&nbsp;

1. Life.

Although there is indirect evidence that his father’s ancestors may have originated in the Netherlands, both of Vanhal’s parents’ families (Vaňhal and Volešovský) had lived in Bohemia for several generations. He was bonded to Count Schaffgotsch, in whose estates his family lived. During his early years in Nechanicz he was trained to sing and to play string and wind instruments; he also went to the nearby town of Marscherdorf to learn German and other subjects. His favourite teacher, Anton Erban, taught him to play the organ, and at the age of 13 he became organist in Opocžna (Opocžno). He later became choir director in Niemcžowes (Nemyčeves) in the province of Jicin, where Mathias Nowák trained him to be a virtuoso violinist and to write concertos.

In 1760–61 Vanhal moved to Vienna. He lived there until May 1769, entering ‘the most imposing circles’ (DlabacžKL) and giving instrumental and singing lessons; among his keyboard pupils was Ignace Pleyel. His income enabled him to purchase his freedom from bondage; he apparently returned to Bohemia only once, on the death of one of his parents. In 1762–3 he probably received some help from Dittersdorf (then Carl Ditters), who was a member of the imperial theatre orchestra. Dittersdorf later referred to Vanhal as ‘a pupil of mine’, but there is little evidence of his influence in Vanhal’s music. Payment records, however, suggest that Ditters helped by introducing Vanhal to the musical scene as a violinist. An encounter in 1762 with the child Mozart has also been reported. During this period Vanhal established himself as one of the leading composers in Vienna, contributing to the rise of the ‘Viennese style’. He also made contact with the Parisian publisher Huberty, who issued his six Simphonies quatours op.1 in 1769. Baron I.W. Riesch of Dresden offered to finance Vanhal’s musical tour to Italy, so that he could prepare himself to become Kapellmeister of Riesch’s court in Dresden. Reaching Italy in May 1769, Vanhal spent about a year in Venice, then travelled to Bologna, Florence, Rome and elsewhere. He met many prominent composers, including Gassmann (with whom he returned to Vienna) and Gluck. Two operas which he may have written in Rome, Il trionfo di Clelia and Il Demofonte, both to texts by Metastasio, have not been found.

On his return to Vienna in September 1771, he declined the Kapellmeister’s position in Baron Riesch’s orchestra. The often-stated (but mistaken) idea that he was overcome with a debilitating mental disease has its source in Burney’s statement that a ‘little perturbation of [Vanhal’s] faculties’ had caused his compositions to become ‘insipid and shallow’. During the succeeding decade Vanhal paid several visits to the estate of a new patron, Count Ladislaus Erdödy, at Varaždin (now in Croatia), but his home continued to be in Vienna. In response to the changing musical tastes of the Viennese public, he stopped composing symphonies in the late 1770s, and string quartets a few years later, and began to cultivate the unique opportunities offered by the fledgling Viennese music publishing industry to control the character and dispersal of his works; Viennese publishers subsequently issued more than 270 prints of his music.

The first of Vanhal’s Viennese publications (six violin duos op.28, issued by Artaria) appeared in 1780. Foreign publishers such as André, the Hummels and English firms such as John Bland and Robert Bremner had already copied his compositions from earlier French publications. The focus of Vanhal’s composing now shifted away from the nobility and more towards the public and, increasingly, the church. For the former he continued to compose serious music, such as concertos and the seven-movement cantata Trauergesang bey dem Tode Ioseph des Zweiten, a remarkably intense work published by Artaria in 1790, but he concentrated principally on music for and with keyboard, of which he wrote a wide variety. Most of Vanhal’s church music remained unpublished, and little is known about its background other than the names of the churches and monasteries that appear on the title-pages. He was unmarried and left no heirs; when he died, in an apartment near the Stephansdom, he had obviously been living in modest but comfortable circumstances.

Vanhal’s career was strongly influenced by his character. Dlabač, in addition to recounting the pleasing social qualities that gained him quick access to Viennese noble circles called him ‘a zealous Christian’. It can also be seen that, although he was hard-working, conscientious, pragmatic and determined, he was not personally ambitious. He must have been a fine performer, but, other than that he was listed as a first violinist in a performance of Gluck’s Orfeo in 1763 and that in 1784 he played (perhaps the cello) in a quartet with Haydn, Dittersdorf and Mozart, little is known about his ability. He was not related to a travelling virtuoso flautist known as Vanhal.

2. Works.

In spite of the appearance in 1988 of a new thematic catalogue, the total number of Vanhal’s compositions can be only roughly estimated. His earliest works, written in Bohemia during the two decades before he came to Vienna, are lost. In Vienna he turned his attention to the new genres of symphony and chamber music (especially quartets and trios). For the symphonies, only one autograph survives (for C28, an atypical one-movement ‘symphonie’, HR-Vu), but there is credible evidence that a further 76 of the normal symphonies attributed to him can probably be considered authentic, and that they can be divided chronologically into ten groups, which reveal the basic changes in his style during the years between about 1760 and 1780. The 34 symphonies that Vanhal wrote before going to Italy reveal the evolution in his concept of the symphony. The first two are, exceptionally, three-movement overtures – active, busy and almost entirely forte. The remainder have four movements (normally fast–slow–minuet–fast). The earliest works show their Baroque heritage in their use of fugal and canonic movements and passages, a slow French overture-type first movement, dance-derived finales, concerto grosso textures and motivic construction based on the opening theme. During this period, Vanhal began to use minor keys and the so-called Sturm und Drang style; he also made increasing use of incipient sonata form (with discernible development sections), and of cantabile thematic material.

It is impossible to assess the effects of Vanhal’s stay in Italy upon his style. But there is less experimentation in the symphonies that he produced after his return. They feature distinct sonata form movements with full-size cantabile themes, and opening thematic material may be re-used both within a movement and in a subsequent one. Some are in minor keys, though not in characteristic Sturm und Drang style. Vanhal’s attempt to widen the range of timbres is seen in many small changes; the most dramatic is his apparently pioneering use of three, four and five horns. Compared with the earliest group, all the later symphonies are longer overall as well as in the lengths of the first, second and last movements. Most of their finales are in sonata form. A basic slowing in the tempos of both the slow and the fast movements is discernible in these symphonies.

Similar structural developments are found in Vanhal’s other instrumental works from the same period, such as the string quartets and the concertos. D.W. Jones’s study (1978) of 53 ‘authenticated’ string quartets (out of 94 that Weinmann (1988) attributed to Vanhal) points also to important differences from the symphonies, especially in the treatment of the first violin, which is treated as a virtuoso solo instrument. Other unusual features include the fugal-style finale of C9, one of his last quartets and written-out cadenzas for all four instruments in ten others. The normal order of movements (fast–minuet–slow–fast) also differs from that in the symphonies. Jones points to Vanhal as second only to Haydn in the number of quartets he composed, and describes him as the prominent figure in the evolution of the virtuoso string quartets of the early 19th century.

All the 72 keyboard sonatas discussed in M. Dewitz’s study (1933) were composed about 1783 or later, that is, after the symphonies. Most are in three movements (some with slow introductions); the sonata form first movements have clearly contrasted themes (which are harmonically accounted for in the developments) and complete recapitulations. The finales are mostly stylized dances, such as rondos, but nine are in sonata form. Dewitz stresses that the caprices, with their free forms, virtuoso elements and Romantic traits, constitute an important group of Vanhal’s sonata-type compositions and point towards the lyric and Romantic piano pieces of the 19th century. They were well received by the public, both in Vienna and abroad. So too were the many other keyboard pieces, although Vanhal was criticized by several north German writers, especially Gerber, for composing programmatic pieces.

From the studies carried out so far, it is clear that Vanhal was one of the best composers of the time – innovative, imaginative and original. He was also influential, but to what extent is difficult to assess. Haydn was presumably familiar with the ten Vanhal symphonies preserved in the Esterházy collection (H-Bn), but there is more affinity between Vanhal’s style and Mozart’s. Comparisons with other contemporary composers are necessary for an accurate account of Vanhal’s role. However, he unquestionably contributed significantly to music in Europe, and his published music, issued by many publishers, stimulated the public and the entire industry. His career, which led him from bondage to comfortable independence, reflects the influence of Emperor Joseph II and the democratic principles he espoused in Viennese society. Vanhal’s music, in turn, contributed to the development of Viennese musical style.

WORKS

provisional list; categories and numbering follow Weinmann (1988) except where otherwise stated; for printed works usually only the first use of an opus number is noted (for fuller list of opus numbers see Bryan, 1977)

principal sources: A-Wgm, Wn; CZ-Bm, K, KRa, Pnm; D-Bsb, Dlb, Rtt, SWl; F-Pn; GB-Lbl; H-Bn; I-Vnm; US-NYp, Wc

Editions: Vanhal: Six Quartets, ed. D.W. Jones (Cardiff, 1980) [J]Jan Křtitel Vaňhal: Five Symphonies, ed. P. Bryan, The Symphony 1720–1840, ser. B, x (New York, 1981) [B]Thematic catalogues: Weinmann (1988) [all categories except symphonies]Bryan (1997) [symphonies]Jones (1978) [string quartets]

i. symphonies

numberings from Bryan (1997)

Principal publications [only authentic works listed]; op.16 [C6, A2, B] (Paris, 1774); op.16 [C6, G8, A5] (Paris [Sieber], 1774); op.17 [F5, g1] (Paris, 1774); op.18 [E4, a2, F6, B2] (Paris, 1774); op.23 [a2] (Paris, 1776); op.25 [all non-authentic] (Paris, ?1779)

1760 (or earlier)–?1762: C2; C3, ed. A. Badley (Wellington, 1999); D1; D7; e3, ed. P. Bryan (Wellington, 2000) G7, ed. in Spomenici hrvatske glazbene prošlosti, iv (Zagreb, 1973); A1; B4

?1762–4: C10; c3; D18; F3, ed. in RRMCE, xvii (1985); G8 (London, 1772); B3, transcr. in TCMS, i (1990), ed. A. Badley (Wellington, 1999)

?1763–5: C1 (Paris, ?1770), ed. P. Bryan (Wellington, 2000); A5 (Paris, ?1771–2); D2 (London, 1778), ed. A. Badley (Wellington, 1999); E1, ed. P. Bryan (Wellington, 2000); E2; G1

?1764–7: c2 (London, ?1785, attrib. J. Haydn), ed. in B and by A. Badley (Wellington, 1999); e1, ed. in B; g2, ed. in RRMCE, xvii (1985); D6; E1; E4; F2

?1767–8: C6 (Paris, 1772), ed. C. McAlister (Boca Raton, FL, 1982); d1 (Paris, 1772–3), ed. in RRMCE, xvii (1985); F5 (Paris, ?1773–4), ed. in Diletto musicale, no.329 (Vienna, 1978); G4; g1 (Paris, 1773–4), ed. in Diletto musicale, no.38 (Vienna, 1965), ed. W. Hofmann (Frankfurt, 1966); A2 (Paris, 1772), ed. in RRMCE, xvii (1985)

?1769–71: C5; D3; E3; F4; a2, ed. F. Kneusslin (Zürich, 1947); B1 (Paris, 1772), ed. in B

?1771–2: C7 (Paris, 1772, attrib. J. Haydn); E4 (Paris, 1775); E2 (Paris, 1775); e2 (Paris, 1775), ed. in RRMCE, xviii (1985); F6 (Paris, 1775), B2 (Paris, 1775)

?1771–3: C4 (Paris, 1778); E12; G10, ed. L. Ryba (Prague, 1972)

?1772–3: C8, 1 movt only (Paris, 1775); E5; E3; G6 (Paris, ?1781, attrib. Dittersdorf), ed. A. Badley (Wellington, 1999); A1, ed. A. Badley (Wellington, 1999); A3

1773: C28, 1 movt only, ed. in Spomenici hrvatske glazbene prošlosti, iv (Zagreb, 1973)

?1773–4: C9 (Amsterdam, 1781); D4, ed. in RRMCE, xviii (1985); d2, ed. in B and by A. Badley (Wellington, 1999); F7 (Paris, 1778); f1; A4 (Lyons, 1780), ed. P. Bryan (Vienna, 1973); a1, ed. P. Bryan (Vienna, 1973)

?1775–8: C11, ed. in B and by A. Badley (Wellington, 1999); C14; C17, ed. P. Bryan (Wellington, 2000); C18; C27; D12; D15; E10; G11, ed. A. Bradley (Wellington, 2000); G13; A9, ed. A. Badley (Wellington, 1999)

?1778–9: D17 (Berlin, ?1781), ed. A. Badley (Wellington, 1999); E5 (Berlin, ?1781); A7 (Berlin, ?1781)

ii. concertos

only solo instruments listed

(a) 19 for hpd/pf: C2, pf, vn, by 1776–7, ed. in Diletto musicale, no.1107 (Vienna, 1990); C3 (Vienna, 1783); C4 (Vienna, 1809); C5 (Vienna, 1802); C6 (Vienna, 1810), ed. M. Csurk and L. Vígh (Budapest, 1990); A1 (Vienna, 1785); D1, op.14 (Offenbach, 1788), ed. H. Gmür (Zürich, 1985); G1 (Vienna, 1804); C1; C7; C8; C9; C10; C11; D2; D3; E1; F1, by 1786, ed. as org conc. in Diletto musicale, no.562 (Vienna, 1973); F2

(b) 15 for vn: C1, by 1774; D1, by 1775; D2, by 1775; G1, by 1770; G2, by 1771; G3, by 1772; A1, by 1775; B1, by 1775, ed. C. Eisen (Wellington, 2000); C2; C3; D3; D4; E1; G4, ‘Concertino’; A2

(d) 4 for vc, incl.: C1, by 1785–7; A1, ?c1780, ed. in MVH, l (1984)

(e) 11 for fl: C1, by 1775; D1, by 1776–7; D2, by 1782–4; E1 (Paris, n.d.), ed. B. Meier (n.p. 1988); F1, by 1775; Conc., G, =Vn Conc. IIb:G2; A1, fl/ob (Paris, n.d.), ed. B. Meier (n.p. 1993); A2 (Paris, n.d.), ed. F. Pohanka (Prague, 1958); B1, fl/ob (Paris, n.d.), ed. B. Meier (n.p. 1993); D3; G2

(f) 1 for ob; see also fl concs. IIe:C1, A1, B1, E1 (? for fl.ob)

(g) 1 for cl (orig. as Fl Conc. IIe:C1), ed. G. Balassa and M. Berlész (Budapest, 1972)

(h) 1 for db ed., (in E) by H. Hermann (Leipzig, 1957) and (in D) in Diletto musicale, no.556 (Vienna, 1977)

(i) 3 for bn: C1, ed. K. Schwamberger (Hamburg, 1964); F2, ed. in Diletto musicale, no.537 (Vienna, 1978); F3, 2 bn, ed. H. Voxman (Monteux, 1985), also attrib. Zimmermann

Tpt conc., 9 org concs., listed in inventory of Vanhal’s estate

iii. divertimentos, cassations, partitas, etc.

29 works, incl.: C4, Divertimento, 2 ob, 2 hn, bn, ed. H. Steinbeck (Zürich, 1970); D4, Cassation, vn, va, db obbl, fl, 2 hn, ed. R. Malarić (Vienna, 1986); the same titles, esp. ‘divertimento’, were used for many other works in categories I–XIV

iv: quintets and sextets for strings and winds

(a) 6 qnts, incl.: IVa:2, vn, va, 2 hn, b; IVa:3, 2 vn, 2 va, b (Paris, n.d.); IVa:5, Notturno, G, vn, va, 2 hn, b

(b) sextets: IVb:1, 6 quatuors concertantes op.3 (Paris, 1770); IVb:2, Notturno, fl, bn, vc, 2 hn, b

v. quartets

(a) str qts: op.1 [E1, F11, G6, c2, ed. in J, D3, G1] (Paris, 1769); op.2 [F1, E2, B9, B1, E5; no.6 = wind qnt by J.C. Bach] (Paris, 1769); op.6 [F6, ed. in J, E1, C3, G4, A2, B5] (Paris, 1771); op.7 [F7, d1, C4, g2, B7, E8] (Paris, 1771), also as op.26 (Paris, 1779–80); op.9 [E4, G2, F2, B2, F3, E3, all spurious] (Paris, 1772); op.13 [E2, C1, ed. in J, F4, A1, B3, G3] (Paris, 1773); op.21 [E6, E7, doubtful, D2, E3, F8, G5, spurious] (Paris, 1773); op.24 [C6, G7, A3, B8, E10, E4] (Paris, ?1779), also as op.4 (Berlin, 1779); 6 qts, op.28 [unidentified] (Paris, 1783); op.33 [C7, A4, ed. in J, F10, D4, G9, B10] (Vienna, ?1784–5); 6 quatours [F9, E11, ed. in J, g3, B11, G10, D7] (Vienna, 1785–7); C5; c1; D5; D6; E12; G8, ed. in J; A5; c26 others

(b) 19 fl qts, incl.: op.3 [D4, G3, D2, F4, D6, D7] (Paris, 1770); op.7 (Paris, 1771), incl. F1, ed. G. Dobrée (London, 1973), B1, G1, E1, A1, C1, the last 3 ed. D. Mulgan (London, 1973)

vi. trios

(a) 74 for 2 vn, b, incl.: op.4 (Paris, ?1770); op.5 (Paris, ?1770); op.11 (Paris, 1773); op.12 (Paris, 1773); op.19 (Paris [Bérault], 1774); op.20 (Paris [Chevardière], 1774); op.22 (Paris, 1777); 15 trios, C10–14, F7–13, G12–14, edn (Offenbach, 1976); B2, ed. L. Klemen (Budapest, 1990)

(b) 22 for vn, va, db, incl. VIb:13, ed. D. Jones (London, 1982)

(d) 12 others: 6 Trios, cl, cl/bn, b, op.18 (Paris, 1775), incl. VId:9, 12, ed. N. Morrison (Dorn, n.d.) and VId:10–11, edn (Wïnterthur, 1992)

vii. duets

(a) 65 for 2 vn, incl.: VIIIa:1–6, 6 duetti (Paris, c1779); VIIa:7–12, op.28 (Vienna, 1780); others, pubd Vienna

(b) 4 for vn, b, incl.: VIIIb:C1, Sonata, vn, b; VIIb:B2, Variazioni, vn, vc (Vienna, 1803)

(d) VIId:1 Variations, fl, vn (Vienna, n.d.)

(e) 3 for fl, b, incl. VIIe:D2

(f) VIIf:1–6, 6 Solos or Sonatas, fl, b, op.10 (London, 1781/R1981 in ECCS, x)

(g) VIIg:1, Solo, vc, b; VIIg:2, 6 Variations, vc, va/vc, edn (Prague, 1975)

viii. quintets with keyboard

VIII:1–3, Sonates, kbd, 2 vn, va, vc ad lib, op.12 (Amsterdam, 1784)

ix. quartets with keyboard

13 works, incl.: 6 Sonatas, hpd, 2 vn, vc, op.27 (London, 1782); 3 Sonatas, pf, vn, va, vc, op.29 (Vienna, 1782); Quartetto, op.40 (Leipzig, ?1811); XI:13, Concertino, C, hpd, 2 vn, b, ed. in Fillion

x. trios with keyboard

(a) 51 kbd trios (most entitled ‘Sonate’), incl.: Xa:23, pf, vn, vc, ed. T.D. Thomas (St Cloud, MN, 1982); Xa:46, ed. in RRMCE, xxxii (1989)

(b) 6 sets of variations, incl. Xb:6, pf, vn, vc, ed. E. Kleinová (Prague, 1969)

xi. keyboard, violin (or viola, flute, etc.) and cello

(a) 71 sonatas, incl.: op.29 (Vienna, 1782); op.32 (Vienna, 1784–5); XIa:64 (Vienna, 1799), ed. J. Panocha and A. Dítělová (Prague, 1974); XIa:26, Sonata, pf, cl (Vienna, 1801), ed. B. Tuthill (New York, 1948); 6 sonate piccole (Vienna, 1802); 6 Zwergel Sonaten (Vienna, 1803); XIa:55–7, 3 sonates, pf, vn (Vienna, 1808), ed. as ‘op.30’ in Diletto musicale, nos.118–3 (Vienna, 1995); 3 sonates (Vienna, c1809); Sonate (Vienna, c1810); op.43 (Leipzig, 1811); Fantaisie (Vienna, 1811); XIa:35, kbd, fl, ed. M. Klement (Prague, 1968); XIa:68, pf, va, ed. in Diletto musicale, no.544 (Vienna, 1973)

(b) 31 sonatinas for kbd, vn ad lib, most pubd Vienna, 1804–12

(c) 10 little pieces (kleine Stücke), incl. XIc:5, Kurz u. leichte Klavierstücke, vn, acc. (Vienna, 1804), ed. A. Imbescheid (Vienna, 1978); XIc8–9, Stücke, kbd/gui, vn

(d) 36 sets of variations for kbd, vn ad lib, incl. XId:1–36, most pubd Vienna, 1786–1814

(e) 3 ovs. for kbd, vn ad lib, pubd Vienna, 1808–13

xii. keyboard four hands

(a) 31 sonatas and sonatinas incl.: op.32 (Vienna, 1784–5), edn (Bologna, 1993); op.39 (Vienna, 1795); op.41 (Vienna, 1796); op.64 (Vienna, 1799); op.65 (Vienna, 1802)

(b) 9 other works, incl. 24 duettini, 2/4 hands (London, 1809)

xiii. keyboard solo

sonatas, sonatinas and caprices; for list see Dewitz

196 works, incl.: 3 sonate, op.30 (Vienna, ?1785), also as The Beauties of Apollo, 3 Caprices, op.30 (London, n.d.); 3 neue Caprice-Sonaten, op.31 (Vienna, 1783; London, n.d.; Amsterdam, 1783); caprices opp.33–5 (Vienna, 1784); 3 Caprices op.36 (Vienna, 1784); XIII:70–73, 4 Sonatine (Vienna, 1805), facs. (Brescia, 1985); XIII:124–5, edn (Prague, 1975); XIII:135, 3 Capricio (Vienna, 1809); XIII:168, Sonate (Vienna, 1812)

xiv. keyboard solo

other works; for list see Dewitz

(a) 44 short pieces, little pieces, etc., incl. XIVa:18, 36 fortschreitende Clavierstücke (Vienna, Leipzig and Mainz, 1813)

(b) 32 divertimentos, fantasias, etc., incl. XIVb:2, Pantomina (Vienna, 1802); 3 divertimentos, ed. M. Bizjak (Ljubljana, 1989)

xv. keyboard variations

for list see Dewitz

c68 sets, incl.: op.36 (Vienna, 1788); op.37 (Vienna, ?1790); op.38 (Vienna, 1795); op.40 (Vienna, 1795); op.42 (Vienna, 1796); op.60 (Vienna, 1798); op.62 (Vienna, 1798); op.63 (Vienna, 1799); c57 other sets, mentioned in inventory of Vanhal’s estate

xvi. organ and pedagogical works

36 works, incl.: Fugue (Vienna, 1785); 4 praeambula (Vienna, 1801); 6 [12] kurze und leichte praeambula (Vienna, 1801); 12 Orgelfugen (Vienna, ?c1801–2); 12 ausgeführte praeambula für Stadt- und Landorganisten (Vienna, 1801–?c1814); 24 Cadenzen in allen Tonarten für Organisten (Vienna, 1803); 6 Fugen (Vienna, ?c1806); 24 kurze Cadenzen und Präludien durch 24 Tonarten (Vienna, ?c1806); 6 [12] leichte Präludien (Vienna, c1806–); 6 Fugen (Vienna, ?c1810); 6 Fugen (Vienna, c1813–14); XVI:23–5, 2 fugues, ed. in MVH, xxi (1968); Anfangsgründe des General-basses (Vienna, 1817); Kurzgefasste Anfangsgründe für das Pianoforte, lost; Flötenschule, doubtful, advertised in Wiener Zeitung (1804), lost; many other pedagogical pubns, incl. duos, kbd pieces, variations etc.

xvii. occasional compositions

(a) 17 programmatic pieces, incl.: Die Schlacht bei Würzburg (Vienna, 1796); Die Bedrohung u. Befreyung der k.k. Haupt- und Residenzstadt Wien (Vienna, 1797), arr. for 2 fl (Vienna, n.d.), ed. K. Hünteler (Vienna, 1991); Die grosse Seeschlacht bei Abukir (Vienna, 1800); Die Seeschlacht bei Trafalgar (Vienna, 1806)

(b) 41 secular songs with kbd (pf/hpd), incl.: When your beauty appears, in 6 Elegant Ballads (London, c1788); Trauergesang bey dem Tode Ioseph des Zweiten (cant.), 1v, pf (Vienna, 1790); 8 deutsche Kinderlieder (Vienna, 1796); Die Vollmondsnacht auf dem Kahlenberge (Vienna, 1803); Arietta In questa tomba oscura … da molti autori (Vienna, 1808); Die Poststationen des Lebens (Vienna, 1808); Des Volkes Wunsch (Vienna, 1809); Lied für das der k.k. Landwehr einverleibte Handlungs-Corps (Vienna, 1810)

xviii. dance music

47 works incl. minuetti, Deutsche, Ländler, Hungarian dances, waltzes, angloises, écossaises, etc., many pubd, incl.: XVIII:1, 12 minuetti, 2 vn, b (Vienna, 1786); XVIII:2, 6 allemandes, 2 vn, 2 ob, 2 hn, b (Vienna, 1787); XVIII:20, 6 leichte deutsche Tänze, pf 4 hands (Vienna, 1806), ed. J. Ligtelijn (Amsterdam, 1955); XVIII:25, 6 ungarische Tänze, pf (Amsterdam, 1809), facs. (Amsterdam, 1988); XVIII:47, Baten Waltz (New York, n.d.); others, listed in DlabacžKL

xix. masses

48, C1–12, D1–9, E1–6, F1–5, G1–7, A1–4, B1–5, some dated, C8 and G5 pubd (Vienna, 1818); G4, Missa pastoralis, ed. B. MacIntyre (forthcoming); 2 Requiem settings; several other masses (see MacIntyre, 1996); orat, perf. Varaždin, listed in DlabacžKL

xx. smaller church works

(a) 10 lits, 1 pubd (Vienna, 1818)

(b) 3 vespers settings

(d) 10 grads

(e) 46 offs, incl. C13 and C14 (Vienna, 1818); 21 others, mentioned in inventory of Vanhal’s estate

(f) 34 arias

(g) 32 Salve regina; 32 Stabat mater; 1 Regina coeli

(h) TeD, 1770, ed. M. Eckhardt (Vienna, 1973)

(i) 15 Tantum ergo, incl. C7 (Vienna, 1808)

(j) 15 ants, hymns, psalms and responses, incl. Pange lingua, C7, and 4 breves et faciles hymni, F2 (Vienna, 1808); Alma regina, 2 Alma, Veni sanctae, Libera, ‘ein Benedictus zum Einlegen’, lost, mentioned in inventory of Vanhal’s estate

xxi. opera

not listed by Weinmann

Il Demofonte (P. Metastasio), Il trionfo di Clelia (Metastasio), lost, listed in DlabacžKL

2. Aesthetics and technique.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BurneyGN

BurneyH

ČSHS

DlabacžKL [with list of works]

EitnerQ

GerberL

GerberNL

MGG1 (M. Poštolka) [incl. further bibliography]

NewmanSCE

P.P. : ‘Ein sehr Kahler Auszug einer guten Overture’, Magazin der Musik, ed. C.F. Cramer, i (Hamburg, 1783/R), 933 only [review of arr. of Sym. C6]

C. Ditters von Dittersdorf: Lebensbeschreibung (Leipzig, 1801; Eng. trans., 1896/R1970); ed. N. Miller (Munich, 1967)

C.F.D. Schubart: Ideen zu einer Ästhetik der Tonkunst (Vienna, 1806/R), 232

[?F. Sartori:] ‘Nekrolog auf das Jahr 1812: Johann Wanhall’, Vaterländische Blätter für den österreichischen Kaiserstaat (Vienna, 1813), ii, 476–8

J.B. Wanhal: Inventur u. Schätzung (MS, 1813, A-Wst 2965/813) [inventory and evaluation of Vanhal’s estate; partial transcr. in Dewitz]

M. von Dewitz: Jean Baptiste Vanhal: Leben und Klavierwerke (Munich, 1933) [with non-thematic list of kbd works]

F. Fišer: Jan Vaňhal a jeho varhanní skladby [Vanhal and his organ compositions] (diss., U. of Prague, 1966) [with inc. genealogy and partial thematic catalogue of organ works]

A. Borková: ‘K problematice čeksé emigrace 18. století: J. Vaňhal’ [Czech 18th-century emigration: Vanhal], OM, iii (1971), 285–91

K. Filić: Glazbeni život Varaždina [The musical life of Varaždin] (Varaždin, 1972)

L. Županović: Introduction to Varaždinski skladateljski krug s kraja XVIII. stoljeća, Spomenici hrvatske glazbene prošlosti, iv (Zagreb, 1973), p.xii [incl. Fr. summary]

D.W. Jones: The String Quartets of Vanhal (diss., U. of Wales, 1978)

R. Hickman: Six Bohemian Masters of the String Quartet in the Late Eighteenth Century (diss., U. of California, 1979)

M.M. Fillion: The Accompanied Keyboard Divertimenti of Haydn and his Viennese Contemporaries (c. 1750–1780) (diss., Cornell U., 1982)

B.C. MacIntyre: The Viennese Concerted Mass of the Early Classic Period (Ann Arbor, 1986)

S.R. Floyd: The Clarinet Music of Johann Baptist Vanhal (diss., Michigan State U., 1988)

A. Weinmann, ed.: Themen-Verzeichniss der Kompositionen von Johann Baptiste Wanhal (Vienna, 1988) [catalogue of all Vanhal’s works except syms.]

B. MacIntyre: ‘Johann Baptiste Vanhal and the Pastoral Mass Tradition’, Music in Eighteenth-Century Austria, ed. D.W. Jones (Cambridge, 1996), 112–32

P. Bryan: Johann Wanhal, Viennese Symphonist: his Life, his Symphonies, and his Musical Environment (Stuyvesant, NY, 1997) [incl. analytical studies and thematic catalogue]

O. Krone: ‘Johann Baptist Wanhol (1739–1813) und seine Mäzene’, Concerto, xvi (1999), 25–30

Van Halen.

American hard rock and heavy metal band. It was formed in 1972 (initially under the name Mammoth, but changed to Van Halen in 1974) by the brothers Eddie [Edward] Van Halen (b Nijmegen, Netherlands, 26 January 1955; guitar) and Alex Van Halen (b Nijmegen, Netherlands, 8 May 1950; drums), with Michael Anthony (b Chicago, 20 June 1955; bass). David Lee Roth (b Bloomington, IN, 10 October 1955) joined as a vocalist in 1973 and continued through the band's most influential period; he was replaced in 1985 by Sammy Hagar (b Monterey, CA, 13 Oct 1947), who in turn yielded the frontman's position to former Extreme vocalist Gary Cherone (b 26 July 1961) in 1996. The band's first album, Van Halen (WB, 1978) has long been considered a rock classic; it set the tone for much of the band's future work by combining heavy metal intensity with a brighter pop sensibility. It also introduced the virtuosic playing that made Eddie Van Halen the most influential electric guitarist after Jimi Hendrix. He developed special techniques such as two-handed tapping and extreme vibrato, expanded the instrument's vocabulary of moans and screams, and modified his equipment to produce a hotter, more sustained sound. His playing featured bluesy fluidity, but his innovations also helped accelerate the Baroque impact on 1980s heavy metal; few rock guitarists were unaffected by him. The band's other original asset was the flamboyance, athleticism, good looks, showmanship and swaggering persona but slight androgyny of its first lead singer, David Lee Roth. The band's years with Sammy Hagar were commercially very successful, but many fans prefer the original line-up. Van Halen is usually counted a heavy metal band on the strength of their often weighty sound and guitar virtuosity, but they also incorporated pop-friendly hooks and vocal harmonies. This gained them radio play and record sales far exceeding those of harder bands such as Judas Priest or Iron Maiden. (R. Walser: Running with the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music, Hanover, NH, 1993)

ROBERT WALSER

Van Helmont, Adrien Joseph

(b Brussels, 13 Aug 1747; d Brussels, 28 Dec 1830). Flemish composer and teacher. Son of Charles Joseph Van Helmont, he was taught music by his father and other musicians of the collegiate church of St Michel et Ste Gudule, though unlike his brother Pierre Joseph he did not serve there as a choirboy. He sang at the royal chapel and in 1777 succeeded his father as choirmaster of Ste Gudule. He lost his directorship in 1794 during the occupation of the Netherlands by the French Revolutionary armies, but resumed his duties at Ste Gudule from 1802 to 1818. In 1813 he helped to establish a free singing school, thus marking the secularization of music education in Brussels, of which he was a strong advocate. This school eventually evolved into the Brussels Conservatory.

Van Helmont's known religious works (all autograph manuscripts) include a Requiem (1791) and two motets (1797) of mediocre workmanship (B-Bc), a responsorium graduale for Corpus Christi and a setting of Homo quidam (B-Br); three other motets are attributed to him by the priest and copyist Franciscus Haseleer and dated 1803–4. An additional motet, a Missa solemnis for chorus and orchestra (before 1783) and many other works are lost. His opéra comique, L'amant légataire, produced in Brussels in 1808, had no success, though its music, which resembles that of Grétry, is charming.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BNB (F. Loise)

Vander StraetenMPB, v

R. Wangermée: Les maîtres de chant des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles à la collégiale des SS. Michel et Gudule à Bruxelles (Brussels, 1950)

ROBERT WANGERMÉE/LEWIS REECE BARATZ

Van Helmont, Charles Joseph [Carol Josephus]

(b Brussels, 19 March 1715; d Brussels, 8 June 1790). Flemish composer, organist and music director. He studied as a choirboy under Petrus Hercules Brehy at the collegiate church of St Michel et Ste Gudule in Brussels where, at the age of 18, he succeeded Josse Boutmy as titular organist. In 1737 he was appointed choirmaster at the Kapellekerk of Brussels (the parish church of Notre Dame de la Chapelle), and styled himself ‘Directeur de musique de la Chapelle roÿale espagnolles’. The premature death of J.H. Fiocco in 1741 enabled him to return to Ste Gudule, this time as music director (zangmeester), a position he had aspired to since the onset of Brehy's terminal illness in October 1736, but which had gone to Fiocco. For the next 36 years, Van Helmont lived with his growing family in the choraelhuys (maîtise) where he supervised the musical and general education of the choristers, composed frequently for the service, and undertook the task of conserving Ste Gudule's extensive music collection. In 1768 he founded a musical association which gave weekly public concerts; this was one of the first societies of its kind in Brussels. In 1777 he resigned from Ste Gudule passing his duties to his son Adrien Joseph.

The majority of Van Helmont's compositions are sacred; they comprise a substantial corpus of the approximately 525 manuscripts of the fonds Ste-Gudule, now housed primarily in the Brussels Conservatory library, with additional manuscripts in the Royal Library Albert I. His numerous motets (written between 1733 and 1769) are nearly all for a choir of four (or more) parts and instruments, with tutti–ripieno technique; a few are for one or two solo voices, instruments and continuo. The works written before 1741 need only a limited instrumental complement as they were intended for a smaller musical establishment, while the later works employ more substantial forces, including transverse flutes, oboes and cors de chasse in addition to the customary strings and continuo. Many manuscripts survive with multiple sets of parts and full scores, of which several bear the date of composition and specific liturgical usage.

The extent of Van Helmont's output is only now coming to light. His recently accessible 501-page manuscript Psalmi vesperarum et competi de officiis decanalibus, for four voices, strings and continuo, contains numerous motets and miscellaneous religious pieces (including three settings of the Te Deum for four voices and continuo by other composers) which the young Van Helmont submitted to the canons of Ste Gudule in his bid to succeed Brehy. The copious rubrics are invaluable to our understanding of sacred music and liturgical practice in 18th-century Brussels. Many other works are listed in 18th-century inventories, although the whereabouts of these manuscripts are unknown.

Van Helmont's motets are sectional and consist of a series of choruses interspersed with solo and duo sections, arias and solo recitatives. Da capo form predominates in the solo arias and duos. Thematically the works are strongly coloured by Italianate writing with mannerist formulae: the heavily ornamented melodies are set to predictable harmonic progressions underpinned by complex rhythmic devices. The masses are in the same style. Judith (1756), an oratorio to a Latin text, is a ‘sacred history’ of slight musical interest. Similarly, his three ‘Simphonies’ are not particularly original in nature.

Van Helmont's main secular work, Le retour désiré (1749), is a divertissement written to mark the return of the Hapsburg governor-general Charles de Lorraine to the Austrian Netherlands after a French occupation. The Pièces de clavecin (1737) consists of two suites showing Rameau's influence and also a self-concious flamboyance. The pieces have evocative titles after the French style such as La caille, La sauteuse, La mélodieuse, Le parc and employ both rondeau structure and stylized dance forms. A familiarity with Handel is evident as well. The organ fugues are brief compositions that conclude with a full-voiced ricercar-like cadential structure or with an improvisatory flourish. Texturally they are better suited to the harpsichord than to the organ.

WORKS

sacred

in MS in B-Bc unless otherwise stated

Masses (4vv, str, bc (org), unless otherwise indicated): Missa pro defunctis, 1739; Missa solemnis S Clarae, 2 ob, str, bc, 1739; Missa solemnis SS Trinitatis, 1741; Missa solemnis, 5vv, str, bc, 1742; Missa solemnis novi altaris, 5vv, 2 fl/ob, 2 cl ad lib, str, bc, 1743; Missa solemnis S Gudilae, 1745; Missa doi chori, 8vv, ob, 2 hn, str, bc, Advent 1746; Missa Jubilemus, 6vv, 2 ob, 2 hn, 2 bn, timp, db, bc, 2 vn, bc, 1751; Missa pastorella, fl, 2 hn, 2 vn, bc, 1756; Missa solemnis, ob, 2 vn, bc, 1757; Missa S Caeciliae, 8vv, str, bc, 1769; Missa de Nativitate; Missa solemnis, 2 ob, str, bc; Missa Venatoria (B-Br)

65 motets (most for 4vv, insts, org; some for solo vv): 41 dated, 1733–69, 24 undated, detailed list in Wangermée; 4 addl motets, undated (B-Br); others, lost

Other works: Litaniae BMV, 4vv, bc: 5 collections, 1756–9; Litaniae Lauretanae, 4 vv, str, bc, 1739 (B-Br); 5 Ants for the Mass of St Roch, 4 vv, bc (Br); 3 Mag, 4vv, insts, bc; Lamentations: Les 9 leçons de la Semaine Sainte, 1v, insts, 1737; 3me lamentation du Jeudÿ Sainte, 1v, va/vc, bc, 1756; 6 concentus sacri, incl, 1 mass, 3 motets, lits, 1 TeD, 4vv, str, bc (Brussels, ? 1751–64); Stabat mater dolorosa, 4vv, str, bc, 1759 (Br); Tantum ergo, 4vv, bc (Br); Tantum ergo, 4vv, bc, 1769 (Br); Tantum ergo, 4vv, str, bc (Br); Te Domine, 1748, inc. (Br); Hymn, 8vv, str, bc (Br); Vespers ant, 4vv, str, bc (Br)

Psalmi versperarum et completi de officiis decanalibus (organ preludes, office hymns and motets, mostly for 4vv, insts, bc), 1737 (Br)

Judith (orat), 5 solo vv, ob, 2 hn, str, bc, 1756

secular

New airs for Gryselide (op, J.F. Caunaert, after A. Zeno), Brussels, Monnaie, 23 Jan 1736

Le retour désiré, divertissement pour la paix, vs (Brussels, 1749)

Overtura, 2 orchs, 1754, Bc; Symphonia, 1739 (Br); Symphonia, 1741 (Br)

Kbd: Pièces, hpd (Brussels, 1737), 1st suite ed. in MMBel, vi (1948); 6 fugues, org, D-Bsb, nos.1–3, 5 ed. in MMBel, vi (1948)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Vander StraetenMPB, i

S. Clercx: ‘Les clavecinistes belges et leurs emprunts à l'art de François Couperin et de Jean Philippe Rameau’, ReM, no.192 (1939) 11–12

S. Clercx: Introduction to Dieudonné Raick, Charles-Joseph van Helmont: Werken voor orgel en/of voor clavecimbel, MMBel, vi (1948)

R. Wangermée: Les maîtres de chant des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles à la collégiale des SS. Michel et Gudule à Bruxelles (Brussels, 1950)

L.R. Baratz: ‘A Belgian fonds and Secondary Source Materials’, FAM (1990), 288–90

G. Huybens: ‘Een onbekend muziekhandschrift van Charles-Joseph Van Helmont’, Musica antiqua X: Bydgoszcz 1993, 24–6

L.R. Baratz: ‘St Gudula's Children: the Boninfanten and Choraelen of the Brussels Collegiate Church during the Ancien Régime’, Musicology and Archival Research: Brussels 1993, 214–305

ROBERT WANGERMÉE/LEWIS REECE BARATZ

Van Heusen, Jimmy [James; Babcock, Edward Chester]

(b Syracuse, NY, 26 Jan 1913; d Rancho Mirage, CA, 7 Feb 1990). American composer, publisher and pianist. At the age of 16 he became a pianist, singer and announcer for a radio station and adopted his professional name. He then studied singing with Howard Lyman and wrote college shows at Syracuse University. In 1933 he replaced Harold Arlen as composer at the Cotton Club in Harlem, and worked as a pianist and song plugger for Tin Pan Alley publishers, including Remick and Santley Brothers. He had his first songwriting success in 1938 with It’s the dreamer in me (in collaboration with Jimmy Dorsey) and wrote for the bandleader Eddie DeLange before teaming up with the lyricist Johnny Burke in 1939. Together Burke and Van Heusen wrote the songs for 16 of Bing Crosby’s best-known films, including Road to Morocco (1942) and others of the ‘Road to …’ series, and Going my Way (1944, from which ‘Swingin’ on a Star’ won an Academy Award). In 1944 they established the Burke–Van Heusen publishing company (which became Burvan in 1950). From 1955 to 1969 Van Heusen collaborated with Sammy Cahn on several well-known songs for television and films, many of them for Frank Sinatra; these included ‘Love and Marriage’ (1955, for a television production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town), which won an Emmy Award, and ‘All the Way’ (1957, in the film The Joker is Wild), ‘High Hopes’ (1959, in A Hole in the Head), and ‘Call me irresponsible’ (1963, in Papa’s Delicate Condition), all of which won Academy awards. His songs have become standards for many other popular singers including Lena Horne and Rosemary Clooney, and for jazz arrangers.

Van Heusen’s songs are sophisticated, with chromatic bass lines and melodies built up sequentially through successions of diminished chords, and ‘almost always the suggestion of a rhythm section in the background’ (Wilder). Seven holograph manuscripts of his songs are in the Crosby Library at Gonzaga University, Spokane, Washington, but the major collection of his musical works, recordings and papers, 1920–91, is at the University of California in Los Angeles. In 1966 he issued a recording of his own performances of some of his songs, reissued in 1982.

WORKS

(selective list)

Selective editions: Sinatra Sings Van Heusen (New York, 1958)

Great Songs by Johnny Burke and Jimmy Van Heusen (New York, 1957)

Songs of Burke and Van Heusen (New York, 1994)

stage

all are musicals and dates are those of first New York performance; where different, writers shown as (lyricist; book author)

Swingin’ the Dream (E. DeLange, after W. Shakespeare), 29 Nov 1939 [incl. Darn that dream]; Nellie Bly (J. Burke; J. Quillan), 21 Jan 1946; Carnival in Flanders (Burke; P. Sturges), 8 Sept 1953; Skyscraper (S. Cahn; P. Stone), 13 Nov 1965; Walking Happy (Cahn, after H. Brighouse: Hobson’s Choice), 26 Nov 1966

films

lyrics by J. Burke unless otherwise stated

Road to Morocco, 1942 [incl. Moonlight becomes you]; Dixie, 1943 [incl. Sunday, Monday or Always]; And the Angels Sing, 1944 [incl. It could happen to you]; Belle of the Yukon, 1944 [incl. Like Someone in Love]; Going my Way, 1944 [incl. Swingin’ on a Star]; Road to Utopia, 1945 [incl. Personality]; Road to Rio, 1947 [incl. But Beautiful]; A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, 1949 [incl. Busy Doing Nothing, Once and for Always]; Mister Music, 1950 [incl. Accidents will happen]; Our Town (television film, Cahn; T. Wilder), 1955 [incl. Love and Marriage]; High Time (Cahn), 1960 [incl. Second Time Around]; Robin and the Seven Hoods (Cahn), 1964 [incl. My Kind of Town]

songs

most associated with films, lyrics by S. Cahn unless otherwise stated

It’s the dreamer in me (J. Dorsey) (1938); Deep in a Dream (E. DeLange) (1938); Heaven can wait (DeLange) (1939); Oh, you Crazy Moon (DeLange) (1939); Imagination (Burke) (1940); Suddenly it’s Spring (Burke) (1943), in Lady in the Dark; Nancy (P. Silvers) (1944); Aren’t you glad you’re you? (Burke) (1945), in The Bells of St. Mary’s; The Tender Trap (1955), in The Tender Trap; All the way (1957) in The Joker is Wild; Come fly with me (1958); Indiscreet (1958); High Hopes (1959), in A Hole in the Head; A Pocketful of Miracles (1961), in A Pocketful of Miracles; Call me irresponsible (1963), in Papa’s Delicate Condition; Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967), in Thoroughly Modern Millie; Star! (1968), in Star!

BIBLIOGRAPHY

CBY1970

D. Ewen: Popular American Composers (New York, 1962; suppl. 1972)

A. Wilder: American Popular Song: the Great Innovators, 1900–1950 (New York, 1972)

W. Craig: The Great Songwriters of Hollywood (San Diego, 1980)

R. Hemming: The Melody Lingers On: the Great Songwriters and their Movie Musicals (New York, 1986)

D. Ewen: American Songwriters (New York, 1987)

A. Forte: The American Popular Ballad of the Golden Era, 1924–1950 (Princeton, NJ, 1995)

DEANE L. ROOT

Van Hoboken, Anthony.

See Hoboken, Anthony van.

Van Hove, Luc

(b Wilrijk, 3 Feb 1957). Belgian composer. He studied composition at the Antwerp Conservatory, where he was a pupil of Kersters. As a teacher in composition from 1984 at both the Antwerp Conservatory and the Lemmens Institute in Leuven, he is one of the most respected and influential Flemish composers.

Van Hove is primarily a composer of chamber and orchestral music. Within the latter, a preference for the concerto form is noticeable (electric guitar, oboe, piano). He shares with Ligeti a fascination for dense orchestral textures moving at full speed and applies set theory to composition by taking properties of pitch-class sets (similarity relations, interval content, the complement of a set, set complex relations) as the point of departure for the construction of chords and motifs. His profound knowledge of 19th-century music is increasingly apparent in his works from 1990 onwards. This can be seen from the gestural and expressive qualities of his melodies, for example in the Oboe Concerto, the Nonet and in subsequent works. It is documented furthermore by his adaptation of the rhetorical forms and instrumentation typical of Romantic music. Consequently, the use of tonality in his recent output comes as no surprise. It functions both as a technique for the large-scale structuring of basically non-tonal pitch materials and as an attempt to draw new meaning from tonal chords by integrating them in a non-tonal context.

WORKS

(selective list)

Vocal: 3 Songs, op.12, S, cl qt, 1983; 3 poèmes (P. Verlaine), op.14, S, chorus, chbr orch, 1984

Orch: Largo, op.13, 1984; Scherzo, op.16, 1985; Carnaval op het strand, op.17, 1985; Sym. no.1, op.25, 1989; Stacked Time, conc., elec gui, orch, op.26, 1990; Triptych, ob conc., op. 29, 1993; Pf Conc., op. 32, 1995; Strings, op.33, 1997; Sym. no.2, op.34, 1997

Chbr: Ww Qnt, op.10, 1982; Sonatina, op.11, pf, 1982; Dansen voor 4 handen, op.23, 2 pf, 1988; Septet, op.24, fl, cl, tpt, pf, vn, va, vc, 1988; Sonata, op.27, vc, pf, 1991; Aria, op.28, vc, 1992; Str Qt, op.30, 1994; Nonet, op.31, ww qnt, str trio, pf, 1994

Principal publisher: CeBeDeM

BIBLIOGRAPHY

M. Delaere: ‘Harmonie in het oeuvre van Luc Van Hove’, Ons erfdeel, xxxvi (1993), 62–8

Y. Knockaert: ‘De klank, niets dan de klank. Vlaamse componisten (10): Luc Van Hove’, Kunst en cultuur, no.4 (1993), 10–11

M. Delaere, Y. Knockaert and H. Sabbe: Nieuwe muziek in Vlaanderen (Bruges, 1997)

MARK DELAERE

Vanhulst, Henri

(b Leuven, 5 Dec 1943). Belgian musicologist. He studied at the Free University of Brussels, taking degrees in Romantic philology in 1965 and musicology (with Wangermée and Lesure) in 1976. He subsequently gained the doctorate in 1984 for his dissertation on the Phalèse family of music publishers. He was appointed a part-time lecturer at the Free University of Brussels in 1984, later becoming a full lecturer (1991), part-time professor (1993) and full professor (1995). He was also professor of the history of music at the Brussels Conservatory (1980–90). His research is principally concerned with music of the Renaissance, music printing and publishing in the Low Countries up to the 19th century, and musical life in Brussels. His most important publication is his catalogue of the editions of the publishers Phalèse, which has become an invaluable reference book in this field. He is co-editor of the Revue belge de musicologie and secretary of the Société Belge de Musicologie. He was a prizewinner of the Belgian Royal Academy in 1984.

WRITINGS

‘Les éditions de musique polyphonique et les traités musicaux mentionnés dans les inventaires dressés en 1569 dans les Pays-Bas espagnols sur ordre du Duc d’Albe’, RBM, xxxi (1977), 60–71

‘Un succès de l’édition musicale: Le Septiesme livre des chansons a quatre parties 1560–1661/63’, RBM, xxxii–xxxiii (1978–9), 97–120

‘Edition comparative des instructions pour le luth, le cistre et la guitare publiées à Louvain par Pierre Phalèse (1545–1570)’, RBM, xxxiv–xxxv (1980–81), 81–105

‘L’édition musicale’ (with P. Raspé), ‘Orchestres et concerts’, ‘L’enseignement de la musique’, ‘Les revues et la critique’, ‘La musicologie’, La musique en Wallonie et à Bruxelles, ed. R. Wangermée and P. Mercier (Brussels, 1980–82), i, 293–305; ii, 43–91, 193–206, 223–34, 235–47

‘L’instruction pour le cistre parue dans la version anversoise de l’Hortulus citharae (1582)’, RBM, xxxvi–xxxviii (1982–4), 65–87

Les Phalèse, éditeurs et imprimeurs de musique à Louvain (1545–1578) (diss., Free U. of Brussels, 1984)

‘Lassus et ses éditeurs: remarques à propos de deux lettres peu connues’, RBM, xxxix–xl (1985–6), 80–100

ed., with M. Haine: Musique et société: hommages à Robert Wangermée (Brussels, 1988) [incl. ‘La diffusion des éditions de musique polyphonique dans les anciens Pays-Bas à la fin du XVIe et au début du XVIIe siècle’, 27–51]

‘La musicologie en Belgique depuis 1958’, AcM, lxi (1989), 241–63

Catalogue des éditions de musique publiées à Louvain par Pierre Phalèse et ses fils 1545–1578 (Brussels, 1990)

‘A Fragment of a Lost Lutebook Printed by Phalèse (Leuven, 1575)’, TVNM, xl/2 (1990), 57–80

‘Le manuscrit 41 des archives communales de Bruges’, Le concert des voix et des instruments à la Renaissance: Tours 1991, 231–42

with M. Cornaz: ‘Le marchand de musique bruxellois Weissenbruch et la diffusion des oeuvres de Beethoven (1804–1813)’, RBM, xlvi (1992), 189–223

‘La fricassée de Jean de Latre (1564)’, RBM, xlvii (1993), 81–90

‘Suppliers and Clients of Christopher Plantin, Distributor of Polyphonic Music in Antwerp (1566–1578)’, Musicology and Archival Research: Brussels 1993, 558–604

‘Le contrat d’apprentissage conclu en 1562 entre Pierre Phalèse et Jean Laet’, From Ciconia to Sweelinck: donum natalicium Willem Elders, ed. A. Clement and E. Jas (Amsterdam, 1994), 155–9

‘Le livre de choeur manuscrit de château fort d’Ecaussines-Lalaing (Ec): une source peu connue de la musique de Lassus (1574)’, Orlando di Lasso: Munich 1994, 265–76

ed.: The ‘Catalogus librorum musicorum’ of Jan Evertsen van Doorn (Utrecht 1639) (Utrecht, 1996)

‘Le Conservatoire royal de musique de Bruxelles: ses origines et le directorat de François-Joseph Fétis (1833–1871)’, Le Conservatoire de Paris, 1795–1995: des Menus plaisirs à la Cité de la musique, ed. Y. Gérard and A. Bongrain (Paris, 1996), 201–17

J. Gribenski, ed.: D’un opéra l’autre: hommage à Jean Mongrédien (Paris, 1996), 273–81

MARIE CORNAZ

Van Ijzer-Vincent, Jo.

See Vincent, Jo.

Van Immerseel, Jos

(b Antwerp, 9 Nov 1945). Belgian harpsichordist and fortepianist. At the Royal Conservatory in Antwerp he studied with Eugene Tracy, Flor Peeters and Kenneth Gilbert, winning first prizes for piano (1963), organ (1967) and harpsichord (1971), then going on to win the artist's diploma for the harpsichord (1973). From 1963 onwards he won a number of international competitions and in 1973 received the first prize at the Paris Forum International de Clavecin. In 1985 he founded the Baroque orchestra Anima Eterna, with which he has recorded a complete cycle of Mozart piano concertos, directing from the keyboard. Van Immerseel has also conducted the Antwerp Collegium Musicum and Collegium Vocale, published articles and reviews, and produced radio programmes as well as pursuing an international performing career. Besides the Mozart concertos his numerous recordings include harpsichord concertos by C.P.E. Bach, the complete Beethoven piano concertos and violin sonatas, and the Schubert piano trios with his regular chamber music partners, Vera Beths and Anner Bylsma. He frequently accompanied the baritone Max van Egmond, with whom he recorded Schubert's Winterreise. His repertory also includes many lesser-known compositions by Belgian composers. Van Immerseel has taught at the Conservatory and at the international academy of the Vleeshuis Museum in Antwerp (from 1972), the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam (1981–5) and, since 1992, the Paris Conservatoire.

HOWARD SCHOTT

Vanini, Bernardino.

See Vannini, Bernardino.

Vanini [Boschi], Francesca

(b Bologna; d Venice, 1744). Italian contralto. She was in the service of the court of Mantua. Between 1695 and 1700 she appeared in operas in Bologna, Florence, Venice, Mantua and Parma. She sang in Naples in 1701 and in Caldara's Gli equivoci del sembiante at Casale in 1703, at Genoa in 1703–6 and Vicenza in 1707. Between 1707 and 1709 she appeared with her husband, the bass Giuseppe Boschi, in 12 operas in Venice (including Handel's Agrippina) and Bologna, often playing male parts. She accompanied him to London (1710–11), singing in Alessandro Scarlatti's Pirro e Demetrio, Giovanni Bononcini's Etearco and Handel's Rinaldo (Goffredo). Her voice was then on the decline (Goffredo is her last known part), but earlier she had been an outstanding artist: Tosi praised her for following Pistocchi's method ‘of introducing Graces without transgressing against Time’. Handel's two parts for her, Otho in Agrippina and Goffredo, have a limited compass of g to e''; the tessitura of the former is exceptionally low. Her will, drawn up in 1739, is in I-Vas.

WINTON DEAN

Van Kerckhove, Abraham.

See Kerckhoven, Abraham van den.

Van Lier, Bertus.

See Lier, Bertus van.

Van Maldeghem, Robert Julien

(b Dentergem, nr Ghent, 9 Oct 1810; d Ixelles, nr Brussels, 13 Nov 1893). Belgian musicologist and composer. He studied with Fétis at the Brussels Conservatory where he won the first prize in composition in 1838. Shortly afterwards he became the organist at St Jacques-sur-Coudenberg in Brussels, and in 1847 he founded the Belgian Caecilia, a periodical for religious music. He is remembered particularly for his monumental series, Trésor Musical: Collection Authentique de Musique Sacrée et Profane des Anciens Maîtres Belges (Brussels, 1865–93/R), of which two volumes (one sacred and one secular), were published each year. For this series, numerous compositions by 15th- and 16th-century Netherlandish musicians were collected from Brussels, Cambrai, Bologna, Rome, Paris, Munich and Aachen, and thus appeared for the first time in modern print. Despite erroneous attributions and other shortcomings it remains a useful collection. Maldeghem also wrote a number of religious works, songs, an organ method and (with his brother) a singing method; most of these were never published.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

FétisB

D. Bartha: ‘Bibliographische Notizen zum Repertoire der Handschrift Cambrai 124 (125–128)’, ZMw, xiii (1930–31), 564–72

C. van den Borren: ‘Inventaire des manuscrits de musique polyphonique qui se trouvent en Belgique’, AcM, v (1933), 66–71, 120–27, 177–83; vi (1934), 23–9, 65–73, 116–21

G. Reese: ‘Maldeghem and his Buried Treasure’, Notes, vi (1948–9), 75–117

PATRICK PEIRE

Vannarelli [Vanarelli], Francesco Antonio

(b Rome, c1615; d ?Padua, after 1676). Italian composer. He became a Franciscan conventual friar and on 14 May 1646 magister musices of his order. In 1647 he became maestro di cappella of SS Apostoli, Rome. From 23 February 1649 he was maestro di cappella of Spoleto Cathedral, but in 1650 he took a similar post at Terni Cathedral. In 1653 he was maestro di cappella to Cardinal Rapaccioli. On 26 March 1656 he was reappointed to Spoleto Cathedral but left in 1658, only to return on 12 May 1659. He remained at Spoleto with frequent, generally short, breaks until the end of 1665. His publication of 1668 names him as maestro di cappella of Orvieto Cathedral. On 9 March 1674 he directed the fourth oratorio of the Arciconfraternita del SS Crocifisso in S Marcello, Rome, and a ‘soprano del padre Vannarelli’ (presumably a pupil) sang in the third choir. From 1674 to 1676 he was maestro di cappella of S Antonio, Padua. He was an able composer of the Roman school, held in high esteem by his contemporaries, as his inclusion in so many collections demonstrates. For the most part his music belongs to the polyphonic tradition of the prima pratica.

WORKS

La Fedra (op, D. Montio), Spoleto, 1661, I-Nc

Decachordum Marianum decies variatis modulis, 3–8vv (Rome, 1668)

Mass, Mag, 5 pss, 3vv, 1653²

8 motets, 1646⁸, 1647², 1650⁴, 1667¹, 1675²

3 pss, 5vv, bc, 1645¹

BIBLIOGRAPHY

G. Tebaldini: L'archivio musicale della Cappella Antoniana in Padova (Padua, 1895), 35–6

L. Fausti: La cappella musicale del duomo di Spoleto (Perugia, 1916), 41–2

A. Liess: ‘Materialen zur römischen Musikgeschichte des Seicento: Musikerlisten des Oratorio San Marcello 1664–1725’, AcM, xxix (1957), 137–71

JOHN HARPER

Van Nes, Jard.

See Nes, Jard van.

Vannes, René

(b Lille, 25 May 1888; d Ixelles, nr Brussels, 19 Nov 1956). Belgian musicologist. After attending the Liège Conservatory, he studied the history of music with Victor Dwelshauwers. As a member of a light music orchestra he toured Europe and South America for about 20 years and during this time collected a great deal of hitherto unpublished information in local archives, mainly concerning instrument makers. He was subsequently librarian at the Brussels Conservatory (1939–43). His major work was a dictionary of instrument makers, Essai d’un dictionnaire universel des luthiers (Paris, 1932, enlarged 2/1951–9 and 1972–5/R as Dictionnaire universel des luthiers, addl vol. by C. Lebet 1985); he also wrote an Essai de terminologie musicale: dictionnaire universel (Thann, 1925/R) and, with André Souris, a Dictionnaire des musiciens (compositeurs) (Brussels, 1947).

PAUL RASPÉ

Vanneschi, Francesco

(b ?Florence, early 18th century; d ?London, cAug 1759). Italian librettist and impresario. His most frequently performed comic opera was La commedia in commedia, incorrectly attributed to Giovanni Barlocci, first performed in 1731 at the Cocomero in Florence by the company of Pietro Pertici with music by Chinzer. A new score by Rinaldo di Capua for Rome, 1738, was used for a tour by the same company through northern Italy. In 1741 Vanneschi was employed by Charles Sackville, the Earl of Middlesex, as poet and impresario at the King’s Theatre, London. He wrote at least two new librettos for his patron: Scipione in Cartagine (1742) and Fetonte (1747). Otherwise, his seasons at the King’s Theatre were dominated by revivals which he reworked to a greater or lesser extent. He was instrumental in bringing the Pertici company to London from November 1748 to May 1750. The company performed nine comic operas, five of which had been staged previously in Florence (1731–43). Though less successful, this introduction of Italian comic opera into England is comparable with the more famous Parisian seasons of 1752 to 1754 directed by Eustache Bambini. Vanneschi’s management of the King’s Theatre intermittently from 1741 to 1759 was marred by scandals, thefts, disputes (notably with the prima donna, Regina Mingotti) and financial distress resulting in his incarceration briefly in debtors’ prison.

Although the language is sometimes crude, hasty and inappropriate, Vanneschi’s librettos form a worthy background to Goldoni’s works of the 1740s and 50s and an important bridge between the 17th-century Tuscan classic librettos of Moniglia and Villifranchi and the more sentimental Leopoldine ones of Casorri, Coltellini, Somigli and Tassi in the late 18th century.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

R.L. and N.W. Weaver: A Chronology of Music in the Florentine Theater 1590–1750 (Detroit, 1978)

C. Taylor: ‘From Losses to Lawsuit: Patronage of the Italian Opera in London by Lord Middlesex, 1739–45’, ML, lxviii (1987), 1–25

ROBERT LAMAR WEAVER

Vanneus, Stephanus [Vanni, Stefano]

(b Recanati, c1493; d ?Ascoli Piceno, after 1539). Italian theorist. In 1529 he was an Augustinian monk at the monastery at Ascoli Piceno; in the same year he became a choir singer in the cathedral and from 1533 until at least 1540 was organist and rector cantus there. He is said by Pamphilus to have published two books of introits and vespers antiphons, but none of his works survive. His Recanetum de musica aurea (Rome, 1533/R; partial Eng. trans., 1979) was completed in Italian in 1531 and published in 1533 in a Latin translation by Vincenzo Rosetti. It is a well-written introductory treatise directed towards students, presenting the basic areas of plainsong, notation and counterpoint, with less attention to speculative theory. Pietro Aaron’s treatises appear to have been his model, not only in the choice of title, honouring his native city, but also in the decision to have the treatise translated (like Aaron’s De institutione harmonica) into humanistic Latin. Of his contemporaries, Vanneus mentioned only Nicolò Burzio, Giovanni Spataro, Aaron – thus including both partisans and opponents of Ramis de Pareia in the current theoretical disputes – and the Duke of Atri (Andrea Matteo Acquaviva d’Aragona).

The Recanetum presents several novel aspects, with personal remarks reflecting Vanneus’s experience as a choir director. His gamut extends an octave in both directions beyond the traditional compass, with the positions located on the reverse of the hand; he derided the practice of calling such notes ‘musica ficta’ and especially writing a flat before F. In singing, he stressed the importance of listening to the other parts, in order to correct emerging dissonances quickly; the tactus should be beaten either physically or mentally. His most original contribution is his extended treatment of cadences and composition, distinguishing between simple and florid counterpoint. He discussed the construction of chords, starting with the interval between superius and tenor, and showed how to form cadences with dissonant suspensions, laying great stress on the proper use of accidentals, with ample musical examples. Grammatical analogies underly his advice on cadential structure and word-setting. The Recanetum was an important source for Agostino Pisa’s Breve dichiarazione della battuta musicale (Rome, 1611) and its expanded version of the same year as well as Giovanni Andrea Angelini Bontempi’s Historia musica (Perugia, 1695).

Schiele’s 17th-century bibliography of writings on music lists ‘Stephanus Vanneus, & Petrus Vanneus de vi Musica’. The latter author and his book remain to be identified.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

MGG1 (W. Dürr)

J. Pamphilus: Chronica Ordinis Fratrum Eremitarum Sancti Augustini (Rome, 1581)

J.G. Schiele: Bibliotheca enucleata (Ulm and Vienna, 1679), 327–8

J.F. Ossinger: Bibliotheca Augustiniana (Ingolstadt, 1768) [with earlier bibliography]

G. Fabiani: Ascoli nel Cinquecento, i (Ascoli Piceno, 1957)

S. Clerx: notes to facs. of S. Vanneus: Recanetum, DM, 1st ser., Druckschriften-Faksimiles, xxviii (1969)

G. Vecchi: notes to facs. of S. Vanneus: Recanetum, BMB, section 2, xvi (1969)

K. Berger: Musica ficta: Theories of Accidental Inflections in Vocal Polyphony from Marchetto da Padova to Gioseffo Zarlino (Cambridge, 1987)

PETER BERGQUIST, BONNIE J. BLACKBURN

Vanni, Stefano.

See Vanneus, Stephanus.

Vanni-Marcoux [Marcoux, Vanni; Marcoux, Jean Emile Diogène]

(b Turin, 12 June 1877; d Paris, 22 Oct 1962). French bass and baritone. His father was French and his mother Italian; the ‘Vanni’ which he incorporated into his professional name was originally an abbreviation for ‘Giovanni’. He made early appearances in Bayonne (début 1889 as Gounod’s Friar Laurence) and in Turin as Sparafucile (1894). But neither heredity nor Italian training affected the timbre of his voice, which was always characteristically French. He was engaged in 1905 by Covent Garden, where he made his début as Rossini’s Don Basilio, and where he returned every summer until 1912 in a wide variety of roles, both baritone and bass. Exceptionally, he tended to gravitate towards the higher range as his career developed, moving for example from the bass role of Arkel in Pelléas (1909, London) to the baritone part of Golaud (1914, Paris, 1937, London). At the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels, in the 1907–8 season, he was still predominantly a bass, singing even Hunding and Fafner in the Ring; and it was as Gounod’s Méphistophélès that he made his début at the Paris Opéra in 1908. Thereafter for nearly 40 years he remained an admired figure in Parisian musical life, mainly at the Opéra, but also at the Opéra-Comique, where he was particularly famous as the Father in Louise and in the title role of Don Quichotte. His American career was centred on Chicago, where he first appeared in 1913 as Scarpia and as Don Quichotte (singing in both operas with Mary Garden), and again frequently between 1926 and 1932. Among his other leading roles were Boris Godunov, Iago (which he studied with Maurel) and Don Giovanni. He was also director of the Grand Théâtre at Bordeaux from 1948 to 1951.

Vanni-Marcoux was a splendid actor as well as an accomplished singer, with exemplary enunciation and a voice remarkable for smoothness and finish rather than for sheer power. Among his many excellent records, those of ‘Elle ne m’aime pas’ from Don Carlos and of extracts from Don Quichotte are especially treasurable.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

D. Shawe-Taylor: ‘Vanni Marcoux’, Opera, xiv (1963), 156–62; rev. in Recorded Sound, nos.29–30 (1968), 266–72 [with discography by H. Barnes]

DESMOND SHAWE-TAYLOR

Vannini [Vanini], Bernardino

(b Barbarano, nr Vicenza, ?c1590; d probably at Rome, early 1666). Italian composer. He was a Camaldolite monk and was maestro di cappella of Viterbo Cathedral by 1647. His reputation rests largely on Silvestri, himself a native of Barbarano, who published Vannini's Sacrae musicales cantiones 8 vocibus et pro processionibus (Rome, 1666) posthumously, out of local patriotism. In his preface Silvestri appears to recommend the volume for teaching purposes more than for its musical value. He included a piece by Vannini in only one of his numerous collections: Mons Dei for three sopranos, alto and organ (RISM 1647²). Three five-part motets by Vannini were included in the three parts of Schadaeus’s Promptuarii musici, one in each part (Strasbourg, 1611¹, 1612³, 1613²; 1 ed. in Musica sacra, xxiv, Berlin, 1883). (A. de Angelis: ‘La cappella musicale di Viterbo nel secolò XVII’, RIM, xix (1984), 21–35)

JOHN HARPER

Vannini, Elia

(b Medicina, nr Bologna, c1660; d in or after 1699). Italian composer. He came from a Jewish family, but he converted to Christianity and entered the Carmelite monastery in Bologna. According to the title-pages and dedications of his works, he was maestro di cappella of Ravenna Cathedral from 1691 to 1699. The statement (in EitnerQ) that he was maestro di cappella at Medicina in 1692 may stem from a misreading of the title-page of op.2. Vannini's extant music consists of sacred polyphonic works for voices and instruments; they reveal him as a composer of moderate significance and skill.

WORKS

Sinfonie [sonate], 2 vn, vc, violetta, bc, op.1 (Bologna, 1691); 1 ed. M. Mascagni (Bologna, 1972)

Litanie della Beata Vergine, 4–6vv, 2 vn ad lib, bc, op.2 (Bologna, 1692)

Psalmi ad vesperas musicis, 3–4vv, 3 vn, va, org, bc, op.3 (Bologna, 1693)

Letanie, liber secundus, 5–6, 8vv, insts, op.4 (Bologna, 1698)

Psalmi ad completarium, cum symphoniis, 2–4vv, 3 vn, org, bc, op.5 (Bologna, 1699)

Vannius, Johannes.

See Wannenmacher, Johannes.

Van Noordt.

See Noordt, van family.

Vannucci, Domenico Francesco

(b Lucca, c1718; d Lucca, 7 Aug 1775). Italian composer and cello teacher. He probably spent his entire life in Lucca, where in 1743 he became maestro di cappella at the court of the archbishop. He also taught singing and the cello at the seminary in Lucca; Boccherini was one of his pupils. On his death he left his extensive music library, including his liturgical music, to the seminary.

WORKS

Orats for the Congregazione degli Angeli Custodi, Lucca, music lost: L’uccisione de Abele (P. Metastasio), 1757; La passione de nostro Signore Gesù Cristo, 1762; Gesù ed Anima, 1765

2 masses, 4vv, org; mass, 8vv, org: all I-Ls

Compositions for Holy Week: Miserere, 3vv, hn ad lib, 1765; Benedictus, 4vv, 1768; Litanie della SS Vergine, 4vv, insts, 1767; Responsori, 4vv, per le prime lezioni, rev. 1770: all Ls

Nove servizi religiosi a grande orchestra per le grandi festività di S Cecilia, 1740–71, lost

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L. Nerici: Storia della musica in Lucca (Lucca, 1879/R), 53, 313

A. Bonaccorsi: ‘Catalogo con notizie biografiche delle musiche dei maestri lucchesi’, CHM, ii (1956–7), 86–96

SIEGFRIED GMEINWIESER

Van Oeckelen, Petrus

(b Breda, 15 Aug 1795; d Harenermolen, 1878). Dutch organ builder, carillon maker, musician and instrument inventor. His father, Cornelis (b 1762; d 29 Aug 1837) was a clockmaker and inventor of musical instruments who worked on carillons and started an organ-building business in 1805. Petrus completed his father’s last instrument. His brothers were also musicians and gifted craftsmen: Johannes Matthias (1787–1860) was a carillonneur and clockmaker in Breda; and Cornelis Jacobus (1798–1865) was a piano maker and the inventor of several unique mechanical musical instruments.

In 1810 Petrus left his job as municipal carillonneur in Breda and moved to Groningen, where he learned the craft of organ building with H.H. Freytag (d 11 April 1811) and his apprentice J.W. Timpe. His first organ was built for the Dutch Reform church of Assen (1814, now in Havelte) re-using older parts. His reputation as a repairer and restorer grew, and he adapted the large organs of Groningen's Martinikerk, Aa-kerk and Zwolle's Grote Kerk in accordance with contemporary musical tastes and practices. Petrus also designed the magnificent case for the 1829 Timpe organ in the Nieuwe Kerk, Groningen, patterned after the famous Müller organ of the Bavokerk, Haarlem.

In 1837 Petrus took over the organ-building firms of his father and Timpe, both recently deceased, and settled in Harenermolen. In 1841 he built one of his first new organs, at the Koepelkerk, Smilde. He secured orders for new instruments through the contacts cultivated by the organist Samuel Trip, who often played the inaugural recitals. Petrus also continued to work on carillons (in 1857 he automated the carillon of the church in Middelstum) and to invent instruments, including an oboe with free reeds which could be played from a keyboard. After his death Petrus’s sons Cornelis Aldegundis (1829–1905) and Antonius (1839–1918) continued their father's work (although they produced few organs after 1905). From 1918 the business was run by his chief apprentice Harmannus Thijs (1862–1943); he was succeeded by lesser figures after 1933.

Petrus was an innovator: the first builder to introduce magazine bellows into northern Europe, applied to both new and rebuilt organs; he also made extensive use of metal parts in the action, especially the stop action. He was the first organ builder in the Netherlands to develop a certain degree of mass production: parts were absolutely uniform and made according to standardized procedures, and even the cases could be identical or nearly identical twins, such as those at Usquert and Saaxumhuizen. The churches of Westeremden and Leermens received identical organs in neo-Gothic cases. With these production methods Petrus was able to build up to three organs per year. Both in quality and quantity, Van Oeckelen's work belongs to the greatest of the 19th century. The sound of his organs can be characterized as stately, heavy, full of gravity, and very well suited to the musical practice of his time. For much of the 20th century Petrus’s vigorous rebuilding and replacement of old organs was lamented; however, the quality of that work (especially of his newly built organs) has gained recognition and acceptance since the 1980s.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

F. Talstra: Het Groninger Orgelbezit van de Reformatie tot de Romantiek, Stichting Oude Groninger Kerken, xxii (Groningen, 1979)

F. Talstra: Langs Nederlandse Orgels: Groningen, Friesland, Drenthe (Baarn, 1979)

J. Holthuis: Petrus van Oeckelen, Orgelmaker te Harenermolen bij Groningen: Voortzetter of vernieuwer der Groninger orgelmakerstraditie?, Publicatie Stichting Groninger Orgelland, ix, (Groningen, 1985)

ADRI DE GROOT

Van Parys, Georges

(b Paris, 7 June 1902; d Paris, 25 June 1971). French composer. The son of a textile manufacturer, he studied law at the Sorbonne before deciding to pursue composition in 1924. He formed an early collaboration with Philippe Parès, writing jazz-influenced film scores and musical comedies for the Paris stage in the 1920s and 30s. During the occupation, he wrote a number of stage and film works, including the successful wartime musical Une femme par jour (1943). Throughout the 1940s and 50s, up until his final work, La belle de Paris (1961), he was a mainstay of Parisian opéra comique. He was president of the composer's group in the Syndicat National des Auteurs et Compositeurs, and a member of the Comité des Variétés de l'ORTF. He was admitted to the Légion d'Honneur in the late 1960s.

Van Parys was a prolific composer, writing more than 200 film scores, as well as hundreds of popular songs, two dozen operettas and incidental music. Unlike many film composers of this period, Van Parys did not see himself as part of the high cultural tradition of French music. His leanings were rather towards operetta, lyric theatre, and the belle époque. His songs, which include Si l'on ne s'était pas connu, Ça s'est passé un dimanche and Complainte des infidèles, are often light, colourful tunes that reflect the popular style of the Parisian lyric theatre. His best film work was with René Clair, with whom he collaborated on Sous les toits de Paris (1930), the first important French sound film, as well as Le million (1931) and Les belles de nuit (1952). His score for Max Ophüls' Madame de … (1953) includes a lilting waltz which captures the grace and elegance of the aristocratic life, while simultaneously conjuring up a sense of melancholy and dread as the characters move inexorably towards their doom. His score for Henin-Georges Clouzot's Les diaboliques (1955), endlessly imitated, attained a level of tension rare in music for the cinema.

WORKS

(selective list)

for fuller list see ES

Stage (dates are of first performances in Paris unless otherwise stated): La petite dame du train bleu (opérette), collab. P. Parès, 1927; Lulu (opérette), collab. Parès, 1927; L'eau à la bouche (opérette), collab. Parès, 1928; Le coeur y est (opérette), collab. Parès, 1930; Une femme par jour (opérette, S. Veber), 1943; Voulez-vous jouer avec moi (incid music, M. Achard), 1943; Les chasseurs d'images (opérette, Mouézy-Eon and A. Willemetz), collab. R. Dumas, 1946; Virginie Déjazet (opérette, J. Marsan, R. Vogel and L. Bariset), 1946; Le colleur d'affiches (ballet, L. Bertrand Castelli, choreog. J. Charrat), 1953; Minnie Moustache (opérette, J. Broussolle and A. Hornez), 1956; Le moulin sans-souci (opérette), collab Parès, Strasbourg, 1958; Le jeu des dames (comédie musicale, Willemetz), 1960; La belle de Paris (opéra bouffe, J.J. Etchévery), 1961; L'orchestre (incid music, J. Anouilh), 1961

Film scores (directors' names in parentheses): L'âge d'or (L. Buñuel), 1930; Sous les toits de Paris (R. Clair), 1930; Le blanc et le noir (R. Florey), 1931; Le million (Clair), 1931; Zou-Zou (Y. Allégret), 1934; Cette vieille canaille (A. Litvak), 1935; La vie en rose (J. Faurez), 1947; Le silence est d'or (Clair), 1947; Jean de la lune (M. Achard), 1949; Fanfan la tulipe (Christian-Jaque), 1951; Le grand Méliès (G. Franju), 1951; Adorables créatures (Christian-Jaque), 1952; Casque d'or (J. Becker), 1952; Les belles de nuit (Clair), 1952; Le grand jeu (R. Siodmak), 1953; Madame de … (M. Ophüls), 1953; Mam'zelle Nitouche (Allégret), 1953; French Cancan (J. Renoir), 1955; Les diaboliques (H.-G. Clouzot), 1955; Les grandes manoeuvres (Clair), 1955; Madame du Barry (Christian-Jaque), 1955; La tour, prends garde! (J. Lampin), 1957; Les misérables (J.P. Le Chanois), 1957; Mitsou (J. Audry), 1957; The Happy Road (G. Kelly), 1957; Montparnasse 19 (Becker), 1958; The Millionairess (A. Asquith), 1960; Tout l'or du monde (Clair), 1961; Monsieur (Le Chanois), 1964; Les fêtes galantes (Clair), 1965

WRITINGS

‘Le compositeur de musique’, Le livre d'or du cinéma français (Paris, 1945)

‘Musique et Cinéma’, Les Annales, lxii/57 (1955), 25–38

‘Film, Musique de’, FasquelleE

BIBLIOGRAPHY

G. Hendricks: ‘The Sound Track’, Films in Review, v/6 (1954), 311-12

T.M.F. Steen: ‘The Sound Track’, Films in Review, xii/3 (1961), 178–9

M. Fleuret: ‘Un musicien heureux: Georges Van Parys’, Musica, no.104 (1962), 21–7

MARK BRILL

Van Put, Hendrik.

See Puteanus, Erycius.

Vanrans [Vanrrans].

See Rans, van, family.

Van Rooy, Anton.

See Rooy, Anton van.

Van Rossum, Frederik.

See Rossum, Frederik van.

Van San, Herman

(b Mechelen, 19 March 1929; d Mechelen,26 Oct 1975). Belgian composer and theorist. He studied theory and piano with Gabriel Minet in Brussels, and law, physics and philosophy at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. A precursor of formalistic composition, he developed his own theories on a mathematical basis and applied the new insights of physics to formal aspects of his compositions. He invented a chemico-electric possibility of sound production and developed the possibilities of ‘stimulated’ sound to replace natural sound with the help of the methods of quantum physics. He has destroyed many compositions, while others are lost. Until 1953 he wrote dodecaphonic music; from 1953 to 1956 he applied mathematical systems to instrumental and electronic works. From 1956 nearly all his works (many incomplete) were electronic. He divided his works into two categories: ‘opus instrumentale mathematicum’ and ‘opus electronicum mathematicum’. Only a few of his instrumental works were played in the 1950s. His musical thought reflected an analytic-positivistic conception of the world. His prophetic essays consider music as an exact, logical-empirical science of unity.

WORKS

(selective list)

Chbr orch: 5 Structuren, 1952

Vocal: De Schim van Memling (cant., R.C. van de Kerckhove), S, A, T, B, str qnt, 1952; Trivium quadrivium (J. Joyce), S, A, T, B, 6 vn, 6 vc, timp, 1954

Chbr: Qnt, fl, ob, cl, 2 bn, 1948; Qnt, fl, ob, cl, bn, hn, 1949; Conc., bn, 2 pf, 1950; Sextet no.1, fl, ob, cl, bn, hn, pf, 1950; Sextet no.1, fl, ob, cl, bn, hn, pf, 1951; Sneden, 3 vn, 3 vc, 1953; Lattices, 6vn, 6 vc, 1954

Elec: Lasciate ogni speranza, 1953; Entia non sunt multiplicanda, 1956; Geometrische patterns, 1957; Axiomata, 1958; Opus electronicum mathematicum, 10 bks, 1956–72

WRITINGS

‘De nieuwe muziek I’, Tijd en mens, (1949–50), 257 ‘De nieuwe muziek II’, ibid., (1954–5), p.80

‘Het structuralisme in de muziek’, De Vlaamse gids, xxxiv (1955), 603

‘Einheitswissenschaft und Musik’, Gravesaner Blätter, nos.7–8 (1957), 39–49

‘Electronische muziek met klare begrippen’, De periskoop (1959), no.8, p.13

‘Sundry Notes Introductory to the Theoretical Mechanics of Mathematical Music’, Interface, ii/2 (1973), 23–39

‘Wetenschappelijke geluidskunst’, Gamma, xxvi (1974), 198–9

YVES KNOCKAERT

Van Soldt Keyboard Manuscript

(GB-Lbl Add.29485). See Sources of keyboard music to 1660, §2(iv, vi).

Van Stappen, Crispin.

See Stappen, Crispin van.

Vanuatu

(formerly New Hebrides). See Melanesia, §4.

Vaňura [Waniura, Wanjura, Wanžura], Česlav [Ceslaus]

(b Miletín [Bohemia], 28 Dec 1694; d Prague, 7 Jan 1736). Czech composer. As a member of the Minorite order he was appointed first organist to the convent church of St James at Prague in 1734. On the title-page of his Cultus latriae op.2, published two years later, he is referred to as regens chori there. In 1735 he was awarded the degree of magister musicae. Although he might have been active at the Prague Minorite convent in the same years as his elder contemporary B.M. Černohorský, he was apparently not Černohorský's pupil.

Stylistically, Vaňura's works stand near to Černohorský and Šimon Brixi, especially the 12 offertories Cultus latriae, written in a late Baroque idiom with a characteristic mixture of concerto style and contrapuntal texture. They are in two, three or more sections, the principal ones sometimes being elaborate fugues. The fugue ‘Laudetur sanctissima Trinitas’ of no.11 is modelled on Černohorský's famous Laudetur Jesus Christus (c1728–9). His litanies op.1 are primarily homophonic. He sometimes aimed at pictorial interpretation of the text, and his orchestration is varied, with emphasis on the brass instruments.

WORKS

7 brevissimae et solennes litaniae lauretanae, SATB, 2 vn, 2–4 tpt, timp, org, op.1 (Prague, 1731)

Cultus latriae, seu 12 offertoria solennia, SATB, 2 vn, va, 2–4 tpt, timp, org, op.2 (Prague, 1736); several abridged CZ-Pnm

Domine in auxilium meum respice, off, SATB, 2 vn, org, LIT, Pnm

In omnem terram exivit sonus eorum, off, solo vv, SATB, 2 tpt, 2 vn, org; Litanie del santo nome di Giesù, E, solo vv, SATB, 2 hn/tpt, 2 vn, va, org, 1731; Litanie del santo nome di Giesù, B, solo vv, SATB, 2 tpt, 2 vn, org, 1731: all ?autograph GB-Lbl

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ČSHS

DlabacžKL

A. Buchner: Hudební sbírka Emiliána Troldy [The music collection of Emilián Trolda] (Prague, 1954)

O. Pulkert: Domus laurentana pragensis: catalogus collectionis operum artis musicae (Prague, 1973)

J. PeŠková: Collectio ecclesiae březnicensis: catalogus collectionis operum artis musicae (Prague, 1983)

J. Sehnal: ‘ Pobělohorská doba (1620–1740)’ [The period after the Battle of the White Mountain (1620–1740)], Hudba v českých dějinách od středověku do nové doby [Music in Czech history from the Middle Ages to the modern era] (Prague, 1983, 2/1989), 147–215

J. Stefan: Ecclesia metropolitana pragensis: catalogus collectionis operum artis musicae (Prague, 1983–5)

MILAN POŠTOLKA

Van Vactor, David

(b Plymouth, IN, 8 May 1906; d Los Angeles, 24 March 1994). American composer, conductor and flautist. He studied at Northwestern University (BM 1928, MM 1935), the Vienna Music Academy (1928–9), the Ecole Normale, Paris (1931), and the Paris Conservatoire (1931). His teachers included Marcel Moyse and Josef Niedermayr (flute), and Paul Dukas and Franz Schmidt (composition). As a flautist, he played with the Chicago SO (1931–43) and was the section leader of the Kansas City PO (1943–7). He was the assistant conductor of the Chicago Civic Orchestra (1933–4) and the Kansas City PO (1943–7), founded and conducted the Kansas City Allied Arts Orchestra, an ensemble emphasizing contemporary repertory, and conducted the Knoxville SO for 25 years. He also appeared as guest conductor with the New York PO, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Chicago SO, the LPO, the Frankfurt RSO, and the symphony orchestras of Rio de Janeiro and Santiago. His academic appointments included positions at Northwestern University (1935–9), the Kansas City Conservatory (1945–7) and the University of Tennessee, where he founded the department of fine arts. He retired as a conductor in 1972 and as professor emeritus of flute and composition in 1976. His awards include Fulbright and Guggenheim fellowships (1957–8) and the title of Composer Laureate of Tennessee (1975).

A prolific composer, Van Vactor wrote about 140 original works, including seven symphonies (1937–82). His First Symphony won the New York PO symphony competition in 1938. Based on classical forms, his compositions are lyrical and often contrapuntal, showing the influences of Hindemith and Prokofiev. Dance rhythms and marches are characteristic of his style.

WORKS

Orch: Ov. to a Comedy no.1, 1934; Conc., 3 fl, hp, orch, 1935; Sym. no.1, 1937; 5 Bagatelles, str, 1938; Ov. to a Comedy no.2, 1941; Variazioni solenne, 1941; Sym. no.2 ‘Music for the Marines’, 1943; Pastorale and Dances, fl, str, 1947; Prelude and March, 1950; Vn Conc., 1951; Fantasia, Chaconne and Allegro, 1957; Sym. no.3, 1959; Suite on Chilean Folk Tunes, 1963; Sinfonia breve, 1964; Sym. no.4 ‘Walden’, SATB, orch, 1971; Sym. no.5, 1975; Sym. no.6, 1980; Sym. no.7, 1982; Knoxville SO 50th Anniversary Salute, 1984; other works, incl. 11 concertante pieces, 7 works for str orch, 9 ovs., 4 suites, 3 fanfares, works for sym. band, brass

Vocal: Credo, Mez, SATB, orch, 1941; Cant., SSA, orch, 1947; The New Light (cant., Bible), S, Bar, nar, boys’ vv, chorus, 1954; Anthem, chorus, 1962; 3 Songs, S, a fl, eng hn, b cl, 1976; Episodes – Jesus Christ (cant.), SATB, orch, 1977; other works for chorus/chorus, orch; songs, incl. 11 for 1v, pf, 2 for S, str

Chbr and solo inst: Qnt, fl, 2 vn, va, vc, 1932; 24 Etudes, fl, 1933; Qt, 4 bn, 1934; Suite, 2 fl, 1934; Str Qt no.1, 1940; Sonatina, fl, pf, 1945; Str Qt no.2, 1949–50; Pf Suite, 1962; Brass Octet, 1963; Economy Band no.1, tpt, trbn, perc, 1966; Suite, 12 trbn, 1971; 5 Songs, fl, gui, 1974; Suite, brass, 1976; 2 ww qnts; brass qnt, 2 brass qts, c20 other works

Dance and film music

MSS in US-KN

Principal publishers: R. Rhodes, Southern

BIBLIOGRAPHY

EwenD

J.T. Howard: Our American Music (New York, 1931, 4/1965), 523–4

Compositores de América/Composers of the Americas, ed. Pan American Union, ix (Washington DC, 1963), 161–71

P. Bayne, ed.: The David Van Vactor Collection: a Catalog (Knoxville, TN, 1993)

PAULINE BAYNE

Van Vere.

See Verius, Joanne.

Van Vleck, Jacob

(b 1751; d 1831). American Moravian composer. See Moravians, music of the, §3.

Van Vulpen.

Dutch firm of organ builders. It was founded in Utrecht in 1940 by brothers Rijk van Vulpen (i) (b Utrecht, 11 April 1921; d 15 Nov 1997) and Adrianus (Jos) van Vulpen (b Utrecht, 5 July 1922). They had already built their first organ in their father's plumbing workshop from old parts. On 10 March 1952 the third brother, Evert van Vulpen (b Utrecht, 2 Jan 1929) joined the firm as a salaried worker, and Rijk van Vulpen (ii) (b 3 Aug 1955), son of Adrianus, joined likewise on 1 May 1974. In 1983 Rijk (i) retired, leaving Adrianus as sole proprietor. On 27 March 1997 Rijk (ii) took over the firm and changed the name to Gebr. van Vulpen BV. In 1999 Henk Bouwman (b 1 Sept 1938) and Rijk (ii) led the firm. The firm started to blossom in 1950, when they bought the building that has since housed the organ building workshop. All parts and pipes are made in-house.

As self-taught builders of mechanical-action church, studio and house organs, the brothers' initial orientation was inspired by the neo-Baroque organ revival movement, and especially that of Danish builders. They were introduced to this by Lambert Erné, organist of the large three-manual 1957 Marcussen organ of the Nicolaikerk in Utrecht. Their most famous example and landmark instrument is the 1961 two-manual choir organ for St Eusebius in Arnhem, which has a modern yet classically inspired flat façade and a horizontal Trumpet stop. Other significant organs of that period are in Bremen Cathedral (1966) and the Elisabethkirche in Recklinghausen (1973).

After the restoration of the 1756 Matthijs van Deventer organ in the Hermvormde Kerk, Nijkerk (1975–87) and the 1696 Duyschot organ at Hendrik-Ido-Ambacht (1982), and also owing to a changing tide of opinion in the Netherlands, the firm's approach to the building of new organs changed dramatically to one more fully based on historical Dutch organ building from before the 20th century. This is exemplified by lower mixtures, wider pipe scales, more lead in the pipe metal and an overall warmer sound. The firm employs both historically inspired and modern case designs.

Other notable restorations are: the 1733 Hinsz organ of the Petruskerk, Leens (1967); the 1786 Bätz organ, Petruskerk, Woerden (1971); the 60-stop, three-manual 1830 organ of Utrecht Cathedral, containing much 16th-century pipework (1985); the 1686/1720/1860 organ of the Nicolaaskerk, Vollenhove (1977), and the 1738 Hinsz organ of the Broederkerk, Kampen (1993; new Pedal and Rugwerk added).

The most significant organs built since the 1970s are: the Stephankirche, Andernach (1983); the Maranathakerk, Woerden (1983); the Buurkerk, Utrecht (1984); the Rehobothkerk, Utrecht (1984); the Hervormde Kerk ‘de Ark’, Ede (1986); the Gereformeerde Kerk Vrijgemaakt, Zuidhorn (1989); the Hervormde Kerk, Arnemuiden (1990); the Hervormde Kerk, Renkum (1994); and the large three-manual organ in North-Germanic/Dutch tradition for the Hervormde Kerk of Ouddorp (1994).

The firm has contributed to the production of small and large house and studio organs, and has delivered new organs to Germany, Norway, Austria and the Czech Republic. (G. Verloop, ed.: Small Organs in Holland: a Description of Some Modern Instruments, Schagen, 1978)

ADRI DE GROOT

Van Wilder [de Vuildre, Vanwilder, Van Wyllender, Welder, Wild, Wildroe, Wylde], Philip

(b ?Millam, nr Wormhout, c1500; d London, 24 Feb 1553). South Netherlandish composer and lutenist, active in England. He was one of Henry VIII’s most favoured musicians, rising to the position of head of the secular musical establishment of the royal household, a post later described as ‘Master of the King's Musick’. According to his grant of denization Van Wilder was ‘a native of the Emperor's dominions’. Francis Tregian in his early 17th-century manuscript anthology (GB-Lbl Eg. 3665) further identifies him as ‘Maestro Phillippo di Fiandra, chi visse circa l’Anno 1520, in Inghilterra’. He may, like Peter van Wilder, another lutenist at the English court, have come from ‘Millom’, possibly the Belgian town of Millam, significantly located near the village of Wyler some 5 km north-east of Wormhout.

London municipal accounts first record Van Wilder's presence in England in 1522 as ‘Phyllyp of Wylde, Frensshman’, living in the parish of St Olave and having £60 ‘in goods’ and £48 ‘in Fees’, substantial amounts for a foreigner and a musician. His name first appears in the royal account books of 1525/6, where he is listed as ‘Philip Welder, mynstrell’, and allotted the exceptionally large monthly salary of 50s. At that time the king granted him a licence to import 800 tons of Toulouse woad and Gascon wine, the first of such privileges Van Wilder received to supplement his wages and rewards as a musician. A 1529 list of the King's Musick describes him as ‘lewter’ with a salary of 66s. 8d. a month, the largest paid to a court musician. In the same year he is named as a member of the Privy Chamber (the small, select company of gentlemen, grooms and pages who attended and entertained the King in private), and by 1540 he rose to the rank of Gentleman of the Privy Chamber, a position of considerable influence.

Van Wilder's wages and rewards reflect not only his special status but also the various services he performed at court. He played at royal ceremonies, entertained the king in his private apartments, supervised the purchase of musical instruments and lute strings (later he was named Keeper of the Royal Collection of Musical Instruments at Westminster), and gave lute lessons to the royal children (Princess Mary in 1537–43, Prince Edward in 1546). He also accompanied the king on his various journeys within and outside of England. One of the most important was the meeting in late October of 1532 between Henry and the French king François I at the Field of Cloth of Gold between Calais and Boulogne, where musicians from both the English and French courts entertained the royal retinues.

In February 1537 Princess Mary gave Van Wilder a gift of 40s. upon his marriage to a woman named Frances, and on 1 May 1538 a son Henry (presumably named after his royal patron) was born. Four other children, Edward, William, John and Katherine, survived the composer.

On 18 March 1538/9 Van Wilder became a naturalized citizen; as such he could now own land. The following August, King Henry bestowed on him and his wife the leaseholds to various properties in the parishes of St Olave and All Hallows near Dowgate for a yearly rent of 35s. 4d. Within the year Van Wilder had sold his rights in these properties back to the Crown, and in exchange leased from the king the grange and certain ‘closes’ within the manor of Myddlemarshe and Lytlebredye, Dorset (formerly of Cerne Abbey), a valuable collection of properties for which he paid an annual rent of £122 19s. 2d., more than three times his annual salary. In 1550 Edward VI conferred freeholds to the properties in Dorset to Van Wilder and his wife. Shortly thereafter, the composer requested and received a coat of arms and crest. A courtier possessed of such wealth, property and a coat of arms is likely to have had his portrait made by the king's painter, as did several of his colleagues; thus it is possible that Hans Holbein the younger's Man with a Lute, now in the Dahlem Museum, Berlin, depicting a proud gentleman in French dress, is a portrait of Van Wilder, painted when the musician was in his 40s.

His will was drawn up on 18 January 1553; it shows him to have died a gentleman of considerable property. Among the witnesses were several members of the Privy Chamber and of the King's Musick, including at least one who had formerly been a child of the Privy Chamber. For most of his time at court Van Wilder had had charge of the ‘young Mynstrells’ who performed in the Privy Chamber. Between 1529 and 1532 there seem to have been three of them, but by 1548 their number had grown to six children and three men. Thus Van Wilder as ‘Master of his Highnes Singing Children’ was in charge of the king's private music, as opposed to the music performed in the chapel and other parts of the royal establishment. Its importance for the history of music at the English court is obvious; for at least 20 years a foreign musician was in a position to influence the taste of the king, his court and those in the kingdom for whom king and court set the tone.

Van Wilder's influence can be seen to some extent in the number and variety of sources in which his music is found. No fewer than 55 manuscript and printed sources of both continental and English origin transmit 41 musical works that can be assigned to Van Wilder with certainty. He was the only early Tudor composer whose music appeared on the Continent during the 16th century. A motet was copied in Padua and two chansons in the Netherlands during his lifetime, and his music was printed in Antwerp, Augsburg, Paris and Leuven between 1545 and 1598.

Most of the continental sources ascribe the Netherlander's works to ‘Phl. de Vuildre’. English manuscripts, dating mainly from the later Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, often identify Van Wilder by his first name only (‘Mr. Phillips’ or ‘Philippes’). The chief source, a collection of untexted works in table-book format (GB-Lbl Add. 31390), includes 17 of Van Wilder's compositions, more than any other single source. It is typical of English manuscript sources in general that his vocal works occur without their texts. Van Wilder's music, particularly his chansons, appear as transcriptions for lute and keyboard, contrafacta with English texts, lute accompaniments without superius parts, and untexted part-music.

Van Wilder's music reflects the stylistic traditions of both his Flemish origins and his adopted country. Among his seven surviving Latin motets, the seven-voice Homo quidam, modelled after Josquin's five-voice setting, points to the Netherlandish predilection for contrapuntal artifice with its canon at the 4th between contratenor and tenor. Vidi civitatem, Pater noster and Aspice Domine display the pervading imitation and through-composed form commonly found in continental motets. The five-voice Aspice Domine, in particular, exerted an influence on later Elizabethan composers: Byrd alluded to it in his six-voice setting (1575) and again in Civitas sancti tui (the secunda pars of Ne irascaris, 1591), which he later transformed into the anthem Bow thine ear. Some of Van Wilder's other sacred works contain musical features associated with Tudor composers. The 12-voice Deo gratias, in which the Ite missa est chant from Mass XI appears as a cantus firmus in the tenor, embodies the flamboyant, differentiated style of pre-Reformation English sacred music. It was obviously written for some important royal ceremony, possibly even the meeting between Henry VIII and François I in 1532. The votive antiphon Sancte Deus, with its scoring for three trebles and tenor, short points of imitation, and unusual cadences, bears a striking resemblance to the well-known setting by Tallis. Van Wilder's only extant English anthem, Blessed art thou, is one of the earliest polyphonic settings of Thomas Sternhold's metrical psalms (Psalm cxxviii) and enjoyed a long life in the Anglican church repertory.

Some 31 of Van Wilder's surviving works are French chansons. Their scoring for five or more voices and their predominantly imitative texture identify them with the Netherlandish style. Other musical techniques found in the chansons and used by Netherlanders, such as ostinato points and simultaneous cross-relations, in particuar the so-called English cadence, later became distinctive features of 16th-century English style. The Netherlandish propensity for using pre-existing material in chansons is also striking in Van Wilder's works. His techniques of adaptation varied with each work, including straightforward borrowing, paraphrase and parody; in each case he composed for more parts than his model. Sometimes other composers apparently based their work on his music, as did Lassus and Bonnet in their settings of Un jeune moyne. An anonymous five-voice D'un nouveau dart found next to the one ascribed to Van Wilder in one of its sources appears to be an updated setting with its high scoring, vocal dialogues and condensation of material. His five-voice Las que feray was apparently transformed into the anonymous four-voice English part-song Shall I despaire.

Although Van Wilder was especially esteemed for his lute playing (the elegy On the death of Phillips is included in every edition of Tottel's Miscellany, 1557–87) only one piece by him for lute survives, an attractive four-voice fantasia. The only other surviving example of his instrumental writing, a four-part fantasia preserved in score format, may be performed with or without its rests, reflecting the Netherlandish penchant for musical puzzles.

The eldest of Van Wilder's four sons, Henry (b ?London, 1 May 1538; d after 1575), served as a court musician to Queen Mary. Two other musicians of the same name were probably related: Matthew de Veldre, who in 1517 was one of the king's minstrels, playing lute and viol, and Peter de Weldre, a lutenist who was in court service from 1519 to 1559. As Peter van Wilder he succeeded Philip as Master of the Children on his death.

WORKS

Editions: Philip van Wilder: Collected works, ed. J. Bernstein, Masters and Monuments of the Renaissance, iv (New York, 1991) [contains all works]

sacred vocal

Aspice Domine, 5vv; Aspice Domine, 6vv; Blessed art thou (Ps cxxviii), 5vv; Deo gratias/Ite missa est, 12vv; Homo quidam, 7vv; Pater noster, 4vv; Sancte Deus, 4vv; Vidi civitatem, 6vv

secular vocal

Amour me point, 4vv; Amour partez, 5vv (arr. of Sermisy's setting, 4vv, in 1529²); Amours me va tout au rebours, 5vv; Amy souffrez, 7vv (parody of anon. setting, 3vv, in 1529⁴); Arousez vo violette (parody of Appenzeller's setting, 5vv, in 1544¹³); Ce vostre beaute, 5vv; De vous servir, 5vv; Du bon du cueur, 6vv (parody of anon. setting, 3vv, in GB-Lbl Add.35087); Du mal que j'ay, 5vv; D'ung noveau dart, 5vv (related anon. setting, 5vv, on preceding folio of Lbl Add.30480–84); En despit des envyeulx, 7vv; Esperants [? Esperant d'avoir quelque bien], 5vv

Fayre ladye: see Un jeune moyne

Helas madame faites luy, 5vv (parody of Passereau's setting, 4vv, in 1536⁵); I heard a mess of merry shepherds: see Je file quand Dieu; Je dis adieu, 7vv;

Je file quand Dieu [= I heard a mess of merry shepherds], 5vv; Je me repens d'avoir, 5vv; Je ne fay rien, 5vv; Las que feray [= Shall I despaire], 5vv; Le home banny [?L'homme banni de sa plaisance], 5vv; Ma bouche rit, 5vv; Ma povre bourse [?Ma pauvre bourse a mal au cueur], 4vv

O dulks regard, 5vv; Pour un plaisir, 5vv; Pour vous aymer, 5vv; Puis qu'ainsi est, 4vv; Shall I despaire thus suddenly: see Las que feray; Si de beaucoup, 5vv; Si vous voules, 5vv; Une nonnain refaite, 5vv; Un jeune moyne [=Fayre ladye], 5vv (parodied by Lassus, 4vv, in 1578¹³); Un jour un moine, 5vv; Vois commant, 5vv

instrumental

Fantasia con pause et senza pause, a 4; Fantasia, lute

doubtful or misattributed works

Ave Maria, 5vv, 2p. of Pater noster, attrib. ‘Philippe de Vuildre’ in 1554⁸ (by Willaert); Madonna somm'accorto, 5vv, attrib. ‘Mr Phillipes’ in GB-Ob Tenbury 389 (by G. Fogliano; also attrib. Tye); Qual iniquia mia sorte, 5vv, attrib. in Lbl Add.31390 (by Berchem); Triste depart, 5vv, attrib. in Lbl Add.31390 (by Gombert)

Dump, lute, attrib. ‘philli’ in EIRE-Dm Z3.2.13; Philips Song, lute, US-NH Braye Lutebook

BIBLIOGRAPHY

AshbeeR vii, viii

BDECM

C. van den Borren: Les musiciens belges en Angleterre à l'époque de la Renaissance (Brussels, 1913)

J. Noble: ‘Le répertoire instrumental anglais (1550–1585)’, La musique instrumentale de la Renaissance: Paris 1954, 91–114

J. Bernstein: ‘Philip Van Wilder and the Netherlandish Chanson in England’, MD, xxxiii (1979), 55–75

D. Humphreys: ‘Philip van Wilder: a Study of his Work and its Sources’, Soundings, viii (1979–80), 13–36

J. Kerman: The Masses and Motets of William Byrd (Berkeley, 1981), 102–3

J.M. Ward: Music for Elizabethan Lutes (Oxford, 1992)

JOHN M. WARD/JANE A. BERNSTEIN

Van Wyk, Arnold(us Christian Vlok)

(b Calvinia district, Cape Province, 26 April 1916; d Stellenbosch, 27 May 1983). South African composer. Although he started to compose at an early age, he received no formal instruction until 1938; of his early works, only the Vier weemoedige liedjies are regularly performed. In 1938 he became the first South African recipient of a scholarship for overseas study from the PRS, and for four years studied with Theodore Holland at the RAM; he also gratefully acknowledged the advice and encouragement he received from Howard Ferguson. His first mature works, composed before leaving London in 1946, include the Five Elegies, the String Quartet no.1 and the Symphony no.1; notable performances in England include that of the Symphony under Wood and of Saudade by the violinist Olive Zorian at a Promenade concert, under Boult. During World War II Van Wyk also worked as an announcer for the BBC Afrikaans programme. After 1946 he settled in South Africa, lecturing at the South African College of Music at Cape Town University (1949–60) and at Stellenbosch University (1961–78). He was made a fellow of the RAM in 1952; his song cycle Van liefde en verlatenheid (1953) was highly acclaimed at an ISCM festival in Israel in 1954. He was awarded honorary doctorates by the universities of Cape Town (1972) and Stellenbosch (1982).

Because of his intense self-criticism, Van Wyk composed slowly, and often conceived works over long periods: the initial ideas for his Missa in illo tempore were sketched 34 years before its completion in 1979. The basis of each work is normally a few skilfully developed motives, as illustrated in the 24-minute piano piece Night Music, in which he develops four motives exposed in the first two minutes. Although preoccupation with motivic development should have found an ideal expression in contrapuntal textures, the Symphony no.2 remains his only predominantly contrapuntal work. Van Wyk wrote in an expanded tonal idiom, frequently using chromatically altered chords in a colouristic and non-functional way. His harmonic language, often the result of part-writing, employs interlocking major and minor 3rds, sudden tonal shifts, pedal points and ostinato figures. He shows a predilection for the sharpened 4th and flattened 7th degrees, and his melodic ideas evolve slowly, often around a central pedal.

WORKS

(selective list)

Vocal: Vier weemoedige liedjies (W.E.G. Louw, I.D. du Plessis), 1v, pf, 1934–8; Kerskantate (Afrikaans Bible, early Dutch poems), S, A, T, B, chorus, 1946–7; Van liefde en verlatenheid (E. Marais), 1v, pf, 1953; Carmine Petronii (Petronius Arbiter), Bar, fl, ob, hn, hp, pf, 2 perc, 2 va, 2 vc, db, 1964; Die ou paradys (C. Louis Liepoldt), double chorus, 2 whistlers, perc, 1964; Aanspraak virrie latenstyd (Boerneef), chorus, 1973–83; Missa in illo tempore, double chorus, boys’ vv, 1979

Orch: Saudade, solo vn, orch, 1942; Sym. no.1, a, 1943; Suiderkruis, 1943; Sym. no.2 (Sinfonia ricercata), 1952; Primavera, 1960; Fantasie, f (arr. of Schubert, D940), pf, orch, 1961; Maskerade, 1963; Gebede by jaargetye in die Boland, 1966; Quasi variationi, pf, orch, 1974

Chbr and solo inst: 5 Elegies, str qt, 1940–41; 3 Improvisations on Dutch Folk Songs, pf duet, 1942; Str Qt no.1, 1946; Pastorale e capriccio, pf, 1955; Night Music, pf, 1955–8; Rumba op die Vierperdewa, 2 pf, 1956; Duo concertante, va, pf, 1962–76; 4 klavierstukke, 1965; Musique pour treize, ww qt, hn, tpt, hp, pf, timp, perc, va, vc, db, 1969; Tristia, pf, 1972–83; Ricordanza, pf, 1974–82

Principal publishers: Boosey and Hawkes, H.A.U.M. (Cape Town), Arnold van Wyk Trust

BIBLIOGRAPHY

H. Ferguson: ‘Arnold van Wyk’s Five Elegies’, Tempo, new ser. (1947–8), no.6, pp.16–18

H. Temmingh: ’n Stylkritiese studie van die musiek van Arnold van Wyk (diss., Potchefstroom U., 1965)

I.J. Grové, ed.: Arnold van Wyk: 1916–1983 (Bloemfontein, 1984) [incl. H. Ferguson: ‘Arnold van Wyk: Recollections of his Stay in England’, 31–4; H. Temmingh: ‘Die tweede simfonie van Arnold van Wyk’, 62–6; J. Geldenhuys: ‘Die koorwerke van Arnold van Wyk: 'n oorsigtelike beskouing’, 67–77; M. Viljoen: ‘Aspekte van Van Wyk se Missa in illo tempore’, 114–20; M. Feenstra: ‘Eenheidsgewende faktore in die Vyf elegieë vir strykkwartet’, 113–41]

H. Ferguson: ‘Arnold van Wyk’, Composers in South Africa Today, ed. P. Klatzow (Cape Town, 1987), 1–31

J. May: ‘Arnold van Wyk’s Two Symphonies: an Introduction’, Musicus, xix/2 (1991), 102–8

I.J. Grové: ‘Arnold van Wyk: herdenking en her-denking, 1916–1996’, Musicus, xxiv/1 (1996), 85–90

J. May: ‘Some Aspects of Unity in Arnold van Wyk’s Works between 1940 and 1952’, Musicus, xxiv/1 (1996), 92–8

JAMES MAY

Van Wyk, Carl (Albert)

(b Cape Town, 12 May 1942). South African composer. His composition teachers at the University of Cape Town (BMus 1964, MMus 1965, DMus 1971) were Erik Chisholm, Gideon Fagan, Stanley Glasser and Ronald Stevenson. In 1966 an award from the PRS enabled him to study for a year with Alan Bush at the RAM, where his Petrusa Variations (1967) won the Academy's Manson and West awards. He was appointed lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg (1976), later becoming associate professor (1982) and head of the school of music (1991–7). He has received many commissions and is prominent in South Africa as an adjudicator. His main compositional influences are Western: earlier works such as the sonata (1968) and concerto (1981) for violin have their roots in the music of Bartók, Schoenberg and Berg, while later works show the influence of modern American music and demonstrate his concern that contemporary music should be easily accessible to its audience. In 1986 Van Wyk's involvement with black choirs and exposure to traditional Zulu music prompted the incorporation into his compositional style of indigenous melodic and rhythmic elements, notably in the Piano Concerto no.2 (1986), Carmina Afrika (1992) and Insimbe Za Se Goli (1997).

WORKS

(selective list)

Op: Fiela's Child (1, A. van der Walt, after D. Matthee), 1993

Orch: Derivations, 1965; Petrusa Variations, 1968; Pf Conc., 1975; Vn Conc., 1981; Conc. for Orch, 1984; Ov. for a Festive City, 1985; Pf Conc. no.2, 1986; Cape Collage: Recollections from Childhood, 1995; Insimbe Za Se Goli, suite, children's orch, 1997

Chbr and solo inst: Suite, pf, 1963; Sonata, vn, pf, 1968; A Little Dance for the Piccaninny, 1973; 5 Short Pieces, pf, 1976–7; Bell Tunes, pf, 1981; Trio, vn, hn, pf, 1982; 3 Dances, gui, 1983; Pf Qt, 1985; Choruses and Refrains, pf, 1993; 3 Paraphrases, 2 str qt, 1996; Wind Qnt, 1997

Vocal: 2 liedjies (E. Eybers), 1v, pf, 1967; Carmina Afrika, S, A, T, B, SATB, orch, 1992; Sunburnt under a Cloud, 1v, pf, 1993 Human Rights Orat (D. Ravenhill), solo vv, SATB, orch, African perc, 1997 [1 movt of 5 by different composers]; 3 Biblical Songs, 1v, pf, 1998

Principal publishers: Musications, Cape Town; VANWYKMusic, Johannesburg

ALISON PRAIN

Van Ypen.

Flemish music publishers. Pierre-Joseph Théodore Van Ypen (d Brussels, 1 Feb 1792) and his younger brother Philippe-Henri created a music publishing house in Brussels, in partnership from 1774 to 1779 with the engraver, trumpeter and horn player Abraham Salomon Pris (b Dieppe, 5 Oct 1740; d Brussels, 13 Sept 1800), then until 1789 with the engraver and tenor Paul Mechtler (b Strenzendorf, c1723). The firm distributed its publications to Paris, Lyons, Lille, The Hague, Amsterdam, Frankfurt and London (through Longman & Broderip). Van Ypen & Pris produced works by Conrad Breunig (opp.5 and 6), J.-T. Brodeckzy (opp.2 and 3), C. Brunings (op.1), J.-B. Jadin (opp.1, 4 and 5), Pierre van Maldere (op.7), Antoine Pallet and J.-M. Rousseau. Van Ypen & Mechtler published works by Eugène Godecharle (opp.5 and 6), Godefroid Staes (opp.1 and 2) and Carl Stamitz (op.17). Two composers had works published by both firms: W.G. Hauff (opp.3, 4 and 5) and Ferdinand Staes (opp.1, 3–7). Van Ypen was responsible for a collection of 14 Recueil d'ariettes successfully sold by subscription from 1775 to 1789, presenting opéra-comique airs arranged for voice, two violins and bass.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

P. Raspé and H. Vanhulst: ‘L'édition musicale’, La musique en Wallonie et à Bruxelles, ed. R. Wangermée and P. Mercier (Brussels, 1980), 301–5

P. Raspé: ‘Les débuts de la gravure musicale à Bruxelles, à fin de l'Ancien Régime’, Annales d'Histoire de l'Art et d'Archéologie, ii (1980), 123–31

M. Cornaz: ‘La Monnaie et le commerce des ouvrages lyriques à Bruxelles’, La Monnaie néoclassique, ed. M. Couvreur (Brussels, 1996)

M. Cornaz: L'édition et la diffusion de la musique à Bruxelles au XVIIIe siècle (diss., U. Libre de Bruxelles, 1996)

MARIE CORNAZ

Van Zandt, Marie

(b New York, 8 Oct 1858; d Cannes, 31 Dec 1919). American soprano. Her mother, a member of the Carl Rosa company, was her first teacher; she also received encouragement from Patti and further training from Francesco Lamperti in Italy. After a successful début in Turin in January 1879 as Zerlina (Don Giovanni), she was engaged for Her Majesty’s Theatre, London, as Amina (La sonnambula). Her voice was already well developed and pleasant, if not powerful, while her execution was competent and her acting graceful and charming. These gifts contributed to her success as Mignon at the Opéra-Comique in March 1880, and to her popularity in Paris during the next five years. Her interpretations of Mignon, Dinorah and Cherubino found such favour with the critics that Delibes entrusted her with the creation of the title role in Lakmé (1883). She left the Opéra-Comique in March 1885 under unfortunate circumstances, having unwittingly antagonized both press and public. Subsequently she sang in St Petersburg and Moscow before returning to Covent Garden in 1889. She made her American début in Chicago as Amina in November 1891, a month later repeating the role at the Metropolitan Opera. She continued to make guest appearances at various houses until her marriage in 1898.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

H. de Curzon: Croquis d’artistes (Paris, 1898)

O. Thompson: The American Singer (New York, 1937), 184–7

HERMAN KLEIN/JUNE C. OTTENBERG

Vanzo, Alain (Fernand Albert)

(b Monte Carlo, 2 April 1928). French tenor. A boy chorister in Monte Carlo, he later continued his musical studies at Aix-les-Bains. After winning a competition for tenors at Cannes in 1954, he made his Paris Opéra début that year as a Pirate in Oberon. Following a period of small roles at both Paris houses, in 1956 he undertook the Duke of Mantua at the Opéra and Gérard (Lakmé) at the Opéra-Comique, and won renown throughout France and Belgium in French lyric parts – Berlioz’s Cellini, Gounod’s Faust and Vincent (Mireille), Lalo’s Mylio (Le roi d’Ys), Massenet’s Des Grieux and Werther – and in Donizetti, Verdi and Puccini. Although he appeared at Covent Garden, as Edgardo (1961) and Rodolfo in La bohème (1963), and in Wexford and the USA, it remains surprising that in a time of shortage a French tenor of his elegant, clean style and well-formed vocal timbre should not have received wider international acclaim. His recordings include Lakmé, with Sutherland; Le roi d’Ys, Les pêcheurs de perles and Massenet’s La Navarraise. After retirement he was active as a singing teacher.

MAX LOPPERT

Vanzo, Vittorio Maria

(b Padua, 29 April 1862; d Milan, 13 Dec 1945). Italian conductor, pianist and composer. He studied with Bazzini at the Milan Conservatory and developed an early interest in Wagner, whom he got to know in Palermo in 1882. He conducted Wagner’s works in Italy, giving the Italian première of Die Walküre (Turin, 1891) and the Milan première of Götterdämmerung (1896). He conducted Italian works in Moscow (1897) and in 1900 visited Buenos Aires. He retired in 1906. As a pianist he gained a fine reputation (Grieg compared him favourably with Liszt and Rubinstein). He undertook many concert tours, often accompanying his wife, the singer Anna Kribel, with whom he opened a singing school in Milan. His opera Edipo re was composed in 1893 but not performed; his two other operas, Fosca and Pamela, were not completed. His one-act operetta Lubino (Milan, Pezzana, 1887) was performed under the pseudonym Canard. Several songs, piano pieces, chamber music, small-scale choral works and a symphony are in the Milan Conservatory library (I-Mc). He also composed a requiem mass.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

DEUMM (C. Parmentola)

ES (M. Morini)

A. Toni: Vittorio Maria Vanzo (Milan, 1946) [with work-list]

G. Confalonieri: ‘Vittorio Maria Vanzo’, I grandi anniversari del 1960 e la musica sinfonica e da camera nell’Ottocento in Italia, Chigiana, xvii (1960), 133–41

S. Martinotti: ‘Poetiche e presenze nel pianismo italiano dell’Ottocento’, Quaderni della RaM, no.3 (1965), 181–94

S. Benco: Scritti musicali di Silvio Benco (Milan, 1974), 24–7

FERRUCCIO BONAVIA/MARCO BEGHELLI

Vaquedano [Baquedano], José de

(b Puente la Reina, Navarra, bap. 20 March 1642; d Santiago de Compostela, 17 Feb 1711). Spanish composer. He was a pupil of Simón Huarte Arrizabalaga in his native town and studied composition with Matías Ruiz in Madrid. By 1680 he had been ordained a priest, entered the Order of the Trinity and was maestro de capilla – probably in a provisional capacity – at the Convento de la Encarnación, Madrid. On 2 October 1680 he was appointed maestro de capilla at the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela, but was not able to take up the post until 10 May 1681. About 1700 his health declined and by 1709 he was so frequently ill that he was unable to fulfil his duties; on 4 Feb 1710 he retired with a pension and he died a year later.

Vaquedano is among the most representative composers of the Spanish musical Baroque. Most of his works were composed before 1700, and he must be considered the first Spanish composer to use a true bel canto idiom, particularly in evidence in some of his Lamentations for Holy Week. These are often highly melismatic in both slow and rapid passages, and sometimes rests are used to break up long melodies, enhancing the bel canto effect. Vaquedano also mastered a rich polychoral style; some compositions use as many as 20 voices divided into five choirs. Many works employ instruments to double the voices, in addition to the ubiquitous basso continuo, which normally follows the melodic patterns of the bass voice. All Vaquedano’s surviving music is sacred except for a single trio sonata, the only known example of the genre in 17th-century Spanish music.

WORKS

Edition: Obras musicales de fray José de Vaquedano, ed. J. López-Calo (Santiago de Compostela, 1990) [L]

5 masses: 1, 4vv, bc; 1, 8vv; 1, 8vv, bc; 1, 12vv; 1, 12vv, bc, E-SC

6 antiphons: 2, 4vv, bc; 1, 8vv, org, harp; 2, 8vv, org; 1, 8vv, harp, SC

7 Lamentation settings: 2, v, bc; 1, 2 S, bc; 1, 6vv; 1, 7vv, insts; 1, 8vv, insts; 1, 8vv, bc, org, SC; 1 ed. in L

14 psalm settings: 1, 6vv, org, bc; 1, 8vv, bc; 1, 8vv, harp; 1, 8vv, harp, org, bc; 1, 8vv, vn, harp, org; 1, 11vv, org, insts; 1, 12vv, harp, bc; 1, 12vv, vn, org, bc; 3, 12vv, bc; 3, 12vv, org, bc, SC; 1 ed. in L

16 other sacred Latin works: 1, 3vv, bc; 1, 4vv; 1, 4vv, org; 4, 4vv, bc; 4, 8vv; 1, 8vv, bc; 1, 8vv, vn, org; 1, 8vv, harp, org; 1, 8vv, vn, hp; 1, 8vv, vn, harp, org, bc, SC; 3 ed. in L

49 villancicos, including 26 for the feast of St James, 6 for Christmas and 6 for the feast of the Holy Sacrament, 2, 3–5, 7, 8, 10–13, 15, 16vv, vn, harp, vihuelas, bn, tpt, org, CO-B, E-BUa, SC; 2 ed. in L

1 Sonata, 3 insts, bc, SC; ed. in L

BIBLIOGRAPHY

J. López-Calo: ‘Fray José de Vaquedano, maestro de capilla de la catedral de Santiago (1681–1711)’, AnM, x (1955), 191–216

F.J. Sanchez Cantón: ‘Noticias del maestro de capilla de la catedral de Santiago, fray José de Baquedano (†1711)’, Museo de Pontevedra,xvi (1962), 69–71

J. López-Calo: ‘Fray José de Vaquedano: nuevas aportaciones a su biografía y al estudio de su obra’, Cuadernos de sección, musica, Sociedad de estudios vascos, ii (1985), 103–15

J. López-Calo: ‘Las lamentaciones solísticas de Miguel de Irízar y de José de Vaquedano: un estudio sobre la melodía barroca española’, AnM, xliii (1988), 121–62

C. Villanueva: Las lamentaciones de Semana Santa de fray José de Vaquedano (diss., U. of Santiago de Compostela, 1990)

JOSÉ LÓPEZ-CALO

Vaqueras [Vacqueras, Vagares, Vacares, Vassadelli, della Bassa, de Bassea], Bertrandus

(b ?Vacqueyras, c1450; d Rome, before 21 April 1507). French singer and composer. Although there has been some confusion about Vaqueras's origins (his name suggested to some that he was Spanish, while the appellation ‘de Bessea’ suggested to others origins in Flanders or western France), the occasional use of ‘Vassadelli’ as his last name strongly suggests that he was a member of the Vassadel family, who had been the lords of the town of Vacqueyras near Orange since the 14th century. Although born in southern France either in Vacqueyras or near Cavaillon (he always described himself as a cleric of the diocese of Cavaillon and many of the benefices he received during his 24 years in the papal chapel were located in the area of Vaison or Orange), Vaqueras also managed to hold a canonry in the Cathedral of Liège, and one in the collegiate church of Notre Dame, Tongeren; as it was difficult to take possession of benefices in places other than one's home diocese, this may suggest some early connection with the north. Vaqueras is first recorded in Rome in 1481 as a contrabass singer in the choir of S Pietro. In November 1483, he was one of the nine new members to join the papal chapel, where he was to spend the rest of his career. He seems never to have left Rome. Vaqueras was apparently also an active humanist. A manuscript in the Vatican Library (I-Rvat Vat. Lat. 2836) contains two long classicizing Latin poems ascribed to ‘Bertrandus de Vaqueirassio’. One of these, dedicated to Antonius Flaminio, has been dated 1493–4 (see Vattasso). It shows the poet to be connected with humanistic circles in Rome and with its university. It is not altogether clear if the poet and the singer are the same, but it does seem unlikely that there were two people named Bertrandus Vaqueras in Rome at the same time.

Vaqueras's small number of works survive mainly in manuscripts prepared for the papal singers. His two masses, two settings of the Credo, three motets and one chanson setting are on the whole more than competent, exhibiting a certain eclecticism and a melodic/contrapuntal idiom characteristic of late 15th-century French and Netherlandish compositions; indeed, Ludovico Zacconi mentioned Vaqueras and Obrecht in the same breath as examples of composers who used excessive melodic sequences, printing a melodic fragment which he attributed to Vaqueras, although it relates to no known work. Vaqueras's five-voice Missa ‘L'homme armé’ is almost a compendium of techniques found in other L'homme armé masses of the late 15th century. The Missa ‘Du bon du ceur’ paraphrases its cantus firmus (the tenor of a polyphonic chanson) and includes long declamatory sections that may betray Italian influence. The motet Rex fallax miraculum has strong affinities with the five-voice motets of Regis, while the setting of Ave regina coelorum could be analysed as an example of the varietas championed by Tinctoris. The motet Domine non secundum peccata, the only sacred work by Vaqueras to appear in print, was compared by Glarean (albeit unfavourably) with a setting of the same text by Josquin (at one time Vaqueras's colleague in the papal chapel). The Credo settings are uninteresting, even clumsy in places; the untexted chanson setting is like many others of the period. Richard Taruskin has suggested that Vaqueras might be the composer of the anonymous Missa ‘L'ardent desir’ in I-Rvat C.S.51, but this seems unlikely.

WORKS

Edition: Bertrandi Vaqueras opera omnia, ed. R. Sherr, CMM, lxxviii (1978)

Missa ‘Du bon du ceur’, 4vv, I-Rvat C.S.49 (on T of anon. chanson)

Missa ‘L’homme armé’, 4vv, Rvat C.S.49; ed. in Monumenta polyphoniae liturgicae, 1st ser., i/10 (Rome, 1948)

Credo, 4vv, Rvat C.S.51, f.190v, VEcap 761

Credo, 5vv, Rvat C.S.51, f.183v, VEcap 761

Ave regina coelorum, 4vv, Rvat C.S.35

Domine non secundum peccata, 4vv, 1503¹, 1547¹, D-SGs 463, GB-Lbl Add.12532, I-Rvat C.S.35

Rex fallax miraculum/Apertis thesaurus, 5vv, Rvat C.S.63

Veci la danse Barbari, 3vv, 1501², E-SE (attrib. Compère), I-Fn Magl.107bis (anon.); ed. in MRM, ii (1967)

frag. in L. Zacconi: Prattica di musica, i (Venice, 1592, 2/1596/R), chap.80, f.84

BIBLIOGRAPHY

AudaM

F.X. Haberl: Die römische ‘Schola cantorum’ und die päpstlichen Kapellsänger bis zur Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts (Leipzig, 1888)

M. Vattasso: Antonio Flaminio e le principali poesie dell autografo Vaticano 2870, Studi e Testi, i (Vatican City, 1900), 60–64

M. Schuler: ‘Die Kapelle Papst Pius III’, AcM, xlii (1970), 225–30

R. Sherr: ‘Illabata dei virgo nutrix and Josquin's Roman Style’, JAMS, xli (1988), 434–64

R.C. Wegman: ‘Another Mass by Busnoys?’, ML, lxxi (1990), 1–19 [see also correspondence, 631–5]

C. Reynolds: Papal Patronage and the Music of St. Peter's, 1380–1513 (Berkeley, 1995)

R. Sherr: ‘Notes on the Biography and Music of Bertrandus Vaqueras (ca. 1450–1507)’, Studien zur Musikgeschichte: Eine Festschrift für Ludwig Finscher, ed. A. Laubenthal (Kassel, 1995), 111–22

RICHARD SHERR

Varady, Julia

(b Oradea, 1 Sept 1941). Romanian soprano, naturalized German. She studied in Bucharest with Arta Florescu, joining the Cluj State Opera at 22. Guest engagements took her to Italy, Frankfurt and Cologne, where she soon became known as a Mozart soprano of passionate intensity, vocal warmth and technical smoothness, as Elvira, Fiordiligi and Vitellia. In the 1972–3 season she was engaged at Munich, where her roles included Offenbach’s Antonia, Butterfly, Giorgetta (Il tabarro) and Liù; in 1977 she sang the title role in Strauss’s Arabella there. As Gluck’s Alcestis in the 1974 Scottish Opera production, she was much admired for her ability to marry emotional power and classically serene line in a portrayal of nobility and dignity, unstrained by the high tessitura of Gluck’s music. But in spite of her protean artistry, which enabled her to tackle such parts as Senta (a role she sang at Covent Garden in 1992), it is as a Verdi soprano that she revealed the range of her powers; and she undertook such varied roles as Violetta, Leonora in both Il trovatore and La forza del destino, Elisabeth de Valois, Desdemona, Aida and Abigaille with thrilling magnetism and vocal slancio. Varady's recordings include Cecilius in Lucio Silla, Electra (Idomeneo), Vitellia (La clemenza di Tito), Arabella and Bluebeard's Castle, as well as Verdi and Puccini arias. She married Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in 1978. She retired from the operatic stage in 1997. (A. Blyth: ‘Julia Varady’, Opera, x/iii, 1992, pp. 646–51)

MAX LOPPERT

Varcoe, (Christopher) Stephen

(b Lostwithiel, Cornwall, 19 May 1949). English baritone. He studied at King’s College, Cambridge, and the GSM. After singing in various choral groups and winning a Gulbenkian Foundation fellowship in 1977, he embarked on a career that concentrated on Baroque music and song, although he has made occasional forays into opera, notably as Sarastro in a London performance of Die Zauberflöte with Norrington (1989). He also created Father Zossima in the première of Tavener’s Mary of Egypt at the 1992 Aldeburgh Festival. During the 1980s and early 1990s he was a frequent contributor to Graham Johnson’s Songmakers’ Almanac, giving many refined performances of mélodies, and in the late 1990s he made a special study of, and recorded, many British songs. Varcoe’s feeling for the meaning of the text, allied to his gentle warmth of tone and sensitive phrasing, is evident in his many recordings, notably of music by Purcell, Bach, Handel and Rameau and of mélodies.

ALAN BLYTH

Vardi, Emanuel

(b Jerusalem, 21 April 1917). American viola player. At two he was given his first violin lessons by his father and when he was four the family emigrated to New York, where at seven he started serious violin studies with Joseph Borisoff and then Auer's assistant Khusdo. At the Institute of Musical Art (later the Juilliard School) his teachers were Constance Seeger and Edward Dethier; but he never graduated because his chamber music coach Felix Salmond interested him in the viola. He played in the NBC SO with William Primrose, his only viola teacher, studied Bach with Emanuel Feuermann and played in the Stuyvesant Quartet. In 1941 he gave the first complete viola recital at Town Hall, New York, and Toscanini arranged for him to broadcast six sonatas; he was the critics' recitalist of the year for his second Town Hall programme. During the war he played in the US Navy Orchestra as its viola soloist, giving the première of Morton Gould's Concerto (1943). In 1946 he gave a further radio series and a Carnegie Hall recital and he then became one of America's best-known soloists and recitalists. However he periodically took time off to pursue his interests in drawing, painting, sculpture and photography. He played the violin, in 1953–5 he was a member of the Guilet Quartet, he conducted – for a time he was music director of the South Dakota Symphony – and he worked as a recording producer. In the 1970s he virtually retired from playing but he returned in the 1980s rejuvenated, giving regular recitals at Alice Tully Hall, New York, and the Wigmore Hall, London. Seymour Barab, Henry Brant, Michael Colgrass, Alan Hovhaness, Charles Jones, George Kleinsinger, Walter May and Alan Shulman have written works for him. Vardi is one of the virtuosos of the viola, with an eloquent bow arm and a supple left hand. His big tone is produced with no evidence of effort. Most of his teaching has been done privately. From early in his career until a broken wrist curtailed his activities in 1993, he made recordings which, alongside those of Primrose, redefined the scope of the viola. The most legendary is a set of Paganini caprices with his own embellishments and concert endings; but he has recorded such rarities as Tibor Serly's Rhapsody (of which he gave the première) and Concerto and is one of the few viola players to have made anything of the Bliss Viola Sonata. His compositions include a violin concerto and pieces for viola, including Fantasy Variations on a Theme of Paganini and transcriptions. He has owned many vintage violas but in recent years has played an instrument by Hiroshi Iizuki, with sloping viol-like shoulders.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

T. Potter: ‘Sound Values’, The Strad, xcvi (1985), 690–92

T. Potter: disc notes, The Recorded Viola, vol.iii, Pearl GEMM CDS 9150

TULLY POTTER

Värdi [Vardina], Pietro.

See Verdina, Pietro.

Varela de Vega, Juan Bautista

(b Lugo, 21 Dec 1933). Spanish musicologist. He studied piano and harmony privately with Isabel Arróniz, disciple of the Galician composer Juan Montes Capón, and took the doctorate in musicology at the University of Valladolid. He also holds a doctorate in law and a Bachelor’s degree in sociology. He received various prizes and distinctions, including the diploma de mérito (1982) and the Lira de Ora (1990) of the Sociedad Lírica ‘Amigos de la Zarzuela’ (Valladolid). He became a member of the Real Cofradía Internacional de Investigadores, Toledo (1989) and the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de la Purísma Concepción, Valladolid (1990) and was named academic librarian and editor of the Boletín of the latter in 1996. He has served as music critic for the periodicals El norte de castilla (Valladolid) and El progresso (Lugo). In 1980, with the ethnomusicologist Joaquín Díaz, he founded the Revista de folklore, to which he also contributed numerous articles about folk musical instruments throughout the world.

Varela de Vega has for long been a leading spokesman for the performance of music by Galician composers, whose works he continues to introduce as well as integrate in his numerous lecture-concerts throughout Spain and other European countries. His writings on Galician music take into account significant cultural, literary and musical influences on and from other regions of the Iberian peninsula.

WRITINGS

Encuentros con la música … desde mi mesa (Valladolid, 1981)

‘Música y tarantismo en el siglo XVIII español’, Revista de folklore, no.61 (1986), 13–20; no.66 (1986), 199–208

Cesáreo Bustillo, un maestro de capilla vallisoletano (Valladolid, 1990)

Juan Montes, un músico gallego: estudio biográfico (La Corũna, 1990)

‘Enrique IV de Castilla, rey-músico’, Boletin de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes de la Purísma Concepción, xxvi (1991), 79–91

‘Juan Montes el músico gallego por excelencia’, Cuadernos de música y teatro, vi (1992), 67–77

‘Tiburcio y José María Aparicio, dos músicos vallisoletanos’, Boletin de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes de la Purísma Concepción, xxvii (1992), 233–65

‘Dos tonadillas de Pablo del Moral en el archivo musical de la Catedral de Valladolid’, RdM, xv (1992), 221–30

‘Gregorio Santiso Bermúdez: datos para su biografía y corrección de tradicionales errores’, RdM, xv (1993), 743–59

‘Influencia española en el nacionalismo musical ruso’, Boletin de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes de la Purísima Concepción, xxviii (1993), 33–43

‘Encuentro Casals-Grieg’, ibid., xxix (1994), 33–41

‘Alonso de Mudarra, músicao vallisolentano del Siglo de Oro’, ibid., xxx (1995), 15–25

‘Vidas paralelas: Federico García Lorca – Rosalía de Castro, Manuel de Falla – Juan Montes’, ibid., xxxi (1996), 181–96

‘El magisterio de capilla de la Catedral de Lugo en el siglo XIX’, Lvcensia, no.15 (1997), 279–98

‘Obras manuscritas de Juan Montes en el museo provincial de Lugo, procedentes del archivo de Vicente Latorre’, Boletín del museo provincial de Lugo, vii (1997), 229–50

El músico Juan Montes y los poetas gallegos (forthcoming)

Músicos de Valladolid: autología biográfica (Valladolid, forthcoming)

ISRAEL J. KATZ

Varesco, (Girolamo) Giovanni Battista [Gianbattista]

(bap. Trento, 26 Nov 1735; d Salzburg, 25 Aug 1805). Italian poet and musician. Educated at the Jesuit college in his home town, in 1766 he became a chaplain to the Archbishop of Salzburg, serving also in the archbishop’s orchestra. When Mozart received the commission for Idomeneo (1781) from the Munich court, he turned not to an established theatrical poet but to Varesco, who, as an Italian educated by the Jesuits in the liberal arts, was as capable as more prolific librettists. Furthermore, his presence in Salzburg allowed Mozart to work closely with him during the preparation of the libretto and the early stages of composition. Varesco translated and reworked Danchet’s tragédie lyrique Idomenée (1712) under Mozart’s supervision, producing a libretto in which the grand choruses, spectacular effects and supernatural elements reflect its French origins and probably the influence of Gluck’s Alceste. Varesco’s work is fluent and theatrical, with moments of great beauty, both poetic and dramatic.

Although offended by Mozart’s persistent attempts to alter the libretto of Idomeneo, Varesco collaborated again with Mozart. When Joseph II organized an opera buffa troupe in Vienna in 1783, Mozart, eager to display his abilities as a composer of Italian comic opera, set to work with Varesco on L’oca del Cairo. Most of the first act had been completed when, in early 1784, they abandoned the project. After L’oca del Cairo, Varesco collaborated with Michael Haydn on the opera seria Andromeda e Perseo (1787). Having survived Mozart by 14 years, Varesco died in poverty in his adopted city.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

D. Heartz: ‘The Genesis of Mozart’s Idomeneo’, MJb 1967, 150–64; repr. in MQ, lv (1969), 1–19; repr. in Mozart’s Operas (Berkeley, 1990)

K. Kramer: ‘Antike und christliches Mittelalter in Varescos Idomeneo, dem Libretto zu Mozarts gleichnamiges Oper’, MISM, xxviii/1–2 (1980), 6–20

K. Kramer: ‘Frauengestalten in Varescos Idomeneo’, MISM, xxviii/3–4 (1980), 16–24

K. Kramer: ‘Giovanni Battista Varesco: Versuch einer Biographie’, Acta Mozartiana, xxvii (1980), 2–14

K. Kramer: ‘Das Libretto zu Mozarts Idomeneo’, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Idomeneo 1781–1981, ed. R. Münster (Munich, 1981), 7–43

J.E. Everson: ‘Of Beaks and Geese: Mozart, Varesco and Francesco Cieco’, ML, lxxvi (1995), 369–83

JOHN A. RICE

Varèse, Edgard [Edgar] (Victor Achille Charles)

(b Paris, 22 Dec 1883; d New York, 6 Nov 1965). American composer of French birth. He produced in the 1920s a series of compositions which were innovative and influential in their rhythmic complexity, use of percussion, free atonality and forms not principally dependent on harmonic progression or thematic working. Even before World War I he saw the necessity of new means to realize his conceptions of ‘organized sound’ (the term he preferred to ‘music’), and, seizing on the electronic developments after World War II, he composed two of the first major works with sounds on tape.

1. Life.

PAUL GRIFFITHS

1. Life.

Varèse spent his early childhood partly in Paris and partly with maternal relatives in Burgundy, a region to which he retained a deep attachment; his first performed orchestral work was entitled Bourgogne, and the earlier Rhapsodie romane (1905–6) was stimulated by the Romanesque architecture of St Philibert at Tournus. In 1893 the Varèse family settled in Turin, where Henri Varèse, intending his son for a business career, directed his studies towards mathematics and engineering. But, despite his father's opposition, Varèse was able to begin music studies with Giovanni Bolzoni about 1900, and he had already composed an ‘opera’ for his schoolmates. He left home for Paris in 1903 and the next year entered the Schola Cantorum, where his teachers were Roussel (composition, counterpoint and fugue), Bordes (pre-classical music), and d'Indy (conducting). Bordes had a decisive influence in turning his attention to early music (always the favoured repertory for the choral groups which he directed from time to time), but Varèse was unable to put up with d'Indy's paternalism, and in 1905 he left the Schola to enrol in Charles-Marie Widor's composition class at the Conservatoire.

Late in 1907 Varèse moved from Paris to Berlin. He had been impressed by the radical prophecies of Busoni's Entwurf einer neuen Ästhetik der Tonkunst and he soon sought out the author, who became a close acquaintance. In 1908 Hofmannsthal gave him permission to set Oedipus und die Sphinx as an opera; through Hofmannsthal his music came to the notice of Richard Strauss, and Strauss persuaded Stransky to perform Bourgogne in 1910. During these years he made several visits to Paris, meeting and impressing Rolland and Debussy, to whom he introduced Schoenberg's atonal works (he heard Pierrot lunaire in Berlin in 1912). Varèse returned to Paris in 1913, leaving most of his manuscripts in Berlin, where they were destroyed in a warehouse fire. In Paris he took an interest in Jean Bertrand and his electric instrument, the ‘dynaphone’; he got to know Apollinaire and Satie, and was involved in Cocteau's unrealized project for a circus production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. In 1914 he conducted the Czech PO in a programme including the concert première of the orchestral suite from Debussy's Le martyre de St Sébastien, but he was unable to secure a permanent position and on 18 December 1915 he left for the USA.

After his arrival in New York 11 days later, Varèse was introduced into musical circles by Muck, another Berlin acquaintance. He was also on the fringe of a dadaist group around Duchamp and Picabia; he contributed to Picabia's magazine 391, but he never accepted the iconoclasm of dada. On 1 December 1917 he made his American conducting début with Berlioz's Requiem, and he directed concerts of new music with the Cincinnati SO (1918) and his own New SO (1919). His eagerness to promote contemporary works found a more permanent outlet in the International Composers' Guild, which he founded with Carlos Salzedo in 1921. During the six years of its existence the guild organized performances of chamber pieces by Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Berg, Webern, Ruggles, Cowell and many others; its concerts also saw the first performances of Varèse's Offrandes in 1922, Hyperprism in 1923, Octandre in 1924 and Intégrales in 1925. The première of Hyperprism, for nine wind and seven percussionists, brought an outburst from the audience, but Kenneth Curwen, who was present, was sufficiently impressed to offer to publish Varèse's scores. After the discontinuation of the International Composers' Guild, Varèse founded the Pan American Association of Composers (1928–34). Dedicated to the promotion of experimental contemporary music and its performance in the USA, Latin America and Europe, the association was one of the first to encourage cooperation among composers throughout the Americas and to stimulate performances of American music outside the USA.

Varèse had visited Europe briefly several times in the 1920s, and in 1928 he began a long stay in Paris, where he was soon involved again in the artistic milieu. He spent a lot of time on a dramatic project, first mooted as The One-All-Alone, to a text by his wife Louise on an American-Indian subject. This appears to have been transformed into L'astronome, for which he sketched a scenario concerning an astronomer who makes contact with the inhabitants of a distant solar system, incites the anger of the mob, and is finally annihilated by the star's rays. The idea came to nothing, and Espace, also begun during these years, similarly failed to materialize, though it continued to occupy Varèse until the 1940s. Espace was a Protean project; in its most ambitious state it was to involve simultaneous broadcasts by performers all over the globe. While Varèse was in Paris, several of his works were played there; for the French première of Amériques in 1929 the siren was replaced by the newly invented ondes martenot. Varèse also continued his work with Bertrand, and he included two theremin parts in Ecuatorial (1932–4).

Before leaving Paris (in 1933) Varèse wrote to the Bell Telephone Co. and the Guggenheim Foundation in an attempt to raise interest in a centre for electric-instrument research. His failure to obtain funds or facilities was the principal cause of the depression which overtook him for many years; after Density 21·5, composed in 1936 for Barrère's flute made from platinum (21·5 is the density of that metal), he completed nothing for a decade. In 1937 he gave classes in composition and orchestration at the Arsuna School of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, and in 1938 he went to Los Angeles, where he tried, again unsuccessfully, to persuade film producers that ‘organized sound’ held possibilities for the cinema. Back in New York he founded the Greater New York Chorus for performances of Renaissance and Baroque music (1943–7) and lectured on composition and 20th-century music at Columbia University (1948) and elsewhere. Some of his lectures were published in The American Composer Speaks (ed. G. Chase, 1966) and Contemporary Composers on Contemporary Music (ed. E. Schwartz and B. Childs, 1967). He taught at the Darmstadt summer courses in 1950, and a recording of four of his works was released.

In 1953 Varèse received, from an anonymous donor, an Ampex tape recorder, which enabled him to begin concrete work on the plans he had nurtured for 40 years. He started by collecting sounds for the tape episodes in Déserts, whose instrumental parts had been in progress since about 1950. Schaeffer invited him to complete the work in the Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française studios in 1954, and Déserts was introduced in Paris later that year in a concert that was broadcast live in stereo, the first music to be so transmitted by French radio. Varèse went back to New York in 1955 and returned to Europe in 1957 to work on the Poème électronique at the Philips laboratories in Eindhoven (fig.2). This composition, for tape alone, was designed to fill Le Corbusier's pavilion for the Philips firm at the Brussels Exposition Universelle of 1958.

The last years of Varèse's life brought him honour and renown. In 1960 his scores began to appear in print again; Boulez and Craft made recordings of his works; performances became much more frequent; he was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters (1955) and to the Royal Swedish Academy (1962); and he received the Brandeis University Creative Arts Award (1962) and the first Koussevitzky International Recording Award (1963). He also finished work on the Déserts tapes at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center and revised the close of Arcana. But in terms of new compositions the period was less rich: it was at this time that he destroyed Bourgogne in a moment of despair, and he laboured with several projects on themes of night and death. Nocturnal was given in incomplete form at a concert of homage in 1961; at his death, four and a half years later, it was still unfinished.

2. Aesthetics and technique.

Varèse has frequently been honoured as the precursor of electronic music, the adventurous explorer of techniques and conceptions far ahead of his time. This view of his work as ‘experimental’ and valuable chiefly for its prophetic character has perhaps been overemphasized, but enthusiasm for the new was undeniably an important part of Varèse's personality. The title of his earliest published composition, Amériques, was chosen ‘as symbolic of discoveries – new worlds on earth, in the sky, or in the minds of men’. And as early as 1916 he was expounding his ideas for the future of music: ‘We also need new instruments very badly. … Musicians should take up this question in deep earnest with the help of machinery specialists’. In a lecture at the University of Southern California in 1939 he specified the new possibilities that machines might offer: liberation from the tempered system, a pitch range extended in both directions, ‘new harmonic splendours obtainable from the use of sub-harmonic combinations now impossible’, increased differentiation of timbre, an expanded dynamic spectrum, the feasibility of sound projection in space, and unrelated cross-rhythms. To realize such ideas Varèse recognized that it would be necessary to collaborate with scientists and engineers; indeed, he often spoke of music as an ‘art-science’, a discipline to stand at the side of mathematics, as it had for the medieval theorist and the Greek philosopher. Nevertheless, it was the mythology of science that Varèse embraced rather than its method; titles such as Ionisation and Hyperprism are hardly more than evocative. The scientist seems to have been for him a figure parallel to the Romantic artist: an individual elevated above the masses by his access to the mysteries of nature (cf L'astronome). His ideal was Paracelsus, from whom he took a hermetic inscription for the score of Arcana, not Albert Einstein, who only wanted to talk to him about Mozart.

Another aspect of Varèse's determined radicalism was his love of urban life, something he had in common with the Italian futurists, whose work he knew in Paris before World War I. However, he criticized them for their anecdotal recourse to the sounds and rhythms of machines. For him it was essential to integrate such materials, whether in the tape collages of Déserts and the Poème électronique or in instrumental works. If some quality of mechanized industry and the city street remains in a piece like Intégrales, there is no direct imitation; and the use of sirens in Amériques, Hyperprism and Ionisation was not just a futurist gesture of revolt but a means of obtaining the continuous slow glissandos impossible with conventional instruments. Varèse's intimate incorporation of urban features can be compared with early Léger or late Mondrian more closely than with the work of any other composer. In some respects, too, he shared the ambiguous awe with which surrealist writers regarded the city: as a thing of violent beauty and yet, on occasion, an unintelligible snare. He used surrealist poems in Offrandes, wrote one himself, and planned at one stage to work with Artaud on L'astronome. Artaud wrote him a text, published as Il n'y a pas de firmament, but it was not set. Nonetheless, Artaud's ideas probably suggested the introduction of meaningless syllables in the subsequent Ecuatorial and Nocturnal; the former, setting a tribal incantation, is particularly Artaudesque. As Ecuatorial most pointedly indicates, the distant past was almost as important to Varèse as the present and the future; Leonardo, Paracelsus and the Greeks meant more to him than did later thinkers.

Similarly, Varèse felt closer to Perotinus, Machaut, Schütz and Marc-Antoine Charpentier than to composers of the Classical-Romantic tradition (Berlioz excepted), as his conducting repertory demonstrated. Among contemporaries, Debussy, Stravinsky and Schoenberg had the greatest influence on him, though he was always mistrustful of what he regarded as ‘systems’, whether neo-classical or serial. His structural use of ‘sound-masses’ can be viewed as a combination of the block form of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring with the continuously evolving fluidity of Debussy's Jeux and the Five Orchestral Pieces op.16 of Schoenberg (all works he knew before World War I). Varèse's music is typically composed of parallel streams, each made up of ‘sound-masses’ and silences, but with continuity maintained by the overlapping of the streams. They may be sharply distinguished in terms of pitch, interval, register, rhythm, instrumentation, deployment (linear or chordal) or rate of change (an important compositional aspect in Varèse), or any combination of these; they may alternatively share some of these attributes.

A few aspects of Varèse's technique can be explored in Hyperprism (1922–3), a short work for a characteristic ensemble of nine wind instruments (flute, clarinet, three horns, and pairs of trumpets and trombones) and seven percussion players, all using ‘noise’ instruments, except for the indefinitely pitched siren. Varèse used strings in only four published works; he disliked vibrato, and only wind and percussion could provide sounds of the intensity (not necessarily brutality) he demanded. Unpitched percussion instruments were suitable for complex rhythmic writing (Hyperprism has sections of four independent rhythmic parts in the percussion) and the wind family constituted a homogeneous collection of sounds from which Varèse could ‘synthesize’ his sonorities. The association between wind and percussion is, in Hyperprism, typically variable: there are passages of quasi-independence (opening), homorhythm (figure 4) and alternation (figure 6); other sections are scored for wind or percussion alone. Percussion rhythm patterns, consisting most characteristically of repeated accented ‘cells’, are often found when rhythmic activity in the winds is at its lowest (in sustained single notes or chords).

One of the elements important to the pitch relationships of Hyperprism is the unordered set (henceforth S) of three adjacent pitch classes. The first 13 bars, for example, contain only the pitch classes C (tenor trombone, horns and E clarinet), D (bass trombone), and C (flute). Bars 14–16 build a nine-note aggregate, the missing pitch classes being another instance of S (G, A, A). The trombone melody at figure 8 (ex.1) presents three examples of S successively (discounting the grace notes, which themselves form S) in such a way that interval class 1 is emphasized; again, the three pitch classes not included constitute a form of S. Finally, the outer trichords of the last sonority (ex.2) are instances of S; the lower one is removed before the other six notes of the chord. (Chords such as this, generally composed of eight to 11 pitch classes, widely disposed in register and each represented once only, are frequently found in Varèse's music at points of closure.)

Bars 14–16, to which reference has been made, may be taken as a simple example of the structural idea to which Varèse referred in a lecture of 1936: ‘taking the place of the linear counterpoint, the movement of sound-masses, of shifting planes, will be clearly perceived. When these sound-masses collide the phenomena of penetration or repulsion will seem to occur’. The passage opens with a C–C dyad in flute and E clarinet (dyads of interval class 1 in the high woodwind are common in Varèse). There are entries by the brass, and the woodwind instruments exchange pitch classes, returning to their original positions once the horns and trumpets have stopped playing.

However, any analysis of Varèse's music in terms only of pitch structure must be insufficient (though such analyses have been widely offered – a fact that partly accounts for the favouring of Density 21·5 in the literature). In order to be convinced of the importance to Varèse of timbre, it is enough to imagine ex.1 played on a cello.

3. Works.

The two compositions that followed Hyperprism – Octandre (1923) and Intégrales (1924–5) – share several of its features; neither goes so far in avoiding repetition, though again pitch organization is dependent on redispositions of basic sets rather than on thematic development. Intégrales is close to Hyperprism in instrumentation (it requires 11 wind and four percussionists), material and form. The first of its three main sections (up to two bars after figure 5) is, however, the extreme case of repetition in Varèse: though there is no exact repeat, the 52 bars are dominated by a three-note motif of a rising tritone followed by a rising tone, with the last note sustained or successively attacked. In several respects this is an essentially Varèsian idea: the most characteristic melodic type in Varèse is that in which a single pitch is strongly emphasized (as in ex.1), an emphatic rising ‘summons’ is found elsewhere as a point of initiation (cf Nocturnal), and the Intégrales motif itself occurs again in Arcana (two bars after figure 9, etc.) and Ecuatorial (bar 8). Octandre is scored for eight instruments without percussion (‘octandrous’ flowers have eight stamens) and is uncharacteristically divided into three movements. Although rhythmic activity is here concentrated in melody instruments, the play between independence and unison in the rhythmic domain is as important as it is in Hyperprism and Intégrales.

The two compositions that preceded Hyperprism – the orchestral Amériques (completed in 1921 and revised in 1927) and Offrandes for soprano and small orchestra (1921) – display Varèse's debts to predecessors most clearly, yet both are full of typical features, such as the use of solo wind instruments in Offrandes or the elaborate scoring for 11 percussionists, including two sets of timpani, in Amériques. Debussy's influence is evident in the orchestration of these pieces, notably in the writing for harp (an instrument Varèse was not to use again) and strings. And the way in which Varèse employs an exposed alto flute melody as a recurring origin for fresh departures in the early part of Amériques has some parallel in the Prélude à l'aprés-midi d'un faune. Amériques requires an enormous orchestra, as, it seems, did the lost Bourgogne and Prélude à la fin d'un jour. In revising the work Varèse cut some instrumental parts and excised a considerable quantity of music, but Amériques still has a greater profusion of material than any subsequent composition.

Arcana (1925–7) demands a comparably enormous ensemble but is structurally more contained; it deploys many of the principles of Hyperprism and Intégrales on a scale of greater density and time-span. The surface coherence of the work depends largely on the varied returns of a few basic ideas, and in this sense the music is more thematic than in the smaller compositions. However, development is not linear: ideas disappear and then reappear in transformed states in a perpetual upheaval of sound. Among the germinal ‘sound-masses’ are the pounding initial figure for bass instruments and the Intégrales motif already mentioned. Thus linked to an earlier piece, Arcana also looks forward, notably in the section beginning at figure 18, to Ionisation for 13 percussion players (1929–31). Fittingly, since Ionisation is scored almost entirely for unpitched instruments, it provides the most sustained example in Varèse of the alternation and variation of rhythmic ‘cells’. Definite pitches make a dramatic appearance in the last 17 bars of the composition, with a repeated cluster in the piano bass and various rhythmic arrangements of three chords distributed between piano, glockenspiel and tubular bells. The use of percussion instruments for their resonant capacities, here quite new to Varèse's music, was to be further exploited in later compositions, above all in Déserts.

Even in Ecuatorial (1932–4) there is a significant part for piano, and Varèse introduces an organ into the ensemble. Possibly his interest in keyboard instruments was reawakened by the French composers then emerging; Jolivet was his pupil while he was in Paris (1928–33), and he would almost certainly have heard Messiaen's music at that time. Ecuatorial also adds two parts for electronic instruments; Varèse worked with Thérémin in Paris on those to be used, but in the published score he replaced them by ondes martenots. These enabled Varèse to achieve one of the benefits he expected from electronic music: at one point there is an e''''', a note to which Varèse, even in his most strenuous demands on piccolo players, had not previously stretched. Four trumpets, four trombones and percussion (six players) complete the instrumental forces of Ecuatorial. The vocal line, to a prayer from the Popol Vuh of the Maya Quiché, was first intended for Chaliapin, though in the printed version it is assigned to a unison bass chorus, perhaps more appropriate for a communal incantation. In either version Ecuatorial is a work of drama and vividness, suggesting the ‘elemental rude intensity’, as Varèse put it, of pre-Columbian sculpture.

Apart from the short Density 21·5 for solo flute (see Atonality,§2, esp. ex.6), Varèse's next complete work was Déserts for 20 instrumentalists and two-track tape (finished in 1954). The contrast is striking between the ‘new worlds’ of Amériques and these ‘deserts’, by which Varèse meant ‘not only physical deserts of sand, sea, mountains and snow, outer space, deserted city streets … but also this distant inner space … where man is alone in a world of mystery and essential solitude’. The instrumental music, which was composed first and may be performed without the three tape inserts, requires forces similar to those of Hyperprism and Intégrales – 14 winds, piano and five percussionists – but the style is changed. Though ejaculatory motifs still occur, they are subsidiary to sustained chords or single pitches, and Varèse's orchestration of these is extremely subtle. Pitched percussion instruments – principally piano, but also vibraphone, glockenspiel, xylophone and tubular bells – are used almost always to double the winds; the assembling and dismantling of sonorities is done with great beauty and effect; and there are moments of Klangfarbenmelodie, which are, with other tendencies to transparency, suggestive of Webern. Sparer and stiller than earlier works, Déserts has more room for consonant intervals (even emphatic octaves at bars 54–6) and less rhythmic activity; the role of the unpitched percussion is considerably curtailed. In preparing the electronic interludes, whose grating ‘noise’ character is quite opposed to that of the orchestral material, Varèse modified recordings of factory sounds and percussion instruments.

About the time that he was composing Déserts, Varèse was involved in various cinematic projects, principally in collaboration with his friend Thomas Bouchard; he prepared extracts from his own works for a film on Léger (1946), arranged Baroque fragments for one on Seligmann (1950), and composed an electronic soundtrack for one sequence in Around and About Joan Miró (1955). He also intended that Déserts should be accompanied by a film of images in counterpoint to the sounds, but nothing came of the idea. Another project of this period, a realization of Intégrales for tape, was also abortive, but Varèse did produce the Poème électronique (1957–8; fig.3). This uses a much greater range of sounds than did the tapes for Déserts: pure electronic sounds, machine noises, bells, solo and choral voices, piano and percussion, all with or without modification; there are suggestions of the ‘summons’ of Intégrales, the insistent rhythms of Ionisation, and the wide-ranging soprano line of Nocturnal. Though hard to analyse, the coherence of the Poème électronique is as undeniable as its power to move. Sadly, Le Corbusier's building (fig.4), in which the three-track tape was transmitted through a large number of loudspeakers, was soon demolished, and so Varèse's spatial intentions cannot be realized.

The unfinished Nocturnal (1961) – in which, after decades of planning, Varèse left electronic means behind – is still more bleak and reduced than Déserts. Varèse had investigated texts by Michaux, Novalis and St John of the Cross before choosing some phrases from Anaïs Nin's The House of Incest, to be intoned by soprano solo and bass chorus. The orchestral writing is most comparable with that of Déserts, with two important exceptions: instruments often double vocal lines, and strings are introduced, most strikingly to present pianissimo chords in harmonics, a sound that may have been suggested by the Japanese shō, in which Varèse took an interest after his introduction to gagaku in 1958. Chou Wen-chung made a skilful and coherent completion of Nocturnal after Varèse's death, but the piece has to be considered a fragment.

Thus Varèse left only 12 self-sufficient compositions: a smaller output than that of any modern composer of like importance, but a major contribution for itself and for the stimulus it gave. Few other composers enjoyed the respect of such disparate contemporaries as Busoni, Debussy, Schoenberg and Stravinsky; few others excited the interest at once of Babbitt, Boulez, Cage and Stockhausen.

WORKS

surviving works

Un grand sommeil noir (P. Verlaine), lv, pf (1906)

Amériques, orch, ?1918–1921; Philadelphia, Academy of Music, 9 April 1926, Philadelphia Orchestra, cond. Stokowski; rev. 1927, Paris, Maison Gaveau, 30 May 1929, Orchestre des Concerts Poulet, cond. Poulet; later revs. incorporated in edn by Chou Wen-chung (1973)

Offrandes, S, small orch, 1921: Chanson de là-haut (V. Huidobro), La croix du sud (J.J. Tablada); New York, Greenwich Village Theater, 23 April 1922, N. Koshetz, cond. C. Salzedo

Hyperprism, 9 wind, 7 perc, 1922–3; New York, Klaw Theater, 4 March 1923, cond. Varèse

Octandre, fl + pic, cl + E cl, ob, bn, hn, tpt, trbn, db, 1923; New York, Vanderbilt Theater, 13 Jan 1924, cond. R. Schmitz; ed. Chou (1980)

Intégrales, 11 wind, 4 perc, 1924–5; New York, Aeolian Hall, 1 March 1925, cond. Stokowski; ed. Chou (1980)

Arcana, orch, 1925–7; Philadelphia, Academy of Music, 8 April 1927, Philadelphia Orchestra, cond. Stokowski; rev. 1960

Ionisation, 13 perc, 1929–31; New York, Carnegie Hall, 6 March 1933, cond. Slonimsky

Ecuatorial (prayer from Popol Vuh of Maya Quiché, trans. Father Jimines), B (solo/unison chorus), 8 brass, pf, org, 2 ondes martenots, 6 perc, 1932–4; New York, Town Hall, 15 April 1934, C. Baromeo, cond. Slonimsky

Density 21·5, fl, 1936; New York, Carnegie Hall, 16 Feb 1936, Barrère

Etude pour Espace, chorus, 2 pf, perc, 1947; New York, New School for Social Research, 23 Feb 1947, cond. Varèse

Déserts, 14 wind, pf, 5 perc, 2-track tape, ?1950–54, Paris, Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, 2 Dec 1954, Orchestre National, Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française, cond. Scherchen; tape rev. 1960, 1961, 1961

La procession de Vergès (tape for film Around and About Joan Mirò, dir. T. Bouchard), 1955

Poème électronique, 3-track tape, 1957–8; Philips Pavilion, Brussels Exposition, 2 May 1958

Nocturnal (from A. Nin: The House of Incest, meaningless syllables by Varèse), S, B chorus, small orch, 1961, inc.; New York, Town Hall, 1 May 1961, cond. Craft; ed. and completed from notes and sketches by Chou (1973)

unfinished projects

The One-All-Alone (stage work, L. Varèse), 1927

L'astronome (stage work, writers involved at various times incl. A. Artaud, P. Carpentier, J. Desnos, Giono), 1928–9 [for scenario by Varèse see Ouellette]

Espace (A. Malraux involved 1937), chorus, orch, 1929–c1940 [for scenario by Varèse see Miller]

Metal, S, orch, 1932

Dans la nuit (Michaux), chorus, 15 brass, org, 2 ondes martenot, perc, 1955–61

Nocturnal II (Nuit) (from Nin: The House of Incest), S, fl, ob, cl, 1/2 tpt, 2 trbn, perc, db, 1961–5

lost works

Martin Pas (op, Varèse, after J. Verne), boys' vv, mand, c1895

Works of c1905–5: Apothéose de l'océan, sym. poem; Chanson des jeunes hommes, orch; Colloque au bord de la fontaine; Dans le parc; Poème des brumes; Prélude à la fin d'un jour, after L. Deubel, orch; Souvenir (Deubel); 3 Pieces, orch; 2 rhythmic prose pieces (Deubel)

Rhapsodie romane, orch, 1905–6; pf version perf. Paris, 1906

Bourgogne, sym. poem, 1908; Bluthner Orchestra, cond. Stransky, Berlin, Bluthner Hall, 15 Dec 1910; destroyed by Varèse, c1962

Gargantua, sym. poem, inc.

Mehr Licht, orch, 1911; preworked as Les cycles du nord, orch, 1912

Oedipus und die Sphinx (op, H. von Hofmannsthal), 1909–13

Principal publisher: Colfranc/Ricordi

1. The rhetoric of variation.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

primary sources

E. Varèse: ‘Oblation’, 391, no.5 (New York, 1917); repr. in SMz, cxix (1979), 65–6 [poem]

G. Schuller: ‘Conversation with Varèse’,PNM, iii/2 (1964–5), 32–7; repr. in Perspectives on American Composers, ed. B. Boretz and E.T. Cone (New York, 1971), 34–9

E. Varèse: ‘The Liberation of Sound’,Contemporary Composers on Contemporary Music, ed. E. Schwartz and B. Childs (New York, 1967/R), 196–208; abridged in Perspectives on American Composers, ed. B. Boretz and E.T. Cone (New York, 1971), 25–33

L. Alcopley: ‘Edgar Varèse on Music and Art: a Conversation between Varèse and Alcopley’, Leonardo: International Journal of the Contemporary Artist, i/2 (1968), 71–9

D. Dille, ed.: Documenta bartókiana, iii (Budapest and Mainz, 1968)

G. Charbonnier: Entretiens avec Edgard Varèse (Paris, 1970) [interviews of 1955 with excerpts from Varèse's lectures]

E. Varèse: Ecrits, ed. L. Hirbour (Paris, 1983)

E. Varèse: ‘A Note for Lou Harrison’, A Lou Harrison Reader (Santa Fe, 1987), 18–19

R. Revueltas, ed.: Silvestre Revueltas por él mismo (Mexico City, 1989) [incl. letters from Varèse]

H. de la Motte-Haber and K.Angermann, eds.: Edgard Varèse 1883–1965: Dokumente zu Leben und Werk (Frankfurt, 1990)

E. Varèse: ‘La mécanisation de la musique’, Digraphe, no.55 (1991), 111–15

Other documents in J. Petit: Le poème électronique; Liberté 59; H. Jolivet: Varèse; H.-K. Metzger and R. Riehn, eds.: Edgard Varèse: Rückblick auf der Zukunft, for all of which see below

monographs and symposia

J.H. Klaren: Edgar Varèse: Pioneer of New Music in America (Boston, 1928)

J. Petit: Le poème électronique: Le Corbusier (Paris, 1958)

Liberté 59 (Montreal, 1959), no.5 [special issue]

F. Ouellette: Edgard Varèse (Paris, 1966, 2/1989; Eng. trans., 1968/R)

L. Varèse: Varèse: a Looking-Glass Diary, i: 1883–1928 (New York, 1972/R)

H. Jolivet: Varèse (Paris, 1973)

O. Vivier: Varèse (Paris, 1973)

The New Worlds of Edgard Varèse: New York 1977

G. Wehmeyer: Edgard Varèse (Regensburg, 1977)

H.-K. Metzger and R.Riehn, eds.: Edgard Varèse: Rückblick auf der Zukunft, Musik-Konzepte, no.6 (Munich, 1978)

SMz, cxix/2 (1979) [Varèse issue]

A. Carpentier: Varèse vivant (Paris, 1980)

Comporre arcano: Webern e Varèse: Palermo 1983

M. Bredel: Edgar Varèse (Paris, 1984)

F.-B. Mâche, ed.: ‘Varèse, vingt ans après …’, ReM, nos.383–5 (1985) [Varèse issue]

J.W. Bernard: The Music of Edgard Varèse (New Haven, CT, 1987)

H. de Ia Motte-Haber, ed.: Edgard Varèse: die Befreiung des Klangs (Hofheim, 1992)

H. de la Motte-Haber: Die Musik von Edgard Varèse: Studien zu seinen nach 1918 entstandenen Werken (Hofheim, 1993)

memoirs and biographical studies

H. Miller: ‘With Edgar Varèse in the Gobi Desert’, The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (New York, 1945/R), 109–19

D.L. Root: The Performance Guilds of Edgard Varèse (diss., U. of Illinois, 1971)

R. Julius: ‘Edgard Varèse, an Oral History Project: some Preliminary Conclusions’, CMc, no.25 (1978), 39–49

A. Nin: ‘Edgard Varèse: fragments de journal 1940–1965’, SMz, cxxii (1982), 317–25

R. Bayly: ‘Ussachevsky on Varèse: an Interview’, PNM, xxi/2 (1982–3), 145–51

R.A. Lott: ‘“New Music for New Ears”: the International Composers' Guild’, JAMS, xxxvi (1983), 266–87

G. Tromp: ‘Artaud et Varèse’, Les écrivains français et l'opéra, ed. J.-P. Capdevielle and P.-E. Knabe (Cologne, 1986), 275–84

A. Arvois: ‘Varèse à New York’, Digraphe, no.55 (1991), 118–32

O. Mattis: Edgard Varèse and the Visual Arts (diss., Stanford U., 1992)

J. Bártová: ‘Proč zapomněla Praha na Varèse?’ [Why has Prague forgotten Varèse?], Opus musicum, xxv/3 (1993), 71–8

general music studies

H. Cowell: ‘The Music of Edgard Varèse’, MM, v/2 (1927–8), 9–18; repr. in American Composers on American Music, ed. H. Cowell (Stanford, CA, 1933/R), 43–8

O. Vivier: ‘Les innovations instrumentales d'Edgard Varèse’, ReM, no.226 (1955), 188–97

F. Lesure: ‘Debussy et Edgard Varèse’, Debussy et l'évolution de la musique au XXe siècle: Paris 1962, 333–8

Chou Wen-chung: ‘Varèse’, CMc, no.1 (1965), 169–74

E. Helm: ‘Aussenseiter Varèse’, Melos, xxxii (1965), 433–7

L. Dallapiccola and others: ‘In memoriam: Edgard Varèse (1883–1965)’, PNM, iv/2 (1965–6), 1–13

Chou Wen-chung: ‘Varèse: a Sketch of the Man and his Music’, MQ, lii (1966), 151–70

Chou Wen-chung: ‘Open rather than Bounded’, PNM, v/1 (1966–7), 1–6

O. Vivier: ‘Edgard Varèse: esquisses et oeuvres détruites’, ReM, nos.265–6 (1969), 31–6

C. Dahlhaus: ‘Aussenseiter der neuen Musik: Charles Ives und Edgard Varèse’, GfMKB: Bonn 1970 , 299

C.W. Johnson: A Comparative Study of the Views of Present Reality Manifested in the Art Works of Fernand Léger and Edgard Varèse (diss., Ohio U., 1970)

H.E. Steinhardt: ‘Varèse: unbegriffener Prophet einer kosmischen Schallwelt’, Melos, xxxviii (1971), 293–7

D.R. Bolch: The Music of Edgard Varèse (diss., U. of Washington, 1973)

P. Garland, ed.: Soundings: Ives, Ruggles, Varèse (Santa Fe, 1974)

A.F. Parks: Freedom, Form, and Process in Varèse: a Study of Varèse's Musical Ideas, their Sources, their Development, and their Use in his Works (diss., Cornell U., 1974)

J.-I. Bosseur: ‘Der Futurismus und das Werk von Edgard Varèse’, Der musikalische Futurismus: Graz 1973 and 1975, 37–49

A. Wilheim: ‘The Genesis of a Specific Twelve-Tone System in the Works of Varèse’, SM, xix (1977), 203–26

L. Stempel: ‘Varèse's “Awkwardness” and the Symmetry in the “Frame of 12 Tones”: an Analytic Approach’, MQ, lxv (1979), 148–66

J.W. Bernard: ‘Pitch/Register in the Music of Edgard Varèse’, Music Theory Spectrum, iii (1981), 1–25

N. Post: ‘Varèse, Wolpe and the Oboe’, PNM, xx/1–2 (1982), 135–48

K. Tedman: Edgard Varèse: Concepts of Organized Sound (diss., U. of Sussex, 1982)

G. Wehmeyer: ‘Wie modern war Edgard Varèse (1883–1965)?’, Jg.145, nos.7–8 (1984), 18–23

D.H. Cox: ‘Thematic Interrelationships between the Works of Varèse’, MR, xlix (1988), 205–17

J.D. Anderson: ‘Varèse and the Lyricism of the New Physics’, MQ, lxxv (1991), 31–49

E.W. Marvin: ‘The Perception of Rhythm in Non-Tonal Music: Rhythmic Contours in the Music of Edgard Varèse’, Music Theory Spectrum, xiii (1991), 61–78

H. de la Motte-Haber: ‘Edgard Varèse und die europäische Tradition’, Musiktheorie, vi (1991), 221–31

M.A. Guck: ‘Varèse Bound’, PNM, xxx/2 (1992), 240–73 [response: J.W. Bernard: ‘Cracked Octaves, Warped Perspectives: a Response’, PNM, xxx/2 (1992), 274–89; counter-response: M.A. Guck: ‘The Endless Road’, PNM, xxxi/1 (1993), 306–14]

K. Boehmer: Das böse Ohr: Texte zur Musik 1961–1991, ed. B. Söll (Cologne, 1993)

particular works

M. Wilkinson: ‘An Introduction to the Music of Edgard Varèse’, The Score, no.19 (1957), 5–18 [on Intégrales and Density 21·5]

M. Babbitt: ‘Edgard Varèse: a Few Observations of his Music’, PNM, iv/2 (1965–6), 14–22; repr. in Perspectives on American Composers, ed. B. Boretz and E.T. Cone (New York, 1971), 40–48 [principally on Octandre]

A. Whittall: ‘Varèse and Organic Athematicism’, MR, xxviii (1967), 311–15 [on Déserts]

M. Gümbel: ‘Versuch an Varèse Density 21·5’, Zeitschrift für Musiktheorie, i (1970), 31–8

J. Young: The Role of Parameters in Octandre by Edgard Varèse (thesis, U. of Wisconsin, 1970)

F.-B. Mâche: ‘Méthodes linguistiques et musicologie’, Musique en jeu, no.5 (1971–2), 75–92, esp. 81 [on Intégrales]

P. Ramsier: An Analysis and Comparison of the Motivic Structure of ‘Octandre’ and ‘Intégrales’, Two Instrumental Works by Edgard Varèse (diss., New York U., 1972)

L. Stempel: ‘Not even Varèse can be an Orphan’, MQ, lx (1974), 46–60 [on Un grand sommeil noir]

J -J. Nattiez: Densité 21·5 de Varèse: essai d'analyse sémiologique (Montreal, 1975); Eng. trans. in MAn, i (1982), 243–340 [response: J.W. Bernard: ‘On Density 21·5: a Response to Nattiez’, MAn, v (1986), 207–31

J. Strawn: ‘The Intégrales of Edgard Varèse: Space, Mass, Element, and Form’, PNM, xvii/1 (1978–9), 138–60

J. Stenzl: ‘Varèsiana’, HJbMw, iv (1980), 145–62 [on Intégrales and Déserts]

J. Tenney and L.Polansky: ‘Temporal Gestalt Perception in Music’,JMT, xxiv (1980), 205–41 [on Density 21·5]

C.K. Baron: ‘Varèse's Explication of Debussy's Syrinx in Density 21·5 and an Analysis of Varèse's Composition: a Secret Model Revealed’, MR, xliii (1982), 121–34

L. Ferrara: ‘Phenomenology as a Tool for Musical Analysis’, MQ, lxx (1984), 355–73 [on Poème électronique]

M. Guck: ‘A Flow of Energy: Density 21·5’, PNM, xxiii/1 (1984–5), 334–47

J. Kresky: ‘A Path through “Density”’, PNM, xxiii/1 (1984–5), 318–33

J. Siddons: ‘On the Nature of Melody in Varèse's Density 21·5’, PNM, xxiii/1 (1984–5), 298–316

M. Kelkel: ‘Arcana d'Edgard Varèse: éléments d'analyse formelle’, Analyse musicale, no.3 (1986), 59–64

P. Lalitte: ‘Arcana d'Edgard Varèse: thématique et espace des hauteurs – un univers musical en expansion’, Analyse musicale, no.3 (1986), 65–70

I. Stoianova: ‘Edgar Varèse: Ecuatorial’, Melos, xlviii/4 (1986), 59–91

T. Koto: ‘Basic Cells and Combinations in Varèse's Ionisation’, Sonus, vii/2 (1987), 35–45

T. Koto: ‘Basic Cells and Intercourse in Varèse's Density 21·5’, Sonus, viii/1 (1987), 60–70

T. Koto: ‘Basic Cells and Hybridization in Varèse's Octandre’, Sonus, viii/2 (1988), 59–72

T. Koto: ‘Basic Cells and Foreign Bodies in Varèse's Intégrales’, Sonus, ix/2 (1989), 36–45

M.S. Dannendring: Varèse's ‘Density 21·5’: Interpretation and Synthesis of Existing Analyses (DMA diss., U. of Iowa, 1990)

D.H. Cox: ‘Geometric Structures in Varèse's Arcana’, MR, lii (1991), 246–54

G. Dixon: ‘Some Principles of Structural Coherence in Varèse's Amériques’, CMc, no.48 (1991), 27–41

J.C. François: ‘Organization of Scattered Timbral Qualities: a Look at Edgard Varèse's Ionisation’, PNM, xxix/1 (1991), 48–79

K.-W. Kurz: Offrandes (1921) von Edgard Varèse: analytische Annäherung an ein unterschätztes Werk (Saarbrücken, 1993)

Varesi, Elena Boccabadati-.

Italian soprano, daughter of Felice Varesi.

Varesi, Felice

(b Calais, 1813; d Milan, 13 March 1889). Italian baritone. He made his début in 1834 at Varese as Cardenio in Donizetti’s Il furioso all’isola di San Domingo, then for six years sang throughout Italy, mainly in operas by Donizetti. He first appeared at La Scala in 1841 as Publio in Mercadante’s La vestale, then sang in Luigi Ricci’s Le nozze di Figaro, the first performance of Federico Ricci’s Corrado d’Altamura, Pacini’s Saffo and the first performance of Nini’s Odalisa (1842). He sang Sir Riccardo Forth in I puritani at the Teatro Apollo, Rome, in 1842, having sung Sir Giorgio in the same opera five years earlier at Faenza. A frequent visitor to the Kärntnertortheater, Vienna, he created Antonio in Linda di Chamounix (1842) there, and also appeared in Donizetti’s Alina, regina di Golconda (1843), Roberto Devereux (1844) and Maria Padilla (1847). His first Verdi roles were Carlo in Ernani at Padua (1844) and the Doge in I due Foscari at Bergamo (1845). He created the title role of Macbeth at Florence in 1847, then sang Francesco in I masnadieri (1849) and Alphonse in La favorite (1850) at the S Carlo, Naples, and Malatesta in Don Pasquale at the Argentina, Rome (1850). He took part in two Verdi premières at La Fenice, Venice, singing Rigoletto (1851) and Giorgio Germont (1853). He appeared in Madrid (1856–7) and made his London début in 1864 at Her Majesty’s Theatre as Rigoletto. Varesi was a prototype of the modern dramatic baritone who evolved from the operas of Donizetti and of early and middle-period Verdi. Although he made a powerful Macbeth, Rigoletto was undoubtedly his finest role; his singing of ‘Si vendetta’ always aroused enormous enthusiasm and was invariably encored; he neither understood nor liked the part of Germont.

His daughter, Elena Boccabadati-Varesi (b Florence, ?1854; d Chicago, 15 June 1920), a soprano, made her London début at Drury Lane in 1875 as Gilda in Rigoletto. She also sang the title role in Lucia di Lammermoor, Amina in La sonnambula and Zerlina in Don Giovanni. Her Lucia was considered the best since that of Persiani, the creator of the part. After singing for a decade in Italy and other European countries, she went to the USA and from 1888 taught singing in Chicago.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

G. Cesari and A. Luzio, eds.: I copialettere di Giuseppe Verdi (Milan, 1913/R; Eng. trans., abridged, 1971, as Letters of Giuseppe Verdi, ed. C. Osborne)

L.A. Garibaldi, ed.: Giuseppe Verdi nelle lettere di Emanuele Muzio ad Antonio Barezzi (Milan, 1931), 261, 268, 274, 302–3, 312

H. Weinstock: Donizetti and the World of Opera in Italy, Paris and Vienna in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1963/R)

Bolletino Verdi: dell’Istituto di Studi Verdiani (1969–82)

J. Budden: The Operas of Verdi, i: From ‘Oberto’ to ‘Rigoletto’ (London, 1973, 3/1992), ii: From ‘Il trovatore’ to ‘La forza del destino’ (London, 1978, 3/1992)

ELIZABETH FORBES

Varga, Tibor

(b Győr, 4 July 1921). British violinist, conductor and pedagogue of Hungarian birth. His father was his first teacher and his mother was his accompanist. At nine he had lessons from Carl Flesch and at ten made his début with Mendelssohn's E minor Concerto and was taken by Jenö Hubay into the Liszt Academy in Budapest, where he studied the violin with Ferenc Gabriel, composition with Kodály and chamber music with Leo Weiner. At 14 he began touring Europe. In 1937 he played Hubay's Third Concerto, with Ernő Dohnányi conducting, at Hubay's memorial concert. Having graduated in 1938, in 1939–43 he studied philosophy at Budapest University. During the war he also learnt conducting with Franco Ferrara. In 1947 he settled in England, taking British citizenship, but since 1956 he has been based at Sion, Switzerland. Although Varga did not actually study with Hubay, in his prime he exhibited all the positive qualities of that school, never employing his considerable virtuosity for mere display. His repertory as a violinist covered the major Baroque, Classical and Romantic literature but he gained particular fame for his performances of the music of Bartók (whom he knew) and composers of the Second Viennese School. In 1946–7 he gave the Vienna and German premières of Berg's Concerto and in 1950 the first performance of Boris Blacher's Violin Concerto. Ernst Krenek was among the composers who dedicated works to him. In 1998 he gave up playing to concentrate on conducting and teaching, occupations which have brought him as much acclaim as his solo career. After the war he became professor at the new Győr Academy of Music and in 1949 he formed the violin department at the Nordwestdeutsche Musikakademie, Detmold, remaining there for 37 years. In 1956 he founded the Tibor Varga Chamber Orchestra at Detmold and he directed it until 1988. In 1963 he established a summer school in Sion and in 1964 he began his annual festival there; since 1967 an annual violin competition has been organized there in his honour. In 1988 he founded the Sion Ecole Supérieure de Musique. He is also in demand as an adjudicator and for masaterclasses. Varga began making records when he was 13 and among his many recordings, including most of the major concertos, Bartók's Second Concerto with Ferenc Fricsay conducting must take precedence. His first violin, a Lupot, was destroyed during the war. From 1947 he played a 1757 Giovanni Baptista Guadagnini and since 1960 he has owned the ‘Ex-Soil’ 1733 Guarneri del Gesù.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

J. Creighton: Discopaedia of the Violin (Toronto, 1974, 2/1994)

S. Applebaum and H. Roth: The Way They Play (Neptune, NJ, 1981)

W. Kiley: ‘Ventures Abroad’, The Strad, xcviii (1987), 125–6

R.-F. Rudin: Tibor Varga (Sion, 1995)

R. Noltensmeier: Geiger von Beruf (Kiel, 1999)

TULLY POTTER

Vargas(-Wallis), Darwin (Horacio)

(b Talagante, 8 March 1925; d Santiago, 8 April 1988). Chilean composer. He studied at Santiago Conservatory with Santa Cruz, Urrutia Blondel and Orrego-Salas, simultaneously gaining wide experience as a choral conductor. In 1956 he was appointed assistant conductor of the Catholic University Choir in Santiago, and taught at the Talagante Seminary (1955–62), the Gonzalez Academy, Santiago (1964–8), the Valparaíso Naval School (music history, 1971) and the Catholic University, Santiago (professor of counterpoint and composition from 1972). In addition, he served on the permanent composition jury of the Instituto de Extensión Musical (1968–9). He received several prizes for his compositions, at Chilean music festivals and elsewhere. A personal mysticism is reflected in many works in a prevailing inward, lyric character, often linked to the use of modal scales and Chilean folk music. He has published articles in the Revista musical chilena and in La libertad.

WORKS

(selective list)

Choral: Chbr Cant., S, A, SATB, orch, 1954; Ecce sacerdos magnus, TTBB, org, 1961; Stabat mater, S, A, children’s vv, org, 1961; 3 coros sacros, SATB, 1961; En el país de los dos rios (Rubio), T, Bar, B, TTBB, orch, 1967

Orch: Obertura para tiempos de adviento, 1956–8; Sym. ‘Meditation’, 1965

Solo vocal: Cantos del hombre (Cesar Vallejo), Bar, orch, 1959–60; Canciones para Georgeanne (Montes), Mez, pf, 1971–2

Chbr: Pastoral, fl, cl, bn, pf, 1950; Duo, 2 vn, 1951; Sonatina, gui, 1963; Sonata no.1, va, pf, 1963–8; Sonatina, cl, pf, 1967; Studies, gui, 1967; 2 wind qnts, 1968, 1972; Sonata no.2, gui, vc, 1969; Sonata no.3, 2 gui, 1970; Sonata no.4, 2 cl, b cl, 1970; Sonata no.6, hp, 1972; Sonata no.5, vc, pf, 1973

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Compositores de América/Composers of the Americas, ed. Pan American Union, xvii (Washington DC, 1971), 121

J. Rojas-Zegers: ‘Darwin Vargas Wallis’, RMC, no.169 (1988), 124–5

JUAN A. ORREGO-SALAS/LUIS MERINO

Vargas, Ramón

(b Mexico City, 1960). Mexican tenor. After studying at the Mexico City Conservatory and then in Vienna, he was engaged at the opera houses in Lucerne (1988–90) and Zürich, his roles including Edgardo, Elvino (La sonnambula) and Werther. In 1991 he began to appear regularly in Italy, mostly in Mozart and Rossini, gaining a reputation for his light, flexible and sweet-toned singing, a reputation confirmed when he sang a charming Almaviva in a much lauded recording of Il barbiere di Siviglia in 1992. He made a successful début at La Scala in 1993 as Fenton, in a performance of Falstaff under Riccardo Muti that was committed to disc. At the same time Vargas appeared regularly at his home house in Mexico City and at the nearby Houston Opera (where he sang his first Hoffmann). His roles at Covent Garden include the Duke of Mantua, Alfredo, and Rudolfo, and at the Metropolitan a much admired Edgardo (the role of his début in 1992), the Duke of Mantua, Alfredo and Ramiro (in a new production of La Cenerentola, 1997). He took the role of Don Narciso in Chailly's award-winning recording (with Bartoli) of Il turco in Italia (1997), adding a highly accomplished Werther to his discography in 1999. By then Vargas's light, lyric voice had taken on stronger tones without losing quality or flexibility. He has been aptly compared to his mentor, Alfredo Kraus.

ALAN BLYTH

Vargas [Bargas], Urbán de

(b Falces, Navarre; d Valencia, bur. 8 Oct 1656). Spanish composer. On 1 October 1626 arrangements were made for him to study music for two years with Luis Bernardo de Jalón, maestro de capilla of Burgos Cathedral, but by 1 April 1627 he had attained that position himself at Huesca Cathedral. On 1 May 1629 he was appointed maestro de capilla of Pamplona Cathedral, apparently holding both posts simultaneously for some time. From 1646 to 1651 and in 1653 he was maestro de capilla of Nuestra Señora del Pilar in Zaragoza. In the interim he held the same post at Burgos Cathedral, beginning his duties on 20 June 1651. His last known position was at Valencia Cathedral, from 24 October 1653.

Vargas was one of the more prolific Spanish composers of the 17th century and, as is shown by the wide distribution of his works, one of the most admired. His villancicos, consisting of an introduction, estribillo and cobles, are especially noteworthy. Most are serious, but popular melodic and rhythmic elements are occasionally found, as are arpeggiated figures suggesting a guitar. Vargas usually composed for two or three choirs with continuo for organ or harp; in performance, instruments often doubled or replaced the vocal parts.

WORKS

5 masses: 1, inc., 5vv; 2, 8vv; 1, 12vv; 1, 14vv, E-H, VAc, Zvp

22 settings of pss, canticles, Lamentations, offs and ants: 1, 4vv; 5, 8vv; 1, 10vv; 5, 11vv; 8, 12vv; 1, 13vv; 1, 14vv; all with bc (org/hpd), some with harp, AL, Bc, VAc, Zvp

23 villancicos, incl. 2, 4vv; 2, 6vv; 3, 8vv; 4, 10vv; 6, 11vv; 3, 12vv, AL, Bc, VAc, Zvp

c60 villancicos, 8–12vv, Zvp

Other works in BUa, CU, ORI, SEG

BIBLIOGRAPHY

V. Ripollés: El villancico i la cantata del segle XVIII a València (Barcelona, 1935)

A. Durán Gudiol: ‘Los maestros de capilla de la catedral de Huesca’,Argensola, x (1959), 107–31

C. Zudaire: ‘Urbán de Bargas: nuevas aportaciones biográficas’,Revista de musicologia, vii (1984), 219–23

BARTON HUDSON

Vargas y Guzmán, Juan Antonio de

(fl c1770). Spanish theorist and guitarist. He is known primarily for his guitar treatise, one of the earliest for the six-course instrument, which circulated in manuscript under various titles; copies in the Archivo General de la Nación, Mexico City, and the Newberry Library, Chicago, bear the title E[x]plicación para tocar la guitarra de punteado por mussica, o cifra y reglas utiles para acompañar con ella la parte de el baxo. Vargas drew on Santiago de Murcia’s Resumen de acompañar la parte con la guitarra (Madrid, 1717) and Joseph de Torres y Martińez Bravo’s Reglas generales de acompañar (Madrid, 1702, 2/1736) for the sections on music theory and accompaniment. The treatise deals extensively with most aspects of guitar playing: stringing and tuning the instrument, scordatura tunings, metres, scales, clefs, accidentals, ornaments, left- and right-hand technique, arpeggios, staff notation and tablature. Music examples are numerous and include Spanish, French, Italian and English dances, as well as passacalles, variations and a substantial Folías italianas in both tablature and staff notation. A progressive feature is the use of modern chord names in place of the Italian alfabeto system preferred by Baroque guitarists.

A copy of the Explicación made in Cádiz in 1773 (Angel Medina’s private collection) includes also a comparison of Catalan and Castilian strumming techniques and details of a notation system (different from the Italian alfabeto) using letters to denote chords; also appended are nine minuets and four other pieces written on two staves, one with a treble clef, the other (apparently for a second guitarist or a continuo player) with a bass clef. The same two-stave notation is used for 13 single-movement sonatas appended to the Mexico City copy; these exhibit features of Classical style and structure and others which suggest groupings (at least for the first 12 sonatas) into larger units of three movements each.

A villancico for four voices and continuo, ¡Oh, qué buen pastor! (E-E), attributed to ‘Vargas’ may also be by Vargas y Guzmán.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

R. Stevenson: ‘A Neglected Mexican Guitar Manual of 1776’, Inter-American Music Review, i (1978–9), 205–10

J.J. Escorza and J.A. Robles-Cahero: ‘Two Eighteenth-Century Treatises (at Mexico City) on Instrumental Music’, Inter-American Music Review, vi/1 (1984–5), 1–28

G. Arriaga: ‘El método de guitarra de Juan Antonio de Vargas y Guzmán’, RdMc, viii (1985), 97–102

J.J. Escorza and J.A. Robles-Cahero: Juan Antonio de Vargas y Guzmán’s ‘Explicación para tocar la guitarra de punteado por música o cifra, y reglas útiles para acompañar con ella la parte del bajo’ (Veracruz, 1776) (Mexico City, 1986) [incl. facs.]

A. Medina: ‘Un nuevo manuscrito del tratado de guitarra de Vargas y Guzmán (Cádiz, 1773)’, Inter-American Music Review, x/2 (1988–9), 61–7

CRAIG H. RUSSELL

Vargyas, Lajos

(b Budapest, 1 Feb 1914). Hungarian ethnomusicologist. He studied folk music under Kodály (1932–3, 1935–6), church music at the Budapest Academy of Music (1936–7), and philology at the University of Budapest, where he took the doctorate in 1941 with a dissertation on Hungarian folk music from the village of Áj. After working in the Budapest University library (1941–52), as head of the music department of the Ethnographic Museum (1952–67) and as lecturer at the ethnography faculty of the University of Budapest (1952–4), he was appointed research assistant (1967) of the folk music research group of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, which he also directed (1970–74). Between 1975 and his retirement in 1983 he was academic adviser at the musicology institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He was awarded the degree of doctor of sciences for a study of the medieval folk ballad in 1963.

Vargyas’s initial research project was the first scholarly account of the music of a Hungarian village; his later work extended to the whole field of folklore, including Hungarian literature. He compiled the music examples in Kodály’s fundamental work on Hungarian folk music. Vargyas has worked on the earliest forms of Hungarian folksong, its links with the folksong of neighbouring peoples, and the influence on it of early instrumental music; he is one of the leading scholars of European comparative ballad research.

WRITINGS

Áj falu zenei élete [Musical life of the village of Áj] (diss., U. of Budapest, 1941; Budapest, 1941, enlarged 2/1960–63)

‘Die ugrische Schicht in der ungarischen Volksmusik’, Acta ethnographica, i (1950), 161–92 [also in Russ.]; Hung. orig., enlarged, in ZT, i (1953), 611–57

‘Les mélodies des jeux hongroises de Noël’, Folia ethnographica, ii (1950), 95–112

with Z. Kodály: A magyar népzene [The folk music of Hungary] (Budapest, 1952, 3/1982; Eng. trans., rev., enlarged by Vargyas, 1971)

A magyar vers ritmusa [The rhythm of Hungarian poems] (Budapest, 1952)

with I. Csanádi: Röpülj, páva, röpülj: magyar népballadák és balladás dalok [Fly, peacock, fly: Hungarian folk ballads and ballad-style songs] (Budapest, 1954)

‘Kollektives Schaffen in der Volksmusik’, Acta ethnographica, iv (1955), 395–418

ed., with B. Rajeczky: Studia memoriae Belae Bartók sacra (Budapest, 1956; Eng. trans., 1959) [incl. ‘Die Wirkung des Dudelsackes auf die ungarische Volkstanzmusik’, 503–40]

‘Das Musikleben im ungarischen Dorf und die Methoden seiner Erforschung’, Deutsches Jb für Volkskunde, iii (1957), 447–69

‘Some Parallels of Rare Modal Structures in Western and Eastern Europe’, JIFMC, x (1958), 2–8

‘Kutatások a népballadák középkori történetéböl, i: Francia eredetü réteg’ [Research into medieval history of folk ballads, i: The time of French origins], Ethnographia, lxxi (1960), 163–276; ‘ii: A honfoglakáskori hősi epika továbbélése balladáinkban’, Ethnographia, lxxi (1960), 479–523 [Ger. trans. as ‘Das Weiterleben der Landnahmezeitlichen Heldenepik in den ungarischen Balladen’, Acta ethnographica, x (1961), 241–94]; ‘iii: A “Kőmüves Kelemen” eredete’, Néprajzi értesitő, xli (1959), 5–73 [Ger. trans. as ‘Die Herkunft der ungarischen Ballade von der eingemauerten Frau’, Acta ethnographica, ix (1960), 1–88]; ‘iv: Müfaji és történeti tanulságok’ [Conclusions on the theory and history of the genre], Ethnographia, lxxiii (1962), 206–59; Eng. trans. of all as Researches into the Mediaeval History of Folk Ballad (Budapest, 1967)

‘Magyar népdalok francia párhuzamai’ [French parallels in Hungarian folk ballads], Néprajzi közlemények, v/3–4 (1960), 3–21; Fr. trans. in Acta ethnographica, ix (1960), 397–402

Az Alföld és Bartók békési gyüjtése a folklórkutatásban [The great Hungarian plain and Bartók’s collections from the Békés district in ethnomusicological research] (Gyula, 1961)

‘Folk Music Research in Hungary’, SM, i (1961), 433–50

‘Les analogies hongroises avec les chants “Guillauneu”’, SM, iii (1962), 367–78

‘Keleti párhuzamok Tar Lőrinc pokoljárásához’, Müveltség és hagyomány, v (1963); Eng. trans. as ‘Eastern Analogies of Lőrinc Tar’s Descent to Hell’, Acta ethnographica, xv (1966), 301–18

‘The Folk-Song as a Work of Art’, SM, vi (1964), 195–206

‘Zur Verbreitung deutscher Balladen und Erzählieder in Ungarn’, Jb für Volksliedforschung, ix (1964), 63–79

‘Bases linguistiques du rythme du vers hongrois’, Etudes finno-ougriennes, ii (1965), 123–33

Magyar vers – magyar nyelv: verstani tanulmány [Hungarian poems – Hungarian speech: prose studies] (Budapest, 1966)

A népdal, mint müalkotás [The folksong as art work] (Budapest, 1967)

‘A magyar foklór-hagyomány és Kelet-Európa’ [Hungarian folklore tradition and Eastern Europe], Szabolcsi Bence 70. születésnapjára, ed. F. Bonis (Budapest, 1969), 391–8

‘A magyar és délszláv népballadák összehasonlító vizsgálata’ [Comparative research of Hungarian and south Slavonic folk ballads], Szomszédság és közösség (Budapest, 1972), 13–31

A magyar népballada és Európa (Budapest, 1976; Eng. trans., 1983, as Hungarian Ballads and the European Ballad Tradition)

‘Trends of Dissemination of the Ballad Genre’, The European Medieval Ballad: Odense 1977, 75–85

‘Protohistoire de la musique hongroise’, SM, xx (1978), 3–73

Balladáskönyv [Book of ballads] (Budapest, 1979)

‘A regősének problémájának ujabb, zenei megközelitése’ [A newer, musical approximation of the problem of the narrative song], Ethnographia, xc (1979), 163–91

A magyarság népzenéje [Folk music of the Hungarians] (Budapest, 1981)

Keleti hagyomány – nyugati kultúra [Eastern tradition – Western culture] (Budapest, 1984)

ed. Z. Kodály: Közélet, vallomások, zeneélet [Public life, confessions, musical life] (Budapest, 1989)

‘Népzene’ [Folk music], Magyar néprajz, vi (Budapest, 1990), 7–183

Keritésen kivül: emlékek életemből [Outside the fence: memories of my life] (Budapest, 1993)

ed. Z. Kodály: Magyar zene, magyar nyelv, magyar vers [Hungarian music, language and poetry] (Budapest, 1993)

Magyar népballadák [Hungarian folk ballads] (Budapest, 1994)

LUJZA TARI

Variable tension chordophone.

Instruments, widespread in South Asia, in which alteration of pitch is produced by the variation of tension in the string, either directly through pressure of the player’s hand or arm, or indirectly by the use of a device such as a flexible neck or yoke, or turnable peg. The instruments all consist of a vessel-shaped body: wooden or metal cylinders, gourds or clay pots with no base, one opening covered with skin. A gut or metal string passes at right angles from the middle of the skin through the body, held by a device such as a wooden cross-bar, and is attached at the other end to another cross-bar (held in the hand), a neck or a yoke (either directly or via a peg). They are all plucked and are predominantly single string instruments.

The ānandalaharī of Bengal, often known by the onomatopoeic names gubgubī and khamak, comprises a barrel-shaped or upward-tapering wooden cylinder open at both ends. The lower end is covered with a complete skin, the upper skin with the centre cut away (earlier instruments had only a lower skin, glued on). Both skins are laced to plaited leather hoops and braced by chord V-lacings, each with a metal tuning ring. A string of gut is looped through two holes and a protective button (or piece of bamboo etc.) in the lower skin, passing up through the body to a handle formed from a small brass pot. The body is held under the left arm with the left hand gripping the handle to tension the string; the right hand plucks the string with a small plectrum of bone or similar material (see fig.1).

The gopīyantra, also of Bengal and Orissa, has a body which resembles that of the ānandalaharī. Unlike the ānandalaharī it has a neck, or yoke, consisting of a split-bamboo fork whose upper node is left whole and whose lower ends are nailed or bound to the sides of the resonator (see fig.2). The string is attached to a tuning peg inserted through the node. When the two sides of the fork are squeezed by the right hand the pitch of the string rises. The string is plucked by the index finger of the right hand. The gopīyantra is also known as the ektārā or khamak. A similar instrument known as the gopīyantra kendrā is used by the Mundā Ādivāsī people. Both the ānandalaharī and the gopīyantra are used by religious mendicant singers of the Sādhu type and especially by singers of the heterodox Baul faith.

Sachs (1914) classified these instruments as ‘plucked drums’. However, work by Picken and others (1981) shows that they are not only true chordophones but also frequency doublers. When a string is attached at right angles to the centre of a membrane, the fundamental is an octave higher than the expected frequency.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

C. Sachs: Die Musikinstrumente Indiens und Indonesiens (Berlin and Leipzig, 1914, 2/1923)

S. Ray: The Music of Eastern India: Vocal Music in Bengali, Oriya, Assamese and Manipuri with Special Emphasis on Bengali (Calcutta, 1973)

B.C. Deva: Musical Instruments of India (Calcutta, 1978)

C.J. Adkins and others: ‘Frequency Doubling Chordophones’, Musica asiatica, iii (1981), 1–10

L.E.R. Picken: ‘The “Plucked Drums”: Gopīyantra and Ānandalaharī’, Musica asiatica, iii (1981), 29–33

ALASTAIR DICK/R

Variafon.

A photoelectric composition machine, inspired by experiments in Drawn sound, four models of which were developed in Leningrad between 1932 and 1949 by Yevgeny Aleksandrovich Sholpo. See Electronic instruments, §III, 2(ii).

Variations.

A form founded on repetition, and as such an outgrowth of a fundamental musical and rhetorical principle, in which a discrete theme is repeated several or many times with various modifications. Identifiable as a formal type from the 16th century, it nonetheless reflects a technique and process important in nearly all music, including music in which the improvised repetition of the strophes of song or dance forms is a part. A theme for variations, rarely shorter than eight or longer than 32 bars, may be a melody, a bass line, a harmonic progression or a complex of such elements. When the theme is brief enough to serve as an ostinato, its repetitions generate a continuously unfolding structure with new figurations and textures at each statement of the theme. When the theme is a self-contained sectional structure, such as a small two-reprise form, its repetitions result in a strophic form in which some elements of the theme change and others remain the same; this is known as ‘theme and variations’. If instead of successive repetitions the variations recur singly or in groups after intervening material (e.g. episodes, another theme and its own variations, a B section), the result may be termed ‘hybrid’ variations. Sets of variations may be freestanding, independent pieces, most often for solo keyboard but also for orchestra and chamber combinations, or they may be movements in a larger work such as a symphony, piano sonata or string quartet. They may be based on a ‘borrowed’ theme – a popular or otherwise well-known melody or harmonic scheme – or on an ‘original’ theme, with the former more often appearing in independent sets and the latter in variation movements (see Borrowing). In rare instances, a series of variations occupies only a part of a larger movement, as in the finale of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony or the first movement of Brahms's Piano Quartet in C minor op.60, second theme. Non-essential parts of a variation set, such as an introduction, transitions between variations, and coda, were first introduced in the late 18th century.

Variation form has always had an ‘image’ problem, for which several factors are to blame. First is its reliance on repetition: the inevitable pattern of cadences suggests that composer and audience prefer limitation and clear signposts to more difficult developmental forms. Secondly, for a large part of its history the variation focussed on the theme's melody, causing commentators to sniff at ‘mere decoration’ or even at the very concepts of the familiar and recognizable. Most critics of any period applauded the idea of unity and variety within a work of art (variatio delectat), but ornament itself was seen as hiding true worth, obscuring the merits of simplicity or giving an unfair advantage in oratory. Variations were thus also implicated in the backlash against virtuosity, with the enormous numbers of variation sets produced by virtuosos between about 1790 and 1840 provoking a reaction against their empty display, or what Momigny in 1818 called ‘much speech but little sense’. Finally, the apparent arbitrariness of an additive structure, the series of variations having no necessary ordering or ending point beyond local convention, has similarly served to downgrade the form as one that lacks organic inevitability. Variations are inherently paratactic, based on an iteration of items in a linear series, and thus are comparable to the ‘choppy’ as opposed to the ‘rounded’ or periodic style of oratory (the latter is more characteristic of sonata form). Composers have thus typically found ways to organize sets of variations in ways that seek the advantages of repetition while sometimes also mitigating it. These are important issues for the critic of variation form: what impels one variation to succeed another? is there any motivation for the number and order of variations? how do composers seek either to accommodate or to overcome the paratactic nature of the form? how is the ending articulated? if closure is achieved by returning to the theme, is the effect artificial or revelatory? At any moment in the form a variation may be considered as a totality, as a species of relationship with the theme and as a building-block in the larger edifice. Ideas central to variations – among them display, ornament, strengthening a theme by means of figures, and the aesthetic effects of repetition – come straight from the art of rhetoric.

7. The early 18th century.

8. The Classical period.

9. The 19th century.

10. The 20th century.

ELAINE SISMAN

1. The rhetoric of variation.

The idea that models for variation form might be found in rhetoric arises not only from the explanatory vividness and sheer historical staying power of the latter but also from features common to both: their shared modes of display and their understanding of the persuasive power inherent in repetition and ornament. A specific correlation between rhetoric and variation can be grafted on to the common fund of rhetorical knowledge on which composers and theorists can be assumed to have drawn, and takes three forms: explicit connection, the existence of rhetorical models for the structure of variation form, and the idea of figures and figurations as flexible tools for analysing variations. As Abbé Vogler wrote in 1793: ‘Variations are a type of musical rhetoric, where the given meaning appears in different guises, with the distinction that the boundary lines are much more rigorously determined in music than in oratory’ (Verbesserung der Forkel'schen Veränderungen über … ‘God Save the King’, 1793, p.2).

Models for the structure of theme and variations come from the ars praedicandi, the medieval rhetoric of preaching, still alive in the 19th century. To construct a sermon, one was advised to choose a theme, a quotation from scripture, and then illuminate and amplify it in a series of divisions (in English, a term for variations). Each division could be a word from the quotation. In the second volume of Joseph Riepel's Anfangsgründe zur musicalischen Setzkunst (1755), the student and teacher argue over how much contrast to allow in a musical composition, with the student claiming that the composer, like the preacher quoting scripture, must stick to his theme, and the teacher claiming that digressions strengthen the sermon if the theme remains in memory. A second source for the linkage of variation form and rhetoric is the widely circulated 16th-century treatise by Erasmus on abundant language or copiousness (De copia, 1512), based on the necessity for developing the ability to say the same thing in different ways and drawing extensively on Quintilian. After providing the means of variety in a list of figures, Erasmus's demonstration included 150 variations of the sentence ‘Your letter pleased me mightily’ and 200 variations on ‘I will remember you as long as I live’. Variations of the first include:

Your epistle exhilarated me intensely.
Your brief note refreshed my spirit in no small measure.
Your pages engendered in me an unfamiliar delight.
Your communication poured vials of joy on my head.
Your letter promptly expelled all sorrow from my mind.
Good God, what a mighty joy proceeded from your epistle.
May I perish if I ever met with anything in my whole life more agreeable than your letter.

In pointing out the dangers inherent in the pursuit of copiousness, Erasmus echoed the concerns of the rhetoricians of antiquity while at the same time foreshadowing the cautions expressed in 18th-century treatises on variation technique, namely the tendency to fall into ‘glibness, which is both silly and offensive’ and to ‘pile up a meaningless heap of words and expressions without any discrimination, and thus obscure the subject they are talking about, as well as belabouring the ears of the unfortunate audience’. The principal advantage of copiousness is that it enables the speaker to avoid literal repetition (‘an ugly and offensive fault’) because ‘nature above all delights in variety’ (‘De duplici copia rerum ac verborum commentarii duo’, Collected Works of Erasmus, Literary and Educational Writings, ed. C.R. Thompson, xxiv: Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style, ed. and trans. B.I. Knott, 1978).

Rhetorical variations were seen as a means of acquiring and polishing style because a display of copiousness, or varied repetition, might be called into action in many oratorical situations, especially those involved in showpieces known as epideictic or display orations. Cicero's description of display oratory describes the pleasure it gives, the neatness and symmetry of sentences, the ornamentation done ‘openly and avowedly, with no attempt at concealment, so that words correspond to words as if measured off in equal phrases, frequently things inconsistent are placed side by side, and things contrasted are paired, clauses are made to end in the same way and with similar sound’ (Cicero, v: ‘Orator’, ed. and trans. H.M. Hubbell, Loeb Classical Library, 1939, xi.37–xii.38). Cicero could as easily be describing the composer of variations. Indeed, as a means of acquiring and polishing style, variations were sometimes considered an early step in compositional training; Brahms urged his only composition student, Gustav Jenner, to begin with variations. Aristotle identified two other important features of epideictic rhetoric: its reliance on amplification, because the subject concerns ‘actions that are not disputed, so all that remains to be done is to attribute beauty and importance to them’, and its similarity to written prose, making it the only kind of display oratory meant to be read (Art of Rhetoric, I.ix.38–40; III.xii.6). Quintilian discussed amplification in detail, offering techniques for its purpose of revealing in ever stronger terms the importance of the subject (Institutio oratoria, VIII.iv). Thus both display oratory and variation straddle improvised and written forms, and both offer new ways to reclothe the subject.

The nature, application and control of ‘figures’ is a problem considered in almost identical terms by writers on rhetoric and writers on variation form. Both conclude that figures are natural and necessary but must not be overused. The tension between res and verba, or Gedanke and Ausdruck – how the thought is to be clothed in words – is greater in music than in verbal arts: in purely instrumental music, what is the res? Even the theme has its own figural ‘clothing’, as some early variation sets made clear when they called the first segment ‘Prima variatio’. Just as in verbal rhetoric, figures were the means necessary to adorn and make expressive a simpler musical entity, as well as the culprits in freighting it down unnecessarily. Overzealous labelling of motifs by late 16th- and early 17th-century theorists such as Burmeister and their 20th-century counterparts such as Schering, Unger and Gurlitt made the application of rhetorical figures to music appear problematic to more sober 20th-century scholars such as Brian Vickers and Peter Williams. But a figure is not necessarily co-extensive with a motif. Each of Erasmus's variations embodies a figure. As a means of showing mastery of style while elaborating on a theme, varied repetition may itself be seen as a kind of rhetorical figure that could include other figures. For example, ‘refining’ (expolitio), according to the [Rhetorical] Ad Herennium, ‘consists in dwelling on the same topic and yet seeming to say something ever new’ for ‘when we descant upon the same theme, we shall use a great many variations’; the example of a speech based on this figure includes the Theme expressed simply, the theme expressed in a new form, arguments from comparison, contrary and example, and a conclusion which restates the theme (IV.xlii.54–xliii.56). Puttenham renames this figure ‘the Gorgious’ because it has the same effect on speech and language as ‘rich and gorgious apparell’ has on the ‘bare and naked body’ in order to ‘attire it with copious and pleasant amplifications and much variety of sentences all running upon one point & to one intent’ (The Arte of English Poesie, 1589). Great effect may be produced by ‘Dwelling on the Point’ (commoratio), that is, ‘repeating the point several times in different words’ (Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, IX.i.27), or ‘synonymy’, which is described by Ad Herennium as a figure ‘which does not duplicate the same word by repeating it, but replaces the word that has been used by another of the same meaning, as follows: “You have overturned the republic from its roots; you have destroyed the state from its foundations”’; and by Peacham as ‘when by a variation and change of words that be of like signification, we iterat one thing diverse times’ (The Garden of Eloquence, 1577, 2/1593, p.149). Other figures that become central to variations are periphrasis (circumlocutio), the substitution of many words for one in order to amplify, and pleonasm, the addition of superfluous words for decoration and emphasis. It seems more than coincidental that the especially creative new thrust in Elizabethan rhetorical treatises accompanied the first flowering of variation form in England (see §5). The rhetorical underpinnings of variation form and variation technique reveal the aspects of persuasive (expressive) and pleasurable display common to both, and offer, as compensation for another layer of terminology, new tools for the analysis and valuation of variations even beyond those posited here. (See also Rhetoric and music.)

2. Terminology.

The roots of the word variatio in the adjective varius originally referred, in non-specialized antique usage, to an impression of mixed coloration in plants and animals, either in the sense of ‘colourful’ or the more negative connotation of ‘indeterminate’ or ‘fluctuating’. In his etymological analysis, Horst Weber (HMT, 1986) draws useful distinctions between the transitive and intransitive senses of variare (in German, verändern and sich ändern, respectively) with the connection of the first to process (varying, verändern) and the second to the result of that process (variation, Veränderung). Thus from the very beginning we see foreshadowed the twofold musical meanings of variation as technique and as form, and its connotations as positive and as problematic. Later associations of variation with colour can be seen in Zarlino's use of ‘Chromatico, quasi Colorato, o Variato’ for his chromatic genre (Istituto harmoniche, 1558, 3/1573, p.100). The idea of variety (varietas) played an important role in rhetoric, as the Latin writers drew on Aristotle, who himself had called on the authority of Euripides' Orestes: ‘Change also is pleasant, since change is in the order of nature; for perpetual sameness creates an excess of the normal condition; whence it was said: “Change [metabole] in all things is sweet”’ (Art of Rhetoric, 1371a, I.xi.20). Quintilian noted that ‘artistic structure [compositio] must be decorous, pleasing and varied’ (Institutio oratoria, IX.iv.146). Variety was a goal both in performance, especially in height and tempo of the voice (e.g. Ad Herennium, III.xii.22: ‘Relaxation from a continuous full tone conserves the voice, and the variety gives extreme pleasure to the hearer too’, trans. J.H. Freese) and in the realm of style (e.g. Ad Herennium, IV.xii.18: ‘To confer distinction [dignitas] upon style is to render it ornate, embellishing it by variety’, trans. H. Caplan).

Both variatio and its partial synonym mutatio are found in discussions of various kinds of ‘colourings’: the octave-related quality of different voices (Guido of Arezzo, Micrologus; Johannes Afflighemensis, De musica), hexachordal mutation and musica ficta (Marchetto da Padova, Lucidarium; Tinctoris, Diffinitorium; Finck, Practica musica; Zarlino, Le istitutioni harmoniche; Demantius, Isagoge artis musicae; and others). Varietas and variatio appear in discussions of the differentiae, the many possible ending-formulas for psalm tones used to link them to their antiphons. Whether the later Spanish term ‘diferencia’ for variation in the 16th century has any connection to this term is unclear; a similar question arises from the term divisiones for such endings (Regino of Prüm, c900) and the later English term ‘divisions’ for variations. The longstanding association of varius and variatio with rhythm, whether in a change of mode in mensural notation (from Franco on) or the rhythmically varied subdivisions of a final tone or cadence (from Guido on), makes the latter connection more plausible, especially in that the earliest variation sets of the 16th century subdivide the rhythm and may change the metre of the theme.

Rhetorical definitions of ‘figure’ as a schema, in which it is ‘altered from the simple and obvious method of expression’ (Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, IX.i.10–11, 13) thus make clear why variatio would become a figure to musical theorists of the 17th century: it takes a rhythmically plain (that is, ‘unfigured’) series of notes and recasts it as something rhythmically special, ‘ornate’ in the sense of ‘ornatus’, the soldier's armaments essential in the art of rhetoric. To Christoph Bernhard, variatio ‘occurs when an interval is altered through numerous shorter notes in such fashion that, instead of the longer note, numerous shorter notes rush to the following [principal] note through all kinds of runs and leaps’ (Tractatus compositionis augmentatus, p.73, Eng. trans. Musica poetica, 1997, p.434). It can thus include other figures and is itself part of other figures, like the transitus, one of Bernhard's figures of dissonance resolution. In writings by Bernhard, Prinz, Praetorius and Vogt, variatio is generally treated as synonymous with diminutio, coloratura and passaggio, and all of these are thought of both melodically, to fill in a large interval, and rhythmically, to subdivide a longer note. The related Spanish term glosa was discussed not only as the technique of diminution per se but also in the context of dissonance treatment (e.g. P. Nassarre, Fragmentos músicos, 2/1700). The sense of variatio as resolving a dissonance in small-note values carries through into the 18th century with Fux (Gradus ad Parnassum, 1725, p.217) and Scheibe (Compendium musices theoretico-practicum, ed. P. Benary in Die deutsche Kompositionslehre des 18. Jahrhunderts, 1961, p.62), and the much older view of it as a subdivided cadential note is recontextualized as the decoration of a cadence in an improvised cadenza (Riepel, Anfangsgründe zur musicalischen Setzkunst, iv: Erläuterung der betrüglichen Tonordnung, 1765, pp.89–90). A late echo of mutatio is found in Johann Walther's Musicalisches Lexicon of 1732, referring to each of its various changes (of accidentals, of mode, of manner, of register) as a Veränderung. The idea of variation as something intrinsic and essential, like ornatus, part of the artistic ‘tool-kit’ of the composer, might also make specific rules beyond those of part-writing impossible to prescribe: as Werckmeister put it, ‘one artist has a different Invention, a different Variation, and a different Genium from another’ (Harmonologia musica, 1702, p.84).

Variety and variation as the goal of art became an oft-repeated maxim during the 17th and 18th centuries, as a source of pleasure and as an approximation of the beautiful variety of nature. Simpson, Heinichen, Mattheson and Daube all asserted its primacy in music. Both florid counterpoint and elaborate figured-bass realizations were perceived to vary a simpler underlying model, and the art of ‘divisions upon a ground’ was predicated upon it: Christopher Simpson used ‘ground’, ‘subject’, ‘bass’ and ‘theme’ interchangeably (The Division-Violist, 1659, p.27; see Division). Whether the model was identified as a ‘given Moduli’ (Printz, Phrynis Mytilenaeus, 1696, pt 2, p.46), a ‘simple melody for singing or playing’ (Walther, Lexicon) or ‘certain bass notes’ (Mattheson's revision of Niedt's Handleitung zur Variation, 1721), the injunction that the original ought to be recognizable adds an important new strand to the ongoing evolution of the term. The possibilities of variations in fugues had been discussed from the early 17th century onwards, with subjects varied by inversion and by change of key and mode; in 1773, Daube described fugues with four-part invertible counterpoint, which with inversions ‘give rise to eight Veränderungen’ (Der musikalische Dilettant, 1773, p.330). Grassineau (translating Brossard, Dictionaire de musique, 1703) was specific about the result of the varied repetition, not merely the varied projection, of a simple model (Musical Dictionary, 1740): ‘Variation, is the different manner of playing or singing the same song, air, or tune, either by subdividing the notes into several of less value, or by adding of graces in such a manner, however, as one may still discern the ground [le simple] of the tune thro' all the enrichments’. The dictionaries of both Walther (1732) and Lacombe (1752) also adopted Brossard, but Lacombe was the first to use the plural Variations (Dictionnaire portatif des beaux-arts, 1752; subsequently used by Rousseau, 1768). Mattheson (1721) claimed that ‘what the French call double, we call variation, though this is not the best [term]. The name is entirely too general’.

Just as the term ‘variation’ could refer to different things, many different terms referred to variations. Double, originating in the pas doublé of court dance (Thoinot Arbeau, Orchésographie, 1588, p.33), appeared first in suites, such as an allemande or sarabande with one or more doubles. Like double but each with subtle semantic distinctions, the Spanish diferencia, Italian partita and English division all referred to a ‘partition’ – a segment, later called ‘theme’, that was repeated with alterations – as well as the sense of subdividing the original note values. In the realm of 17th-century dance music, however, it is sometimes unclear whether one double, glosa or variatio of an entire short piece is meant to be a varied repetition or an alternative version, especially since these terms refer to the practice of improvising diminutions as well as to sets of variations (e.g. Hernando de Cabezón's 1578 edition of his father Antonio's music, which included nine sets of diferencias, suggested that it be used as a model for glossing). The German Veränderung, like the Spanish mudanza and Italian mutanza, on the other hand, means change or alteration; German writings sometimes appear to distinguish between it and variatio, where the former is a broader category subsuming the latter as a figure (Horst Weber comments that all the different terms ‘make possible a latent distinction between the concept of a “figure” and that of a “segment”’). Mudanza and mutanza were choreographic terms of the 15th and 16th centuries, though both were applied to sets of variations (e.g. Antonio Valente's Intavolatura de cimbalo, 1576). Indeed, ‘variation’ as a term for a solo dance or ‘number’ persisted in the terminology of ballet, applied by Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky, among others, and perhaps connecting both with the sense of solo display often on view during performances of instrumental variations and with the possible origin of variations as varied repetitions of a piece of music to accompany the dancers. Certainly dancers from the 16th century onwards were given a vocabulary of steps to improvise in subdividing the basic steps, comparable to diminution practice. Such titles as ‘aria’ and ‘capriccio’ were at times given to pieces with variations or variation-based procedures, but more often not.

The echo of many terminological possibilities resonates in J.S. Bach's nomenclature (see §7): Aria variata all[a] man[iera] italiana, Partite diverse on chorale melodies, the unfinished Variationen of the Clavierbüchlein for Anna Magdalena Bach, the doubles in the suites, Aria mit verschiedenen Veränderungen (the Goldberg Variations) and Einige canonische Veränderungen über das Weynacht-Lied: Vom Himmel hoch da komm ich her. Whether the abandonment of ‘variation’ in favour of ‘Veränderung’ reflects a change in contemporary practice or in Bach's own sense of the relative valuation of his works is debatable. Certainly Brahms felt that Beethoven's use of that term for his Diabelli Variations reflected more intrinsic worth and greater ‘strictness’ (see §9). J.A.P. Schulz's rank-ordered list of variation types might lead to the same conclusion. In his article on variations for Sulzer's Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste, he placed the suite movements by Couperin and Bach lowest on the scale, then sonatas with varied reprises by C.P.E. Bach (not technically speaking variation form at all, although representing a type of ‘fully varied melody’), and finally, as ‘incontestably the highest type’, the contrapuntal variations with imitations and canons, as in Bach's Goldberg and Vom Himmel hoch sets. (Schulz also included Bach's Art of Fugue, fugues by D'Anglebert and even ‘the folie d'Espagne by the celebrated Corelli’ in this last category.)

Individual variations may or may not be labelled. Sweelinck's organ variations on Psalm cxl, as transmitted in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, have been identified as the earliest source to use the rubric ‘variatio’ for the heading of each segment (Weber, 1986). As with many other keyboard sets on sacred or secular themes (e.g. Sweelinck's Mein junges Leben hat ein End’), the first segment is not headed ‘theme’ but rather ‘Prima variatio’, showing that it already reflects a varied version of a familiar melody. Individual chorale variations were sometimes headed ‘versus’ (Scheidt's Tablatura nova, 1624) or ‘Verset’ (Titelouze, Hymnes de l'église, 1623) to distinguish them from secular variations, although this usage was not consistent and applied primarily to the first half of the 17th century. Many works of the late 16th century and the 17th use no title for the variations, merely numbers, while in variation movements from the 18th and 19th centuries composers often dispense altogether with any identifying title, number or other designator, especially in variation movements. In the 20th century, numbers make a comeback.

During the later 18th century, written discussion continued to treat variation as a technique, whether improvised or composed, and gave the first clear assessments of variation as a musical form (see §8). Writers rarely drew terminological distinctions between technique and form; Momigny was unusual in differentiating between ‘broderies’, varied repetitions of phrases and melodies in any form, and ‘variations’, or the ‘broderie’ of an ‘entire Air’ (Cours complet d'harmonie et de composition, ii, 1806, p.614). The latter type is more concerned with creating an overall ‘dessein’, and only in an Adagio variation do the frequently changing ‘broderie’-type figurations appear. After the term ‘theme and variations’ made its appearance (in Koch's Versuch einer Anleitung zur Composition, iii, 1793), all the earlier synonyms for variations except Veränderungen fell by the wayside; new terms were subsequently developed during the 19th century to create new hierarchies of value in variation (e.g. ‘formal’ versus ‘character’ variations; ‘decorative’ versus ‘contrapuntal’ versus ‘fantasy’ variations: see §9). In the 20th century, the term was applied to different sorts of process in addition to variation forms though with a tangential connection to the latter: Schoenberg's term ‘developing variation’ refers to the ‘endless reshaping of a basic shape’ by thematic regeneration; Fred Lerdahl's ‘expanding variation’ elaborates a simple model into cycles of increasing length and complexity, with stable events acting as points of departure for new growth (e.g. First String Quartet, 1978; Second String Quartet, 1982; Waves, 1988). And sometimes the term has been avoided entirely as composers seek to create different ‘views’ of a theme, as in Ruth Crawford Seeger's early work Kaleidoscopic Changes on an Original Theme ending with a Fugue (1924).

3. Variation types.

Every set of variations retains elements of the theme while altering or replacing others, and 20th-century typologies of variations (e.g. Nelson, 1948; von Fischer, 1956) developed terms that refer to the constant elements in a set, particularly constructive elements such as bass, melody, harmony and structure. While such terms have historical meaning primarily when all or most of the individual variations in a set meet that condition, variation sets also commonly mix variation types, especially after the 18th century. The nature of the theme, or given material – whether it is a melody (e.g. a song or hymn), a bass line, a harmonic progression (or ‘harmonic-metric scheme’, Esses, 1992) or a structural complex – exerts a certain predictive force on the type of variations to follow.

(a) Ostinato variations. Built upon a short pattern of notes, usually in the bass register, which functions as an Ostinato, §2 or Ground bass, this type includes continuous variations of late 16th- and 17th-century dance frameworks (e.g. Chaconne, Passacaglia), English grounds and their later progeny. It has two subgroups, ‘tonic-providing’ and ‘tonic-requiring’, depending on whether the pattern includes its own final cadence with a return to the tonic pitch at the end. The tonic-requiring type (e.g. Pachelbel's Canon in D major, on an expanded chaconne progression) creates a continuously regenerating series while tonic-providing ostinato variations (e.g. Bach's Passacaglia in C minor) may sound somewhat more sectional, although the presence of an upbeat generates continuity. Sometimes the bass line disappears or is submerged in the harmonies it generates, and sometimes it is transposed.

(b) Constant-melody or cantus firmus variations. The former is the broader category of which the latter is a historical instance. A melody, usually widely known, appears intact or with only slight embellishments in every variation, moving from voice to voice in the texture. Chorale variations by Sweelinck are perhaps the earliest instances (but see §4 for a discussion of the Western Wind masses). Composers as late as Weber (Variations on Schöne Minka op.40, variations 4 and 7) used the term ‘canto fermo’ to identify the melody when it appears in another voice. Until the mid-18th century, the cantus firmus is often set off from the other voices by its slower rhythmic values; after that time, when composers hardly ever used it for an entire set (Haydn's string quartets op.76 no.3, second movement, on Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser, and op.76 no.6, first movement, are exceptions), it might appear in one or two variations, as in the introductory variations on the bass of the theme in Beethoven's op.35 and ‘Eroica’ Symphony finale.

(c) Constant-harmony variations. This broad category includes many variation sets of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries in which the harmonic progression takes precedence in retentive power over the melody. The more sectional harmonic-metric schemes of Italian and Spanish dance frameworks, such as the Folia and the Romanesca, may be included here, as well as such topical, expressive and contrapuntal Baroque variation sets as Buxtehude's La capricciosa and Bach's Goldberg Variations. During the middle decades of the 18th century, a more restrictive subcategory of constant-harmony was popular: these constant-bass variations on a two-reprise (sectional) theme repeated the bass line of the theme in every variation, sometimes writing it out only once with ‘Repetetur [x] volte’. This subcategory may also include the variation suite, in which two or three suite movements (rarely an entire suite) maintain the same series of harmonies, generated from the same figured bass line, despite differences in metre, character and melody. F.E. Niedt's Handleitung zur Variation (1706) shows how to generate an entire suite from a single bass line, and Fischer (1957, p.118) cites a suite notated only by a figured bass (I-Fn XIX, 110).

(d) Melodic-outline variations. The theme's melody, or at least the ‘outline’ of its main notes, is recognizable despite figuration, simplification (unfigured variation) or rhythmic recasting. This much-maligned category (‘mere decoration’: Tovey correctly warns against ‘despising the embroidery variation on principle’) includes variations whose harmonies remain more or less unchanged (typical of the later 18th century) and those whose harmonies may change from variation to variation (more common in the first half of the 19th). It also favours periodic reiteration of the theme's melody more or less intact (melodic reprise) with figurations in another line. Types of figuration may be pleonastic (the addition of ‘superfluous’ notes within the melody or as a countermelody) or periphrastic (the original notes replaced by a more ornate line, though with sufficient resemblance to the original, especially at cadences). Many variation sets of the 18th and 19th centuries mix this type with constant-harmony variations.

(e) Formal-outline variations. Aspects of the theme's form and phrase structure are the only features to remain constant in this predominantly 19th-century type. Phrase lengths may expand or contract within the general outline, with harmonies usually referring to the theme at the beginning and end of a variation. Resemblance to the theme may be striking, subtle or ‘found only with the eyes’ (a criticism voiced by Brahms). Sets of this type may contain a mixture of (b) to (f), and include Beethoven's Diabelli Variations op.120 and Brahms's Handel Variations op.24.

(f) Characteristic variations. Individual numbers take on the character of different dance pieces, national styles or programmatic associations. Within such a set, types (c), (d) and (e) may be used, just as characteristic styles and topics may form individual variations within sets of those types. The historical staying power of this type is revealed in such examples as Poglietti, Rossignolo (1677); Herz, Variations caractéristiques sur un thème arabe op.137; Strauss, Don Quixote (1898; see also (g) below); Britten, Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge op.10 (1937); and Ginastera, Variaciones concertantes (1953). By ‘characteristic’ is not meant the broad and by-now meaningless term ‘character variation’; from 18th-century discussions of character in variations, character emerges as a concomitant of figuration, metre and tempo, and is always present.

(g) Fantasy variations. In this 19th- and 20th-century type, occasionally used as a title, the variations allude to or develop elements of the theme, especially its melodic motifs, often departing from any clear structural similarity with it. Such pieces may also have a programmatic or characteristic element and may have either individual numbers (Elgar, ‘Enigma’ Variations) or a more continuous texture (Strauss calls his symphonic poem Don Quixote ‘fantastic variations on a theme of knightly character’). Indeed, while this type is on the one hand sometimes hard to distinguish from formal-outline variations, it has on the other hand even been called ‘free’ variation because of its melodic or motivic allusiveness and structural looseness. (Free variations were derided by Tovey because they violated his sole criterion of value, that the composer ‘know his theme’.) 20th-century fantasy variations have been written by Howard Hanson, George Perle, Donald Martino and others.

(h) Serial variations. Modification of a serial theme (a 12-note row or some slightly longer or shorter configuration) in which figuration and accompaniment are derived from the row. The structure of the theme usually remains constant. Because of this structural component, serial variations differ from other serial pieces in which the row itself, not the theme, is manipulated and varied. Examples include Schoenberg, Serenade op.24, third movement, and Webern, Symphony op.21, second movement.

Identifying variation types and even variation form itself is a much less straightforward matter than it might appear, because in both technique and overall shape variations are defined by boundaries and limits that are not always clear. Types (b) to (g) above may be mixed within a set, the vexed nature of melodic resemblance may complicate some determinations of identity, and varied repetition sometimes appears to be a surprisingly fragile principle such that a greatly contrasting segment may upset the whole. Writers as early as Volger were aware that ‘free’ variations might be inserted within a set (Betrachtungen der Mannheimer Tonschule, ii, 1779–80, pp.118–19; Momigny, Cours complet d'harmonie et de composition, ii, 1806, p.613). When variation forms take on elements of recurrence and return in addition to or perhaps instead of repetition, the resulting hybrid type raises questions: is it a rondo or a variation? a ternary form or a variation movement with freely varied minore? Then there are anomalous pieces with some strophic features – a structural unit that recurs, perhaps in different keys, perhaps with connective passages – to conjure a fantasy-like resemblance to variations, such as the slow movements of Mozart's Piano Concerto k449, Haydn's String Quartet op.76 no.6 (marked ‘Fantasia’) and Brahms's String Quintet op.111. Finally there are strophic vocal works with alterations in each stanza, whether to the accompaniment (as in Beethoven's Sehnsucht woo146 and An die ferne Geliebte op.98 or Brahms's Agnes op.59 no.5) or to the voice(s). A potent example is the quartet from Beethoven's Fidelio (‘Mir ist so wunderbar’), long erroneously referred to as a canon when the form is actually strophic constant-melody variation with each new voice entering with the original melody while the other voices continue with new counterpoints. Finally, a variation principle may also act as a structuring device in sonata form. Haydn favoured a paratactic organization of material that offsets the periodic (hypotactic) nature of the functional areas of sonata form (first group, bridge, second group, closing). In the first movement of the C major Sonata h XVI:50, figural, textural, registral and harmonic variations of the opening theme come to dominate the exposition and development. Varied repetitions dominate the first movements of Symphonies nos.85 and 87, but most paratactic is the first movement of Symphony no.88, in which each of the four areas in the exposition first presents a version of the opening quaver theme (bars 16, 44, 61, 77) and then accompanies that theme with a counterfigure in semiquavers (bars 24, 51, 71, 85). Each segment sounds like a melodic, rhythmic and structural variant and intensification of the one before. A different kind of intensification occurs when progressive diminution affects every functional area, as in the first movement of Mozart's D minor String Quartet k421/417b. The limits of variation, the points at which it spills over into development, transformation and fantasy, are not clearly drawn. Indeed, the structural integrity of the ‘given material’ can be violated even in works clearly identified as variations by their composers; the presence of paratactic and strophic structuring within fantasies and sonata-like forms suggests the power of the variation model.

Another direction such improvisations might take – the varied tone colours and figurations of different instruments – does come from a much earlier source, emerging from this advice in Guglielmo Ebreo's dancing tutor De pratica seu arte tripudii (appendix to the second edition, written within 12 years of the original 1463 edition, by which time he had converted and become Giovanni Ambrosio):

4. Origins.

Variation is a sufficiently broad procedure that finding the earliest instance of its systematic application, before the publication of Narváez's diferencias in 1538, has proved impossible. Those pieces that stand out as instances of varying in both secular and sacred vocal music are hard to categorize. In an anonymous 14th-century madrigal, E con chaval (PMFC, viii, 28), the cantus sets each line of text in its three-line strophe to a varied version of the first line (aa¹a²), possibly reflecting vocal improvisation. Another madrigal from the same volume, Quando i oselli canta (p.81), shows a similarly unusual variation principle in that the third line not only ornaments the first but repeats its text. Unfigured variation is found in a Gloria by Excetre from the Old Hall Manuscript, which paraphrases a Sarum chant in the upper voice ten times; the two phrases of every statement end on C, nearly every time with C in the lowest voice as well, lending a strikingly sectional air to the movement. The paraphrases differ in length and rhythm, but despite the occasional added notes do not resemble what later writers would term ‘diminutions’. If the original chant consists of a repeated melody, then the result may be a few ‘variations’, as in Olyver's Agnus Dei setting in the Old Hall Manuscript. Isorhythmic motets with ‘isomelic’ tendencies, in which the tenor melody is taken up by the upper voices especially at the beginnings of sections, might be considered a distant harbinger of such later genre variations as variation canzona or ricercare, but hardly of variations per se. Dalglish's categories ‘variation motet’, ‘hocket variation’ and ‘ostinato motet’ incorporate some techniques of variation, but only the last has some claim to embodying actual variations, and only when the upper voices dovetail with the ostinato, as in the eight ‘variations’ of Regina celi letare/Ave regina/Ave (ex.1: F-Pa 135, transcribed in H. Besseler, ‘Studien zur Musik des Mittelalters II’, AMw, viii, 1927, p.243) and the 28 ‘variations’ of Thomas gemma canturiae (transcribed in K. Levy, ‘New Material on the Early Motet in England’, JAMS, iv, 1951, pp.234–9). Certainly such celebrated ostinato-based pieces as the Sumer canon and Du Fay's Gloria ‘ad modum tubae’ are not variations. Successive polyphonic settings of the same plainchant, including most cantus firmus masses and even Magnificat cycles of the 16th century that go through all eight tones, thus do not necessarily refer to variations in any but the most general rhetorical sense.

Methods of organizing multi-sectional or multi-movement Renaissance works – masses and motets, for example – may include sophisticated repetition patterns, in which each statement of a cantus firmus changes one or more features of the original statement or accompanies other changes. Normally the continuity of the polyphonic web and the lack of an initially discrete structural entity works against both the intentional and perceptible nature of such works as variations. Josquin's three masses based on solmization syllables deserve mention, however, because of their ostinato treatment of these short and memorable formulae, though whether the result is variation is highly debatable. In some of the movements of his Missa ‘La sol fa re mi’ the five-note subject, which in some movements (especially beautifully in the Agnus) saturates the texture, is also heard in structural ‘units’: in the first Kyrie it occurs twice consecutively in each entering voice (STB) to form regular four-bar segments; in the Sanctus it announces a three-bar pattern with cadence, then the tenor turns it into an uninterrupted ostinato, just as it does on two different pitch levels in the Osanna. In the Benedictus the cantus firmus makes a six-bar segment successively in three voices (TSB) while the two-bar countersubject moves from voice to voice during the first two statements of the cantus firmus. The Osanna of the Missa ‘Faisant regretz’ turns its four-note subject (fa–re–mi–re) into a two-bar canon between tenor and bass, while the Benedictus turns it into a six-bar pattern similarly alternating between tenor and bass, with upper-voice imitation as well; each statement begins on a different pitch. In the Osanna of the Missa ‘Hercules Dux Ferrariae’, the threefold repetition of the cantus firmus is then repeated in a faster rhythm, suggesting the process of progressive diminution later to be a common feature in variations; the Benedictus offers three statements of the cantus firmus at different pitches paired with an ornate contrapuntal voice.

An exception to these strictures about cantus firmus masses are the Western Wind masses by Taverner, Tye and Sheppard, an unusual group of works constituting the first English masses based on a secular song and possibly the earliest English variations as well (c1535–42). The Taverner setting, usually considered the earliest of these, presents the melody 36 times, nine times in each of the four movements (21 treble, ten tenor, five bass statements), differing each time in texture, number of voice parts and metre, with occasional ornamental notes but without intervening material between statements. The requisite ‘entity’ concept is thus clear. Moreover, the arresting upward leaps of 5th and octave at the beginnings of the first and second phrases respectively and the meandering descents, largely in conjunct motion, make the tune instantly recognizable in whatever texture it is placed, although it is of course most evident in the treble. Tye puts the melody into the single voice not set by Taverner, the alto (mean), in 29 varied statements. Sheppard's total is 24, of which 13 omit the final phrase of the melody, and all are in the treble but no.10, the third phrase of 21, and 23, which are in the tenor. The Western Wind melody is neither more ornate than, nor moves at a different speed from, the other voices and thus differs appreciably from the melodies of other cantus firmus masses in its relationship to the texture of the mass as a whole. It makes sense to call these three works variation masses. (See Western Wind, exx.1 and ..\Frames/F010084.html2.)

In the realm of instrumental music, the most promising models are in dance music, especially (a) the possibility that short pieces for dancing were repeated with improvised variations rather than literally, and (b) the pairing of gliding and leaping dances, often with a proportional relationship in which the second, faster dance – the Nachtanz, Proportz or Tripla – would offer a varied version of the first. A variation principle informs even the original dance-pairs of the 14th century in GB-Lbl Add.29987, La Manfredina and Lamento di Tristano, each with its own Nachtanz called La Rotta, a quicker, compressed and somewhat ornamented version of the first dance. But varied dance pairs such as pavan–galliard and passamezzo–saltarello suggest that they were the forerunners not of sets of variations but rather of the varied allemande–courante pairs in longer sequences of dances in the early 17th century. That dance pieces were repeated, in part or as a whole, is clear not only from the length of the choreographic pattern compared to the notated music but also to explicit directions like ‘Questa Sonata farassi due volte’ (‘play this piece twice’, in the balletto Laura suave) and ‘Si torna à fare di nuovo detta Sciolta in Saltarello à quattro Tempi’ (‘Play the sciolta to this piece as a saltarello four more times’, in Furioso alla Spagnuola; Fabritio Caroso, Nobiltà di dame, 1600, Eng. trans., 1986, pp.10–11). It seems plausible to suggest that such repetitions were varied. Laura suave is itself a kind of variation suite, consisting of an opening pavan-like piece (including repetitions), the piece played as a galliard, then in triple proportion as a saltarello and finally as a canary (ex.2). As Thoinot Arbeau wrote in 1588 (Orchésographie, 1589, Eng. trans., 1967), ‘you can amplify this music to suit your pleasure and fancy’ (p.43) and ‘some dancers divide up the double that follows the two simples, and instead of the double comprising only four bars with four semi-breves, they introduce eight minims or sixteen crotchets, resulting in a great number of steps, passages and embellishments, all of which fit into the time and cadence of the music’ (p.66). This connects the variations of steps performed by dancers – called mutanze by Caroso as early as 1581, in Il ballarino – with musical variations, as does Antonio Valente's use of the term mutanze for sets of variations on dance themes such as the romanesca and the gagliarda napolitana (Naples, 1576). But the lateness of these sources, even if one were to speculate that they codify long-term existing practice, does not offer an actual precedent.

Get four or five kinds of instruments to play, such as shawms, organs, lute, harp, pipe and tabor, or whatever other instrument there is. Have them play one by one, and have them play a ballo, and [get] each one to play that [same] ballo, each one playing by itself. The [dancer] must dance to that air that the instruments play. For even though they are playing one [and the same] ballo, each one will play with his own air. [And] although they are playing the same ballo, the shawms will play in one air, the organ in one air, the harp in another air, the [pipe and tabor] in another air, but all will play one and the same ballo. Remember that the dancer must dance with that air and with that measure and with that rhythm that the said players are playing; that is, dancing each one on its own. And if the dancer always dances with one air, even though he dances with measure and in time but does not follow the air of the said players, his dancing will be imperfect and show little skill. (On the Practice or Art of Dancing, Eng. trans., 1993, p.235)

Although the meaning of ‘air’ is obscure, it plausibly refers to a kind of characteristic expressive style that may be related to tone quality or kind of figuration, especially since it has to affect the dancer's movements. What emerges from such a series of ‘intrinsic’ variations on a dance is a variation form. This sort of exercise may also lead to the kind of dancing described by Arbeau (p.16): ‘a kind of mute rhetoric by which the orator, without uttering a word, can make himself understood by his movements and persuade the spectators that he is gallant and worthy to be acclaimed, admired and loved’. Not only did Vogler make the same point about variations 200 years later, but it strongly reinforces the display element in both, which serves to convince the audience of the talents of the performer/composer.

Sets of variations appeared for the first time in the 16th century and, as their themes originating in dance and song indicate, they captured two forms of improvisation, the variations in repeated strains of dance music originating in its choreography and the varied settings and diminutions given successive stanzas of a song whose melody can be savoured as a cantus firmus or a springboard to figuration. Early 16th-century dances on short ostinato basses, such as Hugh Aston's Hornpype and the various forms of dump (e.g. My Lady Carey's Dompe, HAM, no.103), reveal a flourishing variation practice in England. The importance of diminutions in improvising embellished lines in polyphony and to a cantus firmus is attested by such treatises as Silvestro Ganassi, Fontegara (1535), Diego Ortiz, Trattado de glosas (1553) and Girolamo dalla Casa, Il vero modo di diminuir (1584). Intabulations of vocal polyphony and related dance-pairs such as pavan–galliard and passamezzo–saltarello in the Italian lute and keyboard repertories also participated in this development. As early as 1508, in J.A. Dalza's Intabulatura di lauto, two sorts of pavan herald the varied-reprise dance forms as well as the variation set per se: the pavana alla ferrarese with a series of open-ended phrases followed by varied repeats (AA'BB'CC' …) and freer material, and the pavana alla venetiana, with a somewhat longer phrase ending on the ‘tonic’ followed by a series of variations before a freer concluding passage (Horsley, 1959, calls these ‘multiple-strain’ and ‘single-strain’ variations respectively). ‘Suites’ of dances with related incipits, such as ‘Passa e mezzo antico’ (or ‘moderno’) and ‘Salltarello’, or ‘Passamezo–Padoana–Saltarel’ (all based on the same song) appear in Giacomo Gorzanis’s four books of Intabulatura de liuto (1561–79).

5. The 16th century.

The earliest published sets of variations, or diferencias, appeared in Spanish works for vihuela by Luis de Narváez (Delphín de música, 1538); especially influential were (1) the variations on O guárdame las vacas (ex.3), the Spanish version of the romanesca (identified as such by Francesco de Salinas, De musica libri septem, 1577), in which the first of three diferencias is much shorter than the theme while the third is followed by a coda; (2) Conde claros, on a two-bar theme; and (3) diferencias on a plainchant (O gloriosa domina, HAM, no.122). After the varied-reprise dances and ubiquitous vacas of Alonso de Mudarra (Tres libros de música, 1546), who used the terms manera and diferencia interchangeably, and Enríquez de Valderrábano (Silva de Sirenas, 1547, HAM, no.124), came the important diminution treatise of Ortiz (1553), which offered a series of recercadas on ‘plain songs [canto llano] which in Italy are commonly called tenors’ (bk.ii, f.47r). These recercadas resemble variations on the folia, romanesca and passamezzo antico and moderno, while Ortiz's recercadas on polyphonic compositions (e.g. Arcadelt's madrigal O felici occhi miei) have the cumulative effect of variations since diminution techniques are differently applied to each intabulation.

Antonio de Cabezón was the first master of the keyboard variation, with some published in Luis Venegas's Libro de cifra nueva (1557) and nine sets in his son Hernando's Obras de música (1578), including three on O guárdame las vacas and several calling attention to direct Italian influence, such as Diferencias sobre la pavana italiana and sobre la gallarda milanesa. Cabezón's four-voice polyphonic settings, while neither systematic nor progressive in figuration, often present diminutions first in the treble, then in the bass, then in both hands. Constant-melody technique is often present, sometimes with the theme melody lightly coloured. One wonders if such beautiful settings of plainchants as his Ave maris stella XI, which maintains the cantus firmus in the middle voice and surrounds it with precisely the kinds of figurations found in the diferencias, were spurs to further variation in performance, especially in pieces based on a strophic original. His sojourn in England with Philip II from 1554 to 1556 has spurred theories of reciprocal influence in variation.

The flowering of keyboard music in the later 16th and early 17th century in England among composers later known as the ‘English virginalists’ went hand in hand with a vogue for variations on dances and popular tunes. In general these combine constant-melody, constant-harmony and melodic-outline types. Sometimes the varied repeats in the pavan – AA¹BB¹CC¹ – were followed by yet another chain of varied repeats – A²A³B²B³C²C³ – before the metric variation of the galliard (perhaps with its own varied reprises). Occasionally an unnamed ‘alla venetiana’ model produced a one-strain pavan with a longer chain of variations, as in Bull's Spanish Pavan (eight-bar theme) with eight variations (Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, i, no.131); Bull's Quadran Pavan with eight variations followed by a ‘Variation of the Quadran Pavan’ with another eight; Byrd's Passamezzo Pavana (16-bar theme) with six variations followed by the ‘Galiardas Passamezzo’ with eight (Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, i, no.203); Peter Philips's Passamezzo pavana and Galiardas passamezzo with seven and ten respectively, the ninth in the latter labelled ‘Saltarella’. In most cases, however, variations on dances differentiated themselves from chains of variations by virtue of their emphasis on the varied reprise; thus Byrd's Monsieur's Alman has two parts each with a varied reprise (aa¹bb¹, followed by one variation in which each part has a varied reprise (a²a³b²b³), after which a ‘Variatio’ offers three further variations on the alman, each part with a varied reprise. Were all the varied reprises of Monsieur's Alman to be presented as a chain, it would be a theme with nine variations. While the vast majority of song variations are secular, the occasional plainchant appears, as in Bull's Salvator mundi, based on Veni creator and Miserere, and is treated as a cantus firmus in long notes moving from voice to voice in two- and three-part settings. Blitheman's six settings of Gloria tibi Trinitas and four of Aeterne rerum conditor in the Mulliner Book (MB, i, nos.91–6 and 49–52), if considered as variation sets rather than multiple settings of the same chant, may be the first chorale variations, challenging Sweelinck's position (see §6). Some ostinatos are lengthy and elaborate (e.g. Byrd, My Lady Nevell's Ground, 24 bars), while others consist of only two notes or chords (Byrd, The Bells, The woods so wild), perhaps the successors to the dump or older pes-like forms. Giles Farnaby's Rosasolis combines elements of both song and ostinato in that the theme is only four bars long and ends on a ‘half-cadence’, offering what would be an early example of the ‘tonic-requiring’ cycle, except that the piece ends on the ‘dominant’. (See also Passamezzo.)

The general pattern of many Elizabethan keyboard variations is progressive diminution in one or more groupings of several variations, broken up by dotted-rhythm variations (always seen as an intensification), and with triplets normally reserved for the last group of a cycle. A technique sometimes called ‘mirroring’ (by Mies, 1937, and Cavett-Dunsby, 1989), in which the treble figurative pattern in one variation goes into the bass in the next, helps to join variations as well. After a final build-up a quiet quasi-reprise, either reharmonized or simply a return to the theme's rhythm, leaves an elegiac sense of an ending. One of the best of these sets is Byrd's John come kiss me now, in which the melody is treated like a cantus firmus, except for its partial abandonment in variation 6; it appears in the treble in variations 1–9, 13 and 15, the tenor in 10–12, the bass in 14 and the alto in 16. Other groupings overcome the final bar-line to connect 5 and 6, so that the first variation without an immediately recognizable melody grows out of the previous one, and especially 11–14, in which both harmonically and rhythmically the variation is propelled into the next; this group also includes the triumphant triplet variation 12, which begins as a point of arrival and another rhythmic acceleration. The final variation disguises the theme melody in the alto and reharmonizes it while also crystallizing the upward and downward slopes of the theme into an articulation that grows out of the quasi-reprise variation 15 (ex.4). The tune Walsingham inspired some of these composers' longest sets – 30 virtuoso variations from Bull and 22 from Byrd – and most inventive figurations. Finally, dances with varied reprises and sets of variations for consort appear in Morley's First Book of Consort Lessons (1599) and other collections. Richard Alison's Goe from my window for broken consort treats the melody as a cantus firmus, moving from treble viol to flute to bass viol and to treble again, with the addition of florid figurations and counterpoints in the other instruments, unlike the keyboard set attributed to both Morley and Munday in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, in which the melody is much more variable than the bass and returns in a plain version only in variations 5 and 7. Byrd's 20 variations on Browning my dear (‘The leaves bee greene’) for viol consort retain the melody as a cantus firmus, beginning unobtrusively in the bass and working upwards, and are more contrapuntal than Alison's.

(i) The earlier 17th century.

6. The 17th century.

(ii) The later 17th century.

Variations, §6: The 17th century

(i) The earlier 17th century.

The beginning of the 17th century saw the remarkable Dutch organist J.P. Sweelinck create a north German organ ‘school’ by virtue of his exceptional teaching in which variations, both chorale-based and secular song-based, played a large part. In introducing the forms and figurations of the English virginalists to organ music, he helped to develop the new genre of chorale variations in which the chorale melody, always recognizable as a cantus firmus though occasionally slightly embellished, is embedded in an increasingly complex web of contrapuntal figurations in two, three or four voices. (His variations on Psalm cxl even appear in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, ii, no.151.) These figurations, often sequential repetition of short motifs, would change in the course of an individual variation, lending an exploratory aspect of the composer-performer at work to each piece; pieces begin with the first variation, perhaps because the melody was assumed to be familiar. In newly Protestant Amsterdam, these works would be performed during daily organ recitals in the church, rather than liturgically. In the rare cases where the chorale is itself highly figured, as in variation 6 of Erbarme Dich mein, o Herre Gott, the notes of the chorale remain at the metrically identical parts of the bar (ex.5). Sweelinck's variations on pavans and on songs like Est-ce Mars, Onder een linde groen and especially Mein junges Leben hat ein End’ also begin with the first variation, present written-out variants of each reprise, and change the type, placement and speed of figuration several times in a single variation. Unlike the chorale variations, his secular variations may also change within a variation the voice in which the melody appears. The variations of his principal students, Scheidt and Scheidemann, who took his pieces and techniques to Halle and Hamburg respectively, continued and extended these characteristics to include more brilliant figurations and longer sets of variations. Scheidt sometimes headed a variation with the location of the chorale or song melody (e.g. ‘Choralis in Alto’, ‘Variatio in Tenore’), and quick, slurred figures towards the end of a variation are marked ‘imitatio violistica’. Unlike Sweelinck, he usually began with the ‘theme’ as a simple chordal rendering before the ‘variations’.

With the rise of monody at the beginning of the 17th century, the repetitive impulse found outlet in two directions, both centred on retention of the bass: strophic arias with successive modifications to the melody or different melodies in each strophe, and vocal pieces, largely solos and duets, over an ostinato bass. The prototype of the former is perhaps Caccini's Ard'il mio petto misero, the only strophic aria in his Nuove musiche (1601) to be written out with some changes to the melody (fewer to the bass). (There are, however, strophic songs with varied lute parts and slight vocal changes already in Narváez, 1538, e.g. Sy tantos halcones.) A striking later example is Frescobaldi's ‘Aria di romanesca’ (Arie musicali, 1630), which also shows the incorporation of 16th-century dance frameworks into vocal music. The melody is different in each strophe except for the cadential note at the end of each three-bar phrase. On the other hand, Monteverdi's ciaccona for two voices and bass, Zefiro torna (1632), exemplifies a non-coincidence between bass and treble typical of his style but differing from many vocal ostinato-bass pieces in this era (Merula, Schütz). Inevitable cadencing in the two-bar bass line (a classic tonic-requiring pattern) is mitigated by shorter, longer and asymmetrical passages in the upper voices, while texturally the flat plane of the bass contrasts with the quasi-imitative and often off-beat give-and-take of the singers. Brief or prolonged absence of the ostinato may also have a profound programmatic effect, as in the final ‘tormented’ stanza of the poem (where the ‘sweet and joyous notes’ of Phyllida and Cloris give way to the pain of the narrator, ‘Sol io, per selve abbandonate e sole’) with its affective, chromatic and dissonant word-painting in recitative style before the final return of the ostinato. Monteverdi similarly frames and punctuates his later madrigal Lamento della ninfa (Book 8, 1638) with a group of three male commentators while setting the nymph's own words to the descending ‘lamento bass’ tetrachord, a powerful minor-mode evocation of despair that quickly spread to opera of the 1640s, 50s and 60s in works by Cavalli (including Egisto, Rosinda, Giasone and Eliogabalo), Cesti (Argia) and others. There is a difference, of course, between the endlessly recycling tetrachord that reaches only from i to V and the tetrachord that is extended to a final tonic-providing close; of the five elaborated lament basses by Cavalli given by Ellen Rosand (Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice, Berkeley, 1991, p.649), only one ends on the dominant. Later examples include the justly celebrated lament from Purcell's Dido and Aeneas (1689), with its chromaticism and tonic-providing tail. The power of even the simple major-mode tetrachord may be seen in the opening and closing sections of the highly charged closing duet for Nero and Poppaea in Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea (1642), set to Benedetto Ferrari's text ‘Pur ti miro, pur ti godo’, perhaps the first operatic da capo (not knowing whether the music is by Ferrari, Sacrati, Cavalli, Laurenzi or a composer yet to be suggested does not detract from its ostinato-derived hold on the imagination). (See also Lamento; Ostinato, §§4–5; and Strophic variations.)

Whether the instrumental ostinato variations of the 17th and 18th centuries such as the Chaconne and Passacaglia owe anything to the vocal models is an open question, because they tend to take their points of articulation from the bass line, changing their figurations, textures and rhetoric at cadential points, and are thus true variation sets. The ‘set rhythm’ that builds throughout a span of continuous variations maintains the quality of overcoming its interior cadences at the same time that it uses the inevitability of cadences for energy and emotional power. Certainly variations on dance frameworks and progressions, or harmonic-metric ‘schemes’, constituted an important strand of variation writing up to the early 18th century, with occasional appearances thereafter. The first written variations of the chaconne, a dance imported from Latin America (chacona) in the late 16th century, appeared in Spanish guitar books of the early 17th century; the earliest set for keyboard is Frescobaldi's Partite sopra ciaccona (1627). Passacaglias originated in the early 17th century as a kind of ‘walking-around music’ for guitar that served as introductions, interpolated episodes and conclusions to songs and dances; these passages were also known as riprese or ritornelli, repeated several or many times with improvised variations. Frescobaldi's Partite sopra passacagli (1627) may have been the earliest for keyboard. Chaconnes tended to be major and passacaglias minor, and each had characteristic though similar bass lines and chord progressions, but early differences were often ignored. Indeed, Frescobaldi's Cento partite sopra passacagli (Secondo libro di toccate, 1637 edition) features sections headed ‘passacagli’ as well as ‘ciaccona’: both are in the minor, though with differing harmonic rhythms.

In addition to his vocal ‘partite’ on dance-bass patterns, Frescobaldi was thus the principal composer of variations and variation-inflected instrumental genres in the early 17th century in Italy. Of the established or evolving genres in which he was drawn to explore the concept of variation – suite, capriccio, canzona and ricercar – only the first had a natural connection with variation, developing as a stylized representation of dances with roots in both choreographic necessity and a form to which actual dancing occurred and to which repetition with improvised variations would have been common. Indeed, each of Lorenzo Allegri's eight balli (Il primo libro delle musiche, 1618) supposedly reflects the contents of actual dances performed as part of an intermedio at the Florentine court, and nearly all include pairs of dances in which the second is built on the bass and melody of the first (e.g. ‘Quinto ballo detto le Ninfe di Senna’, with opening pair: untitled ‘prima parte’ – ‘Canario seconda parte’; the following ‘Gavotta terza parte’ and ‘Corrente quarta & ultima parte’ are unrelated). Three German publications with longer series of linked dances later known as variation suites appeared in the second decade of the 17th century: Paul Peuerl's Newe Padouan, Intrada, Däntz unnd Galliarda (four-movement sequence, 1611), Isaac Posch's Musicalische Ehrenfreudt (three-movement sequence, 1618) and the most celebrated of these, Schein's Banchetto musicale (1617). Schein asserted that the dances are ‘arranged so that they correspond to one another in both mode and invention’, thus clearly referring to the rhetorical notion of the principal idea of each piece. The principal ideas are variations of each other, even if there is no literal bar-to-bar correspondence, with the most ornate version appearing first in the leisurely pavans (Padouana), followed by Gagliarda, Corente and finally the Allemande and its Tripla, a simplified metrical recasting of the allemande. As the dances progress from complex to simple, texturally and melodically, they also descend in style from higher to lower.

The canzona, ricercare and so-called capriccio (actually a type of ricercare) were contrapuntal single movements, often in multiple sections differentiated by metre and dominated by imitative texture; the term ‘variation’ has been used to describe the rhythmic transformations of the imitative subjects and countersubjects of successive sections. While such a composition may be considered cyclic, it is not a variation form in the sense of a common substratum underlying each section. On the other hand, the impulse to connect contrapuntal and variational forms suggests a relatively borderless connection between them. Several composers of this era cultivated what modern scholars call the variation canzona and variation ricercare: Andrea Gabrieli, Ercole Pasquini (1600), Ascanio Mayone (1603), G.M. Trabaci (1603) and Frescobaldi beginning with his Primo libro di toccate (1615). Ladewig (1987) has persuasively placed the origin of the variation canzona in late 16th-century Ferrara with Luzzaschi, Ercole Pasquini and ‘Giaches’ (de Wert or Brumel), who subsequently influenced Neapolitan musicians. Frescobaldi's capriccios are, in most cases, witty or clever ricercares, free contrapuntal investigations of a given subject (e.g. a solmization pattern), occasionally with an ostinato (Capriccio sopra il cucco, no.3 of the Primo libro di capricci, 1624), though in one case the term refers to a set of variations (on Or chè noi rimena in partite, a binary theme with varied repetitions). The Capriccio sopra l'aria di Ruggiero (no.12; Monumenti musicali italiani, viii, 1984, p.78) treats the four phrases of the Ruggiero bass (ABCD) in a way that shares elements of the imitative ricercares and canzonas, on the one hand, and sets of variations on the other. Apel (1972) calls it a ‘quadruple fugue’ and divides it into eight sections according to metre, principal cadences, and the presence of particular phrases of the bass. Table 1 amends his chart to reveal the two variation structures that emerge first from the sections in which all four theme phrases are present (I, III, VI, labelled variations 1–3) and second from alterations to the theme phrases themselves through metric and rhythmic changes (II, IV, V, labelled variations a–c), as well as the ‘finale’-grouping of sections VII and VIII (variation 4d) which combines both types by speeding up the figuration as well as presenting the B-phrase as a varied counter-figure (a chromatic 4th, both ascending and descending). The sections identified as variations, however, treat the phrases of the Ruggiero as separable entities, motivically and contrapuntally (ex.6); they are not structural variations like Frescobaldi's own Partite 8 sopra l'aria di Ruggiero (Toccate e partite … primo libro, 1615, expanded to 12 variations in the second edition), on the same popular subject already also set by Macque, Mayone and Trabaci. However, his Capriccio sopra soggetto scritto sopra l'aria di Ruggiero in the same volume adds the melody ‘Fra Jacopino’ to the harmonic pattern (Mw, xi). Dance-bass variations as well as variations on such melodies as ‘Tanto tempo hormai’ appeared in trio sonatas by Salomone Rossi (including 11 sets in his books 3 and 4, 1613–22), G.B. Buonamente (including eight of the 12 sonatas of his Book 4), Scarani and Merula.

Frescobaldi's Aria detta la Frescobalda (Secondo libro di toccate, 1627) is very possibly the first set of variations on an original theme and the first with variations labelled as dance-types: variations 3 and 5 are called Gagliarda and Corrente respectively. Apel (1972) considers this the earliest variation suite and suggests that the term ‘suite variations’ is more appropriate. Several other variation sets by Frescobaldi present the dance-flavoured alternation of duple and triple metre, such as the eight variations on the Aria detta balletto in the same collection, which alternates duple and triple metre for three pairs of variations, then for the last two increases the speed of figuration in duple metre, from triplets to semiquavers, while bringing back the melody in the ‘ultima parte’ for a theme reprise. Although the two triple-metre variations in the earlier Partite sopra l'aria di follia (variations 3 and 5, Primo libro di toccate, 1615) recall the corrente in rhythmic pattern, they are not labelled. A later, oddly titled type of variation suite is the Balletto corrente passacaglia (three in the 1637 edition of the Primo libro di toccate), with the corrente a triple-metre variant of the balletto, and the passacaglia a brief set of variations on a related bass line. Acknowledged as Frescobaldi's masterpiece in variations, the Partite sopra l'aria della romanesca (1615; HAM, no.192), offers both the bass and treble parts of the framework in the prima parte, though the treble is much less important than the bass in the variations. Several variations have a different structure from the first; the ripresa in particular is likely to be shortened. A single figurative pattern dominates in a few variations, a ‘middle section’ of slower variations (with notes of double value) right after the ‘proportio tripla’ variation that effectively speeds up the motion. The surface of both treble and bass is often so irregular, free and ornate that the underlying framework can scarcely be detected. A magical final variation strips all that away with simple off-beat chords and a newly emergent thematic essence never otherwise seen in this era.

Variations, §6: The 17th century

(ii) The later 17th century.

The later 17th century saw few innovations in variation writing. In Italy, composers continued to write dance-framework variations for keyboard (Michelangelo Rossi, Bernardo Storace, Gregorio Strozzi) or strings (Stradella, 24 variations for solo violin on the ‘Gran Duca theme’, G.B. Vitali's op.3 no.12 ‘sopra l'aria del pass' e mezzo’, Corelli's ciaccona forming the trio sonata op.2 no.12 and his celebrated sonata on the folia for violin and bass op.5 no.12 (1700), imitated or coincidentally joined within a few years by Vitali, Albicastro, Vivaldi and Reali); Alessandro Scarlatti's toccata concluding with 29 variations on the folia conflates the trends by following Corelli on the keyboard. G.B. Vitali carried the principles of the variation suite into the sonata. Bernardo Pasquini, the most prolific composer of keyboard variations in this period, sometimes made specific reference to works by Frescobaldi (Toccata con lo scherzo del cucco, with the same insistent pattern as his predecessor's Capriccio but without the counterpoint) and in variations used several of the same theme-types (Ruggiero, folia) as well as his own themes, in this way following Frescobaldi even into originality. Pasquini's original-theme sets, in most cases called ‘variationi’ to distinguish them from the ‘partite’ on pre-existing frameworks, include ‘Variationi capricciose’, with a theme that already sounds like a variation (the texture simplifies later), and ‘Variationi d'inventione’, with dance-types labelled (variations 5–7 ‘in corrente’, 11 ‘gagliarda’), allusions to several keyboard pieces by Frescobaldi and a final ‘alla zoppa’-type syncopated variation.

In England few composers followed the brilliant virginalists, and their variations consisted largely of grounds (John Blow, William Croft, Henry Purcell), usually with a tonic-providing pattern. The best-known of these, Purcell's Chacony in G minor, resembles Dido's lament in the force of its chromatic expressiveness. The important mid-century improvisation treatise by Christopher Simpson, The Division-Violist (1659, 2/1665), offered ways both to ‘break the ground’, in which the viol player plays divisions over the notes of the ground held by harpsichord or organ, and to create ‘descants to the ground’, in which the viol makes a ‘different-concording part unto the Ground’, resulting in a series of divisions, an improvised variation form (see Division). The torch of the most prolific variation composers had passed to Germany and Austria.

Froberger, a German musician who studied with Frescobaldi in Rome and travelled widely before joining the musical establishment of the imperial court in Vienna, wrote in several of the older genres, as can be seen in his Libro secondo (1649): variation canzona (e.g. fbwv305, on an attractive songlike subject, rhythmically transformed in successive contrapuntal sections in different metres), fantasia on a soggetto treated contrapuntally (e.g. fbwv201, ‘sopra ut re me fa sol la’, in which the hexachordal subject is diminished, treated with countersubjects of decreasing rhythmic value, changed metrically and finally offered chromatically), and variation suite (e.g. fbwv601–5, all in Allemand–Courant–Saraband format except 602, which adds a Gigue). Froberger's most celebrated variation set makes up the sixth suite, ‘auff Die Maÿerin’, fbwv606, also known as ‘Schweiget mir vom Frauen nehmen’ (the title of a poem by Georg Greflinger published in 1651; a variation set by Reincken with both titles made its way into the Bach family scriptorium). It consists of six partite with the melody coming out most clearly in the first and fifth (a simplified outline), and such interesting changes as 12/8 metre in the third (another way to write triplets), semiquaver mirroring in the fourth and fifth and pervasive chromaticism in the sixth (‘Grammatica’), followed by a ‘Courant sopra Maÿrin’ with its double and a ‘Sarabande sopra Maÿrin’. (The title ‘Grammatica’ has been interpreted as follows: as the first ‘a’ of the word was changed from an ‘o’, it seems that the artist who wrote the decorative titles of each partita on the autograph may have started to write ‘Cromatica’; ‘Grammatica’ may refer to the Pythagorean temperament explained in the early 16th-century treatise by Magister Henricus Grammateus of Vienna because it contains both D and E: see ‘Commentary on the Works’ in Froberger, Neue Ausgabe sämtlicher Clavier- und Orgelwerke, i, ed. S. Rampe, 1993.) It is odd to find suite movements labelled separately from the variations, especially because of Frescobaldi's practice in Aria detta la Frescobalda; this suggests that the partite are but one element in the larger suite and that dances and their doubles have a separate identity.

Alessandro Poglietti, who spent most of his career in Vienna, went considerably further in labelling his variations with characteristic and descriptive titles. His collection of pieces entitled Rossignolo (1677, written for Leopold I and his wife Eleanora) contains several series of pieces, among them a suite of dances (Allemande–Courente–Sarabande–Gigue) each with at least one double, and an ‘Aria Allemagna con alcuni variationi Sopra l'Età della M[aes]ta V[os]tra’, with 20 variations to correspond to her majesty's age. The designated characteristics include a ‘lyra’ (hurdy-gurdy, variation 5), ‘Bohemian bagpipe’ (8), ‘Dutch flageolet’ (9), ‘Bavarian shawm’ (11), ‘Acrobat's tightrope dance’ (16), ‘Polish swordplay’ (17), ‘Military fife’ (18) and ‘Hungarian violins’ (19) as well as such comedies of manners as ‘French hand-kissing’ and the satirically chromatic ‘old women's funeral procession’. The other variations are figural, and one alludes to the learned style with ‘soggetto rivoltato’ (4), but in this means only that the melody is in the left hand. Unfortunately, Poglietti's theme is pedestrian to the point of lameness, which somewhat undercuts the attractiveness or cleverness of his imitations and descriptions. The programmatic aspects, however, guarantee it a place in the history of variations.

Johann Pachelbel contributed excellent works to the variation repertory, nearly all for organ or harpsichord. He wrote seven sets of chorale partitas, a form credited to Georg Böhm, who adapted the older contrapuntal form of chorale variations into a newer, more homophonic type that drew on techniques of secular works and was intended for non-liturgical performance. The chorale melody dictates the structure and is surrounded by ‘accompaniments’ rather than ‘counterpoints’. The four in Pachelbel's Musicalische Sterbens-Gedancken (1683) possibly reveal a response to the recent death of his wife and son in the plague by incorporating one expressively chromatic variation in each set. He was also partial to the chaconne, writing six ciaccone for keyboard and the Canon in D, an ostinato variation set for three violins and bass. The Canon, with an eternally simple if utterly compelling bass line of root position triads, is a locus classicus of the tonic-requiring type, over which the canonic violins emerge, intensify and recede, towards the end revealing the power of the flattened seventh degree. In the F minor Ciaccona for organ, an intense series on the descending tetrachord, a segment of the piece modulates to the relative major and, as later in Bach’s Passacaglia in C minor, thins out the texture before a final series of returns. The Ciaccona in D, on the other hand, is a surprisingly sectional work, on a two-reprise theme with each part ending on the tonic. Although the first reprise uses the same chord progression as the Canon in D, its force is dramatically weakened by the tonic-providing close, the repeat and the second reprise. Pachelbel's ‘summa’ of variations is the Hexachordum Apollinis (1699), a collection of six arias with mixtures of constant-harmony and melodic-outline variations arranged in the keys of the hexachord (D, E, F, G, A, all minor except the one in F) until the final piece, which uses the key signature of B but is in F minor. The latter is in any case anomalous in the set: it is in triple metre, its first reprise remains in the tonic, and it has a title, ‘Aria Sebaldina’, referring though with unknown import to the Sebalduskirche in Nuremberg, where Pachelbel had worked since 1695. The collection as a whole appears to have had a serious purpose not often found in secular variations: with a preface attesting the ‘beliefs of many’ that music comes from the ‘Dreymal-Heilig’ sung by angels as well as from the harmony of the ‘heavenly bodies’ known by Pythagoras and Plato, it is dedicated to Buxtehude of Lübeck and F.T. Richter of Vienna, thus apparently attempting to unite north and south, Protestant and Catholic, religion and humanism.

Many composers of south Germany and Austria luxuriated in lengthy passacaglias and chaconnes, with notable contributions by Biber, Kerll, Georg Muffat and Fux; each composed other types of variation as well. Unlike his extraordinary Passacaglia for solo violin (65 repetitions of the descending tetrachord, perhaps originating for a religious purpose), however, Biber's ostinato movements are not always labelled more specifically than ‘Variatio’ (e.g. Sonata no.3 for violin, 1681, on the descending tetrachord, or Sonata no.1 on the bergamasca progression; the Mystery Sonatas also include many ostinato variations). Buxtehude, like Pachelbel an influence on J.S. Bach, imported the ostinato form into northern Germany, writing two ciaccone and a brilliant Passacaglia in D minor on four-bar themes as well as seven sonatas for violins and bass viol with ostinato movements. The Passacaglia presents a symmetrical structure of seven statements of the tonic-requiring bass in each of D minor, F, A minor and D minor. In the ciaccone the bass theme may be varied and moved from the pedals to the upper registers. In addition to chorale variations (one of which, ‘Auf meinem lieben Gott’, is actually a series of dance movements including a double) and suite doubles, he also composed six sets of secular variations, including one on a Lully ballet melody (‘Rofilis’) and his most celebrated, La capricciosa (buxwv 250). The latter uses as melody the song Kraut und Rüben, found in the quodlibet (variation 30) of Bach's Goldberg Variations, and as the bass I–IV–V–I pattern of the bergamasca (twice in each reprise). Also in G major and also with 32 sections (partite), La capricciosa has in common with the Goldberg Variations a multiplicity of topics and styles: quasi-imitative ‘canzona’ (2, 5, 15, 20 and the chromatic 12), brilliant ‘toccata’ (3, 6, 7, 11, 13, 16, 22, 26), lute-like style brisé (10, 17 and the sarabande-like 25), gigue (9, 19) and tonic-pedal ‘lyra’ (18) styles (ex.7). In several variations the theme’s harmonies are altered to I–IV–V–vi, leading in variation 25 to a striking expansion in phrase structure (giving 10 bars in each reprise instead of four or eight).

French variations of the 17th century had consisted primarily of doubles for lute (Denis Gaultier) with figural patterns of the style brisé, doubles and other variations for harpsichord (Louis Couperin, Chambonnières, D'Anglebert, variations on Les folies d'Espagne), which used both style brisé and a more idiomatic keyboard ‘division style’, and noël variations for organ (Lebègue, Gigault). Chaconnes and passecailles were usually en rondeau, with the theme serving as an unvaried refrain to punctuate the couplets, rather than as a source of continuous variations, although the latter appeared in rare instances (e.g. Lebègue, Chaconne in F). Composition in every one of these genres continued during the 18th century.

7. The early 18th century.

(i) Couperin and Rameau.

François Couperin's many ordres and pièces de clavecin contain relatively few variation movements. Most of his passacaglias and chaconnes for harpsichord are en rondeau. A notable example is the vivid and intense Passecaille from ordre no.8. But an extraordinary set of variations in ordre no.13 (Troisiéme livre de piéces de clavecin, 1722), entitled Les folies françoises, ou Les dominos (ex.8), appears to represent a meaningful French answer to the Folies d'Espagne with its increasing frenzy or virtuosity, the meaning of which, if it ever had one, had long before been lost. Here Couperin populates a masked ball with characters charting a colourful progress of love from Virginity (clear mask), Modesty (pink mask), Ardour (carnation), Hope (green), Fidelity (blue), Perseverance (grey linen), Boredom (violet) and Coquetry (diverse masks, represented musically by changing metres), to their dispiriting progeny: galant old men and faded beauties (purple mask and dead leaves), benevolent cuckolds (yellow), silent jealousy (Moorish grey) and frenzy or despair (black). While the first three numbers in the ordre appear unrelated to the Folies (‘Budding lilies’, ‘Reeds’, ‘Engaging one’), the concluding ‘L'âme-en-peine’ seems to be a doleful commentary on the foregoing. The eight-bar bass pattern whose twofold statement underlies each of the 12 couplets is reminiscent less of the folia than of Purcell's Dido's lament or Chacony in G minor (z730), or of the minor-key sections of Bach's Goldberg Variations, that is, a quasi-descending tetrachord (the third bar loosens the pattern so that it briefly resembles the i–V–i of the folia) followed by an ascending formula ending on the tonic. As in many 16th- and 17th-century sets, the first couplet is already a variation: the ‘pure form’ of the theme must wait until its presentation in the bass in semibreves in the seventh couplet.

Rameau's Gavotte with six doubles from the third collection of keyboard pieces (Nouvelles suites de pièces, c1728) is his longest variation set. Part of its popularity derives from its harmonies which, like the Couperin Folies, refer to several sequences of chords from earlier dance basses: in the first reprise, the opening i–IV–V–i from the chaconne and descending tetrachord from the passacaglia, and in the second, the progression from III to V is reminiscent of the folia, while the final melodic-minor inflected ascent recalls Purcell's Chacony. Mirroring techniques animate the first few variations, with the melody appearing complete or in part in either upper or middle voice. The final variation returns to an ornate version of the theme, rather than continuing an increasing rhythmic trajectory.

After 1780, Haydn began to infuse variation into most of his slow movements. Of the symphonies from the Paris set onwards, only the slow movements of nos.83, 98 and 99 are without significant variation. His last strophic variation movement, the first movement of the String Quartet op.76 no.6 (1797), explores the constant-melody variation type found in three other string quartet movements of the 1790s. While the beautiful ‘Kaiserhymn’ that Haydn had just composed as the new Austrian national anthem (‘Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser’) seemed to call for this sort of treatment, the theme of op.76 no.6, on the other hand, is repetitive, circular and rhythmically static (ex.10a), so there is a touch of amusement in the exaggerated way in which it is repeated: in overture style in variation 2, with a mocking echo in variation 3. The movement even ends with a wonderful Allegro fugato (whose countersubject foreshadows the countersubject in the ‘Eroica’ finale). But this repetitive presentation has important consequences for the rest of the quartet. In the Fantasia slow movement, a series of repetitions of the same hymn-like theme in different keys connected by improvisatory transitions also gives way to a fugato, while in the Alternativo to the Minuet, the theme is an E major scale given the cantus firmus treatment: it is stated over and over again in successive instruments either ascending or descending, with new counterpoints and accompaniments every time (ex.10b). The latter piece has never been described as theme and variations, but it clearly derives from the textural constant-melody variations of the first movement; one feels that one is hearing a witty staging of the scale with different characters entering and exiting with their textured retinues. Finally, the last movement uses a scale-based theme metrically displaced to different parts of the bar. Repetition, variation, counterpoint and humour form the underlying ‘plot’ of the entire work. No better example could be found of the importance of variation principles to Haydn's musical mind.

Variations, §8: The Classical period

(iii) Mozart.

In contrast to Haydn, Mozart's variations were primarily strophic and largely for piano; out of 55 movements and sets, only seven are rondo-variations, one is ternary and only 15 are for genres without piano. As his performance and publication opportunities increased, so did the number of variation works: 16 were written between 1766 and 1779, mostly for Salzburg and Paris (half were independent sets for keyboard) and 32 in Vienna between 1781 and 1791. He wrote no symphonic variations. Whereas Haydn tended to write a few variations on an elaborately detailed theme, Mozart wrote larger numbers of variations on relatively simple themes, exceptions being the texturally complex minor-key themes of the finale of the String Quartet k421/417b (1783) and the second movement of the Piano Concerto k456 (1784), each with five variations and coda, and that of the second movement of the Piano Concerto k482 (1785), a rondo-variation. The themes of these last two are also rich in expressive rhetorical figures and establish the idyllic pastoral wind-serenade variation as an important part of the concerto oeuvre.

Mozart's variation sets and movements were widely known and admired during and after his lifetime, as evidenced by contemporary accounts adducing the marvels of his improvising variations at the keyboard and by multiple editions of both independent sets and of piano arrangements of variation movements up to 1817. One of the sets most highly valued by Mozart himself and his Viennese audiences has had a chequered reputation in the 20th century because its brilliantly rhetorical element has not been understood. This work, known as the Rondo in D major k382, was composed in March 1782 as a new finale to his earlier piano concerto k175 (1773). In sending a copy to his father (23 March 1782), Mozart noted that it was making a ‘big noise’ in Vienna and was always greeted with torrents of applause; he asked that Leopold ‘guard it like a jewel – and not give it to a soul to play … I composed it specially for myself – and no one else but my dear sister must play it’. Mozart continued to perform it for over a year, referring to it as a Variazion rondeau (Schmid, 1992, adduces the title as evidence of a vocal origin of the theme). It is a theme and variations in which the first reprise of the contredanse theme returns periodically like a ritornello or rondo refrain, as he was later to write in the piano variations k613. Persuasively arranged, the sectional format of the movement has the ritornello recurring first after a single variation (the solo foil to the tutti and thus the more personal signal of the genre), then after two variations (each increasing the speed of figuration), then after three (each with an expressive or characteristic reinterpretation: minore, scherzando with trill accompaniment, Adagio). The final ritornello is an Allegro in the triple metre flanking a real variation and a coda. No other movement by Mozart asserts first genre, then technical strategy, then expressive value: it is a rhetorical tour de force.

Several of Mozart's improvised keyboard sets were later published, such as the ones originating at a Viennese concert of 23 March 1783 (at the Burgtheater, with the emperor present) on themes by Paisiello (k398/416e) and Gluck (k455). (Other improvised sets that were mentioned in letters and contemporary accounts – on Figaro's ‘Non più andrai’ (two different occasions), on Michael Kelly's melody to Metastasio's canzonetta ‘Grazie agl'inganni tuoi’, one on a theme given by Archbishop Colloredo in Vienna – do not survive.) The Paisiello set appears closer to what must have been the virtuoso display of its original performance, given the presence of the melody in all the variations and of three improvisatory passages, two smaller and one fully fledged cadenza, between the last four variations. The minore of variation 4 triggers the first of these with a change in phrase structure when the melody returns to the opening in a new key (A major) rather than a return to the second element (the theme is abcb'd, in which b is a codetta to a, b', is on the dominant, and d is a short conclusion); here the short cadenza is Adagio and full of the minore's expressive values. The scherzando trill variation 6 consists only of a and b and their varied repetition with the hands exchanged (mirroring). Two altered bars and a short cadenza lead to a final variation in étude style – triplets in right and left hand – in which a and b are heard only once before the lengthy cadenza and coda based entirely on b. Thus the last two and then the last three segments of the theme are sheared off in the process of stripping the theme to its most memorable elements.

That k398/416e appeared in print so soon after its first performance suggests that Mozart may have changed it only little from the improvised form; all the sources before 1798 lack numbers for the variations and double bars between them, suggesting the through composition of an extempore performance. The Gluck variations, on the other hand, came out more than a year later and seem more highly crafted, especially in the ways in which Mozart departs from the strongly profiled unison descent from the tonic to the fifth degree of the scale in the first four bars, whether by substituting another melody completely (variation 2) or by finding substitutes for the dominant chord on which it lands (as in variation 4, where every version of the phrase has a different chord and resolution). A lengthy cadenza doubtless refers to its origin and perhaps increased the salability of such a work by enabling the performer to mimic extemporization.

Mozart alluded to Haydn's variations four times, and possibly used one as a model, during the 1780s in Vienna. The variation movement from the Wind Serenade k361/370a employs a theme remarkably like that in Symphony no.75; the minor variation of the same serenade plays with the opening of the minor theme in Haydn's Symphony no.63 (‘La Roxelane’); and the siciliana variation finale of Mozart's D minor Quartet k421/417b draws together the siciliana variation finale of Haydn's G major Quartet op.33 no.5 and Mozart's own earlier D minor variations in a piano and violin sonata (k377/374e, the sixth variation of which is a siciliana). Finally, one possible explanation for Mozart's revision to the theme of the slow movement of his Piano Concerto k450 after he had already begun composing the variations is that he realized that the material in the second reprise was too close to his model, Haydn's Symphony no.75, with its triple-metre hymn theme. One classic locus for the inventio of a theme is in imitation of the theme of another, or imitatio, so this kind of homage is especially appropriate to variations.

Mozart's methods of organizing sets of strophic variations differ in nearly every particular from Haydn's, but most obvious are cadenzas in keyboard sets and the way they chain variations together; opposite-mode variations, especially the two movements in C minor with two variations in two different keys (in the Wind Serenade k388/384a relative and parallel majors, in the Piano Concerto k491 with submediant and parallel majors; the rondo-variation movement in the Piano Concerto k482 also has relative and parallel major episodes); and the presence of an Adagio or an Adagio–Allegro pair. Of 29 movements, 20 have opposite-mode variations (half in fourth position out of five or six), seven have a penultimate Adagio variation, and 11 (including six of the sets with Adagios) conclude with a faster and often metrically altered variation. Mozart's minore variations tend to be imitative, chromatic and highly expressive, often with an air of mystery, as in the Piano Concerto k453 or the Divertimento for string trio k563.

The autograph of the String Quartet k464 supports the idea of a conscious plan for the ordering of variations. After completing five variations, Mozart decided that the coda should incorporate the cello figuration of the fourth variation, and thus reversed the order of the last two variations. The coda followed the original fifth variation in the manuscript. At that point the minore was added and given the number 4, and the original fourth variation was renumbered 6. The real question is why there was no minore movement originally: what was the rationale of the original plan? In fact, the most highly figured line in each variation descends through the parts from first violin to cello until, with every register sounded, a contrapuntal epitome offers a summation, obviously intended to be the final variation (ex.11). One other movement seeks to articulate its imminent close with a contrapuntal study, the slow movement of the Divertimento k563, which has four variations and a coda. Here the contrapuntal variation is not imitative, as in k464, but rather is a layered species exercise in which the chorale-like cantus firmus, played by the viola, itself includes two different note values (minims and crotchets) and represents the theme melody stripped down to a scale. The cello in semiquavers creates a largely third-species relationship to the viola, while the demisemiquavers maintain a constant second-species relationship to the cello. In format, the movement resembles the ubiquitous figure of refining (expolitio) as described in the Ad Herennium: the theme expressed simply, the theme expressed in a new form (three-part version in the varied repeats), arguments from comparison, contrary and example (variations 1–2, 3 and 4, respectively), and a conclusion that restates the theme.

Other questions of ordering arise from the striking finales to two piano concertos, k453 (1784) and k491 (1786). The former has a labelled ‘Finale’ after five variations and extension, in which an entirely new Presto theme (of practically the same length as the variation theme) forms the first of five quasi-paratactic segments, all of which contain repeated and sometimes varied material. That these five segments might be intended to match and sum up the theme and variations is suggested first by the resemblance of the finale theme and its piano reiteration to the tutti variation theme and solo first variation, and second by the reference of the mock-serious ombra passages and ascending imitative sequences with suspensions to the minore. The finale of k491 features alternation between piano-dominated and wind-band-dominated opening periods and at the same time a kind of three-part form in which the ‘middle section’ appears to develop aspects of the first, with a contrapuntal piano variation alluding to the march-like variation 3 and the maggiore variations (4 in A, 6 in C), developing the wind-band sonority of variation 2. The final section offers two variations without repeats and a coda: the first is a melodic reprise uniting all instrumental groups and the second has both a new time signature and a new auxiliary-note motif from which the coda develops.

Variations, §8: The Classical period

(iv) Beethoven.

In works by Haydn and Mozart, the decorum of a variation movement – its traditional and hence normative technical and expressive limits – depended upon position in the work, upon genre and upon the nature of the theme. In general, its implicit code included several different properties: ordering, in which simpler textures appeared early in a set but imitative polyphony never did; performance style, in which extremes of orchestration and dynamics would be introduced for local contrasts, rarely as the topic of an entire variation; and contrast and return, in which distantly related or contrasting material would be followed by returns of the theme melody. Finally, the theme itself would observe certain properties, in its (usually) two-reprise phrase structure with clearly delineated phrases, its degree of repetition, and contrast in melodic segments, rhythms and textures. All these properties devolve upon the concept of familiarity and recognition, without which, Koch said, ‘[the variations] give the impression of a group of arbitrarily related pieces which have nothing in common with each other, and for whose existence and ordering one can imagine no basis’ (Musikalisches Lexikon, 1802). Thus Beethoven issued the first serious challenge to the decorum of the classical variation in the very first variation of the String Quartet op.18 no.5 (1799), a gritty contrapuntal build-up starting in the cello which, by suddenly eradicating the harmony and registration of the theme, inserts a new level of difficulty into a previously more accessible form.

Beethoven's first published work was an ordinary set of variations on a minor-key march by Dressler (woo63), promoted by his teacher Neefe to attract attention and money to the 11-year-old composer. Only eight years later Beethoven wrote the exceptional set of 24 variations on Righini's ‘Venni amore’ (woo65, 1790–91), which featured an imaginative array of both melodic outline and constant-harmony techniques and a wide variety of piano figurations and sonorities sometimes reminiscent of the thicker and more contrast-orientated mode of writing for piano characteristic of such northern German composers as C.F. Fasch, J.A.P. Schulz and J.G. Müthel. The Viennese style in keyboard variations favoured thinner textures, as evidenced in the works of such composers as Mozart, Vanhal, Štepán and Kozeluch. For his early Viennese sets, Beethoven generally adopted many of the common features of Mozart's keyboard sets, especially the minore, Adagio and finale variations, though the last in his case are normally rondos with extended excursions into foreign keys and no cadenzas. His ‘peculiarities of style’, however, were copied by others and ‘palmed off with pride as their own’, as Beethoven wrote testily to Eleonore von Breuning in 1794, forcing him to write down and publish pieces that ‘I should never [otherwise] have written down’. The fine craftsmanship of the Righini set is once again in evidence in the set on Salieri's ‘La stessa, la stessissima’ (woo73, 1799); concluding with an ‘alla Austriaca’, Beethoven thus joins a popular trend to characteristic variations, one example of which is Vanhal's Theme avec VII variations caractéristiques (c1805), with its variations ‘alla Polonese’, ‘alla Ungarese’, ‘alla Francese’ and ‘alla Inglese’. In the set on Süssmayr's ‘Tändeln und Scherzen’ (woo76, 1799), Beethoven for the first time tried to link several variations tonally: variations 5, 6 and 7 in this F major set are in D major, B major and F major (Adagio), followed by an Allegro fugue in the eighth variation with a chain of third-related keys after it reaches the dominant. For all his efforts, however, it was reported (AMZ, 1799, col.607) that ‘he does not understand how to vary well’; in the same year Haydn's F minor Variations, just published, received the comment ‘varied as only a master can’.

That Beethoven revised his variation style is attested by the two sets op.34 and op.35, offered to Breitkopf in 1802 with the request that they be given the opus numbers of his ‘greater musical works, the more so as the themes have been composed by me’. On 18 October 1802 he claimed that these pieces were composed ‘in a completely new manner, and each in a separate and different way’. Considerable scholarly attention has been paid to these claims, mostly focussed on the demonstrably new elements in both sets: it has been suggested (Küthen, 1984) that the phrase ‘wirklich gantz neue Manier’, however, was intended as a parody of Antoine Reicha's ‘new kind of fugue’ in the 36 Fugues dedicated to Haydn in 1803, Beethoven having contemptuously interpreted the description to mean ‘the fugue is not a fugue’ (Reicha's L'art de varier, op.57, was however similarly exploratory and inventive). The F major set op.34, the first free-standing Adagio with variations, moves from F to variations in D, B, G, E and C minor before returning to F, also changing the time signature and tempo in every one but the first. The rather conventional techniques of melodic decoration are thus given new life in changes of character and in what sounds like a radical defamiliarization of the theme as early as the D major of the first variation, virtually a conjurer's trick. The E Variations op.35, later known as ‘Eroica’ or ‘Prometheus’ variations because the same contredanse theme was used in the finales of both those works, were called ‘grand’ by Beethoven in contrast to the ‘small’ F major set, probably because of their length (15 variations and fugue), enormous technical difficulty and large-scale contrapuntal pretensions – immediately shown by the ‘Introduzione col Basso del Tema’, with three constant-melody variations, the ‘canone all'ottava’ and the fugal finale. Beethoven first claimed to Breitkopf that this set had 30 variations, just like the Goldberg Variations, recently published in several editions starting in 1799. (The publication in 1802 of Handel's Chaconne and C.P.E. Bach's folia variations may have inspired Beethoven's passacaglia-like work on an eight bar theme, 32 Variations in C minor woo80, of 1806.) Like these older models, op.35 uses constant-harmony technique almost exclusively, in contrast to the melodic orientation of op.34. In variation movements of the middle period, however, melodic-outline technique prevails, but with very different cyclic shapes: the sublime D slow movement of the ‘Appassionata’ Sonata in F minor op.57 (1804–5) adumbrates the trajectory of its beautiful hymn theme by combining the gradatio of register with that of rhythm in an arc-like shape, while the finale of the E major String Quartet op.74 (1809), with a metrically ambiguous theme, offers an alternation in dynamics which effectively groups the variations into piano–forte doubles in which the first of each pair is melody-orientated, the second more motivic and figural.

Beginning with the ‘Eroica’, every one of Beethoven's odd-number symphonies has prominent conjunctions of variation and fugue, forecasting the central place these forms would have in his late style; moreover, every symphonic variation movement except that of the Ninth Symphony finale adopts some type of alternating-variation scheme, with extensions and transitions making a more or less continuous and fluid succession of variations such as also marked Haydn's symphonic movements and Mozart's piano concerto variations. The ‘Eroica’ finale modifies both the nature of the theme and the alternating plan itself in a virtual compendium of available variation techniques with a symmetrical harmonic plan, all within a progressive structure. The two themes are those familiar from op.35; the first theme (A) is the bass of the second (B), but they are always varied in turn (after the first two cantus firmus variations on the A theme), with the first always treated contrapuntally (cantus firmus, fugato, countermelody), the second with melodic reprise, melodic-outline and constant-harmony technique. The first fugato introduces a dynamic, asymmetrical ‘middle section’ in keys, largely minor, outside the tonic, and it is during the final truncated variation in a foreign key (B², C major, bar 258) that the two themes meet as equals, while in the second fugato B becomes a countersubject to A and helps to banish it entirely. During the final two Andante variations, the A theme is not present even as a bass line, and the return of the Presto introduction now leads to B; the predominance of A at the outset is more than compensated by the final emphasis on B.

The slow movements of the fifth and seventh symphonies draw on the alternating-variation model, each offering a different reading of it and resembling ‘Eroica’ more than any movement of Haydn's. Both suggest a three-part design together with their alternations. In the Fifth Symphony, a middle section is articulated by a series of shortened variations followed by a climactic reprise of the first theme; E.T.A. Hoffmann noted its resemblance to Haydn's variations separated by Zwischensätze (AMZ, x, 1810, col.641). The Seventh, on the other hand, has a more developmental middle section between the two maggiore sections: a variation with bass cantus firmus that creates a dominant pedal leads to a fugato and then to a shortened reprise-like variation. The maggiore sections also serve to defuse the climaxes generated by each group of variations on the first theme, including the extraordinary ever-expanding constant-melody variations of the first theme at the beginning. The Adagio of the Ninth treats its hymn theme to echoes and internal repetitions as in the Fifth, and its alternation of the themes in B and D major is initially unproblematic except for the deceptive cadence that ends each theme. When the second theme comes back in G major, however, ‘resolving’ D, future progressive developments are forecast: the following modulating episode on A begins in E major, develops the upbeat motif of the theme and generates the next round of alternations, in which the B theme disappears and variations on A now alternate with fanfare episodes both on A and on the upbeat, each time beginning in E and then modulating through darker-hued keys. The tonal palette is expanded and the alternating principle is extended to include the thematically derived episodic material, which is itself alternated to generate the movement's climax. In the finale of the Ninth, chains of strophic variations on the ‘Freude’ theme are used to generate climaxes as well, in the manner of the first section of the Allegretto of the Seventh, a kind of incrementum.

In chamber genres, Beethoven tried alternating variations twice, first in the Haydnesque Piano Trio op.70 no.2 (1808), where two consecutive variations of A interrupt the alternations before an unusual ending in the minor. In the late String Quartet in A minor op.132 (1825), the Heiliger Dankgesang apparently retreats from the progressive alternation of the symphonies in favour of the earlier five-part alternating model. Yet the movement is anything but Haydnesque: the extraordinary modal polarities of the otherworldly A (chorale) sections set the stage for the deceptive yet emphatic tonal resolutions at the beginnings of the virile B sections, while the tempo change is given a programmatic rationale (‘Neue Kraft fühlend’). The increasingly vigorous figurations of the already highly elaborated B sections become stile moderno foils to the gently accelerating contrapuntal figures of the stile antico variation (A¹) and fugue (A²) on the chorale.

Beethoven's late strophic variations are the Diabelli set and fully five of the slow movements in the piano sonatas (opp.109, 111) and string quartets (opp.127, 131, 135) in addition to the instrumental and vocal chains of variations on the ‘Freude’ theme amalgamated with the larger composite structure of the finale of the Ninth Symphony. The inner world of the hymn theme in the Adagio of the Ninth Symphony is previewed in the sonatas, which also examine the propriety of concluding a work with a slow variation movement. The solution is similar in conception but differently realized in each work: progressive diminution leading incrementally to extremes of registration, dynamics and speed of figuration (trills), followed by a theme reprise. In op.109 the diminutions occur within a single ‘sprung’ microcosm, variation 6, after the grouping of variations 3–5 covers three Baroque topics in turn: invention in invertible counterpoint, pastorale and canzona. In op.111, progressive diminution and registral expansion open out into a linking trill-laden modulatory episode with elements of a developmental minore between the ethereal fourth and retrospective fifth variations, the latter a conspectus of melodic reprise and two of the previous levels of rhythmic diminutions. A comparable episode appears with even larger-scale tonal resonances in op.127, because in that movement in A variation 3 is in E major, and the episode after variation 4 is in D/C minor, a connection reiterated in the coda. The highly detailed part-writing in variation 1, with its foretaste of Mahler's Adagietto, is unprecedented in variations, as is the suspended-animation introduction, a slowly unfolding dominant 7th chord out of which the theme emerges very tentatively (ex.12). In op.131, the central variation movement has a role to play in the integrated design of the quartet as a whole, beginning as the ‘aria’ following the 11-bar third movement with its recitative-like close. Perhaps these suggestions of an earlier style prompted Beethoven to use an Andante 2/4 theme ending with a cadence formula of the 1760s (bars 23–4 and 31–2) and even, during variation 3 with its texture of contrapuntal voice-pairs and false fugato, an ascending trio-sonata-like trill figure also found in the first movements of Haydn's quartets op.20 no.1 (copied out by Beethoven) and no.2. The compressed sonorities of variation 5 recast for quartet the technique already found in the Diabelli Variations op.120, variation 20 (ex.13) and later taken up by Schumann and Brahms. A lengthy coda brings in cadenza-like trills, several partial, decorated returns of the theme and final reiterations of the cadence formula. After the intricate part-writing of op.127 and 131, Beethoven's extremely slow last variation movement, op.135, the first to be marked Lento, is largely unfigured until the final variation, and also brings in melodic reprise after the minore.

Beethoven's two bouts of working on the Diabelli Variations, 1819 and 1822–3, surrounded the composition of the last piano sonatas. Like the Goldberg Variations, they represent a grandiose final statement, and like them had a strange reason for coming into existence: in 1819, Diabelli sent his waltz to composers important in Austria and asked each to contribute a single variation to a patriotic Vaterländischer Künstlerverein for the benefit of widows and orphans. The resulting cross-section of variation style was not published until 1824, the year after Diabelli brought out Beethoven's 33 variations, with the impressive total of 50 in alphabetical order from Assmayer to Worzischek (Voříšek), with a coda by Czerny. Included are a contrapuntal variation by Sechter, a minore by Schubert, one of brilliant virtuosity from Kalkbrenner (hastily commissioned during a visit to Vienna), variations by Czerny, Moscheles and Gelinek, an overture by Dreschler, a polonaise by Tomášek and, at opposite ends of the generational span, contributions from the elderly Förster and Schenk and the 11-year-old Liszt. As Kinderman's research has shown, Beethoven's 1819 draft already included 23 variations, to which he added variations 1–2, 15, 23–6 and 28–9, and revised the conclusion. The addition of the Alla Marcia maestoso as variation 1 is crucial because it instantly reveals contrast to be the primary aesthetic of the set. Just as Bach took the pensive Aria and turned it into an athletic two-part invention for the first Goldberg variation, so Beethoven announces a new topic, metre, tempo and texture immediately. Although characteristic variations do not remain at the fore during this formal-outline set, extremes of textures and of expressive types do. It is significant that after all the contrapuntal, brilliant, scherzando, fugal, epigrammatic, espressivo and comic variations, the finale should be a Tempo di Menuetto, grazioso e dolce, a tribute to Beethoven's and Diabelli's shared patrimony.

(iii) Symphonic variations after Beethoven.

9. The 19th century.

(i) Early 19th century.

(ii) Brahms.

Variations, §9: The 19th century

(i) Early 19th century.

Schubert was a master of the melodic reprise varied by means of beautiful new figurations or harmonies, in such pieces as the Andantes of the A minor String Quartet (a sonata-rondo), the C major String Quintet (an ABA variation) and late sonatas (alternating rondo-variations, d850, 894 and 958). Several of his variations, including the best-known variation movements, are based on his own lieder, and only four times did he vary themes not written by himself (d576, 624, 823 no.22, 908); the first of these gave a hint of Schubert's interest in linking the opposite-mode variation to one in a related foreign key. His first important set, on Die Forelle, was the Andantino of the Piano Quintet in A (1819), reflecting its vocal source with a constant melody during the first three variations (first violin, piano, second violin, cello). After the minore, a variation in the flat submediant – coloured by its own minor and flat mediant keys – simultaneously offers the most rhythmically layered variation in the entire movement. (This grouping of a minore with a different major key related to it is found also in the Piano Sonata in A minor d845, B Impromptu d935 no.3, and the C major variations on a theme from Hérold's Marie for piano four hands d908.) The final theme reprise returns to something outside the piece: the piano accompaniment of the lied itself. The Wanderer Fantasy (1822) not only links each movement by a head-motif related to the lied Der Wanderer, but clothes that eight-bar melody in the slow movement with different accompaniments, keys (C minor, E, C) and cadence patterns, finally dissolving the melody itself into periphrastic figurations. Virtuoso interludes and conclusions outside the variation chain assimilate the movement to the technically demanding cycle. The year 1824 saw the ornate Introduction and Variations on Trockne Blumen for flute and piano d802, the String Quartet in D minor with slow movement variations on Der Tod und das Mädchen, the Octet with variations on a duet from Die Freunde von Salamanka, and the A variations for piano four hands, with its nod in variation 5 to the Allegretto of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. Of these, the quartet and piano sets are among Schubert's finest and most significant. Using the sombre chords of Der Tod for the theme, the quartet maintains a quasi-constant melody for variations 1 and 2 and the first reprise of 5, but breaks into a gallop for 3 based on a diminution of the theme's anapaestic rhythm. In the general shape of the set, including the ethereal maggiore of variation 5 and the major-mode coda, recalling the major ending of the lied, the movement appears to be modelled on the finale of Mozart's D minor Quartet k421/417d.

Of the composers making their name at the turn of the century who excelled at variations, especially in the eyes of contemporary reviewers, those who stand out are Spohr (for violin, clarinet, harp and string chamber music), Hummel (mostly for piano but some in chamber music; variations account for a quarter of his published piano works, some single opus numbers containing up to three sets), Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia (for piano and piano chamber music) and particularly Weber, who wrote a number of variations on original themes and in new genres like the concertinos for clarinet and for horn, as well as on such much-varied themes as Schöne Minka. These last pieces have elaborate introductions, which were becoming more and more common, and lengthy linked finales.

The 1820s and 30s saw a vast increase in the number of showy variation sets for piano on popular tunes tricked out with all manner of introductions, finales and virtuoso details in such a way that they became nearly indistinguishable from the numerous fantasies on popular melodies. Already under way in the 1790s with Daniel Steibelt and Abbé Gelinek, the trend accelerated with the growing concert scene in Paris, Vienna and Berlin and with such composers as Herz, Hünten, Kalkbrenner, Thalberg and Moscheles. That the 1830s exacerbated this trend may be seen in setting Diabelli's encyclopedic Vaterländische Künstlerverein of 1824 against the public display of the Hexaméron, a set of ‘grandes variations de bravoure’ on a theme from Bellini's I puritani commissioned for a benefit concert in Paris in 1837, with contributions by Liszt, Thalberg, Czerny, Pixis, Herz and Chopin. Indeed, the previous year saw the publication of Czerny's L'art d'improviser, in which Hummel, Moscheles, Kalkbrenner and Ries are upheld as models, although the student is also advised to study Mozart's k354/299a, Clementi's variations on the same theme in the finale of a B Sonata, and Beethoven's opp.34 and 35 and woo80. ‘The number of forms at the disposal of the artist is infinite’, Czerny proclaims, giving as examples figurations for either or both hands while retaining the melody or at least the harmonies of the first part; trills and ornaments of all kinds; a new cantabile theme on the original bass and harmony; ‘strict style’ with the theme placed in a higher or lower voice; canons or fugues on the theme; and changing the tempo, metre and key, as in an Adagio, Polonaise or Rondo, and in a finale with free development (p.92).

Schumann found most variations of this time irredeemably trite and vapid. Although he praised a few sets of variations by his contemporaries, especially Chopin's variations for piano and orchestra on Mozart's ‘Là ci darem la mano’ op.2 – which prompted his memorable ‘Hats off, gentlemen: a genius!’ – Schumann more often deplored their lack of meaning. He argued against using popular themes, notably ‘the most hackneyed Italian ones’, because the best sets have themes with personal resonances for the composer, and against the empty virtuosity and mechanical figurations of salon variations; in a scathing review of 1836 he asserted that ‘in no other genre of our art is more bungling incompetence displayed … variations should create a whole, whose centre is the theme. … The time is past when one can create astonishment with a sugary figure, a yearning suspension, an E major run over the keyboard. Now one strives for thoughts, for inner connections, with the whole bathed in fresh fantasy’ (Gesammelte Schriften, i, 219, 221, 223).

A more thoughtful typology from within the Schumann circle was published in 1860 by the Berlin composer Julius Schäffer:

The variation form, although cultivated by the masters with special partiality, is still so badly mistreated by bunglers and hacks that, when it appears, people avoid it or encounter it with mistrust, and as a consequence of its bad reputation noteworthy theorists and aestheticians scarcely want to grant it even a modest spot next to legitimate art forms. This appears to us unjust.
If we exclude the bravura variation, then the different forms of variation divide into three principal categories. In the first, which can appropriately be described as the decorative, all interest lies in the theme. In each variation, this is clothed, as it were, in a new attire, but it is not disguised. … It is usually a known melody and the goal of this genre is the ever-new charm of its differently turned-out repetitions.
In the second [category], which we call the contrapuntal, the centre of gravity lies in the variations themselves. … Here the theme is only the outline, on which different architectonic creations are built. … This category stands higher than the first … [and features] the creation of independent structures on the basis of the given harmonic relationships. …
In the third category, the centre of gravity lies neither in the theme alone nor in the variations alone, but rather in the psychological bond between the two. … That the theme is usually an invention of the composer's – a so-called original theme – is entirely in the nature of the thing. The individual variations will have to manifest a connection with the theme as well as with each other … ; in other respects, however, they will come into the world bringing with them their newborn motifs and new developmental laws, thus [each] to expand into autonomous art forms – often even as related movements not directly derived from the theme [but] like ‘intermezzi’ draw into their own realm. Just as the variation form in this genre achieves its highest significance, it reaches at the same time its outermost limits, striving to overcome them and to pass into the sphere of the free fantasy. It appears not inappropriate to give them the name Fantasy-Variations. (Echo, x, 1860, p.95; quoted in Puchelt, 142–3)

These remarks keep the same hierarchy as Schulz's rank-ordered list of 1774 while adding fantasy-variations. Brahms was later to argue that fantasy variations are not really variations at all.

Schumann's own variations chose a personally meaningful subject as early as the Abegg Variations op.1 (1830); he went on to vary themes by Clara Wieck (Impromptus op.5, based on her Romance variée op.3) and by Ernestine von Fricken's father (Symphonic études op.13), and to base another work, Carnaval op.9, on a cipher, A–S–C–H, in which the distinction between a motif to be varied and to be transformed breaks down. From Clara's theme he took an idealized bass line, which is initially presented alone, in the manner of Beethoven's op.35; its opening I–IV–V–I puts it in the much older tradition of the bergamasca and other dance schemes (ex.14). Von Fricken's theme, on the other hand, was a melody only, originally for flute. Schumann reassured von Fricken that he was very strict with the theme because the unfolding structure was based on it; in variations the object in view is ‘always before us’ but seen ‘as though through coloured glass’. Thus he sought to ‘break the pathetic [nature of von Fricken's C minor theme] into divers colours’ (Jugendbriefe, 251–4). In the second edition of the Symphonic études, now titled Etudes en forme de variations, Schumann also differentiated terminologically between ‘variations’ more closely related to the theme and structurally freer ‘études’. He followed Beethoven and Schubert in including a lengthy finale, here a rondo on a theme of Marschner. In addition to variations for piano, Schumann wrote variation movements in two string quartets, op.41 nos.2 and 3, as well as the finale of a sonata for piano and violin op.121. His compositional ‘last thought’ was a set of variations on a theme in E, on which he was working just before his suicide attempt in 1854.

Other responses to the superficiality of the form included two by Mendelssohn, his 17 Variations sérieuses op.54 (1841), which despite a fugato in variation 10, several scherzandos and an example of ‘Schumann shorthand’ in variation 11 (a curtailed outline of the theme's melody), stay close to the harmonically quixotic theme, and his chorale partita on Vater unser in Himmelreich (Six Sonatas, op.65 no.6), a set of cantus firmus variations with chorale fugue and finale. Formal seriousness and a striking set rhythm come to the fore in Liszt's two sets of ostinato variations on Bach's bass line from Cantata bwv12, Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen. The first of these is a small-scale Prelude (1859) that is actually a passacaglia with 25 repetitions of the bass theme. The much larger Variations (1862) contain not only 43 variations but also a recitative, finale and chorale (‘Was Gott tut, dass ist wohlgetan’, the same one that ends Bach's cantata), and considerable chromaticism within its formal outlines. These two works mark the reappearance of the Baroque ostinato-variation as conscious archaism, although ostinato form had made an appearance in Chopin's Berceuse op.57, with a much simpler pattern. Liszt even included a series of variations on the folia within his Rhapsodie espagnole for piano, immediately after the introduction.

Variations, §9: The 19th century

(ii) Brahms.

Brahms was the first composer after Beethoven to whom variations were central. For over 40 years, in seven independent sets and nine variation movements from his op.1 to his op.120, he showed ‘what could still be done with the old forms’ (Kalbeck, quoting Wagner on op.24). He also used variation technique extensively in slow rondo movements, like the first movement of the Horn Trio op.40, slow movements of the Piano Quartet in A op.26, the String Quintet in F op.88 and the Violin Sonata in A op.100, and nearly every slow ABA movement. While the varying of theme returns is quite common in this period, Brahms exceeded contemporary practice by placing variations in sonata form movements: the second theme group in the first movement of the Piano Quartet in C minor op.60 consists of an eight-bar melody with three variations (the second in the minor), which is recapitulated with new variations, with the final one an actual recapitulation of the exposition's first. The development section of the Piano Quartet in A op.26 begins with three variations of the opening theme in B minor. Like Schumann, Brahms claimed that the theme was centrally important, but more particularly

In a theme for variations, it is almost only the bass that actually has any meaning for me. But this is sacred to me, it is the firm foundation on which I then build my stories. What I do with melody is only playing around. … If I vary only the melody, then I cannot easily be more than clever or graceful, or, indeed, [if] full of feeling, deepen a pretty thought. On a given bass, I discover new melodies in it, I create. (Letter of Adolf Schubring, Feb 1869; Briefwechsel, viii, 217–18)

Brahms went on to trace the ‘path made by the art of variation’, from Bach's Goldberg Variations to the melodic variations of Herz, to Beethoven and himself, and then to Schumann, asking wistfully ‘But could we not make a distinction between variations and fantasies on a melody, a motif?’ In two other letters Brahms seems eager to assess the history of the form and his place in it. To Joachim, with whom he was engaged in a ‘correspondence course’ in counterpoint in the summer of 1856 and who had just sent him some variations on an Irish folksong, he wrote:

From time to time I reflect on variation form and find that it should be kept stricter, purer. The Ancients were very strict about retaining the bass of the theme, their actual theme. With Beethoven, the melody, harmony and rhythm are so beautifully varied. I sometimes find, however, that the Moderns (both of us!) more often (I don't know the right expression) worry the theme. We anxiously retain the entire melody, but don't manipulate it freely. We don't really create anything new out of it; on the contrary we only burden it. The melody thus becomes scarcely recognizable.

Brahms's final verbal document on variations is the rather censorious letter he sent to Heinrich von Herzogenberg, who in 1876 was about to publish the first variations ever written on a theme of Brahms:

I wish people would distinguish between the title Variations and something else, possibly Fantasy-variations, or however we would want to call almost all the newer variation works. I have a singular affection for the variation form, and believe that this form still compels our talents and ability. Beethoven treats it so extraordinarily severely, he can even justly translate [the title variations as]: alterations [Veränderungen]. What comes after him, by Schumann, H[erzogenberg] or Nottebohm, is something else. I have, of course, as little against the method as against the music. But I wish people would distinguish by name what is different in the method.

What the variations Brahms labelled ‘fantasy-variation’ – by Nottebohm (on a theme of Bach, op.17), Herzogenberg (on a theme of Brahms, op.23) and Schumann – have in common are extensive alterations in the structure, metre and tempo of the theme while retaining its melody or motifs. Brahms's own variations, like Beethoven's, may depart from many details of the theme but normally retain its formal outline. Like Schumann, he often chose themes with personal significance and let the character and source of the theme play a role in the nature of the variations: a song theme led to melody-orientated variations, as in the sonatas opp.1 and 2 (with colourful harmonic substitutions) and op.21 no.2 on a Hungarian song, a Handel theme led to a stricter conception (as well as Baroque topics like siciliana and musette, canon and fugue), a Paganini theme led to virtuoso variations.

Brahms's independent variation sets up to 1862 show a tendency to pair stricter and freer conceptions. In the Schumann variations op.9 (1854), that contrast emerges from the attribution of most of the variations in the autograph manuscript either to ‘Brahms’ (variations 4, 7, 8, 14, 16) or to ‘Kreisler’ (5, 6, 9, 12, 13), referring to his Schumann-inspired alter ego from E.T.A. Hoffmann's character, and the piece becomes the embodiment of a dual persona. The ‘Brahms’ variations are nearly all slow, like the theme, and tend to have a lyrical melody which is sometimes treated in canon, while the ‘Kreislers’ are fast, feature melodic fragments embedded in figurations that consciously recall Schumann, contain codas, lack canons and depart more strikingly from the theme's structure, harmony and affect (ex.15). The theme itself, a poetic Albumblatt, was doubtless chosen by Brahms because Clara had written her op.20 variations on it the previous year, a colourful, pianistically rich set with a canon in variation 6 and melodic resemblance throughout; to make his own set still more Schumann-connected, Brahms quoted from Clara's Romance op.3, which Schumann had already varied in op.5 (variation 10), as well as from another Albumblatt (variation 9), and added his own Clara-cipher in variation 11. Brahms's next variation pair, op.21 nos.1 and 2 (1856–7), share several features: minore variations limited to a single large grouping, linking of most of the major variations by melody or speed of figuration, and a finale which includes a reworking of the first variation (the last also in Joachim's Variations in E for viola and piano op.10, 1854). The greater sophistication of op.21 no.1, written somewhat later than no.2, derives from its theme, Brahms's first written specially for a set of variations; the theme of no.2, an eight-bar Hungarian song, had been written down as early as 1853, and Brahms's interest in things Hungarian was rekindled with Clara's trip to Budapest in 1856. Both sets have Beethovenian elements. His final big pairing is the Handel Variations op.24 with the four-hand Schumann Variations op.23 of 1861; the theme of the latter, Schumann's ‘letzte Gedanke’, was chosen by Brahms for its ‘melancholy sound of farewell’ (letter to Joachim, 29 Dec 1862, Briefwechsel, v, 331). The stricter–freer paradigm can be seen in the conclusions of each set – the Handel set ends with a fugue, the Schumann with a funeral march – as well as in the telling differences between their two-part imitative minore variations: variation 6 in the Handel set is entirely canonic and resembles the theme's melody, while 4 in the Schumann set is more freely imitative and mysteriously evocative. Schubring's lengthy 1868 review of the latter piece includes an account of its emotional ‘meanings’ (Eng. trans. in The Compleat Brahms, ed. L. Botstein, 1999, p.200). Finally, the Handel set draws liberally on the Diabelli Variations, especially in variation 3 (Diabelli 11, 19), 7–8 (Diabelli 15), 14 (Diabelli 16) and 2 and 20 (Diabelli 3 and 12). The Handel ‘music-box’ variation 22 goes back to Couperin, and among the more contemporary styles are étude (2, 4, 21), introspective character-piece (5, 12), triumphal march (25) and Hungarian rhapsody (13). Of the two Paganini sets op.35, book 1 contains a preponderance of variations with melodic and harmonic resemblance to the theme, as well as older topics like the descending tetrachord bass (4) and quasi-musette (11), while the variations in book 2 immediately reinterpret the theme's harmonies, even at cadence points, and contain the variation most remote from the theme (12).

The variation movements up to 1864 also reflect pairing to a degree. The Sonata op.2, while close in variation technique to op.1, uses a more chromatic theme and recycles it as the scherzo theme. More profoundly connected are the two string sextets op.18 (1860) and op.36 (1864). The theme of the D minor Andante of op.18 suggests older models such as the folia and the Allegretto of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, and its treatment includes expanding register while decreasing note values in the first three variations, a ‘heavenly’ maggiore musette (variation 5), a final quasi-reprise and a coda referring to Mozart's D minor quartet finale and the plagal major conclusion of Schubert's D minor Quartet ‘Der Tod und das Mädchen’. The slow movement of op.36, on the other hand, uses a floating, chromatic treble theme written much earlier (dedicated to Clara in a little pocket notebook of Christmas Eve 1854, and sent to her two months later) which fluctuates between minor and major, opens with a sequence on I and VII, and opposes rising 4ths and descending chromatic figures. In short, the theme is sufficiently ‘free’ for it to be varied strictly and still suggest fantasy, as in the first variation, which sounds like a continuation of the theme while actually incorporating augmentation, diminution and a new bass line. After two sets of paired variations (1–2, 3–4), the second resembling the aggressive counterpoint of Beethoven's Quartet op.18 no.5, the maggiore returns to melodic-outline technique using diminutions of the rising 4th radiated throughout the texture.

Brahms's later variation period, spanning years from the St Anthony Variations op.56 (1873) to the Clarinet Sonata in E op.120 no.2 (1894), reveals new preoccupations and older models of a different kind: finale variations which quote the theme of the first movement to bind the work together (String Quartet in B op.67, Clarinet Quintet op.115) or serve to conclude the work with a slow movement like Beethoven's late sonatas (op.120 no.2); the passacaglia (the tonic-requiring finale of the formal-outline variations in op.56, the bass subject deriving from the theme melody and the tonic-providing fourth movement of the Fourth Symphony op.98, the theme deriving from Bach); alternating variations based on a split theme, like the finale of the ‘Eroica’ (Andante con moto of the Piano Trio in C op.87); and fantasy-like reiterations of a theme in different keys, like Haydn's Fantasia in op.76 no.6 and Schubert's ‘Wanderer’ Fantasy slow movement (Adagio of the String Quintet in G op.111). The ‘St Anthony’ or ‘Haydn’ Variations (the chorale theme was not written by Haydn) was probably the first independent set written for orchestra and is widely viewed therefore as Brahms's ‘warm-up’ for a real symphony, yet he conceived of it in both orchestral and two-piano versions, each a fully autonomous work, and in an even more unusual move did not destroy the extensive sketches. The anapaest rhythm of Beethoven, Schubert and the Handel Variations returns in variation 6, and other evocations of op.24 appear here and there (e.g. 7, a combination of the Handel's 17 and musette 22). Characteristic variations, like the scherzando (5) and siciliano (7), are few. The embellished varied repeats of variation 3 contrast with the repeats in invertible counterpoint in 4 and with the added countermelody in 8. In the passacaglia finale, progressive diminution and expanding registers articulate the close of this novel form. In the finale of the Fourth Symphony, on the other hand, which bears a quite different kind of weight, Brahms drew on the formal articulations of Bach's Passacaglia for organ and Chaconne for solo violin, the second of which he had already arranged for piano left hand, while writing 30 variations and coda, the number (minus da capo) of the Goldberg Variations. There is a ‘middle section’ of slow variations, all but one in the major (12–15, the last two with ‘Wagnerian’ brass), after which the theme returns nearly unvaried (16); this return halfway through the set suggests the ‘Ouverture’ of the second half of the Goldberg set. A further return to the theme and to the rhetoric of the first two variations (23–5) immediately follows the ‘scherzo’ variation (22). Other variations deliberately recall the first movement of the symphony: 10, with its antiphonal echoes, strange harmonies, crescendos on a single chord; and especially the final group, 28–30, which brings back the descending 3rds of the opening theme.

Variations, §9: The 19th century

(iii) Symphonic variations after Beethoven.

The attractions of the ostinato variation as a format for conflations of old and new, as well as its appearance in composers as different as Liszt and Brahms, predicated the wholesale return of the passacaglia in the 20th century. However, within the post-Beethoven symphony, Brahms's Fourth was anomalous because so few composers wrote variation forms at all, preferring instead to vary returns and repeats in their slow movements. Those who did, notably Bruckner and Mahler, appropriated as models the Beethovenian alternating variation of the fifth, seventh and ninth symphonies. Most of Bruckner's symphonic adagios vary two themes in turn, usually by enriched orchestration, accompaniment patterns, countermelodies and different keys; like Beethoven's Ninth, they generate a substantial climax. Variations are important in the slow movements of Mahler's early symphonies, but only the Second and the Fourth can be said to have true variation forms, while the First and Third contain opening themes varied in inventive ways when they return in the course of more rondo-like structures. His Second Symphony alternates variations on themes in tonic major and minor (ABA¹B¹A², in A major and G minor) with lengthy mood-changing transitions and transparent techniques of variation; in early 1900 he told Natalie Bauer-Lechner that, unlike Brahms's strict variations, his own variations (in the Second and Third) are ‘more embellishments, playing around, and entwinements, than a careful following up and working through of the same grouping of notes’ (Gustav Mahler in den Erinnerungen von Natalie Bauer-Lechner, ed. H. Killian, 1980, p.153). The ‘entwinement’ doubtless includes the countermelody added in A¹. B¹ reaches a climactic level of scoring and dynamics. The Poco Adagio of his Fourth Symphony, on the other hand, draws more on the variation groupings of Beethoven's Seventh, even while referring to the pizzicato bass line of the Adagio of Beethoven's Ninth. Expansion of register, enrichment of orchestration and addition of countermelodies characterize the opening series of A variations, but the ascent leads to greater peacefulness rather than to a climactic restaging of the theme. Like the Seventh, Mahler's movement has bass elements of the A sections in the more episodic and increasingly dissonant B sections, which begin in the relative rather than tonic minor but move far afield. The second A group presents faster, more dance-like tempos and characters, while the third increases progressively in tempo and metre (Andante 3/4, Allegretto subito in 3/8, Allegro subito in 2/4, Allegro molto in 2/4) until the Anfangstempo der Variation returns, Andante subito in 3/4, and after it the Adagio. The ‘heavenly music’ of the finale appears in the coda, with an apotheosis of the bass figure in the timpani. In some ways the strophic form and progressive tonality of the finale are adumbrated in the variations of the Poco Adagio.

Brahms's St Anthony Variations launched the independent orchestral set as a genre. Closest to the model are sets on borrowed themes, like Dvořák's Symphonic Variations (1877), Parry's Symphonic Variations (1897) and the variations by Reger on themes by Hiller (op.100, 1907) and Mozart (op.132, 1914). Others, recalling such earlier works as Chopin's op.2, add a featured solo instrument, such as Tchaikovsky's Variations for Cello and Orchestra on a Rococo Theme (1876), Franck's Variations symphoniques (with piano, 1885) or Delius's Appalachia (1896), or adapt variations to a programme, as in Strauss's Don Quixote (also with prominent solo cello, 1896–7), d'Indy's Istar (1896) and Elgar's ‘Enigma’ Variations (1898–9). Dvořák begins in Brahmsian fashion without introduction; the theme, based on a Czech folksong the composer had recently set for male chorus (‘I'm a fiddler, poor as can be’), is in C with a raised fourth (the triumphant end of the coda repeats the opening four notes diatonically), stated at once with minimal accompaniment, then varied 27 times, concluding with a fugue. The first three variations maintain a constant melody, so that its three-strain (ABA) construction is firmly fixed in mind. After this point the departures in length, metre, tempo and key cannot obscure the essentially formal-outline status of the rest, with frequent returns of the melody, during which time characteristic topics of pastoral, scherzo, ‘mysterious’ adagio and martial exhortation make their appearance. The work was an enormous success. Franck's Variations symphoniques are a different matter: only one part of the lengthy piece is actually a theme plus strophic variations (bars 100–249), after a lengthy opening section on two different melodic ideas. The piano states the theme and the variations perform a kind of historical synopsis of the form, though out of chronological order: a dialogue in variation 1 emphasizes melodic-outline technique, constant-melody technique enters in 2 and 5, the étude-like 3 conceals just a few melody notes in its constant-harmony technique, while 4 is a centrally located expansive climax with a new structure. After the variations per se, the theme of the introduction returns at a slower tempo and is varied rather freely and developmentally, as it was in the introduction proper. An extended final section, Allegro non troppo (bar 285), brings back both themes in new guises, with the variation theme in the bass. The structure of the whole shares features with early 19th-century piano fantasias that might contain a set of variations within more improvisatory material (e.g. Beethoven's Fantasia op.77); while Nelson assigns the entire piece to a category of ‘free’ variations, it is clear that the variations themselves are not free but are embedded within a fantasia-like larger structure that alludes to a multi-movement work.

Strauss's Don Quixote, on the other hand, is subtitled ‘fantastische Variationen über ein Thema ritterlichen Charakters’, and is indeed a set of ‘fantasy-variations’ in an episodic form (Strauss's first notated idea for the work calls them ‘Verrückte, freien Variationen’). Like so many others, Strauss not only wrote down a few words on the history of variation but found a threefold historical typology:

I consider as the historical high points of the so-called variation form: the unbelievably brilliant Chaconne of J.S. Bach, in which the invention of figural elements appears to have sprung like Minerva from the head of Jupiter in a perfection since then no longer achieved. The paradisally beautiful Kaiservariations in the immortal Haydn's C major Quartet, as the ideal expression of the melodic clothing of a beautiful theme; and third, the metaphysical (I know no better expression), unearthly creation of the A Adagio from Beethoven's E Quartet op.127, with which I take the variation form as a purely musical creation, music-historically speaking, to have concluded. It found in the prelude to Rheingold and in Siegfried's Blacksmith's Song an application scenically full of meaning and dramatically important, after which it leads in my Don Quixote to representations of futile phantoms in the head of the Knight of the Sad Countenance – a kind of Satyrspiel ad absurdum. (Diary entry quoted in W. Werbeck, Die Tondichtungen von Richard Strauss, 1996, p.454)

Thus Strauss's term ‘fantastic variations’, like Brahms's ‘fantasy-variations’ category, consciously distances itself from the form, but Strauss goes further in appearing to mock it. There is no ‘ur’-structure to which the variations refer; the themes are melodies personified as Don Quixote (cello) and Sancho Panza (bass clarinet, bass tuba, viola), though the latter theme is marked simply maggiore and its status with respect to the first and primary theme is unclear; both are fully ‘thematized’ versions of melodies heard in the introduction (Dulcinea, also heard there, returns in variations 1, 3, 5 and 6) which subsequently appear varied by division and by other sorts of rhythmic and harmonic transformation as the programme requires. Unlike Till Eulenspiegel, a rondo in which the prankster's theme peeps out unvaried between episodes of mischief-making, in Don Quixote the themes are incorporated into the sometimes precisely delineated action, from the adventures with the windmills (variation 1) and sheep (2), ending with Quixote's death. More ruminative sections include the introduction, which details Quixote's process of derangement after reading knightly romances, and variation 3, a mad conversation between Don and squire.

The attention given to Elgar's Variations on an Original Theme op.36 has focussed primarily on the ‘enigma’ contained therein, a word authorized by the composer to be placed in the score, alluding possibly to an unwritten theme that goes ‘through and over the whole set’, as well as a ‘dark saying’ that ‘must be left unguessed’. Commentators on the works, while assessing Elgar's words and subsequent theories, have also made clear (as did Elgar himself, and Tovey) that the piece should be evaluated on its own musical terms (see Rushton, 1999). Each variation is a character portrait of someone close to Elgar, including himself, and the initials and other cryptic references that serve as headings to the variations have all been identified. The ternary structure of the G minor theme, with a B section in the parallel major, looks ahead both to the frequent appearance of variations in the major (3, 8, 10, 13, 14, as well as 6–7 in C major and 9 in E) and to the relatively greater importance of the melody of the A section as a virtual idée fixe. That melody, appearing in a variety of rhythmic transformations, in different registers, metres, tempos and instruments, has been the focus of intense scrutiny both because of the contrapuntal possibilities suggested by the enigma and because of its similarity to other melodies by Elgar and to the second theme of the slow movement of Mozart's Prague Symphony. Its prominent chains of 3rds and ascending bass line have also drawn comparisons with Brahms's Fourth Symphony, in the first and last movements respectively. As in Schumann's Etudes symphoniques, variations with less thematic resemblance are differently titled: 10, ‘Dorabella’, is an ‘Intermezzo’ and 13 ‘(***)’ a ‘Romanze’. Elgar's work appears to exemplify the ‘Fantasy-variation’ category of Schäffer, especially in the matter of the ‘psychological bond’ between theme and variations evidenced throughout but especially in variation 1 (C.A.E., his wife), which is expressively and texturally very complex, and 9 (‘Nimrod’, his friend Jaeger, who had saved him from recent depression with a conversation about Beethoven's slow movements), justly celebrated for its spacious and moving harmonies, and ostensible references to the ‘Pathétique’. The finale has been interpreted as two complete variations, the first quoting from ‘Nimrod’, the second from ‘C.A.E.’, with a peroration and coda (Rushton).

Because variation form seemed a good candidate either for relegation to the dustbin of tonality or for a final one-way flight into fantasy, its resilience in the 20th century is a surprising phenomenon. The serial variation emerged; the strophic form continued; the passacaglia flourished; diverse types of motivic fantasy left recognizable traces of variation form; and new forms of repetition promised a new paratactic emphasis, though without much in the way of reference to older forms. Moreover, composers seemed more willing to label movements with such titles as ‘Variationen’, ‘con variazioni’ and ‘Passacaglia’.

10. The 20th century.

Reger was perhaps the most dedicated composer of variations after Brahms and clearly upheld parts of his tradition, not only in writing large-scale independent sets for orchestra and for piano, often with a concluding fugue, but also in the evident care with which he connected type of theme and type of treatment. His two independent sets for orchestra (on themes by J.A. Hiller, op.100, 1907, and Mozart, op.132, 1914) joined piano sets on themes of Bach (op.81, 1904), Beethoven (op.86, 1904, two pianos, orchestrated 1915) and Telemann (op.134, 1914), a Chaconne in G minor for violin, two pieces called Introduction, Passacaglia and Fugue (op.96, 1906, two pianos; op.127, 1913, organ), Variations and Fugue on an Original Theme (op.73, 1903) for organ, as well as several choral fantasias for organ which include elements of the cantus-firmus-like chorale partita. In addition, his inclusion of many variation movements in chamber works – among them two violin sonatas (opp.84 and 139), two string quartets (opp.74 and 109), a string trio (op.141b), a clarinet quintet, a serenade – mark him as a successor to Brahms. Unlike Brahms, Reger keeps the early variations in a set quite close to the theme, perhaps because in some cases the themes themselves lack a memorable profile; these early variations are sometimes already in new keys (as in the Beethoven variations, on the Bagatelle op.119 no.11). The chamber variations are often transparent, with growing dissonance as the movements proceed, as in the String Trio op.141b. Typically dense, Reger's independent variations contain elaborate figurations marked by chromaticism, as well as thick textures dominated by a particular motif; the concluding fugues and double fugues are extremely long. The piano set on a theme from Bach's Cantata no.128 (op.81, 1904) is noticeably polyphonic and chromatic, while the figurations in the Telemann set (on a theme from the Musique de table) seem strikingly derivative, with Brahms's Handel Variations (also in B) as the main model and including echoes of Schubert's B Impromptu and Beethoven's op.109. In the Mozart set for orchestra, on the theme from the A major Sonata k331/300i, the first variation reiterates the theme melody against a rich and sparkling orchestral tutti texture, but this turns out to be the only variation in the tonic; while the melodic outline is nearly always apparent and is nearly reprised in variation 6, the keys are different in each variation, moving from F in variation 2 to A minor, E minor, A minor, D major and E major. The last variation is an expansive sostenuto of poetic breadth. Reger's variation sets, which combine melodic-outline and formal-outline types, are considered to be among his most important works.

Other notable variations of the first quarter of the 20th century include Glazunov's Thème et variations op.72 (1900) for piano, Rachmaninoff's Variations on a Theme of Chopin op.22 (1902–3) for piano, Dukas's Variations, interlude et final sur un thème de Rameau (1902) for piano, Szymanowski's Variations on a Polish Folk Theme op.10 (1904) for piano, Tovey's Brahmsian Elegiac Variations op.25 (1909) for piano and cello, the first movement of Joaquin Turina's Sonata romántica op.3 (1909) for piano and Dohnányi's Variations on a Nursery Theme op.25 (1914) for piano and orchestra. The Passecaille in Ravel's Piano Trio (1914) emerges from the depths, reaches a climax, and sinks down again. Sibelius's Fifth Symphony (1915), like Vaughan Williams's much later Fifth, has a variation-like slow movement that gradually loosens its structural components. Nielsen's Symphony no.6 (Sinfonia semplice, 1924–5) ends with a set of nine variations in which chaos and death intrude: variation 6 is a waltz that seems to function as a theme da capo, in 7 raucous noises break up the ball, 8 suggests the presence of death, and Nielsen compared 9 to a ‘grinning death's head’, finally dispelled by a ‘fanfare’. Vaughan Williams's Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis for string orchestra (1910), like other works with similar titles, presents ‘versions’ of a theme, rather than variations on a theme, and although a variational impulse is present it does not dominate. The work inherits the broadest strand of music ‘on’ another piece, whether capriccio, fantasia or variation, and becomes influential in new conceptions of variations later in the century (e.g. Britten's Lachrymae, ‘Reflections on a song of Dowland’ for viola and piano, 1950, or Foss's Baroque Variations, 1967; see below).

(i) Schoenberg, Berg, Webern.

(ii) Stravinsky, Hindemith, Britten.

(iii) Other mid-century approaches.

(iv) The later 20th century.

Schoenberg's contributions to the history of variation emerge from his writings and teachings as well as his compositions. He identified variation as an important ingredient in compositional technique generally (‘developing variation’), and variation form seemed congruent with the techniques of serialism. Indeed, his earliest set of variations, in the third movement of his String Quartet in D (1897), reveals a progressive texture already in the theme, which begins with a single line opening out into two-part counterpoint (bars 5–8). This texture, described as ‘unique in the variation literature’ (Frisch, The Early Works of Arnold Schoenberg, 1893–1908, 1993, p.43), appears to conjure both with the chromatic lament bass in its initial iambic semitone descent and the tetrachord span of its first incise and with the contrary-motion dynamic of the variation theme in the third movement of Brahms's Sextet no.2, op.36, while at the same time foreshadowing the solo serial theme of the Serenade op.24. As is often noted, Schoenberg's seven other variations sets plus the passacaglia (‘Nacht’) in Pierrot lunaire span a complete tonal arch from that early quartet, moving from the extended tonality of ‘Litanei’ in the Second String Quartet op.10 (1908) to the atonal ‘Nacht’, through the serial ‘Variationen’ of the Serenade op.24 (1923), ‘Thema mit Variationen’ from the Suite op.29 (1926) and Variationen für Orchester op.31 (1926–8), back to the tonality of the Variations on a Recitative for organ op.40 (1941) and Theme and Variations for wind band op.43a (1943). Schoenberg regarded variations as a ‘very strict form’, but allowed himself liberties of various kinds; one rationale might be his comment on Brahms's Handel Variations, that ‘Brahms fulfills his obligation to the theme in the first part of the measure, and is thus freed for the rest of the measure’ (see Nelson, 1964). In ‘Litanei’, the eight-bar structure of the theme remains constant while its four basic motifs, derived from the first and second movements, are manipulated and enriched in the presence of the soprano voice. Schoenberg identified these motifs (‘An Introduction to my Four Quartets’, Schoenberg, Berg, Webern: the String Quartets, a Documentary Study, ed. U. von Rauchhaupt, trans. E. Hartzel, 1971, pp.35–64), stating that his goal was their elaboration, omitted in the earlier movements; moreover the form would keep him from becoming ‘too dramatic’ for chamber music, a risk brought on by Stefan George's emotional poem. Indeed, the climax occurs not in the variations but in the overwrought coda, which has its own postlude. In this respect, the trajectory of the piece is not unlike that of the variations in Haydn's String Quartet op.20 no.4.

(i) Schoenberg, Berg, Webern.

In contrast to the strict structure of ‘Litanei’, in the passacaglia ‘Nacht’ the structural element of the theme in this normally pattern-based form disappears, with a motif of only three notes (e–g–e) radiating through the texture, first in minims, then in quavers, sometimes transposed and usually countered by chromatic scales. The singer has only one exposed statement of the motif, in minims (bar 10), ironically to the text ‘verschwiegen’ (silently); it also begins her final phrase (bar 23). Perhaps the note-based subject foreshadows the note-based serial structures to come, first in the ‘Variationen’ third movement of the Serenade op.24, with its 14-note theme. That the theme contains both the row and its retrograde immediately reveals the tension between the row and the theme. Schoenberg describes the variations as using ‘inversions and retrograde inversions, diminutions and augmentations, canons of various kinds, and rhythmic shifts to different beats – in other words, all the technical tools of the method are here, except the limitation to only twelve different tones’ (‘My Evolution’, Style and Idea, ed. L. Stein, 1984, p.91). The variations in the Suite op.29 exacerbate the row–theme issue by using a tonal melody, Silcher's Aennchen von Tharau.

During the composition of the Variationen für Orchester, op.31, Schoenberg wrote the Third String Quartet op.30 (1927), the Adagio of which still provokes controversy. After Erwin Stein's published analysis of it as a theme with variations and alternations (foreword to the Philharmonia score, 1927), Schoenberg asserted that the movement was really a rondo. Odegard (1966) supports the variation model, linking it to Haydn's alternating variations and the contrasts of rhythm and mood in Beethoven's Heiliger Dankgesang, while Dale (1993) claims that this view was ‘refuted’ by Schoenberg. But Schoenberg may have been hoist on the petard of his strict definition that variations require the ‘recurrence of one structural unit’, or he was disingenuously deflecting attention away from the Beethovenian echoes during 1927 centenary festivities. The orchestral Variations, Schoenberg's first independent set, take their place in the genre inaugurated by Brahms. Schoenberg himself gave a radio talk about the piece in 1931 and published an analysis in Style and Idea. The theme – which he describes as ‘simple’ and ‘characteristic’ – contains four forms of the row and generates a series of what he called both ‘formal’ or ‘developing’ variations, in which ‘everything develops from the theme and its individual features and there is, as usual, a general tendency toward quicker movement’, and ‘character’ variations, ‘in that each of them at the same time develops some particular character’ and contains a ‘characteristic motif’ (1960, p.36). In his radio talk he seemed to reiterate some of his general critique of variations, especially the aspect of ‘mere’ juxtaposition or ‘different views’ that makes inevitability and growth unlikely or impossible; he uses this idea to justify a ‘preparatory’ introduction and a ‘symphonic’ (that is, organic) finale. As in ‘Litanei’ and the Serenade, the theme is cantabile, focussing on shapes and rhythms that remain memorable. The cellos begin the theme (the prime, of five bars, is given in ex.16a; it is followed by a transposed retrograde inversion, seven bars; and a retrograde, five bars), and for the last phrase they are joined by the violins (transposed inversion, seven bars) while they return to the transposed prime, thus lending a three-part construction with a sense of return to the relatively symmetrical four-phrase theme. The focus is on finding motifs connected to the theme and a play of topics relating to genre, mood or dance-type (variation 2 is ‘chamber-music-like’, 3 ‘stormy’, 4 ‘idealized waltz’: ex.16b). The B–A–C–H motif is also quoted here and there. Neither of Schoenberg's last two variation sets, the independent works for organ and for band, approach the combination of inner complexity and surface sheen of op.31.

All Berg's variations, beyond the Brahms-inflected student piece Zwölf Variationen über ein eigenes Thema (1908), are in vocal works and concertos and show a remarkably dramatic and expressive organizing power. From the start he revealed a predilection for cantus firmus structures, in passacaglias (no.5 of the Altenberg lieder op.4; Wozzeck, Act 1 scene iv), and in chorale variations (Lulu, Act 3 scene i; Violin Concerto). His first set, ‘Hier ist Friede’ in the Altenberg lieder (1912), is based on three principal themes, stated one by one at the outset and varied nine times; five-bar segments are marked in the score. In an open dedicatory letter to Schoenberg, Berg wrote about the ‘motto’ of the first movement, ‘Thema scherzoso con variazioni’, of the Kammerkonzert for piano, violin and 13 wind instruments (1925): before the theme appears, three motifs give out the musical letters in the names Schoenberg (piano), Webern (violin) and Berg (muted horn). The motto is woven into the ‘Thema scherzoso’, and extends to 30 bars in three segments. Berg identified variations 1 and 5 as ‘reprise’ variations, using the prime form of the row, and 2–4 as ‘a kind of development section’ of increasing density and speed, featuring retrograde, inversion and retrograde inversion respectively. Often considered a less successful work because of its eclecticism, the variations are persuasive sonically because of their shape and recognizable motifs.

In his operas Berg used variation as he did other traditional forms, to structure scenes and acts; repetitive forms are particularly effective in charting the characters’ obsessions. The passacaglia in Wozzeck's scene with the Doctor (Act 1 scene iv) undergoes 21 variations in which the original serial theme, presented linearly as a bass line to the Doctor's initial manic admonishment, is fragmented, overlapped, turned into simultaneities, moved from part to part and, most importantly for the scenic movement, becomes more and more compressed as the exchanges between the characters become increasingly rapid. The variations at the beginning of Act 3, labelled ‘Inventions on a theme’, similarly intensify and speed up as Marie's soliloquy becomes more and more overwrought, but the theme, by contrast, is an eerily tonal and consciously archaic melody, in imitative texture and with a hollow 5th, to underscore the Bible's ancient wisdom before more chromatic motifs intrude with her present-day cries of anguish. Variations 1 and 5, which like the theme introduce a new Bible reading, are the most tonal; 2 and 6 are continuations. The fugue, a counterpart to and completion of the theme, also begins in a high register and works into climactic statements with the subject blared out in the bass. Whether the rest of the ‘inventions’ in Act 3 owe anything to at least a conception of variation form is moot, but the ‘Inventions on a rhythm’ in scene iii have a structural component that is suggestive. Lulu sees an even greater use of variations. The largest of these is the set-piece ‘Konzertante Chorale-Variationen’ during the dialogue between the Marquis and Lulu in Act 3 scene i, which is broken up by ‘intermezzi’ referring to earlier music (e.g. the English waltz from Act 1 scene iii). The chorale melody, introduced in Act 1 scene iii (bars 1113–22) and Act 2 scene i (bars 250–61), is presented in Act 3 in 12 variations (beginning in bar 83) that include a polonaise (variations 1 and 5), wind chorales (2 and 6), four-part canon (7), bass chorale linking 8, 9 and 10 and the chorale in diminution linking 11 and 12. Act 3 continues with a set of variations between scenes i and ii based on Wedekind's lute-song, already introduced as an intermezzo during the chorale variations (bars 103–18), and that returns later in the act as funeral music for Alwa. Like Schoenberg's Suite op.29 and Berg's later Violin Concerto, these variations use a tonal theme in non-tonal contexts.

The Adagio finale of Berg's Violin Concerto uses the chorale melody Es ist genug from Bach's Cantata no.60, granting it both serial and tonal treatments; the alternation between chorale phrases in dissonant counterpoint led by the solo violin and their repetition in ‘Bach’schen Harmonisierung’ by an ensemble of three clarinets, designed to sound like a small organ, is especially compelling. Traditional segmentation is altered in two ways. First, the layout of chorale and two variations gives way to a folksong (the Carinthian song with personal resonances heard originally in movement 1b and here played ‘wie aus der Ferne’) before the coda; second, in variation 1 (bar 164), Berg introduces a new melody, the ‘Klagegesang’ of Willi Reich's original programme note, which rises to a climax, bringing along the other violins. This and the chorale return in the coda, turning it into a kind of summary variation. Thus the clear structure and multiple rhythmic levels of the chorale variations are intercut with programmatic elements that fulfil a broader role for the finale of the work.

Like Berg's early piano variations of 1908, Webern's orchestral Passacaglia op.1 of the same year owes something to Brahms, but its debt to the finale of Brahms's Fourth Symphony is repaid in a mature and compelling work. (The passacaglia finale of Zemlinsky's Symphony no.2, 1892–3, is clearly also indebted to Brahms's Fourth, as is Reger's Suite ‘Den Manen J.S. Bachs’, op.16, for organ.) The chromatic crux in Brahms's theme is the raised fourth degree as the fifth of eight notes; here it is the lowered fifth degree as the fourth of eight. The eight-bar pizzicato theme, a bass line in D minor, exerts a hold on many of the variations, but during the continuous sweep of the overall three-part shape, with a ‘middle section’ of variations in the major (variations 12–15, like the Brahms and the Bach Chaconne), the theme tends to be lost during climactic points and at other times may be orchestrally redistributed note by note. As in the Brahms, a flute variation prepares the turn to major. After 20 years, Webern's next set of variations, the second movement of his Symphony op.21, turned its back on this world: 99 bars, lasting barely more than three minutes, in as compressed and lapidary a form imaginable. As in Schoenberg's Serenade, the clarinet gives out the theme but instead of a complete retrograde turns back on itself after only six pitches, in tritone transposition, and with its complete retrograde as accompaniment in harp and horns. Every section of the movement (theme, seven variations, coda) but variation 4 maintains a palindromic structure, and Webern claimed that it was ‘the midpoint of the whole movement, after which everything goes backward’ (The Path to the New Music; see Nelson, 1968–9); thus the entire movement is a palindrome (see Hitchcock, 1970, and Starr, 1970). The variations strive for contrast, each maintaining a distinctive scoring, texture, predominant motif and articulation: variation 1 is a double canon and 7 a quadruple one, 2 has a horn ostinato, and so on.

In Webern's last three variation works, questions central to the identity of any such work come to the fore: what is the subject for variation? what must remain constant? Indeed, in the first two of these the issue is more basic: where are the variations? The Variations for piano op.27 (1936) is in three movements, and analysts have disagreed about variation structures in the first two, whose overall designs are ABA (with three 18-bar sections of contrasting texture) and binary respectively, but with palindromic motifs and other mirror effects. Webern, however, composed the third movement first, writing to Hildegard Jone, ‘The completed part is a variations movement; the whole will be a kind of “Suite”’; Bailey (1973) takes this to mean that only the third movement contains true variations, with its six sections of 11 bars each. Here the nature of the form is increasingly abstract, with no identifiable theme beyond the level of the motif. Just as Webern had once described the last movement of his Cantata no.1 op.29 as a combination of variations, scherzo and fugue, so he wrote to Willi Reich that the ‘basic principle’ of the serial Variations for Orchestra op.30 (‘my overture’) is an ‘adagio’ form, which he clarified in a subsequent letter by relating each variation to a part in a sonata structure: theme = introduction, variation 1 = main theme, 2 = transition, 3 = second theme, 4 = reprise of main theme, ‘however in the manner of a development’ (‘for it is an andante form!’, i.e. slow-movement sonata form), 5 = ‘repeating the manner of the introduction and transition’, 6 = coda (see Bailey, 1973). (He similarly described the first movement of the String Quartet op.28 as variations in an adagio form.) Indeed, the ‘first theme’ is the closest thing in the piece to accompanied melody, while the ‘second theme’ after a chordal transition presents the tiny motifs slightly more lyrically than the theme. The row itself (ex.17) forms pitches 6–12 as the retrograde inversion of 1–6, and Webern identified the first six pitches (four in the double bass, two in the oboe, immediately retrograded so that two four-note motifs sound) as the source of all the rest of the material (the ‘Gestalt’ to be subjected to ‘metamorphoses’, that is, variations; but the theme itself is already a variation, itself a metamorphosis of the basic shape: letter to Jone, 26 May 1941). Yet despite this skein of motivic development in formally recognizable groupings, Webern described the variations as in ‘a quite different style’ with an ‘affinity with the type of presentation one finds in the Netherlanders’, thus forging a new path with elements of an archaic constructive principle.

Britten's exuberantly characteristic Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge, op.10 (1937) runs a gamut of moods and topics, some of them parodistic, but arrestingly places its Adagio variation at the very beginning, contravening tradition, before turning to the March, Romance, Aria italiana (strumming violins and exaggerated melodic gestures), Bourrée classique and Wiener Walzer (full of discordant sighs and surface-skimming turns, some at an eerie distance). The mood abruptly changes during the Funeral March, Chant, and even the return of the theme as a cantus firmus during and after the fugue. Other early variations include the choral variations A Boy was Born (1933), the middle movement of the Sinfonietta op.1 (1932) and the Temporal Variations for oboe and piano (1936), the latter including an ‘Oration’ (marked ‘Lento quasi recitativo’), Commination (bearing the arresting marking ‘Adagio con fuoco’) and Chorale, in addition to the more common March, Waltz and Polka. His best-known set of variations, the Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell) op.34, is, in the felicitous words of Paul Griffiths (‘Variations’, Grove6), ‘at once a tour of the forces and a tour de force’. Like the Bridge variations, it includes colourful character pieces while exploring orchestral colour and brings back the theme as a cantus firmus during the most frenzied moments of the fugal finale. Mood and character pieces and a concluding fugue appear again in a later work, Gemini Variations, ‘Twelve Variations and Fugue on an Epigram of Zoltán Kodály’ op.73, for flute, violin and piano four hands (1965); except for the ruminative final Romanza and lengthy fugue subject, the variations are very concise, including two ‘mirrors’ in contrary motion (variations 6 and 9 are Specchio 1 and 2 respectively). Like his contemporaries, Britten was attracted to the passacaglia, especially as a finale, notably in the Violin Concerto (1939), the second and third string quartets (1945, 1975), in Peter Grimes (1945, extracted as one of the Four Sea Interludes) and in The Turn of the Screw (1954). In this last work, the passacaglia is the culmination of a variation structure covering the entire opera, with a theme stated in the Prologue and 15 variations spread over the orchestral interludes that link the scenes. The theme rises in pitch in every variation during Act 1 from A, associated with the Governess, to A associated with the ghosts, then each time descending in pitch during Act 2 to the final confrontation, with all 12 tonal centres present during variation 15.

(ii) Stravinsky, Hindemith, Britten.

Stravinsky's eight variation movements on original themes are framed by the ‘Gavotte e due variazioni’ in Pulcinella and the orchestration of Bach's Vom Himmel hoch variations (1955–6), after which he wrote his single independent set, the Variations (Aldous Huxley in memoriam) (1963–4), which is of an entirely different stripe. Remarks he made to interviewers after the première of his Octet for wind (1922–3) about his affinity to earlier music, together with his comment that ‘in writing variations my method is to remain faithful to the theme as a melody’ (Nelson, 1962), have focussed attention on his tendencies towards constant-melody variation or use of at least parts of the theme melody as a cantus firmus. The layered rhythmic texture of many of his variations bears this out, and in the Octet's middle movement the theme melody returns in different keys in variations 1, 3 and 6, each time in the trombones with faster figurations in the other voices. (The Sonata for Two Pianos also returns to the melody of theme in variations 1, 2 and 6.) These are separated by dance-like and antic characteristic variations (march, waltz, cancan), sometimes with ostinato accompaniments. The lengthy legato theme melody also differs strikingly from the atomized melodies of the Viennese composers but is treated with octave displacement later in the set to reduce the degree of resemblance. Stravinsky described the ‘ribbons of scales’ he added to variation 1 that would return later, and pointed out the theme played in rotation by instrumental pairs in the final fugato variation. Similar elements appear in his ballet scores (Jeu de cartes, 1936; Danses concertantes, 1940–42) and other instrumental works (Concerto for Two Pianos, 1932–5; Sonata for Two Pianos, 1943–4; Ebony Concerto, 1945), even the serial Septet (1952–3), a relatively strict passacaglia on 16 notes in the second movement. The oscillating 3rds of the final movement of the Ebony Concerto appear unpromising material for a theme, yet always stand apart rhythmically from the surrounding texture; only in the third and final variation are they treated with diminution, and the repeated chords of the theme's accompaniment also become a subject for variation. Stravinsky's later variations increasingly feature disjunct themes, but from the beginning he treated his themes with octave displacement and instrument dispersal to recast the melody. Sometimes a fragment of the theme appears as an ostinato during a variation (Concerto, variation 4; Danses concertantes, variations 1 and 3; Sonata, variation 1) or becomes the subject of a fugal variation (Octet, variation 7; Sonata, variation 3). The Concerto for Two Pianos draws on Haydn's model of alternating variations in its third movement, though different melodic shapes obscure the relationships between the first theme and its variations; using the first theme as a subject for the fourth-movement fugue brings to mind Brahms's Piano Sonata op.2, in which the theme is used for the Scherzo, as well as his op.24, importing the closing fugue of variations into a multi-movement work (ex.18). Another procedure derives from Beethoven's op.34, placing every variation in a different key according to a pattern (Jeu de cartes, descending semitones; Danses concertantes, ascending semitones). In his last set, the serial Variations (Aldous Huxley in memoriam), the lack of a clear theme and degree of abstract concision resemble Webern, and the overall organization of the 12 sections suggests a refrain in the recurrence of dense polyphony (called ‘12-part variations’ by Stravinsky) in II (all violins), V (all strings) and XI (all wind) and the textures of I returning in XII. In these respects, as well as the appearance of a fugato (X), this set recalls at least the plans of his earlier ones, if not their style.

Important strands in the history of variations were contributed by Hindemith and Britten, beginning with their early works in the 1920s and 30s respectively. Hindemith was also drawn to the passacaglia, especially in finale position, in both instrumental music (String Quartet no.5, op.32, 1923) and vocal music (Das Marienleben, 1922–3; Cardillac, 1926; Die Harmonie der Welt, 1956–7, of which Act 5 is also a separate symphony). In the quartet finale the bass subject is sometimes restated intact, especially at the beginning, and sometimes participates rhythmically with the upper voices. The song cycle Das Marienleben includes a passacaglia in the ‘Darstellung Mariä in der Tempel’ as well as ostinato variations in the three pieces ‘Vom Tode Mariä’. Another early work, the Viola Sonata op.11 no.4 (1919), seems to have a surfeit of variations: the movements are Fantasie, Thema mit Variationen, Finale (mit Variationen). The Fantasie acts as an improvisatory introduction and the finale introduces a new theme which alternates with variations continuing from the second movement. Perhaps the connection of the fantasy with variations gave rise to Hindemith's more rhapsodic variations of the 1930s, such as the Philharmonisches Konzert (1932) and the finale of the viola concerto Der Schwanendreher (1935). A stricter strand of melodic-outline variation writing is evident in the variations on Mozart's lied Komm, lieber Mai that conclude the Sonata ‘Es ist so schönes Wetter draussen’ op.31 no.2 (1924) for violin. Hindemith's most important variation work, Die vier Temperamente for string orchestra and piano (1940, also well known with Balanchine's choreography, 1946), takes a rather extensive theme in three sections – a broad orchestral section, a faster, more scherzando section which introduces the piano, and a siciliano theme for strings, embellished by the piano (ex.19a) – and subjects it to four characteristic interpretations according to the ancient theory of humours: ‘Melancholic’, ‘Sanguinic’, ‘Phlegmatic’, and ‘Choleric’. Points of melodic contact with the theme are evident throughout, as are the theme's hollow 5th chords. The first, also slow–fast–slow, introduces a meditative solo violin into the first section; the second is entirely for strings; and the siciliano has been transformed into a ‘slow march’ (ex.19b). ‘Sanguine’ stays in ‘waltz’ time throughout, with the occasional dance-like repeated section; ‘Phlegmatic’, for five solo strings and piano, returns to the three-tempo structure; while ‘Choleric’ has the most improvisatory piano writing and give-and-take with the orchestra, and for the first time presents the final section of the theme, always previously dance-like, into a broad, even chorale-like, summary statement (ex.19c).

Other notable variations of the second quarter of the 20th century include Copland's astringent Piano Variations (1930, orchestrated in 1957), about which the composer wrote ‘it was not composed in the consecutive order of its finished state … I worked on the variations individually, not knowing exactly where or how they would eventually fit together. One fine day, when the time was right, the order of the variations fell into place’ (Copland and V. Perlis, Copland, i: 1900 through 1942, 1984); the sixth movement of Zemlinsky's String Quartet no.4, op.25 (1936), subtitled ‘Barcarole’; Kodály's Variations on a Hungarian Folksong, The Peacock, 1938–9, in which the 16 variations are grouped in threes, except for variation 10, which stands alone, and 11–14, the massive slow-movement group which reorganizes the whole into a three-part form; Poulenc's suite of character sketches Les soirées de Nazelles (1930–36), framed by a ‘Préambule’ and then a ‘Cadence’ and ‘Final’; three sets on Paganini's much-varied A minor Caprice: by Rachmaninoff (Rhapsody op.43, 1934) for piano and orchestra, by Lutosławski (for two pianos, 1941) and by Blacher (op.26 for orchestra, 1947); Rósza's Theme, Variations and Finale op.13 (1934), on a theme ‘in the manner of a Hungarian folksong’; Eisler's serial variations 14 Arten, den Regen zu beschreiben (1940) for flute, clarinet, piano and strings (written for a documentary film), notable for their lyricism, the ‘chorale-étude’ (no.3) and the initial ‘Anagramm’ on Schoenberg's name; and Dello Joio's ‘Variations, Chaconne and Finale’ for orchestra (1947), based on a Gregorian theme. The soaring lyricism of the second movement of Tippett's String Quartet no.3 (1945–6) hides the technique of constant-melody variation.

(iii) Other mid-century approaches.

Several composers during the middle of the century found variation techniques an essential part of their approach to composition, without writing many actual variations: Bartók, K.A. Hartmann and Shostakovich, among others. Apart from the second movement of his Violin Concerto (1937–8), some early pieces (Violin Sonata of 1903, piano variations) and two pieces in Mikrokosmos as true variation movements, Bartók tended to put into practice what he told the interviewer Denis Dille in 1937: ‘I never repeat [an idea] unvaried; this is connected to my love of variation, of thematic transformation’. He was partial to palindromic forms within a cycle, where a later movement may vary elements of an earlier one or be based on a varied version of the earlier movement's theme; this procedure he called a ‘Brückenform’, evident in the Violin Concerto, the Second Piano Concerto (1930–31) and the five-movement fourth and fifth quartets (1928, 1934). Whether the later movement may be considered ‘a variation’ of the earlier one is doubtful, however. His Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta (1936) does reflect a four-movement-wide re-presentation of thematic material in varied forms. Bartók noted in his introduction to the 1937 score that in the development section of the second movement the theme of the first movement appears ‘in veränderter Gestalt’; that the theme of the fourth movement is alluded to there as well; that in the recapitulation of the same movement the 2/4 rhythm of the exposition is changed into 3/8; and that in the finale the theme of the first movement is ‘extended’ from its original chromatic form into a diatonic one (ex.20). Hartmann was similarly concerned with variation procedures and presented large-scale forms as variants of each other. His Symphony no.6 (1951–3), for example, concludes with a ‘Toccata variata’ of three fugues, in which the second two are variants of the first. Shostakovich's variation movements include the passacaglia slow movements of his string quartets nos.3 (1946, unusual in that the theme is a lyrical melody, rather than a framework), 6 (1956) and 10 (1964) as well as the Violin Concerto no.1 (1947–8). The finale of String Quartet no.2 (1944) is a variation movement beginning with a constant-melody build-up, which makes the remaining variations seem developmental; in fact, all the movements of the quartet are thematically connected and the variation movement alludes to the others. At the level of individual movements, however, it is unclear how to differentiate between cyclic procedures and variation techniques. If we have managed to avoid the temptation to see variations in the thematic transformation of developmental and cyclic forms of 19th-century music, then there is no reason to succumb to it for that of the 20th.

Stockhausen's critique of variation in 1952 began from the premise that musical ordering begins with the note, not the theme or figure, and thus took issue with Webern's identification of the entity to be varied as a ‘Gestalt’:

(iv) The later 20th century.

Musical variation assumes a pre-formed Gestalt that is varied. This Gestalt bears its own fixed ordering of tones. It is complete, not arising as the inevitable outcome of an idea for a specific arrangement of tones … In the ‘variation’, however, it is not a question of the to-be-varied [das Variierende], but rather of the varying [das Variieren]. (H. Weber, 1986, p.43)

Thus the composers involved in inventing total serialism generally eschewed variation, at least at the time; Stockhausen's later Inori for soloist and orchestra (1973–4) is related to variations. Boulez used the term ‘double’ in both Le marteau sans maître (1953–5) and Figures–Doubles–Prismes (1963) and ‘Variation’ for the first piece of Livre pour cordes for string orchestra (1968), the three parts of which he described respectively as ‘based on simple, static elements’, ‘a tangle of decorated lines’ and a combination of the two. But a composer could use the title ‘variation’ for nearly anything. Cage's Variations I–VIII (1958–78) are chance compositions: Variations I is for any number of players and any number and kind of instruments, the score consisting of clear plastic overlays with lines and dots, each player making an individual part; Variations V includes choreography by Merce Cunningham with film and video images. Cage's Hymns and Variations for 12 amplified voices (1979) takes two hymns by William Billings, subjects them to ‘subtraction’ (chance operations reducing their elements) and then follows with a series of ten ‘variations’ in which each has five such ‘subtractions’; the piece lasts nearly half an hour. Cage's Themes and Variations (1982) consisted of chance operations on text alone, designed to be read aloud; as in Hymns and Variations, the variations ‘succeed the theme as four more composite realizations of the original prose-poems’ (Radano, 1982). Electronic works are often only tangentially related to variations: Pierre Henri's Variations pour une porte et un soupir (1963) generates 25 variations from the musique concrète elements of a creaking door, breathing and a musical saw. Noah Creshevsky articulates the principle underlying his Variations (1987) as ‘perpetual variation’ while acknowledging that ‘sectional repetitions are interrelated solely through a few prominent motivic and rhythmic ’.

But the encroachments of the avant garde on the term ‘variation’ did not mean that composers ceased to produce remarkable ‘true’ variations during the 1950s and 60s. Ginastera's Variaciones concertantes for chamber orchestra (1953) combines characteristic and concertante approaches, as well as a new form: an interlude inserted between theme and variations, another interlude between the variations and a theme reprise, and a final variation ‘in modo di Rondo’. Berio's unusual Cinque variazioni for piano (1952–3) finds its theme (by Dallapiccola) in variation 5, only to edit it out in the 1966 revision (shades of Brahms editing Schumann and others out of his op.8). Elliott Carter's Variations for Orchestra (1954–5) invented two new modes of organization, in the first of which the variations progress from vivid contrast to the ‘misterioso’ variation 5, sonorous but without rhythmic propulsion (4 is ‘ritardando molto’, 6 is ‘accelerando molto’), then increase in textural and rhythmic complexity. The work also uses two ideas as ritornellos, the first a quick ascending one that gets slower at each restatement (variations 1, 3, 8, finale), the second a descending line (played by two violins during the theme) that gets faster as the work progresses (variations 2, 8, finale): the ritornellos meet at the end. Milton Babbitt's Semi-Simple Variations for piano (1956), a 36-bar serial piece, spreads its six-pitch theme (ex.21) over six bars, so that variation 1 contains the second hexachord which, as in the Webern Symphony, is a retrograde in tritone transposition. Moreover, the 12 notes are sustained, like a cantus firmus, and the set has been ‘registrally partitioned’ (Barkin, 1967); the composer noted in addition that ‘the sixteenth notes in the first six measures represent all 16 possible partitions of the quarter note in terms of the 16th note unit’. Charles Wuorinen wrote six inventive sets of variations, mostly for solo instruments (piano, flute, violin, cello, bassoon plus harp, and timpani) between 1963 and 1975. Peter Westergaard's serial Variations for Six Players (1963) features a disjunctive Webernian Klangfarbenmelodie: from the same year come Walton's Variations on a Theme by Hindemith (1962–3), which uses a meandering theme from the slow movement of Hindemith's Cello Concerto no.2, a source that generates the variations’ long-breathed melodies against vividly orchestrated faster-moving lines contrasting with more motivically organized variations.

The tradition of variations on a borrowed theme was extended in the 20th century to formal interactions with earlier music. There is perhaps a fruitful connection here with Picasso's 44 variations on Velázquez's Las Meninas (1957), in which the first painting is already a variation. 13 of the next 19 variations focus on the central figure, the Infanta in a white dress, and one can see her face progressively dissociating in 4–11. The vista broadens before a ‘theme reprise’ in 22, which inaugurates a series of four variations on the entire picture. The rest of the variations concern the secondary figures, with the Infanta returning only as part of a larger ensemble (36–8). This engagement with an earlier ‘text’ that creates varied ‘views’, and different perspectives of a model may be at work in Paul Lansky's Six Fantasies on a Poem by Thomas Campion (1978–9), an electronic piece in which each fantasy uses the text of the poem (‘Rose cheekt Lawra, come’) read in its entirety to very different effect; the whole has an extraordinary overall shape and impact. But Lukas Foss's Baroque Variations (1967), which the composer called ‘dreams about’ rather than ‘variations on’, uses three different pieces, each given in its entirety but realized in an entirely different way, without the necessary repetition and, in the case of no.3, with only a set of instructions for the performer. The latter situation is made especially vivid in Brian Eno's Variations on the Canon in D by Pachelbel (1975), which gives the players instructions on how to use selected parts of the (unplayed) theme so that each of the three variations unfolds as a process, a ‘self-regulating and self-generating system’. In the first (‘Fullness of Wind’), each player's tempo is decreased, with the rate of decrease governed by the instrument's register (bass = slow). In some respects this resembles Arvo Pärt's Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten (1977–80), in which all the strings inexorably descend the A minor scale with the upper strings moving much faster than the lower, and each progressively slowing. Rochberg's variations on Pachelbel's canon in his Quartet no.6 (1978), by contrast, maintain the structure of the theme even while moving far away from and then back towards its style. An entirely different approach to the historical sense of ‘Variations on …’ animates Mauricio Kagel's Variationen ohne Fuge for orchestra (1971–2), a peculiar hommage à Brahms that keeps the phrase structure and rhythm of the Handel Variations while changing their harmony and ordering (2, 19, 21, 3 etc.); the effect is rather like a smear of sound over a distanced but recognizable original. As in Alexander Goehr's Variations on the Sarabande from Bach's English Suite in E minor (a work with which it has nothing else in common), the Baroque theme appears only at the end. Kagel includes ad libitum parts for two actors to impersonate a silent Handel and a monologist Brahms. Other modes of calling up the past are rendered in Rochberg's Partita-Variations (1976), with its mix of 18th- to 20th-century styles in different characteristic variations; the theme, a ballade, is in the centre of the set.

The idea of repetition in combination with gradual change makes problematic the relationship between the minimalist musical style of the 1970s and 80s and variations. Very tiny ostinatos produce the feeling of pulsations rather than structures to be varied. Some pieces in a minimalist style or aesthetic do reveal a more structural approach, however, especially when governed by a text, as in Steve Reich's Tehillim (1981), which sets four psalms. The first presents strophic variations at each text repetition, with canons, elaborate vocal overlapping and interplay and increasing complexity, then dwells almost developmentally on two- or three-line segments, finally returning to the entire text in a set of recapitulatory variations. The last psalm uses incantatory canonic repetitions within each stanza while retaining the strophic form until the coda. Reich's Variations for Winds, Strings and Keyboards (1979) makes three increasingly complex statements of a long harmonic progression into a stretched chaconne.

Indeed, contemporary progeny not only of variations but of its older forms continue to exert fascination, as they did in the early 20th century. Mario Davidovsky's Chacona for violin, cello and piano (1971) is based on a regularly recurring pattern of durations; George Edwards's Draconian Measures (1976) and Czeched Swing (1994) maintain an element of harmonic structure in each variation, while in the latter, as in jazz, the bars may be variable in length but every variation has the same number of bars. Movements in larger works also adopt an updated ‘constant-harmony’ chaconne type: the slow movement of Tippett's Piano Sonata no.3 (1972–3) varies 17 chords; in John Harbison's Oboe Concerto (1991), the Passacaglia middle movement maintains a sarabande-like tread and harmonic structural elements especially in the tutti sections, while the solo sections are either connected to the substructure or more freely rhapsodic; in Thomas Adès's Concerto conciso for piano and orchestra (1997), a seven-bar chordal theme underlies the ciaconetta slow movement. Other composers interested in older forms of repetition include Birtwistle (‘varied ostinato’), Maxwell Davies (‘doubles’, a far cry from Theme and Variations: Mavis in Las Vegas, 1997), Schnittke (passacaglia) and Kernis (‘ground’). Ellen Zwilich's Prologue and Variations (1984) uses ‘prologue’ in place of ‘theme’ (ex.22a), in the sense of the introduction to the ‘characters’ in a drama, here represented by different musical motifs and textures over 69 bars of Andante misterioso; the four variations develop now one, now another of these aspects without maintaining a structural resemblance (102, 26, 86, 42 bars respectively, at Allegro (ex.22b), Lento, Presto, Tempo I). A look at these and other remarks composers make about their variations suggests a self-consciousness about claiming ‘true’ variation status, especially when the structure of the theme is changed, even when they use the title. This reveals the tenacity of the model both as a sense of limitation and as a testing-stone for the compositional imagination.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

a general

GerberNL

Grove6 (K. von Fischer and P. Griffith)

MGG1 (K. von Fischer)

MGG2 (K. von Fischer/S. Drees)

H. Viecenz: ‘Über die allgemeinen Grundlagen der Variation-Kunst, mit besonderer Berücksichtigung Mozarts’, Mozart Jb 1924, 185–232

R.U. Nelson: The Technique of Variation: a Study of the Instrumental Variation from Antonio de Cabezón to Max Reger (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1948/R)

J. Müller-Blattau: Gestaltung-Umgestaltung: Studien zur Geschichte der musikalischen Variation (Stuttgart, 1950)

K. von Fischer: Die Variation, Mw, xi (1956; Eng. trans., 1962)

N. Frye: ‘Wallace Stevens and the Variation Form’, Literary Theory and Structure: Essays in Honor of William K. Wimsatt, ed. F. Brady, J. Palmer and M. Price (New Haven, CT, 1973), 395–414

H. Weber: ‘Varietas, variatio / Variation, Variante’ (1986), HMT

H.R. Picard: ‘Die Variation als kompositorisches Prinzip in der Literatur’, Musik und Literatur: komparatistische Studien zur Strukturverwandtschaft, ed. A. Gier and G.W. Gruber (Frankfurt, 1995, 2/1997), 35–60

D. Hörnel: ‘A Multi-Scale Neural-Network Model for Learning and Reproducing Chorale Variations’, Melodic Similarity: Concepts, Procedures, and Applications, ed. W.B. Hewlett and E. Selfridge-Field (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1998), 141–57

b to 1600

D. Ortiz: Trattado de glosas (Rome, 1553/R)

C. van den Borren: Les origines de la musique de clavier en Angleterre (Brussels, 1912; Eng. trans., 1914, as The Sources of Keyboard Music in England)

I. Horsley: ‘Improvised Embellishments in the Performance of Renaissance Polyphonic Music’, JAMS, iv (1951), 3–19

K.J. Levy: ‘New Material on the Early Motet in England’, JAMS, iv (1951), 221–39 [incl. transcr. of ‘Thomas gemma Canturiae’, showing variations]

J. Ward: ‘The “Dolfull Domps”’, JAMS, iv (1951), 111–21

M. Reimann: ‘Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte des Double: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Variation’, Mf, v (1952), 317–32; vi (1953), 97–111

E. Lowinsky: ‘English Organ Music of the Renaissance’, MQ, xxxix (1953), 373–95, 528–53

I. Horsley: ‘The 16th-Century Variation: a New Historical Survey’, JAMS, xii (1959), 118–32

I. Horsley: ‘The Sixteenth-Century Variation and Baroque Counterpoint’, MD, xiv (1960), 159–65

T. Messenger: ‘Texture and Form in Taverner’s “Western Wind” Mass’, JAMS, xxii (1969), 504–8

N. Davidson: ‘The “Western Wind” Masses’, MQ, lvii (1971), 427–43

W. Dömling: ‘Isorhythmie und Variation: über Kompositionstechniken in der Messe Guillaume de Machauts’, AMw, xxviii (1971), 24–32

W. Apel: The History of Keyboard Music to 1700 (Bloomington, IN, 1972)

W. Dalglish: ‘The Use of Variation in Early Polyphony’, MD, xxvi (1972), 37–51

W. Kirkendale: L’aria di Fiorenza, id est Il ballo del Gran Duca (Florence, 1972)

H.M. Brown: Embellishing Sixteenth-Century Music (London, 1976)

V. Gutmann: ‘Die Diminutionen über “Susanne un jour” von Bartolomeo de Selma y Salaverde (1638): zur Entstehung von improvisierten Bassvariation’, Basler Jb für historische Musikpraxis 1983, 184–91

V. Gutmann: ‘Improvisation und Instrumentale Komposition: zu drei Bearbeitung der Chanson “Doulce memoire”’, Alte Musik: Praxis und Reflexion, ed. P. Reidemeister and V. Gutmann (Winterthur, 1983), 177–86

c baroque

C. Simpson: The Division-Violist, or An Introduction to the Playing upon a Ground (London, 1659/R, rev. 2/1665/R)

F.E. Niedt: Handleitung zur Variation (Hamburg, 1706, 2/1721/R; Eng. trans., 1989)

L. Propper: Der Basso ostinato als technisches und formbildendes Prinzip (Hildburghausen, 1926)

R. Litterscheid: Zur Geschichte des Basso ostinato (Dortmund, 1928)

L. Nowak: Grundzüge einer Geschichte des Basso ostinato in der abendländischen Musik (Vienna, 1932)

O. Gombosi: ‘Italia, patria del basso ostinato’, RaM, vii (1934), 14–25

L. Walther: Die Ostinatotechnik in den Chaconne- und Ariaformen des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts (Würzburg, 1940)

D.F. Tovey: ‘Aria with Thirty Variations’, Essays in Musical Analysis: Chamber Music, ed. H.J. Foss (London, 1944/R), 28–75

W. Osthoff: ‘Le forme più antiche della passacaglia nella musica italiana’, Musiche popolari mediterranee: Convegno dei bibliotecari musicali: Palermo 1954, 275–88

H.-P. Schmitz: Die Kunst der Verzierung im 18. Jahrhundert (Kassel, 1955, 4/1983)

J. Müller-Blattau: ‘Bachs Goldberg-Variationen’, AMw, xvi (1959), 207–19

K. von Fischer: ‘Zur Entstehungsgeschichte der Orgelchoralvariation’, Festschrift Friedrich Blume, ed. A.A. Abert and W. Pfannkuch (Kassel, 1963), 137–45

M. Schuler: ‘Zur Frühgeschichte der Passacaglia’, Mf, xvi (1963), 121–6

R. Hudson: ‘The Ripresa, the Ritornello, and the Passacaglia’, JAMS, xxiv (1971), 364–94

W. Breig: ‘Bachs Goldberg-Variationen als zyklisches Werk’, AMw, xxxii (1975), 243–65

H.-J. Schulze: ‘Melodiezitate und Mehrtextigkeit in der Bauernkantate und in der Goldbergvariationen’, BJb 1976, 58–72

C. Wolff: ‘Bach’s “Handexemplar” of the Goldberg Variations: a New Source’, JAMS, xxix (1976), 224–41

F.W. Riedel: ‘Die zyklische Fugen-Komposition von Froberger bis Albrechtsberger’, Die süddeutsch-österreichische Orgelmusik im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert: Innsbruck 1979, 154–67

G. Zacher: ‘Canonische Veränderungen, BWV 769 und 769a’, Johann Sebastian Bach: das spekulative Spätwerk, Musik-Konzepte, no.17 (1981), 3–19

S. Leopold: Claudio Monteverdi und seine Zeit (Laaber, 1982, 2/1993; Eng. trans., 1991, as Monteverdi: Music in Transition) [chap. on ‘Ostinato and other Bass Models’]

D. Schulenberg: ‘Composition as Variation: Inquiries into the Compositional Procedures of the Bach Circle of Composers’, CMc, no.33 (1982), 57–87

D. Humphreys: ‘More on the Cosmological Allegory in Bach’s Goldberg Variations’, Soundings [UK: Cardiff], xii (1984–5), 25–45

R. Dammann: Johann Sebastian Bachs ‘Goldberg-Variationen’ (Mainz, 1986)

A. Habert: ‘Wege durch die Division Flute: zur Variationspraxis in der englischen Kunst- und Volksmusik des 17. Jahrhunderts’, Basler Jb für historische Musikpraxis 1987, 89–138

R. Hill: ‘Stylanalyse und Überlieferungsproblematik: das Variationssuiten-Repertoire J.A. Reinckens’, Dietrich Buxtehude und die europäische Musik seiner Zeit: Lübeck 1987, 204–14

J. Ladewig: ‘The Origins of Frescobaldi’s Variation Canzonas Reappraised’, Frescobaldi Studies, ed. A. Silbiger (Durham, NC, 1987), 269–83

A. Street: ‘The Rhetorico-Musical Structure of the “Goldberg” Variations: Bach’s “Clavier-Übung” IV and the “Institutio oratoria” of Quintilian’, MAn, vi (1987), 89–131

M. Ossi: ‘“L’armonia raddoppiata”: on Claudio Monteverdi’s “Zefiro torna”, Heinrich Schütz’s “Es steh Gott auf”, and other Early Seventeenth-Century Ciaccone’, Studi musicali, xvii (1988), 225–54

F.W. Riedel: ‘Johann Caspar Ferdinand Fischers Komposition für Tasteninstrumente in ihrer Bedeutung für die Stilentwicklung am Wiener Hof’, J.C.F. Fischer in seiner Zeit: Rastatt 1988, 45–54

J. Butt: ‘Improvised Vocal Ornamentation and German Baroque Compositional Theory: an Approach to “Historical” Performance Practice’, JRMA, cxvi (1991), 41–62

R. Klakowich: ‘“Scocca pur”: Genesis of an English Ground’, JRMA, cxvi (1991), 63–77

M. Esses: Dance and Instrumental Diferencias in Spain during the 17th and Early 18th Centuries (Stuyvesant, NY, 1992–4)

T. Mäkelä: ‘Die geheime Logik der Figuren: von der Idiomatik zur spielerischen Redundanz’, Musiktheorie, viii (1993), 217–40 [on Bach and Froberger]

Y. Kobayashi: ‘The Variation Principle in Bach’s Passacaglia in C minor, BWV 582’, Bach Studies 2, ed. D.R. Melamed (Cambridge, 1995), 62–9

D. Schulenberg: ‘Composition and Improvisation in the School of J.S. Bach’, Bach Perspectives, i (1995), 1–42

A. Silbiger, ed.: Keyboard Music Before 1700 (New York, 1995)

R.E. Seletsky: ‘18th-Century Variations for Corelli’s Sonatas’, EMc, xxiv (1996), 119–30

N. Zaslaw: ‘Ornaments for Corelli’s Violin Sonatas, op.5’, EMc, xxiv (1996), 95–115

N. Cook: ‘At the Borders of Musical Identity: Schenker, Corelli, and the Graces’, MAn, xviii (1999), 179–233

D.R. Melamed: ‘Constructing Johann Christoph Bach (1642–1703)’, ML, lxxx (1999), 345–65

d classical

G.J. Vogler: Verbesserung der Forkel’schen Veränderungen über das englische Volkslied ‘God Save the King’ (Frankfurt, 1793)

P. Mies: ‘W.A. Mozarts Variation-Werke und ihre Formungen’, AMf, ii (1937), 466–95

K. von Fischer: ‘Eroica-Variationen op.35 and Eroica-Finale’, SMz, lxxxix (1949), 282–6

K. von Fischer: ‘C.Ph.E. Bachs Variationenwerke’, RBM, vi (1952), 190–218

P. Mies: ‘Ludwig van Beethoven’s Werke über seinen Kontretanz in Es-Dur’, BeJb 1953–4, 80–102

E. Beuermann: ‘Die Reprisensonaten Carl Philipp Emanuel Bachs’, AMw, xiii (1956), 168–79

L. Misch: ‘Fugue and Fugato in Beethoven’s Variation Form’, MQ, xlii (1956), 14–27

K. von Fischer: ‘Zur Theorie der Variation im 18. und beginnenden 19. Jahrhundert’, Festschrift Joseph Schmidt-Görg, ed. D. Weise (Bonn, 1957), 117–30

L. Misch: ‘Beethoven’s “Variierte Themen” op.105 und op.107’, BeJb 1959–60, 102–42

K. von Fischer: ‘Mozarts Klaviervariationen’, Hans Albrecht in Memoriam, ed. W. Brennecke and H. Haase (Kassel, 1962), 168–73

K. Geiringer: ‘The Structure of Beethoven’s Diabelli-Variations’, MQ, l (1964), 496–503

H. Eibner: ‘Die authentische Klavierfassung von Haydns Variationen über “Gott erhalte”’, Haydn Yearbook 1970, 281–99 [with Eng. summary, 300–03]

K. von Fischer: ‘Arietta variata’, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Music: a Tribute to Karl Geiringer, ed. H.C.R. Landon and R.E. Chapman (New York and London, 1970), 224–35

R. Flotzinger: ‘Die barocke Doppelgerüst-Technik im Variationsschaffen Beethovens’, Beethoven Studien, ed. E. Schenk (Vienna, 1970), 159–94

S. Kunze: ‘Die “wirklich gantz neue Manier” in Beethovens Eroica-Variationen op.35’, AMw, xxix (1972), 124–49

A. Batta and S. Kovács: ‘Typbildung und Grossform in Beethovens frühen Klaviervariationen’, SMH, xx (1978), 125–56

J. Smiles: ‘Directions for Improvised Ornamentation in Italian Method Books of the Late Eighteenth Century’, JAMS, xxxi (1978), 495–509

G. Scholz: ‘Der dialektische Prozess in Haydns Doppelvariationen’, Musicologica Austriaca, no.2 (1979), 97–107

F. Salzer: ‘The Variation Movement from Mozart’s Divertimento K. 563’, Music Forum, v (1980), 257–315

M. Zenck: ‘Rezeption von Geschichte in Beethoven’s “Diabelli-Variationen”’, AMw, xxxvii (1980), 61–75

W. Kinderman: ‘The Evolution and Structure of Beethoven’s “Diabelli” Variations’, JAMS, xxxv (1982), 306–28

A. Münster: Studien zu Beethovens Diabelli-Variationen (Munich, 1982)

C. Reynolds: ‘Beethoven’s Sketches for the Variations in E, op.35’, Beethoven Studies 3, ed. A. Tyson (Cambridge, 1982), 47–84

E. Sisman: ‘Small and Expanded Forms: Koch’s Model and Haydn’s Music’, MQ, lxviii (1982), 444–75

D. Berg: ‘C.P.E. Bach’s “Variations” and “Embellishments” for his Keyboard Sonatas’, JM, ii (1983), 151–73

D.R.B. Kimbell: ‘Variation Form in the Piano Concertos of Mozart’, MR, xliv (1983), 95–103

S. Brandenburg and M. Staehelin: ‘Die “erste Fassung” von Beethovens Righini-Variationen’, Festschrift Albi Rosenthal, ed. R. Elvers (Tutzing, 1984), 43–66

E. Derr: ‘Beethoven’s Long-Term Memory of C.P.E. Bach’s Rondo in E flat, W. 61/1 (1787), Manifest in the Variations in E Flat for Piano, Opus 35 (1802)’, MQ, lxx (1984), 45–76

W. Kinderman: ‘Tonality and Form in the Variation Movements of Beethoven’s Late Quartets’, Beiträge zu Beethovens Kammermusik: Bonn 1984, 135–51

H.-W. Küthen: ‘Beethoven’s “wirklich gantz neue manier”: eine Persiflage’, Beiträge zu Beethoven’s Kammermusik: Bonn 1984, 216–24

C. Reynolds: ‘Ends and Means in the Second Finale to Beethoven’s op.30, no.1’, Beethoven Essays: Studies in Honor of Elliot Forbes, ed. L. Lockwood and P. Benjamin (Cambridge, MA, 1984), 127–45

M. Zenck: ‘“Bach, der Progressive”: Die “Goldberg-Variationen” in der Perspektive von Beethoven’s “Diabelli-Variationen”’, Johann Sebastian Bach: Goldberg-Variationen, Musik-Konzepte, no.42 (1985), 29–92

W. Kinderman: Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations (Oxford, 1987)

E. Helm: ‘C.P.E. Bach and the Great Chain of Variation’, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach und die europäische Musikkultur: Hamburg 1988, 223–8

P. van Reijen: Vergleichende Studien zur Klaviervariationstechnik von Mozart und seinen Zeitgenossen (Buren, 1988)

H. Serwer: ‘C.P.E. Bach, J.C.F. Rellstab, and the Sonatas with Varied Reprises’, C.P.E. Bach Studies, ed. S. Clark (Oxford, 1988), 233–43

E. Cavett-Dunsby: Mozart’s Variations Reconsidered: Four Case Studies (K. 613, K. 501, and the finales of K.421/417b, and K. 491) (New York, 1989)

N. Marston: ‘Analysing Variations: the Finale of Beethoven’s String Quartet op.74’, MAn, viii (1989), 303–24

A. Brendel: ‘Must Classical Music be Entirely Serious? 2: Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations’, Music Sounded Out (London, 1990), 37–53

K. Komlós: ‘“Veränderte Reprise”: Aspects of an Idea’, MR, li (1990), 262–7

H. Lühning: ‘Der Variationensatz aus dem c-Moll-Trio op.1 Nr.3’, Beethovens Klaviertrios: Munich 1990, 45–64

E. Sisman: ‘Tradition and Transformation in the Alternating Variations of Haydn and Beethoven’, AcM, lxii (1990), 152–82

K. Komlós: ‘“Ich praeludirte und spielte Variazionen”: Mozart the Fortepianist’, Perspectives on Mozart Performance, ed. R.L. Todd and P. Williams (Cambridge, 1991), 27–54

W. Meredith: ‘Forming the New from the Old: Beethoven’s Use of Variation in the Fifth Symphony’, Beethoven’s Compositional Process, ed. W. Kinderman (Lincoln, NE, 1991), 102–21

S.M. Whiting: To the ‘New Manner’ Born: a Study of Beethoven’s Early Variations (diss., U. of Illinois, Urbana, 1991)

L. Plantinga and G.P. Johnson: ‘Haydn’s “Andante con variazioni”: Compositional Process, Text, and Genre’, The Creative Process, ed. R. Broude (New York, 1992), 129–67

M.H. Schmid: ‘Variation oder Rondo? zu Mozarts Wiener Finale KV 382 des Klavierkonzerts KV 175’, Mozart Studien, i (1992), 59–80

E. Sisman: Haydn and the Classical Variation (Cambridge, MA, 1993) [incl. discussion of the rhetoric of variation]

R.L. Marshall, ed.: Eighteenth-Century Keyboard Music (New York, 1994)

G. Stanley: ‘The “wirklich gantz neue Manier” and the Path to it: Beethoven’s Variations for Piano, 1783–1802’, Beethoven Forum, iii (1994), 53–79

M. Solomon: ‘Beethoven’s “Diabelli” Variations: the End of a Beginning’, Beethoven Forum, vii (1999), 137–51

e 19th century

C. Czerny: Fantasie-Schule, i: Systematische Anleitung zum Fantasieren auf dem Pianoforte, op.200 (Vienna, 1829/R; Eng. trans., 1983)

V. Luithlen: ‘Studie zu Johannes Brahms’ Werken in Variationenform’, SMw, xiv (1927), 286–320

M. Friedland: Zeitstil und Persönlichkeitsstil in den Variationenwerken der musikalischen Romantik: zur Geistesgeschichte und Schaffenspsychologie der Romantik (Leipzig, 1930)

W. Schwarz: Robert Schumann und die Variation, mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Klavier-Werke (Kassel, 1939)

M.J.E. Brown: Schubert’s Variations (London, 1954)

B. Hansen: Variationen und Varianten in den musikalischen Werken Franz Liszts (Hamburg, 1959)

J. Moore: ‘An Approach to Elgar’s “Enigma”’, MR, xx (1959), 38–44

H. Hirsch: Rhythmisch-metrische Untersuchungen zur Variationstechnik bei Johannes Brahms (Freiburg, 1963)

G. Puchelt: Variationen für Klavier im 19. Jahrhundert (Darmstadt, 1973)

J. Brahms: Variations on a Theme of Haydn, ed. D.M. McCorkle (New York, 1976) [with analytical essays and book excerpts]

N.B. Reich: ‘Liszt’s Variations on the March from Rossini’s “Siège de Corinthe”’, FAM, xxiii (1976), 102–6

C. Floros: Brahms und Bruckner: Studien zur musikalischen Exegetik (Wiesbaden, 1980)

C.S. Becker: ‘A New Look at Schumann’s Impromptus’, MQ, lxvii (1981), 568–86

J. Dunsby: Structural Ambiguity in Brahms: Analytical Approaches to Four Works (Ann Arbor, 1981) [incl. op.24]

O. Neighbour: ‘Brahms and Schumann: Two Opus Nines and Beyond’, 19CM, vii (1983–4), 266–70

H. Danuser: ‘Aspekte einer Hommage-Komposition: zu Brahms’ Schumann-Variationen Op.9’, Brahms Analysen, ed. F. Krummacher and W. Steinbeck (Kassel, 1984), 91–106

B. Turchin: ‘Robert Schumann’s Song Cycles: the Cycle within the Song’, 19CM, viii (1984–5), 231–44

G. Phipps: ‘The Logic of Tonality in Strauss’s Don Quixote: a Schoenbergian Evaluation’, 19CM, ix (1985–6), 189–205

M. Struck: ‘Dialog über die Variation präzisiert: Joseph Joachims “Variationen über ein irisches Elfenlied” und Johannes Brahms’ “Variationenpaar” op.21 im Licht der gemeinsamen gattungstheoretischen Diskussion’, Musikkulturgeschichte: Festschrift für Constantin Floros, ed. P. Petersen (Wiesbaden, 1990), 105–54

E. Sisman: ‘Brahms and the Variation Canon’, 19CM, xiv (1990–91), 132–53

P. Cook: ‘Vincent d’Indy’s Istar’, MR, lii (1991), 237–45

J. Brügge: ‘“Mozartismen” in Peter I. Tschaikowsky’s Rokoko-Variationen op.33’, Acta Mozartiana, xlv (1998), 1–9

J. Rushton: Elgar: Enigma Variations (Cambridge, 1999)

3. Vaudeville in the 17th and 18th centuries.

f 20th century

W. Hymanson: ‘Hindemith’s Variations: a Comparison of Early and Recent Works’, MR, xiii (1952), 20–33

K. Westphal: ‘Der Ostinato in der neuen Musik’, Melos, xx (1953), 108–10

H.L. Schilling: ‘Hindemiths Passacagliathema in den beiden Marienleben’, AMw, xi (1954), 65–70

E. Payne: ‘Theme and Variation in Modern Music’, MR, xix (1958), 112–24

L. Stein: ‘The Passacaglia in the Twentieth Century’, ML, xl (1959), 150–53

A. Schoenberg: ‘The Orchestral Variations, op.31’, The Score, no.27 (1960), 27–40

R.U. Nelson: ‘Stravinsky’s Concept of Variation’, MQ, xlviii (1962), 327–39

R.U. Nelson: ‘Schoenberg’s Variation Seminar’, MQ, l (1964), 141–64

P.S. Odegard: The Variation Sets of Arnold Schoenberg (diss., U. of California, Berkeley, 1964)

C. Spies: ‘Notes on Stravinsky’s Variations’, PNM, iii/1 (1964–5), 62–74

P.S. Odegard: ‘Schoenberg’s Variations: an Addendum’, MR, xxvii (1966), 102–21

E. Barkin: ‘A Simple Approach to Milton Babbitt’s “Semi-Simple Variations”’, MR, xxviii (1967), 316–22

C. Dahlhaus: Arnold Schoenberg: Variationen für Orchester, op.31 (Munich, 1968)

R.U. Nelson: ‘Webern’s Path to Serial Variation’, PNM, vii/2 (1968–9), 73–93

H.W. Hitchcock: ‘A Footnote on Webern’s Variations’, PNM, viii/2 (1969–70), 123–6

M. Starr: ‘Webern’s Palindrome’, PNM, viii/2 (1969–70), 127–42

R.U. Nelson: ‘Form and Fancy in the Variations of Berg’, MR, xxxi (1970), 54–69

K. Bailey: ‘The Evolution of Variation Form in the Music of Webern’, CMc, no.16 (1973), 55–70

C. Wintle: ‘Milton Babbitt’s Semi-Simple Variations’, PNM, xiv/2–xv/1 (1976), 111–55 [Babbitt issue]

D.M. Green: ‘Cantus Firmus Techniques in the Concertos and Operas of Alban Berg’, Alban Berg: Vienna 1980, 56–67

F. Michael: ‘Anmerkungen zu Bartóks Variationstechnik’, ÖMz, xxxvi (1981), 303–10

L. Somfai: ‘Strategies of Variation in the Second Movement of Bartók’s Violin Concerto’, The Garland Library of the History of Western Music, x: Twentieth Century Music, ed. E. Rosand (New York, 1985), 290–332

R. Wason: ‘Tonality and Atonality in Frederic Rzewski’s Variations on “The People United Will Never be Defeated”’, PNM, xxvi/2 (1988), 108–43

G. Weiss-Aigner: ‘Der Variationssatz in Regers Streichquartett A-Dur’, Augsburger Jb für Musikwissenschaft, v (1988), 103–23

M.A. Schaffer: The Use of Variation Principle in the Works of Max Reger (diss., Boston U., 1989)

G. Weiss-Aigner: Max Reger: Mozart-Variationen op.132 (Munich, 1989)

D. Burge: Twentieth-Century Piano Music (New York and Toronto, 1990)

C. Dale: ‘Schoenberg’s Concept of Variation Form: a Paradigmatic Analysis of Litanei from the Second String Quartet, op.10’, JRMA, cxviii (1993), 94–120

G. Phipps: ‘Harmony as a Determinant of Structure in Webern’s Variations for Orchestra’, Music Theory and the Exploration of the Past, ed. C. Hatch and D.W. Bernstein (Chicago, 1993), 473–504

C. Nolan: ‘Structural Levels and Twelve-Tone Music: a Revisionist Analysis of the Second Movement of Webern’s “Piano Variations” op.27’, JMT, xxxix (1995), 47–76

W. Budday: ‘Zur Kompositionstechnik in A. Webern’s Klaviervariationen op.27’, Mf, l (1997), 182–205

E. Haimo: ‘Developing Variation and Schoenberg’s Twelve-Note Music’, MAn, xvi (1997), 349–65

Varischino [Varischini], Giovanni

(fl Venice, 1680–92). Italian composer. He composed two operas for Venice: L’Odoacre (S Angelo, 1680, libretto by N. Bonis; MS score in I-Vnm) and L’amante fortunato per forza (S Angelo, 1684–5, libretto by P. d’Averara; music lost). They are his only known works apart from six manuscript cantatas (in A-Wn) which may themselves be excerpts from operas. The libretto of L’Odoacre describes him as a nephew and pupil of Giovanni Legrenzi. Varischino published two of his uncle’s works in 1691 and 1692 in response to prevision of the latter’s will. The score of L’Odoacre shows the hand of a competent and at times graceful composer with no great fund of imagination. Most arias are written-out da capos with extended reprise, typical in form of the period c1675–85. A trumpet joins the string ensemble several times, as in the strikingly imitative opening symphony.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

EitnerQ

FétisB

H.C. Wolff: Die venezianische Oper in der zweiten Hälfte des 17. Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 1937/R)

THOMAS WALKER/R

Varlamov, Aleksandr Yegorovich

(b Moscow, 15/27 Nov 1801; d St Petersburg, 15/27 Oct 1848). Russian composer, singer and teacher of Moldavian descent. He showed an early aptitude for music, and in his youth taught himself to play the violin, cello, piano and guitar. In 1811 he was sent to St Petersburg, where he was enrolled as a chorister in the court chapel. At this time the director of the choir was Bortnyansky, who was so impressed by Varlamov’s musical ability that he took him on as a pupil. In 1817 he graduated to the adult choir, but he left in 1818 after his voice had broken. The following year he went to The Hague as director of the choir in the Russian ambassadorial chapel, and was attached to the court in Brussels of Princess Anna Pavlovna, the Russian wife of Prince William of Orange. He returned to Russia in 1823 and later the same year took up an appointment as singing teacher in the St Petersburg theatre school, where he remained until 1826. In 1829 he taught the young solo singers in the court chapel choir, but he resigned at the end of 1831 to take up, in January 1832, the post which was to occupy him for the next 12 years, that of Kapellmeister of the imperial theatres in Moscow. It was in this period that Varlamov flourished as a composer, producing a vast number of songs, two ballets, piano pieces and incidental music to 17 plays. Nine of his songs were published in the Muzïkal'nïy al'bom na 1833 god (‘Album of Music for 1833’), and thereafter his works enjoyed widespread popularity and appeared in several contemporary journals.

Some of his songs, like Krasnïy sarafan (‘The Red Sarafan’), a setting of Tsïganov’s poem, are written in a folk idiom; many more are conceived in the romantic, sentimental vein popular at this time. Varlamov composed 138 solo songs, besides those written for plays, with texts from numerous Russian poets, including Lermontov, Fet, Del'vig, Kolt'sov, Tsïganov and F.N. Glinka. He also wrote 31 songs for vocal ensembles, and made arrangements of over 50 folk melodies, a collection of which was published under the title Russkiy pevets (‘The Russian singer’, Moscow, 1848). The first plays for which Varlamov composed incidental music were Shakhovskoy’s Roslavlev (1832) and Dvumuzhnitsa (‘The Woman with two Husbands’, 1833). In March 1834 the first volume of Varlamov’s music journal Eolova arfa (‘Aeolian Harp’) was published in Moscow; this ran for ten issues, and contained some 40 pieces by Varlamov and other composers. He also produced a three-part educational book, Polnaya shkola peniya (‘Complete school of singing’, Moscow, 1840, 2/1950). Varlamov left his theatrical post in December 1843, and in 1845 moved to St Petersburg. Here his hopes of gaining an appointment in the court chapel were not realized. His health deteriorated rapidly and he spent the final years of his life giving private singing lessons, intermittently performing in concerts and writing songs.

His complete works comprising 223 pieces were published posthumously in 12 volumes (Polnoye sobraniye sochineniy, ed. F.T. Stellovsky, St Petersburg, 1861–4); a further complete edition, comprising 225 pieces, was published in 1886. An extensive bibliography and list of works is contained in Listova.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

IRMO

S.K. Bulich: ‘A.E. Varlamov’, RMG, viii (1901), 1110–20, 1142–51, 1178–86, 1238–44

Kh. Satin: ‘Aleksandr Yegorovich Varlamov’, SovM (1948), no.8, pp.36–42

E. Tinyanova: ‘Na zare russkogo romansovogo tvorchestva’ [The dawn of Russian songwriting], SovM (1948), no.8, pp.43–7

N.A. Listova: Aleksandr Varlamov (Moscow, 1968)

B.L. Vol'man: Russkiye notnïye izdaniya XIX-nachala XX veka [Russian music publishing in the 19th and early 20th centuries] (Leningrad, 1970)

M. Ovcinnikov: Tvortsï russkogo romansa [Creators of the Russian romance] (Moscow, 1992)

GEOFFREY NORRIS

Varna.

City in Bulgaria. It is the largest Bulgarian port and resort city on the Black Sea coast. Once the ancient Greek colony of Odessos, Varna is the centre of operatic activity in north-eastern Bulgaria. The first performances of opera scenes date from the founding of a choir at St Michael’s Church in 1893 and of the Gusla Music Society in 1899. In 1920, 1928 and 1930 attempts were made to organize a permanent theatre; from the period 1926–37 the first Bulgarian musical festivals began to be organized.

After the socialist revolution in 1944, Varna became the home of the Varnensko Lyato (Varna Summer), an international music festival. A symphony orchestra was founded in 1946, and the Varnenska Narodna Opera (Varna National Opera) in 1947, housed in the National Theatre. The first opera performance was Smetana’s The Bartered Bride. The repertory is predominantly Italian and German, with special emphasis on Mozart and modern European and Bulgarian music (especially that of Parashkev Hadjiev). Operas staged for the first time in Bulgaria include Così fan tutte, Britten’s Albert Herring and his version of The Beggar’s Opera, Il turco in Italia and Prokofiev’s Betrothal in a Monastery. The regular season starts in September and ends in August, with between four and eight new productions a year. The theatre, built by N. Lazarov in 1932 in a mainly classical style, holds about 600; it was renovated during the 1980s and reopened with Die Zauberflöte (1989). The company presents four opera performances weekly in addition to those staged as part of the summer festival.

MAGDALENA MANOLOVA

Várnai, Péter P(ál)

(b Budapest, 10 July 1922; d Budapest, 31 Jan 1992). Hungarian musicologist and conductor. He studied composition under Szervánszky and conducting under Ferencsik at the Budapest Conservatory, and from 1945 to 1950 worked at Hungarian Radio. After some years as a conductor at Szeged (1951) and as a theatre conductor (1952–4) he turned to music criticism and musicology, and was an editor of Editio Musica, Budapest (1956–82). His research was initially focussed on Hungarian music: in 1952 he found, among others, scores of the first Hungarian Singspiel with extant music, Mátray’s Cserni György. Opera, especially that of Verdi, was his main interest. He was a permanent member of the Istituto di Studi Verdiani of Parma, and gave papers at many Verdi conferences. In his articles he demonstrated how different means of expression serve dramatic characterization. He was also an authority on 20th-century Hungarian composers and wrote biographies of Béla Tardos (1966), Rudolf Maros (1967) and the singers Mihály Székely (1967) and Endre Rösler (1969).

WRITINGS

‘Egy magyar muzsikus a reformkorban: Mátray Gábor élete és munkássága a szabadságharcig’ [A Hungarian musician in the reform age: life and work of Mátray, 1797–1846], Zenetudományi tanulmányok, ii (1954), 231–321 [with Eng. summary, 553–5]

‘Mátray Gábor élete és munkássága a szabadságharctól haláláig’ [Life and work of Mátray after the War of Independence, 1846–75], Zenetudományi tanulmányok, iv (1955), 163–209 [with Eng. and Ger. summaries]

with M. Káldor: Goldmark Károly élete és müvészete (Budapest, 1956)

A lengyel zene története [History of Polish music] (Budapest, 1959)

Heinrich Schütz (Budapest, 1959)

‘Leonora e Don Alvaro’, Verdi: Bollettino dell’Istituto di studi verdiani, ii (1961–6), 1695–710 [also in Eng., Ger. and Hung.]; see also Magyar zene, viii (1967), 274 only

‘Verdi in Ungheria’, Verdi: Bollettino dell’Istituto di studi verdiani, ii (1961–6), 988–1030; iii (1969–73), 287–332, 1083–130 [also in Eng., Ger. and Hung.]; pubd separately as Verdi Magyarországon (Budapest, 1975)

‘“Magyar keringők” a krakkói Jagelló-könyvtárban’ [‘Hungarian waltz’ in the Jagellonian Library of Kraków], Magyar zene, iii (1962), 641–4

‘Contributi per uno studio della tipizzazione negativa nelle opere verdiane: personaggi e situazioni’, Studi verdiani I: Venice 1966, 268–75

‘La funzione dell’unisono nella drammaturgia di Mozart’, NRMI, iii (1969), 422–38

‘Hungarian Composers Today: the Middle Generation’, Tempo, no.88 (1969), 25–33

‘Unità musicale e drammaturgica nel “Don Carlo”’, Studi verdiani II: Verona, Parma and Busseto 1969, 402–11

‘Dramma e musica nel “Nabucco”’, Studi verdiani III: Milan 1972, 453–63

Oratóriumok könyve [Book of oratorios] (Budapest, 1972, 2/1983)

‘Ritmikus struktúra, mint jellemzési eszköz a Sziciliai vecsernyében’ [Rhythmic structure as a means of characterization in I vespri siciliani], Magyar zene, xv (1974), 34–43

‘“ … È sempre ugual …”’, NRMI, ix (1975), 205–18

Operalexikon (Budapest, 1975)

Beszélgetések Nonóval [Conversations with Nono] (Budapest, 1978)

‘Survival of Italian Operatic Traditions in Wagner's Music Dramas’, Ricerche musicali, ii (1978), 71–94

Verdi operakalauz [Verdi opera guide] (Budapest, 1978)

Beszélgetések Ligeti Györggyel [Conversations with Ligeti] (Budapest, 1979; Eng. trans., 1983)

‘Paolo Albiani: il cammino di un personaggio’, Studi verdiani, i (1982), 63–71

‘Partiture ungheresi con alcune correzioni di Haydn’, Giuseppe Sarti: Faenza 1983, 193–220

VERA LAMPERT

Varnay, Astrid (Ibolyka Maria)

(b Stockholm, 25 April 1918). American soprano of Swedish birth. Her family emigrated in 1920 to the USA, where she studied with Paul Althouse and Hermann Weigert, whom she married. She made her début at the Metropolitan in 1941 as Sieglinde, a last-minute replacement for Lotte Lehmann; six days later she replaced Helen Traubel as Brünnhilde. She also sang Elsa, Elisabeth, and Telea in the première of Menotti’s The Island God. In 1948 she attempted her first Italian roles (La Gioconda, Tosca, Aida, Santuzza) in Mexico City and made her European début at Covent Garden as the Siegfried Brünnhilde; she also sang Isolde and returned to London as a powerful Kostelnička. In 1951 she sang Lady Macbeth at the Florence Maggio Musicale and first appeared at Bayreuth, returning every year until 1967, as Brünnhilde, Isolde, Ortrud, Kundry and Senta. In the 1950s and 60s Varnay sang mostly in Munich, Düsseldorf, Berlin and Vienna. In 1959 she created Jocasta in Orff’s Oedipus der Tyrann at Stuttgart. In 1962 she began to take mezzo roles, including Strauss’s Herodias and Clytemnestra, Begbick (Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny) at the Metropolitan in 1979 and Claire (Der Besuch der alten Dame). Although her vocal technique was imperfect, her intense, passionate singing and committed acting made her a superb Wagnerian soprano, as can be heard in her live recordings of Senta, Ortrud and Brünnhilde from Bayreuth; she also recorded Elektra at the Metropolitan, and sang Clytemnestra in a film of the same opera.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

B.W. Wessling: Astrid Varnay (Bremen, 1965) [with discography]

R. Jacobson: ‘Varnay Revisited’, ON, xxxix/8 (1974–5), 24–6

A. Tubeuf: ‘Astrid Varnay’, Le chant retrouvé (Paris, 1979), 77–101

HAROLD ROSENTHAL/R

Varney, Louis

(b New Orleans, 30 May 1844; d Paris, 20 Aug 1908). French composer and conductor. He was one of two sons of the theatre conductor and composer Pierre Varney (1811–79), from whom he received his musical training. His early career was spent as conductor at the Théâtre de l'Athénée in Paris, for which he composed the one-act operetta Il signor Pulcinella (1876) and music for revues. After his father's death he became known as a prolific composer of opérettes, beginning with Les mousquetaires au couvent (1880). For two decades he produced about two opérettes a year, some of which were also produced abroad, and composed ballets for the major Paris music halls. In the last years of his life, however, he composed little due to a disease which obliged him to move to Bagnères-de-Bigorre in the Pyrenees; he was taken back to Paris the day before he died. Varney's music displays a lightness and gaiety which owe much to Offenbach, but only Les mousquetaires au couvent has remained in the French repertory, having a good libretto based on a vaudeville of the 1830s, L'habit ne fait pas le moine.

WORKS

unless otherwise stated, all are opérettes listed in order of first performance and first performed in Paris: for more detailed list see GroveO

Il signor Pulcinella, 1876; Les mousquetaires au couvent, 1880; La reine des Halles, 1881; Coquelicot, 1882; Fanfan-la-tulipe, 1882; La petite reinette, Brussels, 1882; Joséphine, Trouville, 1883; Babolin, 1884; Les petits mousquetaires, 1885; L'amour mouillé, 1887; Dix jours aux Pyrénées, 1887; Divorcée, 1888; La japonaise, 1888; La Vénus d'Arles, 1889; Riquet à la houppe, 1889; La fée aux chèvres, 1890; La fille de Fanchon la vielleuse, 1891; La femme de Narcisse, 1892; Le brillant Achille, 1892; Miss Robinson, 1892; Cliquette, 1893; Les forains, 1894; La fille de Paillasse, 1894; Les petits Brebis, 1895; Mam'zelle Bémol, 1895; La belle épiciére, 1895

La falote, 1896; Le papa de Francine, 1896; Le pompier de service, 1897; Pour sa couronne, 1897; Les demoiselles des Saint-Cyriens, 1898; La tour de bois, 1898; Les petites Barnett, 1898; La fiancée de Thylda, 1900; Frégolinette, 1900; Mademoiselle George, 1900; Princesse Bébé, 1902; Le chien du régiment, 1902; L'âge d'or, 1905

Ballets-pantomimes, incl. Princesse Idéa, Eden, 1895; Paris-Cascades; music for revues; dance music

BIBLIOGRAPHY

GänzlEMT

GroveO

R. Traubner: Operetta: a Theatrical History (New York, 1983)

ANDREW LAMB

Varnish.

A resinous solution applied to string instruments to protect the wood from which they are made. Varnish has always been held to be of the utmost importance to string instruments, the violin family in particular. Apart from the distinctive beauty of the finish achieved by Antonio Stradivari and his fellow luthiers in Cremona in the 17th and 18th centuries, it is commonly regarded as having a significant effect on the tone of the instruments. Stradivari’s varnish stands as the culmination of centuries of development. The painter Gentileschi (1563–1639) noted that lute maker’s amber varnish was sold by all the artist’s colourmen in Italy, but the technique was lost in the general decline of Italian violin making after Stradivari’s death. The subsequent mass-production of instruments led to the use of cheaper, fast-drying alcohol-based varnish in the 19th century, but in the 20th century there was a revival of traditional methods, spurred on by a substantial body of scientific research into the nature of Cremonese varnish.

The violins and viols surviving from 16th-century Italy, most importantly from Cremona and Brescia, already have all but one of the definitive qualities of the varnish of Stradivari. There is a deep colour in the wood itself, without the appearance of staining, a reflectiveness which illuminates the wood structure and the so-called bi-refractive quality in which different hues are visible depending on the angle of observation. The top coats of varnish are tender, usually marked to varying degrees with craquelure, and have little or no coloration apart from a deep golden tone. In contemporary paintings, string instruments are usually depicted as either white or pale gold. Stradivari’s main achievement in the years after 1700 was the incorporation of a transparent red colour which did not compromise the other qualities of the varnish. Coloured varnishes did appear elsewhere before then, but they do not have the subtlety achieved by Stradivari. The old Cremonese varnish was available to all the members of the Amati family and their pupils in the 17th century, Rugeri, Rogeri and Andrea Guarneri. Following Stradivari’s example, Andrea Guarneri’s son Giuseppe, with his son Giuseppe Guarneri and Carlo Bergonzi, used the highly coloured varnish with differing levels of success, but after Del Gesu’s death in 1744 the recipe appears to have been abandoned. Lorenzo Storioni, a virtually self-taught maker who revived the Cremonese tradition at the end of the 18th century, used an inferior varnish which, although enhanced by the passage of time, has not the delicacy of the earlier Cremonese. Other 18th-century Italian centres – Venice, Milan, Florence, Rome and Naples – all had their own distinctive varnish, the Venetian in particular being very fine, with an intense red layer, often with a strong craquelure, above a rich yellow ground. The other varnishes tend generally to be harder and paler yellow in colour.

Outside Italy, varnish of good quality seems to have been in regular use throughout Europe, applied over different qualities of ground, with some variation in hardness and durability. The universal quality of the varnish may be attributed to the widespread use of a drying oil, such as linseed or walnut, with various proportions of hard resins and driers added. The Tyrolean Jacob Stainer was, however, the only maker outside Italy to approach the Cremonese level. The distinguishing feature of the best Italian work, which Stainer may have shared, is the ground. Recent research has suggested that Italian instruments have a sealing layer of powdered mineral strong in silica applied to the wood. Analysis of the coloured top layer shows evidence of transparent pigments, both organic and mineral, in various mixtures. Examples of varnish by later makers, however, including Storioni, reveal the use of coloured dyes rather than pigments in the varnish.

If varnish does have any influence on tone, it is probably deleterious. A soft, slow-drying varnish that invades the wood has as much of a muting effect as a hard, quick-drying varnish that stays on the surface. The Cremonese seem to have evolved a system involving a durable ground that protects the wood and isolates it from the softer outer varnish, which wears away quickly but exhibits great beauty in the differing effects of light and depth, and in the patina it easily acquires. One danger now confronting this delicate old varnish is the intense use to which old violins are put by present-day concert performers, and the resulting tendency to protect it with layers of shellac and french polish. Because the old varnish is slightly absorbent, any layers added subsequently are drawn in and are virtually impossible to remove without damaging the original surface. Overpolishing changes the character of the varnish, giving a uniform sheen that destroys its distinctive texture and contrasting tones.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

C. Reade: A Lost Art Revived: Cremona Violins and Varnish (Gloucester, 1873) [orig. pubd in Pall Mall Gazette]

G. Fry: The Varnishes of the Italian Violin-Makers of the Sixteenth, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries and their Influence on Tone (London, 1904)

J. Michelman: Violin Varnish (Cincinnati, 1946)

S.L. Corbara: Le vernici antiche e moderne per liuteria (Cesena, 1963; Eng. trans., 1987)

G.L. Baese: Classic Italian Violin Varnish (Fort Collins, CO, 1985)

S. Pollens: ‘Historic Lute and Violin Varnishes’, Journal of the Violin Society of America, viii/2 (1987), 31–40

C.Y. Barlow and others: ‘Wood Treatment Used in Cremonese Instruments’, Nature, cccxxxii (1988), 313 only

W.M. Fulton: Turpentine Violin Varnish (San Diego, 1988) [incl. appx ‘Propolis Violin Varnish’]

C.Y. Barlow and J. Woodhouse: ‘Firm Ground’, The Strad, c (1989), 195–7, 275–8

JOHN DILWORTH

Varoter, Francesco.

See Ana, Francesco d’.

Varotto, Michele

(b Novara, before c1550; d Novara, ?1599). Italian composer. He was a cleric, first a canon on the island of S Giulio in Lake Orta, and then from at least 1580 at Novara Cathedral. He was the first maestro di cappella of the cathedral, being nominated on 7 August 1564. On 13 July 1599 he was succeeded in this post by Francesco Ramella. He probably remained in Novara until his death, and was admired and honoured both in Italy and elsewhere: his pupil Giovanni Battista Portio attested to this in the dedication of his collection Fiamma ardente (RISM 1586¹⁹). Fedeli and other scholars have maintained that Varotto may perhaps be identified with a certain Michele Novarese whom Antonfrancesco Doni introduced as the interlocutor in his Dialogo della musica (Venice, 1544); Einstein, however, disagreed with this view. Varotto wrote predominantly sacred music, adopting the concertante style and the antiphonal choral practices of the Venetian school, showing originality and mastery. He also composed madrigals, which were published in collections. In the Dialogo for ten voices, ‘A Segnor Hermano io digo’ (in 1586¹⁹), he set up a conversation between different characters of the commedia dell'arte, including, for example, Pantalone, Graziano and a gypsy.

WORKS

Missarum liber primus, 6vv (Venice, 1563)

Li 8 Magnificat con 1 messa et un Magnificat, 5, 10vv (Venice, 1580)

Lamentationes Hieremiae prophetae, aliaeque divinae laudes, 5, 8vv, insts (Milan, 1587)

Hymnorum musica, 5vv (Milan, 1590)

Sacrae cantiones, 5vv, insts (Milan, 1590)

Sacrae cantiones, 5vv (Venice, 1594)

Psalmodia vespertina in dialogo, 8vv (Milan, 1594)

Liber primus missarum, 8, 12vv (Milan, 1595)

Sacrae cantiones, 8vv, insts (Milan, 1599)

Further sacred works, 1591¹, 1596¹, 1612³

6 madrigals (1 spiritual), 1585¹⁷, 1586¹⁹ (1 ed. in Cw, cxxv, 1975), 1598⁶

Missa ‘Hodie completi sunt’, 12vv, A-Wn

BIBLIOGRAPHY

EinsteinIM

V. Fedeli, ed.: Le cappelle musicali di Novara dal secolo XVI a' primordi dell'Ottocento, IMi, iii (1933), 56

K. Fischer: ‘Nuove techniche della policoralità lombarda nel primo seicento: il loro in flusso sulle opere di compositori di altre aree’, La musica sacra in Lombardia nella prima metà del Seicento: Como 1985, 39–60

MARIANGELA DONÀ

Varro, Marcus Terentius

(b ?Reate [now Rieti], 116 bce; d 27 bce). Roman scholar and poet. During four decades he took an active part in political life, but his passion was for scholarship. Educated at Rome and Athens, he made available to his countrymen much of the entire range of Hellenic and Hellenistic erudition. Varro is the first Roman example of the polymath, and he remained deeply Roman. His eclecticism continued to be subservient to an abiding concern for the virtues of earlier generations, even as his prodigious learning was lightened and made palatable for ordinary readers by a strong feeling for earthy realities. He has been called the ‘most learned of the Romans’.

The 55 known titles constitute but a partial list of Varro's major works. Of these, only On Farming survives in a complete form; six books remain of the 25 originally comprising the systematic treatise On Latin, as well as 600 fragments of his Menippean Satires, written on the model of the Cynic philosopher Menippus of Gadara. These exemplify both the author's moral concern and his gift for the common touch. Among them is the Onos lyras (‘When the ass hears the lyre’), a defence of music against the stock charges of its low esteem and effeminate practitioners. Even though the champion is a personified figure taken from the everyday practice of music (phōnaskia, i.e. ‘vocal training’), the actual defence goes well beyond considerations of utility for the statesman and others: cosmic harmony, rhythmic ethos and the power of music to calm wild beasts are also included. With reference to men, who are said to have an inborn affinity for the musical, the ethical power of music is exemplified by the effect of tibiae (double reed pipes; the Greek auloi) upon audiences in public performance. Notably un-Platonic, this may echo the doctrines of the Politics. The high praise accorded to Aristotle's celebrated pupil Aristoxenus does not seem merely coincidental. It is noteworthy that the individualizing approach to musico-ethical theory, well established in Stoic doctrine by Varro's time, has no place in the scattered remains of the Onos lyras. Several of the fragments contain coarse or obscene references; one, involving string tension, has its prototype in Hellenistic comedy.

Varro's lost Disciplines dealt with the liberal arts, with medicine and architecture added, in nine books. The contents of book 7, on music, have been surmised from references in the work of later theorists and scholars of sundry kinds, from Pliny and Quintilian to Isidore of Seville, but only the most general outline can be recovered. The topics of the Menippean dialogue reappeared, with elaborations and additions. Further, Varro discussed the liturgical, military and therapeutic uses of music. There was also a section devoted to consonances and dissonances. The definition of music itself as ‘scientia bene modulandi’, stated by Censorinus (On the Day of Birth, 10), Augustine (De musica, i.2), Cassiodorus (Institutiones, ii.5), Pseudo-Odo (Dialogus) and in the Scolica enchiriadis and closely paraphrased by Aurelian of Réôme (chap.2: ‘scientia recte modulandi’), has commonly been attributed to Varro. None of these authors, however, associated the definition with Varro and the attribution is certainly doubtful.

Varro united Greek theorizing with Roman practical experience. His influence was enormous on later Latin authors, in whose writings faint traces of his erudition can still be discerned.

WRITINGS

F. Buecheler and W. Heraeus, eds.: Petronii saturae … Varronis et Senecae saturae (Berlin, 1862, 6/1922/R), 181ff

BIBLIOGRAPHY

E. Holzer: Varroniana (Ulm, 1890)

H. Abert: ‘Zu Cassiodor’, SIMG, iii (1901–2), 439–53

H. Dahlmann: ‘M. Terentius Varro’, Paulys Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, suppl.vi (Stuttgart, 1935), 1172–1277, esp. 1259, 1275–6

L. Richter: ‘Griechische Traditionen im Musikschrifttum der Römer’, AMw, xxii (1965), 69–98

M. Simon: ‘Zur Abhängigkeit der spätrömischen Enzyklopädien der artes liberales von Varros Disciplinarum libri’, Philologus, cx (1966), 88–101

G. Wille: Musica romana (Amsterdam, 1967), 410ff, 642ff, 705ff

M. Vogel: Onos Lyras: der Esel mit der Leier (Düsseldorf, 1973)

W.R. Bowen: ‘St Augustine in Medieval and Renaissance Musical Science’, Augustine on Music, ed. R.R. La Croix (Lewiston, NY, 1988), 29–51

WARREN ANDERSON/THOMAS J. MATHIESEN

Varró [née Picker], Margit

(b Barcs, 22 Oct 1881; d Chicago, 15 May 1978). Hungarian piano teacher. Initially self-taught, she studied with Árpád Szendy at the Budapest Academy of Music, graduating in 1907. After consolidating her teaching experience at the Ernő Fodor School of Music (1907–8), she began to give concerts and develop her own private teaching practice. For a short period from 1918 she taught the piano and methods of piano teaching at the Budapest Academy, the first woman instrumental teacher to be appointed. Thereafter she concentrated on private teaching. Her detailed, systematic observations on piano teaching, music psychology and performance form the basis of her first book, Zongoratanítás és zenei nevelés (1921). Translated into German in 1929, it immediately assured her reputation as an outstanding teacher well beyond Hungary, and attracted invitations to give lectures, courses and broadcasts throughout Europe. In November 1938 Varró moved to America, where she continued teaching and writing. She is considered to be a pioneer of the ‘auditive approach’ to piano teaching, and in the area of teacher-pupil relationships based on psychological observation and experimentation.

WRITINGS

Zongoratanítás és zenei nevelés [Teaching the piano and music education] (Budapest, 1921; Ger. trans., enlarged, as Der lebendige Klavierunterricht: seine Methodik und Psychologie, 1929, 3/1958)

Designs to Music (Chicago, 1952)

Tanulmányok, elöadások, visszaemlékezések [Studies, lectures, memories] (Budapest, 1980)

ed. M. Ábrahám: Két világrész tanára/A Teacher in Two Worlds (Budapest, 1991)

Dynamic Piano Teaching (London, 1997) [previously pubd in Két világrész tanára/A Teacher in Two Worlds, 466–520]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

V. Lampert: ‘On the Origins of Bartók's Mikrokosmos’, SMH, xxxix (1998), 123–37

BETTY VERGARA-PINK

Varsovienne

(Fr.; It. varsoviana).

A dance originating in France during the 1850s. It is a genteel variation of the mazurka, incorporating elements of the waltz; its name – from the French form of ‘Warsaw’ – was intended to remove the exotic connotations of ‘mazurka’. It would have returned to obscurity, having served its purpose as an instructive piece for dancing classes, had it not become unexpectedly popular at balls at the Tuileries in Paris; it is said to have been a favourite of the Empress Eugénie. Its tempo is rather slow, and its music is characterized by strong accents on the first beats of the second and fourth complete bars.

MAURICE J.E. BROWN

Vartan, Hayg

(b Ruse, Bulgaria, 5 April 1953). Armenian composer and pianist. In 1977, after graduating from the piano class of Lyuba Entscheva at the Bulgarian State Conservatory, Sofia, he moved to Switzerland, where he continued his studies at Basle University (1977–83), continuing his training as a pianist and studying composition with Friedhelm Doehl. In 1985 he began teaching the piano at the Basle Conservatory and started a career as a concert pianist, appearing in Switzerland, Germany and France. He then worked with Nono in studios in Freiburg, Frankfurt and Cologne (1986–90); it was in Freiburg that he conceived Promethée XII, a dramma per musica which he completed in 1991. The first act of this work was staged in 1994 at the Teatro Goldoni, Venice; its first complete performance took place in 1995 in the Opera Studio of the Yerevan Conservatory. Promethée XII received further performances in Europe over the next year sponsored by UNESCO. His training as a pianist left its stamp on his early works, but by the start of the 1980s a refined technique notable for its linear textures, strictness of form and use of classical counterpoint had developed. Extra-musical symbolism, frequently sacred in origin, imparts a ritualistic character to many works (Modus for soprano and computer). His mixed technique brings together elements of archaic vocal declamation, free dodecaphony and sonoristic experiment; all these elements are subordinated to a concern for musical expressiveness.

WORKS

selective list

Song [no.1], S, pf, 1978; Str Qt [no.1], 1978; Kyrie Eleison, chorus, 1980; Str Qt [no.2], 1980; Mer tjanapar'e [Our Path] (after A. Aharonian), str qt, perc, pf, 1981; Sonata for ‘M’, insts, 1981; Finit, c'est finit, chbr choir, orch, 1982; Song [no.2], S, pf, 1982; Momente, vn, pf, 1984; Sonata, vn, pf, 1985; 8 Variations, S, 1986; Elegy, vn, pf, 1987; Modus, S, cptr, 1989; Movements, synth, 1991; Promethée XII (dramma per musica, J.J. Varoujean), 1991–4, 1st act, Venice, Goldoni, 1994, complete work, Yerevan, Conservatory Opera Studio, 1995; 2 Bagatelles, cl, pf, 1992; Song [no.3], S, pf, 1993; Requiem (Lat. text), 4 solo vv, chorus, orch, 1996; Le roi pêcheur (op, J.L. Bénel, after J. Gracq), 1996, Nîmes, Opéra, 1997

BIBLIOGRAPHY

S. Schibli: ‘Haig Vartan, Prometheus Oper’, Basler Zeitung (2 July 1994)

S. Sarkisyan: ‘“Prometeus XII” Yerevanum’ [“Promethée XII” in Yerevan], AZG (29 Nov 1995)

SVETLANA SARKISYAN

Värttinä

(Finnish: ‘Spindle’).

Finnish folk music ensemble. It was created in 1983 by the composer and singer Sari Käasinen and her sister Mari, in the village of Rääkkylä. They take their inspiration from the surrounding culture of Karelia, the area of Finland that borders with Russia. Originally formed with 21 musicians, who wore national dress, sang ancient, local melodies, and played the traditional kantele, accordion, tin whistle, flute, guitar, fiddle, double bass and saxophone, by 1987 it had been transformed into a ten-piece ensemble, incorporating new instrumentalists, with guitar, fiddle, accordion, double bass, saxophone and bouzouki. Owing to the fact that many members had by then become graduates of the folk music department of the Sibelius Academy the sound shifted to absorb more complex influences from other world musics as well as rock and jazz. By 1991 Värttinä had become one of Finland's leading folk groups. Despite the five men in the group, Värttinä's overriding image has been of an energetic front line of women singers reinterpreting traditional ‘runolaulu’ songs, some original laments about love, and the loneliness and often misery of marriage, others the traditional boasting songs of village boys and girls. Much of their music has come from the Finno-Ugric areas of Finland lost in war to Russia, as well as the music of the Setu people of Estonia and the Rönttyskä dance-songs of Ingria. Värttinä's approach has rejuvenated the ancient rune song form of melody, confined to the first five notes of the scale. The four stressed syllables, set to time signatures, usually 4/4 or 5/4, by varying the melodic line, emphasize the alliterative qualities of phrases and the play on double meaning and poetic metaphor. Sari Käasinen's departure to pursue a solo career in the mid-1990s did not hold Värttinä back: rather the extraordinary talent of the group has continued to blossom as they have moved more intensely into composition to become one of Scandinavia's and the world's leading contemporary groups. They have made a number of recordings including Oi Dai (1991), Kokko (1996) and Vihma (1998).

JAN FAIRLEY

Varunts, Viktor Pavlovich

(b Tbilisi, 26 Aug 1945). Russian musicologist. He studied theory and composition with Nest'yev at the Moscow Conservatory, graduating in 1972. He worked as a pianist and accompanist at the Institute of Theatrical Arts from 1972 to 1976, and since 1976 has taught at the Moscow Conservatory, where he has been head of doctoral and postgraduate studies since 1979 and professor in the department of history of foreign music since 1996. He took the Kanditat degree in 1988 with a dissertation on neo-classicism in 20th-century music, and the doctorate in 1994 with a dissertation on popularizing Stravinsky and Prokofiev. Source studies on these two composers have dominated his research, and he has published many papers on their legacies of writings, correspondence, new biographical material and previously unknown manuscripts.

WRITINGS

ed.: N.P. Anosov: literaturnoye nasledstvo, perepiska [Anosov: literary legacy and correspondence] (Moscow, 1978)

‘Tsikl “Kammermuzik” P. Khindemita’ [Hindemith’s Kammermusik cycle], Paul' Khindemit, ed. I. Prudnikova (Moscow, 1979), 143–76

Muzïkal'nïy neoklassitsizm: istoricheskiye ocherki [Musical Neo-classisism: historical notes] (Moscow, 1988)

Neoklassitsizm v muzïke XX veka [Neo-classicism in 20th-century music] (diss., Moscow Conservatory, 1988)

ed.: Stravinskiy, publitsist i sobesednik [Stravinsky, publicist and conversationalist] (Moscow, 1988) [incl. ‘Problemï naslediya Stravinskogo i yego publitsistika’ [Issues on Stravinsky’s legacy and its dissemination], 436–60]

‘Prokofiew in Zeitungsinterviews: ein Querschnitt’, S. Prokofiew: Beiträge zum Thema, Dokumente, Interpretationen, Programme, das Werk, ed. H. Danuser and others (Laaber, 1990), 103–6

‘Prokof'yev o Stravinskom’ [Prokofiev on Stravinsky], Prokof'yev o Prokof'yeve: stat'i i interv'yu [Prokofiev on Prokofiev: articles and interviews], ed. V. Varunts (Moscow, 1991), 236–54

‘Stranitsï biografii Prokof'yeva’ [Pages from Prokofiev’s biography], SovM (1991), no.4, pp.65–70

ed.: Prokof'yev o Prokof'yeve: stat'i, interv'yu [Prokofiev on Prokofiev: essays and interviews] (Moscow, 1991)

‘Komentariy k marginaliyam: Shyonberga o Stravinskom i Stravinskogo o Asaf'yeve’ [A commentary on marginalia: Schoenberg on Stravinsky and Stravinsky on Asaf'yev], MAk (1992), no.4, pp.182–4

‘Publitsistika I. Stravinskogo i S. Prokof'yeva kak problema istochnikovedeniya i muzïkovedeniya’ [Popularizing Stravinsky and Prokofiev: a problem for source studies and musicology] (diss., Moscow Conservatory, 1994)

‘Stravinskiy-Dyagilev: perepiska’ [Stravinsky and Diaghilev: correspondence], MAk (1996), no.2, pp.152–62; no.3, pp.147–68

‘I.F. Stravinskiy’, Russkoye zarubezh'ye: ėntsiklopedicheskiy, biograficheskiy slovar', ed. V. Shelochayer (Moscow, 1997), 601–3

LARISA GEORGIEVNA DANKO

Varviso, Silvio

(b Zürich, 26 Feb 1924). Swiss conductor. The son of a singing teacher, he studied music in Zürich and began his career as an accompanist. His first conducting appointment came in 1944 at the Stadtheater, St Gallen, where he made his début in Die Zauberflöte. He worked at the Basle Opera, first as assistant, then as principal conductor (1950–62, musical director from 1956). He directed a wide range of Classical and contemporary operas, to which he applied the eye of a talented painter as well as the ear of a sensitive musician. His wider travels began in 1958 with opera in Berlin and Paris, and the next year he made his American début with the San Francisco Opera (where in 1960 he conducted the American première of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream).

After his engagement by the Metropolitan Opera in 1961 for Lucia di Lammermoor, he returned to conduct 14 different operas during the next four seasons (1962–6). His British début was at the 1962 Glyndebourne Festival in Le nozze di Figaro, and his Covent Garden début later that year in Der Rosenkavalier; he returned there often in a varied range of operas. He was musical director at the Royal Opera, Stockholm (1965–71), and became a frequent guest at the Vienna Staatsoper. He first went to Bayreuth in 1969 (Der fliegende Holländer) and was musical director at Stuttgart, 1972–80, and at the Paris Opéra, 1980–85, since when he has worked as a freelance conductor, mainly in Belgium and Germany. Varviso has achieved particular distinction for his buoyant and sensitive style in Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti, and for his clarity and expressiveness in Mozart, Wagner and Richard Strauss. His recordings include several complete operas, among them L'italiana in Algeri, Il barbiere di Siviglia, Norma, Anna Bolena and a Meistersinger recorded at a performance at Bayreuth in 1974.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

J.L. Holmes: Conductors: a Record Collector's Guide (London, 1988), 295

NOËL GOODWIN

Varvoglis, Marios

(b Brussels, 10 Dec 1885; d Athens, 31 July 1967). Greek composer. He studied painting with Lytras at the Athens School of Fine Arts (1900–02), and it was not until he had gone to Paris to study law that he decided on a musical career. He remained in Paris from 1902 to 1920 (except for a period between 1909 and 1912 or 1913 spent in Vienna and Düsseldorf), and there he met Saint-Saëns, Ravel, Casella, Varèse, Moréas and Modigliani, who used him as the model for Le beau Marius (1919). According to a curriculum vitae (1965) submitted by the composer to the Athens Academy, he studied harmony with Leroux and counterpoint and fugue with G. Caussade at the Paris Conservatoire (Anoyanakis gave the dates 1903–9 for this period of study), and composition with d’Indy and music history with Bourgault-Ducoudray at the Schola Cantorum (c1913). Back in Athens Varvoglis taught at several schools; he also taught harmony, counterpoint, composition, orchestration and music history at the Athens Conservatory (1920–24) and at the Hellenic Conservatory (from 1924), of which he was made co-director in 1947. He was vice-president of the Union of Greek Composers (?1940–1957) and president of the League of Greek Composers from 1957. He contributed to various periodicals and was appointed music critic of the daily paper Ta nēa in 1955. Awards made to him included the National Award for Fine Arts and Letters (1923) and the Takis Kandiloros Music Prize of the Athens Academy (1937). His music contains no more than a slight suggestion of Greek folk music, whose modes and rhythms he used in producing a clear polyphony that often has a pastoral quality. Varvoglis’s orchestration was sober and conservative, and his harmony inclined more to Franck, d’Indy and Fauré than to the Impressionist manner, although some of the piano pieces (such as the Sonatina) are somewhat reminiscent of Ravel.

WORKS

(selective list)

Stage: Aya Varvara [St Barbara] (op, 3, S. Skipis), 1912, prelude only extant as fs, frags. of Acts I–III as pf score; Tó apóyema tís agápis [The Afternoon of Love] (op, 1, Varvoglis, after Synodinos), 1935, Athens, State Opera, 10 June 1944; incid music for 6 Gk. plays

Orch: Tó panigyri, tone poem, 1906–9; Gk. Capriccio, vc, pf/orch, 1914; Sym., before 1920, destroyed; Canon, Chorale and Fugue on BACH, str, 1930; Dáphnes ke kyparíssia [Laurels and Cypresses], 1950

Vocal: Eurycome (D. Solomos), S, pf, 1906; Tó traghoúdhi toú agoyati [The Carter’s Song], S, pf/orch, 1906; Hellenikó ayéri [Greek Wind] (A. Mamelis), male chorus, 1927; Mín xérete yatí? [Do you Know Perhaps Why?] (M. Edelstein-Goudéli), 1v, pf, before 1935; Tó kartéri [Expectation] (R. Philyras), S/Mez, pf, 1940; Ta sýnnefa [The Clouds] (Z. Papantoniou), female chorus, 1940; Ergatikos hymos [Labourers’ hymn] (unknown), 2vv, chorus, pf

Chbr: Serenata tis kouklas (Sérénade) [Doll’s Serenade], vn, pf (Paris, 1905); Angélus, vn, pf, 1906; Pastoral Suite, str qt/orch, 1912; Hommage à César Franck, vn, pf, 1922; Meditation of Areti, str qt, 1929; Danse des poules, fl, ob, cl, vn, pf, 1929; Stochasmós [Meditation], str qt, 1932, rev. str orch, 1936; Pastorale, fl, pf, 1937; Str Trio (Partita), 1938; Laikó poíema [Folk poem], pf trio, 1943; Prelude and Fugue on a Byzantine Theme, org, 1953; Dedication to Nikos Skalkottas, str qt, ?1957–64, inc.

Pf: 14 children’s pieces incl.: Tó nanoúrisma tís koúklas [The Lullaby of the Doll], 1904, also version for vn, pf, Horós tis koúklas [The Dance of the Doll], 1906; On thánatos tís koúklas [The Death of the Doll]; Souvenir, 1915; Marche triomphale, E, Paris, 1918; Gk. Rhapsody, 1922; Papillons; Sonatina, 1927

Principal publishers: Senart, Union of Greek Composers

BIBLIOGRAPHY

MGG1 (J.G. Papaïoannou)

F. Anoyanakis: ‘I mousiki stin neoteri Ellada’ [Music in modern Greece], in K. Nef: Eisagogi eis tin mousikologian (Athens, 1958), 586–8 [Gk. edn of Einführung in die Musikgeschichte]

K. Romanou: ‘Marios Varvoglis (1885–1967)’, Moussikologhia, no.2 (1985), 6–47

C. Kendrotis: Thematikos katalogos ergon Mariou Varvogli [Thematic catalogue of Marios Varvoglis’ works] (diss., U. of Thessaloniki, 1998)

GEORGE LEOTSAKOS

Vásárhelyi, Zoltán

(b Kecskemét, 12 March 1900; d Budapest, 21 Jan 1977). Hungarian conductor and composer. He studied the violin with Kemény and composition with Kodály at the Liszt Academy in Budapest before becoming leader of the Estonian SO in Tallinn (1924–6). In 1926 he played with the Bergen Chamber Orchestra and then taught the violin and choral conducting at the Kecskemét Conservatory until 1942, when he became professor of choral conducting at the Budapest Conservatory. He was awarded the Kossuth Prize in 1949. He was a central figure in the Hungarian choral movement that began with Kodály, giving many first performances of works by Kodály and other Hungarian composers. As a teacher he influenced a generation of choral conductors in Hungary, where the effects of his work are still felt. His compositions include a string quartet and suite for violin (early works), a symphony (1956) and many choral arrangements of folksongs; he also wrote a manual on choral conducting, Az énekkari vezénlyés módszertana (Budapest, 1965).

Vásáry, Tamás

(b Debrecen, 11 Aug 1933). Swiss pianist of Hungarian birth. Gifted in childhood with a remarkable ear, Vásáry gave his first recital in Debrecen aged eight. At the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest he studied mainly with Josef Gat, but he was also much influenced by Kodály, who gave him a Steinway grand piano and invited him to take over half his solfège class as soon as Vásáry's studentship was ended. Having won the Franz Liszt Competition in 1948, Vásáry began his career as an accompanist on state-sponsored tours, but after his talent was recognized in Moscow he quickly graduated to a soloist's status.

During the 1956 uprising he left for Brussels, soon afterwards settling near Lake Geneva. Much-praised recordings of Liszt made in Brussels led to his débuts in Vienna, Berlin, New York, Milan and London in 1960–61. In London, where he made his home, he was particularly warmly received. Since then he has toured the world and played with every major orchestra. He was granted Swiss nationality in 1971. He has recorded most of Chopin's music, a good deal of Liszt and some Debussy, the concertos of Schumann and Rachmaninoff and (with Peter Frankl) duets by Mozart. Though regarded as a Romantic, he enjoys playing Bach, Beethoven and especially Mozart. His virtuosity is delicate, his phrasing is seductive, and always at the service of a sensitive poetic imagination.

Vásáry made his long-desired conducting début at the 1971 Menton Festival and in 1979 he became musical director of the Northern Sinfonia, since when he has concentrated as much on conducting as on the piano. In 1982, when he left the Northern Sinfonia, he was appointed principal conductor of the Bournemouth Sinfonietta, with whom he recorded music by Respighi and Honegger; an appointment as music director and principal conductor of the Budapest SO followed in 1993, with a tour of Britain in 1995. Appearances as guest conductor have taken him to the Berlin PO, the Accademia di S Cecilia Orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris and various orchestras in the USA.

JOAN CHISSELL/JESSICA DUCHEN

Vasconcellos, Joaquim (António da Fonseca) de

(b Oporto, 10 Feb 1849; d Oporto, 2 March 1936). Portuguese lexicographer. He apparently had little formal training in music. After studies at the University of Coimbra (1865–9) he travelled in Germany, France, England and Spain from 1871 to 1875. In 1886 he became director of the Museum for Industries and Commerce. He is noted for his dictionary Os musicos portuguezes: biographia-bibliographia (Oporto, 1870), a remarkable publication for a man of 21. It was the first comprehensive work in its field, and is distinguished by its range; it is complementary to the dictionary of Vieira. His monograph Luiza Todi: estudo critico (Oporto, 1873, 2/1929) has remained a standard work on this famous singer. Vasconcellos made several contributions to Pougin's supplement to Fétis's Biographie universelle. Besides a useful Ensaio critico sobre o catalogo de el-Rey D. João IV (1873), he published, with index and commentary, a facsimile of the catalogue of the great Royal Library of Lisbon which was destroyed in the earthquake of 1755. His fine music library was anonymously sold by auction in 1898 (copies of the catalogue are in the Hirsch Library, British Museum, and in the Library of Congress). His other writings include books on art history and ceramics. He was a member of the Gesellschaft für Musikforschung.

ALEC HYATT KING

Vasconcellos Corrêa, Sérgio (Oliveira) de

(b São Paulo, 16 July 1934). Brazilian composer and teacher. He began his music studies in 1946 with Ilíria Serato, then attended the piano classes of Ubelina Reggiani de Aguiar at the Conservatório Dramático e Musical of São Paulo (diploma 1953). He then studied harmony and conducting with Martin Braunwieser and choral singing. From 1956 to 1968 he studied composition with Camargo Guarnieri, who strongly influenced his adherence to musical nationalism and neo-tonalism. From 1957 he taught music education at various institutions, in São Paulo, and since the 1970s he has taught at the Art Institute of the University of Campinas (1975–9), at the Escola Superior de Musica S Marcelina (1976–9) and the Art Institute of the University of the State of São Paulo (UNESP) since 1980. His compositions have earned him several prizes, including the Casa de Goethe prize (1969) for his piano piece Contrastes. His educational writings include Planejamento em educação musical (São Paulo, 1971) and Introdução à harmonia (São Paulo, 1975).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

M. Marcondes, ed.: Enciclopédia da música brasileira, erudita, folclórica, popular (São Paulo, 1977, 2/1998)

GERARD BÉHAGUE

Vasconcelos [Vasconcellos] (Moniz Bettencourt), Jorge Croner de (Santana e)

(b Lisbon, 11 May 1910; d Lisbon, 9 Dec 1974). Portuguese composer and pianist. After initial studies with his mother, Laura Croner, he entered the Lisbon Conservatório Nacional, where he studied the piano with Silva and composition with de Freitas Branco. A government grant enabled him to pursue his studies in Paris (1934–7) with Dukas, Boulanger, Roger-Ducasse and Cortot. On returning to Lisbon he was appointed professor at the conservatory (1938–74). He continued his activities as a pianist, but in 1943 he abandoned his career as a soloist to dedicate his life to teaching and composition. Vasconcelos’s works were influenced mainly by Ravel, but also by Stravinsky and Hindemith. He preferred the harmonic, rhythmic and structural aspects to the melodic, with a tendency towards short, condensed forms.

WORKS

(selective list)

Ballets: A faina do mar, ?1936; A lenda das amendoeiras, 1940; Coimbra, 1959

Orch: Poemeto sinfónico, 1928; A vela vermelha, sym. poem, 1961

Choral (SATB unacc., unless otherwise stated): Coral a Santa Cecília, 1936; Em Belém, vila do amor (G. Vicente), 1936; A fermosura desta fresca serra (L. de Camões), 1937; Fermoso Tejo meu (R. Lobo), 1937; Vilancico para a festa de Santa Cecília, chorus, orch, 1967; Erros meus (L. de Camões), unison vv, org, 1972; 8 cantos de Natal (after folksongs), 3 equal vv, 1974

Chbr: Rapsódia, str qt, 1935; Pf Qt, 1938; Aria e scherzo, vn, pf, 1944; Canção, vn, pf, 1946

Songs (1v, pf, unless otherwise stated): 3 redondilhas de Camões, 1927; No turbilhão (A. de Quental), 1927; Baylemos nos ia todas tres (A. Nunes), 1v, pf/orch, 1936; Senhora partem tam tristes (J.R. de Castel-Branco), 1v, pf/orch, 1936; En esta vida mortal (D. Brandão), 1v, pf/orch, 1937; Comigo me desavim (S. de Miranda), 1v, pf/str qt, 1938; Lembranças, tristes cuidados (J. de Resende), 1v, fl, str qt/pf, 1938; O viajante (E. Libório), 1944; 4 canções populares, 1945 [nos.1 and 4 also 1v, orch]; Canção (A.L. Vieira), 1948; canção da almotolia (Vieira), 1948; Não, não digas nada (F. Pessoa), ?1960; Ao desconcerto do mundo (Camões), 1972

Pf: Peça para dois pianos, 1930; Scherzo, 1937; 3 tocatas a Carlos Seixas, 1937, 1941, 1942; Partita, 1960; Suite ‘Coimbra’, 2 pf, 1966; Canção, 1973

MSS in P-Ln

BIBLIOGRAPHY

‘Homenagem a Jorge Croner de Vasconcellos 1910–1974’, Colóquio/Artes, xxv/Dec (1975), 59–72

Catálogo geral da música portuguesa: repertório contemporâneo (Lisbon, 1978–80)

G. Miranda: ‘A música de piano de Jorge Croner de Vasconcellos (1910–1974)’, Livro de homenagem a Macario Santiago Kastner, ed. M.F. Cidrais Rodrigues, M. Morais and R.V. Nery (Lisbon, 1992), 309–24

G. Miranda: Jorge Croner de Vasconcellos: vida e obra musical (Lisbon, 1992)

JOSÉ CARLOS PICOTO/ADRIANA LATINO

Vasilenko, Sergey Nikiforovich

(b Moscow, 18/30 March 1872; d Moscow, 11 March 1956). Russian composer, conductor and teacher. He began systematic music studies in 1888 as a private pupil of Richard Nokh and then took lessons with Grechaninov (theory), Sergey V. Protopopov (harmony) and Konyus (composition). From 1891 to 1896 he studied law at Moscow University and attended the conservatory (1895–1901) as a pupil of Taneyev (counterpoint and form), Ippolitov-Ivanov (composition) and Safonov, leaving with a gold medal. He conducted at the Mamontov Private Opera, Moscow (1903–5), and organized and conducted the Historic Concerts in the city (1907–17). From 1918 he gave concerts and lecture-concerts in Moscow; in 1925 he participated in the organization of music broadcasting there. He taught orchestration and composition at the Moscow Conservatory (1907–41, 1943–56) where he was appointed professor in 1907 and head of the faculty of orchestration in 1932. In 1938 he worked in Tashkent on the first Uzbek opera, Buran (‘The Snowstorm’).

Vasilenko's early works reflected his enthusiasm for Russian folk music, kryuk (neume notation) and Old Believer song. After 1906 he produced several pieces that show a connection with Russian symbolist poetry, among them the orchestral Sad smerti (‘The Garden of Death’) and Polyot ved'm (‘Flight of the Witches’) and the songs on texts by Blok and Bryusov. Then between 1910 and 1920 he was attracted by eastern exoticism; an interest in oriental folk music, particularly that of central Asia, remained with him in the post-revolutionary period, as is evident from the ballets Noyya and Iosif prekrasnïy (‘Iosif the Beautiful’). His work is distinguished by masterly orchestration. He received the title People’s Artist of the Uzbek SSR in 1939 and the State Prize in 1947.

WORKS

(selective list)

stage

Skazaniye o velikom grade Kitezhe i tikhom ozere Svetoyare [Legend of the Great City of Kitezh and the Quiet Lake Svetoyar] (op-cant., 1, N. Manïkin-Nevstroyev), 1902, concert perf., Moscow, 16 Feb/1 March 1902; staged, Moscow, 2/15 April 1903

Sïn solntsa [Son of the Sun] (op, 4, M. Gal'perin), op.62, 1929; Moscow, Bol'shoy, 2nd perf. 23 May 1929

Khristofor Kolumb (op, 4, A. Argo and S. Antimonov), op.80, 1933, unstaged

Buran (op, 4, K. Yashen), 1938; Tashkent, 12 June 1939, collab. M. Ashrafi

Velikiy kanal [The Grand Canal] (op, 4, Yashen and M. Rakhmanov), 1940; Tashkent, 7 Jan 1941, collab. Ashrafi

Suvorov (op, 4, S. Krzhizhanovsky), op.101, 1941; Sverdlovsk, 22 Feb 1942

Ballets: Noyya (ballet-pantomime), A. Arapov, 1923, unpubd; Iosif prekrasnïy [Iosif the Beautiful] (K. Goleyzovsky), 1925; V solnechnïkh luchakh [In the Rays of the Sun] (Goleyzovsky), 1926, unpubd; Lola (Goleyzovsky), 1926; Treugolka [The Tricorn] (M. Galperin), 1935, unpubd [after Falla, Albéniz and Sp. folksongs]; Tsïganï [Gypsies] (P. Markov and N. Kholfin, after A.S. Pushkin), 1936, unpubd; Ak–bilyak (V. Smirnov), 1942, unpubd; Mirandolina (P. Abolisimov and V. Varkovitsky), 1946

orchestral

Ėpicheskaya poėma [Epic Poem], op.4, 1903; Sym. no.1, g, op.10, 1906; Sad smerti [The Garden of Death], after O. Wilde, op.12, 1908; Polyot ved'm [Flight of the Witches], after D. Merezhkovsky, op.15, 1909; V solnechnïkh luchakh [In the Rays of the Sun], op.17, 1911; Sym. no.2, F, op.22, 1913; Vn Conc., op.25, 1913 rev. 1952; Vn Conc. no.2, op. 134, 1952; Kitayskaya syuita [Chinese Suite] nos.1, 2, opp.60, 70, 1927, 1933; Balalaika Conc., op.63, 1931; Turkmenskiye kartinï [Turkmen Pictures], op.68, 1931; Sovetskiy vostok [The Soviet East], op.75, 1932

Sym. no.3 ‘Ital'yanskaya’ [Italian], A, op.81, domra and balalaika orch, wind ad lib, 1934; Sym. no.4 ‘Arkticheskaya’ [Arctic], d, op.82, 1934; Uzbekskaya syuita, op.104, 1943; Vc Conc., op.112, 1944; Ukraina, suite, op.121, 1946; Sym. no.5, e, op.123, 1947; Hp Conc., op.126, 1949; Pf Conc., op.128, 1949; Cl Conc., op.135, 1953; Hn Conc., op.136, 1953; Vesnoy [In Spring], op.138, suite, fl, small orch, 1954

other works

Solo vocal: 3 pesni [3 Songs], op.11 (V. Bryusov, A. Blok), 1v, pf, 1906; Zaklinaniya [Invocation], op.16 (G. Chulkov, Bryusov, K. Bal'mont, Lokhvitskaya), suite, medium and high vv, pf, 1909; Maoriyskiye pesni [Maoriysk Songs] (Bal'mont), op.23, S/T, pf, 1913; Ėkzoticheskaya syuita (Bal'mont, Bryusov, V. Ivanov), op.29, S/T, ens, 1916

Chbr music, orchestrations, folksong arrs., choral works, music for the theatre and cinema

Principal publishers: Jürgenson, Muzgiz

WRITINGS

Stranitsï vospominaniy [Pages of memoirs] (Moscow and Leningrad, 1948)

Instrumentovka dlya simfonicheskogo orkestra [Instrumentation for Symphony Orchestra], i (Moscow, 1952); ed. with suppl. by Yu. Fortunatov (Moscow, 1959)

Vospominaniya [Memoirs], ed. T. Livanova (Moscow, 1979)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ME (G. Polyanovsky)

V. Belyayev: S.N. Vasilenko (Moscow, 1927)

V. Yakovlev, ed.: Sergey Vasilenko: 25 let muzïkal'noy deyatel'nosti [Vasilenko: 25 years of musical activity] (Moscow, 1927)

B. Asaf'yev [I. Glebov]: Russkaya muzïka [Russian Music] (Moscow and Leningrad, 1930), 89, 216

Obituary, SovM (1956), no.4, p.206

G. Polyanovsky: S.N. Vasilenko: zhizn' i tvorchestvo [Vasilenko: life and work] (Moscow, 1964)

Yu. Fortunatov: ‘S.N. Vasilenko’, Vïdayushchiyesya deyateli teoretikokompozitorskogo fakul'teta Moskovskoy konservatorii [Leading figures of the theory and composition faculty of the Moscow Conservatory] (Moscow, 1966)

G.K. Ivanov: S.N. Vasilenko: notograficheskiy spravochnik (Moscow, 1973)

T. Livanova, ed.: ‘Iz literaturnogo naslediya S.N. Vasilenko: pis'ma k sem'ye Shambinago’ [From Vasilenko's literary heritage: letters to the Shambinago family], Iz proshlogo sovetskoy muzïkal'noy kul'turï (Moscow, 1975), 210

D. Gojowy: Neue sowjetische Musik der 20er Jahre (Laaber, 1980)

T. Zevaya: Russkaya muzïka nachala XX veka v khudozhestvennom kontekste ėpokhi [Russ. music of the early 20th century in the artistic context of the epoch] (Moscow, 1991)

INNA BARSOVA

Vasilescu, Ion

(b Bucharest, 4/17 Nov 1903; d Bucharest, 1 Dec 1960). Romanian composer and conductor. At the Craiova Conservatory (1914–16, 1919–23) he studied harmony with G. Fotino and the violin with Ida Capatti; his studies were continued at the Bucharest Conservatory (1923–4) under Castaldi (harmony and counterpoint) and at the Schola Cantorum, Paris (1924–6), under Le Flem (composition). Conductor of the Craiova National Theatre from 1926 to 1932, Vasilescu went on to conduct variety shows and musical comedies at various theatres in Bucharest during the period 1930–55. As a composer, he abandoned work in serious genres after the String Quartet of 1926, becoming the most renowned composer of light music in Romania. His stage pieces are distinguished by outstanding tunes handled with delicacy and purity, and he also wrote many successful dances and songs, some of which achieved international fame after 1940.

WORKS

(selective list)

Stage: Fata şefului de gară [The Stationmaster’s Daughter] (musical comedy), 1935; De la munte la mare [Down From the Mountains the Sea] (musical comedy), 1938; Suflet candriu de papugiu [Dotty Soul of Some Poor Skulk] (musical comedy), 1940; Un vals ca pe vremuri [A Waltz Like in the Old Times] (musical comedy), 1940; Sînziana şi Pepelea (musical fairytale), 1950

Film scores: Răsună valea [The Valley Resounds], 1949; Nufărul roşu [The Red Nenuphar], n.d.; Directorul nostru, 1955; Băieţii noştri [Our Good Boys], 1959; Melodii alese [Selected Tunes] (1961)

Principal publisher: Editura Muzicală, Armonia

BIBLIOGRAPHY

E. Deda: Parada muzicii uşoare româneşti [Romanian Light Music Parade] (Bucharest, 1968)

A. Frost: Ion Vasilescu: poet al melodiei (Bucharest, 1968)

V. Cosma: Muzicieni români (Bucharest, 1970), 441ff

VIOREL COSMA

Vasil'yev-Buglay, Dmitry Stepanovich

(b Moscow, 28 July/9 Aug 1888; d Moscow, 15 Oct 1956). Russian composer and choral conductor. From 1898 to 1906 he studied at the Moscow Synodal School (in Kastal'sky's composition class and Viktor Kalinnikov's harmony class). He actively popularized choral music and from 1906 he directed choirs in various Russian towns. In 1918 he was in charge of the mass-education undertaken by the music section of the Tambov Proletkul't. He and the choir (of 150 members) that he organized performed on the fronts during the Civil War with revolutionary, anti-religious and campaigning and satirical repertory. He was later a member of RAPM (1923–5) and ORKIMD (1925–30), both proletarian music organizations. He wrote vocal music almost exclusively and principally for chorus; the main part of his legacy consists of mass songs. In his work he relied on traditional peasant and soldiers’ songs, and in the course of his folklore studies he gathered about 500 folksongs. In 1938 he wrote the opera Rodina zovyot (‘The Motherland Calls’) for a collective farm initiative and later composed Kolobok (‘Round Loaf’), an opera for children (1941). He became an Honoured Representative of the Arts of the RSFSR in 1947 and received the State Prize in 1951.

WORKS

(selective list)

Stage: Alyonkin vïbor [Alyonka's Choice] (vaudeville, 1, F. Chernishev and F. Il'insky), solo vv, chorus, bayan, 1930; Rodina zovyot [The Motherland Calls] op, 2, I. Persanov, F. Kanatov and M. Reznik), spkr, folk orch, 1938, collab. G. Bruk; Kolobok [Round Loaf] (children's op, 3, after Ukrainian folk tale), 1941; Polin'ka (comic op, 1, Vasil'yev-Buglay, after A.P. Chekhov), 1946; Svad'ba [The Marriage] (comic op, 1, Vasil'yev-Buglay, after Chekhov), 1946; Unter Prishibeyev [NCO Prishibeyev] (comic op, 1, Vasil'yev-Buglay, after Chekhov), 1946

Vocal: Sten'ka Razin (suite, A.S. Pushkin), chorus, 1935; Lenin-Stalin (suite, D. Bedny, F. Kanatov, trad., Ya. Rodionov), chorus, 1937; Borodino (cant., M.Yu. Lermontov), B, chorus, small orch, 1941–2; Poltava (orat, after Pushkin, A.N. Tolstoy), solo vv, chorus, orch, 1944; Moskva [Moscow] (suite, Lermontov, trad., V. Vitka, L. Oshanin), chorus, 1947; Devushka i smert' [The Maiden and Death] (orat, A.M. Gor'ky), 1948; Zhenshchinï mira – za mir! [The Women of the World – for Peace!] (orat, B. Dubrovin), Mez, T, chorus, boys' chorus, 1952

Pieces for folk insts, folksong arrs., romances (S.A. Yesenin, V. Mayakovsky, Gor'ky)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A. Ostretsov: ‘Tvorcheskiy oblik D. Vasil'yeva-Buglaya’ [A creative portrait of Vasil'yev-Buglay], Muzïka i revolyutsiya (1929), no.2, pp.9–14

Yu. Keldïsh: ‘D. Vasil'yev-Buglay’, Proletarskiy muzïkant (1930), no.8, pp.8–13

D.D. Lokshin: D.S. Vasil'yev-Buglay (Moscow, 1958)

YELENA DVOSKINA

Vasina-Grossman, Vera Andreyevna [Grossman, Vera]

(b Ryazan', 21 Feb/5 March 1908; d Moscow, 1 July 1990). Russian musicologist. She graduated from the department of history and theory at the Moscow Conservatory in 1938. She took the Kandidat degree in 1941 with a dissertation on the early 19th-century Russian ballad and in 1954 was awarded the doctorate for her work on the Russian classical ballad. In 1939 she began teaching at the Central School of Music and was on the staff of the Central Correspondence Institute for Musical Education (1939–41). She taught at the Moscow Conservatory (1943–57) and was senior research fellow at the Institute for the History of Arts in Moscow (1949–78). Vasina-Grossman's research has centred on small-scale vocal genres. Her superb knowledge of poetry and her keen ear for the musicality of the poetic word found their reflection in her writings on the vocal music of Glinka, the Romantic lieder of Austria and Germany, and the classical ballads of Soviet composers. Her work in this area resulted in the three-volume book Muzïka i poėticheskoye slovo (1972–8), in which she analysed the components and aspects of the synthesis between words and music. She was on the editorial board of and wrote on 19th- and 20th-century Russian music for the important collective works Istoriya russkoy sovetskoy muzïki (Moscow, 1956–63) and Istoriya muzïki narodov SSSR (Moscow, 1970–73) and also wrote on film music. Vasina-Grossman was concerned with music education at all levels: her writings include books for beginners (Pervaya knizhka o muzïke, 1951) to volumes for more experienced audiences.

WRITINGS

A.K. Lyadov (Moscow, 1945)

Yu.A. Shaporin (Moscow, 1946)

‘Zabïtaya povest' o russkom muzïkante’ [A forgotten tale about a Russian musician], SovM (1947), no.4, pp.61–4

‘Glinka i liricheskaya poėziya Pushkina’ [Glinka and the lyrical poetry of Pushkin], M.I. Glinka: sbornik materialov i statey, ed. T. Livanova (Moscow, 1950), 93–113

Pervaya knizhka o muzïke [A first book about music] (Moscow, 1951, 4/1976)

‘Voprosï melodiki v rabotakh B.V. Asaf'yeva’ [Questions of melody in the works of Asaf'yev], Pamyati akademika Borisa Vladimirovicha Asaf'yeva, ed. D.B. Kabalevsky (Moscow, 1951), 79–86

Russkiy klassicheskiy romans XIX veka [The Russian classical ballad in the 19th century] (diss., Moscow Conservatory, 1954; Moscow, 1956)

Zhizn' Glinki [The life of Glinka] (Moscow, 1957)

Vokal'nïye formï (Moscow, 1960, 2/1963)

Kniga dlya lyubiteley muzïki [A book for music-lovers] (Moscow, 1962, 2/1964)

Romanticheskaya pesnya XIX veka [The Romantic song of the 19th century] (Moscow, 1966)

‘Polska poezja w pieśni rosyiskiej’ [Polish poetry in the Russian song], Polsko-rosyjskie miscellanea muzyczne, ed. Z. Lissa (Kraków, 1967), 177–84

‘Zametki o muzïkal'noy dramaturgii fil'ma’ [The dramatic problems of writing film music], Voprosï kinoiskusstva (1967), 209 only

Mastera sovetskogo romansa [Masters of the Soviet ballad] (Moscow, 1968)

Rasskazï o muzïke [Stories about music] (Moscow, 1968)

‘Romans i khorovaya muzïka’ [The ballad and choral music], Russkaya khudozhestvennaya kul'tura kontsa XIX–nachala XX veka (1895–1907), ed. A.D. Alekseyev, i (Moscow, 1968), 422–48

Muzïka i poėticheskoye slovo [Music and the poetic word] (Moscow, 1972–8)

‘Muzïka i proza’ [Music and prose], Tipologiya russkogo realizma vtoroy polovinï XIX veka, ed. G.Yu. Sternin (Moscow, 1979), 10–34

‘Trudnost' prostogo’ [The difficulty of being simple], SovM (1981), no.7, pp.96–8

‘K istorii libretto “Ivana Susanina” Glinki’, Stilevïye osobennosti russkoy muzïki XIX–XX veka, ed. M.K. Mikhailov (Leningrad, 1983), 17–25

‘Musorgskiy i Viktor Gartman’, Khudozhestvennïye protsessï v russkoy kul'ture vtoroy polovinï XIX veka, ed. G.Yu. Sternin (Moscow, 1984), 37–51

‘Mne povezlo na vstrechi s khoroshimi lyud'mi’, MAk (1998), nos.3–4, pp.99–104

BIBLIOGRAPHY

G.B. Bernandt and I.M. Yampol'sky: Kto pisal o muzïke [Writers on music], i (Moscow, 1971)

Ye. Ruch'yevskaya: ‘O muzïke poėzii i poezii muzïki’ [On the music of poetry and the poetry of music], SovM (1982), no.9, pp.72–82

L.N. Korabel'nikova: ‘Ne tol'ko o muzïke …’ [Not only about music …], Khudozhestvennïye protsessï v russkoy kul'ture vtoroy polovinï XIX veka, ed. G.Yu. Sternin (Moscow, 1984), 409–23

NELLI GRIGOR'YEVNA SHAKHNAZAROVA

Vasks, Pēteris

(b Aizpute, 16 Apr 1946). Latvian composer. He studied the double bass with V. Šereika at the Lithuanian State Conservatory (Vilnius) from 1964 to 1970 and graduated from Valentīns Utkins’s composition class at the Latvian State Conservatory (Riga) in 1978. From 1963 to 1974 he played in various symphonic and chamber orchestras in Lithuania and Latvia. Since 1989 Vasks has been teaching composition at the Emīls Dārziņš Music School in Riga.

Vasks specializes in instrumental chamber music with programmatic titles, which speak of nature under threat and the need to defend humanity from forces hostile to mankind in the development of civilization. The presence of this ethical imperative creates a deeply meditative basic mood, as well as frequent sharp contrasts between the clear beauty of ideals and tragic pathos. Vasks bases his style on Lutosławski and the Polish school of the 1960s, but with his own radical individuality and aesthetic rooted in traditional Latvian culture. His works have gained broad attention outside Latvia.

WORKS

(selective list)

Orch: Cantabile, str, 1979; Vēstījums [Message], 1982; Musica dolorosa, str, 1983; Lauda, 1986; Eng Hn Conc., 1989; Sym. ‘Balsis’ [Voices], str, 1991; Vc Conc., 1993–4; Vn Conc. (Tālā gaisma [Distant Light]), vn, str, 1996–7; Sym. no.2, 1998

Chbr and solo inst: Mūzika aizlidojušajiem putniem [Music for Fleeting Birds], wind qnt, 1977; Str Qt no.1, 1977; Grāmata čellam [Book for Cello], vc, 1978; Ainava ar putniem [Landscape with Birds], fl, 1980; Mūzika aizgājušajam draugam [In Memory of a Friend], wind qnt, 1982; Str Qt no.2 ‘Vasaras dziedājumi’ [Summer Tunes], 1984; Sonata, db, 1986; Pavasara sonāte [Spring Sonata], str sextet, 1987; Sonata, fl + a fl, 1992; Str Qt no.3, 1995

Kbd: In memoriam, 2 pf, 1977; Mazā nakts mūzika [A Little Night Music], pf, 1978; Baltā ainava [White Scenery], pf, 1980; Rudens mūzika: quasi una sonata [Autumn Music], pf, 1981; Cantus ad pacem (Conc.), org, 1984; Episodi e canto perpetuo, pf trio, 1985; TeD, org, 1991; Izdegušās zemes ainavas [Landscapes of the Burnt-Out Earth], pf, 1992; Pavasara mūzika: quasi una sonata [Spring Music], pf, 1995

Vocal: Latvija (chbr cant., A. Rancāne), S, fl + a fl, bells, pf, 1987; Litene (ballad, U. Bērziņš), 12vv, 1992; 3 Poems (C. Milosz), A, 2T, B/ATTB, 1995; Dona nobis pacem, SATB, str, 1996 [arr. SATB, org, 1997; SATB, 7 instr, 1997]

Film scores, incid music

Principal publishers: Schott, Sikorski, Sovetskij Kompozitor, Muzyka

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L. Mūrniece, ed.: Muzïka sovetskoy Latvii [The music of Soviet Latvia] (Riga, 1988), 107–10

Christoph Schlüren, ed.: Pēteris Vasks: Verzeichnis der veröftentlichen Werke (Mainz, 1997)

ARNOLDS KLOTIŅŠ

Vaslin, Olive-Charlier

(b Montreuil-Bellay, 10 March 1794; d Saint Julien-sur-Sarthe, 5 Aug 1889). French cellist and teacher. He was one of the more elusive musical figures of 19th-century Paris, overshadowed by fellow cellist and Conservatoire professor, Louis Norblin. He entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1808 and studied with Nicolas Baudiot, taking second prizes in 1809 and 1810 and first prize in 1811. He accepted a position at the Théâtre des Variétés in 1809, and joined the Opéra orchestra in 1814. In 1827 he assumed the retiring Baudiot's position as cello teacher at the Conservatoire, remaining there until 1859. Between 1820 and 1840, he played second cello for Pierre Baillot's quintets, and first cello for the Athénée Musical. Other chamber music activities included a performance with Bériot and Liszt in April 1828. After his retirement, he spent his time composing, writing several incidental works and a cello method (1884). He owned a 1725 Stradivari cello, but was reportedly unhappy with the neck adjustment, having it replaced several times before finally scraping it down himself (Hill). He sold the instrument in 1869.

Although a student of Baudiot, Vaslin devised his own individual mannerisms derived from violin technique. A self-proclaimed admirer of Baillot, he adopted an oblique rather than perpendicular left-hand position. This enabled him to overcome the weakness of a double-jointed third finger, although the position was considered old-fashioned by other cellists. His bow hold was above the frog, as was that of most other French cellists of his era, but his fingers took a more acute slant towards the tip than was usual. His method was formulated as a tribute to the bowing style of Baillot and provides a comprehensive survey of mid-19th-century French bowing technique. In particular, he addresses issues of bow management for varied articulation and phrasing, and highlights clarity of attack and uniformity of sound as the focus of instruction. The method also implies a distinct difference in musical style between generations of players. Vaslin was 90 at the date of publication, and expressed pointed disdain for the portamento shifts and left-hand vibrato favoured by more youthful Romantic cellists.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Articles in Revue musicale, iii (1828), 277–9; xi (1831), 21–2; xiii (1833), 334–6

F. Niecks: ‘Recollections of Violoncellists’, MMR, xlix (1919), 121–3

C. Pierre: Conservatoire National de musique et de déclamation (Paris, 1900)

W.H. Hill and others: Antonio Stradivari: his Life and Work (London, 1902/R)

J.-M. Fauquet: Les sociétés de musique de chambre à Paris de la Restauration à 1870 (Paris, 1986)

V. Walden: One Hundred Years of Violoncello: a History of Technique and Performance Practice, 1740–1840 (Cambridge, 1998)

VALERIE WALDEN

Vásquez, José (Francisco)

(b Arandas, Jalisco, 4 Oct 1895; d México City, 19 Dec 1961). Mexican composer and conductor. After studying at the National Conservatory, Mexico City, with Rafael Tello (piano) and Carrillo (theory), he established his own Escuela Libre de Música y Declamación in 1921, where he taught until his death; he was also a founding teacher of the Escula Nacional de Música (1929). In 1926 he created the National University SO, and, as a conductor, performed in Europe and South America, as well as being the first Mexican to conduct in Japan (with the Osaka SO and Tokyo SO). He organized his own opera company, Pro arte patrio, which performed his own operatic works and other operas by Mexican composers. A prolific composer, he wrote, among other works, nearly 50 songs for voice and orchestra. His style was largely influenced by the late German Romantics, though works such as Acuarelas de viaje (written after a trip to Guatemala) also display the influence of the French Impressionists, particularly in their manner of orchestration. The Suite para instrumentos de arco was awarded a composition prize by the Congreso Nacional de Música in 1927.

WORKS

(selective list)

Dramatic: Los compañeros de la hoja (opereta), 1911; Citlali (op, 1, M. Bermejo), 1922, Mexico City, Esperanza Iris, 19 Dec 1922; Los mineros (op, 1, A. Molina), 1917, unperf; Monna Vanna (op, 3, A. Michel), 1917, unperf; El mandarín (comedia lírica, 1, Bermejo after Clemenceau: Le voile du bonheur), 1927, Mexico City, Arbeu, 3 April 1927; El rajah (drama lírico, 2, Bermejo), 1931, Mexico City, Arbeu, 14 June 1931; La ofrenda (ballet), 1931; El último sueño (opera-ballet, 3, Bermejo), 1928, Mexico City, Arbeu, July 1935; Don Vasco Nuñez de Balboa (op, C. Caballero), 1961, inc.

Orch: Acuarelas de viaje, sym. poem inc., 1929; Estampas, sym. poem, 1959; 4 syms., 4 pf concs., 2 vn concs.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

O. Mayer-Serra: Música y músicos de Latinoamerica (Mexico City, 1947)

N. Slonimsky: Music of Latin America (New York, 1972)

J.C. Romero: Efemérides de la música mexicana (Mexico City, 1994)

G. Pareyón: José F. Vasqueƶ (Guadalajara, 1996)

RICARDO MIRANDA-PÉREZ

Vásquez, [Vázquez] Juan

(b Badajoz, c1500; d ?Seville, c1560 ). Spanish composer. His name first appears as a ‘contralto’ hired on 27 October 1511 in the cathedral of Plasencia; he next appears as a singer in Badajoz Cathedral's capitular acts of 22 April 1530, and by September he had the task of teaching plainchant to the cathedral's ‘disorderly’ choirboys. On 26 June 1535 he was appointed sochantre. In 1539 he was a singer in Palencia Cathedral, and in 1541 Juan Tavera, Archbishop of Toledo, gave him 20 ducats to travel from Palencia to his court in Madrid. Vásquez's stay there may have been short, for his name has not been found in subsequent lists of chapel singers. In 1545 he returned to Badajoz as maestro de capilla at the provincial cathedral, and he remained there until 1550. The following year he was employed by Don Antonio de Zuñiga, a Sevillian nobleman to whom he dedicated a collection of secular music, Villancicos i canciones (1551). Vásquez's only extant sacred music, Agenda defunctorum (1556), appears in a beautifully executed volume dedicated to the ‘noble Juan bravo’ in which Vásquez described himself as a priest and a native of Badajoz. His last publication, Recopilación de sonetos y villancicos (1560), is a compilation of his secular works, including seven reprints and three reworked settings from the 1551 book, and pieces first published as vihuela intabulations by Valderrábano (1547) and Pisador (1552). The dedication of the Recopilación to Don Gonzalo de Moscoso y Casceres Penna, an hidalgo of the Cáceres family of Badajoz, shows that Vásquez remained in Seville, where he probably died in about 1560. It is unlikely that he is identifiable with the Vázquez who was maestro de capilla at the court of the Duke of Medina, and to whom the chapter of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria offered the post of maestro de la catedral in 1572.

The Agenda defunctorum is monumental, both in length and in display of the composer's powers of organization. He assumed the use of chant as well as polyphony in his settings for Matins with three nocturns (the invitatory, six lessons and nine antiphons are polyphonic), Lauds (plainchant apart from Benedictus domine Deus), and part of the Burial Service (the responsory Libera me is polyphonic). The Requiem Mass is polyphonic and shows its historical position in its range of texts: items differing from the present liturgy are the tract, Sicut cervus, without sequence, an interpolated motet, Sana me, Domine, and a communion, Absolve, Domine. Musical interest is maintained by varying sonorities: the setting is generally for four voices but includes three- and five-voice sections, and high and low voices are contrasted. The cantus firmus may be placed in any voice. The texture ranges from a homophonic chant paraphrase to a fully polyphonic style, seen particularly in the Requiem Mass.

Vásquez achieved greatest fame with his secular music. Although a few settings are of italianate poetic forms, three-quarters of the contents of the new secular forms are settings of villancicos. They include poetry by leading Spaniards, and Vásquez himself may have glossed traditional refrains. His villancicos are traditional in form, but he made them longer and more imposing by expanding the estribillo with phrase repetitions, and by complete or partial repetitions of the estribillo itself before or after the mudanza. Some villancicos show the traditional form clearly; in others, phrase extensions or madrigalisms obscure repetitions. Vásquez typically began with an imitative point, but neither his counterpoint nor his rhythmic patterns are complex. The diatonic melodies often include phrase shapes related to folktunes and to the medieval cantigas; he was careful to provide proper text declamation. The synthesis of folksong and folk poetry in Vásquez's courtly villancicos, and their charm and variety, may explain their numerous intabulations and his great popularity in Spanish courts. Bermudo, in his Libro Mamado Declaración de instrumentos musicales (1555), praised Vásquez's music and recommended it as a model for study. It is probable that Vásquez composed the music, now lost, for the Farsa del juego de cañas by Diego Sánchez de Badajoz (c1500–c1550).

WORKS

[26] Villancicos i canciones, 3–5vv (Osuna, 1551), ed. in RRMR, civ (1995); 11 vihuela intabulations, 1 guitar intabulation, 1554³², 6 ed. F. Pedrell, Catálech de la Biblioteca musical de la Diputacio de Barcelona, ii (Barcelona, 1909), 125ff, 7 ed. F. Pedrell, Cancionero musical popular español, iii (Barcelona, 1922), 151

Agenda defunctorum, 4vv (Seville, 1556); ed. S. Rubio (Madrid, 1975)

Recopilación de [67] sonetos y villancicos, 4–5vv (Seville, 1560), ed. in MME, iv (1946); 3 vihuela intabulations, 1547²⁵, ed. in MME, xxii (1965); 4 vihuela intabulations, 1552³⁵; 3 vihuela intabulations, 1554³²

BIBLIOGRAPHY

StevensonSCM

B.J. Gallardo: Ensayo de una biblioteca española de libros raros y curiosos, iv (Madrid, 1889/R), 921–31

A. Paz y Melia: Series de los mas importantes documentos del archivo y biblioteca del … Duque de Medinaceli, ii (Madrid, 1922)

J. Moll Roqueta: ‘Músicos de la corte del Cardenal Juan Tavera (1523–1545)’, AnM, vi (1951), 155–78, esp. 165–6

M.S. Kastner: ‘La música en la Catedral de Badajoz (años 1520–1603)’, AnM, xii (1957), 123–46, esp. 126–8

E. Russell: Villancicos and Other Secular Polyphonic Music of Juan Vásquez: a Courtly Tradition in Spain's Siglo del Oro (diss., U. of Southern California, 1970)

E. Russell: ‘The Patrons of Juan Vásquez: a Biographical Contribution’, AnM, xxvi (1971), 61–74

R. Gómez: ‘Juan Vázquez en la Catedral de Plasencia’, Revista de estudios extremeños, new ser., xxix (1973), 495–502

C. Solis: ‘Juan Vázquez en la Catedral de Badajoz’, Revista de estudios extremeños, new ser., xxx (1974), 127–51

L. de La Torre: ‘Juan Vázquez en 1572’, RdMc, ii (1979), 131 only

M.C. Gómez: ‘En torno a la ensalada y los orígenes del teatro lírico español’, Cultura y representación en la Edad Media: Elche 1992, 191–212 [Eng. trans., Comparative Drama, xxviii (1994), 375–81]

ELEANOR RUSSELL/MARICARMEN GÓMEZ

Vass, Lajos

(b Poroszló, 5 Apr 1927; d Budapest, 6 Nov 1992). Hungarian choirmaster, composer and folksong collector. After Lajos Bárdos, Vass was the last figure of great consequence in the history of the Hungarian choral movement linked with the name of Kodály. He completed his secondary education at a teacher-training college in Debrecen (1941–6), after which he studied composition and singing at the Liszt Academy of Music; he graduated in 1951. His composition teachers were Veress and Ferenc Farkas. He held appointments as conductor (from 1949) and artistic director (1953–7) of the Hungarian Army Art Ensemble, conductor of the Hungarian State Male-Voice (1957–8) and Steel Sound (1960–64) choirs and as chief conductor of the Art Ensemble of the Ironworkers' Union (1964–92).

As choirmaster he was a faithful interpreter of the works of Kodály and Bartók and a disseminator of more recent Hungarian choral works. With his choirs he raised the standard of Hungarian singing to an international level, as attested by the many prizes he won at international competitions. His dynamic personality was well suited to the dissemination of musical knowledge. (He was, among other things, a well-known personality on Hungarian television and radio.) Additionally, he played an important role in the Hungarian folk music revival of the 1970s. Understandably, vocal music lies at the centre of his output. His musical language developed gradually from the early folksong adaptations to a style involving discernible use of dodecaphonic technique. He was awarded the Erkel Prize (1952) and, posthumously, the Hungarian Order of Officers (1993).

WORKS

(selective list)

Vocal-orch: Requiem - A hősök emlékére [Requiem - Homage to Heroes] (R.I. Roszgyensztvenzkij, trans. Z. Rab), S, B, female chorus, orch, 1963; Egy gondolat bánt engemet [I'm Troubled by a Thought] (cant., Petőfi), T, orch, 1964; Mathias Rex (orat, J. Pannonius), solo vv, nar, chorus, orch, 1971, rev. 1979; Ráday (cant., P. Ráday), T, chorus, orch, org, 1989

Other choral: (mixed chorus unless otherwise stated): Az Értől az òceánig [From the Brook to the Ocean] (E. Ady), male chorus, 1957; 2 fantasia notturna (P. Gulyás, Á. Tóth), equal vv, 1959; Ember és jövő [The Man and the Future] (F. Jankovich), T, male chorus, 1960; Oboe sommerso (S. Quasimodo), 3 female choruses, 1961; Hommage à Debussy (F. García Lorca), 1962; Risponde la Notte (C. Strozzi, Michelangelo), 6-pt chorus, 1962; Az esztendő [The Year] (S. Weöres, A. Károlyi), female/children’s chorus, 1965; Jövendölés [Predictions] (M. Jókai), 1965; Firenze (D. Campana), 3-pt female/male chorus, 1966; Tavaszi Madrigal [Spring Madrigal] (A. József), 1966; Cantamus semper et ubique (without text), 1967; Gyászének - Hommage à Kodály [Mourning Song], 1967; Nocturne (P. Verlaine, J. Szegszárdy-Csengery), 1968; De summo bono (cant., A. Szenczi Molnár), T, chorus, org, 1974; Furor bestiae (F. Otrócleocsi Fóris), chorus, org, 1975; Lessing-Sinngedichte, 1978; Kőrösi Csoma Sándor üzenete [The Message of Sándor Kőrösi Csoma] (L. Magyari), 1984; Kufsteini elégiák [Elegy from Kufstein] (F. Kazinczy, J. Batsanyi, G. Czuczor, Kreith, F. Verseghy), 1985; Benedetto sia'l giorno (madrigal, Petrarch), 6-pt chorus, org, 1986; Ernlékhangok [Remembered Sounds] (V. Csontos), 1987; Kiáltó szó [Shouting Word] (Bible: Isaiah, Matthew, John), 1988; Tövisek es viragok [Thorns and Flowers] (Kazinczy), SATB, female chorus, male chorus, org, 1989; Hymnus Santi Emerici (anon. Hung.), org, 1991

Children's chorus: Hajnali harangszó [Chimes at Daybreak] (M. Donászy), 1974; Csúfolódók [Mockers] (trad. texts), chorus, chbr ens, 1978;

Other vocal: Hogy szeretlek? [How do I love thee?] (E.B. Browning), S, pf, 1966; Canti appassionati (A. Fodor), solo vv, pf, 1968, orchd; other songs, folksong arrs.

Orch: Este a táborban [Evening in the Camp], sym. picture, 1951; Ritornelli de Venezia, 1965; Conc., pf, perc, cel, hp, vc, str, 1966; Magyar koncert [Hung. Conc.], 1990

Children's ops, ballets; incid music, incl. film scores

WRITINGS

‘A magyar táj, történelem és nyelv a népdalok tükrében’ [The Hungarian landscape, history and language in the folksongs], Nyelvünk és kultúránk (1978), no.3, 66–76

‘Bartók Béla kórusmüvészete’ [The choral works of Bartók], Kóta (1981), no.1

‘A népzene reneszánsza hazánkban’ [The renaissance of folk music in our country], Nyelvünk és kultúránk (1986), no.10

‘A magyar zene itthon és a nagyvilágban’ [Hungarian music at home and abroad], Nyelvünk és kultúránk (1987), no.8

BIBLIOGRAPHY

M. Berlász, ed.: Vass Lajos emlékezete: tanulmányok és dokumentumok [In memory of L. Vass: studies and documents] (Budapest, 1998)

MELINDA BERLÁSZ

Vassallo, Paolino

(b Cospicua, Malta, 24 July 1856; d Valletta, 30 Jan 1923). Maltese composer, teacher and church musician. He studied theory, organ and composition with Luigi Fenech and Giuseppe Spiteri Fremond and violin with Domenico Amore. In 1875 he went to Paris, where he remained for 10 years, during which time he studied with Ernest Guiraud and Massenet who, on the evidence of extant letters, rated Vassallo's musical gifts highly. On his return to Malta, he founded his extremely successful Music Institute which offered comprehensive courses ranging from the basics to advanced compositional and orchestral techniques; most Maltese composers prominent in the first half of the 20th century, including Carlo Diacono, Giuseppe Caruana and Josie Mallia Pulvirenti, studied with Vassallo.

The turning-point in Vassallo's career as a church musician came in 1903 with the issue of Pope Pius X's Motu proprio, which emphasized the importance of plainchant and Palestrina-style polyphony in the Roman Catholic liturgy, and condemned the operatic style previously in vogue. Vassallo immediately started producing effective liturgical music in line with these instructions. The many ecclesiastical commissions he received culminated in his appointment in 1912 as maestro di cappella of Mdina Cathedral, a position he held until his death.

Vassallo was one of the most influential figures in modern Maltese musical history. He was the first Maltese composer to go for advanced training not in Italy, as had been the convention, but in France. He revitalized Maltese church music, historically the primary genre of Maltese musical expression, leading it away from the heavily operatic Italian idiom of the second half of the 19th century. It is natural, given contemporary circumstances, that his splendid liturgical music is influenced by Gregorian chant and 16th-century Italian polyphony, but it also exhibits a Gallic line of elegance and word-setting, which is even more apparent in his secular works, especially his three operas, where the influence of Massenet is evident.

WORKS

selective list; mostly unpublished; MSS in the archives of the Augustinian Priory in Valletta

sacred

all for male voices and orchestra unless otherwise stated

Grande messa, S, S, T, T, Bar, B, 4vv; Messa no.12, 4vv; Missa S Pauli, v, org; Missa Corpus Christi, 2vv; Kyrie e Gloria pastorale, 2vv; Missa pontificalis, 3vv; Missa S Ceciliae, 3vv; Messa da requiem, T, Bar, B, 4vv; Messa funebre, v, org

8 responses for Holy Week, 1–3 vv; Christus factus est, T, T, Bar, B, str; Dextera Domini, 3vv, unacc.; Ecce vidimus Eum, T, B, str; Lamentazione, T; Seniores populi, T, B, 3vv, pf, hp, str; Lauda Sion, 3vv; Stabat mater, 3vv; Ave maris stella, SATBB; O salutaris hostia, T, 2vv; Tantum ergo, 4vv; Tantum ergo, Bar; Veni Creator Spiritus, 3vv unacc.

9 ants, 1–4vv; Augustine lux doctorum, TTBB, org, orch; Gabriel angelus, TB, org, orch; Salve regina, T; Salve regina, 3vv; Ave Maria, B; Beatus vir, 2vv; Confitebor, S, vv; Laudate pueri Dominum, 10vv unacc.; Laudate pueri Dominum, 6vv unacc.; Mag, 5vv unacc.; Miserere, 4vv unacc.

secular

Ops: Francesca da Rimini (poema lirico, 1, G. Chazol), Valletta, Royal Opera House, 1 May 1888, rev. as Amor Fatale (2), Royal Opera House, 3 May 1898; Frazir (dramma lirico, 4, M.A. Refalo, after G. Muscat Azzopardi: Susanna), Royal Opera House, 15 March 1905; Edith Cavell (melodramma, 3, A. Giglio and A. German), Royal Opera House, 21 March 1927

Orch: Ad Gloriam, ov.; Andante e scherzo; Cantate; Extase; Finale, vn, orch; Fuga; Malta, ov.; Les Astres: valses de concert; Marcia religiosa; Marcia trionfale; Scherzo, andante e finale

Chbr: Andante moderato, (vn, pf)/(pf, orch)/orch; Andante, str qt; Dans Honjgroise, pf 4 hands; Gavotta, 3 mand, 2 gui, str qt; other works, vn, pf

Vocal: Il fior del mio diletto, S, orch; Capriccio, S, orch; Inno degli operai, B, TB, pf, str; La farfalla, Mez, pf; Le retour, T, pf; L'anima di una fanciulla, S, pf; Ottobre, 1v, orch; Trovatella, Mez, pf

BIBLIOGRAPHY

‘Istituto di Musica diretto dal Mro. Paolino Vassallo’, Guida generale di Malta (Malta, 1891), 317–20

A. Levanzin: ‘Il melodramma maltese: Paolino Vassallo’, Malta letteraria, ii (1905), 179–81

V. Caruana dei Conti Gatto: Malta artistica illustrata parte 2da: Musica (Malta, 1910)

U. Rolandi: Musica e musicisti in Malta (Livorno, 1932)

R. Mifsud Bonnici: Mużiċisti kompożituri maltin: maestri di cappella tal-Kattidral (Malta, 1950)

J. Vella: ‘Music’, Malta: Culture and Identity, ed. H. Frendo and O. Friggieri (Malta, 1994), 159–79

JOSEPH VELLA BONDIN

Vasseur, Léon (Félix Augustin Joseph)

(b Bapaume, 28 May 1844; d Pas-de-Calais, 25 May 1917). French composer, organist and conductor. After studying music with his father, an organist at Bapaume, he moved to Paris at the age of 12 to study at the Ecole Niedermeyer. In 1867 he published his Méthode d'orgue expressif ou harmonium (Paris), and in 1870 he became organist at St Symphonien, Versailles. While continuing with religious compositions, he turned to operetta, and in 1872 his La timbale d'argent ran for over 200 nights at the Bouffes-Parisiens, saving the theatre from bankruptcy and setting Vasseur on a career of composing light music. However, none of his later operettas, many of them comic treatments of historical subjects, had equal success. In 1879 he reopened the former Théâtre Taitbout as the Nouveau Théâtre-Lyrique, but his attempt at theatre management soon proved a disaster. In 1890 he became conductor at the Folies-Bergère, but in 1897 retired from the theatrical scene where his attractive if unexceptional style of light music was finding little acceptance.

WORKS

stage

all are opérettes listed in order of first performance and first performed in Paris, unless otherwise stated; for more detailed list see GroveO

Un fi, deux fi, trois figurants, 1872; La timbale d'argent, 1872; Mon mouchoir, 1872; La petite reine, 1873; Le grelot, 1873; Le roi d'Yvetot, Brussels, 1873; Les Parisiennes, 1874; La famille Trouillat ou La rosière d'Honfleur, 1874; La blanchisseuse de Berg-op-Zoom, 1875; La cruche cassée, 1875; La Sorrentine, 1876; L'Oppoponax, 1877; Le droit du seigneur, 1878; Le billet de logement, 1879; Le petit Parisien, 1882; Royal amour, 1884

Le mariage au tambour, 1886; La brasserie (ballet-pantomime), 1886; Madame Cartouche, 1886; Ninon de Lenclos, 1887; Mam'zelle Crénom, 1888; Le prince soleil, 1889; Le voyage de Suzette, 1890; La famille Vénus, 1891; Le pays de l'or, 1892; Le commandant Laripète, 1892; La prétentaine, 1893; Au premier hussard, 1896 [? first perf. 1883]; Le royaume d'Hercule, 1896; Au chat qui pelote, 1897; La souris blanche, 1897, collab. de Thuisy; Dans la plume, 1898

sacred

Hymne à Ste Cécile, S, org, orch, 1877

2 masses, offertories, anthems, Magnificat

ANDREW LAMB

Vasson, Pierre.

See Vachon, Pierre.

Vatelot, Etienne

(b Paris, 13 Nov 1925). French violin maker and restorer. He began his training in the workshop of his father, Marcel Vatelot, one of Paris's foremost luthiers. From there he went in 1946 to learn to make new instruments under Amédée Dieudonné in Mirecourt, returning to Paris to study repairs with Victor Quénoil. He spent a few months in New York in 1949 before rejoining his father. In 1959 Marcel Vatelot handed over the business to his son, staying on as a consultant and making his almost daily contribution at the shop until his death in September 1970. In the meantime Etienne Vatelot's skill, knowledge and reputation continued to grow; he was president of the French Violin Makers' Society from 1965 to 1969, and was appointed to the Légion d'Honneur in 1972. His opinion as an expert on early instruments has been widely sought and highly regarded, and he has also been especially noted for his expertise in tonal adjustments. He published the definitive work on French bows, Les archets français (Paris, 1976), whose detailed photographs (in colour) make it an invaluable study.

CHARLES BEARE

Vater, Christian

(b Hanover, bap. 11 Oct 1679; d Hanover, 25 Jan 1756). German organ and harpsichord builder. He learnt organ building from his father, Martin Vater, is known to have worked for Arp Schnitger as journeyman in 1697 and 1700, and he set up on his own in about 1702. He became organist to the court of the Elector of Hanover (later King George I of England) in 1708–9, and court organ builder in 1714. By 1716–17 he had to his credit ‘33 organs, some new-built, some renovated’. Most of his work was done in the electorate of Hanover, the bishopric of Osnabrück and the county of Oldenburg, but he also worked for the landgraves of Kassel and Darmstadt, and in Amsterdam he built a new organ for the Oude Kerk (1724–6) and rebuilt an instrument in the Westerkerk (1726). Like his brother Anton in Paris, Christian Vater was in demand as a builder of harpsichords and clavichords. His son Johannes succeeded him as organ builder to the court of Hanover.

Organs by Vater survive at Bockhorn, Oldenburg (1722); Wiefelstede, Oldenburg (from 1729); St Nikolai, Gifhorn (1748) and Hohenrode, near Bad Hersfeld (built for Gestorf, 1749). Surviving cases are to be found at Wathlingen (1707), Melle, near Osnabrück (from 1722), Riessen (1738), Zeven (1750) and elsewhere. Vater’s Amsterdam organ, which was substantially altered and enlarged as early as 1738 by Johann Caspar Müller – probably a brother or cousin of Christian Müller – now contains only a few ranks of pipes by Vater. He built slider-chests, having no appreciation for the spring-chest. His instruments, with their well-balanced specifications, are typical of the late Baroque organ in northern Germany.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

MGG1 (W. Kaufmann)

F. Bösken: Musikgeschichte der Stadt Osnabrück (Regensburg, 1937)

W. Kaufmann: ‘Beiträge zu einer Orgeltopographie Nordwestdeutschlands’, Osnabrücker Mitteilungen, lxvii (1956), 175–217

W. Kaufmann: ‘Die Orgeln in Melle’, Osnabrücker Mitteilungen, lxviii (1959), 102–32

G. Piper: Gifhorner Orgelchronik (Gifhorn, 1961)

W. Kaufmann: Die Orgeln des alten Herzogtums Oldenburg (Oldenburg, 1962)

W. Kaufmann: ‘Nachrichten über die Orgeln des Berendt Huess und anderer Orgelbauer im nordwestfälischen Grenzraum’, Osnabrücker Mitteilungen, lxxii (1964), 51–83

U. Pape: ‘Grundsätze der Dispositionsgestaltung des Orgelbauers Christian Vater’, AMw, xxii (1965), 294–301

B. Bijtelaar: De oude orgels van Amsterdam (Leiden, 1971)

G. Fock: Arp Schnitger (Kassel, 1974)

R. Skupnik: Der hannoversche Orgelbauer Christian Vater, 1679–1756 (Kassel, 1976)

HANS KLOTZ

Vatielli, Francesco

(b Pesaro, 31 Dec 1876; d Portogruaro, Venice, 12 Dec 1946). Italian musicologist. He took an arts degree at the University of Bologna (1895) and a diploma in composition from the Liceo Musicale, Bologna, having studied with Mascagni and Antonio Cicognani. Under the guidance of Riccardo Gandolfi he developed an interest in music history, which he taught in 1905–6 at the Bologna Liceo. His publication Canoni musicali di Ludovico Zacconi, on a manuscript found in the Biblioteca Oliveriana in Pesaro, appeared in the same year; he presented further biographical information for the subject in 1912. In 1906 he succeeded Torchi as director of the Liceo library, a post he held until 1945. In 1908 he published his research on the Lyra Barberini of G.B. Doni and took the chair of music history at the University of Bologna.

Vatielli’s access to the rich Bologna Liceo library led to the publication of research on Corelli, Torelli and the musical heritage of Bologna in general. He was one of the first Italian musicologists to write on the history of 17th- and 18th-century Italian instrumental music, the 16th-century canzone popolare and the dramatic madrigal, and to create a better understanding of the 17th-century Bologna school of instrumental music. He was also active in music education (Materia e forme della musica, 1923–6; Letteratura poetica e drammatica, 1938), journalism (as music critic of Il resto del Carlino), administration (he founded Cultura musicale, the Società del Quartetto) and as a composer of piano, choral and vocal works.

WRITINGS

‘Un musicista pesarese del sec. XVI (L. Zacconi)’, Cronaca musicale, viii (1904), 65–74; see also xvi (1912), 51–60, 83–92, 103–11

‘La Lyra Barberina di G.B. Doni’, Cronaca musicale, xii (1908), 207–22, 253–62, 293–304, 335–44, 364–78; xiii (1909), 11–17, 48–54

La civiltà musicale di moda: ragionamenti di Petronio Isaurico (Turin, 1913, 2/1924 as Ragionamenti e fantasie musicali di Petronio Isaurico)

‘La biblioteca del Liceo musicale di Bologna’, L’archiginnasio, xi (1916), 124–46, 201–17; xii (1917), 31–47

‘Rossini a Bologna’, L’archiginnasio, xii (1917), 169–88; xiii (1918), 48–54, 117–32, 209–19

‘Cinquant’anni di vita musicale a Bologna (1850–1900)’, L’archiginnasio, xv (1920), 129–51; xvi (1921), 28–40, 120–33

Materia e forme della musica (Bologna, 1923–6)

Arte e vita musicale a Bologna (Bologna, 1927)

Storia della musica (Milan, 1936, 2/1938)

‘Rapporti della musica violinistica con l’ultima letteratura per liuto’, Congresso internazionale di musica II: Florence and Cremona 1937, 292–9

Letteratura poetica e drammatica (Milan, 1938)

‘L’oratorio a Bologna negli ultimi decenni del Seicento’, NA, xv (1938), 26–35, 77–87

‘Giuseppe Torelli, la scvola veronese (secoli XVI–XVII)’, Chigiana, iii (1941), 25–31

Il principe di Venosa e Leonora d’Este (Milan, 1941)

‘Primizie del sinfonismo’, RMI, xlvii (1943), 117–40

EDITIONS

Antiche cantate d’amore (Bologna, 1907–20)

Adriano Banchieri: Musiche corali, CMI, i–iii (1919)

Antichi maestri bolognesi (Bologna, 1919)

Filippo Azzaiolo: Villote del fiore (Bologna, 1921)

Madrigali di Carlo Gesualdo, principe di Venosa, PIISM, Monumenta, ii (1942)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L. Parigi: ‘La musica e il libro: Vatielli’, Critica musicale, ii (1919), 67–8

A. Della Corte: ‘Francesco Vatielli’, RMI, xlix (1947), 225–7

F. Ghisi: ‘Francesco Vatielli’, Mf, ii (1949), 5–9

CAROLYN GIANTURCO

Vatsyayan, Kapila

(b Delhi, 25 Dec 1928). Indian classical dancer, scholar and administrator. She was educated at the Universities of Delhi and Michigan and took her PhD in Indology from Banaras Hindu University, which is among those universities which later awarded her honorary degrees. In addition to her studies in art, history and English and Sanskrit literature she trained in several styles of Indian classical dance. Her numerous published writings show a broad interdisciplinary interest in the cultural, historical and philosophical contexts of Indian art and performing traditions. She has stressed the conceptual links between different Indian arts and has striven to identify underlying symbolic and intellectual themes in the various regional styles and genres she has studied. In her administrative career she has held Indian government posts in cultural policy and has headed departments responsible for archaeology, museums and libraries as well as literary, visual and performing arts. She became first the secretary and then the academic director of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts in New Delhi. She has held visiting appointments at universities in the USA and has represented India in international conferences, seminars and exhibitions; she has also been a member of UNESCO committees. Under Vatsyayan's leadership the Indira Gandhi Centre has become an important documentation centre for the study of classical Indian texts and traditional Indian philosophy and performing arts. It has also published a series of primary texts and translations, dictionaries and reference works concerning music and other arts. Vatsyayan's academic and administrative achievements have been recognized in a number of national awards including the Padma Shri of the Republic of India in 1990.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

G. Kuppuswamy and M. Hariharan: Indian Dance and Music Literature: a Select Bibliography (New Delhi, 1981)

M. Haroon: Indian Music Literature (Delhi, 1991)

B.N. Saraswati, S.C. Malik and M. Khanna, eds.: Art, the Integral Vision (New Delhi, 1994)

JONATHAN KATZ

Vaubouin [Vauban, Vauboyet].

See Voboam.

Vaudeville

(Fr.).

A French poem or song of satirical or epigrammatic character common in the 17th and 18th centuries. Its use in the French theatre (comédie en vaudevilles) led in the 19th and 20th centuries to a broader application of the term as a name for theatrical entertainments similar to modern musical comedy or music-hall variety shows. The term itself is the result of the cohesion and confusion of two genres of French song which have separate origins. The earliest, the vau de vire, was a popular, satirical song originating in Normandy in the 15th century; the voix de ville was a courtly song of Parisian origin, the spelling of which in the earliest known reference (‘vaul-de-ville’, 1507) is already confused with that of the Norman genre. The existence of three villages in Lorraine, all named Vaudeville, adds to the confusion of etymology.

1. Vau de vire.

2. Voix de ville.

4. Comédie en vaudevilles.

5. Vaudeville final.

6. Vaudeville in the 19th and 20th centuries.

CLIFFORD BARNES

1. Vau de vire.

Vau de vire literally means ‘valley of Vire’, the place near the city of Vire in Normandy where the song originated. A local genre, concerned with events and personalities of Normandy, celebrated in songs of love, drinking and current events, the vaux de vire were probably created and sung by a society or guild of poet–singers, the ‘bons compaignons du Vau de Vire’ mentioned in the song Hélas, Olivier Basselin. The most notable of them was Olivier Basselin (c1400–50), a semi-legendary figure whose name appears in two 15th-century Norman collections, the Vire manuscript (texts only) and the Bayeux manuscript (texts and melodies). Gasté linked Basselin and his ‘bons campaignons’ with the Norman trouvères of an earlier period.

By 1500 there was a sizable repertory of vaux de vire, which had become very popular and spread all over France as ‘lais des Vaux de Vire’. Francois Briand’s Novels nouveaux (1512) includes a ‘Noël sur une chanson du Vau-de-Vire’, Plaisante fleur. The name remained current for songs of popular, topical satire long after the original and authentic vaux de vire had died out. In 1570 Jean Le Houx published a collection of Vaux-de-Vire nouveaux, intended to revive the earlier style of Basselin, but in fact consisting entirely of drinking-songs. The title of one of Jacques Mangeant’s six collections (Caen, 1608–15), based in part on Le Houx, shows the broad application of the term by this time: Recueil des plus beaux airs accompagnées de chansons a dancer, balets, chansons folâtres et bachanales, autrement dites vaudevires. Cotgrave’s Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues (1611) includes this definition: ‘A country ballade, or song; a Roundelay or Virelay; so tearmed of Vaudevire, a Norman towne wherin Olivier Bassel, the first inventor of them lived; also a vulgar proverb; a country or common saying’. This definition appears under ‘vaudeville’, showing that by the early 17th century the more modern term and spelling had replaced the Norman one, and the confusion of origins had begun.

2. Voix de ville.

The term ‘voix de ville’ (‘city voices’), current during the 16th century, described a courtly lyric of several strophes and, more particularly, the simple tune repeated to each strophe. Often written by the most famous poets of the day (unlike the 17th- and 18th-century vaudeville), the voix de ville poem covered the full range of courtly poetry, with a preference for love-poems. The music was distinguished by its chordal setting, although Bourgeois wrote in his psalter of 1574 that melismas and short imitations were occasionally used, suggesting the possibility of a style like that of the Parisian chanson of about 1530.

The term ‘voix de ville’ may have originated as a courtly and urban response to the popular and provincial vau de vire. The first known reference to it, in the courtly play La comdamnacion de banquet (1507) by Nicolas de la Chesnaye, occurs in a spelling linking it to the older genre. De la Chesnaye listed the text incipits of 17 songs, some of which are said to be ‘vaul-de-ville’. In spite of the occasional appearance of the spelling ‘vaudeville’ in the 16th century, ‘voix de ville’ was more common, as in Adrien Le Roy’s Le second livre de guiterre, contenant plusieurs chansons en forme de voix de ville (1555; an earlier edition may have appeared in 1551, but it is now lost). This collection, the first known to consist entirely of voix de villes, gives the full texts with their melodies and tablatures for accompaniment. Most of these pieces, which exemplify the mid-century voix de ville, also double as dances (‘Chanson-Gaillard’, ‘Chanson-Branle gay’), a practice widespread in France. Some of the same tunes appear as tenors in polyphonic chansons of the period, e.g. Certon’s Premier livre de chansons (Paris, 1552), and Le Roy’s Premier livre de chansons en forme de vau de ville (Paris, 1573) uses them in the upper voice. Levy has shown that many chansons of Arcadelt and Sandrin, published by Attaingnant in the first half of the century, are really voix de villes in form or style. Levy and Heartz have also traced the relation between certain dance tunes, and the verses written for them by court poets, which appear among the settings in the voix de ville collections.

Chardavoine’s Recueil des plus belles et excellentes chansons en forme de voix de ville (Paris, 1576, 2/1588) contains 200 poems by earlier and contemporary poets and a few folksongs, provided with ‘chants communs’ adaptable for either monophonic vocal or instrumental performance. The variety of dance types used with these verses is shown by a list in the preface: pavanes, gaillards, branles, tourdions, ‘et tant d’autre chansons que l’on dance et que l’on chante ordinairement par les villes’. Le Roy’s publications of 1571 and 1573 alternate the spelling voix de ville and vau de ville; in the preface of his Airs de cour (Paris, 1571) Le Roy wrote that such songs were formerly called ‘voix-de-ville’. St Juliens’ Meslanges historique (1588) uses both voix-de-villes and vaux-de-villes, but the single-word form ‘vaudeville’ was in common use by the end of the 16th century.

3. Vaudeville in the 17th and 18th centuries.

After 1600, the term ‘air’ or ‘air de cour’ was generally used for settings of strophic texts, particularly for accompanied solo songs. Vaudeville continued to be used, but with a meaning more limited than before; in his Harmonie universelle (1636–7), Mersenne defined it as the simplest sort of air, using all sorts of verses set syllabically and sung without fixed metre according to the rhythm of the words, making it possible for even the least skilled to sing them. On the other hand, De Sercy made some kind of distinction between air and vaudeville, as is apparent in the title of his Airs et vaudevilles de cour (Paris, 1665–6). During the reign of Louis XIV, however, vaudeville came primarily to mean topical songs in which political and court events were satirized (‘mazarinades’, for example, were vaudeville lampoons of Mazarin). Furetière, in his Dictionnaire universel (1690), defined vaudevilles as ‘chansons du Pont Neuf’, the bridge in Paris where it was customary to sing or recite them.

These songs for dancing, drinking and satire became a national pastime. Since everyone knew the tunes, they were transmitted orally and usually not printed in the numerous 17th- and 18th-century collections of ‘historical’ songs about life in Paris and the court. There are numerous manuscript collections, however, most notably those of Clérambault and Maurepas in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. Vaudeville tunes soon became dissociated from their original words and could be re-used by any rhymer; they were known by an identifying tag or ‘timbre’ which consisted usually of part of a refrain or, often, of nonsense syllables, if these existed in the original text. Sometimes several timbres came to be used for the same tune, and the false ones (faux timbres) complicate finding the original. Occasionally one timbre may refer to different tunes in different centuries.

Between 1627 and 1663 Ballard published numerous volumes of vaudevilles, separating the lighter (Chansons pour dancer et pour boire) from the more serious (Airs). His Meslanges de chansons, airs sérieux et à boire (1674) mixed the two styles, and volumes of this series appeared almost every year thereafter. After the turn of the century, the words ‘parodie’ and ‘brunette’ became associated with vaudeville in the titles of these volumes. Finally, in 1717, Ballard brought out La clef des chansonniers, ou Recueil des vaudevilles depuis 100 ans et plus, in which he gathered together for the first time over 300 pieces. This encouraged the founding in 1733 of the famous singing society Le Caveau, in which the vaudeville was cultivated along with the arts of eating and drinking. Capelle’s La clé de caveau à l’usage des chansonniers (1810), with its later supplements, increased the original Ballard repertory to 2350 tunes. Singing clubs of this kind flourished into the 19th century, and the tradition still continues with the chansonniers in cafés and concerts. Many vaudevilles of 16th- and 17th-century origin remained popular into the 19th and 20th centuries. One of the most stable of these is Réveillez-vous, belle endormie (see ex.1a).

In Grout’s succinct analysis, the musical features of the vaudeville are to be found in a short, folklike melody of narrow range and persistent rhythmic pattern, with occasional irregular phrase structure. Many vaudeville tunes are of dance origin, whether the timbre suggests this or not. Other features are a preference for the keys of G and D, both major and minor, the preservation of the word rhythm of the text, melody in the middle of the vocal range, ornaments carefully placed (the cross, + or ×, is the usual ornament sign) and frequent three-part form (ABA). The minor mode often heightens the sly, humorous effect that characterizes so many of these songs.

4. Comédie en vaudevilles.

Comedy using vaudeville tunes with new words was one of the new theatrical styles that caught the imagination of the Paris public in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Two collections of plays, Evaristo Gherardi’s Théâtre italien (1694), representing the repertory of the Comédie-Italienne, and Le Sage and d’Orneval’s Le théâtre de la foire, ou L’opéra comique (1721–37), provide examples of the gradual evolution of these comedies into a new genre, the opéra comique.

At various times theatres at the annual Paris fairs of St Germain and St Laurent experimented with acrobatic shows, plays with songs and dances, monologues, pantomimes, poster plays and marionettes, all centred heavily on the use of vaudevilles (see Théâtres de la Foire). Some of these types of spectacle arose in response to the restrictions placed on the Théâtres de la Foire by the theatrical monopolies of the Comédie-Française and the Opéra; for example, the poster plays (comédies par écritaux), in which the actors’ lines were displayed on placards or posters while the audience sang the vaudevilles, originated in 1710 as a way of circumventing a prohibition of singing or reciting on stage. Opera parody was also a great favourite, and the Théâtres de la Foire were quick to produce their version as soon after an opera première as possible.

Originally vaudevilles made up the bulk of the music used in these comedies, supplemented by short opera excerpts which quickly invaded the vaudeville repertory, dances and instrumental interludes. Composers were employed to organize a small orchestra, work with the playwrights in selecting appropriate vaudevilles, and eventually to write original songs, called ariettes. Serious attempts were made to select vaudevilles that best represented the emotional state of the play at the point they were to be introduced, either through the tune itself or by recalling or re-using part of the original text. A clever choice could underscore a situation forcefully, or even contradict it in a humorous way. Double meanings abounded.

In writing new words for vaudeville tunes, authors were seldom successful in making all the syllables fall correctly on the musical accents (see ex.1b), but in such light entertainments wit and gaiety were more important than correct declamation. Vaudevilles were also used to carry dialogue, as in ex.1c. Le Sage and his composer-collaborator Gilliers sometimes created continuous musical scenes with several vaudevilles in succession, and in La princesse de Carizme Le Sage cleverly interwove separate phrases of different vaudevilles (because most vaudevilles were written in keys with one or two sharps it was easy to link them by simple modulations).

As the opéra comique developed, more original music was added, beginning with the finales to each act or play, and the vaudevilles were gradually dropped. After 1752 the Querelle des Bouffons and the resulting popularity of the Italian opera buffa style also affected its musical content. However, the French style of comédie en vaudevilles itself had an international influence. It spread to England as the ballad opera and to Germany as the early Singspiel, but the exchange was mutual. Coffey’s ballad opera The Devil to Pay (1731) became Der Teufel ist los (Berlin, 1743) and Sedaine’s Le diable à quatre (1756).

5. Vaudeville final.

Placed at the end of an act or play, the vaudeville final reassembled on stage all the important characters and allowed each to sing one or more verses of a vaudeville. At times the strophic form of this closing ensemble was made more obvious by having a chorus repeat a refrain line. Sometimes a few dances intervened. This divertissement style was common to both French opera and opéra comique of the period. Beaumarchais’s play Le mariage de Figaro ends with a vaudeville, while Rousseau’s Le devin du village has a vaudeville final. Rameau, along with Gilliers, Mouret, Duni, Monsigny and Philidor, wrote them for the Théâtres de la Foire and Opéra-Comique.

Normally the words of the vaudeville final were still in keeping with the characters singing them, each of whom usually presented some moral to be deduced from the play. The comic lead generally delivered the final verse ‘to the public’: a curtain speech asking for the audience’s indulgence and renewed patronage. Ex.1d comes at the end of a long final scene that opens with 15 stanzas of a different vaudeville final, followed by a short comic scene in place of a ballet and then this short verse asking the audience to return the next day.

Attempts to make the final scene more impressive soon led composers to write an original vaudeville final, chorus and dance music. With this as its starting-point, original music then gradually infiltrated the entire play. The influence of the vaudeville final can also be seen in other genres and continued into later periods, as in Gluck’s Orfeo, Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia, Mozart’s Der Schauspieldirektor, Die Entführung aus dem Serail and Don Giovanni, Verdi’s Falstaff, Ravel’s L’heure espagnole and Stravinsky’s Rake’s Progress.

1. Early life and beliefs.

6. Vaudeville in the 19th and 20th centuries.

By the end of the 18th century, with opéra comique tending to use more elaborately constructed musical numbers, comedy with sung vaudevilles became separated from it under the names comédie à couplets and comédie-vaudeville. In 1792 Piis and Barré opened the Théâtre du Vaudeville for this kind of entertainment, which at first resembled what is now called musical comedy. Eventually these shows were called simply vaudevilles. Their producers increasingly used satire and variety acts with all kinds of popular music. This lighthearted style of entertainment spread across Europe and by 1890 was patterned after the English music hall, even adopting that name. At the turn of the century in the USA vaudeville achieved great popularity with its combination of songs, dances, pretty girls, rapid-fire comics, skits and acrobatics. Such variety shows are still popular, though less common.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ES (P. Blanchard and others)

FasquelleE (‘Opéra-comique, A. Machabey; ‘Vaudeville’, S. Wallon)

GroveO (M.E.C. Bartlet)

MGG1 (D. Heartz)

P. Capelle: La clé du caveau (Paris, 1810, 4/1847)

A. Gasté: Etude critique et historique sur Jean Le Houx et le vau de vire à la fin du XVIe siècle (Paris, 1874)

J. Tiersot: Histoire de la chanson populaire en France (Paris, 1889//R)

A. Font: Favart: l’opéra comique et la comédie-vaudeville aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris, 1894/R)

G. Cucuel: Les créateurs de l’opéra-comique français (Paris, 1914)

T. Gérold: L’art du chant en France au XVIIe siècle (Strasbourg, 1921/R)

F. Liebstaekl: Das deutsche Vaudeville: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des deutschen Dramas (diss., U. of Vienna, 1923)

F.J. Carmody: Le répertoire de l’opéra-comique en vaudevilles de 1708 à 1764 (Berkeley, 1933)

D.J. Grout: The Origins of the ‘opéra comique’ (diss., Harvard U., 1939)

D.J. Grout: ‘The Music of the Italian Theatre at Paris, 1682–1697’, PAMS 1941, 158–70

J. Gardien: La chanson populaire française (Paris, 1948)

F. Lesure: ‘Eléments populaires dans la chanson française au début du XVIe siècle’, Musique et poésie au XVIe siècle: Paris 1953, 169–84

K.J. Levy: ‘Vaudeville, vers mesurés et airs de cour’, Musique et poésie au XVIe siècle: Paris 1953, 185–202

P. Coirault: Formation de nos chansons folkloriques (Paris, 1953–63)

P. Barbier and F. Vernillat, eds.: Histoire de France par les chansons (Paris, 1956–61)

Chanson & Madrigal, 1480–1550: Cambridge, MA, 1961

H.M. Brown: Music in the French Secular Theater, 1400–1550 (Cambridge, MA, 1963)

A. Verchaly: ‘Le recueil authentique des chansons de Jehan Chardavoine (1576)’, RdM, xlix (1963), 203–19

C.R. Barnes: The Théâtre de la Foire (Paris, 1697–1762): its Music and Composers (diss., U. of Southern California, 1965)

C. Barnes: ‘Vocal Music at the “Théâtres de la Foire” 1697–1762, i: Vaudeville’, RMFC, viii (1968), 141–60

D. Heartz: ‘Voix de ville’, Words and Music: the Scholar’s View … in Honor of A. Tillman Merritt, ed. L. Berman (Cambridge, MA, 1972), 115–35

B. Smith: The Vaudevillians (New York, 1976)

N.L. Rioux: Vau de ville, voix de ville and vau de vire: a Study in Sixteenth-Century Monophonic Popular Music (diss., U. of West Virginia, 1979)

J.O. Whang: From voix de ville to air de cour: the Strophic Chanson, c.1545–1575 (diss., U. of North Carolina, 1981)

L. Matthes: Vaudeville: Untersuchungen zur Geshichte und literatursystematischen Ort einer Erfolgsgattung (Heidelberg, 1983)

H. Gidel: Le vaudeville (Paris, 1986)

F. Nies: ‘Chansons et vaudevilles d’un siècle devenu “classique”’, La chanson française et son histoire, ed. R. Dietmar (Tübingen, 1988), 47–58

N. Wild and D. Charlton: Théâtre de l’opéra-comique: répertoire musical, 1762–1972 (forthcoming)

Vaudry, Jean Etienne, Seigneur de Saizenay et de Poupet

(b Saizenay, nr Salins, Jura, 26 Sept 1668; d Besançon, 21 July 1742). French amateur lutenist and theorbo player. He compiled two sizeable anthologies (F-B; facs. (Geneva, 1980), see Chauvel; ed. in Burchmore), which are among the most important lute and theorbo sources of the late French Baroque. He was in Paris towards the end of the century (the larger anthology is inscribed ‘Parisÿs. 1699’), presumably studying law, concurrently studying the lute with Guillaume Jacquesson and, some time later, lute and theorbo with Robert de Visée. By 1704 he was living in Besançon, after he was nominated counsellor to the parliament. His tablatures span the entire history of the French Baroque lute. The most famous lute pieces of the earlier 17th-century repertory (e.g. La belle homicide by Denis Gaultier) are mixed with the works of later composers such as Jacques Gallot, whose Pièces de luth (Paris, c1683) was copied in its entirety by Vaudry. One of the manuscripts (279152) contains virtually all of Visée's attributed music for theorbo and lute; it is the only extant source of his lute pieces. Also present are Visée’s arrangements of operatic airs, vaudevilles, noëls and so on, so common to the repertory of later 17th-century luthistes and clavecinistes.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

W.J. Rave: Some Manuscripts of French Lute Music 1630–1700: an Introductory Study (diss., U. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 1972)

C. Chauvel: Introduction to Manuscrit Vaudry de Saizenay, tablature de luth et de théorbe de divers auteurs, 1699 (Geneva, 1980) [facs.]

W.J. Rave: ‘Remarks on Gallot Sources: How Tablatures Differ’, JLSA, xx–xxi (1987–8), 87–107

B.K. Burchmore: A Saizenay Miscellany, JLSA (forthcoming)

BRUCE K. BURCHMORE

Vaughan, James D(avid)

(b between Lawrence Co. and Giles Co., TN, 14 Dec 1864; d Lawrenceburg, TN, 9 Feb 1941). American music publisher. He was a composer and compiler of gospel songs published in shape notation. From 1890 to 1911 he produced songbooks under his own name, beginning with Gospel Chimes. In 1912 he established the Vaughan Company in Lawrenceburg, which by 1964 had issued over 105 collections of music, most of them known as convention books because they were intended primarily for use in singing conventions. The firm also published five instruction books for singing school use and a trade journal, the Musical Visitor (later Vaughan’s Family Visitor; ceased 1986), which publicized activities of gospel singers. Vaughan has been credited with having originated the idea of the male gospel quartet in about 1891 and beginning radio broadcasts by such groups; later his firm employed up to 16 quartets at one time. In 1921 he established the first radio station in Tennessee, to promote Vaughan songs and songbooks. His firm also sponsored singing schools and normal music schools, the latter to train singing-school teachers. Since 1965 the Vaughan Company has been managed by Pathway Press of Cleveland, Tennessee, the trade division of the Church of God publishing house. Selected Vaughan books are kept in print, including the famous Rudiments, and a new one produced every few years.

See also Shape-note hymnody.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

G.P. Jackson: ‘Rural Shape-Note Song Books by the Million: Publishers of Seven-Shape Song Books’, White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands (Chapel Hill, NC, 1933/R), 366–70

J.L. Fleming: James D. Vaughan, Music Publisher, Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, 1912–1964 (diss., Union Theological Seminary, 1971)

HARRY ESKEW

Vaughan, Sarah (Lois) [Sassy]

(b Newark, NJ, 27 March 1924; d Los Angeles, 3 April 1990). American jazz and popular singer. She sang in the choir of Mount Zion Baptist Church, Newark, as a child, where at the age of 12 she became organist. In October 1942 she won an amateur contest at the Apollo Theater, New York; shortly afterwards, in April 1943, she joined Earl Hines’s big band as second pianist and singer to Hines and Billy Eckstine. Eckstine formed his own bop-orientated big band early in 1944, and Vaughan joined him a few months later, making her first recording with his orchestra on 31 December. She left Eckstine after about a year, and thereafter, except for a brief stay in John Kirby’s group in winter 1945–6, she worked only as a soloist. After George Treadwell (her manager and first husband) refashioned her stage appearance and repertory she achieved considerable success on television, in recordings from the late 1940s, and in international performances from the early 50s. Although she began to perform predominantly slow, popular ballads with heavy vibrato to the accompaniment of ‘easy listening’ orchestras (notably It’s Magic, 1947, Musi.), her early associations with bop musicians – especially Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker (with whom she recorded Lover Man, 1945, Guild) – established her lasting reputation as a jazz singer. This reputation endured in part because of her tendency to treat her voice more as a jazz instrument than as a vehicle for lyrics: she negotiated wide leaps within her full-bodied contralto range, improvised subtle melodic and rhythmic embellishments, and made fluid alterations of timbre – from a bell-like clarity to a bluesy growl. Her most blues-influenced performance was on After Hours (1961, Roul.).

During the five-year contract with Columbia that marked her rise to stardom (1949–54), Vaughan recorded often with studio orchestras and only once in a jazz context (with Miles Davis in 1950). A new contract with Mercury (1954–9) allowed her to pursue a dual career: for Mercury she made commercial discs, including her hit Broken-hearted Melody (1958), while for EmArcy, Mercury’s jazz subsidiary, she recorded with Clifford Brown, Cannonball Adderley, the sidemen of Count Basie’s orchestra and other jazz musicians; one of her most successful titles was Lullaby of Birdland (1954, EmA). She combined these activities under later contracts with Roulette, Mercury and Columbia (1960–67). In 1971, after a five-year absence from recording, she began once again to make popular albums, occasionally employing a jazz-flavoured accompaniment. In public performances Vaughan was accompanied by a trio of piano, double bass and drums, either alone or as the nucleus of a big band or symphony orchestra.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

GroveJ

R. Leydi: Sarah Vaughan (Milan, 1961)

A.J. Smith: ‘Sarah Vaughan: Never Ending Melody’, Down Beat, xliv/9 (1977), 16–17, 44 [incl. discography]

D. Brown: Sarah Vaughan: a Discography (New York, 1991)

G. Giddins: ‘Divine’, Faces in the Crowd: Players and Writers (New York, 1992), 93–100

L. Gourse: Sassy: the Life of Sarah Vaughan (New York, 1993)

BARRY KERNFELD

Vaughan, Stevie Ray

(b Dallas, 3 Oct 1954; d East Troy, WI, 27 Aug 1990). American blues guitarist and singer. He grew up listening to the blues record collection of his elder brother Jimmie, a guitarist and co-founder of the Fabulous Thunderbirds, thus absorbing influences from the whole pantheon of black American and white British blues guitarists. He made his first public performance at the age of 12 and appeared regularly in Dallas clubs until he moved to Austin, Texas (1970). There he formed Double Trouble (named after a song by Otis Rush) with the singer Lou Ann Barton, Tommy Shannon (bass guitar) and Chris Layton (drums). In the late 1970s Barton left the group and the remaining trio established a reputation as Austin’s most exciting performers. In 1982 they played at a party held in New York for the Rolling Stones and were subsequently booked to appear at the Montreux Jazz Festival and Vaughan gained a recording contract. With Layton and Shannon he recorded the critically acclaimed album Texas Flood (Epic, 1983), which showed him to be a technically unrivalled electric guitarist in the tradition of Buddy Guy, Eric Clapton and Johnny Winter. He also played guitar on David Bowie’s album Let’s Dance (EMI, 1993) but turned down the invitation to join Bowie’s band. His later albums included Couldn’t Stand the Weather (Epic, 1984), with its reverential version of ‘Voodoo Chile’ by Jimi Hendrix, and Soul to Soul (Epic, 1985). Double Trouble made several successful international tours and Vaughan won Grammy awards in 1984 and 1989.

In 1987 his career was interrupted in overcoming drug and alcohol addiction, which he wrote about for his final studio album, In Step (Epic, 1989). In August 1990 he died in a helicopter accident after appearing on stage with Eric Clapton and Robert Cray. Since his death there have been numerous reissues of his recordings as well as an album of duets with his brother and a 1996 tribute album which featured such blues performers as Clapton, Guy, B.B. King and Bonnie Raitt performing his best-known songs. In 1993 the city of Austin erected a statue of him. For further information, see J.N. Patoski and B. Crawford: Stevie Ray Vaughan: Caught in the Crossfire (Boston, 1993).

DAVE LAING

Vaughan Thomas, David

(b Ystalyfera, 15 March 1873; d Johannesburg, 15 Sept 1934). Welsh composer. His keyboard skills were noticed in the Dowlais area in 1882 and he came to national prominence on winning a prize for harmonium playing at the 1883 National Eisteddfod. After initial studies with Joseph Parry at Swansea, he attended Llandovery College, winning a scholarship to study mathematics at Exeter College, Oxford (BA 1895, BMus 1906, DMus 1911), where he played a prominent role in university musical life. He taught at the United Services College, Westward Ho!, Monkton Combe School, Bath, then at Harrow, where he was college organist and a music master. Thomas returned to Wales in 1906 and thereafter worked freelance as a composer, teacher, adjudicator, organist and lecturer. He applied for the post of professor at Aberystwyth in 1918 but was passed over in favour of Walford Davies, a decision which created considerable controversy at the time. He was chief music advisor to the National Eisteddfod in 1926. After becoming an overseas examiner for Trinity College, London (1927), he often travelled to exotic locations, as his colourfully written diaries make clear. He died in Johannesburg in 1934, seen by many as a prophet without honour in his own land.

He began to compose in his early 20s and left a considerable body of work, particularly songs and partsongs, large-scale choral works, instrumental works (most notably the fine String Quintet written in Cape Town in 1930), hymns and arrangements of folk tunes. The earliest songs display an affinity with the Welsh Victorian repertory but he quickly established a more independent voice. While his first large-scale choral work, Llyn y Fan (1907), is rather drawn out, he shows a much surer touch in The Bard (1910), with its echoes of Straussian harmony and the influence of his close friend Bantock. His embrace of modernism was short-lived however, and Thomas returned to his roots through a detailed study of Welsh folksong and medieval Welsh poetic metres, of which he was a skilful translator into English. He was also an accomplished poet. The cycle Saith o ganeuon (‘Seven Songs’) sets cywydd metre for tenor, harp and strings in a manner that recalls earlier penillion singing, particularly in the third song. His finest work is perhaps the song Berwyn for voice and harp or piano in which a sharpened 4th delicately heightens poetic declamation to great effect. His settings of Meredith are particularly sensitive; his sturdy diatonic hymn tunes are surprisingly assured for one who was a lifelong agnostic. With Morfydd Owen and others, Thomas was one of the most important Welsh composers of his time.

WORKS

Choral: Bendithiaf Yr Arglwydd [I Bless the Lord], anthem (1906); Llyn y Fan [The Van Lake], solo vv, chorus, orch, 1907; A Song for St Cecilia’s Day, 1909; The Bard (cant.), 1910; Pwy yw y rhai hyn? [Who are these People?], anthem (1915); Ysbryd yw Duw [God is a Spirit], anthem; Phoebus, Arise (W. Drummond), chorus, orch, 1924; Bywyd [Life], motet (1926); Chwe alan gwerin [6 Popular Tunes], children’s vv, orch, 1926; Yr Arglwydd yw fy Mugail [The Lord is My Shepherd], anthem, chorus, org (1930); c19 partsongs, many hymn tune arrs. (Eng. and Welsh)

Orch: Ov., 1922; Interlude, tpt, hp, str, 1923; Tair emyn-dôn [3 Hymn Tunes], 1924; The Woods of Westermain, ov.; Tir na n-og (incid music, T. Gwynn Jones)

Chbr: A Welsh Dance, ob, vn, hp, 1924; 2 str qts, 1929, 1930; Duo, G, vc, pf, 1931; Sonata, C, vn, pf, 1932; Bourrée and Musette, vc, pf; Romanza, vc, pf

Pf: Allegro vivace, 1924; Romanza, 1934

Songs (1v, pf, unless otherwise stated): Angladd y Marchog [The Knight’s Burial] (c1908); Ysbryd y Mynydd [Mountain Spirit] (1914); Bedd y Dyn Tlawd [The Poor Man’s Grave] (1914); Llais yr Adar (1914); Si hwi lwli (1914); Nant y Mynydd [Mountain Stream] (1921–2); 5 Meredith Songs, 1922; Y Bwythn Bach [The Small Cottage], 1923; Saith o ganeuon [7 songs] (D. ap Gwilym and others), T (hp, str)/orch, 1923; 2 Meredith Songs (1923–4); Yr Wylan Deg [Fair Seagull] (ap Gwilym), 1924; Stafell Gyndyllan [The Hall of Cyndyllan], 1v, vn, vc, hp (1926); Berwyn (1926); O Fair Wen (1926); Y Lloer [The Stars], S, Mez, pf, 1926; 10 Welsh Folksongs, arr. (1928); Ymadawiad Arthur [Arthur’s Leaving] (1930); Caledfwlch (1931); Seren Heddwch [Star of Peace], 1931; Cantref Gwaelod, 1931; Y Delyn [The Harp], 1v, pf/hp/str orch, 1932; Cartre’r Bardd [The Bard’s Home], 1932; Ffarwel Fy Ngeneth [Farwel Fair Maiden] (1933)

For fuller list see Tir newydd (1939), no.16, p.30

Principal publishers: Hughes, Snell

BIBLIOGRAPHY

E. Cleaver: D. Vaughan Thomas (Llandybie, 1964)

L. Davies: ‘Towards an Authentic Celtic Voice in Music: the Life and Work of David Vaughan Thomas’, Welsh Music History, ii (1997) [incl. full list of articles and reviews]

PETER CROSSLEY-HOLLAND/LYN DAVIES

Vaughan Williams, Ralph

(b Down Ampney, Gloucs., 12 Oct 1872; d London, 26 Aug 1958). English composer, teacher, writer and conductor. The most important English composer of his generation, he was a key figure in the 20th-century revival of British music.

2. The years after World War I.

3. Early works.

4. Towards ‘A London Symphony’, 1908–14.

5. The inter-war works, 1919–34.

6. The World War II period, 1935–44.

7. The final period.

8. Musical language.

9. Reception and influence.

WRITINGS

HUGH OTTAWAY/ALAIN FROGLEY (1–7); ALAIN FROGLEY (8–9, work-list, bibliography)

1. Early life and beliefs.

Although born in Gloucestershire, Vaughan Williams considered himself a Londoner. The youngest of three children, he grew up at his mother’s family home, Leith Hill Place, Surrey, and most of his life was spent in the Dorking and Leith Hill area or in London. The move from Down Ampney came as early as 1875, on the death of his father, the Rev. Arthur Vaughan Williams. On both sides of the family there was distinction and independence. The Vaughan Williamses were a family of eminent lawyers: Sir Edward Vaughan Williams, the first Judge of Common Pleas, was the composer’s grandfather. His maternal grandparents were Josiah Wedgwood III and a sister of Charles Darwin.

Encouraged to take an active interest in music, the young boy received his first lessons from a Wedgwood aunt, who not only taught him the piano but took him through The Child’s Introduction to Thorough Bass and Stainer’s Harmony. By the time he went to preparatory school, at Rottingdean, Sussex, he had some acquaintance with the violin as well as with the piano and organ. During three years at Charterhouse (1887–90) he switched from the violin to the viola, played in the school orchestra and, but for family misgivings, would possibly have decided on an orchestral career. There followed a period of two years at the RCM, then three at Trinity College, Cambridge (MusB 1894, BA in history 1895), and a further year or so at the RCM: a substantial period of study, during which his teachers of composition were Parry, Wood and Stanford.

Even as a schoolboy Vaughan Williams had been drawn increasingly to composition, and on going up to Cambridge he knew very well what he wanted to become. But progress was slow; Wood did not believe he would ever make a composer, and a Darwin cousin, Gwen Raverat, writing of her Cambridge childhood, recalled ‘overhearing scraps of conversation about “that foolish young man, Ralph Vaughan Williams”, who would go on working at music when “he was so hopelessly bad at it”’. In later years the composer himself remarked on his ‘amateurish technique’, which he said had dogged him all his life; but his early groping had much to do with a deep dissatisfaction with the English musical scene and an inability to see his own path. He knew that he must strive for the highest professional standards; hence his return to the RCM and his subsequent studying with Bruch in Berlin (1897) and Ravel in Paris (1908). At the same time he recognized that, creatively, salvation would be found, not in imitating foreign models, but in a regenerative use of native resources. This led him to English folksong, to Elizabethan and Jacobean music, and to a philosophy of musical citizenship, which he both practised and preached (see especially his essay ‘Who Wants the English Composer?’ and National Music). These interests and ideals he shared with Holst, whom he met at the RCM in 1895. The close friendship that at once developed is notable because the two composers subjected their work in progress to each other’s criticism. These ‘field-days’, as they called them, lasted until Holst’s death in 1934, and Vaughan Williams missed them keenly in the years that followed.

It is a part of Vaughan Williams’s strength and importance that he cannot be adequately discussed in narrowly musical terms. His outlook was human and social. He never forgot that music was for people; he was interested in every situation, however humble, for which music was needed; and his feeling for genuinely popular traditions amounted to a reverence that was almost religious: the most obvious comparison is with Bartók and Kodály in Hungary. Two points immediately follow: throughout a public life of more than 60 years, Vaughan Williams engaged in a wide range of musical activities, sometimes of a kind that many lesser composers would have considered beneath them; and at every stage in his development the extensive list of works shows different levels of composition, from the simplest occasional pieces to the most visionary personal expressions.

‘Visionary’ is a word much used in discussing Vaughan Williams’s music, and it has often been assumed that the vision is theistic and specifically Christian. The reality is more complex. ‘He was an atheist during his later years at Charterhouse and at Cambridge’, wrote Ursula Vaughan Williams, ‘though he later drifted into a cheerful agnosticism: he was never a professing Christian’. He was a first-generation atheist with a profound sense of the past, which means a disappointed theist. Moreover, in the popular traditions of the English church, as in folksong, he was aware of the common aspirations of generations of ordinary men and women with whom he felt a deep, contemplative sympathy. And so there is in his work a fundamental tension between traditional concepts of belief and morality and a modern spiritual anguish which is also visionary.

It was not until 1909–10 that a personal voice fully emerged in Vaughan Williams’s music: On Wenlock Edge and the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis are reliable points of reference. By then he had gained experience in a number of directions; he had worked as a church organist – perhaps the only appointment he was glad to give up – had taken the FRCO and MusD, and had launched out as writer, lecturer, music editor and folksong collector. He was editing Welcome Songs for the Purcell Society, but far more important was his selecting of the tunes for The English Hymnal (1906), a task to which he devoted many months, rediscovering old tunes and weeding out Victoriana. Some tunes, including the justly celebrated Sine nomine (‘For all the saints’), he wrote himself; he adapted more than 40 from folksongs. Since collecting his first folksong, Bushes and Briars, in 1903, he had become one of the foremost activists in the movement, notably in Norfolk, Essex and Sussex. In all he collected over 800 songs and variants, the vast majority before 1910. Another important development was the Leith Hill Musical Festival: from its inception in 1905 until 1953 Vaughan Williams was principal conductor, and his performances of Bach, particularly of the St Matthew Passion, became national events. His Bach was noted for its dramatic and spiritual qualities; he had little time for the school of ‘authenticity’.

By 1914 he had behind him a considerable body of work, including two symphonies, and a growing reputation for independence and strength of character. Although nearly 42, he felt bound to involve himself in the war. He served as a wagon orderly with the Royal Army Medical Corps in France and on the Salonika front, and later returned to France as an artillery officer. Soon after the armistice he was made director of music for the First Army of the British Expeditionary Force, with responsibility for organizing amateur music-making among the troops. The impact of the war on his imagination was deep and lasting but did not express itself in an obvious protest or change of style; rather it is felt in a more intense inwardness.

2. The years after World War I.

Demobilized in 1919, Vaughan Williams joined the teaching staff of the RCM, became conductor of the Bach Choir (1920–28), for a short time conducted the Handel Society, and did much to revive and expand the Leith Hill Festival. The English Folk Dance Society and other bodies made demands on his time, which he gave freely, still managing to revise pre-war compositions – A London Symphony, The Lark Ascending, Hugh the Drover – and to write new ones. This capacity for reconciling all manner of musical activity – practical, educational, administrative, advisory – with his own creative work lasted into old age. So did his capacity for friendship, which became particularly marked in the 1920s as he found himself thrust into prominence in many branches of musical life. One new friend was the young conductor Adrian Boult, who in 1922 gave the first performance of the Pastoral Symphony and soon emerged as Vaughan Williams’s foremost interpreter. That same year the composer was invited to Connecticut to conduct the American première, and it was also played (under Boult again) at one of the ISCM festivals: works by Vaughan Williams were given at Salzburg (1924), Venice (1925), Prague (1925), Geneva (1929) and London (1931).

As a teacher of composition, Vaughan Williams shared Parry’s gift for encouraging his pupils to be themselves. He expected them to do as he did – seek the best advice but use their own judgment. Where there was strength of character as well as some talent he succeeded, and often a lasting relationship resulted, as with Gordon Jacob and Elizabeth Maconchy. He also taught and conducted at summer schools of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, of which he was elected president in 1932. In the same year he lectured on national music at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania. From the 1920s onwards, he was increasingly in demand as composer–conductor, a role in which he often distinguished himself, particularly in performances of A London Symphony. His 1937 recording of the Fourth Symphony is not only ‘historic’ but an outstanding performance in its own right.

The Fourth Symphony, first performed in 1935, is another notable landmark; although controversial, for many it confirmed Vaughan Williams’s leadership of ‘the English school’ and his lasting capacity for self-renewal. In the same year, having previously refused a knighthood and other honours, he accepted the OM. Many years later he wrote to Rutland Boughton: ‘I have always refused all honours and appointments which involved obligation to anyone in authority – the OM involved no such obligation’. Purely musical honours, which had effectively begun in 1919 with an honorary DMus at Oxford, included a number of other doctorates from British universities, the Cobbett Medal (1930), the Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society (1930), the Collard Life Fellowship (1934, in succession to Elgar), the Shakespeare Prize (University of Hamburg, 1937), the Howland Memorial Prize (Yale University, 1954) and the Albert Medal of the Royal Society of Arts (1955).

The Hamburg award troubled him, and before accepting he stated bluntly that he belonged to ‘more than one English society whose object is to combat all that the present German régime stands for’. Although his politics have rarely been discussed, they were inseparable from his overall outlook. He voted Radical or Labour throughout his life, except in 1945, when he felt that the Labour Party was wrong to force an election. His socialism stemmed from a deep-rooted compassion for the underprivileged as real human beings rather than social abstractions (although he had enough taste for political theory as a young man to work through the Fabian tracts). As for the international scene, despite his conviction that nations should proudly maintain their cultural identities, he believed federalism to be the best hope for solving the destructive dilemmas of Europe and beyond. In many ways he followed the tradition of the 19th-century free-thinking radical who devoted his energies to particular causes.

For Vaughan Williams the plight of the German refugees was just such a cause, and his activity on their behalf led in 1939 to his music being banned by the Nazis. During the war years he directed the work of the Home Office Committee for the Release of Interned Alien Musicians, helped to organize the lunchtime concerts at the National Gallery and did much for the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (now the Arts Council of Great Britain) and other bodies engaged in promoting music. A new interest, beginning with 49th Parallel (1940–41), was music for films, which was almost the only medium that he had not explored, and he found it stimulating. But his principal wartime composition was the Fifth Symphony, ‘music imbued with what one can only call greatness of soul’ (Mellers, B1946); first played in 1943, this met with a response of deep gratitude, even from many who had not known that Vaughan Williams mattered to them.

In the postwar years he learnt to his dismay that he had become an almost patriarchal figure and that critics were attributing prophetic intentions (and concrete meanings) to the symphonies nos.4–6. A reaction to the latter, almost certainly, was his writing of semi-facetious programme notes, particularly for the first performances of the Sixth and Ninth symphonies. He denied that the Sixth was a ‘war symphony’; but this disturbing work, first played in 1948, accorded so well with the postwar disillusionment that within a little over two years it had received 100 performances – a record exceeded by only one English symphony, Elgar’s First. Once again, though not with intent, he had done the unpredictable and challenged comfortable opinion.

The 1950s brought important changes in Vaughan Williams’s personal life, his music and the critical climate. In 1951 his wife Adeline (née Fisher), whom he had married in 1897, died at the age of 80, having been an invalid for many years; and in the same year he suffered ‘the bitterest disappointment of his musical life’ (Douglas, E1972), the inept production at Covent Garden of the morality The Pilgrim’s Progress, on which he had been working, intermittently, for up to 40 years: Bunyan, like Blake and Whitman, had long been embedded in his personal mythology. In 1953 he married Ursula Wood, a close family friend, and left Dorking, where he had been living since 1929, for central London. Apart from deafness, he was in good health; London’s cultural life was paradise regained, and he travelled abroad more than he had done for decades. In 1954 he visited the USA again, lecturing at Cornell and other universities, conducting A London Symphony and touring extensively. Everywhere he went he received an enthusiastic welcome; overwhelmed by invitations, he turned down a dinner in his honour to have been given by the League of Composers and the offer of a coast-to-coast television interview. Throughout these last few years he was not only a familiar presence at London concerts, the Cheltenham Festival and the Three Choirs Festival, but was active in public controversy – for example, over the threat to the BBC Third Programme (1958) – and wrote a great deal of music, including the last two symphonies.

When he died many English music-lovers felt a sense of loss that was personal no less than musical. This ‘extraordinary, ordinary man’ (Kennedy, C1964) had not only become an institution; he had also, as Parry said of Elgar, reached the hearts of the people. On 19 September 1958, before a crowded assembly, his ashes were interred in the north choir aisle of Westminster Abbey, near the burial places of Purcell and Stanford; the first music that was played was his Five Variants of ‘Dives and Lazarus’, on a tune that he had known and loved since 1893.

3. Early works.

Although the variety within Vaughan Williams’s extensive output would seem to favour discussion according to genre, the development through 60 years presents an overriding case for division into periods. The five periods chosen here are neither arbitrary nor absolute: up to 1908, 1908–14, 1919–34, 1935–44 and 1945–58. Each has its distinguishing character, or characters; equally striking, however, at least from the second period onwards, is the recurrence of earlier modes of expression. Few major composers have kept open so many avenues for so long, which is a reflection of that unusual blend of outward- and inward-looking qualities which characterized the man. Because he was an intuitive artist, little disposed to theorize, except about the human and social aspects of music, he was never inhibited by fears of inconsistency, stylistic or otherwise. Some unlikely works appear side by side, particularly in the third period: for instance, Job and The Poisoned Kiss, the Fourth Symphony and the Suite for viola and small orchestra. If there was a streak of clumsiness in his make-up, he was also ‘a perfectionist, though he might not have thought of himself as such’ (Douglas, E1972). This shows clearly in his revisions of some of the works that meant most to him. As late as 1950 he made some changes in the scoring of the Pastoral Symphony (first performed 1922), and the much revised Hugh the Drover (1910–14) did not take its final form until 1956.

The first period, that of Vaughan Williams’s long ‘apprenticeship’, culminated in A Sea Symphony (1903–9), which stands at the brink of the first period of maturity. The balance throughout is tilted towards vocal music, but with the orchestra prominent and becoming increasingly important in the last five or six years. Although there are songs and partsongs dating from the 1890s, the earliest composition that is widely known is Linden Lea (1901). This setting for voice and piano of words by the Dorset dialect poet William Barnes is not without significance: sub-titled ‘a Dorset folksong’ (which it is not), it has an open-air freshness and an attachment to simple things, but is also related to the domestic (drawing-room) song forms of the time. This vein is extended and broadened in the Songs of Travel (Stevenson, 1901–4), which have likewise retained their early popularity. These have a moving eloquence and afford many insights into the composer’s temperament, particularly ‘The Infinite Shining Heavens’ and ‘Bright is the Ring of Words’; but there is also a received Romanticism of a kind that disappeared under the impact of folksong and of Elizabethan music. This is also marked in the rather less sharply focussed Rossetti cycle The House of Life (1903), from which ‘Silent Noon’ has remained popular. However remote they may seem from the composer of 20 years later, these early songs are among the finest written in England around 1900 and are as notable for strength of purpose as for sensitive word-setting. Their achievement is underlined by the fact that at no other stage did Vaughan Williams give much attention to the solo song with piano accompaniment.

Choral music, with and without orchestra, is prominent throughout his development. Toward the Unknown Region (Whitman, 1904/5–6), ‘a song for chorus and orchestra’, was the first work to make a major impact on critics and public alike. Despite the choral debt to Parry and some residual chromaticism, there is much that is individual, particularly in the harmonic language and the scoring. Noteworthy too is the first four-note phrase (ex.1), a melodic fingerprint that persisted into old age. The crucial years for A Sea Symphony (Whitman) were 1906–8. Beginning as ‘songs of the sea’ in emulation of Stanford, this became a fully choral symphony, a triumph of instinct over environment. The tone is optimistic, Whitman’s emphasis on the unity of being and the brotherhood of man comes through strongly, and the vitality of the best things in it has proved enduring. Whatever the indebtedness to Parry and Stanford, and in the finale to Elgar, there is no mistaking the physical exhilaration or the visionary rapture. Melodic invention mingling duplets and triplets, harmonic images such asex.2, the quasi-epilogue with its alternating chords and niente close, these are among the features that are fundamental Vaughan Williams.

The unpublished works include two or three for orchestra showing an earlier and more significant interest in the medium than has sometimes been suggested, notably the Bucolic Suite (1900), the Heroic Elegy and Triumphant Epilogue (1900–1) and Harnham Down (1904–7). The composer thought well enough of In the Fen Country (1904) to revise the scoring in 1935; it registers the first impact of his folksong collecting and contains elements of his mature pastoral style, albeit alongside an alien chromaticism. The first works to quote folksong directly are the three Norfolk Rhapsodies (1905–6), of which the second and third were withdrawn: no.1 has a distinctive tone poetry, atmospheric and pure in expression, and points clearly to the next period. Two folksongs appear briefly in the scherzo of A Sea Symphony, but these are incidental in a work whose style has a different ancestry. Whitman’s liberating thought and the music of English villagers had still to make common cause.

In general, Vaughan Williams did not use folksongs in orchestral and instrumental works, but he so absorbed the folksong idiom that his melodic writing was profoundly conditioned and freed from inconsistencies. Certain tunes, notably Searching for Lambs and Dives and Lazarus, are often felt to be almost within earshot, so much a part of him did their turns of phrase become. From the period 1905–35 there are many folksong arrangements, for voice and piano and for unaccompanied chorus, and as late as 1949 he wrote Folksongs of the Four Seasons for women’s voices and orchestra. The harmonization is always idiomatic: even in his later student years he was drawn to the modes; indeed, he once presented Stanford with a modal waltz.

4. Towards ‘A London Symphony’, 1908–14.

This period extends from the String Quartet in G minor and On Wenlock Edge – the immediate beneficiaries of Vaughan Williams’s study with Ravel – to Hugh the Drover, A London Symphony and The Lark Ascending, all substantially complete in 1914. The common ground is the assimilation of folksong, the confident use of a distinctive body of imagery, at once national and personal, and the achievement of a unified style. In most works, but not the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, there are traces of former ways, usually involving a chromatic expressiveness: only in the G minor Quartet (1908–9) and the Five Mystical Songs (Herbert, 1911) are these a serious handicap. At least five works from this period are among those that have proved most durable, and their popularity is not unconnected with their emotional background, which is stable and secure, however anguished the foreground. This ‘security’, though in part a reflection of the composer’s growing self-confidence, has much to do with the pre-war climate of Liberal optimism and the sense of community inherent in it. The most anguished foreground is in the finale of A London Symphony, but at the close, after a climax of harrowing intensity, the vision is ‘contained’ by a warm G major chord throughout the orchestra. Similarly, the romance for violin and orchestra The Lark Ascending is wholly idyllic, and therefore different in feeling from the postwar pastoral works. The boisterous good humour of the suite from The Wasps (incidental music to Aristophanes’ comedy, 1909) is a more extroverted reflection of the same stable background. All these works are rich in expressions basic to Vaughan Williams’s maturity. Less well known, yet an especially beautiful product of this period, are the Four Hymns, for tenor, strings and viola obbligato (1914); significantly, these contain seeds of what lay just ahead, in terms of their particular musical realization of spiritual imagery.

The achievement that most clearly transcends this period, however, is the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis for double string orchestra (1910, rev. 1919). This is perhaps the first unqualified masterpiece; it is also the work that has travelled most widely. He was drawn to Tallis’s Phrygian tune when researching for The English Hymnal (see no.92) and found in it a grandeur and an intimacy which crystallized something essential to his own musical style: this way of writing for strings, though many times modified, may be traced as far as the Ninth Symphony.

Although less concentrated, and less pure in expression, the Housman song cycle On Wenlock Edge for tenor, piano and string quartet (1908–9) is more broadly representative of the works of this period. It is also an outstanding contribution to English song, more ambitious than the great majority of Housman settings and sounding greater depths. (A comparison of ‘Bredon Hill’ and ‘Is my team ploughing?’ with the slightly later settings by Butterworth can only emphasize Vaughan Williams’s dramatic sense and the scale of his intentions.) Essentially a cycle, framed by songs that give a cosmic dimension to human suffering, On Wenlock Edge has plenty of vital ideas and marks the first clear emergence of the ‘disappointed theist’. In the opening song, which gives its title to the whole, there is a new chromaticism, anguished and free from Rossetti-like associations (cf the finale of A London Symphony) and in ‘From far, from eve and morning’ and ‘Clun’ consecutive triads form awesome, yet disarmingly simple, images of eternity. The vocal part, too, is generally simple (also demanding), but is less close to folksong than some have suggested. Early in the 1920s the composer made a version for tenor and orchestra, but it is the original that has achieved classic status.

In their separate ways the most ambitious works from this period are A London Symphony (1911–13, with substantial postwar revisions) and Hugh the Drover (1910–14, also much revised). The former, Vaughan Williams’s first purely orchestral symphony, stands in much the same relation to the Germanic mainstream as do the later symphonies of Dvořák: the form is broadly traditional, the expression personal and national. A striking innovation is the matching introduction and epilogue. Also used by Bax, the epilogue is Vaughan Williams’s most personal contribution to symphonic form (cf all his symphonies except the Pastoral, where the finale has its own introduction and epilogue, and nos.8 and 9). Although the London was originally to have been a symphonic poem and has been described as ‘a misplaced opera’ – more concretely the composer acknowledged a background link with H.G. Wells’s Tono Bungay – Vaughan Williams rightly insisted that it was ‘self-expressive, and must stand or fall as “absolute” music’; the use made of the Westminster chimes and other London sounds does not amount to a programme.

Hugh the Drover, or Love in the Stocks, was ambitious in attempting, almost unconcernedly, to break through the barrier of English taste that stood in the way of native opera, and in this it had some success, becoming the best-known example between the revival of Dido and Aeneas in 1895 and Peter Grimes (1945). Some, including Czechs, have seen it as an English equivalent of The Bartered Bride, but the libretto is artificial, presenting a picture-postcard view of Cotswold village life in the 19th century, and the music ranges in style from the Songs of Travel to A London Symphony. Although stagy, it is also stageworthy, and in a good performance holds the attention with its picturesque action, including a boxing-match, and its sense of musical enjoyment. About ten traditional tunes are incorporated: the term ‘ballad opera’, used by the composer though strictly misapplied, is appropriate in spirit. For Hugh the Drover is above all an entertainment.

5. The inter-war works, 1919–34.

Bounded by the next symphonies, the Pastoral and the F minor, this was a period of immense vigour and variety in which three trends are particularly striking: a deepening of the visionary aspect; an extending of the expressive range, embracing new forms of imagery; and a simultaneous working on markedly different levels. This last puzzled some of Vaughan Williams’s admirers, especially those who had set their own limits to the kind of composer he was. Folksong arrangements, occasional and ‘serviceable’ church music, competition partsongs and simple, popular expressions such as the unison song Let us now praise famous men, these are found side by side with some of his most penetrating masterpieces. There are important achievements in almost every field except chamber music.

Ideas for the Pastoral Symphony had begun to form as early as 1916, when Vaughan Williams was in France with the Royal Army Medical Corps, and of this the ‘bugle call’ for a natural trumpet in the slow movement is direct evidence. More thought-provoking pointers are the tensions experienced beneath the seemingly tranquil surface of the music and the sudden impassioned upsurges which challenge the prevailing quietude. For all its indifference to the things commonly held to make a symphony ‘go’, notably contrasts in tempo, dynamics and basic material, the Pastoral is a dramatic work; it is also the expression of a man thrown back on his innermost resources, making discoveries and ‘licking his cultural wounds’.

Kennedy (C1964) said Vaughan Williams ‘did not seek solace in religion after the war’, which, at the conscious level, is probably true. Nonetheless, there is a succession of works, culminating in Sancta civitas, that suggests a deep concern with reaching out towards a religious, though not necessarily Christian, view of reality. The Shepherds of the Delectable Mountains (1921), a one-act ‘pastoral episode’ based on Bunyan and later incorporated in The Pilgrim’s Progress, renews the blessedness glimpsed at the end of the Pastoral Symphony; and in the unaccompanied Mass in G minor (1920–21), written in response to the revival of Byrd and the English polyphonic school at Westminster Cathedral, there are similarly musical links with the Pastoral, notably in the Sanctus. The Mass broke new ground, setting a standard for the re-creation of the a cappella tradition. Sancta civitas (1923–5), a biblical oratorio to words mainly from Revelation, is prefaced by a quotation from Plato concerning the immortality of the soul. This is the most visionary of these works; its expression is plainer, more severe, in a way that anticipates aspects of Job, and a less ‘churchy’ oratorio would be hard to imagine. Although the deepest of Vaughan Williams’s choral works, it has not achieved the prominence of Holst’s Hymn of Jesus, with which it has a close spiritual affinity.

An exploratory impulse is particularly marked in a group of major works conceived during 1924–6, an unusually fertile time that was critical for the course of this larger period. A number of these employ a solo instrument. The Concerto for violin and strings (1924–5), originally called Concerto accademico, is Vaughan Williams’s nearest approach to a Bachian ‘neo-classicism’ and was probably written in response to Holst’s Fugal Concerto. The Piano Concerto (1926–31), in which the toccata-like manner of the first movement invites comparison with Bartók (who heard and admired the work), is an interesting transition to the Fourth Symphony, but it was conceived piecemeal and cannot be considered wholly successful. There is also a version by Joseph Cooper for two pianos and orchestra (1946), which overcomes some problems of balance – but not, of course, those of unity. The outstanding work in this group is Flos campi (1925), a suite for solo viola, small chorus (wordless) and small orchestra, each movement of which is headed by a Latin quotation from the Song of Songs. Rapt, intense, yet ultimately serene, this is among Vaughan Williams’s most imaginative achievements. The often quoted bitonal opening is a natural development from the Pastoral Symphony and Sancta civitas, and the diatonic polyphony of the final number points to the close of the Fifth Symphony. There is also much that reaches out through Riders to the Sea to the Sixth Symphony and beyond. The Suite for viola and small orchestra (1934), written, like Flos campi, for Tertis, is a comparatively low-pressure work in eight short movements, some of which are excellent examples of the composer’s treatment of folksong-like material. Perhaps the finest actual folksong work from this period is the Six Studies in English Folksong (1926) for cello and piano.

The three operas written between 1924, when Hugh the Drover was first performed, and 1932 are remarkable evidence of Vaughan Williams’s working on different levels. The first, Sir John in Love (1924–8), is a natural successor to Hugh without any of the immaturities. Based on The Merry Wives of Windsor, it is an opera in four acts requiring 20 soloists and elaborate staging; musically, however, it represents a relaxation from the visionary vein, an enjoyment of traditional cakes and ale, although Ford’s jealousy opens up a deeper and darker vein, and there are many passages of ravishing, and at times Italianate, lyricism. The one-act Riders to the Sea (1925–32), an almost complete setting of Synge’s play, is both a theatrical tour de force and a visionary masterpiece; moreover, in its response to the theme of man defeated by nature – a far cry from the Pastoral Symphony – and in the comprehensiveness of its musical imagery, it seems to reach to the brink of the final period: even the characteristic chord relationship from the end of the Sixth Symphony makes its first appearance here (ex.3). Very different from both these operas is The Poisoned Kiss (1927–9), a ‘romantic extravaganza’ with spoken dialogue based on a story by R. Garnett. Here a sense of fun prevails, and a delight in doing something different, without obligations; significantly, this is one of the few compositions not shown to Holst while in progress.

Holst’s influence outlived his death in 1934 (in, for instance, the Sixth Symphony) but is most marked in this period. Particular evidence may be found in the Violin Concerto, the Magnificat for contralto solo, women’s choir, solo flute and orchestra, the ballet Job and the Fourth Symphony. This in no way limits the individuality of these works, of which the last two would have to be included in any reckoning of Vaughan Williams’s most important creations. Job, ‘a masque for dancing’ (1927–30), brings together a number of the basic types of imagery from the preceding years and in the music for Satan introduces new ones: so potent are the ingredients, and so high the imaginative level, that the symphonies nos.4–6, utterly different from each other though they are, are all indebted to this seminal score. The scenario by Keynes and Raverat based on Blake’s Illustrations to the Book of Job failed to interest Diaghilev, for whom it was intended, and Vaughan Williams completed his score as a concert work in nine scenes, in which form it was first given. The ballet was mounted by the Camargo Society in 1931 and has entered the repertory of the British Royal Ballet.

The Fourth Symphony, in F minor (1931–4), renews the angular, Satanic element in Job, turns away from modal ‘blessedness’ and achieves a structural power that is intellectually and emotionally challenging in a way quite new to Vaughan Williams’s music. Two basic motifs (ex.4) unite the four movements and dominate the musical imagery. Their extreme terseness, their discordant harmonic implications and the tension arising from their immediate juxtaposition go far to account for the essential violence of this work. Together with Riders to the Sea, the Fourth may be held to represent a response to experience so different from that of the Pastoral and its ‘religious’ satellites as to constitute an opposite pole.

6. The World War II period, 1935–44.

The many who, unlike the composer, interpreted the Fourth Symphony as ‘ancestral voices prophesying war’ thought they saw corroborative evidence in Dona nobis pacem (1936), a cantata for soloists, chorus and orchestra using texts from various sources, with Whitman well to the fore. There is some related imagery – not least the falling semitone on ‘dona’ – but this work ranges widely in point of style, successfully incorporating a setting of Whitman’s ‘Dirge for Two Veterans’ made before World War I, and ending with an affirmation of hope in a serviceable, popular manner found in works from all periods. Although less than a masterpiece, Dona nobis pacem deserves a permanent place among the musical works written against war, and the idea of combining Latin liturgical material with biblical texts and modern vernacular poetry surely influenced Britten’s more famous War Requiem. Five Tudor Portraits (1935), a Skelton suite for soloists, chorus and orchestra, is by the composer of Sir John in Love and the Suite for viola and small orchestra; it is music of relaxed enjoyment, with many characteristic niceties of expression.

Neither of these works is particularly representative of this fourth period, but in their broader lyricism and warmth of manner they may be said to point the way. Disappointed expectations based on the ‘modernity’ of the Fourth Symphony gave rise to the view that, after Holst’s death, Vaughan Williams reverted to a more traditional style. The cause remains speculative, but it is true that for a number of years he concentrated on a more benign, euphonious manner which was regarded by many as definitive. Reversion is too crude a description: a drawing-out and interweaving of threads going back through Job to the Tallis Fantasia would be more accurate. A sense of spiritual security is conveyed by a modal–diatonic norm of expression, offset but seldom undermined by contrary elements. The sentiments made explicit in the Serenade to Music (1938), a setting for 16 soloists and orchestra of words from The Merchant of Venice, are basic to this period. Written for Wood’s golden jubilee as a conductor, the Serenade is best in its original version but may be given by only four soloists, with chorus, or with all the vocal parts treated chorally. There is also an orchestral version. In a similar vein is The Bridal Day (1938–9, rev. 1952–3), a masque with a text by Ursula Wood (later the composer’s wife) after Spenser’s Epithalamion. Originally intended for the English Folk Dance and Song Society, this was not performed until 1953, when it was presented by BBC television (in 1957 Vaughan Williams based a cantata, Epithalamion, on it).

The commanding landmark in this period is the Fifth Symphony (1938–43, rev. 1951), written after some sustained work on The Pilgrim’s Progress but apparently in the belief that the morality (opera) would not be completed. Three principal themes and some subsidiary material are therefore ‘borrowed’ but are treated independently with few, if any, programmatic overtones. Making its affirmations in spite of the Fourth, with which it has in common only its mastery of means, the Fifth marks the climax of Vaughan Williams’s traditional (religious) responses.

Like the Pastoral Symphony, the Fifth has a number of ‘satellites’ or associated works. These include the Five Variants of ‘Dives and Lazarus’ (1939) for strings and harp(s), which is perhaps the most personal of all the folksong compositions, the String Quartet in A minor (1942–4) and the Concerto for oboe and strings (1944). Written for Goossens, the Concerto is at once capricious, lyrical and nostalgic, and is the composer’s most successful essay in the form. The A minor Quartet ends in D in the spirit of the Fifth Symphony, but the other movements, which are either agitated or joyless, make the dominant impression in this fine work. Here, and in some of the music for the war film The Story of a Flemish Farm (1943), are the first definite intimations of the ferment that was to produce the Sixth Symphony. Not that anyone could have foreseen the Sixth, still less the richness of the period that followed.

7. The final period.

After its many early performances Hubert Foss remarked on ‘the flood of explanatory prose which the [Sixth] Symphony has unloosed’. Few other works in the post-Romantic era had so compelled their admirers to ask what the music meant; for the Sixth, in E minor (1944–7, rev. 1950), was experienced by many as a spiritual negation of the Fifth, which it was felt to supplant as a definitive statement. The composer denied that he had written a ‘war symphony’, but later cited Prospero’s words ‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep’ as a verbal indication of ‘the substance of my last movement’ (Kennedy, C1964). This movement, Epilogue, presents the ethos of the work in its most acute form and with the emphasis of an unrelieved pianissimo (senza crescendo). Essentially it is a meditation on a single theme, which ‘drifts about contrapuntally’ and finally disintegrates, leaving only the chords of E major and E minor alternating in a void. An equivalent chord relationship, though less decisively used, has been noted in Riders to the Sea (ex.3), which of the earlier works is the one that has most in common with the imagery of the Sixth. Both these works bear directly on the score for the film Scott of the Antarctic (1948).

It was a stroke of artistic good fortune that Vaughan Williams was asked for that particular score precisely at this juncture. The spiritual desolation of the Sixth found its physical counterpart in the polar wastes, and the sense of challenge and endurance was re-engaged by the story of Scott’s last expedition. Moreover, whatever Vaughan Williams’s reservations about the vainglorious aspects of Scott’s enterprise, the human values represented – heroic endeavour, loyalty, dedication, personal warmth – were a timely corrective to the ‘ultimate nihilism’ (Cooke, D(iii)1959) of the symphony. He soon knew that what he was writing was no ordinary film score and that an Antarctic symphony might well come of it. In fact, he was achieving a reconciliation that would open the way for not one but three more symphonies and would affect almost everything he wrote in the very active ten years remaining to him. This is partly a matter of colour – he was fascinated by his new Antarctic sounds ‘the ’phones and ’spiels’ (tuned percussion) particularly – but basically it concerns the fusion and transformation of hitherto opposed worlds of feeling: the ‘blessedness’ of the Fifth and the nihilistic vision of the Sixth were resolved in a tragic but resilient humanism. Thus the last three symphonies share the same stylistic and philosophical orientation and have a wider range of imagery than any of the others since A London Symphony.

The Sinfonia antartica (no.7) was begun in 1949 but proved troublesome and other works supervened. The same year saw the completion of The Pilgrim’s Progress, which really belongs to the two preceding periods. Both the dramatic conception – effectively, a series of tableaux – and the musical realization have been adversely criticized, but a minority holds that this morality in four acts is one of Vaughan Williams’s supreme achievements: a distinguished Cambridge production by Dennis Arundell in 1954 is cited as supporting evidence and the 1992 revival by the Royal Northern College of Music was also enthusiastically received. The most penetrating critical point is both musical and dramatic: that The Pilgrim’s Progress is ‘an aftermath’ (Richard Capell, in the Daily Telegraph of 28 April 1951), the composer’s Bunyanesque vision having already found its most intense expression in the middle symphonies. But it remains a deeply individual work and will always have its advocates. No less individual are two smaller-scale works from 1949. One of these, An Oxford Elegy for speaker, small chorus and small orchestra, uses another text long thought of by Vaughan Williams as a possible basis for an opera libretto – Arnold’s The Scholar Gipsy, parts of which are combined here with some lines from Thyrsis. This is an unusually successful melodrama and, although broadly pastoral in manner, belongs unequivocally to the final period: like the Cavatina in the Eighth Symphony and many pages from the Ninth, it makes a unique contribution to the music of old age. The other work is in an equally problematical genre, that initiated by Beethoven’s Choral Fantasia: the Fantasia on the Old 104th for solo piano, chorus and orchestra, which is a paean of praise in the composer’s ‘serviceable’ manner but also contains his most distinguished piano writing. Since the piano was in general unsympathetic to him, its use here might almost be included among the instances of unlikely instruments featured in this period. There is a Romance in D for harmonica, strings and piano (1951) – a markedly post-Scott piece written for Larry Adler – and a Concerto in F minor for bass tuba and orchestra (1954), notable for its warmly lyrical slow movement. This instrumental interest was by no means limited to soloistic possibilities; in the Eighth Symphony there is an important part for vibraphone, and the Ninth has a flugelhorn and three saxophones.

The Sinfonia antartica was completed in 1952. It is arguably neither sufficiently symphonic nor sufficiently programmatic, and for that reason the least successful of the mature symphonies, but is capable of making a deep impression. The opening theme, which is a kind of ‘motto’, reveals a synthesis of the harmonic feeling of the Sixth Symphony and the melodic aspiration of the Fifth and is thus a microcosm of the most characteristic music of the last years. In the Eighth (1953–6) and Ninth (1956–8) the post-Scott orientation achieves unambiguous symphonic form. The Eighth, in D minor, has a comparative lightness of heart and a capacity for humour, but these qualities are shot through with sadness and anxiety, even in the rumbustious finale; melodic allusions to Holst and Bach suggest that a thread of remembrance for the fallen of World War I, and for absent friends in general, runs through the work (see Neighbour in Frogley, C1996). The Ninth, in E minor, is a more sombre work, at once heroic and contemplative, defiant and wistfully absorbed.

Of the other late works, the following are of special interest: the Three Shakespeare Songs (1951) for unaccompanied chorus, of which the second, ‘The Cloud-capp’d Towers’, is a memorable setting of the words associated with the Epilogue of the Sixth Symphony; Hodie (1953–4), a Christmas cantata (various texts) for soloists, chorus, boys’ voices and orchestra, which looks back over many years but could only have been written in the 1950s; the Sonata in A minor (1954) for violin and piano, which incorporates a theme from the early Piano Quintet in C minor (1903); and, supremely, the Ten Blake Songs (1957) for voice and oboe, a masterpiece of economy and precision written for the film The Vision of William Blake. In his last years Vaughan Williams showed more interest in the solo song than at any time since the first decade of the century; he had planned two song cycles for voice and piano, to poems by his wife, and of these the completed items were published posthumously as Four Last Songs. At the time of his death the composer was in the advanced stages of work on a cello concerto and on a new opera, Thomas the Rhymer.

All assessments of Vaughan Williams have emphasized his Englishness. This is a matter of temperament and character no less than of musical style and may be felt to have permeated everything he did. In the long run, however, more attention will be given to the specific content of his music: that is, to individuality rather than nationality. That he re-created an English musical vernacular, thereby enabling the next generation to take their nationality for granted, and did much to establish the symphony as a form of central significance for the English revival is historically important; but his illumination of the human condition, especially though not exclusively in those works commonly regarded as visionary, is a unique contribution.

8. Musical language.

Vaughan Williams's path to musical maturity was long and hard – not least because he rejected comfortable solutions – but by the eve of World War I he had developed one of the most distinctive musical personalities of the century. This is characterized as much by the nature of its integration and by the relationship of certain idioms to broader expressive trajectories as by any mannerisms of harmony or rhythm. In the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, for example, the simple juxtaposition of triads with roots a third apart and involving false relations (ex.5), superficially a Vaughan Williams ‘fingerprint’, is initially charged with distinctive, slow-burning energy by the sense of wondering awe created by scoring, spacing and harmonic rhythm. This suggests hidden depths which must be revealed; but contemplatively and obliquely rather than through direct dialectic. The process of revelation, impelled by sleights of modal mixture that echo the emblematic harmonies, builds to a luminous climax in which false relations are painfully intensified (ex.6): once impersonally remote and with each chord allowed time to resonate, they are now fused into an impassioned homorhythmic declamation that fleetingly transcends dualism.

This kind of ecstatic revelation and the particular way in which it is approached became the model for some of Vaughan Williams's finest creations, including the last movement of the Pastoral Symphony and the first and last movements of the Ninth Symphony. The aura of mystery surrounding common chords in these works is by no means arbitrary: in an age of chromatic saturation, emergent atonality and Debussyan added-note chords, pure triadic harmony could become a thing of wonder (and the climax of the Fantasia, as intense as any of Wagner's or Tchaikovsky's, does not use a single appoggiatura). Rather than expunging non-diatonic elements, Vaughan Williams reintegrated them through modally enriched diatonic means, creating a musical tension not compromised by chromatic saturation.

Such concerns underline Vaughan Williams's commitment to reinvent rather than reject the achievements of his 19th-century predecessors. This continuity with the past has frequently been obscured in the critical literature, which has tended to exaggerate the profound but by no means exclusive influence of pre-18th-century music and folksong on his style; the concept of the passionate and transcendent climax, and the confrontational dynamism of the Beethovenian symphonic tradition, however, were also important to Vaughan Williams. Even if he resisted Austro-German developmental and variation processes for their potentially mechanical or routine effect, he nevertheless embraced the sense of spiritual quest and probing exploration of contrasts that underpinned 19th-century large-scale genres (as can be gleaned from the centrality of symphony, concerto and opera to his oeuvre). For all his love of early music, as a searching agnostic with a social conscience he was in larger works drawn more to the conflict-ridden example of Beethoven than to the serene symmetries of Bach. It was surely this influence which eventually impelled him to engage with aspects of musical modernism.

The unusually intimate relationship between expression and technique in Vaughan Williams's music created the central challenge to his development, a challenge intensified by his nationality and by the cultural shockwaves of World War I: how to forge a set of materials and techniques capable of sustaining structures which both emulated the extended heroic narratives of the Austro-German repertoire, yet broke decisively with its idioms and now hollow triumphalist ethos. The task was complicated by other elements in his make-up. Wishing to work with large canvasses, his reverence for the stanzaic ‘tune’ (a clear reflection of his humanistic belief in direct musical expression accessible to a wide audience) presented him with the dilemma of reconciling rounded lyrical statements with the demands of evolving large-scale structures. This challenge was compounded by his general inclination towards material of a contemplative, rather than active, character.

One strategy was to make clearly defined melody the culmination of a work, rather than its point of departure, a procedure adopted in the Pastoral Symphony, Flos campi and Riders to the Sea. But the success of this depended on broader techniques for creating melody-based form. These, which stand at the heart of Vaughan Williams's mature music, generate complex structures from elements that are in themselves extremely simple and easy to assimilate, and do so with apparent spontaneity and minimal recourse to traditional patterning or elaboration (such as diminution, sequence and other direct parallelism). Influenced by contemporary Russian and French music as well as native sources, Vaughan Williams developed a unique musical language based on three closely interdependent elements: the interaction – sometimes confrontation – of common-practice tonality with modality and pentatonicism; a plain and yet pliant rhythmic idiom; and a melodic discourse based on seamless extension rather than fragmentary development (see in particular Payne, C1953, and Neighbour, C1958).

Although these elements, at one level, constituted a sharp break with 19th-century models, Vaughan Williams found in them fresh ways of creating the goal-directed momentum that had sustained Classical and Romantic structures. Pentatonic and modal collections, particularly the Dorian and Mixolydian, not only offered a ‘pure’ alternative to post-Wagnerian chromaticism, but could also generate a rival field of ambiguities and tensions. In the wordless soprano solo of the Pastoral Symphony finale (see ex.7), shifting inflections within a single seven-note diatonic collection suggest several different pitches as potential key centres, an uncertainty that seems to urge the music forward in search of clarification. To reinforce the tonal ambiguity of the melodic line, other kinds of restlessness are also imparted to it: the rhythmic profile, while plain and unassertive on the surface, is rendered unstable by fluctuation between duple and triple groupings of quavers and by a flurry of semiquavers. (Such disruptions are magnified elsewhere in the work as alternations of rhapsodic passages with material in a steady duple metre.) Furthermore, while the melody appears improvisatory, closer examination reveals firm overall control, especially in terms of preparing the climax on a''. Each phrase leading to this extends the range upwards by one pitch in the collection; gradual ascent is then matched asymmetrically by a swift post-climax descent that extends the lower end of the range, a new element which compensates for a return to the opening phrase, now transposed. Each phrase is enmeshed in the next, and literal repetition avoided until the last bar; nevertheless, overall the loose arch-structure is also shadowed by a traditional four-phrase scheme. Paradoxically, then, while it emulates the immediate impact of a self-contained tune, the melody is generated in such a way that it can be extended or compressed without violating its underlying principles of construction, and can evolve into significantly different material. While English folksong, medieval chant and modern Franco-Russian sources have clearly influenced such ‘organic’ melodic structures, so has Brahmsian ‘developing variation’. Interestingly, it is this kind of passage that has led to accusations of ‘aimless rhapsody’ in Vaughan Williams's music; clearly the idea that such music meanders ineffectually without a goal in sight could scarcely be further from the truth.

Typically, Vaughan Williams projects the kinds of instability inherent in ex.7 into the vertical domain of harmony and counterpoint as well. As World War I drew near, he began to explore combinations of independent melodic lines, or of melodies and harmonic backgrounds, featuring conflicting tonal or modal implications. By the early 1920s, he had begun to superimpose layers of tonally divergent material, often comprised of discrete melodic strands thickened into streams of parallel triads. This allowed simple modal figures to generate complex harmonic aggregates. In the opening bars of the Pastoral Symphony (seeex.8), for example, the principal voices suggest a modally inflected major-minor shift at the ‘Poco tranquillo’. The triadic magnification of these lines, however, blurs the harmonic interaction of upper and lower layers (bars 1–8) and introduces bitonal effects (bars 9–12). Working out the implications of these oppositions becomes central to the symphony as a whole.

While tonal superimposition was common currency by the 1920s, Vaughan Williams used it to individual ends that grew naturally from his pre-war concerns. Nevertheless, in the decade following the Pastoral Symphony he explored such oppositions in increasingly stark and dialectical ways, prompting inevitable comparisons with continental modernism. The fortissimo minor-9th crunch that launches the Fourth Symphony presents the fundamental dissonance of tonal music as pure linear conflict, stripped of any harmonic padding (see ex.9); the outer voices grind against each other in a mostly fruitless search for resolution until the end of the symphony. A similar gesture is taken up in the Sixth Symphony, and even the gentler Fifth opens unhesitatingly with a tritone framing its quiet harmonic question.

Harmonic propositions of this kind underline the consistency of expressive purpose in Vaughan Williams's music, however much its terms were distilled, diversified and qualified over the years. Implicit dualism is already apparent in the two-chord progression from A Sea Symphony (see ex.2), but does not become a disruptive force there; by the Fourth Symphony, however, it has been drawn out and collapsed into a form, the polarities of which cannot co-exist without dialectical confrontation. Whatever spiritual or philosophical significance attributed to such oppositions, they are a central feature of Vaughan Williams's entire oeuvre.

The impressive variety of contrasts that Vaughan Williams commanded during his career owed much to the diverse range of styles and materials he mastered from the mid-1920s onwards – partly through experimentation and partly through continental influences, the most important of whom was Bartók. (Holst was important as a conduit for continental developments as well as through direct influence.) In terms of pitch organization, Vaughan Williams incorporated chromatic elements within individual modal or gapped constructions as well as through polymodality and parallel harmonic motion. Octanic and hexatonic collections are introduced during this period; the so-called Lydian minor scale (e.g. C-D-E-F-G-A-B) makes its first appearance in Sancta Civitas and was used frequently in the composer's final decade. Such materials normalize chromatic elements without invoking their expressively charged functions as leading notes or appoggiaturas (although these are still available when required). Other anti-Romantic features of the inter-war music include the doubling of melodic strands at the bare fourth or fifth; quartal structures may also play a melodic role.

A new tendency for sparse textures reflected Vaughan Williams's interest in the neo-classical movement (though he had loved Bach well before the 1920s made it fashionable). Baroque motor rhythms furnished an energy well-suited to his new harmonic concerns and an emotionally neutral quality that added a dimension to his expressive gamut; both qualities were exploited in the openings of the violin and piano concertos. Neo-classical concerns may have also suggested the dance and march parodies notable in Job, the final movement of the Piano Concerto (an angular chromatic waltz), the scherzos of the symphonies from the Fourth onwards, the finale of the Fourth, the ‘Homage to Henry Hall’ from the Partita and parts of The Pilgrim's Progress, although such music tends to evoke Mahler and Shostakovich rather than Stravinsky or Milhaud.

In his final decade, Vaughan Williams extended his expressive resources further with a new approach to timbre. This not only involved experimentation with unusual instruments and combinations, but also the use of timbre and texture as a primary means of articulating structure (such as in the third movement of the Sinfonia antartica), an approach facilitated by the submergence of through-composed trajectories under fragmented, modular surfaces of sharp juxtapositions. Yet fragmentation at one level was offset by the motivic and harmonic interpenetration of contrasting ideas in a subtler and deeper fashion than ever before: the starkly opposed dualisms of the works of the 1930s and 40s are now shown to be formed of cognate terms, and paradox and ambivalence predominate at almost every level. The most impressive achievement of the period, and the last completed major work, is the Ninth Symphony. Both outer movements employ highly original structures – the carefully graded and layered engineering of rhythmic momentum in the first movement is especially striking – and the work offers one of Vaughan Williams's most impressive essays in finely balanced tonal and modal ambiguities. Ex.10, taken from the finale, is typical of the late works in its Janus-faced, light-dark reiteration of a cadential formula.

Nearly all commentators have stressed the centrality of British models in shaping Vaughan Williams's development. Indeed, it has been implied that he was technically unable to master the challenges of the more ‘progressive’ foreign music of his day. While it is true that folksong and early English music provided a strong impetus on certain fronts, not least as a model of flexible contrapuntal technique and a fund of modal resources, the impact of these influences can be easily over-estimated. A general emphasis on British sources has fostered the myth of a lone, rather amateurish figure almost entirely cut off from continental developments. Yet Vaughan Williams's early works show him well able to learn from the dominant continental composers of the day – Brahms, Wagner, Tchaikovsky and Verdi among others – and from Parry, Stanford and Elgar; he was one of the first British composers to assimilate successfullly the influence of Ravel and Debussey; and later he responded to Bartók, Stravinsky and Sibelius, and even, at the end of his life, to the young Britten. He was, in fact, a composer of great originality who was nevertheless perennially curious about the music of others.

9. Reception and influence.

Vaughan William's place in the repertory now appears secure, fixed by a number of the symphonies and smaller-scale orchestral works, and by vocal music, particularly for amateurs. For a long time his reputation was inextricably enmeshed with the degree to which his art and life were deemed to reflect narrowly English concerns and influences. Specifically, a perceived association with the trope of Englishness dominant during the inter-war years – conservative, agrarian, insular and emotionally undemonstrative – made him a natural musical target for the wider post-1945 reaction against this national self-image. Although a more balanced picture is emerging, stressing the multi-faceted and at times subversive character of Vaughan Williams's nationalism, echoes of old polemics still revererate. Nevertheless, if the critical pendulum has swung back and forth, tallies of performances, broadcasts and recordings have always remained healthy, even if sustained during some periods more by amateur, semi-professional and provincial groups than by first-rank ensembles.

A bifurcation between critical and popular reception was evident early in the composer's career, but here the poles were reversed. As early as 1903 and 1904 the composer received enthusiastic critical notices – from influential figures such as Edwin Evans and William Barclay Squire – that already singled him out from the rest of his generation; and in 1907 the première of Toward the Unknown Region established a definite landmark for his growing reputation. Yet broader appreciation came only slowly. Even ‘Linden Lea’ (1901), probably Vaughan Williams's most widely performed piece, did not become a standard until the 1920s; the Tallis Fantasia, eventually played internationally, was not an immediate success. In the pre-war period, it was rather A London Symphony that finally confirmed him as the leading English composer of his generation. Here for the first time nationalism became as significant issue in his reception: the ‘London’ set the stage for the 1920s and the formation of enduring facets of Vaughan Williams's image. Paramount was that of the nature mystic, and here another symphony, the Pastoral, served as a focal point. Among supporters and detractors alike, the reception of his work established much of the misguided rhetoric surrounding the so-called ‘cowpat’ school; the true character of this haunted symphony, conceived on the battlefields of France, was almost buried under facile quips about cows, sheep and farmers.

For much of his career, but especially in the inter-war years, Vaughan Williams enjoyed the mixed blessing of being closely associated with key elements in the emerging musical establishment, including the RCM, Oxford and Cambridge, The Times and, perhaps most importantly of all, the BBC (although he used these connections as often to benefit other composers, including the young and relatively unknown, as himself). He was well served by publishers; here the key relationship was that begun in 1924 with Oxford University Press. In contrast with broadcasting, the gramophone industry did not figure largely in his career (comparison with Elgar and Britten here is instructive): he conducted just two discs of his own music, and was not generally well represented in the catalogue until after World War II. But another medium – the cinema – became important to him, bringing his music before a new mass audience from the early 1940s on.

During this decade the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies also reached a large public, as well as finding critical favour. But by the 1950s the cool critical reception of the last three symphonies foreshadowed the slump that would follow the composer's death; The Pilgrim's Progress also failed to convince, and the achieved simplicity of Hodie was misconstrued as ‘damaging primitivity’ (Mitchell, C1954–5). A common charge was that of insularity; ironically, during this same period Vaughan Williams's reputation in the United States was at its zenith (other evidence refuting the idea that his music cannot be exported includes a strong tally of performances in continental Europe during his lifetime, and recent interest in his music in Russia and Germany). Aware of Vaughan Williams since just after World War I, by the 1950s American audiences placed him in the same category as Prokofiev, Hindemith and Sibelius, and conductors such as Szell and Mitropoulos competed fiercely for premières; his influence is plain to hear in works by Hovhaness, Hanson, Schuman and others.

Vaughan Williams's impact on British composers was strongest between the wars. Although reinforced by his teaching, it was not limited to official pupils; this is clear from the music of Howells, Finzi and Rubbra, as well as certain works by Tippett and Britten. His influence on art music faded in the radical environment of the 1960s, but church music remained susceptible, along with film and television scores. Both his and Holst's impact on grass-roots musical culture can be detected in the confluence of folk-like melody and modal harmony notable in the later music of the Beatles and subsequent progressive rock. The waning of his influence in art music was exacerbated by a global trend away from tonal and large-scale symphonic music towards atonal modernism. Inevitably this affected musicological interest as well as performance and composition, and after the official life and works studies were published in the mid-1960s little else appeared for two decades; although the USA generated some academic dissertations, few constituted primary research, and the virtually complete absence of such studies in the UK is striking. Yet with the decline of hard-line modernism in the wider musical world, and the growing popularity of contemplative tonal music by Tavener, Górecki and others, Vaughan Williams's fortunes have begun to rise once again. The mid-1980s saw a surge in new research projects, live performances and recordings, and in 1994 the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society was founded.

WORKS

for a complete list including juvenilia, sketches, incomplete works and arrangements, see Kennedy (A1982, rev. 2/1996)

Dates given are of main period of composition

chamber and instrumental

incidental music

stage

The Shepherds of the Delectable Mountains (pastoral episode, 1, Vaughan Williams, after J. Bunyan), 1921; London, RCM, 11 July 1922; incl. in The Pilgrim’s Progress

Old King Cole (ballet), chorus and orch, 1923; Cambridge, Trinity College, 5 June 1923

Hugh the Drover, or Love in the Stocks (romantic ballad op, 2, H. Child), 1910–14, last rev. 1956; London, His Majesty’s, 14 July 1924

On Christmas Night (masque with dancing, singing and miming, A. Bolm and Vaughan Williams, after C. Dickens), 1926; Chicago, Eighth Street, 26 Dec 1926

Sir John in Love (op, 4, Vaughan Williams, after W. Shakespeare), 1924–8; London, RCM, 21 March 1929

Job (masque for dancing, G. Keynes and G. Raverat, after W. Blake), 1927–30; London, Cambridge, 5 July 1931

The Poisoned Kiss (romantic extravaganza, 3, E. Sharp, after R. Garnett), 1927–9, last rev. 1956–7; Cambridge, Arts, 12 May 1936

Riders to the Sea (op, 1, Vaughan Williams, after J.M. Synge), 1925–32; London, RCM, 1 Dec 1937

The Bridal Day (masque, U. Wood, after E. Spenser), 1938–9, rev. 1952–3; BBC TV, 5 June 1953

The Pilgrim’s Progress (morality, 4, Vaughan Williams, after Bunyan etc), completed 1949, rev. 1951–2; London, Covent Garden, 26 April 1951

orchestral and band

for orchestra unless otherwise stated

Fantasia, pf, orch, 1896–1902, rev. 1904, unpubd

Serenade, a, 1898, unpubd

Bucolic Suite, 1900, unpubd

Heroic Elegy and Triumphal Epilogue, 1900–1, rev. 1902, unpubd

Symphonic Rhapsody, 1901–3, destroyed

The Solent, impression, 1903, unpubd

Boldre Wood, impression, ?1904–7, lost

Harnham Down, impression, 1904–7, unpubd

In the Fen Country, sym. impression, 1904, last rev. 1935

Norfolk Rhapsody no.1, 1905–6

Norfolk Rhapsody no.2, 1906, unpubd

Norfolk Rhapsody no.3, 1906, lost

March Past of the Kitchen Utensils, 1909

The Wasps, Aristophanic suite, incl. ov., 1909 [from incidental music]

Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, 2 str orch, 1910, last rev. 1919

Fantasia on English Folk Songs, 1910, lost

A London Symphony (no.2), 1911–13, main rev. 1918, last rev. 1933

The Lark Ascending, romance, vn, orch, 1914, rev. 1920

Pastoral Symphony (no.3), completed 1921

English Folk Song Suite, military band, 1923

Sea Songs, march, military/brass band, 1923

Concerto (Concerto accademico), d, vn, str, 1924–5

Toccata marziale, military band, 1924

Flos campi, suite, small SATB chorus, va, small orch, 1925

Piano Concerto, C, 1926–31

Fantasia on Sussex Folk Tunes, vc, orch, 1929, unpubd

Job, concert version of ballet, 1930

Prelude and Fugue, c, 1930 [arr. of org work, 1921]

Symphony no.4, f, 1931–4

The Running Set, 1933

Fantasia on Greensleeves, 1/2 fl, harp, str, 1934 [arr. R. Greaves from Sir John in Love]

Suite, va, small orch, 1934

2 Hymn-tune Preludes, small orch, 1936

Symphony no.5, D, 1938–43, rev. 1951

Serenade to Music, arr. orch 1939

5 Variants of ‘Dives and Lazarus’, str, hp(s), 1939

The Story of a Flemish Farm, suite, 1943 [suite from film]

Concerto, a, ob, str, 1944

Symphony no.6, e, 1944–7, rev. 1950

Partita, 2 str orch, 1946–8 [from Double Trio, 1938]

Sinfonia antartica (no.7), S, small SSA chorus, orch, 1949–52

Concerto grosso, str in 3 groups, 1950

Romance, D, harmonica, str, pf, 1951

Prelude on an Old Carol Tune, 1953 [based on incid music to The Mayor of Casterbridge]

Bass Tuba Concerto, f, 1954

Prelude on 3 Welsh Hymn Tunes, brass band, 1955

Symphony no.8, d, 1953–6

Symphony no.9, e, 1956–8

Flourish for Glorious John [Barbirolli], 1957, unpubd

Variations, brass band, 1957

vocal orchestral

Mass, S, A, T, B, SSAATTBB, orch, 1897–9, unpubd

The Garden of Prosperine (Swinburne), S, SATB, orch, 1897/8–9

A Sea Symphony (no.1) (W. Whitman), S, Bar, SATB, orch, 1903–9, last rev. 1923

Toward the Unknown Region (Whitman), SATB, orch, 1904/5–6

3 Nocturnes (Whitman), Bar, semi-chorus, orch, 1908, unpubd

Willow-Wood (cant., D.G. Rossetti), Bar/Mez, female chorus, orch, 1908–9 [after version for 1v, pf]

5 Mystical Songs (G. Herbert), Bar, SATB, orch, 1911

Fantasia on Christmas Carols, Bar, SATB, orch, 1912

4 Hymns (J. Taylor, I. Watts, R. Crashaw, R. Bridges), T, va, str, 1914

Lord, Thou hast been our Refuge (Ps xc), motet, SATB, semi-chorus, orch/org, 1921

Let us now praise famous men (Bible: Ecclesiasticus), unison chorus, pf/org/ small orch, 1923

On Wenlock Edge (A.E. Housman), T, orch, arr. c1923

Sancta civitas (orat, Bible: Revelation etc.), T, Bar, SATB, semi-chorus, distant chorus, orch, 1923–5

Darest thou now, o Soul (Whitman), unison chorus, pf/str, 1925

Te Deum, G, SATB, org/orch, 1928

Benedicite (Apocrypha, J. Austin), S, SATB, orch, 1929

3 Children’s Songs for a Spring Festival (F.M. Farrer), unison chorus, str, 1929

3 Choral Hymns (M. Coverdale), Bar/T, SATB, orch, 1929

Psalm c, SATB, orch, 1929

In Windsor Forest (cant., Shakespeare), SATB, orch, 1930 [based on Sir John in Love]

Magnificat, A, SA, fl, orch, 1932

5 Tudor Portraits (J. Skelton), choral suite, A/Mez, Bar, SATB, orch, 1935

Dona nobis pacem (cant., Whitman etc), S, Bar, SATB, orch, 1936

Nothing is Here for Tears (J. Milton), choral song, unison chorus/SATB, pf/org/orch, 1936

Festival Te Deum, SATB, org/orch, 1937

Flourish for a Coronation (various), SATB, orch, 1937

All Hail the Power, hymn, arr. unison chorus, SATB, org/orch, 1938

Serenade to Music (Shakespeare), (4S, 4A, 4T, 4B)/(S, A, T, B, SATB), orch, 1938

6 Choral Songs, to be Sung in Time of War (P.B. Shelley), unison chorus, pf/orch, 1940

England, my England (W.E. Henley), choral song, Bar, SSAATTBB, unison chorus, orch/pf, 1941

A Song of Thanksgiving (various), spkr, S, SATB, orch, 1944

An Oxford Elegy (M. Arnold), spkr, small SATB chorus, small orch, 1947–9

The Voice out of the Whirlwind (Bible: Job), motet, SATB, org/orch, 1947

Fantasia (quasi variazione) on the Old 104th (Pss), pf, SATB, orch, 1949

Folksongs of the Four Seasons (cant.), SSAA, orch, 1949

The Sons of Light (cant., U. Wood), SATB, orch, 1950

Sun, Moon, Stars and Man (Wood), song cycl, unison chorus, str/pf, 1950 [based on The Sons of Light]

Hodie (This Day) (Christmas cant., various), S, T, Bar, SATB, boys’ chorus, orch, 1953–4

The Old Hundredth Psalm Tune, arr. SATB, unison chorus, orch, org, 1953

Epithalamion (cant., E. Spenser), Bar, SATB, small orch, 1957 [based on The Bridal Day]

The First Nowell (S. Pakenham), nativity play, solo vv, SATB, small orch, 1958, completed Douglas

See Orchestral and band for works with wordless chorus

other choral works

with org/pf

Sound Sleep (C. Rossetti), SSA, pf, 1903

O clap your hands (Ps xlvii), motet, SATB, brass, org, 1920

A Farmer’s Son so Sweet (trad.), arr. TBB, pf, 1921

The Seeds of Love (trad.), arr. TBB, pf, 1923

Magnificat and Nunc dimittis (The Village Service), SATB, org, 1925

An Acre of Land (trad.), arr. TTBB, pf, ?1934

O how amiable (Pss lxxxiv, xc), anthem, SATB, org. 1934)

The Pilgrim Pavement (B. Partridge), hymn, S, SATB, org, 1934

The Ploughman (trad.), arr. TTBB, pf, ?1934

Morning, Communion and Evening Services, d, unison chorus, SATB, org, ?1939

9 Motets, ?1941, lost: All nations whom thou hast made shall come; Be strong all ye people of the land; I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me; Jesus said, Inasmuch as ye did unto one; Jesus said, Upon this rock will I build my church; Nations shall come to thy light; Jesus said, Blessed are they that mourn; There were great voices in Heaven saying; Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace

The Airman’s Hymn (E.G. Lytton), unison chorus, pf/org, 1942

O Taste and See (Pss), motet, SATB, org, 1952

A Choral Flourish (Pss), SATB, org/2 tpt, 1956

A Vision of Aeroplanes (N. Ezekiel), motet, SATB, org, 1956

unaccompanied

3 Elizabethan Songs, partsongs, SATB, ?1891–6: Sweet Day (G. Herbert), The Willow Song, O Mistress mine (Shakespeare)

Come Away Death (Shakespeare), partsong, SSATB, early

Rest (C. Rossetti), partsong, SSATB, 1902

Ring out your bells (P. Sidney), madrigal, SSATB, 1902

Fain would I change that note (anon.), canzonet, SATB, 1907

Love is a sickness (ballet, S. Daniel), SATB, 1913

O Praise the Lord of Heaven (Ps cxlviii), anthem, SSAATTBB, semi-chorus, 1913

Mass, g, S, A, T, B, SSAATTBB, 1920–21

O vos omnes, motet, A, SSAATTBB, 1922

I’ll never love thee more (S. Graham), SATB, 1934

Valiant for Truth (Bunyan), motet, SATB, org/pf ad lib, 1940

A Call to the Free Nations (Briggs), SATB/unison chorus, 1941

The Souls of the Righteous (Bible: Solomon), motet, S, T, Bar, SATB, 1947

Prayer to the Father of Heaven (Skelton), motet, SATB, 1948

3 Shakespeare Songs, SATB, 1951: Full Fathom Five, The Cloud-capp’d Towers, Over Hill, Over Dale

Silence and Music (U. Vaughan Williams), SATB, 1953

Heart’s Music (T. Campion), SATB, 1954

Song for a Spring Festival (U. Vaughan Williams), SATB, 1955

arrangements of English folksongs unless otherwise stated

Bushes and Briars, TTBB/SATB, 1908

The Jolly Ploughboy, TTBB, 1908

Alister McAlpine’s Lament (Scottish trad.), SATB., 1912

Down Among the Dead Men, TTBB, 1912

Mannin Veen (Manx trad.), SATB, 1912

Ward the Pirate, TTBB, 1912

The Winter is Gone, TTBB, 1912

5 English Folksongs, SATB, 1913: The Dark-eyed Sailor, The Springtime of the Year, Just as the Tide was Flowing, The Lover’s Ghost, Wassail Song

The Farmer’s Boy, TTBB, 1921

Loch Lomond (Scottish trad.), Bar, TTBB, 1921

The Mermaid, S, SATB, 1921

The Old Folks at Home (S. Foster), Bar, TTBB, 1921

Ca’ the Yowes (Scottish trad.), T, SATB, 1922

The Seeds of Love, TTBB, 1923

The Turtle Dove, Bar, SSATB, ?1924

An Acre of Land, SATB, ?1934

John Dory, SATB, ?1934

Tobacco’s but an Indian weed, TTBB, ?1934

The world it went well with me then, TTBB, ?1934

Dives and Lazarus, T, Bar/B, TTBB, ?1942

Early in the Spring, SSA, 1950

In Bethlehem City, SSA, 1950

The Unquiet Grave, SSA, 1950

3 Gaelic Songs, SATB, 1954: Dawn on the hills, Come let us gather cockles, Wake and rise

God bless the master of this house, SATB, 1956

hymn tunes

Down Ampney (Come down, O Love Divine), c1905

Randolph (God be with you till we meet again), c1905

Salve festa dies (Hail thee, festival day), c1905

Sine nomine (For all the saints), c1905

Cumnor (Servants of God, or sons), 1925

Guildford (England, arise the long, long night is over), 1925

King’s Weston (At the name of Jesus), 1925

Magda (Saviour, again to Thy dear name), 1925

Oakley (The night is come like to the day), 1925

Abinger (I vow to thee my country), 1931

Mantegna (Into the woods my master went), 1931

Marathon (Servants of the great adventure), 1931

White Gates (Fierce raged the tempest), 1931

Little Cloister (As the disciples, when Thy Son had left them), 1935

Also many arrs. from folksong tunes: see The English Hymnal and Songs of Praise

carols

8 Traditional English Carols, arr. SATB/1v, pf, 1919: On Christmas Day, On Christmas Night, The Twelve Apostles, Down in yon forest, May-day Carol, The truth sent from above, The Birth of the Saviour, Wassail Song

12 Traditional Carols from Herefordshire, arr. SATB/1v, pf, 1920: The Holy Well (2 versions), Christmas now is drawing near at hand, Joseph and Mary, The Angel Gabriel, God Rest you Merry, Gentlemen, New Year’s Carol, On Christmas Day, Dives and Lazarus, The Miraculous Harvest, The Saviour’s Love, The Seven Virgins

9 Carols, arr. Bar, TTBB, ?1942: God Rest you Merry, Gentlemen, As Joseph was a-walking, Mummers’ Carol, The First Nowell, The Lord at first, Coventry Carol, I saw three ships, A Virgin most pure, Dives and Lazarus

2 Carols, arr. SATB, 1945: Come love we God, There is a flower

Also contributions to The Oxford Book of Carols (London, 1928), incl. four originals: The Golden Carol (trad.), Wither’s Rocking Hymn (G. Wither), Snow in the Street (W. Morris), Blake’s Cradle Song (Blake)

songs

for 1v, pf unless otherwise stated

A Cradle Song (S.T. Coleridge), ?1894

Claribel (A.Tennyson), ?1896

How can the tree but wither? (T. Vaux), ?1896

The Splendour Falls (Tennyson), ?1896

Dreamland (C. Rossetti), ?1898

Linden Lea (W. Barnes), 1901

Orpheus with his Lute (Shakespeare), ?1901

Songs of Travel (R.L. Stevenson), no.7 1901, remainder 1904: The Vagabond, Let Beauty Awake, The Roadside Fire, Youth and Love, In Dreams, The Infinite Shining Heavens, Whither must I Wander?, Bright is the Ring of Words, I have Trod the Upward and the Downward Slope

Boy Johnny (C. Rossetti), ?1902

If I were a Queen (C. Rossetti), ?1902

Tears, Idle Tears (Tennyson), 1902

Willow-wood (cant., D.G. Rossetti), 1902–3, unpubd

The House of Life (D.G. Rossetti), 1903: Love-sight, Silent Noon, Love’s Minstrels, Heart’s Haven, Death in Love, Love’s Last Gift

When I am dead, my dearest (C. Rossetti), ?1903

The Winter’s Willow (W. Barnes), ?1903

Buonaparty (T. Hardy), 1908

On Wenlock Edge (Housman), T, pf, str qt, 1908–9: On Wenlock Edge, From far, from eve and morning, Is my team ploughing?, Oh, when I was in love with you, Bredon Hill, Clun

The Sky above the Roof (P. Verlaine, trans. M. Dearmer), 1908

Merciless Beauty (G. Chaucer), 3 rondels, S/T, 2 vn, vc, 1921: Your eyen two, So hath your beauty, Since I from love

Dirge for Fidele (Shakespeare), 2 Mez, pf, 1922

4 Poems by Fredegond Shove, c1922: Motion and Stillness, Four Nights, The New Ghost, The Water Mill

2 Poems by Seumas O’Sullivan, 1925: The Twilight People, A Piper

3 Poems by Walt Whitman, ?1925: Nocturne, A Clear Midnight, Joy, Shipmate, Joy!

3 Songs from Shakespeare, 1925: Take, O take those lips away, When icicles hang by the wall, Orpheus with his Lute (2nd setting)

Along the Field (Housman), 1v, vn, 1927, rev. 1954: We’ll to the woods no more, Along the field, The half-moon westers low, In the morning, The sigh that heaves the grasses, Goodbye, Fancy’s Knell, With rue my heart is laden

7 Songs from The Pilgrim’s Progress (Bunyan), before 1951

In the Spring (Barnes), 1952

4 Last Songs (U. Vaughan Williams), 1954–8: Procris, Tired, Hands, Eyes and Heart, Menelaus

10 Blake Songs, 1v, ob, 1957: Infant Joy, A Poison Tree, The Piper, London, The Lamb, The Shepherd, Ah! Sunflower, Cruelty has a human heart, The Divine Image, Eternity

3 Vocalises, S, cl, 1958

arrangements of English folksongs unless otherwise stated

Blackmwore by the Stour (Barnes), 1901

Entlaubet ist der Walde (Ger. trad.), 1902

Adieu (Ger. trad., trans. A.F. Ferguson), S, Bar, pf, 1903

L’amour de moy (Fr. trad., trans. England), 1903

Cousin Michael (Ger. trad., trans. Ferguson), S, Bar, pf, 1903

Folksongs from the Eastern Counties (ed. C.J. Sharp), collected and arr. 1903–6: Bushes and Briars, Tarry Trowsers, A Bold Young Farmer, The Lost Lady Found, As I Walked Out, The Lark in the Morning, On Board a Ninety-eight, The Captain’s Apprentice, Ward the Pirate, The Saucy Bold Robber, The Bold Princess Royal, The Lincolnshire Farmer, The Sheffield Apprentice, Geordie, Harry the Tailor

Jean Renaud (Fr. trad., trans. England), 1903

Réveillez-vous, Piccars (Fr. trad., trans. England), 1903

Think of me (Ger. trad., trans. Ferguson), S, Bar, pf, 1903

La ballade de Jésus Christ (Fr. trad.), ?1904

Chanson de quête (Fr. trad.), ?1904

Folksongs for Schools (ed. W.G McNaught), arr. unison vv, pf, 1912: The Jolly Ploughboy, The Cuckoo and the Nightingale, Servant Man and Husbandman, The Female Highwayman, The Carter, I will give my love an apple, My Boy Billy, Down by the Riverside, The Fox, Farmyard Song, The Painful Plough

The Spanish Ladies, 1912

Folksongs from Newfoundland (collected and ed. M. Karpeles), arr. ?1934: Sweet William’s Ghost, The Cruel Mother, The Gypsy Laddie, The Bloody Gardener, The Maiden’s Lament, Proud Nancy, The Morning Dew, The Bonny Banks of Virgie-o, Earl Brand, Lord Akeman, The Lover’s Ghost, She’s like the swallow, Young Floro, The winter’s gone and past, The Cuckoo

2 English Folksongs, 1v, vn, ?1935: Searching for Lambs, The Lawyer

6 English Folksongs, ?1935: Robin Hood and the Pedlar, The Ploughman, One man, two men, The Brewer, Rolling in the dew, King William

chamber and instrumental

String Quintet, c, 1897–8, unpubd

Quintet, D, cl, hn, pf trio, 1898, unpubd

Quintet, c, vn, va, vc, db, pf, 1903, last rev. 1905, unpubd

Ballade and Scherzo, 2 vn, 2 va, vc, 1904, unpubd

String Quartet, g, 1908–9, rev. 1921

Phantasy Quintet, 2 vn, 2 va, vc, 1912

2 Pieces, vn, pf, ?1912

Suite de ballet, fl, pf, ?1913

3 Preludes on Welsh Hymn Tunes, org, 1920: Bryn Calfaria, Rhosymedre, Hyfrydol

6 Short Pieces, pf, ?1920

Prelude and Fugue, c, org, 1921, orchd 1930

6 Studies in English Folksong, vc, pf, 1926; also arr. vn/va/cl, pf

Hymn Tune Prelude on Song 13 by Orlando Gibbons, pf, 1928

Passacaglia on B–G–C, org, 1933, unpubd

6 Teaching Pieces, pf, 1934

Double Trio, str sextet, 1938, unpubd

Suite for Pipes, 1939

Household Music, 3 preludes on Welsh hymn tunes, str qt/other insts, 1940–41

String Quartet, a, 1942–4

Introduction and Fugue, 2 pf, 1943–6

The Lake in the Mountains, pf, 1947 [from film score 49th Parallel]

Sonata, a, vn, pf, 1954

2 Preludes on Welsh Folksongs, org, 1956

Romance, va, pf, date unknown

incidental music

unpublished in original form, unless otherwise stated

for the theatre

Pan’s Anniversary (masque, B. Jonson), 1905, lost

The Pilgrim’s Progress (Bunyan), S, A, SATB, str, 1909, lost

The Wasps (Aristophanes), T, Bar, TTBB, orch, 1909

The Bacchae (Euripides), A, SATB, orch, 1911

Electra (Euripides), spkr, S, A, SATB, orch, 1911

Iphigenia in Tauris (Euripides), SATB, orch, 1911

The Blue Bird (M. Maeterlinck), orch, 1913

The Death of Tintagiles (Maeterlinck), orch, 1913

The Devil’s Disciple (G.B. Shaw), 1913

Henry IV, Part 2 (Shakespeare), 1913

Henry V (Shakespeare), 1913

The Merry Wives of Windsor (Shakespeare), 1913, lost

Richard II (Shakespeare), 1913

Richard III (Shakespeare), 1913

Twelth Night (Shakespeare), pipe, tabor, str qt, kbd, ?1913

for films

49th Parallel, 1940–41; Coastal Command, 1942; The People’s Land, 1943; The Story of a Flemish Farm, 1943; Stricken Peninsula, 1944; The Loves of Joanna Godden, 1946; Scott of the Antarctic, 1948; Dim Little Island, 1949; Bitter Springs, 1950; The England of Elizabeth, 1955; The Vision of William Blake, 1957

for radio

The Pilgrim’s Progress (Bunyan), 1942; Richard II (Shakespeare), 1944; The Mayor of Casterbridge (Hardy), 1950

MSS in GB-Lbl, GB-Lcm, GB-Lam, GB-Ob

Principal publishers: Curwen/Faber, OUP, Stainer & Bell

WRITINGS

for more comprehensive list see Starbuck (A1967) and Butterworth (A1990)

‘Conducting’, ‘Fugue’, Grove2

‘Who Wants the English Composer?’, R.C.M. Magazine, ix (1912–13), 11–15; repr. in Foss (1950)

National Music (London, 1934/R)

Some Thoughts on Beethoven’s Choral Symphony with Writings on other Musical Subjects (London, 1953/R)

The Making of Music (Ithaca, NY, 1955/R)

Correspondence with Holst and some early articles inHeirs and Rebels, ed. U. Vaughan Williams and I. Holst (London, 1959)

National Music and Other Essays (London, 1963, rev. 2/1997)

Correspondence with Douglas in Douglas (1988)

2. Afro-Venezuelan music.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

a: catalogues and source studies

P.J. Willetts: ‘The Ralph Vaughan Williams Collection’, British Museum Quarterly, xxiv (1961), 3–11

A.E.F. Dickinson: ‘The Vaughan Williams Manuscripts’, MR, xxiii (1962), 177–94

P.R. Starbuck: Ralph Vaughan Williams, O.M., 1872–1958: a Bibliography of his Literary Writings and Criticism of his Musical Works (diss., Library Association, 1967)

L. Foreman: ‘VW: a Bibliography of Dissertations’, MT, cxiii (1972), 962–3

M. Kennedy: A Catalogue of the Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams (London, 1982, rev. 2/1996)

R. Palmer, ed.: Folk Songs Collected by Ralph Vaughan Williams (London, 1983)

N. Butterworth: Ralph Vaughan Williams: a Guide to Research (New York, 1990)

A. Frogley: ‘Vaughan Williams and the New World: Manuscript Sources in North American Libraries’,Notes, xlviii (1991–2), 1175–92

b: works in context of british music

W. Barclay Squire: ‘On Some English Music’, The Pilot (21 March 1903)

E. Evans: ‘Modern British Composers: Vaughan Williams’, MT, lxi (1920), 232–4, 302–5, 371–4

F. Toye: ‘Studies in English Music: Vaughan Williams and the Folk Music Movement’,The Listener, v (24 July 1931)

W.H. Mellers: Music and Society (London, 1946, rev. 2/1950)

A. Hutchings: ‘Vaughan Williams and the Tudor Tradition’, The Listener (15 Feb1951)

R. Taylor: ‘Vaughan Williams and English National Music’, Cambridge Journal, vi (1953), 615–24

E.M. Payne: ‘Vaughan Williams and Folksong’, MR, xv (1954), 103–26

P. Harrington: ‘Holst and Vaughan Williams: Radical Pastoral’, Music and the Politics of Culture, ed. C. Norris (London, 1989), 106–27

A. Howkins: ‘Greensleeves and the Idea of National Music’, Patriotism: the Making and Unmaking of British National Identity, iii, ed. R. Samuel (London and New York, 1989), 89–98

E.B. Macan: An Analytical Survey and Comparative Study of the Music of Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst, c1910–1935 (diss., Claremont Graduate School, 1991)

c: life and works

A.H. Fox Strangways: ‘Ralph Vaughan Williams’, ML, i (1920), 78–86

M.C. Colles: ‘The Music of Vaughan Williams’, The Chesterian, no.21 (1922), 129–34

A.E.F. Dickinson: An Introduction to the Music of R. Vaughan Williams (London, 1928)

S.A. Bayliss: ‘Obsession and Originality’, The Sackbut, x (1929–30), 216–18

E. Rubbra: ‘Vaughan Williams, some Technical Characteristics’, MMR, lxiv (1934), 27–8

E. Rubbra: ‘The Later Vaughan Williams’, ML, xviii (1937), 1–8

M. Brian: ‘The Music of Ralph Vaughan Williams’, MO, lxiii (1939–40), 345–8, 391 only

W. Kimmel: ‘Vaughan Williams’s Melodic Style’, MQ, xxvii (1941), 491–9

S. Goddard: ‘Ralph Vaughan Williams, O.M.’, British Music of our Time, ed. A.L. Bacharach (Harmondsworth, 1946), 83–96

S. Goddard: ‘Ralph Vaughan Williams’, The Symphony, ed. R. Hill (Harmondsworth, 1949), 24–35

H.J. Foss: Ralph Vaughan Williams (London, 1950)

E.M. Payne: The Folksong Element in the Music of Vaughan Williams (diss., U. of Liverpool, 1953)

P.M. Young: Vaughan Williams (London, 1953)

F. Howes: The Music of Ralph Vaughan Williams (London, 1954)

D. Mitchell: ‘Contemporary Chronicle: Revaluations: Vaughan Williams’, MO, lxxviii (1954–5), 409–11, 471 only

S. Pakenham: Ralph Vaughan Williams: a Discovery of his Music (London, 1957)

M. Karpeles: ‘Ralph Vaughan Williams, O.M.’, JEFDSS, viii (1956–9), 121–2

O. Neighbour: ‘Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1872–1958’, The Score, no.24 (1958), 7–13

E. Benbow, ed.: ‘Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1872–1958’, R.C.M. Magazine, lv/1 (1959) [whole issue]

J. Day: Vaughan Williams (London, 1961, rev. 2/1975, rev.3/1998)

A.E.F. Dickinson: Vaughan Williams (London, 1963)

M. Kennedy: The Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams (London, 1964, rev. 2/1980)

U. Vaughan Williams: R.V.W.: a Biography (London, 1964)

H. Ottaway: Vaughan Williams (London, 1966)

D. Cox: ‘Ralph Vaughan Williams’, The Symphony, ii, ed. R. Simpson (Harmondsworth, 1967, 2/1972), 114–27

M. Hurd: Vaughan Williams (London, 1970)

J.E. Lunn and U.Vaughan Williams: Ralph Vaughan Williams: a Pictorial Biography (London, 1971)

M. Kennedy: ‘The Unknown Vaughan Williams’, PRMA, xcix (1972–3), 31–41

H. Ottaway: ‘Scott and After: the Final Phase’, MT, cxiii (1972), 959–62

D.M. Foraud: ‘Vaughan Williams at Reigate Priory’, Composer, no.54 (1975), 15–18

U. Vaughan Williams: ‘Pupil and Friend: Ralph Vaughan Williams and Ravel’, Adam, xli (1978), 26–8

L.-W. Hesse: Studien zum Schaffen des Komponisten Ralph Vaughan Williams (Regensburg, 1983)

W. Mellers: Vaughan Williams and the Vision of Albion (London, 1989)

A. Frogley, ed.: Vaughan Williams Studies (Cambridge, 1996)

L. Foreman, ed.: Vaughan Williams in Perspective (London, 1998)

d: studies of specific works

(i) Stage

S. Goddard: ‘The Operas of Vaughan Williams’, The Listener, xx (1938), 917

S. Goddard: ‘‘The Poisoned Kiss’’, The Listener, xxvi (1941), 737

N. Suckling: ‘Vaughan Williams and the Fat Knight’, The Listener, xxxv (1946), 693

G. Keynes: ‘‘Job’’,Sadler’s Wells Ballet Book, ed. A.L. Haskell, ii (London, 1949), 35

S. Wilson: ‘‘Hugh the Drover’’, Opera, i/1 (1950), 29–31

H.J. Foss: ‘‘The Pilgrim’s Progress’ by Vaughan Williams’, Music 1952, ed. A. Robertson (Harmondsworth, 1952), 38

J. Warrack: ‘Vaughan Williams and Opera’, Opera, ix (1958), 698

U. Vaughan Williams: ‘Vaughan Williams and Opera’, Composer, xli (1971), 25

A.-M.H. Forbes: ‘Motivic Unity in Ralph Vaughan Williams's “Riders to the Sea”’, MR, xliv (1983), 234–45

A.O. Weltzien: ‘Notes and Lineaments: Vaughan Williams's “Job”: a Masque for Dancing and Blake's Illustration’, MQ, lxxvi (1992), 301–36

A. Sanders McFarland: ‘A Deconstruction of William Blake's Vision: Vaughan Williams and “Job”’,International Journal of Musicology, iii (1994), 339–71

(ii) Vocal

E. Evans: ‘English Song and “On Wenlock Edge”’, MT, lix (1918), 247–9

H. Ould: ‘The Songs of Ralph Vaughan Williams’, English Review, xlvi (1928), 605–9

R. Terry: ‘“Dona nobis pacem”’, The Listener (4 Nov 1936)

A. Frank: ‘Reincarnating Skelton’, The Listener (20 Jan 1937)

W. Kimmel: ‘Vaughan Williams’s Choice of Words’, ML, xix (1938), 132–42

U. Vaughan Williams: ‘Ralph Vaughan Williams and his Choice of Words for Music’, PRMA, xcix (1972–3), 81–9

A. Herbert: ‘Vaughan Williams's Two Whitman Duets: Sketches for “A Sea Symphony”’,Journal of the RVW Society, no.7 (1996), 18–20

(iii) Instrumental

H. Howells: ‘Vaughan Williams’s “Pastoral Symphony”’, ML, iii (1922), 122–32

H. Howells: ‘Vaughan Williams’s “Concerto accademico”’, The Dominant, i (1928), 24–8

D.F. Tovey: ‘Vaughan Williams: Pastoral Symphony’, Essays in Musical Analysis, ii (London, 1935–9/R, abridged 2/1981), 129–32

H.J. Foss: ‘Vaughan Williams’s Symphonic Manner’, The Listener (5 March1942)

G.N. Long: ‘Vaughan Williams’s Fourth Symphony: a Study in Interpretation’, MMR, lxxvii (1947), 116–21

E.M. Payne: ‘Vaughan Williams’s Orchestral Colourings’, MMR, lxxxiv (1954), 3–11

D. Cooke: ‘Symphony No.6 in E minor, by Vaughan Williams’, The Language of Music (Oxford, 1959/R), 252–74

D. Brown: ‘Vaughan Williams’s Symphonies: some Judgments Reviewed’, MMR, xc (1960), 44–52

E.S. Schwartz: The Symphonies of Ralph Vaughan Williams (Amherst, MA, 1964)

H. Ottaway: Vaughan Williams Symphonies (London, 1972)

H. Ottaway: ‘Misplaced Symphony?’, MT, cxiv (1973), 1143–4

A. Frogley: ‘Vaughan Williams and Thomas Hardy: “Tess” and the Slow Movement of the Ninth Symphony’, ML, lxv (1987), 42–59

B. Adams: ‘The Stages of Revision of Vaughan Williams's Sixth Symphony’, MO, lxxiii (1989), 382–400

A. Frogley: The Genesis of Vaughan Williams's Ninth Symphony (diss., Oxford U., 1989)

M. Vaillancourt: ‘Modal and Thematic Coherence in Vaughan Williams's “Pastoral Symphony”’,MR, lii (1991), 203–17

A. Frogley: ‘H.G. Wells and Vaughan Williams's “London Symphony”: Politics and Culture in fin-de-siécle England’, Sundry Sorts of Music Books: Essays on the British Library Collections, ed. C. Banks, A. Searle and M. Turner (London, 1993), 299–308

e: correspondence, memoirs, reception history

A. Bliss and others: ‘Tributes to Vaughan Williams’, MT, xcix (1958), 535–9

A.C. Boult: ‘Vaughan Williams and his Interpreters’, MT, cxiii (1972), 957–8

R. Douglas: Working with R.V.W. (London, 1972)

U. Vaughan Williams: ‘The VW Centenary’, MT, cxiii (1972), 955–6

M. Kennedy: ‘Ralph Vaughan Williams in the First Centenary of his Birth’, Studi musicali, ii (1973), 175–87

Vaughan Williams in Dorking: a Collection of Personal Reminiscences of the Composer Dr Ralph Vaughan Williams, OM (Dorking, 1979)

H. Cole: ‘Vaughan Williams Remembered’, Composer, no.68 (1979–80), 25–7

J. McKay Martin: ‘Recollections of RVW’, MO, cvii (1983–4), 303–6

R. Douglas: Working with Vaughan Williams (London, 1988)

J. Northrop Moore: Vaughan Williams: a Life in Photographs (Oxford, 1992)

Vaughan Williams Memorial Library.

Library of the English Folk Dance and Song Society.

Vautor, Thomas

(fl 1600–20). English composer. His only extant works are contained in his single madrigal volume, The First Set, beeing Songs of Divers Ayres and Natures, of Five and Sixe Parts, Apt for Vyols and Voyces (London, 1619/20; ed. in EM., xxxiv, 1924, 2/1958), dedicated to George Villiers, the notorious Duke of Buckingham. Vautor was already in the service of the elder George Villiers and his wife when the future Buckingham (b 1592) was still very young. At that time the family lived at Brooksby in Leicestershire, but after the elder Villiers's death in 1606 his widow remarried and moved with her sons to Goadby. On 4 July 1616 Vautor was admitted BMus of Oxford through Lincoln College.

Vautor is one of the most interesting of the lesser-known English composers of his time. Some pieces in his volume evidently date back to the 1590s, and his work is notable for its range. Among the last works to be written were the two elegies, Melpomene bewaile for Prince Henry (d 1612), and Weepe, weepe, mine eyes for Sir Thomas Beaumont (d 1614). Paradoxically the style of these grave viol-accompanied duets is the most old-fashioned in the collection, though the concluding chorus of the former switches easily to a madrigalian manner. The three balletts which open the volume are modelled on those of Morley and Weelkes, and elsewhere Vautor resembles the latter in his occasional use of musical repetition, usually at the suggestion of a verbal repetition, as a means of clarifying the musical structure. Wilbye's influence may be detected in certain of Vautor's sequential practices, and perhaps in certain features of his scoring. Despite the style of Vautor's elegies, his essential remoteness from the more native English tradition is underlined by a comparison of Gibbons's noble setting of Daintie fine bird, a translation from Guarini, with Vautor's related, but more text-dominated treatment of another translation of the same text, Dainty sweet bird. Vautor's greatest strength lay in his ability for fashioning broader, more contrapuntal paragraphs reinforced with sturdy, sometimes very expressive dissonances. This quality is most admirably displayed in certain of his more serious madrigals, such as Fairest are the words, Cruell madam and Sweet thiefe. For Sidney's sonnet, Locke up faire lids, Vautor ventures into chromaticism, partly to underline dramatically the words ‘strange dream’, but at the opening of the concluding sestet integrating the device into a broad paragraph with deeply expressive effect.

Vautor's aptitude for a lighter type of madrigalian expression is best displayed in Sweet Suffolke owle. The rapid declamation and enthusiastic musical representation of textual details have infectious wit, yet the piece is haunted by a shadowy, melancholy quality which transforms it into one of the most individual of English madrigals. Shepheards and nymphs belongs to the family of posthumous Oriana madrigals, with the conclusion altered from ‘Long live fair Oriana’ to ‘Farewell, fair Oriana’.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

E.H. Fellowes: English Madrigal Verse, 1588–1632 (Oxford, 1920, enlarged 3/1967 by F.W. Sternfeld and D. Greer)

E.H. Fellowes: The English Madrigal Composers (Oxford, 1921, 2/1948/R)

DAVID BROWN

Vautrollier, Thomas

(d 1587). English printer, publisher and bookseller of French birth. He was a Huguenot refugee who settled in London (c1562) and worked in London and Edinburgh. He ran a general printing and publishing business, and in 1570 he published an English edition of Lassus's Recueil du mellange. He also printed in 1575 the Cantiones sacrae of Tallis and Byrd (see Printing and publishing of music, fig.8), the first work published under the terms of a music-printing monopoly granted to the two composers by Elizabeth I. Neither the quality of the music nor the high standard of the printing stopped the venture from being a failure and Vautrollier printed no more music under this licence, although he printed two psalm books in 1587, which were exempt from the monopoly. His type was almost certainly acquired from the Netherlands, and on his death his partbook fount passed to Thomas East. A street was named after Vautrollier in the Blackfriars district of the City of London.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Humphries-SmithMP

KrummelEMP

J. Kerman: ‘An Elizabethan Edition of Lassus’, AcM, xxvii (1955), 71–6

MIRIAM MILLER

Vauxhall Gardens.

London pleasure gardens. See London (i), §V, 3.

Vayllant, Jehan [Johannes].

See Vaillant, Jehan.

Vaynberg, Moisey Samuilovich.

See Weinberg, Moisey Samuilovich.

Vaz da Costa [de Acosta], Afonso [Alfonso].

See Costa (i), (1).

Vaziri, Ali Naqi

(b 1887; d 1979). Iranian teacher, composer, conductor and writer. He began music lessons at the age of 15, learning the tār and the violin with prominent masters in Tehran including Darvish Khan (1872–1926) and Aqa Hossein Qoli (c1851–1915). In 1918 Vaziri travelled to Europe to continue his musical studies. He spent three years in Paris and two years in Berlin studying harmony, theory, composition, counterpoint, piano and singing. On his return from Europe in 1923 he became principal of the Madresseh-ye Āli-e Musiqi, the first music school in Iran, and subsequently devoted much of his time to developing and expanding the provision of music education in Iran. Several of his pupils became prominent musicians.

In order to make performances of classical music more widely available, Vaziri organized and conducted public concerts featuring orchestras of Iranian instruments. In his arrangements of traditional melodies and his own compositions he used western classical-style harmonies which had not previously been heard in Iranian music; he believed that Iranian music needed to adopt some elements of European music in order to survive in the 20th century. Staff notation had been introduced to Iran by Europeans in the 19th century, but Vaziri was the first Iranian to advocate its wider use within the classical tradition. His Dastur-e tār (1913) included materials from the teaching repertory (radif) of Mirza Abdollah (1843–1918), technical exercises, Vaziri’s own compositions and extracts from pieces by European composers such as Schubert, Beethoven and Rossini. In this and in Dastur-e violon (1933) Vaziri introduced terms and symbols for the koron and sori pitches of Iranian music, and these have become standard within the tradition.

Vaziri’s westward-looking stance was typical of the prevailing attitude in the early and middle years of the 20th century when European music was regarded as more ‘scientifically’ grounded than Iranian music (see Iran, §I, 2). His significance lies in the diversity of his work and in his endeavours to revitalise Iranian music; he has had a lasting influence on many aspects of musical life in Iran in the 20th century.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A.N. Vaziri: Dastur-e tār (Berlin, 1913, 2/1936)

A.N. Vaziri: Dastur-e violon (Tehran, 1933)

A.N. Vaziri: Musiqi-e nazari (Tehran, 1934)

R. Khaleqi: Sargozasht-e musiqi-e Iran [A history of Iranian music], ii (Tehran, 1954, 2/1983)

S. Behroozi: Chehrehā-ye musiqi-e Iran [Profiles of Iranian musicians], i (Tehran, 1988), 64–8

LAUDAN NOOSHIN

Vázquez, Alida

(b Mexico City, c1931). American composer of Mexican birth. She attended the Conservatorio Nacional de Música, 1941–7, studying the piano with Esperanza Cruz de Vasconcelos and theory with Julián Carrillo. In the next year she moved to New York City, where the Diller-Quaile Music School gave her a scholarship; she also studied with Mario Davidovsky at City College. In 1959 she enrolled in the Columbia University School of Journalism, but from 1960 worked as a music therapist and from 1976 taught in the Bank Street College of Education. Her compositions include numerous solo and chamber works, song cycles (Acuarelas de México, 1970), electronic music for dance and electro-acoustic works (Electronic Moods and Piano Sounds, 1977). Her works are notable for their rhythmic energy, for example, the Pieza para clarinete y piano (1971) and the Música para siete instrumentos (1974). Vázquez's principal publisher is See-Saw Music (New York).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

E. Pulido: ‘Fichero de compositores mexicanos jóvenes’, Heterofonía, xi/3 (1978), 27, 48

A.F. Block and C. Neuls-Bates: Women in American Music: a Bibliography of Music and Literature (Westport, CT, 1979)

E. Pulido: ‘Mexico's Women Musicians’, The Musical Woman: an International Perspective, ii: 1984–5, ed. J.L. Zaimont and others (Westport, CT, 1987), 313–34

G. Béhague: Sonidas de las Americas Festival, New York, 30 Jan–6 Feb 1994, pp.29–30 [American Composers' Orchestra programme booklet]

ROBERT STEVENSON

Vázquez, Juan.

See Vásquez, Juan.

Vaz Rego, Pedro.

See Rego, Pedro Vaz.

Veale, John

(b Shortlands, Kent, 15 June 1922). English composer. His great-uncle was the composer Cyril Rootham. He read modern history at Oxford University (1939–41) and studied music with Wellesz (1940–42, 1947–8) and with Sir Thomas Armstrong. A USA Commonwealth Fellowship (1949–51) enabled him to study with Sessions and Roy Harris. His Panorama was conducted by Boult at the Malvern Festival of 1951 and Barbirolli conducted the première of the Symphony no.1 at the 1952 Cheltenham Festival. He was a junior research fellow at Oxford (1951–3). For 15 years he was film correspondent for the Oxford Mail and has himself written many film scores.

His music is tonal and may show an indebtedness to the mystic and modal styles of Vaughan Williams. He has a gift for colour and orchestral texture, seen in Kubla Khan, a work that marries the indigenous atmosphere of the East with the English choral tradition. Song of Radha is an erotic love-poem of Indian origin. The Demos Variations and the Violin Concerto have both had successful premières.

WORKS

Orch: Sym. no.1, 1947 [rev. 1951]; Sym. Study, 1947 lost; Panorama, 1949; Elegy, fl, hp, str, 1952; Cl Conc., 1953; The Metropolis, ov., 1954; Sym. no.2, 1965; Vn Conc., 1984; Demos Variations, 1986; Triune, ob, eng hn, orch, 1993; Sym. no.3, 1996

Film scores: War in the Air no.12, 1954; The Purple Plain, 1954; Tennessee Venture, 1955; Portrait of Alison (US Postmark for Danger), 1955; The Spanish Gardener, 1956; No Road Back, 1956; High Tide at Noon, 1957; The House in Marsh Road, 1959; Freedom to Die, 1961; Emergency, 1962; Clash by Night, 1964; A Gift for Sarah, 1988

Vocal: Kubla Khan (S.T. Coleridge), Bar, chorus, orch, 1956; Song of Radha (D. Pocock), S, orch, 1964; Apocalypse (Bible: Revelation, S. Sassoon, Coleridge, P. Porter, W. Stafford), chorus, orch, 1988; Sydney Street Scenes (K. Slessor), chorus, ens, 1994

Str Qt, 1946 [rev. 1951]; Encounter, 2 gui, 1994

Principal publisher: Lengnick

BIBLIOGRAPHY

D.C.F. Wright: ‘John Veale’, British Music, xii (1990), 45–53

DAVID C.F. WRIGHT

Veana, Matías Juan de

(b ?Játiva, Valencia, c1656; d ?Madrid, after 1707). Spanish composer. In 1680 he competed unsuccessfully for the position of maestro de capilla at Palencia Cathedral. He was maestro of Madrid's royal convent of Descalzas between 1683 (at the latest) and 1686, and by 1692 he was maestro at the Convento de la Encarnación in the city. In that year Juan de Uruela, an Encarnación tenor, wrote a letter nominating Veana for maestro de capilla at Palencia Cathedral. Uruela stated that Veana was 36 years old, was then assisting his family in Játiva and had previously been employed in a cathedral. Veana accepted the Palencia position but left in 1693 when he failed to secure a benefice, returning to the Encarnación as maestro. He was there until at least 1708, when he was succeeded by Francisco Hernández Pla. Confusion exists between Veana and Matías Ruiz, identified as maestro at the Encarnación in a 1702 publication, but works ascribed to both men exist in many archives and it appears they were different persons.

Veana was important in Madrid's musical circles, but should probably be regarded as less eminent than Sebastián Durón and Juan Hidalgo because his works are not as widely distributed. Latin pieces by Veana survive, but obviously his villancicos were more highly prized by his contemporaries, since they are extant in a number of archives in Spain and Guatemala. Veana wrote many fine polychoral villancicos, including El juego del soldado (E-E). An effective Corpus Christi villancico is the four-part Ay dulce laberinto (E-MO), a gentle but intense work including notable textural variety and special rhetorical devices in the estribillo. A humorous Christmas villancico is El sacristán de Belén (Laird, 1986, ii, pp.193–226) for six-part chorus and continuo.

WORKS

MSS in E-Bc, E, Mn, MO, PAc, SA, SE, V, VAc, Zs; GCA-Gc

Mass, Sapientia aedificavit, 8vv; other masses, 8vv, 12vv

Pss, 8vv: Beatus vir qui timet Dominum; Dixit Dominus; Laetatus sum; Laudate Dominum

7 hymns, 7vv; Mag, 8vv; Lesson for the Dead, 8vv; 2 Salve regina, 8vv; several motets, 7vv

Over 65 villancicos, 4–12vv, mostly for Christmas, Epiphany, Corpus Christi and St Augustine

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A. Martín Moreno: Historia de la música española, iv: Siglo XVIII (Madrid, 1985)

P.R. Laird: The Villancico Repertory at San Lorenzo El Real del Escorial, c1630–c1715 (diss., U. of North Carolina, 1986)

P.R. Laird: ‘The Villancicos of Matías Juan de Veana as a Model for the Study of the Dissemination of the Baroque Villancico’, AnM, xliv (1989), 451–68

P.R. Laird: Towards a History of the Spanish Villancico (Warren, MI, 1997)

PAUL R. LAIRD

Veasey, Josephine

(b Peckham, London, 10 July 1930). English mezzo-soprano. She studied with Audrey Langford and in 1949 joined the Covent Garden chorus, returning in 1955, after a spell with Opera for All, to make her solo début as Cherubino. Later roles included Magdalene, Rosina, Marina, Dorabella, Carmen, Waltraute, Fricka, Amneris, Preziosilla, Berlioz’s Dido and Cassandra, Eboli, the title role of Iphigénie en Aulide, Brangäne, Venus and the Emperor in the première of Henze’s We Come to the River (1976). She first appeared at Glyndebourne in 1957 as Zulma (L’italiana in Algeri), then sang Cherubino, Clarice (Rossini’s La pietra del paragone), Octavian and Charlotte. She sang Fricka (Das Rheingold) at the Salzburg Easter Festival (later recording the role with Karajan) and for her Metropolitan début in 1968. Having made her Paris Opéra début in 1969 as Dido, she returned for Kundry in 1973, then sang Eboli in San Francisco. In 1980 she sang Gertrude (Hamlet) at Buxton and in 1982 made her final appearance, at Covent Garden, as Herodias. On the concert platform Veasey was a noted soloist in Verdi’s Requiem (which she recorded under Bernstein) and the works of Berlioz. She had a rich, vibrant voice of wide range and dramatic power, highly effective in roles such as Berlioz's Dido, which she recorded for Colin Davis.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A. Blyth: ‘Josephine Veasey’, Opera, xx (1969), 759–63

ALAN BLYTH

Vecchi, Giuseppe

(b S Giovanni in Persiceto, Bologna, 26 Nov 1912). Italian musicologist. He studied musicology at the University of Bologna (graduated 1939), specializing in medieval and early Renaissance music, and also took a degree in philosophy (1942). On the basis of a thorough study of medieval texts and their settings (sequences, tropes, organa, hymns etc.) he became libero docente in medieval Latin literature (1951) and in music palaeography (1955). He was appointed lecturer in music history at the Catholic University of Milan (1955) and at the University of Bologna (1958), where he also held the chairs of medieval Latin literature (from 1957) and music history (from 1970).

Vecchi's research is characterized by patient and logical investigation of both the music under examination and the circumstances that produced it. His studies, mainly of medieval music, are also informed by his thorough grounding in the classics, philosophy and the liturgy. For example his Uffici drammatici della chiesa padovana (1954), a critical edition of the dramatic texts and music, contains a description of the specific Paduan liturgy and processions to which they belong as well as a discussion of the individual roles and participants. He has shed new light on the much discussed terms ‘Classical’ and ‘Baroque’, traced sources of early polyphony in Italy (e.g. his study of the Aosta manuscript of planus contrapunctus, 1973), and examined the musical rapport between Italy and Poland. He has also written a series of articles on the librettos of Verdi. His writings have been collected and published in a multi-volume book Dulce melos (1972–96). The Festschrift Contributi e studi di liturgia e musica nella regione padana (Bologna, 1972) was published to mark his contributions to the study of medieval music. In addition to his own research in musicology, Vecchi has encouraged the development of the discipline in Italy in several concrete ways. At his university he has organized and directed both the Scuola di Perfezionamento (recognized by the Ministry of Education 1966) and the Istituto di Studi Musicali e Teatrali; he also founded (1965) and has edited the medieval music journal Quadrivium as well as the series Bibliotheca Musica Bononiensis (an enormous series of reprints and new editions of music studies), Medium Aevum and Antico Teatro Italiano. Vecchi was a member of the Accademia Filarmonica of Bologna (as archivist-librarian) and the Italian representative on the ISCM council (1977–87). He was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Warsaw in 1989.

WRITINGS

‘Sequenza e lai: a proposito di un ritmo di Abelardo’, Studi medievali, new ser., xvi (1943–50), 86–101

Atlante paleografico musicale (Bologna, 1951)

I ‘Planctus’ di Pietro Abelardo (Modena, 1951)

Poesia latina medioevale (Parma, 1952, 2/1958) [text and music]

Le sacre rappresentazioni dei Battuti in Bologna nel sec. XV (Bologna, 1953)

Uffici drammatici della chiesa padovana (Florence, 1954)

‘Modi d'arte poetica in Giovanni di Garlandia e il ritmo Aula vernat virginalis’, Quadrivium, i (1956), 256–68

I ‘Praecepta artis musicae’ di S. Agostino (Bologna, 1956)

‘Su la composizione del Pomerium di Marchetto da Padova e la Brevis compilatio’, Quadrivium, i (1956), 153–205

‘Le Arenge di Guido Faba e l'eloquenza d'arte civile e politica duecentesca’, Quadrivium, iv (1960), 61–90

I più antichi monumenti italiani di melica mensurale (Bologna, 1960)

ed.: Marchetto da Padova: Pomerium, CSM, vi (1961)

‘Le utili e brevi regule di canto di Giovanni Spataro nel cod. Lond. British Museum Add.4920’, ‘Utile e breve regule di canto composte per Maestro Zoanne di Spadari da Bologna’, Quadrivium, v (1962), 5–12, 13–68

‘Il Concilio di Trento, S. Carlo e la musica’, Settimane culturali storico umanistiche, nos.11–12 (1963), 93–132

‘Classicismo e Barocco nella musica del Seicento in Italia’, Il mito del Classicismo nel Seicento, ed. S. Bottari (Messina, 1964), 357–83

‘Ritmi e melodie nel teatro goliardico del medioevo’, Settimane culturali storico umanistiche, no.40 (1965), 93–127

‘Educazione musicale, scuola società nell'opere di F. da Barberino’, Quadrivium, vii (1966), 5–30

‘La melodia popolare nel pensiero e nella ricerca filologica di Oscar Chilesotti’, Chigiana, new ser., iii (1966), 211–23

‘Medicina, musica, vocie, strumenti nel “Conciliator” di F. d'Abano’, Quadrivium, viii (1967), 5–31

‘Musica e Scuola delle Artes a Bologna nell'opera di Boncompagno da Signa (sec. XIII)’, Festschrift Bruno Stäblein, ed. M. Ruhnke (Kassel, 1967), 266–73

‘L'opera didattico-teorica di A. Banchieri in rapporto alla “nuova prattica”’, Claudio Monteverdi e il suo tempo: Venice, Mantua and Cremona 1968, 385–95

Le accademie musicali del primo Seicento e Monteverdi a Bologna (Bologna, 1969)

‘Letteratura e musica nel trecento’, L'Ars Nova italiana del Trecento: Convegno II: Certaldo and Florence 1969, 485–503 [L'Ars Nova italiana del Trecento, iii (Certaldo, 1970)]

‘Momenti di storia musicale italiana e sue presenze in Polonia tra i secoli XV e XVII’, ‘La “Docta schola” di Asprilio Pacelli’, Incontro con la musica italiana in Polonia dal Rinascimento al Barocco I: Parma and Bydgoszcz 1969, 11–20, 153–62

‘Per una interpretazione moderna dei canti scolareschi’, Quadrivium, x/1 (1969), 109–24

‘Primi accenni di storia della semiografia musicale nel Trimerone (Giornata III) di Ercole Bottrigari’, Quadrivium, xii/1 (1971), 321–46

Dulce melos, i (Bologna, 1972), ii (1974); iv (1982); vi (1990); iii (1996) [collections of articles; vol.vi collection of articles on Verdi's librettos]

Melica scolaresca latina medioevale (Bologna, 1972)

‘Il “Nerone fatto cesare” di Giacomo Antonio Perti a Venezia’, Venezia e il melodramma nel Seicento: Venice 1972, 299–318

‘Spigolature nonantolane e padane, i: Le “preces” metriche di Artmanno, e il loro uso liturgico a Nonantola, ii: Una canzone latina di “gesta”: la Vita rythmica Adriani, iii: Qualche problema di lessicografia: cantus, precentor, succento, ecc.’, Quadrivium, xiii/1 (1972), 177–214

‘Angelo Mariani, l'arte e gli artisti e gli amici accademici bolognesi’, Quadrivium, xiv (1973), 321–83

‘Un gruppo di testi di planus contrapunctus dei codici liturgici di Aosta’, Quadrivium, xiv (1973), 115–31

‘L'opera di Albertino Mussate: poetica e melos’, Quadrivium, xv (1974), 81–103

‘Le idee estetiche musicali in Italia nel primo Ottocento e l'estetica di P. Lichtenthal (1831) e di R. Boucheron (1842)’, Quadrivium, xvii/2 (1976), 5–39

with M. Padoan: Pensiero romantico, estetica musicale e melodramma italiano (Bologna, 1976)

‘L'Emila, Bologna e la Polonia: una vicenda di rapporti su musica e teatro, festa e spettacolo tra Rinascimento e Barocco’, Quadrivium, xviii (1977), 1–24

‘La monodia da camera a Bologna e i Pietosi affetti (1646) di Domenico Pellegrini’, Quadrivium, xviii (1977), 97–130

‘Su “La soavissima lira d'Orfeo”, di Francesco Giuliani (1623) e il “bicinium” del primo Seicento’, Subsidia musica veneta, ii (1981), 97–129

‘La gloria degli Estensi in musica e “la Gelosia de' Numi” (1753)’, Aspetti e problemi del Settecento modenese, ii: Arte e cultura nel Ducato estense (Modena, 1982), 169–209

‘I centri della cultura musicale’, Le sedi della cultura nell'Emilia Romagna, i: L'alto Medioevo (Milan, 1983), 189–216 [see also ‘Le scuole musicale’, ibid., ii: L'età comunale (1984), 174–93]

‘Tra Italia e Polonia: per una tipologia e metodologia di una ricerca del dramma-festa musicale del Seicento’, Vita teatrale in Italia e Polonia fra Seicento e Settecento: Warsaw 1980, ed. M. Bristiger, J. Kowalczyk and J. Lipiński (Warsaw, 1984), 146–67

‘Padre G.B. Martini e le Accademie’, Quadrivium, xxvi/2 (1985), 153–87

Giulio Belli da Longiano (Longiano, 1986)

ed., with M. Calore: Teatro e musica nel '700 estense (Florence, 1994)

EDITIONS

Melodiae prudentiae et in virgilium (Lipsiae, 1533), Corpus mensurabilis more antiquo musicae, ii (1952)

P. Bellasio: Villanelle (1592), Biblioteca musicale della rinascenza, i/3 (Bologna, 1952); G.G. Gastoldi: Canzonette a tre voci, libro secondo (1595), ibid., ii (Bologna, 1959)

F. Azzaiolo: Il secondo libro delle villote del fiore (1559), Maestri bolognesi, ii (Bologna, 1953); G. Giacobbi: L'Aurora ingannata (1605), ibid., i (Bologna, 1954); G. Dattari: Le villanelle (1568), ibid., iii (Bologna, 1955); A. Trombetti: Il primo libro delle napolitane (1573), ibid., iv (Bologna, 1955)

Troparium sequentiarum nonantolanum: Cod. Casanat. 1741, MLMI, 1st ser., Latina, i (1955)

Andrae Rota opera omnia, AntMI, Monumenta bononiensia, iv (1961)

Johannis Spatarii opera omnia, AntMI, Monumenta bononiensia, ii (1962)

Adriani Banchieri opera omnia, AntMI, Monumenta bononiensia, xii (1963); Ecce sacerdos magnus, ibid., Excerpta A, ii (1975); La battaglia, ibid., Excerpta B, i (1968); Due intermedii … da ‘La pazzia senile’, ibid., iii/2 (1968); La carissima, ibid., iv/1 (1967); Canzoni alla francese, ibid., iv/2 (1968)

Johannis Matthei Asulae opera omnia, AntMI, Monumenta veronensia, ii (1963)

Vincentii Ruffi opera omnia, AntMI, Monumenta veronensia, i (1963)

G.C. Gabussi: Defecit gaudium motectum octonis vocibus decantandum, AntMI, Monumenta lombarda, Excerpta, i (1964)

L. Viadana: Canzonette a tre voci (1594), AntMI, Monumenta lombarda A, i (1965)

Il canzoniere musicale del Codice Vaticano Rossi 215, MLMI, 3rd ser., Mensurabilia, ii (1966)

M.A. Ingegneri: Missa Gustate et videte, AntMI, Monumenta veronensia, Excerpta, i (1967)

P. Tritonius: Melopoiae sive harmoniae tetracenticae, Corpus mensurabilis more antiquo musicae, i (1967)

G. Giacobbi: Dilecta nostra candida, AntMI, Monumenta bononiensia, Excerpta A, iii (1968)

G. Croce: Canzonette a tre voci, libro primo (1601), AntMI, Monumenta veneta, Excerpta, ii (1969)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L. Callegari Hill, ed.: Sodalium voces (Poznań and Bologna, 1983) [section on music dedicated to Vecchi]

I. Cavallini, ed.: Studi in onore di Giuseppe Vecchi (Modena, 1989) [incl. list of writings, 267–73]

CAROLYN GIANTURCO/TERESA M. GIALDRONI

Vecchi, Lorenzo

(b Bologna, before 1564; d Bologna, 3 March 1628). Italian composer. As a young boy he attended the school attached to Bologna Cathedral, where he studied grammar and music and was eventually ordained. He was appointed chaplain at the cathedral in 1589 and he was made a mansionario (beneficed chaplain) and a member of the cappella musicale. He was appointed maestro di cappella on 30 April 1599, with a monthly wage of 7 lire; this amount was raised to 9 lire on 4 April 1603 ‘pro eius benemeritis’. The cathedral records show that during his career he was highly esteemed by his employers and contemporaries, for both his personal virtues and his musical talents. He dedicated a set of masses to the chapter in 1605 and on 4 November of that year received the sum of 120 lire in recognition of his skills. After Vecchi had served for many years, his pupil Domenico Brunetti was appointed by the chapter as his coadjutor, beginning on 26 October 1618. On 31 December Vecchi was assigned an annual pension of 24 lire, which he evidently received until his death.

His masses for eight voices (Venice, 1605) are based on plainchant cantus firmi: the Missa ‘Ecce sacerdos’ on the antiphon of that name, the Missa apostolis on Kyrie IV (Cunctipotens genitor Deus), and the Missa pro defunctis on various incipits from the Requiem Mass, which are intoned by the tenor. The fourth mass, a Missa sine nomine, is a parody mass based on an unknown source, containing a canon in unison as its ‘Agnus Secundus’. All his masses are in a conservative antiphonal style with full passages at the close of phrases and sections. A canon based on the antiphon Ecce sacerdos ends the collection. Two of his madrigals, for five voices, are printed in Le gemme (RISM 1590¹³, inc.).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Liber secretus, iii, iv (MS, Bologna, Archivio del capitolo di S Pietro)

G.B. Martini: Scrittori di musica (MS, I-Bc H64), 154

G. Gaspari: ‘Dei musicisti bolognesi al XVII secolo e delle loro opere a stampa’, Atti e memorie della RR. Deputazione di storia patria per le provincie dell’Emilia, new ser., v/2 (1880), 16ff; repr. in Musica e musicisti a Bologna (Bologna, 1969), 500ff

ANNE SCHNOEBELEN

Vecchi, Orazio [Horatio] (Tiberio)

(b Modena, bap. 6 Dec 1550; d Modena, 19 Feb 1605). Italian composer. He is known mainly for his entertainment music, of which the madrigal comedy L’Amfiparnaso is his best-known work; his sense of drama and contrast made him a pioneer of dramatic music in the 16th century.

WILLIAM R. MARTIN

1. Life.

Vecchi received his ecclesiastical education from the Benedictines of S Pietro in Modena, and his musical training from the Servite monk Salvatore Essenga, who included a madrigal by Vecchi in his Primo libro di madrigali a quattro voci (RISM 1566⁸). At some point during the next 11 years Vecchi took holy orders. He accompanied Count Baldassare Rangoni to Brescia in 1577 and to Bergamo in 1578. It is evident that by the time of his first publications he was well established in Venetian circles, since in 1579 he joined Andrea Gabrieli, Claudio Merulo and others in writing a sestina in honour of the marriage of the Venetian Bianca Capello and Grand Duke Francesco de’ Medici, which was published in Trionfo di musica (1579³). The same year, the Venetian publisher Gardano published Vecchi's first book of motets, the Mottetti a otto voci. He accepted the appointment of maestro di cappella of Salò Cathedral on 9 April 1581 but left on 24 June 1584 to assume the duties of maestro di cappella at Modena Cathedral. (It was at this time that he began to use the spelling ‘Horatio’ rather than the Italian form ‘Orazio’.) Meagre finances and heavy family responsibilities persuaded him to accept a better position as maestro di cappella at the cathedral of Reggio nell’Emilia, and then a few months later, on 15 October 1586, to accept an appointment as canon at Correggio Cathedral. His financial difficulties continued, however, a fact which he underlined in a light-hearted autobiographical Capitolo written in 1587 (in I-Bu).

During his years in Correggio Vecchi composed both sacred and secular works. When the Roman Gradual was republished in 1591, he was chosen along with Giovanni Gabrieli and Lodovico Balbi to revise and correct it. He was raised to the status of archdeacon at Correggio on 26 July 1591. Looking for a more sophisticated environment, and despairing of finding a position in the north, he returned to Modena in 1593 as maestro di cappella. On 14 October 1596 he was promoted to mansionario (beneficed priest with choral duties, but with no vote in the chapter). He was also admitted into the brotherhood of the Annunciation in the churches of S Maria and S Pietro, where he directed the music on various special occasions. Spaccini recorded that on 26 March 1597 Vecchi visited Venice in the company of a nobleman, and while there supervised Gardano’s publication of his Canzonette a tre voci (1597²¹), a collection which includes 16 compositions by his pupil Gemignano Capilupi. Although Vecchi had published nothing for six years, the fact that he had been writing vigorously during this period is evident in the large number of his works published in 1597, including the Sacrarum cantionum liber II, L’Amfiparnaso and Il convito musicale.

In February 1598 Duke Cesare d’Este heard a mass by Vecchi and was so impressed that in October of the same year he named Vecchi maestro di corte at Modena. His activities are well documented as composer and performer at the Este court, and his popularity is recorded by Spaccini, who described numerous performances of his mascheratas in the streets of Modena. When in 1600 the newly appointed Cardinal Alessandro d’Este was called to Rome, Vecchi went with him as a courtier for three months. In October Jacopo Peri boasted that the illustrious composer Orazio Vecchi had heard a performance of his opera Euridice in Florence. On 3 March 1603 the general council of Modena voted Vecchi the sum of 500 lire to be divided into equal instalments for the next five years, as an inducement to keep a ‘man of such rare abilities’ in their city. Later the same year the imperial ambassador came to Modena to offer Vecchi the position of maestro at the court of Emperor Rudolph II, in succession to Monte. Full recognition had finally come to him, but unfortunately Vecchi was compelled to refuse the appointment because of ill-health.

Despite his lingering illness, he managed to continue composing and to fulfil his duties at the cathedral. The new bishop, however, prevented him from directing music at the cathedral convent; when he disregarded the prohibition Capilupi reported this breach of discipline to the bishop, who suspended Vecchi from his duties at the cathedral and appointed Capilupi as his replacement. Vecchi’s death shortly afterwards suggests that the bishop used the incident as an excuse for retiring the ailing composer. In 1607 a memorial to Vecchi was placed in the church of the Carmelites, where he was buried. A contemporary portrait (see fig.1) is in the Museo Civico of Modena. Spaccini’s accounts of two minor episodes in Vecchi’s life during 1595 have been used as evidence of a quarrelsome and even violent nature, but these must be tempered by contemporary evidence that he was a genial and cultured man.

Vecchi, Orazio

2. Works.

Much of Vecchi’s reputation during his own lifetime rested upon his six books of Canzonette. They constitute a popular but refined compromise between the serious madrigal and the simplicity of the villanella which, in Vecchi’s words, ‘did not bring great fatigue of mind’. Nearly all his canzonettas are strophic, with a largely homorhythmic texture varied by occasional modest imitation. He also published two books of madrigals, and both genres appear in his larger, mixed-genre, publications. His most individual characteristic, in madrigals and canzonettas alike, is a rhythmic variety and vitality that enlivens even the simple homorhythmic canzonettas. Often this variety is the result of his sensitive use of rhythmic and metric accents which, when enriched by cross-rhythms and syncopation, produces a rhythmic interest and freshness approached by few of his contemporaries. His facility with single and two-subject imitation, augmentation, melodic inversion and harmonic inversion shows him to be a master of contrapuntal technique as well.

Vecchi’s major achievements are concentrated in four publications: Selva di varia ricreatione (1590), L’Amfiparnaso (1597), Il convito musicale (1597) and Le veglie di Siena (1604). The Selva di varia ricreatione was Vecchi’s first large publication in which secular forms other than the madrigal and canzonetta were used. Of the 47 titles, eight are serious madrigals, the rest light pieces, including capricci, balli, arias, giustiniane, canzonettas, fantasias, serenatas, dialogues, a villotta, a battaglia and two purely instrumental compositions. Lute accompaniments are provided for one of the instrumental and 11 of the vocal pieces. Of interest is the madrigal ‘a diversi linguaggi’, for nine voices: five composed by Marenzio serve as a point of departure for the four voices added by Vecchi. The piece is a delightful miniature in the madrigal-comedy style: the nine voices represent nine characters each speaking a different ‘language’ or dialect. Seven of the characters are drawn from or related to the commedia dell’arte and two are from the commedia erudita.

The madrigal comedy L’Amfiparnaso is the best-known and most original of Vecchi’s large works. It was first performed in 1594, and was published in 1597 in a lavishly illustrated edition (fig.2; see also Madrigal comedy, fig.1). There is evidence that Vecchi departed from his customary dual role as poet-composer by collaborating with the Bolognese poet Giulio Cesare Croce. While Vecchi maintained the semblance of a plot throughout the 13 scenes of L’Amfiparnaso, he clearly indicated in the prologue that staging was not intended. L’Amfiparnaso is less a genuine precursor of opera, than a final stage in the history of 16th-century a cappella polyphony. Vecchi’s title for this quasi-dramatic work is undoubtedly a reflection of his adherence to the 16th-century literary philosophy that the ‘Parnassus’ of expression is to be reached through contrasting the serious (‘grave’) with the gay (‘piacevole’). The principal serious characters of L’Amfiparnaso, the shepherd and shepherdess Lucio and Isabella, are separated through a misunderstanding, but they are reunited and celebrate their wedding in the final scene. The work contains several highly dramatic madrigals, characterized by word-painting and masterly use of polyphony. The text draws on the buffooneries of the familiar comic characters of the commedia dell’arte: the Venetian Pantalone, who pursues the courtesan Hortensia, the pompous Bolognese Doctor Gratiano and others (see Madrigal comedy, fig.2). Except for Gratiano’s serenade, which is a four-voice parody of Rore’s madrigal Ancor che col partire, the entire madrigal comedy is scored for five voices. The characters in this drama converse in madrigalesque dialogue, implemented through the alternation of combinations of three voices, frequently in homophony. This hybrid vocal form was derived from reciprocal influences of the madrigal and light entertainment music. Other composers, including Alessandro Striggio (i) and Andrea Gabrieli, had written in this style, and it was also imitated by Croce and Banchieri, but none achieved either the sustained dramatic portrayal or the musical virtuosity of L’Amfiparnaso.

The 65 compositions of Il convito musicale comprise a comprehensive selection of nearly every 16th-century secular form and style. It includes some of Vecchi’s most poignant works, including Fummo felici un tempo, Questo legato in oro, and his setting of Petrarch’s sestina Chi è fermato written in the style of Rore, alongside examples of light entertainment music. The madrigalesque dialogues included in Il convito are particularly entertaining: two musical games are presented in the bipartite Bando del asino; one includes animal imitations, the other creates an orchestra of voices imitating musical instruments; and the three-part O giardiniero has an extended monophonic opening and an interesting musical depiction of drunkenness: possibly the first of its kind.

Vecchi alluded to the contrast of the ‘piacevole’ with the ‘grave’ in the preface to Le veglie di Siena of 1604 asking, ‘How is the musician better able to be useful than with the serious, and to amuse than with the ridiculous?’. He borrowed much of the literary background for the musical games used in this work from Girolamo Bargagli’s treatise on games, Dialogo de’ Giuochi (Venice, 1581). Vecchi adapted the three-part form outlined by Bargagli (proposal, imitation and applause) for the seven entertainments of the first veglia, using dialect pieces for the imitations. Four more games make up the second veglia. The ‘grave’ half of the work consists principally of 14 compositions depicting the varied temperaments of love.

Vecchi also composed an impressive amount of distinguished sacred music, including masses, a Magnificat, and three volumes of motets, as well as a volume of Lamentations and one of hymns. These works reveal that this master of nearly every 16th-century secular genre produced an equally wide range of sacred works. The influence of the Venetian style and of his own secular music is immediately apparent. In his motets he combines a seemingly endless variety of the latest contrapuntal techniques with the skilful use of homorhythmic passages for contrast and text reinforcement. Word-painting, triple-metre sections and the use of note values approximating those of the canzonetta and madrigal give his sacred works an extraordinary sense of drama, movement and variety. He also recalls the wide range of familiar techniques used during the previous part of the 16th century, even including the use of cantus firmus, fauxbourdon and a puzzle canon. His cori spezzati motets, although not as numerous as those of his contemporary Giovanni Gabrieli, rival them in virtuosity. In these works he contrasts a deft use of imitative counterpoint in and between the two groups with homorhythmic passages for maximum effect.

Vecchi, Orazio

WORKS

all printed works except anthologies published in Venice

sacred

Mottetti a otto voci, libro primo (1579), inc.

Lamentationes cum 4 paribus vocibus (1587); 1 ed. in Musica sacra, xxvii (Berlin, 1886)

Motecta, 4–8, 10vv (1590); 2 ed. in Musica sacra, xxiii (Berlin, 1882), xxvii (Berlin, 1886); 4 ed. C. Proske, Musica divina, ii (Regensburg, 1854); 1 ed. in Sammlung ausgezeichneter Kompositionen für die Kirche, iii (1884–5); 2 ed. in AMI, ii (1897/R1968); 1 ed. in Rüegge

Sacrarum cantionum liber secundus, 5–8vv (1597); 1 ed. in Musica sacra, xxvii (Berlin, 1886); 1 ed. in Rüegge

Hymni qui per totum annum in Ecclesia Romana concinuntur, 4vv (1604)

Missarum liber primus, 6, 8vv (1607); 1 ed. C. Proske, Selectus novus missarum, ii (Regensburg, 1861); 1 ed. in Cw, cviii (1967)

Missa Julia, 8vv, I-MOd

Magnificat, 5vv, MOd; ed. E. Pancaldi (Bologna, 1912)

secular

Canzonette libro primo, 4vv (2/1580); ed. in RRMR, xcii (1993)

Canzonette libro secondo, 4vv (1580); ed. in RRMR, xcii (1993)

Madrigali libro primo, 6vv (1583)

Canzonette libro terzo, 4vv (1585); ed. in RRMR, xcii (1993)

Canzonette, 6vv (1587); ed. in Dalmonte and Privitera, 2 ed. in AMI, ii (1897/R)

Madrigali libro primo, 5vv (1589)

Canzonette libro quarto, 4vv (1590); ed. in RRMR, xcii (1993)

Canzonette, 3vv (1597²¹); 1 ed. in EinsteinIM

Selva di varia ricreatione, 3–10vv, some with lute (1590); 12 ed. in Biblioteca di rarità musicali, v (Milan, 1892/R); 1 ed. in AMI, ii (1897/R)

L’Amfiparnaso, comedia harmonica, 5vv (1597); ed. in PÄMw, xxvi (1902/R), in Capolavori polifonici del secolo XVI, v (Rome, 1953), and in Early Musical Masterworks (Chapel Hill, NC, 1977)

Il convito musicale, 3–8vv (1597); ed. in Capolavori polifonici del secolo XVI, viii (Rome, 1966)

Le veglie di Siena (1604); ed. in Capolavori polifonici del secolo XVI, ii (Rome, 1940)

Dialoghi da cantarsi et concertarsi con ogni sorte di stromenti, 7, 8vv (1608)

Works in 1579³, ed. F. Ghisi, Feste musicali della Firenze medicea 1480–1589 (Florence, 1939/R); 1583¹⁰; 1583¹¹; 1584¹⁰; 1584¹³; 1585¹⁶, ed. in AMI, ii (1897/R); 1585¹⁹; 1586¹¹; 1590¹¹; 1592¹¹, ed. in AMI, ii (1897/R); 1594⁶; 1601¹¹

Vecchi, Orazio

BIBLIOGRAPHY

EinsteinIM

E.J. Dent: ‘Notes on the “Amfiparnaso” of Orazio Vecchi’, SIMG, xii (1910–11), 330–46

G. Bertoni, T. Sandonnini and P.E. Vicini, eds.: Cronaca modenese di Gio. Batt. Spaccini (1588–1636) (Modena,1911/R)

L. Frati: ‘Un capitolo autobiografico di Orazio Vecchi’, RMI, xxii (1915), 71–8

J.C. Hol: Horatio Vecchi’s weltliche Werke (Strasbourg, 1934/R)

J.C. Hol: ‘L’Amfiparnaso e Le veglie di Siena’, RMI, xl (1936), 3–22

J.C. Hol: ‘Le veglie di Siena di Horatio Vecchi’, RMI, xliii (1939), 17–34

C. Coen: ‘Intorno alle origini di Orazio Vecchi’, RMI, l (1948), 135–40

G. Roncaglia: ‘Orazio Vecchi precursore drammatico ed umorista’, RMI, li (1949), 265–73

Orazio Vecchi, precursore del melodramma (1550–1605) nel IV centenario della nascita (Modena, 1950)

G. Camillucci: ‘L’Amfiparnaso, comedia harmonica’, RMI, liii (1951), 42–60

G. Roncaglia: ‘Gli elementi precursori del melodramma nell’opera di Orazio Vecchi: attuazioni e limiti’, RMI, lv (1953), 251–6

L. Ronga: ‘Lettura storica dell’Amfiparnaso’, RaM, xxiii (1953), 101–17

G.C. Croce: ‘Capitolo al Vecchi’, Operette, i (1956), 45–9

G. Roncaglia: ‘Orazio Vecchi e Le veglie di Siena’, Musicisti della scuola emiliana, Chigiana, xiii (1956), 83–9

G. Roncaglia: ‘Documenti inediti su Orazio Vecchi, la sua familia e l’allievo Geminiano Capilupi’, CHM, ii (1956–7), 367–72

J. Haar: ‘On Musical Games in the 16th Century’, JAMS, xv (1962), 22–34

W.R. Martin: The Convito musicale of Orazio Vecchi (diss., U. of Oxford, 1964)

R. Rüegge: Orazio Vecchis geistliche Werke (Berne, 1967)

C. Sartori: ‘Orazio Vecchi e Tiburzio Masaino a Salò’, Renaissance-muziek 1400–1600: donum natalicium René Bernard Lenaerts, ed. J. Robijns and others (Leuven, 1969), 233–40

W. Kirkendale: ‘Franceschina, Girometta, and their Companions in a Madrigal “a diversi linguaggi” by Luca Marenzio and Orazio Vecchi’, AcM, xliv (1972), 181–235

M. Conati: “‘Teatro dell’udito” Appunti su Orazio Vecchi e il suo tempo’,Ricerche musicali, ii/2 (1978), 41–69

M. Farahat: ‘On the Staging of Madrigal Comedies’, EMH, x (1991), 123–44

R. Dalmonte and M. Privitera: Gitene, Canzonette: Studio e trascrizione delle Canzonette a sei voci d’Horatio Vecchi (1587) (Florence, 1996)

Vecchi, Orfeo

(b Milan or Vercelli, c1551; d Milan, 26 Nov 1603). Italian composer. According to the title-pages of his printed works and the testimony of his contemporaries, he was Milanese and maestro di cappella of S Maria della Scala in Milan. But the discovery of documents in the diocesan archives of Milan and in the archives of the cathedral of Vercelli has shed new light on his early years and shows that his musical training and preparation for an ecclesiastical career took place in Vercelli. It is not known whether he was born there, but it is recorded that in 1570 he was senior singer at the Collegio degli Innocenti, Vercelli, where he probably taught grammar and singing. A further document of 1596 (in Milan), the status personalis of Vecchi, attests that he was a mansionario in S Maria della Scala (Toffetti). This document gives us new information about his biography and lists the stages of his ecclesiastical career. He was the son of Rainaldo, from Milan, and in 1596 he was 45 years old (making 1551 his year of birth). In 1561 he was in Vercelli, where he received his first tonsure; in 1581 he took minor orders under Cardinal Carlo Borromeo in Milan; in 1582 he was first a sub-deacon to the Archbishop of Novara, then deacon to the Bishop of Casale. In 1583 he was in Hippona then Vercelli, and by 1591 he was mansionariato in S Maria della Scala. Vecchi was always a member of the secular clergy (contrary to the opinion of some scholars). As to his musical career, a letter of 1 June 1580, discovered by Martin Morrel in the diocesan archives of Milan, contains a recommendation from Carlo Borromeo and Monsignore di Vercelli for the young Orfeo Vecchi to be taken on as maestro di cappella of S Maria della Scala. The appointment was probably made in the same year, for on 24 September 1582 the chapter of canons at Vercelli Cathedral decided to grant an incumbency to ‘Master Orfeo, maestro di capella at the church of Santa Maria della Scala in Milan, and to see that he was made maestro of their church’. Vecchi was maestro of Vercelli Cathedral from October 1582 until perhaps 1586 (records show that in 1587 there was a new maestro, G.A. Piccioli). Following his appointment in Vercelli, Vecchi moved for the last time to Milan, where he was maestro di cappella of S Maria della Scala until his death. His death certificate records that he died of a stroke at about 50 years of age.

Vecchi was much admired by his contemporaries for his prodigious talent and for the speed with which he composed. He was well known beyond his own region of Lombardy, as shown by the inclusion of 117 of his compositions in the Pelplin keyboard tablatures (13% of the entire repertory contained in this collection). According to Picinelli, he published 24 books of music, 23 of which were listed by the printer Lomazzo in the posthumous re-issue of the Salmi intieri a cinque voci (1614). A catalogue by the printer Tini (c1596) mentions a book, Francese di Orfeo Vecchi a 4 da sonar novi, which is lost. This is the only known collection of secular music by Vecchi. With the exception of three instrumental pieces and two madrigals, which appear in collections by various composers, Vecchi wrote sacred music only. He lived during a period of austerity and was therefore prompted to arrange madrigals by other composers as motets (Scielta de madrigali, 1604). Even his only collection of madrigals, La donna vestita di sole (1602), is not truly secular (although the texts are Italian), as they are a cycle in honour of Our Lady. In his Masses of 1588 Vecchi showed himself to be a master of polyphony, but he later conformed to the instructions of the Council of Trent and more particularly to those of Carlo Borromeo, who prescribed that musical texts should be set simply and comprehensibly. Like Vincenzo Ruffo, Vecchi adopted a style based principally on syllabic word-setting.

WORKS

published in Milan unless otherwise indicated

Missarum liber primus, 5vv (1588)

Missa, psalmi ad Vesperas dominicales, Magnificat, Motecta et psalmorum modulationes (1590)

Psalmi integri in totius anni solemnitatibus, 2 Magnificat, 4 antiphonae ad B.V.M., 5vv, bc (1596) [bc also pubd separately, 1598]

Missarum liber primus, 4vv, bc (1597), ed. O. Beretta (Lucca, 1991)

Motetti libro primo, 5vv (1597, 2/1599⁴)

Missarum liber secundus, Missa pro defunctis, sacrae cantiones, 5vv (1598)

Motectorum liber secundus, 5vv, bc (1598³)

Motectorum liber tertius, 6vv (1598)

Falsi bordoni figurati sopra gli otto toni ecclesiastici, Magnificat, Te Deum laudamus, hinni, antifone, Letanie, 3–5, 8vv (1600)

Hymni totius anni … cum antiphonis et Litaniis B.V.M., 5vv (1600)

In septem Regii Prophetae psalmos, liber quartus, 6vv (1601)

Psalmi in totius anni solemnitatibus, 2 Magnificat, 5vv (1601)

Missarum liber tertius, 5vv (1602)

La donna vestita di sole … 21 madrigali (1602)

Magnificat liber primus, 5vv (1603)

Motectorum liber primus, 4vv (1603)

Cantiones sacrae, 6vv (Antwerp, 1603)

Scielta de Madrigali, 5vv (1604)

Cantiones sacrae, 5vv (Antwerp, 1608)

Salmi intieri, 5vv (1614) [not 1st edn]

Further vocal works, 2–8vv, 1588³, 1596¹, 1598³, 1598⁶, 1598⁸, 1598¹³, 1599⁴, 1604¹¹, 1604¹², 1607²⁹, 1610¹, 1611¹, 1613², 1617², 1619⁴, 1621², 1624⁸, 1627¹

1 pater noster, 5vv, I-Mcap; Messe, 5vv, Pcd; Motetti, GB-Ob, formerly Tenbury; 4 motetts, 6vv, A-Wn

BIBLIOGRAPHY

MischiatiI

P. Morigi: La nobiltà di Milano (Milan, 1619), 304

G. Borsieri: Il supplimento della nobiltà di Milano (Milan, 1619), 34

F. Picinelli: Ateneo dei letterati milanesi (Milan, 1670), 436

F.X. Haberl: ‘Orfeo Vecchi’, KJb, xxii (1907), 166–76

A. Einstein: ‘Un libro di canzoni spirituali di Orfeo Vecchi’, La bibliofilia, xl (1938–9), 38–46

D.A. Mather-Pike: La donna vestita di sole: a Collection of Sacred Madrigals by Orfeo Vecchi (diss., Rochester U., 1961)

I. Fenlon: ‘Il foglio volante editoriale dei Tini, circa il 1596’, RIM, xii (1977), 231–51

L.M. Vigevani: ‘Orfeo Vecchi, maestro di cappella di S Maria della Scala’, RIMS, vii (1986), 347–69

M. Toffetti: ‘Nuovi documenti su Orfeo Vecchi’, NRMI, xxx (1996), 445–65

MARIANGELA DONÀ

Vecchi detto Delle Palle, Scipione.

See Delle Palle, Scipione.

Vécla, Djemma.

See Grandi, Margherita.

Vecoli [Veccoli].

Italian family of composers and musicians. The exact relationship of the three Lucchese composers sharing the surname Vecoli has not been established. The dates of their appointments and publications suggest that Regolo was a generation older than Francesco and Pietro, but this must remain supposition until supported by more precise evidence.

STEVEN LEDBETTER/R

(1) Regolo Vecoli

(b Lucca; fl 1557–86). Composer and cornett player. He was in service as an instrumentalist to his native city in 1557. He worked in Lyons from 1561 to 1581 and then went on to Paris. He referred to his Primo libro de madrigali a cinque voci (Lyons, 1577¹⁰, 1 ed. in Dobbins, 384) as ‘my first musical compositions’. In the dedication to Il secondo libro de madrigali a cinque voci (Paris, 1586) he commented that his removal to Paris was forced upon him by the ‘misfortunes that are now afflicting Lyons’, an apparent reference to the upheavals caused by religious strife there. With this book of 1586 he became, through his publisher Le Roy & Ballard, the first Italian composer to have a complete book of madrigals printed in Paris. Also in 1586 Vecoli was awarded the prize in the Puy d’Evreux, the musical competition that was held annually on St Cecilia’s Day between 1570 and 1614; his prize-winning piece was a De profundis, which was apparently never published and is now lost. No other compositions by him were published after this date, suggesting that he died soon afterwards. Although he spent most of his career away from Lucca, he maintained ties with it and dedicated both of his madrigal publications to members of its nobility. His musical style is also Italian, even Luccan, in its similarity to that of Nicolo Dorati (see Dobbins). The first includes a piece by Francesco Vecoli, who had included a piece by him in his own book of five-part madrigals of 1575.

Vecoli

(2) Francesco Vecoli

(b Lucca; fl 1575–97). Composer. Unlike his two relatives, he remained in Lucca and pursued an ecclesiastical career. He taught at the recently founded seminary of S Michele in Foro, Lucca, and wrote his Primo libro de motetti a cinque voci (Venice, 1580) for its use. He had already published Il primo libro de madrigali a cinque voci (Venice, 1575¹⁶), in which he included a piece by Regolo Vecoli, a favour returned in the latter’s book of five-part madrigals of 1577. In 1597 Francesco Vecoli was named ‘cappellano benefiziato’ of S Martino, Lucca.

Vecoli

(3) Pietro Vecoli

(b Lucca; fl 1580–97). Composer and musician. He seems to have worked most consistently in Savoy. The title-page of his Madrigali … il primo libro a cinque voci (Turin, 1581¹²) states that he was a musician of the Duke of Savoy. Six years later he had apparently left that position, since he claimed his Primo libro de madrigali a sei voci (Paris, 1587), dedicated to Sebastiano Zametti, as his first production under the auspices of his new patron; only one partbook of this print survives, but one madrigal, Nel vago e lieto aprile, survives in a later anthology (RISM 1601⁵). Vecoli returned to his service as a chamber musician in Savoy in time to produce the intermedi for Federico della Valle’s tragedy Adelmonda di Frigia, presented during a state visit by the Cardinal Archduke of Austria in November 1596. The intermedi (I-Tn Ris.mus.II, 8) consist of 20 movements in three parts, mostly for two high voices and bass, with indications for performance by sirens, shepherds, satyrs and harpies (‘who sing hovering in the air’), as well as for entrées and dances by the princes and princesses. Vecoli prepared a presentation manuscript of the work with a dedication to the Duchess of Savoy; he received at her command on 2 April 1597 a payment of 217 lire, presumably in connection with the work or the manuscript.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

NericiS

S. Cordero di Pamparato: ‘I musici alla corte di Carlo Emanuele I di Savoia’, Biblioteca della Società storica subalpina, cxxi (1930), 31–142

A. Bonaccorsi: ‘Catalogo con notizie biografiche della musica dei maestri lucchesi esistenti nelle biblioteche di Lucca’, CHM, ii (1956–7), 73–95

E. Maggini, ed.: Lucca, Biblioteca del seminario: catalogo delle musiche (Milan, 1965)

A. Bonaccorsi: Maestri di Lucca: i Guami e altri musicisti (Florence, 1967), 135, 145

F. Dobbins: Music in Renaissance Lyons (Oxford, 1992)

Vecsey, Franz von

(b Budapest, 23 March 1893; d Rome, 6 April 1935). Hungarian violinist. He studied with his father and with Hubay, and also had some lessons from Joachim, who conducted his performance of Beethoven's Violin Concerto in Berlin in 1904. He made débuts in London in 1904 and in New York in 1905 with great success. Sibelius dedicated his Violin Concerto to Vecsey, who played the work in Berlin and Vienna and was its most brilliant early interpreter. He served in the Austro-Hungarian army during World War I, and made an acclaimed reappearance in Berlin in the 1920s. His playing was said to be technically perfect and of classical purity, but was regarded by Flesch and others as being musically undistinguished. During his later years he rarely appeared in public. He composed a number of short pieces for the violin, among them a set of caprices.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

SchwarzGM

H. Roth: ‘The Man Time Left Behind’, The Strad, civ (1993), 1033–5

MARGARET CAMPBELL

Vécsey, Jenő

(b Felsőcéce, Abaúj, 19 July 1909; d Budapest, 18 Sept 1966). Hungarian composer and musicologist. He studied composition with Kodály at the Liszt Academy of Music (diploma 1935) and in 1941 graduated as professor of chemistry and biology at the university. After a period of school music teaching he received a scholarship to study in Vienna (1941–2), where his String Quartet was performed by the Végh Quartet. In 1942 he joined the staff of the National Széchényi Library, Budapest, where he was head of the music department from 1945 until his death. He was responsible for the reorganization and cataloguing of the valuable collection along modern lines. Besides composing original works, of which the most successful are the Piano Concertino, the Double Bass Concertino, the String Sextet and the Krúdy Concerto, he revived forgotten museum-pieces. His fine sense of style and his experience as a composer and orchestrator inform his reconstructions and editions of 19th-century Hungarian music and the Classical works in the collection he directed. He was founder-director of the series Musica Rinata and a member of the Hungarian Musicological Committee.

WORKS

(selective list)

Ballet: Kele diák [Scholar Kele], 1943

Orch: Divertimento, 1939–40; Rhapsody, 1940–41; Suite (Bagatelles), 1941; Intermezzi, str, 1942; Két szimfonikus tánc [2 Sym. Dances], 1945 [from Kele diák]; Boldogkő vára [Boldogkő Castle], sym. poem, 1951; Pf Concertino, 1953; Db Concertino, 1954, red. db, pf; Szimfonikus concerto Krúdy Gyula emlékére [Sym. Conc. in Memory of Krúdy], 1958; Praeludium, notturno és scherzo, 1958 [rev. of Boldogkő Castle]

Other works: Str Qt, 1942; Str Sextet, 1956; songs, works for pf/2 pf

Principal publisher: Editio Musica

EDITIONS AND ARRANGEMENTS

with L. Somfai: Serate d’opere di Eszterháza, i–iii, 1v, pf (Budapest, 1962)

J. Haydn: L’infedeltà delusa, Werke, xxv/5 (Munich, 1964)

J. Haydn: Le pescatrici, Werke, xxv/4 (Munich, 1972)

Reconstructions: F. Erkel: Báthori Mária, Sarolta, Dózsa György, Erzsébet; works by G. Druschetzky, M. Haydn, J. Haydn, G.J. Werner etc.

Arrs.: F. Erkel: Dózsa György, performing score; F. Liszt: Magyar történelmi arcképek: Vörösmarty, Teleki, Petőfi, Mosonyi, orchd; selections from operas by F. Doppler, F. Erkel, M. Mosonyi etc. orchd; 19th-century Hungarian songs, arr. 1v, small orch

WRITINGS

‘L’infedeltà delusa’, Zenetudományi tanulmányok, i (1953), 423–38

‘A magyar Mozart-irodalomról’, Zenetudományi tanulmányok, v (1957), 523–9

Joseph Haydn művei az Országos Széchényi könyvtár zenei gyűjteményében (Budapest, 1959; Eng. trans., 1960, as Haydn Compositions in the Music Collection of the National Széchényi Library)

with D. Keresztury and Z. Falvy: A magyar zenetörténet képeskönyve [The history of Hungarian music in pictures] (Budapest, 1960)

MÁRIA ECKHARDT

Veerhoff, Carlos (Heinrich)

(b Buenos Aires, 3 June 1926). German composer of Argentine origin. He studied composition at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik with Hermann Grabner and privately with Kurt Thomas. In Cologne he studied composition with W. Braunfels and conducting with Günter Wand. Piano studies were undertaken with Gieseking in Wiesbaden. In 1948 he returned to Argentina and taught at the University of Tucumán; he also attended conducting courses given by Scherchen in Buenos Aires. In 1951 he went back to Berlin as assistant to Fricsay; he moved to Munich the following year. Since then he has been a freelance composer, based in Stuttgart, Argentina, Paris (on a scholarship) and, from 1988, Murnau am Staffelsee. He has received several awards.

Veerhoff has composed in a wide variety of genres, eschewing avant-garde tendencies in developing his own creative language. For him, composing (in which the twelve notes are given the same value but not the same weight) is made freer and broader through both symmetrical and asymmetrical structures; to these structures are applied strict, thematic conditions. Through his structures Veerhoff says that the notes ‘gain a kind of mirror image formation both in melodic runs and in sound structures’, and quotes his orchestral Mirages (1960–1) as a particular example of this. His works’ expressiveness is balanced by a scientific objectivity and solid craftmanship.

WORKS

(selective list)

Ops: Targusis (2, Veerhoff), 1955–7, unperf.; Tanz des Lebens, oder Der letzte Gast (puppet op, 1, F. Schneckenburger), 1962, Zürich, 1963; Die goldene Maske (2, Veerhoff), 1967–8, unperf.; Es gibt doch Zebrastreifen (chbr op, 1, E. Sartorius), 1971, Ulm, 1972

Ballet: Pavane royal, 1950; El porquerizo del rey, 1958, Colón, 1963; Dualis, 1976, Munich, 1977

Vocal: Gesänge aus Sangsâra, S, vv, orch, tape, 1975–6, rev. 1984; Pater noster, chorus, orch, 1982; Burleske ‘Alpha-Zeta’, unacc. choir, 1982, rev. 1998

Orch: Sinfonischer Satz, 1952; Sinfonia panta-rhei, 1953–4; Sym., 1955–6; Prolog, 1957; Symphonie Spirales, 1957–8; Mirages, 1960–61; Akróasis, 1965; Textur, 1969, rev. 1970; Sym., 1970–72; Torso, 1971, rev. 1973; Sinotrauc, 1972; Dorefamie, 1972; Vn Conc. no.1, 1975–6; Pf Conc. no.1, 1978–9; Conc., vc, db, orch, 1988; Pf Conc. no.2, 1989, rev. 1998; Vn Conc. no.2, 1992; Conc., perc solo, orch, 1993–4; Desiderata, orch, chorus, solo vv, spkr, 1995–6

Chbr works and works for solo inst

Principal publishers: Boosey & Hawkes, Bote & Bock, Peters, Suvini Zerboni

ALFRED GRANT GOODMAN

Veg, Willem de.

See De Fesch, Willem.

Vega.

Family name of Francisco de Santiago.

Vega, Aurelio de la

(b Havana, 28 Nov 1925). Cuban composer, writer on music and teacher. He studied in Havana, receiving the BA in humanities at the De La Salle College (1944) and the doctorate in diplomacy at the university (1947); he also studied theory, composition and orchestration privately with Frederick Kramer (1942–6). In 1947 he was appointed cultural attaché to the Cuban consulate in Los Angeles, and while there he took private composition lessons from Toch (1947–8). On his return to Cuba in 1949 he was appointed editorial secretary of Conservatorio, the official review of the Havana Municipal Conservatory, and elected president of the Cuban section of the ISCM. He studied for a doctorate in composition with Gramatges at the Instituto Musical Ada Iglesias, Havana (1950–55), directed the music department at the University of Oriente, Santiago de Cuba (1953–9), served as music adviser to the National Institute of Culture (1953–9) and worked as a music critic. In 1959 he returned to settle in California as professor of composition at the San Fernando Valley State College (later, California State University, Northridge; emeritus professor since 1994) and director of its electronic music studio; he became an American citizen in 1966. He has received numerous commissions and awards, including two Friedheim awards from the Kennedy Center. In 2000 he was the recipient of a FACE (Facts About Cuban Exiles) Excellence Award.

Some of de la Vega’s early works (1944–50), such as the song cycle La fuente infinita, show Szymanowskian post-Impressionist traits in contrast to the neo-classical and neo-Romantic nationalism then prevailing in Cuban music. Although he did rely to a certain extent on Afro-Cuban rhythmic complexities in some early pieces, he never adhered to folklorist nationalism and even voiced his opposition to it on many occasions. The Piano Trio of 1949 demonstrates some of his lasting technical concerns: in particular, a virtuoso style in writing for traditional instruments and a strong reliance on structural principles. A highly chromatic language and a strong rhythmic drive pervade his compositions of the early 1950s, such as Legend of the Creole Ariel for cello and piano. He then developed a style of free atonality and unconventional 12-tone technique, the latter being applied for the first time in the String Quartet ‘In memoriam Alban Berg’ (1957). Subsequent works, culminating with the non-dodecaphonic, virtuoso Intrata for orchestra (1972), show an increasing use of polyphony. By the mid-1960s he was gradually abandoning serialism in favour of electronic means, open forms and, eventually, aleatory procedures and graphic scores. Since the 1980s his music has gradually returned to a multi-layered pantonal idiom underlying an intense lyricism punctuated by Cuban melodies and rhythms. From 1974 many of his works have included visual elements: a series of graphic scores in colours (e.g. Olep ed Arudamot, The Infinite Square, Astralis), in which sounds and pictorial forms are mixed, reaches an apogee in Undici colori (1981) for solo bassoon and slide projections of geometric drawings by the composer. At the same time de la Vega has continued to develop the instrumental colour and rhythmic vigour of his music. All of his work is expressive, forceful and carefully structured. He is the author of Arnold Schönberg and the Atonalists (1947), The Negative Emotion (1950), The New Romanticism (1951) and many articles on topics such as electronic and avant-garde music.

WORKS

Orch: Ov. to a Serious Farce, 1950; Elegy, str, 1954; Divertimento, vn, vc, pf, str, 1956; Sym. in 4 Pts, 1960; Serenade, 1965; Intrata, 1972; Adiós, 1977; Variación del recuerdo, str 1998

Chbr: The Death of Pan, vn, pf, 1948; Pf Trio, 1949; Solioquy, va, pf, 1950; Legend of the Creole Ariel, vc, pf, 1953; Str Qt ‘In memoriam Alban Berg’, 1957; Wind Qnt, 1959; Trio, fl, ob, cl, 1960; Structures, pf, str qt, 1962; Segments, vn, pf, 1964; Exametron, fl, perc, vc, 1965; Exospheres, ob, pf, 1966; Labdanum, fl, vib, va, 1970; Septicilium, fl, cl, perc, pf, cel, hp, vn, vc, 1974; 11 colori, bn, slides, 1981; Galandiacoa, cl, gui, 1982; Tropimapal, 9 insts, 1983

Vocal: La fuente infinita (J.F. Zamora), S, pf, 1944; El encuentro (R. Tagore), A, pf, 1950; Cant. (R.F. Retamar), 2 S, A, 21 insts, 1958; Inflorescencia (de la Vega), S, b cl, tape, 1976; Adramante (O. Armand), S, pf, 1985; Asonante (de la Vega), S, 7 insts, 1985; Magias e invenciones (Baquero), S, pf, 1986; Testimonial (Valladares), S, fl, cl, vn, vc, pf, 1990; Madrigales de entonces (Padilla), SATB, 1991; Canciones transparentes (J. Martí), S, cl, vc, pf, 1995

Solo inst: 3 Preludes, 1944; Epigram, 1953; Toccata, 1957; Antinomies, 1967; Sound Clouds, gui, 1975; Memorial de la Ausencia, vc, 1985; Homenagem, 1989; Bifloreo, gui, 1992

With tape: Vectors, 1-track tape, 1963; Interpolation, cl, tape, 1965; Paratangents, tpt, tape, 1973; Tangent, vn, tape, 1973; Inflorescencia, S, b cl, tape, 1976; Extrapolation, tape, 1981

Variable (any no. of insts): The Infinite Square, 1974; Olep ed Arudamot, 1974; Andamar-ramadna, 1975; The Magic Labyrinth, 1975; Astralis, 1977; Corde, 1977; Nones, 1977

Principal publishers: Belwin-Mills, Ediciones Cubanas de Música, Facsimile, Southern, Universidad Veracruzana, University of São Paolo

WRITINGS

Arnold Schönberg and the Atonalists (Havana, 1947)

The Negative Emotion (Havana, 1950)

The New Romanticism (Havana, 1951)

‘The Training of a Composer Today’, The Modern Composer and his World, ed. J. Beckwith and U. Kasemets (Toronto, 1961)

‘Regarding Electronic Music’, Tempo, no.75 (1965–6), 2–11

‘The Artist in Latin America’, Journal of the Canadian Association of University Schools of Music, viii/2 (1978), 40–54

‘The New and Welcomed Phoenix’, Revista música, ii/1 (1991), 54–61

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Compositores de América/Composers of the Americas, ed. Pan American Union, vii (Washington DC, 1961)

J.R. Schortt: ‘Aurelio de la Vega, un compositor de las Américas’, RMC, no.84 (1963), 62–88

G. Béhague: Music in Latin America: an Introduction (Englewood Cliffs, 1979)

R. Erin: ‘Cuban Elements in the Music of Aurelio de la Vega’, LAMR, v/1 (1984), 1–32

J. Balza: ‘Aurelio de la Vega, un cubano del futuro’, Pauta, no.30 (1989), 25–30

S. González: The Piano Works of Aurelio de la Vega (diss., U. of Miami, 1998)

GERARD BÉHAGUE

Vega, Carlos

(b Cañuelas, nr Buenos Aires, 14 April 1898; d Buenos Aires, 10 Feb 1966). Argentine musicologist and folklorist. He first studied harmony and composition with Gilardi, but soon turned exclusively to musicology. As head of musicology at the Argentine Museum of Natural Sciences (1926) and folklore expert at Buenos Aires University (1933), he dedicated himself to the systematic study of South American traditional music, dances and musical instruments. He founded and directed the Institute of Musicology (1931) under the auspices of the Ministry of Education and undertook a series of field trips throughout Argentina and other South American countries, collecting several thousand items of folk music and dance. He received several grants, including the research grant from the National Commission for Culture (1937) and a UNESCO grant for studies in Europe. In 1947 he was awarded the First National History and Folklore Prize for his publications.

Vega’s work was wide-ranging. His first important publication, La música de un códice colonial del siglo XVII (1931), incorporated a transcription of the songs of the Dezuola manuscript. From 1936 to the early 1960s he produced comprehensive studies of South American folk music, especially Argentine instruments, folksongs and dances. An active music theorist and music educationist, he was also interested throughout his life in the transcription of European medieval monody, believing that he had found a new key for the interpretation of this music in folk music performing practice.

WRITINGS

‘Música indigena americana’, Anales del Instituto popular de conferencias, xvi (1930), 39–56

La música de un códice colonial del siglo XVII (Buenos Aires, 1931)

‘Escalas con semitonos en la música de los antiguos peruanos’, Congreso internacional de americanistas XXV [La Plata 1932] (Buenos Aires, 1934), i, 349–81

Danzas y canciones argentinas (Buenos Aires, 1936)

La música popular argentina: canciones y danzas criollas (Buenos Aires, 1941)

Panorama de la música popular argentina (Buenos Aires, 1944)

Los instrumentos musicales aborígenes y criollos de la Argentina (Buenos Aires, 1946)

Música sudamericana (Buenos Aires, 1946)

‘La forma de la cueca chilena’, RMC, nos.20–21 (1947), 7–13; nos.22–3 (1947) 15–19

‘La música argentina: 1810–1852’, in R. Levene: Historia de la nación argentina, viii (Buenos Aires, 1947), 565–94

Las danzas populares argentinas (Buenos Aires, 1952)

Bailes tradicionales argentinos (Buenos Aires, 1953)

El origen de las danzas folklóricas (Buenos Aires, 1956)

El movimiento de los trovadores (Buenos Aires, 1959)

‘Música folklórica de Chile’, RMC, no.68 (1959), 3–32

Danzas argentinas (Buenos Aires, 1962)

El himno nacional argentino (Buenos Aires, 1962)

‘Música de tres notas’, Conferencia interamericana de etnomusicologia I: Cartagena, Colombia, 1963, 87–106

Las canciones folklóricas argentinas (Buenos Aires, 1964)

‘Una cadencia medieval en América’, YIAMR, i (1965), 94–111

Lectura y notación de la música (Buenos Aires, 1965)

‘Tradiciones musicales y aculturación en sudamérica’, Music in the Americas: Bloomington, IN, 1965, 220–50; repr. in The Garland Library of Readings in Ethnomusicology, ed. K.K. Shelemay, iii (New York, 1990), 144–74

El cielito de la independencia (Buenos Aires, 1966)

‘Mesomusic: an Essay on the Music of the Masses’, EthM, x (1966), 1–17

‘Las especies homónimas y afines de “Los origenes del tango argentino”’, RMC, no.101 (1967), 49–65

BIBLIOGRAPHY

J. Urrutia Blondel: ‘Homenaje póstumo a un gran americano’, RMC, no.96 (1966), 142–3

G. Chase: ‘Recordando a Carlos Vega’, RMC, no.101 (1967), 36–48

P. Suárez Urutubey: ‘Los trabajos inéditos de Carlos Vega’, ‘Contribución a la bibliografía de Carlos Vega’, ibid., 66–71, 73–86

I. Aretz and L.F. Ramon y Rivera: ‘Areas musicales de tradicíon oral en América latina: una crítica y tentativa de reestructuración de los “cancioneros” establecidos por Carlos Vega’, RMC, no.30 (1976), 9–55

C. Garcia Muñoz: ‘Bibliografía de Carlos Vega’, Revista del Instituto Musicológica Carlos Vega, viii (1987), 145–71

B.J. Broere: ‘El chambú: a Study of Popular Music in Nariño, South Columbia’, World Music, Politics and Social Change: Papers from the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, ed. S. Frith (Manchester, 1991), 103–21

I. Ruíz: ‘Institutions in the Field of Ethnomusicology Introduce Themselves, xxiv: Instituto Nacional de Musicología “Carlos Vega”’, World of Music, xxxvi/3 (1994), 123–5

C. Aharonián: ‘Carlos Vega y la teoría de la música popular: un enfoque latinoamericano en un ensayo pionero’, RMC, no.51 (1997), 61–74

N.P. Cirio: ‘La música de los Incas: un libro inédito de Carlos Vega recientemente descubierto’, Música e investigación: revista del Instituto Nacional de Musicología Carlos Vega, i/l (1997), 117–29

GERARD BÉHAGUE

Vega Matus, Alejandro

(b Masaya, 17 Aug 1875; d Masaya, 26 Nov 1937). Nicaraguan composer, bandleader and orchestra leader. Son of the composer Pablo Vega Raudes (1850–1919), he received musical training from an early age in Masaya, famed for its musical environment. He triumphed at the age of 18 in the salons of Guatemala City in virtuoso concerts where he played the piano with his left hand and the trumpet with his right. He studied briefly with Aberle in the Guatemalan Conservatory of Music, but remained essentially self-taught throughout his career. In 1894 he returned to Nicaragua and formed the Orquesta Vega Matus, a wind, brass and string ensemble that eventually attracted the nation’s best musicians. During its 50-year tenure under his, and later his son’s, direction, it reigned as the unrivalled musical performance group of dance and semi-classical music in the nation. The orchestra was also the vehicle for Vega Matus’s prolific output. He composed many waltzes, some still performed today, notably Cascada de perlas, Filomena and Lila. He also composed polkas, mazurkas, gavottes, schottishes, one-steps, cuadrillas, blues, danzas and foxtrots, the latter including the enduring Nadie me quiere. He also wrote many songs, usually together with a lyricist. One of these, La mama ramona, has become so embedded in the national consciousness that it is often mistakenly considered part of the anonymous traditional repertory. He wrote a great quantity of religious music: four masses, two requiem masses, 107 funeral marches (many still in use, especially no.41), 109 sones de pascuas (villancicos), approximately 300 Ave Maria settings and several cantos a María, a particular Nicaraguan genre of songs praising the Virgin Mary. Expressly for band he wrote military marches and sones de toro, lively pieces that provide accompaniment for religious processions. His larger works, which may total as many as 15, are short pieces for chamber orchestra, the best known of which include: Obertura Luciana, described as imitative of Haydn, Murió de un beso (1916), Agonía del crepusculo, Noche de Navidad and Misterio. His largest work is the oratorio En la muerte de Jesús (1900), which contains many programmatic passages. In his larger works he did not stray far from the homophonic texture and regular phraseology of his shorter pieces. Vega Matus enjoyed recognition of his talents during his lifetime and was repeatedly honoured by succeeding presidents. His recordings for the Victor label received regional distribution and were probably the first ones by a Nicaraguan composer.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

R. Sider: The Art Music of Central America: its Development and Present State (diss., Eastman School of Music, 1967)

A. Eskorcia Zúniga: Ligero ensayo sobre la vida, obra y muerte de Alejandro Vega Matus (Masaya, [mid 1970s])

S. Cermeño: Esquema de la obra de Vega Matus (Managua, 1985)

T.M. SCRUGGS

Vegezzi-Bossi.

See Bossi family.

Veggio, Claudio Maria

(b Piacenza, ?c1510; d after 1543). Italian composer. His Madrigali a quattro voci was dedicated on 27 August 1540 to his patron, Count Federico Anguissola of Piacenza. 16 of the settings are of poetry by Luigi Cassola of Piacenza and six others mention ladies, one of whom, Ippolita Borromea Anguissola, was the wife of Count Girolamo of Piacenza. Veggio's madrigals are praised in a letter from Antonfrancesco Doni to the sculptor Giovanni Angelo, dated 3 June 1543, which also describes Veggio's activities as a harpsichordist and composer, presumably at the Accademia Ortolana, to which his poets Cassola, Doni and Bartolomeo Gottifredi also belonged. A further letter of 10 April 1544, from Doni to Veggio, requested new madrigals, and Veggio may have complied since four of his pieces appeared in Doni's Dialogo, published in that year. The quantity of keyboard and sacred music by Veggio in manuscripts at Castell'Arquato suggest that he held an appointment there, possibly that of church organist.

Veggio's madrigal book is the earliest to indicate by its title the use of the sign C and note nere, although it is not the first in which they appear. It includes six such madrigals by Arcadelt and four by Veggio (nos.27, 28, 39 and 40). The ‘full and exact musical repetition’ (Haar) in Veggio's four madrigals in Doni's Dialogo result from the poetry of Gottifredi and Doni, which was influenced by the ballata. Repetition itself occurs quite frequently in the early madrigal, and Veggio's work places him firmly in that tradition.

The Castell'Arquato manuscript containing Veggio's keyboard music, is of exceptional interest. The varying number of staves employed during a given work, the numerous sketches (some quickly abandoned) and the alterations, which are creative revisions and not copyist's errors, all suggest that the manuscript is Veggio's holograph, showing the stages through which the works were composed; this is one of the very few such extant scores from this period. It is also the earliest known direct evidence for the practice of playing from an open score at the keyboard. Veggio's eight ricercares vary greatly in length from 41 to 147 breves. Their alternating contrapuntal and highly figurative sections show strong affinities with the ricercares by M.A. Cavazzoni, in their use of homophonic and sequential rather than motivic imitation, the incorporation of series of parallel 3rds in the left hand and extensive florid passages, and in the employment of registration sequences. Moreover, their melodic range is almost that of Cavazzoni's pieces and far exceeds that in ricercares by Giacomo Fogliano, Jiulio Segni, Girolamo Cavazzoni and Jacques Buus, whose restricted range shows the influence of vocal polyphony on their keyboard writing. Veggio's music represents the stylistic link between the generations of the two Cavazzonis.

Of the other pieces in the Castell'Arquato manuscript, the canzona La fugitiva and the two chanson arrangements follow their models closely. La fugitiva is a transcription of a now unknown ensemble canzona in four parts, to which Veggio added a fifth part. Although Arcadelt's Quand'io pens'al martire and Veggio's Donna per dio are both copied on four staves, only Veggio's piece is decorated, usually at the cadences. Arcadelt's Se per colpa, however, on two and three staves, is heavily decorated. Tu es Petrus receives the most embellishment, initially in the left hand, and is the only arrangement having the parallel 3rds in the left hand so characteristic of Veggio's ricercare style.

It is not known whether the madrigalist Giovanni Agostino Veggio was related to him.

WORKS

Madrigali, 4vv (Venice, 1540¹⁹); ed. in SCMad, iv (1992)

4 madrigals, 4, 8vv, 1544²²

Dixit Dominus, 8vv, I-CARcc

8 ricercares, kbd, CARcc

keyboard arrangements

all in I-CARcc; sources of models follow in parentheses

La fugitiva, canzona, a 4, 5

Tu es Petrus (anon., 1538⁸)

2 chansons: Tant que vivray (Sermisy, 1528³); Or vien ça vien (Janequin, 1533²)

3 madrigals: Quand'io pens'al martire (Arcadelt, 1539²²); Donna per dio vi giuro (Veggio, 1540¹⁹); Se per colpa (Arcadelt, 1539²²)

1 untitled anon. motet; 1 untitled anon. madrigal

BIBLIOGRAPHY

EinsteinIM

G. Turrini: L'Accademia filarmonica di Verona dalla fondazione (maggio 1543) al 1600 (Verona, 1941)

H.C. Slim: The Keyboard Ricercar and Fantasia in Italy, c. 1500–1550 with Reference to Parallel Forms in European Lute Music of the Same Period (diss., Harvard U., 1961)

H.C. Slim: ‘Keyboard Music at Castell'Arquato by an Early Madrigalist’, JAMS, xv (1962), 35–47

J. Haar: ‘The note nere Madrigal’, JAMS, xviii (1965), 22–41

J. Haar: ‘Notes on the “Dialogo della musica” of Antonfrancesco Doni’, ML, xlvii (1966), 198–224

A.M. Monterosso Vacchelli: L'opera musicale di Antonfrancesco Doni (Cremona, 1969) [incl. transcrs.]

J.A. Owens: Composers at Work: the Craft of Musical Composition: 1450–1600 (Oxford, 1997)

H. COLIN SLIM

Végh, Sándor

(b Koloszvár [now Cluj-Napoca], 17 May 1912; d Freilassing, 7 Jan 1997). Hungarian violinist and conductor, naturalized French. He studied at the Budapest Academy of Music from 1924 to 1930 with Hubay (violin), Leó Weiner (chamber music) and Kodály (composition). He made his début in 1931 with the Hungarian Trio, and toured Europe as a soloist. He became leader of the Hungarian Quartet on its foundation in 1935, a position he relinquished to Székely a few months later when he became second violin. Végh left the Hungarian Quartet in 1938, and in 1940 founded the Végh Quartet, which he led until 1978. He often appeared at Casals’ Prades Festival and supervised the summer courses at Zermatt held under Casals’ patronage. He also conducted the Berlin PO, the Vienna PO and from 1974 the Salzburg Camerata Academica. Végh had a distinguised career as a teacher, and held professorships at the Budapest Academy of Music (1941–5), the Musikakademie in Basle (1954–64), the Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg (1956–64) and the Hochschule für Musik in Düsseldorf (1964–74); from 1970 to 1987 he taught at the Salzburg Mozarteum. In 1972 Végh founded with Hilary Behrens the International Musicians’ Seminar, a series of chamber music courses held in Prussia Cove in Cornwall each spring, and from 1975 additionally in September. Here, and elsewhere, he was an influential and inspirational teacher. As a player Végh was known for the purity and warmth of his tone, and the breadth of his musical understanding. His recordings include the quartets of Mozart, Beethoven and Bartók (with the Végh Quartet), and Bach’s complete works for solo violin. He was made an honorary CBE in 1988 and a Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur in 1992. He played the 1724 ‘Earl of Harrington’ Stradivari.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

R. Hicks: ‘Natural Nurturing’, The Strad, xcviii (1987), 372–5

Obituaries: The Times (9 Jan 1997); M. Campbell, The Independent (10 Jan 1997); A. Inglis and S. Isserlis, The Guardian (10 Jan 1997)

MARGARET CAMPBELL

Végh Quartet.

Swiss-based string quartet of Hungarian origin, founded in 1940 by Sándor Végh, Sándor Zöldy, Georges Janzer and Paul Szabó. In 1946 it won the Geneva competition and thereafter embarked on an international career, its repertory ranging from the Viennese Classics to the quartets of Bartók – whom Végh had known – and Kodály, with whom he had studied composition. In 1949 it gave the premières of the second quartets of Karl Amadeus Hartmann and Pierre Wissmer, and in 1962 the Concerto for string quartet and orchestra by Sándor Veress. It was never technically on the level of the Hungarian Quartet (ii) – of which Végh had been a founder member – and as early as 1950 showed signs of slack preparation. Its members lived in four different cities and sometimes gave the impression that they had not met for some time before coming on stage. Its recordings, too, were often mediocre. Time after time its performances were saved by the vivid personality and clear musical vision of Végh, one of the more remarkable re-creative artists of his time. In the early 1970s the ensemble recorded cycles of the Bartók and Beethoven quartets which, while technically flawed, came close to reflecting the illumination of its concerts. A reorganization in 1978 brought in Philipp Naegele as second violinist and Bruno Giuranna as viola player, and another even more short-lived reconstitution in 1980 saw Végh joined by Erich Höbarth, Rainer Moog and Károly Botvay. But these formations were codas to the Végh Quartet's career.

TULLY POTTER

Vehe, Michael

(b Biberach, nr Heilbronn, c1480; d Halle, April 1539). German monk and theologian. He entered the Dominican order about 1500 and was made prior of the monastery in Wimpfen. In 1506 he belonged to the monastery in Heidelberg, where he studied and took the doctorate of theology in 1513 and became regens in 1515. He represented the Catholics in all the important synods, conferences and Imperial Diets of the Reformation era. In 1520 Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenburg appointed him provost of the newly founded abbey church in Halle and made him Councillor for Religious Affairs and archdeacon, and chancellor of the new Halle University. In various writings from the period 1531–6 Vehe defended the Catholic doctrine against the reformers. In collaboration with the last Catholic mayor of Halle, Caspar Querhammer, the theologian Georg Witzel and the organists Johann Hoffman and Wolff Heintz, Vehe produced the first Catholic hymnbook with music, Ein new Gesangbüchlin geystlicher Lieder (Leipzig, 1537/R, ed. W. Lipphardt); it was based partly on medieval tradition and partly on the Reformation hymn- and psalmbooks, but also offered some new material, both in the texts and in their musical settings. Thus the volume contained the first Catholic psalm paraphrases. As it was printed in Leipzig, a large part of the edition was lost in 1539 when the city became Lutheran, and the conversion of Halle about 1541 stopped circulation in the area for which the hymnbook had been intended. Not until the second edition (Mainz, 1567), and the use of some of Vehe's material in Johannes Leisentrit's hymnbook (1567), did the songs in Vehe's collection become the basis for all later Catholic hymnaries.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A.H. Hoffmann von Fallersleben, ed.: Michael Vehe: Ein new Gesangbüchlin 1537 (Hanover, 1853) [texts only]

P. Wackernagel: Bibliographie zur Geschichte des deutschen Kirchenliedes im XVI. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt, 1855/R), 142ff

W. Bäumker: Das katholische deutsche Kirchenlied in seinen Singweisen, i (Freiburg, 1886/R), 124ff; iii (Freiburg, 1891/R), 359

G. Bossert: ‘Michael Vehe’, Blätter für württembergische Kirchengeschichte, vii (1892), 87–8

P. Redlich: Cardinal Albrecht von Brandenburg und das neue Stift zu Halle (Mainz, 1900)

W. Serauky: Musikgeschichte der Stadt Halle, i (Halle and Berlin, 1935/R), 175ff

M. Härting: ‘Die kirchlichen Gesänge in der Volkssprache’, Geschichte der katholischen Kirchenmusik, i, ed. K.G. Fellerer (Kassel, 1972), 453–63, esp. 456

WALTHER LIPPHARDT/CLYTUS GOTTWALD

Veichtner [Feichtner], Franz Adam

(b Regensburg, bap. 10 Feb 1741; d Klievenhof, Courland [now Kalnciems, Latvia], 3 March 1822). German violinist and composer. The son of a violin maker, Johann Georg Veichtner, he attended the Jesuit school in Regensburg, where he studied music theory with Joseph Riepel, and studied the violin with Franz Benda at Potsdam. He entered the service of Count Hermann von Keyserling, and in 1763 travelled to Königsberg, where he met and taught the young J.F. Reichardt. In 1765 Veichtner was appointed Konzertmeister to the Courland court of the hereditary prince Peter von Biron at Mitau (now Jelgava), and at this time wrote his first published compositions, including several symphonies, a violin concerto and a series of choral pieces celebrating events at court. The four-movement Simphonie russienne, composed in 1770, is the earliest symphonic work on Russian folksong themes to survive complete. He composed three Singspiele for the court’s amateur theatre which earned him much praise (Journal von und für Deutschland, Ellrich, April 1784, p.460); Cephalus und Prokris had its première in Riga in 1779 and was produced in Berlin a year later. Veichtner became one of the leading figures in the musical life of Courland during the late 18th century. Among his pupils was the Courlander K.F. Amenda, later a friend of Beethoven. He probably visited Italy twice (c1785 and c1795). After Courland lost its independence in 1795 Veichtner settled in St Petersburg, where in 1798 he was engaged as a musician in the first court orchestra. He composed some violin music in Russia, and left in manuscript a Te Deum, which was first performed by the St Petersburg Philharmonic Society on 19 March 1818. In 1820 he retired to Klievenhof.

Veitchner's brother Michael Veichtner was also active as a violinist and bass viol player in Mitau. Among his descendants, his son Heinrich Konstantin Veichtner (1785–1816) was a chamber musician in St Petersburg, his daughter Benigma Gottlieb married the Hamburg violinist Johann Gottfried Hartmann, and his grandson Konstantin Veichtner (1808–77) was a chorister in Tartu.

WORKS

full list in Gercken

vocal

Singspiele: Scipio (C.F. Neander), Mitau, 30 June 1778, lost; Cephalus und Prokris (K.W. Ramler), Riga, 16 Feb 1779 (Berlin, 1779); Cyrus und Cassandana (2, Ramler), Libau, 15 Feb 1784, LV-J

Choral (mostly lost): Die erste Feier der Himmelfahrt Jesu (orat, Neander), Mitau, 1787; Hymne an Gott (Erfurt, 1787); Mass, D, A-Wgm; TeD, St Petersburg, ?1818; other secular cants., hymns, songs, 1765–c1787

instrumental

Orch: 4 syms. (Mitau, 1770); Simphonie russienne (Riga, 1771); Vn Conc., 1771 (Riga, 1775); 2 divertimentos (Berlin, n.d.); 2 concs., ob, mentioned in Mooser

Chbr: 3 str qts (St Petersburg, c1796–9), as op.3 (Berlin, 1802); 6 sonates, vn, vc (St Petersburg, c1797); 24 fantaisies, vn, b, op.7 (Leipzig, c1815); 6 sonates, vn, b, op.8 (Leipzig, c1815); Air russe varié, suivi d’un caprice, op.9 (Leipzig, c1815), lost; Solo, C, vn, b, lost

BIBLIOGRAPHY

EitnerQ

GerberL

GerberNL

MooserA

SchillingE

J. Döring: ‘Biographische Notizen über den Musiker Fr. A. Veichtner’, Sitzungsbericht der kurländischen Gesellschaft für Literatur und Kunst (Mitau, 1870), 43–7

E. Gercken: ‘Franz Adam Veichtner und das Musikleben am kurländischen Hof’, Baltische Hefte, xi (1964–5), 99–129

J. Müller-Blattau: ‘Benda, Veichtner, Reichardt, Amenda: zur Geschichte des nordostdeutschen Violinspiels in der Frühklassik’, Musik des Ostens, iv (1967), 177–84

E. Stöckl: ‘Franz Adam Veichtners “Simphonie russienne” (1771)’, Musik des Ostens, xi (1989), 169–85

GEOFFREY NORRIS/KLAUS-PETER KOCH

Veiga.

Family name of Francisco de Santiago.

Veiga, José Augusto Ferreira, Visconde do Arneiro

(b Macau, 22 Nov 1838; d San Remo, 7 June 1903). Portuguese composer. A member of a business family, he studied music in Lisbon. His operetta A questão do oriente was performed in Coimbra, at the Teatro Acadêmico (1859). In 1866 his ballet Ginn was performed in Lisbon with great success, and in 1871 his Te Deum was given there. His opera-ballet L’elisir di giovinezza (4, J.J. Magne), to an Italian text, was performed at the Teatro de S Carlos on 31 March 1876, but was not popular with the public, and he decided to present it in Italy. Given in Milan, at the Teatro Dal Verme (1877), the work still failed to win public favour. Veiga adapted the music to a new libretto by Rudolfo Paravicini, based on an English novel by Ann Radcliffe. The new version, a melodrama tragico entitled Dina la derelitta (S Carlos, 14 March 1885), was finally accepted by audiences. Veiga wrote another opera, Don Bibas, based on Alexandre Herculano’s previously unknown novel O Bobo, which drew him into the Portuguese nationalist movement; the opera has never been performed.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

F.F. Benevides: O Real theatro de S Carlos de Lisboa desde a sua fundação em 1793 até à actualidade (Lisbon, 1883)

F.F. Benevides: O Real theatro de S. Carlos de Lisboa: memórias 1883–1902 (Lisbon, 1902)

‘Arneiro, Visconde do’, Grande enciclopédia portuguesa e brasileira (Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro, 1936–60)

LUISA CYMBRON

Veillot [Villot], Jean

(d before Sept 1662). French composer and priest. He was choirmaster at Notre Dame, Paris, from 8 October 1640 to 4 May 1643. His reputation was such that Annibal Gantez (L'entretien des musiciens, 1643), after comparing him with Péchon and Aux-Cousteaux, pronounced him ‘le plus agréable en la musique’ in Paris. While remaining musical adviser to Notre Dame he went on in 1643 to become sous-maître at the royal chapel. On the death of Picot in 1657 he took over his post as composer there and also retained his appointment as sous-maître, which he shared with Gobert. He was ordained priest in 1646. Also in succession to Picot he was admitted to the ninth canonry in Ste Chapelle du Palais and in 1652 was nominated canon of St Aignan at Notre Dame. He was also abbot of Bois-Aubry and music master to the Benedictine nuns of Montmartre. He figures as composer and director of music in reports in the Gazette de France between 1657 and 1660. He must have died shortly before September 1662, for it was then that François Berthod succeeded him at Bois-Aubry.

Most of Veillot's music, including a Te Deum composed in 1660 for the double celebration of the Peace of the Pyrenees and the marriage of Louis XIV, has not survived. Domine salvum fac regem and a Renaissance-style Ave verum were part of the repertory of the Augustinians at Notre Dame des Victoires in Paris. The other motets are for double choir and are in a style which, according to Sauval, Veillot learnt when he came across some works by Formé that Louis XIII had locked in a cupboard after Formé's death in 1638. Alleluia, o filii and Sacris solemnis show that, like Formé, he was a pioneer of the French classical style in church music. They owe as much to the concertato style as to the austere polyphonic style: they are early examples of the Versailles grand motet, with alternating solos, choruses and ritornellos, but they also use liturgical melodies fairly strictly. Veillot was also one of the first to add symphonies to the plan of grand and petit choeur.

WORKS

in F-Pn unless otherwise stated

Alleluia, o filii, 6vv, 5vv, orch

Angeli, archangeli, double choir, 1644, (inc.)

Ave verum, 5vv

Domine salvum fac regem, 5vv, bc

Sacris solemnis, 5vv, 6vv, orch, ? Oratoire, June 1659

TeD, 1660, lost

Other works, mentioned in Gazette de France, 1657–60, lost

BIBLIOGRAPHY

AnthonyFB

H. Sauval: Histoire et recherches des antiquités de Paris, i (Paris, 1724)

D. Launay: ‘Les motets à double choeur en France dans la première moitié du XVIIe siècle’, RdM, xxxix–xl (1957), 173–95

D. Launay: ‘A propos de deux manuscrits musicaux aux armes de Louis XIII’, FAM, xiii (1966), 63–7

J. Burke: ‘Sacred Music at Notre-Dame-des-Victoires under Mazarin and Louis XIV’, RMFC, xx (1981), 19–44

D. Launay: La musique religieuse en France du Concile de Trente à 1804 (Paris, 1993)

DENISE LAUNAY/JAMES R. ANTHONY

Veinert, Antoni.

See Weinert, Antoni.

Veit, Huns

(fl Naumburg, mid-17th century). German brass instrument maker. Two of his trumpets survive, dated 1646 and 1651 (Berlin, Staatliches Institut für Musikforschung, Musikinstrumenten-Museum, nos.640 and 639 respectively). The latter, pitched in modern E, is the only surviving pre-19th-century slide trumpet or tromba da tirarsi known. It is of the Renaissance type (see Slide trumpet, esp. fig.2a), its bell has an early Baroque flare and its slide is nearly 56 cm long. It may be one of the ‘two brand-new slide trumpets’ listed in an inventory of 1658 from St Wenzel, Naumburg, whence it came into the Berlin collection in 1890.

EDWARD H. TARR

Veit, Václav (Jindřich) [Wenzel Heinrich]

(b Řepnice, nr Litoměřice, 19 Jan 1806; d Litoměřice, 16 Feb 1864). Czech composer. At ten years old he was already an accomplished player on the piano, organ and violin, and had begun to write church music. While studying philosophy and law at Prague University (1821–8) he subsisted by composing preludes and entr’actes for amateur theatre productions and singing in an opera chorus, and he established himself as a favourite teacher among the city’s wealthy families. In 1831 he rejected music as a profession, entering the service of the state legislature. However, after the public première of his First String Quintet (1835), he was also recognized as a leading Prague composer. Within a short time his works were being published, and his renown gradually spread throughout Europe. In 1841 he became musical director in Aachen, but, unable to face the daily demands of directing the popular repertory of the town’s opera company, he soon resigned, and returned to Prague and the legal profession. Despite later cultural isolation in Eger (now Cheb; 1854–62), a series of personal misfortunes and frequent bouts of ill-health, he remained active as a composer for the rest of his life.

As one of the first Czech composers who enthusiastically embraced the aesthetic and stylistic ideals of the German Romantics, Veit occupied an important position in the development of Czech music. Although heavily influenced by Mendelssohn and Schumann, his most effective works are characterized by an individual and expressive melodic gift, strong rhythmic sense and a penchant for unexpected turns of harmony and tonality. He pioneered the 19th-century Czech development of chamber music (his quartets were popular in Prague concerts and soirées, and were familiar to Smetana), and his Symphony in E minor (op.49) was one of the most important works in the genre by a Czech composer before Dvořák. Despite some tentative forays into programme music (most notably an overture, op.17, after a verse from Wieland’s Oberon), he was unable to accept many aspects of neo-romanticism. He criticized Wagner and Berlioz, although his role as their active opponent in Prague musical circles has been overstated.

Veit was also an active supporter of the Czech nationalist cultural movement. He attempted to master the Czech language (having been brought up and educated in German), wrote a number of popular Czech choruses and utilized folksong material and characteristics in some of his instrumental music. His chamber works and choruses were performed well into the 20th century, yet he is perhaps known today only for his Episoda ze života krejčovského (‘Episode in the Life of a Tailor’), an imaginative pastiche of Berlioz’s music. Characteristic of his sensitivity and modesty was his withdrawal of the work soon after its composition, because he felt that such caricature was small-minded.

WORKS

(selective list)

many MSS in CZ-Pnm

sacred vocal

Mass, D, 4vv, orch, op.44 (Vienna, 1858)

3 grads, incl. Ave maris stella, op.9 (Prague, 1840); Off, op.42 (Wrocław, 1854); TeD, 1863

Choral-Buch zu den katholischen Gesängen (Leitmeritzer Choralbuch), 1844–5 (Litoměřice, ?1846)

other vocal

Böhmens bester Bergsegen (cant., V.A. Svoboda), 1845

c18 Ger. choruses, male vv, 6 each as op.12 (Leipzig, 1840), op.37 (Leipzig, 1853), op.46 (Wrocław, 1858)

Cz. choruses, incl. Na Prahu [To Prague], 1852, Pozdravení pěvcovo [A Singer’s Greeting] (Prague, 1860)

c40 Ger. songs, 1v, pf, incl. Totentanz (J.W. von Goethe), op.14 (Prague, 1840), Waldlieder (K.E. Ebert), op.31 (Leipzig, 1852), Zwiegesang der Elfen (R. Reinick), 2vv, pf, op.35 (Leipzig, 1853)

7 Cz. songs, 1v, pf, incl. Láska neodměněná [Unrequited Love] (J.K. Chmelenský), (Prague, 1838)

instrumental

Orch: Ov., d, op.17 (Leipzig, 1842); Vn Concertino, op.25 (Prague, 1844); Episoda ze života krejčovského [Episode in the Life of a Tailor], 1846; Sym., e, op.49 (Leipzig, 1859)

3 sextets: Allegorische-mythologische-Pastoral-Jubel Overture über das Thema Pepíček, 2 vn, 2 va, vc, db, c1835, ?lost; Serenade, 2 vn, 2 va, vc, db, 1836; Notturno, 6 hn, op.24, 1840

5 qnts, 2 vn, va, 2 vc: F, op.1 (Leipzig, 1835), a, op.2 (Leipzig, 1835), G, op.4 (Leipzig, 1836), Fantasie, 1836, c, op.20 (Leipzig, 1843), Qnt, A, 2 vn, 2 va, vc, op.29 (Leipzig, 1851)

4 str qts: d, op.3 (Leipzig, 1836), E, op.5 (Leipzig, 1837), E, op.7 (Leipzig, 1839), g, op.16 (Leipzig, 1840)

Trio, E , 2 vn, vc, c1830; Pf Trio, D, op.53 (Leipzig, 1860)

Adagio, hp, pf, c1831, Pnm; Les adieux, vc, pf, op.26 (Prague, 1845); many pf works, 20 op. nos.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ČSHS

A.W. Ambros: ‘Václav Jindřich Veit’, Slavoj, iii (1864), 93–6, 108–10, 127–8; Ger. text in Prager Zeitung, xlviii–l (1864)

A. John, ed.: Briefe H.W. Veit aus Eger (Eger [Cheb], 1903)

W. Cartellieri: ‘Erinnerungen an H.W. Veit’, Deutsche Arbeit, iii (Litoměřice, 1903–4), 820–45

K. Fiala: Václav Jindřich Veit (Litoměřice, 1964)

KARL STAPLETON

Vejvanovský, Pavel Josef [Weiwanowsky, Wegwanowsky, Paul Joseph]

(b Hukvaldy or Hlučín, ?c1633 or c1639; d Kroměříž, bur. 24 Sept 1693). Moravian composer, trumpeter and music copyist. He studied at the Jesuit college at Opava, where he is mentioned in a register of students from 1656 to 1660. At this time he became acquainted with H.I.F. von Biber and P.J. Rittler and started to compose. A letter of 15 June 1661 records his appointment as a trumpeter to the administrator E.F. Castelle, who directed activities at the court of the Prince-Bishop of Olomouc, Leopold Wilhelm (a son of Emperor Ferdinand II), who spent much of his time away from Olomouc. Throughout his life Vejvanovský used the title of Feldtrompeter, although he was not qualified to do so. He remained at Kroměříž and in 1664 entered the service of the new prince-bishop, Karl Liechtenstein-Castelcorno, as principal trumpeter and as Kapellmeister; his duties also included the copying of music, and many sets of parts in his hand survive (in CZ-KRa). He possessed his own valuable music collection, and was mainly responsible for the formation of the famous one belonging to the bishop. He seems to have been on very close personal terms with his patron and was one of the highest paid court servants: with a salary in 1690 of 180 florins, he ranked third in the list of the prince-bishop's establishment and is described in various documents as ‘Hof-und Feldtrompeter’. He appears also to have been director of the choir at the collegiate church of St Mořice, where many of his works were performed during his 32 years at Kroměříž. The record of his burial states that he was ‘about 60 years old’ at his death.

All of Vejvanovský's surviving works are found at Kroměříž. Of the 137 works noted in the music inventory from 1695, 127 are complete or in sketches; many doubtful works also exist. Since he played the trumpet it is no surprise to find that he made considerable use of it. In both vocal and instrumental music he wrote for trumpets and trombones in a manner technically superior to that of most of his contemporaries. An exception among them was J.H. Schmelzer, whom Vejvanovský knew and with whom he may well have studied for a time, since his music shows many traits of the school of Schmelzer and others associated with the court of Emperor Leopold I in Vienna. In his trumpet writing he sometimes called for a tromba brevis, which was tuned a tone higher than the normal trumpet. The Missa clamantium (1683) includes the direction ‘two clarinos may be added ad libitum, but they ought to be one tone higher’. In conjunction with information from contemporary German and Italian sources, these specifications can doubtless be interpreted as references to the smaller variety of trumpet known as the tromba piccola or tromba gallica, which was in D rather than C (the usual tuning for military trumpets). One of Vejvanovský's most exceptional pieces of trumpet writing is the church sonata (IV/43), for solo trumpet, strings and continuo, that bears the reference ‘Be mollis’, alluding to what for a trumpet was an unusual tonality. As in a number of other instances, Vejvanovský cleverly employed here the lowered 7th harmonic of a natural trumpet and used several non-harmonic notes to score for the instrument in G minor rather than in the more usual key of C major. In many of his works it is possible to detect the influence of old modal music compositions, including the melody of the Austrian Christmas song Joseph lieber, Joseph mein, once thought to be a Czech folksong.

Vejvanovský's numerous settings of the Mass for various combinations of voices and instruments represent an interesting if not important step in the evolution of mass settings from the contrapuntally imitative works of the early Baroque period to the more homophonic ones (at least as far as the vocal parts are concerned) of Mozart and his contemporaries. At a time when many other composers were employing fugal devices his vocal writing is frequently syllabic and homophonic, though, perhaps because of the esteem in which polyphony was held in church music, he often made token attempts at writing imitative textures. All his sonatas are of the da chiesa type. It is remarkable that he never wrote variations on an ostinato bass, a form popular among his contemporaries.

It is difficult to assess Vejvanovský's influence on other composers, but it may be noted that in a number of works Biber employed motifs and harmonic procedures otherwise found only in Vejvanovský's music. Biber's knowledge of it may well account for the borrowing of trumpet motifs in particular for several sonatas that appeared after he had left for Salzburg. A detailed comparison of the two composers' music might well reveal a number of other similarities. Several works by Biber survive only in copies made by Vejvanovský.

WORKS

all MSS in CZ-KRa; numbers in parentheses refer to Breitenbacher catalogue; the list contains only complete existing works, c70 other works survive incomplete

Editions: Pavel Josef Vejvanovský: Serenate e sonate per orchestra, ed. J. Pohanka, MAB, xxxvi (1950) [P i]Pavel Josef Vejvanovský: Composizioni per orchestra, ed. J. Pohanka, MAB, xlvii–xlix (1960–61) [P ii–iv]

the edns contain works by other composers incorreclty attrib. Vejvanovský by Pohanka

masses

Missa brevis, 4vv, 2 vn, 2 tpt ad lib, 3 trbn ad lib, bc, 1664 (I/98) [authenticity doubtful]

Missa visitationis BVM, 4vv, 2 vn, 2 tpt, 3 trbn, bc, 1665 (I/159)

Missa salvatoris, 4vv, 2 vn, 3 va, 2 tpt, 3 trbn ad lib, bc (org), 1677 (I/265, 83); ed. in Süddeutsche Kirchenmusik des Barock, xxiv (Altötting, 1989)

Missa florida, 5vv, 2 vn, 3 va, 2 tpt, 3 trbn, bc (org), 1678 (I/155)

Missa bonae spei, 4vv, 2 vn, 2 va, 2 tpt, 3 trbn, bc (org), 1679 (I/148, 260)

Missa bonae valetudinis, 5vv, 2 vn, 2 va, 2 tpt, 3 trbn ad lib, bc (org), 1681 (I/262)

Missa, 4vv, 2 vn, 2 va, org, 1682 (I/273a)

Missa martialis, 5vv, 2 vn, 2 va, 2 tpt, 3 trbn, 1682 (I/203; same work as Missa salvatoris)

Missa refugii, 5vv, 2 vn, 2 va, 2 tpt, 3 trbn, bc (org), 1682 (I/199)

Missa S Josephi, 4vv, 2 vn, 2 va, org, 1682 (I/273b)

Missa clamantium, 4vv, 2 vn, 2 va, 2 clarinos ad lib, org, 1683 (I/197)

Missa misericordiae, 4vv, 2 vn, 2 va, org, 1689 (I/274b)

Missa fidelitatis, 4vv, 2 vn, 2 va, 2 tpt, 3 trbn ad lib, bc (org) (I/200)

Missa ‘Rogate’, 4vv, 2 vn, 2 va, bc (I/274a)

Requiem, 4vv, 3 va, org (XIII/27)

offertories, motets

Adeste cherubim, venite seraphim, 4vv, 2 vn, 2 va, org, 1685 (II/79c); Ave martyr purpurate, 4vv, 2 vn, 2 va, 3 va, org, after 1672 (II/78a); Ave sanctissimum redemptoris nostris corpus, 4 solo vv, 4vv, 2 vn, 2 va, vle, 3 trbn, org, 1687 (II/77); Benedicite gentes, 4vv, 2 vn, 2 va, org, 1687 (II/121); Congavdete mecum, 4vv, 2 vn, 3 va, org, 1677 (II/319); Cum complesset Salomon, 4vv, 2 vn, 2 va, org, 1685 (II/795); Estote fortes in bello, 4vv, 2 vn, 2 va, org, 1685 (II/791); Exurgat Deus et dissipentur, 4 solo vv, 4vv, 2 vn, 2 va, 2 tpt, 3 trbn, org, 1687 (II/250); In confessione laudis, 4vv, 2 vn, 2 va, 2 tpt, org, c1675; Media nocte clamor, 4vv, 2 vn, 2 va, org, 1685 (II/796); Medicamen contra pestem, 4vv, 2 vn, 2 va, 3 trbn, bc (org), 1679 (II/83)

O rex gloriae, 4vv, 2 vn, 2 va, org, 1685 (II/797); Pastores eja, 6vv, 2 vn, 4 va, vle, org, 1671 (II/78, 337); Quasi sidus lucidissimum, 4vv, 2 vn, 2 va, org, 1685 (II/79/4); Stella caeli extirpavit, 4 solo vv, 4vv, 2 vn, 2 va, vle, trbn, org, 1679 (II/783); Transfige, o dulcissime, 1656 (II/107), S, 2 vn, 2 trbn, va, org, doubtful; Usquequo exaltabuntur, 4 solo vv, 4vv, 2 vn, 2 va, 3 trbn, org, 1683 (II/67); Usquequo peccatores, 4vv, 2 vn, 2 va, org, 1685 (II/79/2); Vide, Domine, afflictionem, 4vv, 2 vn, 2 va, org, 1685 (II/79/8); Vidi Dominum sedentem, 4 solo vv, 4vv, 2 vn, 3 va, 3 trbn, org, 1677 (II/72)

vespers, litanies, antiphons

Vesperae breves (Dixit only), 4vv, org, 1677 (III/118a)

Vesperae de confessore, 4 solo vv, 4vv, 2 vn, 3 va ad lib, 3 trbn ad lib, vle, bc (org), c1680 (III/50)

Vesperae de sabbatho, 4 solo vv, 4vv, 2 vn, 2 va, vle, org, 1689 (III/44)

Vesperae dominicales et de confessore, 4 solo vv, 4vv, 2 vn, 2 va, org, 1692 (III/53)

Confitebor tibi Domine, 6vv, 2 vn, 3 trbn, 1660 (III/6), doubtful

Litaniae laurentanae, 4 solo vv, 4vv, 2 vn, 3 trbn ad lib, org, 1668 (V/9)

Litaniae laurentanae, 4 solo vv, 4vv, 2 vn, 2 va, 2 tpt, org, 1674 (V/38)

Litaniae laurentanae, 4 solo vv, 4vv, 4 va, 3 trbn, vle, org, 1674 (V/59)

Litaniae BVM breves simplices, 4 solo vv, 4vv, vle, org, 1675 (V/39)

Litaniae laurentanae, 4vv, 2 vn, 3 va, 2 tpt, 3 trbn, org, 1680 (V/76)

Litaniae laurentanae, 4vv, 2 vn, 3 va, 3 trbn, org, 1680 (V/77)

Litaniae laurentanae, 4vv, 2 vn, 3 va, org, 1681 (VI/11/2)

2 Regina coeli, 2 vv, insts, 1678 (IX/10/1–2)

Salve regina, 4 solo vv, 2 vn, org, 1665 (VI/1); Salve regina, B, 2 vn, 2 va, org, 1666 (VI/3); Salve regina, 4 solo vv, 4vv, 3 va, vle, org, 1671 (VI/25); Salve regina, 4vv, 2 vn, 3 va, org, 1681 (VI/11a)

instrumental

Sonata a 4 Be mollis, tpt, vn, 2 va, bc (IV/43), P i

Sonata laetitiae, 2 vn, 3 va, 1666 (IV/11), P ii

Sonata natalis, 2 vn, 4 va, 2 tpt, bc, 1674 (IV/202), P iii

Sonata paschalis, 2 vn, 2 va, bc, 1666 (IV/25), P ii

Sonata S Mauritii, 2 vn, 2 tpt, 3 va, 3 trbn ad lib, 1666 (IV/9)

Sonata S Petri et Pauli, tpt, 3 trbn, vn, 3 va (IV/10, 13), P iv

Sonata sancti Spiritus, 2 vn, 3 va, 1666 (IV/40), P ii

Sonata la posta, 3 vn, 3 trbn, 1667 (IV/35), P iii

Sonata tribus quadrantibus, vn, tpt, trbn, bc, c1667 (IV/176), P iii, Musik des 17. Jahrhunderts und Pavel Vejvanovský: Kroměříž 1993

Sonata venatoria, vn, 2 va, 2 tpt, bc, 1684 (IV/199). P i

Sonata vespertina, 2 vn, 2 tpt, 3 tbn, bc, 1665 (IV/201), P ii

8 untitled sonatas: Sonata a 4, 2 vn, 2 va, org, 1667 (IV/141); Sonata a 5, vn, 2 va, tpt, trbn, org, c1666 (IV/70), P iv; Sonata a 5, 2 vn, 3 va, org, 1666 (IV/146), P iii; Sonata a 5, 2 vn, 3 trbn, org, 1667 (IV/140); Sonata a 5, 2 vn, 3 va, org, 1167 (IV/47), P ii; Sonata a 5, 2 vn, 3 va, org, 1667 (IV/214); Sonata a 5, 2 vn, 3 va, org, 1667 9IV/189); Sonata a 5, vn, 2 va, 2 tpt, org, after 1680 (IV/200); Sonata a 5, vn, 2 va, 2 tpt, vle, org, 1689 (IV/224), P iv; Sonata a 6, 2 vn, 4 va, org, 1666 (IV/156), P ii; Sonata a 6, 2 vn, 3 va, org, 1666 (IV.181), P iii; Sonata a 6, 2 vn, tpt, 2 cornetts, vle, org c1666 (IV/177), P iv; Sonata a 7, 2 vn, 3 vle, 2 trpt, org, 1666 (IV/69), P iii; Sonata a 7, 2 vn, 3 va, 2 tpt, org, 1666 (IV/157), P ii; Sonata a 8, vn, 3 va, tpt, 3 trbn, org, c1667 (IV/13); Sonata a 10, 2 vn, 3 va, 2 va da gamba, 2 tpt, org, 1665 (IV/147), P ii; Sonata a 10, 2 vn, 2 va, 2 tpt, 3 trbn, org, 1666 (IV/178), P ii; Sonata a 10, 2 vn, 3 va, 2 tpt, 3 trbn, org, 1666 (IV/198), P iii;

Balletti, vn, 2 va, tpt, 2 trbn, hpd, c1670 (XIV/123), doubtful

Balletti pro tabula, 2 vn, 2 va, vle, org, 1670 (XIV/180), P iii

Balletti per il carnuale, vn, 2 va, vle, 2 tpt, 3 piffari, hpd vle, 1688 (XIV/165), P iv

Intrada con altre ariae, vn, 2 va, vle, 3 piffari, bn, 2 tpt, org, 1679 (XIV/92), P iii

Intrada, vn, 2 va, vle, 2 tpt, hpd, 1683 (XIV/124), P iv

Offertur ad 2 choros, 2 vn, 6 va, vle/hpd, 1692 (XIV/44), P iv

Serenada, vn, 2 va, 2 tpt, hpd, 1670 (XIV/91), P i

Serenada, 2 vn, 2 va, 2 vle, 5 tpt, timp, 1680 (XIV/98), P iv

Ingressus, vn, 2 va, 2 tpt, bc, before 1690 (XIV/245)

Serenada, vn, 3 va, 5 tpt, vle/hpd, timp, 1691 (XIV/45), P iv

BIBLIOGRAPHY

P. Nettl: ‘Zur Geschichte der Musikkapelle des Fürstbischofs Karl Liechtenstein-Kastelkorn von Olmütz’, ZMw, iv (1921–2), 485–96

J. Sehnal: ‘Společenský profil Pavla Vejvanovského podle kroměřížských matrik’ [The social profile of P.V. after the church registres of Kroměříž], Zprávy Vlastivědného ústavu v Olomouci, cxx (1964)

D.L. Smithers: The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet before 1721 (London, 1973)

J. Trojan: ‘Modální prvky v nástrojové tvorbě Pavla Vejvanovského’ [Modal elements in the instrumental music of Pavel Vejvanovský], HV, xv (1978), 234–45

J. Sehnal: ‘Trubači a hra na přirozenou trompetu na Moravě v 17. a 18. století’ [Trumpeters and trumpet playing in Moravia in the 17th and 18th centuries], Acta musei Moraviae, lxxiii (1988), 175–207; lxxiv (1989), 255–68

J. Sehnal: ‘Hudba pro trompetu v 17. a 18. století na Moravě’ [Music for the trumpet in Moravia in the 17th and 18th centuries], Acta musei Moraviae, lxxv (1990), 173–203

J. Sehnal: Pavel Vejvanovský (Kroměříž, 1993)

Musik des 17. Jahrhunderts und Pavel Vejvanovský: Kroměříž 1993

J. Sehnal and J. Pešková: Caroli de Liechtenstein-Castelcorno episcopi Olomucensis operums artis musicae collectio Cremsirii reservata (Prague, 1998), 571–649

J. Sehnal: ‘Pavel Vejvanovskýs Beziehungen zu Schlesien’, Untersuchungen und Darstellungen zur Musikgeschichte des ehemaligen Osterreichisch-Schlesien: Troppau 1993 (forthcoming)

DON SMITHERS/JIŘÍ SEHNAL

Vejvodová, Hana

(b Prague, 11 July 1963; d Prague, 1 Aug 1994). Czech composer. She studied composition with Ilja Hurník and Svatopluk Havelka at the Prague Conservatory and at the Academy of Performing Arts. She graduated in 1993 with her Piano Concerto, playing the solo part in the first performance. In 1990 she studied with Donatoni in Siena, and in 1993 she attended the Congress of Women Composers in Heidelberg. She wrote about 40 works, many of them for piano, including a Sonata for piano duet (1985) composed and published while she was still a student, which was widely performed by the Czech duo of Helena and Radomír Melmuka. Apart from pieces written specifically for children, her music is dramatic and expressionistic.

WORKS

Orch: Serenade, str, 1985–6; Passacaglia, 1986; Deliranda, sym. movt, 1988–9; Arkánum [Mystery], 1990–1; Conc., pf, chbr orch, 1992–3

Chbr: Duetina, fl, vn, 1982; Wind Qt, 1984–5; Elegy, vn, org, 1985; Suite, 3 cl, 1985; Dumka, ob, pf, 1986; Trio, 2 fl, pf, 1987–8; Qt Movt, str, 1987; Brass Qnt, 1988; Dodecaphonic Suite, 2 cl, 1990; Odstíny mládí [Shades of Youth], ob, pf, 1991

Pf: 5 pieces, 1982; Etude, 1982; Sonatina no.1, 1983; Sonatina no.2, G, 1983; 10 Vars on a Theme by Beethoven, 1983; Sonata no.1, C, 1984; Quijotská suita [Don Quixote Suite], 2 pf, 1984; Sonata [no.1], 1985, piano duet; 6 études; Sonatina no.3, 1986; Sonata no.2 ‘Zpověď’ [Confession], 1988–90; Svítání [Dawn], 1992; 8 Bagatelles, 1993; Sonata no.3 ‘Pocta ‘přírodě’ [Tribute to Nature]; Sonata-Fantasia no.4 ‘Sudba’ [Fate], 1994; Short Stories [10 pieces], 1994

Vocal: Píseň o zabitém milém [Song of the Slain Lover], women’s vv, 1983; Pohádka [A Tale], mixed choir, 1984–5; Cyklus tři milostných písní [Cycle of 3 Love Songs], women’s vv, 1983–5; Ze zpěvů o zániku ríše MU [Songs on the Rall of the Empire of MU], mixed choir, 1989–90; Pěšiny lásky [Pathways of Love], S, pf, 1990

Pf music and songs for children

Principal publisher: Czech Music Fund

MIROSLAV PUDLÁK

Velasco, Nicolás Doizi de.

See Doizi de Velasco, Nicolás.

Velasco, Sebastián López de.

See López de Velasco, Sebastián.

Velasco Llanos, Santiago

(b Cali, 28 Jan 1915; d Cali 14 May 1996). Colombian composer. He studied with Valencia at the Cali Conservatory (1933–41) and graduated in composition at the University of Chile, where he studied with Domingo Santa Cruz, Pedro Humberto Allende, Humberto Isamitt and Armando Carvajal. On his return to Colombia, he succeeded Uribe Holguín as director of the Conservatorio Nacional de Musica in Bogotá (1950–53) and from 1956–60 he was director of the Cali Conservatory. He played a vital role in the development of musical institutions in Colombia, not least of the Colombia SO, of which he was a founding member. Also a founding member of the National Ballet of Colombia and the Interamerican Music Council (1956), from 1961 he concentrated on his activities as composer, teacher and choral conductor, and as music critic of El país in Cali (1981–96). He is one of the most representative nationalist composers, and his most frequently performed works, the Symphony no.2 (1966) and the symphonic poem on a folksong from the Pacific coast, Tío Guachupecito (1967), reflect a rich harmonic language and rhythmic flair.

WORKS

(selective list)

Vocal: A unos ojos (G. de Cetina), madrigal, SATB, 1938; Dos perrorurín, madrigal, SATB, 1940; Eripe me Domine, motet, chorus, 1940; Kyrie, double fugue for 5, motet, chorus, 1944; Ave Maria, motet, chorus, 1953; 8 villancicos caleños, SATB, 1956–80; Instantes de mi tierra, bambuco, SATB, 1958; O salutaris hostia, motet, chorus, 1959; Allá arriba en aquel alto, bambuco, SATB, 1960; Misa a Santa María de Los Angeles, chorus, 1961; Canción de cuna caleña, madrigal, SATB, 1962; Tío Guachupecito, madrigal, SATB, timp, 1967; Canción de cuna, madrigal, SATB, 1980; Laudate Domino, chorus, 1984

Orch: Danza indígena, 1944; Fugue, d, str, 1944; Sym. no.1 ‘Breve’, 1949; Temas infantiles, 1945–85; El monumento, band, 1958; Sym. no.2, str, 1966; Tío Guachupecito, 1967; Ritmos andinos de Colombia, 1979; Pasodoble Diego Salcedo, band, 1986

Chbr and solo inst: 3 pasillos colombianos, pf, 1930; Valses simples, pf, 1930; Valses sentimentales, pf, 1936; Preludio, E, pf, 1940; 3 miniaturas, pf, 1942; Romanza, vn, pf, 1945; Str Qt no.1, C, 1945; Str Qt, F, 1946; 3 obras, pf, 1958; Adagio, org, 1975; Fugue, org, 1975; Rondó, pf, 1990

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Santiago Velasco Llanos, ed. Pan American Union (Washington DC, 1966)

J.-J. Prevost: ‘Le compositeur colombien Santiago Velasco Llanos’, Education musicale, nos.299–300 (1983), 63–4

SUSANA FRIEDMANN

Velasco Maidana, José María

(b Sucre, 4 July 1896; d Houston, 2 Dec 1989). Bolivian composer and conductor. He was probably a choirboy in the Sucre Cathedral capilla musical, directed by Lorenzo Andreotti. Later he studied at the Fontova Conservatory in Buenos Aires. Returning to Bolivia in 1925, he founded the cinema enterprise Urania, which he continued to own, and in which he worked as producer, director and actor for silent films, for which he provided the music. He taught music history at the La Paz Conservatory from 1928. In subsequent years several works were performed both in La Paz and abroad, including Cuento brujo (1935) and Los khusillos (1936), both performed in Buenos Aires by the Radio el Mundo Orchestra in 1937 with the composer conducting.

In 1938 he was invited by the German government to perform Danza del viento with the Kurzwellensender RO of Berlin, and his ballet Amerindia was performed by Deutsche Tanzbühne in Berlin. The following year he returned to Bolivia and founded the Orquesta Sinfónica de Conciertos, which formed the basis of the National SO, created in 1945. He conducted this orchestra in several of his symphonic works and in Amerindia (staged in 1940). From 1943 he gave concerts in Lima, Cali and Mexico City, where he lived until 1956. Finaly he settled in Houston, Texas, where he composed and gave lectures. He returned to Bolivia only once, two years before his death, attending a concert with the National SO and receiving an ovation when the audience noticed his presence.

WORKS

(known)

Stage: Amerindia (ballet, choreog. Velasco-Maidana), perf. 1938; Churayna (op-ballet, 4), 1965

Orch: Cuento brujo, sym. poem, 1935; Los khusillos, sym. poem, 1936; Danza del viento, sym. poem, 1938; Estampas de mi tierra, sym. poem, 1941; Los hijos del sol, ov., 1941; Vida de cóndores, 1943; Joyio, 1943; María Asúnsolo, sym., 1944; Chaska Laikha, 1948; Imágines, 1948; Forma y color, 1949; Preludio y Huayño, 1949; Sones de la tierra, 1949

Chbr: Madrigal, vn, pf, 1942; Vieja leyenda, vn, pf, 1942; Suite andina, wind qnt, 1956; Estrella inca, vn, pf, 1957; Canciones indias al amanecer, vn, pf, 1958; Paisaje andino, str qt, 1958; Pensamientos indios, ww trio, 1959; Rio Quirpinchaca, cl, pf, 1960; Wind Qnt, 1965

CARLOS SEOANE

Velásques [Velásquez, Velázquez], José Francisco

(fl early 19th century). Venezuelan composer. He held appointments at the churches of S Mauricio (1812–15, 1817, 1819–21), S Pablo (1812–25) and S Jacinto (1816, 1818 and 1825) in Caracas. In 1816 he took over the music for the feast of ‘Naval’ from Cayetano Carreño, and a year later he was paid for providing military music. He may possibly be identified with composers of the same or very similar names mentioned in Caracas records around this period. It was probably Velásques’s father, also José Francisco Velásques, who was a musician at S Mauricio in 1793–4 and founder of a music school; he was a brother-in-law of the composer J.M. Olivares. Others with similar names (including a Francisco Velázquez Sojo) were employed at S Mauricio, S Rosalia and Divina Pastora between 1827 and 1844.

A substantial body of sacred music by Velásques survives in the archiepiscopal archive at Caracas, where there is also music by other composers of the same name and some music ascribed simply to ‘Velásquez’. Information on all these composers is to be found in records in the same archive.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

J.A. Calcaño: La ciudad y su música (Caracas, 1958/R)

SHARON E. GIRARD

Velásquez, Glauco

(b Naples, 23 March 1884; d Rio de Janeiro, 21 June 1914). Brazilian composer. His formal education was entrusted to a priest who encouraged him to sing in Neapolitan church choirs. In 1897 he was sent to Brazil and enrolled at the Instituto Nacional de Música where he studied music theory and choral singing. After a short interruption in his studies he went back to the Instituto in 1903 to study harmony under Frederico Nascimento (who also influenced his compositional tendencies) and composition under Francisco Braga. For a time he taught in a private school but tuberculosis prevented him from developing any real professional life. In 1911 he presented some of his works at a public concert which received a favourable review from the music critic Rodrigues Barbosa.

Velasquez began to compose in 1901 but his more mature works were written during the last eight years of his life. Unlike most of his contemporaries, who adhered to either a post-Romantic or a nationalist style, he found close affinity in his later works with the French school of Franck, d’Indy and Debussy, thus breaking away from the prevailing German Romanticism. His works include a string quartet, four trios, two fantasias for cello and piano, a violin sonata, and various piano works and solo songs. He also left an unfinished opera Soeur Béatrice and several religious choral works.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

R. Almeida: História da música brasileira (Rio de Janeiro, 1926, 2/1942)

L.H.C. de Azevedo: Música e músicos do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro, 1950)

L.H.C. de Azevedo: 150 anos de música no Brasil (1800–1950) (Rio de Janeiro, 1956)

V. Mariz: História da música no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro, 1981, 4/1994)

GERARD BÉHAGUE

Velázquez, José Francisco.

See Velásques, José Francisco.

Veldeke, Hendrik van.

See Hendrik van Veldeke.

Velden, Renier van der.

See Van Der Velden, Renier.

Vel'gorsky, Matyev Yur'yevich.

See Wielhorski, mateusz.

Veličkova, Ljuba.

See Welitsch, Ljuba.

Velimirović, Miloš

(b Belgrade, 10 Dec 1922). American musicologist of Serbian origin. He gained a diploma in the history of fine arts at the University of Belgrade and attended the music academy there. In 1952 he began graduate studies at Harvard, taking the MA in 1953 and the PhD in 1957. At Harvard he studied with Gombosi and Piston; he also worked with Egon Wellesz. After teaching at Yale (1957–69), he was appointed professor of music history at the University of Wisconsin (1969–73); he became professor at the University of Virginia in 1973 and received a Fulbright fellowship to teach in Yugoslavia in 1985. He retired in 1993.

Velimirović’s research interests are Byzantine and Slavonic (especially Russian) music and Slavonic chant; as a teacher he specializes in research methods. From 1958 to 1973 he was general editor of Collegium musicum. His major contributions to research in Eastern chant include Studies in Eastern Chant, which he edited and contributed to (1966–79) and his articles and monograph in the series Monumenta Musicae Byzantine. The book, which grew out of his dissertation, is one of the first studies to explore possible borrowings between Slavonic and Greek chant melodies; his examination of a heirmologion from the Chilandari Monastery indicates borrowings of both music and notational features in the Slavonic heirmoi. His later writings have concentrated on the music of Eastern Southern Slavs.

WRITINGS

Byzantine Elements in Early Slavic Chant (diss., Harvard U., 1957; enlarged, MMB, Subsidia, iv, 1960)

‘Russian Autographs at Harvard’, Notes, xvii (1959–60), 539–58

‘Liturgical Drama in Byzantium and Russia’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, xvi (1962), 351–85

‘Recent Soviet Articles on Music Theory’, JMT, vi (1962), 283–93

‘Joakeim Monk of the Harsianites Monastery and Domestikos of Serbia’, Zbornik radova Vizantološkog Instituta recueil de travaux de l’Institut d’études byzantines, viii (1963–4), 451–8

‘Study of Byzantine Music in the West’, Balkan Studies, v (1964), 63–76

‘Giovanni Sebenico’, MZ, i (1965), 49–58

‘The Influence of the Byzantine Chant on the Music of the Slavic Countries’, Byzantine Studies XIII: Oxford 1966, 119–40

‘Two Composers of Byzantine Music: John Vatatzes and John Laskaris’, Aspects of Medieval and Renaissance Music: a Birthday Offering to Gustav Reese, ed. J. LaRue and others (New York, 1966/R), 818–31

‘Unknown Stichera for the Feast of St. Athanasios of Mount Athos’, Studies in Eastern Chant, i (London, 1966), 108–29

with D. Stefanović: ‘Peter Lampadarios and Metropolitan Serafim’, ibid., 67–88

‘Cristoforo Ivanovich from Budva: the first Historian of the Venetian Opera’, Zvuk, nos.77–8 (1967), 135–45

‘Musique byzantine’, Encyclopédie des musiques sacrées, ed. J. Porte, ii (Paris, 1969), 145–64

‘The Pre-English Use of the Term “Virginal”’, Essays in Musicology in Honor of Dragan Plamenac, ed. G. Reese and R.J. Snow (Pittsburgh, 1969/R), 341–52

‘The Musical Works of Theoleptos, Metropolitan of Philadelphia’, Studies in Eastern Chant, ii (London, 1971), 155–65

‘Present Status of Research in Byzantine Music’, AcM, xliii (1971), 1–20

‘The “Bulgarian” Musical Pieces in Byzantine Musical Manuscripts’, IMSCR XI: Copenhagen 1972, 790–96

‘The Present Status of Research in Slavic Chant’, AcM, xliv (1972), 235–65

‘The Byzantine Heirmos and Heirmologion’, Gattungen der Musik in Einzeldarstellungen: Gedenkschrift Leo Schrade, ed. W. Arlt and others (Berne, 1973), 192–244

‘Egon Wellesz and the Study of Byzantine Chant’, MQ, lxii (1976), 265–77

‘Belgrade as Subject of Musical Compositions’, MZ, xvii (1981), 147–64

‘Beginnings of National Music Cultures Among the Southern Slavs’, Serbian Studies, ii (1982–3), 61–70

‘Stevan Mokranjac’, Landmarks in Serbian Culture and History, ed. V.D. Mihailovich (Pittsburgh, 1983), 208–21

‘The Melodies of the Ninth-Century Kanon for St. Demetrius’, Russian and Soviet Music: Essays for Borsi Schwarz, ed. M.H. Brown (Ann Arbor, 1984), 9–34

‘A Papadike in the Hilandar Ms. 703/ii’, Dzielo Muzyczne: Teoria, Historia, Interpretacja, ed. I. Poniatowska (Kraków, 1984), 31–8

‘Some Letters of Pavel Chesnokov in the United States’, Slavonic and Western Music: Essays for Gerald Abraham, ed. M.H. Brown and R.J. Wiley (Oxford, 1985), 254–69

‘Changing Interpretations of Music’, New Literary History, xvii (1986), 365–80

‘Russian Musicians Outside Russia in the Twentieth Century’, MMA, xii (1987), 234–43

‘Christian Chant in Syria, Armenia, Egypt, and Ethiopa’, ‘Byzantine Chant’, NOHM, ii (2/1990), 3–22, 26–48

‘Byzantine Musical Traditions Among the Slavs’, The Byzantine Tradition After the Fall of Constantinople, ed. J.J. Yiannis (Charlottesville, VA, 1991), 95–105

ed., with W. Brumfield: Christianity and the Arts in Russia (Cambridge, 1991)

‘Warsaw, Moscow and St. Petersburg’, The Late Baroque Era: from the 1680s to 1740, ed. G. Buelow (Basingstoke, 1993), 436–65

‘The First Organ Builder in Russia’, Literary and Musical Notes: a Festschrift for Wm.A. Little, ed. G.C. Orth (Berne, 1995), 219–28

‘History of Art Music in Serbia’, Serbian Studies, ix (1995), 80–87; x (1996), 42–58

PAULA MORGAN

Vella, Joseph

(b Gozo, Malta, 9 Jan 1942). Maltese composer and conductor. He studied with his father, then at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana, Siena, with Donatoni (composition) and Ferrara (conducting); in 1970 he graduated from the University of Durham. In 1958 he composed a suite, Three Mood Pieces, for violin and piano, later reworked for orchestra, which introduced him to the public as a composer. Trained as a teacher, he worked alongside the Austrian Verena Maschat to set up the Government School of Music in Valletta (1972). In 1994 he was appointed Associate Professor of Music at the University of Malta.

As a conductor, Vella has a wide repertory and has received invitations to appear in Europe and East Asia. During his long association with the Malta Choral Society (1970–92), the Astra Opera House, Gozo (since 1970), and other organizations, he introduced to the Maltese public choral works by Mozart, Beethoven, Britten, Orff and Bruckner. His continuing interest in early Maltese music led to the revival of significant 17th- and 18th-century works, which he edited and performed. His conducting is respectful of the composer's perceived inclinations and manifests an intuitive feeling for large-scale musical architecture and rhythmic continuity, and an emphasis on the singing line.

Vella's compositions are all cast in a personal idiom which stems mainly from a neo-classicist orientation. Although the Mediterranean influence does emerge in such works as Seħer, his works are never consciously nationalistic. His language is basically atonal, with a tendency to precipitate towards a central note. His diversity of style ranges from the pungent asperities of his String Quartet to the lyricism of the Canticle Cantata, from the impulsive exuberance of the Violin Concerto to the ascetic flavour of his a cappella works (e.g. Sicut cervus). Those of his works composed to a Maltese text seek to explore the inherent musicality of the Maltese language, an example being the high soprano cantilena in the second movement of the Sinfonia.

WORKS

(selective list)

Orch: Sinfonia ‘De profundis’, op.11, chbr orch, 1969; Ov. alla concertante, op.23, 1976; Pf Conc., op.41, 1984; Sinfonietta, str, op.36, 1984; Rebbieħa [Victorious], Sym. poem, op.45, 1986 [version of work for wind band, 1983]; Jubilo, ov., op.47, str, brass, perc, 1987; Sinfonia (J. Friggieri), op.48, S, orch, 1989; Elegy, vc, orch, op.66, 1993; Vn Conc., op.65, 1993; Vc Conc., op.75, 1995; Concertino, op.77, vc, orch, 1996; Fl Conc., op.76, 1996

Vocal-orch: Mass, D, op.20, S, T, B, SATB, orch, 1975; Laudate pueri Dominum, sacred cant., op.20b, S, T, B, SATB, orch, 1981; Domine Jesu Christe, op.38, SATB, orch, 1984; Seħer [Enchantment] (song cycle, D. Massa), op.39, S, orch, 1984; A Canticle Cant. (Bible: Song of Solomon, adapted by Vella), op.42, S, T, SATB, children's choir, orch, 1985; Demm fuq il-Verna [Blood on the Verna] (orat., M. Vella), op.49, S, S, S, A, T, B, SATB, orch, 1989; Il-Belt Rebbieħa [The Victorious City] (orat., O. Friggieri), op.50, S, T, SATB, orch, 1990; Poeżiji tal-Bahrija [The Bahrija Poems] (song cycle, J. Friggieri), op.53, T, orch, 1991; Rewwixta [Revolt] (orat., O. Friggieri), op.54, S, A, T, Bar, SATB, orch, 1992; Nisġiet l-Imħabba [Love Textures] (song cycle, A. Mizzi), op.64, Bar, orch, 1993; Askesis (song cycle, M. Azzopardi), op.72, C, orch, 1994

Other vocal: The Seasons (madrigal cycle, T. Nash, W. Shakespeare), op.31, SSATB, 1980; Missa brevis, op.40, SSAA, 1984; L-Għanja tal-Ħajja [Life's Song] (secular cant., A. Mizzi), op.60, Bar, ob, hp, 1992; Il cantico delle creature (St Francis of Assisi), op.61, S, fl, hp, 1992; Passeggero (song cycle, A. Porta), op.63, T, fl, ob, bn, 1993; Quasi un madrigale (S. Quasimodo), op.67 high v, fl, pf, 1993; Rorate coeli, op.48, SSAA, 1996

Chbr: 3 Mood Pieces, vn, pf (1958) (arr. orch, op.4, 1965); Trio concertante, op.7, vn, hn, pf, 1968; 2 cantilene, op.12, pf qt, 1970; Cl Qnt, op.16, 1973; 5 Miniatures, op.24, pf trio, 1976; Ħaġar Gim [Ballet Music], op.25, fl, ob, perc, 1978; Str Qt, op.33, 1981; Dialoghetti, op.35, va, pf, 1983; Piece for Brass Qnt, op.55, 1992; Capriccio, op.62, vn, pf, 1993; Fantasia, op.86, org, 1996

BIBLIOGRAPHY

J. Aquilina: ‘Mro. Joseph Vella’, Sunday Times [Malta] (18 Oct 1987)

P.A. Snook: ‘Vella’,Fanfare, xix/3 (1995–6), 38

JOSEPH VELLA BONDIN

Vella, Michel’Angelo [Michaele Angelo]

(b Senglea, Malta, 7 Nov 1710; d Cospicua, Malta, 25 Dec 1792). Maltese composer and teacher. From boyhood, he was intended for the Catholic priesthood. On 14 July 1730 he left Malta for Naples to study at the Conservatorio Pietà dei Turchini with the primo maestro Nicola Fago, the secondo maestro Andrea Basso, and after 1734 also with Leonardo Leo. He returned to Malta in early 1738, where he undertook the duties of a priest and established himself as a maestro di musica. The first truly influential Maltese teacher, he reformed music education, fighting indifference and technical incompetence, and bringing it into line with developments in Naples. His students included Salvatore Magrin, Giuseppe Burlon, Antonio Freri, Francesco Azopardi and Nicolò Isouard. As an organist and maestro di cappella he accepted numerous temporary commissions in the most important Maltese churches before obtaining permanent employment in 1762 at the parish church of Cospicua. His extant works reveal contrapuntal craftsmanship, and his concern with the place of plainchant in an era of rapid musical innovation is evident in his sacred works. In the introit Salve sancta parens, for example, the tight, fugally-treated three-subject antiphon is followed by the psalm verse and Gloria in the second tone. The antiphon is then repeated. Fétis erroneously gives Vella’s name as P. de Vella.

WORKS

sacred vocal

in Cospicua, Parish Church, unless otherwise stated

Sancta et Immacolata Virginitatas, motet, 3vv, db, 1763

Miserere, 4vv, db, 1765

Christus factus est, 4vv, db, Mdina, Cathedral Museum

Dies irae, 4vv, org, I-Nc

Libera me, 4vv, org, db

Litanie, 4vv, 2 vn, other insts, inc.

Salve sancta parens, 4vv, bc

Stabat mater, lost

serenatas and cantatas

music lost, texts in Valletta, National Library of Malta

Serenata, 1740

La virtù trionfante (serenata, ‘D’Ufranio Vasantino da Ormepla’), 1741

Cantata per maggio (F. Cavallo), 1746

Gloria mundi (B. Bernardi), 1746

Gli applausi della fama (serenata, G. Ciantar as ‘Brillante Socio Colombario’), 1758

instrumental works

Sei sonate, 3 vn, b, op.1 (Paris, 1768)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

FétisB

MGG1 (U. Prota-Giurleo)

G.A. Vassallo: ‘Biografia di Don Michel’Angelo Vella’, L’Arte, lxxvii (1866), 2–5 [incl. portrait]

U. Rolandi: Musica e musicisti in Malta (Livorno, 1932)

J. Vella Bondin: ‘Maltese Composers of Calendimaggio Cantatas: Don Michel’Angelo Vella’, The Sunday Times, Malta, 29 May 1994, pp.28–9

JOSEPH VELLA BONDIN

Vello de Torices, Benito.

See Bello de Torices, Benito.

Vellones, Pierre [Rousseau, Pierre]

(b Paris, 29 March 1889; d Paris, 17 July 1939). French composer. He began his musical studies with Jean Hugues Louvier, and then taught himself. His wish to become a professional musician clashed with his father’s will, and he was obliged to study medicine; he worked as a doctor until his early death, and was a pioneer in the use of electrotherapy. However, composition was his second profession, and he soon made his mark with works whose originality won him a considerable place in the musical life of Paris between the wars. All his life Vellones showed a lively interest in new timbres and unusual instrumental ensembles; from 1930 onwards he was one of the first composers to write for the ondes martenot. Another of his favourite instruments was the saxophone, for which he wrote a concerto, and which he used in various ensembles including symphonic jazz groups. He was also fascinated by percussion, and he introduced Tibetan instruments into his ballet Le paradis d’Amitabha.

His music, spontaneous in inspiration, delicate and sometimes humorous, often shows the influence of jazz. His love of the exotic also finds its way into many of his works. He excelled in the field of the mélodie and in pieces for small instrumental ensembles.

WORKS

Stage (all unperf.): Grenade assiégée (ballet, A. Birabeau), op.8, 1918; Le beau ténébreux (ballet, Birabeau and M. Hervieu), op.10, 1919; Au pays du tendre (ballet, R. Kerdyk and G. Arnoux), op.14; Leurs petites majestés (operetta, M. Larrouy), op.43, 1931; Le paradis d’Amitabha (ballet, Vellones), op.97, 1937–9

Orch and ens: Conc., op.65, fl, sax, orch, 1934; 2 Pieces for Columbia, op.67, ondes martenot, ens, 1935; Rastelli, op.82, 4 sax, orch, 1936; Rondo capriccioso, op.88, vn, orch, 1937; A Cadix, op.103, 2 ondes martenot, ens, 1938; Suite cavalière, op.90

Vocal: Prélude et danse indienne, op.16, chorus, orch, 1923; Le cantique des cantiques (J. Lahor), op.18, S, T, B, fl, bn, 1925; 5 poèmes de Mallarmé, op.24, 1v, 4 hp, 2 sax, db, 1929; Préludes et fables de Florian, op.28, 1v, jazz ens, 1929; Cantate de Saint Venceslas (K. Toman), op.45, solo vv, chorus, org, bells, timp, 1931; John Shag (G. de Voisins), op.58, 1v, orch, 1933; La fête fantastique, op.83, B, ens, 1937; Le Roi Salomon (Lahor), op.93, solo vv, chorus, orch, 1938; numerous songs for 1v, pf

Chbr: Cavaliers andalous, op.37, 4 sax, 1930; Impressions d’Espagne, op.68, fl, bn, hp, 1934; Rapsodie, op.92, sax, hp, cel, perc, 1937; Trio, op.94, fl, ob/va, hp, 1938

Pf: Planisphère, op.23, 1928, arr. jazz ens, 1928; Au jardin des bêtes sauvages, op.26, 1929, arr. 4 sax, 1929; Valse chromatique, op.41, 1931, arr. 4 sax, 1931; Ballade, op.42, 2 pf, 1931, arr. pf, orch, 1931; Le bal Binetti, op.60, 1933; Toccata, op.74, 1936

Film scores, incid music

Principal publishers: Choudens, Durand, Lemoine

BIBLIOGRAPHY

R. Bernard: Histoire de la musique (Paris, 1962), 938

S. Vellones: Pierres Vellones: vingt années d’une vie musicale parisienne (Paris, 1981) [incl. complete list of works]

JACQUES TCHAMKERTEN

Velluti, Giovanni Battista

(b Montolmo [now Corridonia], Ancona, 28 Jan 1780; d Sambruson di Dolo, Venice, 22 Jan 1861). Italian soprano castrato. He studied in Bologna, then for six years with Calpi in Ravenna, and made his début at Forlì in 1801. Two years later he was in Naples, singing in the première of P.C. Guglielmi's Asteria e Teseo and in Andreozzi's Piramo e Tisbe. He appeared in Rome from 1805 to 1808 in Nicolini's La selvaggia nel Messico and Traiano in Dacia (première), Tritto's Andromaca e Pirro and Cimarosa's Gli Orazi ed i Curiazi. At La Scala he sang in Nicolini's Coriolano (1808), Federici's Ifigenia in Aulide and Lavigna's Orcamo (1809), and Mayr's Raùl di Créqui and Pavesi's Arminio (1810). He also sang in Venice and in 1811 he appeared in Turin in Nicolini's Angelica e Medoro. The following year he visited Vienna and Munich. Returning to Milan, he created Arsace in Rossini's Aureliano in Palmira (1813).

Over the next three years he sang in Nicolini's Quinto Fabio (1814, Milan), Carlo Magno (1814, Sinigaglia) and Balduino (1816, Padua), and also sang in Turin in Bonfichi's Abradate e Dircea; after a tour of Germany and a visit to St Petersburg, he sang again in Turin in Nicolini's Eroe di Lancastro (1821), an opera he repeated in Bergamo. Tebaldo, in Morlacchi's Tebaldo e Isolina, which he sang in Venice, Reggio nell'Emilia, Parma and Verona, became his favourite role. In 1823 he returned to Venice to sing in Mercadante's Andronico, and in 1824 he created Armando in Meyerbeer's Il crociato in Egitto at La Fenice.

Engaged at the King's Theatre, London, he made his début there in 1825, arousing curiosity and, later, enthusiasm. He made his final appearance, in Nicolini's Il conte di Lennox, at La Fenice in 1830. The last of the great castrato singers, Velluti was without rival during the greater part of his career; his retirement marked the end of an era in operatic history.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

C. Parolari: ‘Giambattista Velluti, ultimo dei sopranisti sulle liriche scene’, RMI, xxxix (1932), 263–98

A. Heriot: The Castrati in Opera (London, 1956/R)

ELIZABETH FORBES

Veloce

(It.: ‘swift’, ‘rapid’, ‘quick’).

An adjective used in several musical contexts. Nicola Vicentino (1555) described the quaver (fusa) as veloce, and several other writers in the 16th and 17th centuries used the word in its purely adjectival sense: for instance, Michael Praetorius twice gave the equation presto: velociter: geschwind (1618 and 1621). As a tempo designation it was used by Adriano Banchieri for one of the many changes in ‘La battaglia’ from L’organo suonarino (1611). Clementi used veloce in his Gradus ad Parnassum (1817), and Chopin for one of the variations in his Là ci darem set op.2, with the qualification ma accuratamente. Later it was used more for ad libitum passages in quick movements, as, for instance, a scale passage or similar figure in a cadenza. It did not necessarily indicate an increased speed, but a smooth flow lasting evenly until the end of the passage or figure to which it applied. In the majority of cases it was applied to loud passages, as, for instance, in the finale of Schumann’s F minor sonata op.11. Chopin, in the slow movement of his Second Concerto, coupled velocissimo with delicatissimo. Velocissimo is also found in Vicentino (1555), who used it to describe a semiquaver (semifusa), in Brossard’s Dictionaire (1703) and in Czerny’s Etudes de la vélocité. The form con velocità also appears.

For bibliography see Tempo and expression marks.

J.A. FULLER MAITLAND/DAVID FALLOWS

Velocissimo.

See Veloce.

Veloso, Caetano (Emanuel Viana Teles)

(b Santo Amaro, Bahia, Brazil, 7 Aug 1942). Brazilian songwriter and singer. After early schooling in Santo Amaro he moved to Salvador, where he learned the guitar and sang in local bars with his sister, Maria Bethânia. In 1963 he met Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa and Tom Zé, and together they organized musical shows, notably Nós, por exemplo, directed by Veloso for the inauguration of the Vila Velha theatre in 1964. He entered the Federal University of Bahia, but left for Rio de Janeiro in 1965, the same year that his sister made the first recording of a song by him, É de manha. In 1967 his song Alegria, alegria brought him national attention when presented at the third Música Popular Brasiliera festival; challenging the prejudices of the very modernity of Brazilian popular music, it also included an accompaniment by the Argentine pop-rock group, the Beat Boys.

With the release of the album Tropicália ou Panis et Circensis in 1968, he launched the Tropicália movement with Gil, Costa, Zé, Torquato Neto and others, radically rethinking the nature of contemporary Brazilian culture. In the same year, both Veloso and Gil were placed under house arrest by the military government and a few months later left for self-imposed exile in London. On his return to Brazil in 1972 Veloso produced his classic albums, Araça azul (1972), Jóia and Qualquer Coisa (both of 1975), Bicho (1977) and Cinema Transcendental (1979). During the 1970s and 80s he performed in Europe and the USA, establishing himself as an international star, and in the 1980s and 90s cultivated a more eclectic idiom, incorporating aspects of rock, funk and soul. His most significant albums during this time were Cores, nomes (1982), Velô (1984), Totalmente demais (1987), O estrangeiro (1989), Circuladô (1991), Tropicália 2 (with Gil, 1993), Pura estampa (1995) and O quatrilho (with J. Morenlenbaum, 1996). In 1998 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Federal University of Bahia, a recognition unprecedented in Brazilian popular music.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

G. Béhague: ‘Bossa and Bossas: Recent Changes in Brazilian Urban Popular Music’, EthM, xvii (1973), 209–33

C. Veloso: Alegria, alegria (Rio de Janeiro, 1977)

C.A. Perrone: Master of Contemporary Brazilian Song: MPB 1965–1985 (Austin, 1989)

H. Fonseca: Caetano, esse cara (Rio de Janeiro, 1993)

I. Lucchesi and G. Korff Dieguez: Caetano: Por que não? (Rio de Janeiro, 1993)

GERARD BÉHAGUE

Velut, Gilet [Egidius]

(fl early 15th century). French composer. He was a petit vicaire at Cambrai Cathedral from 1409 to 1411 (Kügle); in 1411 he travelled to Cyprus as a chaplain in the retinue of Charlotte of Bourbon. It is unlikely that he can be identified with the Egidius Flannel alias Lenfant who sang in the papal choir from 1420 to 1441. The style of the eight compositions with manuscript attributions to Velut indicates that they were written during the early years of the 15th century. Jusqu'au jour and Laissiés ester still show traces of the complex cross-rhythms and syncopations that characterized much of French secular music at the end of the 14th century; his rondeau, Je voel servir, however, with its playful use of hemiola, clearly directed harmonies and frequent cadences, reveals an affinity to the chansons of the early period of Du Fay. Despite these apparent differences, it has been proposed that Velut's songs, notwithstanding his clear technical ability, are rather formulaic in character.

Velut's two sacred motets exhibit a diversity of styles; Benedicta viscera/Ave mater gratie/Ora pro nobis Deum alleluya is strictly isorhythmic in all voices and has frequent passages of triadic hocketing, whereas Summe summy/Summa summy displays a lyrical quality which approaches that of a song-motet. His three-voice Gloria and Credo are both in a treble-dominated style, the texts being declaimed syllabically. All of Velut’s works survive in either GB-Ob Can.misc.213 or I-Bc Q15.

It has been tentatively suggested that Velut was the composer of all the secular works in the Cyprus Manuscript (I-Tn J.II.9).

WORKS

Editions:Early Fifteenth-century Music, ed. G. Reaney, CMM, xi/2 (1959) [R]

mass movements

Gloria, 3vv, R 127

Credo, 3vv, R 132

motets

Benedicta viscera/Ave mater gratie/Ora pro nobis Deum alleluya, 4vv, R 137 (3vv in GB-Ob Can.misc.213); ed. C. van den Borren, Polyphonia sacra: a Continental Miscellany of the Fifteenth Century (Burnham, Bucks.,) 1932, 2/1963), 217

Summe summy/Summa summy, 4vv, R 145

secular works

Jusqu'au jour d'uy pour aprendre a parler, 3vv, R 125 (ballade)

Laissiés ester vostres chans de liesse, 3vv, R 122 (ballade)

Un petit oyselet chantant, 3vv, R 119 (ballade)

Je voel servir plus c'onques mais, 3vv, R 118; ed. in Stainer, 194

BIBLIOGRAPHY

J, J.F.R. and C. Stainer: Dufay and his Contemporaries (London, 1898/R)

E. Dannemann: Die spätgotische Musiktradition in Frankreich und Burgund vor dem Auftreten Dufays (Strasbourg, 1936), 27ff, 37f, 59f, 64, 77, 80ff

H. Besseler: Bourdon und Fauxbourdon (Leipzig, 1950, rev. enlarged 2/1974 by P. Gülke)

D. Fallows: Dufay (London, 1982, 2/1987)

R.H. Hoppin: ‘The Cypriot-French Repertory of the Manuscript Torino, Biblioteca Nazionale, J.II.9’, MD, xi (1957), 79–125

K. Kügle: ‘The Repertory of Manuscript Torino, Biblioteca Nazionale J.II.9, and the French Tradition of the 14th and Early 15th Centuries’, The Cypriot-French Repertory of the Manuscript Torino J.II.9: Paphos 1992, 151–81

D. Leech-Wilkinson: ‘The Cyprus Songs’, ibid., 395–431

L.L. Perkins: ‘The Rondeaux and Virelais of the Manuscript Torino J.II.9’, ibid., 433–62

CRAIG WRIGHT/R

Velvet Underground, the.

American rock band. Its founder members were Lou Reed (b 1942; guitar and lead vocals), John Cale (b 1940; electric viola, bass guitar, keyboards and vocals) and Sterling Morrison (1942–95; guitar and vocals); drummer Angus MacLise was replaced early on by Maureen Tucker (b 1945; drums and vocals). Influences on the band ranged from rhythm and blues and rock and roll to the avant-garde music of John Cage and La Monte Young, the poetry of Delmore Schwartz, the novels of William Burroughs and the pop art of Andy Warhol, who became their first manager. With the vocalist Nico (Christa Päffgen; b Cologne, 16 Oct 1938; d 1988) they became the house band at Warhol’s arts collective, the Factory, and an integral part of his multi-media show ‘The Exploding Plastic Inevitable’ (1966). That year they also signed a contract with MGM’s Verve label and recorded their first album, The Velvet Underground and Nico (1967), which had little commercial success, although its long-term influence was considerable. With songs such as ‘Heroin’ and ‘European Son’ it exhibited an intense and abrasive minimalism new to rock music, the sound distinguished by the drones of Cale’s electric viola, the metronomic precision of Tucker’s drumming and Morrison’s rhythm guitar, and the dark irony of Reed’s delivery of his own lyrics together with Nico’s tomb-like and detached interpretation of his songs. Nico left the group in 1967 and Reed effectively took control. Much of the material for the second album, the savage White Light/White Heat (1967), was developed while Reed was ill and owes most to Cale and the other members of the band. The music is groundbreaking in its use of densely layered textures, distortion, white noise and feed-back, and with Reed’s lyrics graphically explicit in their references to drugs, sex and drag queens, it is probably the most disturbing rock album ever produced.

In March 1968 friction between Reed and Cale forced the latter to leave the band, his place taken by Doug Yule. The third album, The Velvet Underground (MGM, 1969), is very different to its precursors, with mainly restrained and quiet songs. An exception is ‘The Murder Mystery’, an extended piece characterized by Burroughs-style cut-up techniques, simultaneous spoken texts, obsessive minimalist chord patterns and anarchic piano clusters. In 1970 the group moved record label to Cotillion/Atlantic, and released Loaded (1970), the band now functioning largely as a backing to Reed’s vocals. By 1971 all the founder members had left the group, but in 1993 they re-formed temporarily; a European tour followed, and a live album, Live MCMXCIII (Sire, 1993), was released. After further brief reunions in 1994 and the death of Morrison in August 1995, the group disbanded for a second time.

Despite contempt for the music industry, lack of commercial success, lack of sales promotion and the absence of recognition beyond the avant garde of the time, the Velvet Underground has become one of the most influential bands in the history of rock music. At odds with the prevailing atmosphere in popular music of the late 1960s, the group developed a distinctively hard-edged urban sound, polarized between stripped-back rock and roll and avant garde. The Punk rebellion, the New Wave music of the 1970s, art-rock and the phenomenon of ‘cross-over’ can all trace their origins to the radical experimentalism of the group’s first three albums.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

P. Milstein & M.C. Kostek, eds.: What Goes On, nos.1–4 (1978–90) [newsletter of the Velvet Underground Appreciation Society]

L. Reed: Velvet Underground: Lyrics (Milan, 1982)

V. Bockris and G. Malanga: Up-Tight: the Story of the Velvet Underground (London, 1983, 2/1996) [incl. discography]

D. Thompson: Beyond the Velvet Underground (London, 1989)

M.C. Kostek: The Velvet Underground Handbook (London, 1992)

C. Heylin: From the Velvets to the Volvoids: a Pre-Punk History for a Post-Punk World (New York, 1993)

A. Zak, ed.: The Velvet Underground Companion: Four Decades of Commentary (London, 1997) [incl. M.C. Kostek and P. Milstein: ‘The Velvet Underground: a Critical Disc/Filmography, 1957–1986’, 253–310]

MAX PADDISON

Vencelius.

See Wentzely, Mikuláš František Xaver.

Venda music.

See South africa, I, 3.

Venedier, Vitalis

(fl late 15th century). ?Franco-Flemish composer. He is known only through four Masses for four voices in the partbooks (of which only two survive) formerly in Berlin, Preussische Staatsbibliothek, manuscript 40634 (now in PL-Kj): Benedictionum omnium, Freuntlich und mild, Surge virgo and L’homme armé. Venedier may have been the compiler and copyist of the manuscript. From what remains, it appears that he was an able composer with a style similar to Ockeghem’s. Long, complex, interlacing melodic lines with intricate rhythms avoid regular, clear-cut patterns while paraphrasing the borrowed melodies.

BARTON HUDSON

Venegas de Henestrosa, Luis

(b Ecija, Seville, c1510; d Taracena, Guadalajara, 27 Dec 1570). Spanish composer and compiler. He was a priest in the diocese of Toledo and served the Cardinal of Toledo, Juan Tavera, between 1535 and the cardinal's death in 1545. He became administrator of the Hospital of San Juan Bautista, Toledo, on 25 July 1570 but retired through ill-health on 22 November in the same year. In his will he asked his heirs to arrange the printing of his work Armonya de los tres mundos (lost).

His Libro de cifra nueva (Alcalá de Henares, 1557; ed. H. Anglès, MME, ii, 1944) is dedicated to Diego de Tavera, Bishop of Jaén and the cardinal's nephew. It was intended as the first of seven volumes. The book features a new variant of tablature notation in which the ciphers 1 to 7 represent diatonic degrees of a scale. This notation was later employed in Antonio de Cabezón's Obras de música (Madrid, 1578). The contents of Venegas's book were intended for keyboard, harp and vihuela and possibly also for instrumental ensemble. The volume contains 138 works, 70 of which are anonymous, and is prefaced with a discourse on musical theory and instrumental practice. The publication brings together works by Spanish composers, including musicians from the Spanish court and from Sigüenza Cathedral. Many of the works are arrangements of pieces from contemporary vihuela or lute collections: Luiz de Narváez's Delphin de música (Valladolid, 1538), Francesco da Milano and Perino Fiorentino's Intabolatura de lauto (Venice, 1547) and Diego Pisador's Libro de musica de vihuela (Salamanca, 1552). There are over three dozen compositions by Cabezón, and the range of sources for the rest of the music is wide. The music consists principally of fantasias, tientos, settings of hymns and other plainchant melodies and arrangements of secular and sacred music by Josquin, Crecquillon, Clemens non Papa and others. Several tientos draw thematic material from pre-existing vocal music. The Libro also contains sets of variations, an instrumental duet based on a Crecquillon chanson and a fuga for 40 voices.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BrownI

J. Moll Roqueta: ‘Músicos de la corte del Cardenal Juan Tavera (1523–1545): Luis Venegas de Henestrosa’, AnM, vi (1951), 155–78

J.M. Ward: ‘The Editorial Methods of Venegas de Henestrosa’, MD, vi (1952), 105–13

C. Jacobs: Tempo Notation in Renaissance Spain (Brooklyn, NY, 1964)

M.S. Kastner: ‘Vestigios del arte de Antonio de Cabezón en Portugal’, AnM, xxi (1966), 105–21

M. Querol Gavaldá: ‘La canción popular en los organistas españoles del siglo XVI’, AnM, xxi (1966), 61–86

M.S. Kastner: ‘Problemas de semitonia en la música ibérica para el teclado de los siglos XVI–XVII’, Joan Baptista Cabanilles: músico valenciano universal, ed. J.M.L. Cisteró and others (Valencia, 1981), 119–52

L. Jambou: Les origines du tiento (Paris, 1982), 167–9

L. Jambou and F. Reynaud: ‘Doble enigma en torno a la figura de Luis Venegas de Henestrosa (d.1570): su testamento’, RdMc, vii (1984), 420–30

LOUIS JAMBOU

Veneri, Gregorio

(b Rome, 1602/3; d after 1631). Italian composer. The dedication of his Armonia di Venere (1620) states that he was 17 years old and that this was his first publication; within a year he had produced four more, only two of which are extant. In his op.5 he explained that he had frequently served the dedicatee, Dorotea Delfinoni, as a musician. At the time of his only known later publication, in 1631, he was maestro di cappella at Prato (presumably at the cathedral). All except one of his surviving pieces date from before his 21st year. As one would expect, they are on the whole conventional and derivative. The flatness of his Armonia di Venere (the last word surely a pun) characterizes several of the 17 pieces in his op.5 too. Even so the 12 strophic arias are melodically among the more appealing written by Roman composers at this time, and two of the five strophic variations (which are all for solo voice) are unusual in being largely in triple time. (J. Racek: Stilprobleme der italienischen Monodie, Prague, 1965)

WORKS

Armonia di Venere: madrigali, 5vv, et in fine due con un echo, 8vv, bc (Bracciano, 1620)

Sacrarum cantionum … liber tertius, 1–8vv, op.4 (Rome, 1621)

Li varii scherzi … libro primo, 1–3vv, bc, op.5 (Rome, 1621)

Madrigale a 5: canone (Florence, 1631)

1 madrigal, 1v, bc, 1622¹¹; 1 motet, 4vv, 1623²

NIGEL FORTUNE

Venetian swell.

See Swell, §2.

Venetus, Franciscus.

See Ana, Francesco d’.

Venezia

(It.).

See Venice.

Venezianer, Sándor.

See Vándor, Sándor.

Veneziano [Veneziani], Gaetano

(b Bisceglie, Bari, 1665; d Naples, 15 July 1716). Italian composer and teacher. At the age of ten he entered the Neapolitan conservatory S Maria di Loreto, where he studied till 1676. His chief music teacher there was the distinguished Neapolitan composer Francesco Provenzale. While a senior student Veneziano sometimes acted as his teacher's music copyist, as is proved by a manuscript score of Provenzale's opera Il schiavo di sua moglie (I-Rsc), inscribed: ‘Francesco Provenzale fecit Anno Dmni 1671. Gaetano Venetiano allievo di S.M.d.L. di Napoli scrivea 1675’.

During his adult career he held, at one time or another, the important positions of maestro di cappella at the Neapolitan court, the Neapolitan church of Carmine Maggiore, and his old conservatory, S Maria di Loreto. His connections with the Spanish-controlled court began in 1678 when he was made supernumerary organist of the court chapel. In November 1686 he became an ordinary (i.e. paid) chapel member with a monthly stipend of four ducats. When Alessandro Scarlatti, court maestro di cappella, unexpectedly left Naples in 1703, Veneziano was one of four musicians who competed to succeed him. The examination, involving the composition of a mass, was held in December of that year: Veneziano was declared winner on 25 October 1704 and created court maestro with a salary of 30 ducats a month. He did not remain in this position for long, however, for in 1707 the Austrians captured Naples from the Spaniards and on 31 August cancelled the court appointments of Veneziano and other musicians who had been sympathetic to the previous regime.

Veneziano had first become a teacher at the Conservatorio di S Maria di Loreto on 10 July 1684 when he was appointed senior of two new maestri in charge of keyboard playing, singing and composition within the institution. The next year he resigned because of the pressure of other business. He was reappointed maestro of the Loreto, this time without the help of an assistant, on 5 August 1695. In 1704 the music students of the institution complained to their governors that he was not giving them enough attention (perhaps because of his new duties as court maestro di cappella), and a second maestro, Giuliano Perugino, was elected on 7 January 1705 to share the teaching with him. He was still working at the Loreto at his death in 1716.

A large collection of Veneziano's compositions (all of which are religious) survives in manuscript parts or score at the Filippini library in Naples. Though there is still doubt as to the total number of his compositions, over 120 have been authenticated and include Passion music, masses, motets, canticles and Latin hymns (all with chorus and instruments), lessons for Nocturns (solo voice and instruments), and solo cantatas. Veneziano's dated autograph manuscripts in the Filippini collection provide insights into the stylistic and compositional changes that took place in Neapolitan church music between 1677 and 1706. Many of his masses and motets for festive court or church occasions, like those of Caresana and Antonio Nola, continue the elaborate polychoral, soli–ripieno tradition of Giovanni Salvatore. His hymn settings, in contrast, tend to be short and simple in texture. By the turn of the century his music exhibited a rhythmically more vigorous and tonally expanded style, with profiled themes and a broader scope of tempo indication (as in the Lezione prima del primo notturno Mercordi Santo, dating from the 1690s). This may well explain why by 1699 the music of his teacher Provenzale was considered to be out of date. Gaetano Veneziano formed an essential link between the 17th- and early 18th-century traditions of Neapolitan church music.

WORKS

oratorios and passions

Il sacrificio d'Elia (orat, A. Perrucci), SS Trinità della Redenzione de Cattivi, Naples, 1704, lib I-Nn

La Vergine in figura (melodramma, I.M. Mancini), Conservatorio di S Maria di Loreto, Naples, 1713, lib Nn

4 Passions, 4vv, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Nf

Passio del Venerdi Santo, Nf

other works

all in I-Nf; with instruments unless otherwise stated

3 messe, 4–16vv: Ky-Gl, 4–8vv; Graduali per le Domeniche di Quadragesima e del primo giorno delle ceneri, 4vv, bc

Invitatory and responses for the 1st Nocturn of the Office of the Dead, inc.; 4 lessons for Christmas Nocturns; 22 lessons for Holy Week Nocturns; 7 lessons for Office of the Dead Nocturns; 11 lessons for other Nocturns

2 Mag, 2vv, 10vv; Nunc, 4vv; Litanie BVM, 5vv; 3 Salve regina, 4vv; 2 Confitebor, 1v, 9vv; Laudate, 5vv; 2 Laudate pueri, 9vv; Miserere, 4vv: Versetto del miserere, S, bc; Stabat mater, 3vv; 3 Iste confessor, 1v, 2vv, 10vv; 2 Pange lingua, 5vv, 8vv; TeD, 5vv; 4 Veni Creator Spiritus, 3vv, 5vv, 5vv, 9vv; Veni sponsa Cristi, 5vv; Versetto del Benedictus, S, bc; 28 other hymns; 6 motets

Pastorale in festo S Mariae Magdalenae, 5vv; Pastorale ‘Vos pastores’, 4vv; Obstupescite caeli, 5vv; Laudamus, S, vn, bc

Cants.: 6 for S, bc; 1 for S, A, bc; 1 for S, vn, bc

BIBLIOGRAPHY

U. Prota-Giurleo: Breve storia del teatro di corte e della musica a Napoli nei secoli XVII–XVIII (Naples, 1952)

M.F. Robinson: ‘The Governors' Minutes of the Conservatory S Maria di Loreto, Naples’, RMARC, no.10 (1972), 1–97, esp. 38, 45, 93

H.-B. Dietz: ‘Zur Frage der musikalischen Leitung des Conservatorio di Santa Maria di Loreto in Neapel im 18. Jahrhundert’, Mf, xxv (1972), 379–406

R. Cafiero and M. Marino: ‘Materiali per una definizione di “Oratorio” a Napoli nel Seicento: primi accertamenti’, La musica a Napoli durante il Seicento: Naples 1985 465–510

H.-B. Dietz: ‘Sacred Music in Naples during the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century’, ibid., 511–27

MICHAEL F. ROBINSON/HANNS-BERTOLD DIETZ

Veneziano, Giovanni

(b Naples, 11 March 1683; d Naples, 13 April 1742). Italian composer. He is said to have studied under his father, Gaetano Veneziano, at the Conservatorio di S Maria di Loreto. He was one of three musicians, the others being Francesco Mancini and Domenico Scarlatti, appointed to the salaried position of organist of the Neapolitan court chapel on 26 December 1704; like his father, however, he lost his position on 31 August 1707 when the Spanish regime was ousted by the invading Austrians. In 1716 he was appointed second maestro di cappella at the S Maria di Loreto Conservatory, and he held this position for the rest of his life. In 1735, a year after the expulsion of the Austrians from Naples, he applied to the new regime of Charles Bourbon for readmission to the court chapel, claiming that he had been unfairly dismissed by the Austrians in 1707. His petition was successful and he was granted a supernumerary position in the chapel, but he was never readmitted on a salaried basis.

Veneziano is nowadays chiefly remembered as being among the earliest Neapolitan musicians to compose comic operas in the local dialect. These works are Lo mbruoglio de li nomme, Patrò Tonno d’Isca and Lo Pippo. Veneziano’s chief extant music appears to be Acts 1 and 2 of a sacred opera Giuseppe Giusto, composed in 1733 for performance by the students of the conservatory: it is not a distinguished work, possessing little of the ingratiating lyricism of the best Neapolitan operas of the period and providing no evidence that its composer was an outstanding musical figure. A Componimento per musica sopra il felice arrivo in Macerata dell’ill.mo … monsignore Ignazion Stelluti, for which no score survives, was performed in Macerata on 29 May 1736.

WORKS

Patrò Tonno d’Isca (commedia marenaresca, 3, A. Mercotellis), Naples, Fiorentini, Sept 1714

Lo mbruoglio de li nomme aleas Le Doje pope (ob, 3, Mercotellis), Naples, Fiorentini, 26 Sept 1714

Lo Pippo (ob, 3, P. Segisto), Naples, Fiorentini, 1715

Giuseppe Giusto (sacred op, 1 and 2), Naples, Conservatorio di S Maria di Loreto, 1733, I-Nc

Componimento per musica sopra il felice arrivo in Macerata dell’ill.mo … monsignore Ignazion Stelluti, Macerata, 29 May 1736

BIBLIOGRAPHY

U. Prota-Giurleo: Nicola Logroscino, ‘il dio dell’opera buffa’ (la vita e le opere) (Naples, 1927)

U. Prota-Giurleo: Breve storia del teatro di corte e della musica a Napoli nei secoli XVII–XVIII (Naples, 1952)

M.F. Robinson: ‘The Governors’ Minutes of the Conservatory S. Maria di Loreto, Naples’, RMARC, no.10 (1972), 1–97, esp. 38, 45, 95

MICHAEL F. ROBINSON (with DALE E. MONSON)

Venezuela, Bolivaran Republic of

(Sp. República Bolivariana de Venezuela).

Country in South America. It is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north, Brazil to the south, Guyana to the east and Colombia to the west. The capital city is Caracas. The majority of the country's c24 million inhabitants live along the coast. More than 60% of the population is of mixed ethnic origin, 20% Caucasian, 9% of African descent and c2% Amerindian.

I. Art music

II. Traditional music

GERARD BÉHAGUE (I), JONATHAN D. HILL (II, 1), WALTER GUIDO (II, 2–3)

Venezuela

I. Art music

1. Before 1830.

Venezuela was not colonized as fast as other Caribbean or northern South American territories because the area was considered one of the poorest of the continent, and it suffered considerable neglect throughout the period. In the early 16th century Franciscans and Dominicans came to help with various colonization attempts and to pursue missionary work. The earliest towns were Nueva Córdoba (now Cumaná), founded in 1521, and Caracas, founded in 1567 and made the capital in 1587, though Venezuela formed part of the Viceroyalty of Peru until 1739. The earliest reference to musical activity records the establishment of a school in Caracas in 1591 whose curriculum included plainchant; funds were granted in 1593 to Juan de Arteaga to continue the syllabus. In 1591 a Melchor Quintela was organist at Caracas Cathedral. During the 17th century there were several further attempts by Franciscan missionaries to increase the number of missions and towns. The Capuchin Diego de los Ríos (d 1670) taught music to Amerindians in the Píritu mission and is known to have written motets and villancicos with texts in the Carib language. The post of maestro de capilla at Caracas Cathedral was established and held by Gonzalo Cordero in 1671. Francisco Pérez Camacho (1659–c1725) was appointed maestro de capilla at the cathedral in 1687 and taught music at the local seminary; he also held the chair of music at the University of Santiago de León, Caracas, founded in 1725.

The outstanding phase of colonial music occurred during the late 18th century and continued after the country became independent in 1821. The fairly homogeneous school of composers known as the ‘Escuela de Chacao’ or ‘Escuela del Padre Sojo’ developed round the composer Juan Manuel Olivares (1760–97) and with the energetic encouragement of Pedro Palacios y Sojo, the most notable patron of music in the colonial period. In 1764 Sojo founded the congregation of the Oratorio S Felipe Neri in Caracas, modelled on the Italian order. He realized his idea of creating a music school in 1783–4, when the Academia de Música opened under the direction of Olivares. Sojo thus enhanced the importance of sacred music and stimulated music education. He was able to gather round him the most significant group of church-music composers in Venezuelan history, including José Francisco Velásques, José Antonio Caro de Boesi, Pedro Nolasco Colón, José Cayetano Carreño, Juan José Landaeta, José Luis Landaeta, Juan Francisco Meserón and Lino Gallardo (c1775–1837), director of the academy from 1819 and occasional conductor of the Philharmonic Society. The most celebrated figure of the Sojo school was José Ángel Lamas, whose 35 extant compositions include a famous Popule meus (1801), still popular in local choral concerts. The numerous works of these and other contemporary composers make up the important archive of the music school at Caracas. They are mostly for four-part mixed chorus with characteristically Settecento orchestral accompaniment, clearly showing Italian influences, especially that of Pergolesi.

Venezuelan colonial society was divided into whites (Spaniards and creoles) and mulattos (pardos), slaves and Amerindians. The majority of the younger composers of the Chacao group were mulattos, whose musical profession gave them freedom and a privileged social position. Notable exceptions were Cayetano Carreño and Lamas.

Most of the Sojo school’s production was intended for the Church, but as witnesses of the revolutionary war some of the group wrote patriotic songs. Juan José Landaeta composed the song Gloria al bravo pueblo, officially adopted in 1881 as the national anthem of Venezuela, and Gallardo wrote a Canción patriótica celebrating the heroism of the liberator Simon Bolívar. These composers also performed in the orchestra of the Teatro El Conde, the chief hall for music drama at the beginning of the 19th century.

2. From 1830.

During the mid-19th century the Romantic style predominated in Venezuelan art music, represented by the pianist Felipe Larrazábal (1816–73), José Ángel Montero (1839–81), maestro de capilla at Caracas Cathedral and a member of the Academia de Música, and the composer Federico Villena (1835–c1900), who besides church and orchestral music wrote numerous zarzuelas and salon music pieces. Montero’s opera Virginia (1873) was the only one by a native composer to be produced in the 19th century; it was performed at the Teatro Caracas (inaugurated 1854). While opera companies appeared in Caracas more regularly after the opening of the Teatro Municipal (1880), various attempts to create a national opera remained unsuccessful, although composers of the time were prolific writers of zarzuela.

There were attempts to organize music education in the country during the second half of the 19th century. Larrazábal founded (1868–9) an efficient but short-lived conservatory. The Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (founded 1877) incorporated an Academy of Music, at first under the presidency of Eduardo Calcaño, a distinguished politician and writer. The institute itself was directed by Ramón de La Plaza, one of the country’s first music historians. But a regular Escuela Nacional de Música was not established until the 20th century. During this period two Venezuelan musicians established international reputations: Teresa Carreño (1853–1917), particularly famous as a pianist, and the composer Reynaldo Hahn.

20th-century movements in art music reached Venezuela only at the end of World War I, when musical professionalism became possible with a flourishing economy and political stability. Musicians began to familiarize themselves with the works of Franck, Fauré, Debussy and Ravel, which they had never heard before and which exerted a long-lasting influence. A movement towards the updating and revision of composition in Venezuela was stimulated by Vicente Emilio Sojo, the most influential composer from about 1920 to 1960, Juan Bautista Plaza, a nationalist composer and musicologist who worked on colonial music, José Antonio Calcaño, and Juan Vicente Lecuna. They all cultivated musical nationalism within a post-Romantic idiom, and, in the 1920s, French impressionism. Plaza in particular created a direct national style in his well-known Fuga criolla (1931), in his tone poems Campanas de Pascua and El picacho abrupto, and in his Siete canciones venezolanas (1932).

At the end of Juan Vicente Gómez’s dictatorship (1936) a new awareness of contemporary European artistic currents took shape. Sojo became the director of the Escuela de Música (later renamed Escuela Superior de Música ‘José Ángel Lamas’), from which most composers of the next three generations graduated. The school continued to advocate the refinement of French harmonic practices within a national style, but also proved receptive to the diatonicism of Hindemith and neo-classicism. Sojo’s students representing the former tendency include Antonio Estévez (1916–88), whose Cantata criolla (1954) is well known, Evencio Castellanos (1915–84), Carlos Figueredo (1909–86), Gonzalo Castellanos (b 1926), Inocente Carreño (b 1919) and the eclectic José Antonio Abreu (b 1939).

There was no further change in stylistic orientation until the 1960s, when even Antonio Estévez involved himself in new developments such as electronic music (e.g. Cosmogonias 1 & 2, 1968). The Caracas Music Festival (1966) revealed younger composers who had had little chance to be heard previously. One of the few electronic music laboratories in Latin America was established in Caracas within the Instituto de Bellas Artes and directed for a time by the Chilean composer José Vicente Asuar. Information on new music became readily available, particularly through the efforts of the music critic Eduardo Lira Espejo.

The better-known composers who adopted avant-garde techniques in the 1960s were Rhazés Hernández López (b 1918), Alexis Rago (b 1930), José Luis Muñoz (b 1928) and Yannis Ioannidis (b 1930). Hernández López was one of the first to introduce atonal serialism to Venezuela. Rago studied at the Peabody Conservatory, Baltimore, and his work Música de sueños y cosmogonía was first heard at the Fourth Inter-American Music Festival, Washington, DC, in 1968. Muñoz turned to aleatory techniques in some of his works, for example Móviles for orchestra. Ioannidis, of Greek origin, came to Venezuela in the 1960s; his work Metaplassis A, presented in Washington, DC, in 1971, reveals his skilful treatment of sonic collage in an orchestral context. The fact that he found a suitable working atmosphere in Venezuela indicates the country’s musical maturity. Ioannidis taught a number of younger composers, including Miguel Astor, Jorge Benzaquén, Tulio Cremisini, Paul Desenne, Carlos Duarte, Carlos García, Emilio Mendoza, Alfredo Rugeles, Ricardo Teruel, among others. Of these Rugeles (b 1949), Duarte (b 1957) and Teruel (b 1959) have had ample recognition as composers, conductors and performers.

See also Caracas.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

J.A. Calcaño: Contribución al estudio de la música en Venezuela (Caracas, 1939)

J.B. Plaza, ed.: Archivo de música colonial venezolana (Montevideo, 1942–3)

J.B. Plaza, ed.: ‘Music in Caracas during the Colonial Period (1770–1811)’, MQ, xxix (1943), 198

J.A. Calcaño: La ciudad y su música (Caracas, 1958/R)

R.H. López: ‘La música contemporánea en Venezuela (1918–1968)’, Boletín interamericano de música, nos.69–70 (1969), 3–11

W. Guido: Panorama de la música en Venezuela (Caracas, 1978)

R. Stevenson: ‘La música en la Catedral de Caracas hasta 1836’, Revista musical de Venezuela, no.1 (1980), 35–54; no.2 (1980), 15–60

M. Castillo Didier: Venezuela y el instrumento rey (Caracas, 1983)

A. Calzavara: Historia de la música en Venezuela: período hispánico con referencias al teatro y la danza (Caracas, 1987)

J.V. Stopello: ‘Historia del desarrollo musical en Venezuela’, Revista musical de Venezuela, no.23 (1987), 87–104

J.B. Plaza: Temas de música colonial venezolana (Caracas, 1990)

N. Tortolero: Compositores venezolanos: desde la colonia hasta nuestros días (Caracas, 1995) [with introduction by F.C. Lange]

N. Tortolero: Música sacra en Venezuela (Caracas, 1996) [with introduction by J.C. Nuñez]

J. Peñín and W. Guido, eds.: Enciclopedia de la música en Venezuela (Caracas, 1998)

Venezuela

II. Traditional music

1. Amerindian music.

3. Hispano-Venezuelan music.

1. Amerindian music.

The majority of indigenous groups living in Venezuela today reside in areas to the south and east of the Orinoco river or in the most southern regions along the upper Orinoco, Casiquiare and Negro rivers. These groups continue to speak a diversity of Carib, Arawakan, Saliban and unaffiliated languages and have demonstrated strong capabilities for reconstituting and transforming cultural identities in rapidly changing social and natural contexts. Venezuela's indigenous peoples suffered massive loss of life and resources during the colonial period through epidemics, the work of the mission, enslavement, ethnic soldiering and forced relocations. They have also endured violent campaigns of forced labour during the rubber boom between approximately 1860 and 1920, and borne the pressure of policies of assimilation as part of national development in more recent decades. Musical practices, both vocal and instrumental, had become an increasingly significant part of the political and cultural strategies of indigenous peoples as they struggled to reconstruct enduring social identities at the end of the 20th century.

Ethnologists have only recently begun to understand how musical sounds, particularly sung and chanted genres of ritual and ceremonial speech, are fundamental elements in the construction of power relations within indigenous societies of Amazonia. In sacred rituals, shamans and other ritual specialists sing and chant the spirit-names of powerful mythic beings, using them as agents of power in healing the sick, socializing the young and regenerating natural and social worlds. These shamanic musical practices are better understood as activities of creating and transforming the powerful forces that govern bodily, social, and cosmic processes than as mere representations of, or discourses about, such forces.

Interpreting shamanic musical practices in this manner is difficult because of the deeply holistic character of ritual processes which have aesthetic, linguistic, medical, social, moral, spiritual, historical and even ecological dimensions. The shaman’s singing and chanting, often accompanied by percussive sounds made with gourd rattles, play a crucial role in integrating these diverse layers of situated meanings. The activity of singing connects two different levels of interpretation: the more specialized, verbally encoded meanings of the ritual process; and the more widely understood meanings embodied in the shaman’s bodily postures and actions.

Among the Wakuénai, an Arawak-speaking people of the Upper Río Negro region, shamanic singing (málirríkairi) constitutes a hyperanimate activity of journeying to the houses of recently deceased persons in the netherworld and returning to the world of the living with the patient’s soul. These verbally constructed images of movement through the cosmos are directly embodied in the shaman’s physical movements of standing up to search the eastern sky for shadow-spirits and sitting down on a small bench next to the patient. The shaman’s use of a constant pattern of gently descending melodic contours connects his physical actions and movements to the discursive realms of mythic narrative, song texts and interpretive commentary. However, the shaman’s singing is also a hyperanimate journey through various dimensions of musicality. The contrast between loud and soft volume is especially important, since the shaman creates a sense of movement away and back through faintly echoing major phrases of each song. Acceleration and deceleration of tempo through faster and slower shaking of the sacred rattle increases the sense of movement through the cosmos. Within any given ritual, the shaman makes use of a number of different starting pitches and the pitches within each song gradually ascend through microtonal intervals. Thus shamanic curing songs embody a process of journeying or moving through the cosmos by wandering across a variety of pitches, tempos, timbres, rhythms and microtones.

Relatively few studies have given equally detailed attention to the formal features of indigenous musical performances, the multiple contexts in which musical sounds are grounded and the complex interrelations between musical forms and their contexts. Seeger’s study of music among the Suyá of Brazil has documented the importance of microtonal rising and other musically dynamic processes. A study by Olsen in 1996 of Warao music includes numerous examples of microtonal rising in shamanic songs, lullabies, and magical love songs. While these songs were not recorded in their natural context, Olsen (1996) suggests that an upward drift (microtonal rising) in Warao curing songs often indicates direct communication between the transformed shaman and the spirits, while its use in non-shamanistic music occasionally indicates theurgical closeness between the singers and the supernatural world. A more precise comparative analysis of indigenous singing and chanting can emerge only through new studies of musical forms in context.

Far from existing as a residual practice at the margins of colonial and national states in South America, shamanic musical traditions have proliferated as a source of cultural energies through which indigenous peoples have regenerated and transformed their collective identities. Among the Wakuénai and neighbouring Arawak-speaking groups of the Upper Río Negro region, a shaman named Venancio Camico led groups of men and women in collective ceremonial songs and dances on St John’s day, 1858. These shamanic performances called for an end to the whites’ exploitation of indigenous labourers by musically evoking the fiery destruction of the first mythic creation of humanity and its rebirth in the form of sacred musical instruments. Similarly, shamans led collective singing and dancing as a way of protesting against economic exploitation in the 1980s.

Another impressive illustration of cultural resilience through shamanic musical creativity is the indigenous religion called Hallelujah, an appropriation of Anglican Christianity into indigenous shamanism. The religion first emerged in the mid-19th century in Guyana but has spread widely among the Pemon and other indigenous peoples of eastern Venezuela in the 20th century. At the core of Hallelujah ritual practices are songs which originate in the dreams of religious prophets. Members of different language groups learn about each other’s songs, but they must not alter the song texts’ original language or the songs will lose their power. Over time, the result of these musical processes is the creation of multilingual ‘style pools’ of Hallelujah songs within each community, a microcosm of the larger pattern of linguistic diversity organized into regional networks.

Recorded examples of Venezuelan Amerindian music are in the archives of the Instituto Nacional de Folklore, the Fundación La Salle de Ciencas Naturales and the Comisión Indigenista del Ministerio de Justicia, all in Caracas.

See also Latin America, §I.

2. Afro-Venezuelan music.

African influences are particularly dominant in coastal regions, such as the State of Miranda, especially in the region of Barlovento; the cities of Caucagua, Curiepe, Higuerote and Río Chico on the central Venezuelan coast; and in the states of Yaracuy, Zulia and Federal District where populations are predominantly black. The existing musical characteristics of African influence in Venezuela are of Congolese, Sudanese and Angolan origin. No coherent religious systems were brought from Africa to Venezuela, although isolated vestiges remain. At present, traditional African culture has been diluted within the context of a racially mixed culture. However, Afro-Venezuelan ritual practices and belief systems similar to those in Brazil and the Caribbean are still of special importance to the black Venezuelan. This limited African influence in Venezuela is due partly to a spontaneous process of de-Africanization, and partly to the fact that the slave trade was virtually halted before the War of Independence. During this war, blacks became free citizens and were able to attain higher social status. Thus, when the official abolition of slavery was finally decreed by Congress on 23 March 1854, it merely served to legalize a situation which already existed. From this moment on, Africans underwent a process of adaptation to, and acceptance of, Hispanic culture and Western ways of thinking.

The Catholic Church attempted from the outset to organize indigenous peoples and blacks under its God, its rituals, its saints and religious festivals. However, the indigenous people, in common with black people, refused to give up their own beliefs voluntarily, with some managing to evade European religious influences and continuing to worship their own gods. Given the difficulties encountered by the Church in trying to convert the local population, it was forced to accept, within limits, the rituals and beliefs of both indigenous people and blacks. In order to encourage integration, the Church set up religious brotherhoods for free blacks and slaves, with the aim of stimulating the worship of the Saints. But new generations forgot the practices of their fathers and grandfathers while the black creoles became more predominant, leading to the merger of African religious elements with the worship of the Saints of popular Catholicism. As in other Latin American countries, blacks continued to worship their own deities, but amalgamated them with Catholic saints: thus the ceremonies performed were directed towards the gods of fertility, rain or nature, rather than forming part of a Catholic festival. Because blacks were originally only allowed to have one or two festivals per year, they combined the attributes of various African deities in one saint, i.e. St John, St Peter, St Benedict or St Anthony. At the end of the twentieth century in the villages, festivals in honour of the saints are still organized by the cofradías or brotherhoods.

Afro-Venezuelan culture is evident in beliefs, vocabulary, oral traditions and, above all, in instruments, rhythms, dances and songs. The most important African influence is undoubtedly of Congolese origin. For example, the so-called tambores redondos or cylindrical drums of Barlovento are similar to those used by ethnic Bantu communities, and the tambor redondo dances performed by unattached couples are similar to dances found in Angola. The drums known as mina and curbata, which form part of the celebrations in Barlovento in honour of St John, are similar to those used in the Mina region of Dahomey by Ewe/Fon or Fanti/Asaante groups. They may have belonged to other Guinean tribes who embarked through the ports of Mina or San Jorge de la Mina. The Barlovento St John festival coincides with the summer solstice and relates to the fertility of the land and the harvest. In this particular case, St John represents a number of unspecified fertility and plant gods. In Guarenas, fulías (songs in responsorial style and merengue rhythm) are sung during the dancing. In Ocumare de la Costa, sirenas are sung by a solo voice before the image of the saint, in a ceremony performed within the domestic household, while tunes called sangueos (in 2/4 with use of the Cuban cinquillo rhythm) accompany dances performed by alternating, unattached couples, in which the dancers place themselves in a semicircle. This same tradition is performed by blacks of the central coastal areas and the valleys of Tuy and Barlovento (in the states of Miranda, Aragua, Carabobo and Yaracuy). The common denominator is the alternation between soloist and chorus accompanied by the golpe de tambor grande (song of the big drum) and golpe de tambor pequeño (song of the small drum). In the former, the mina and curbata drums are used, whereas in the latter, the tambores redondos (set of three cylindrical drums called pujao, cruzao and corrío), are played. Other drums, such as the caja, cumaco, tamunango, or burro negro, are used in other regions of Venezuela.

African traits also predominate in Corpus Christi celebrations, which take place in the central areas of the country. St Anthony is worshipped on 13 June in the states of Lara, Yaracuy and Portuguesa through the performance of a dance called tamunangue. Here, black influences are still evident in the responsorial style, refrains and use of the tamunango drum. Furthermore, the tamunangue combines Hispanic and African influences in the form of an eight-part suite each with its own special music. The melody is sung by men only, in responsorial fashion, to the accompaniment of various types of distinctive local guitars known as cuatro, cinco and seis (Four, Five and Six), the tamunango drum and one or more pairs of maracas. St Anthony either begins or ends with a Salve (a religious song in honour of the Virgin Mary); this is followed by seven dances (la bella, el yeyevamos, la juruminga, la perrendenga, el poco a poco, el galerón and the seis figureao) preceded by a game called la batalla. Of these, the only parts which show any African influences are the calambres of the poco a poco.

The choreography of the batalla resembles that of European sword dances, although in Venezuela the dancers use strong clubs, which will not break while fencing. The music accompanying the dance is in duple rhythm. The ‘battle’ is performed through the streets leading to the town church, in front of which the remaining dances take place. The music of the seis figureao, which concludes the tamunangue, consists of an instrumental prelude (also serving as an interlude) in eight bars, followed by a longer section for two alternating singers, and finally a coda. The whole is then repeated to a different text. Both music and text are lengthy in order to accommodate the dance, which shows traces of the old European contredanse.

The festival in honour of San Benito (St Benedict) celebrated throughout the states of Zulia and Trujillo to coincide with the winter solstice and Christmas, also has African characteristics. The chimbanguele drums used in these celebrations are of Congolese origin, as is the procession of banners, skirts, colourful costumes and the saint on his litter who is bounced along happily to the rhythm of the dances.

Secular carnival festivities in Curiepe are a vehicle for a form of popular street theatre called tango. It can take the form of mimed dances, such as the sambarambulé in which a snake plays the central role within a group of dancers and actors. Recitation and responsorial style are always present, accompanied by a drum, a charrasca, maracas and the cuatro. Finally, within the carnival celebrations, the calipso is worth mentioning: a dance practised in Guïria (Sucre), El Callao (Bolívar) and Tucupita (Delta Amacuro), the responsorial songs and collective dances by young, popular personalities are accompanied by drums, cuatro, charrasca and steel band (a drum set made out of oil drums).

The principal characteristics which define Afro-Venezuelan music, according to Ramón y Rivera, are the responsorial structure; short melodic phrases built on repeated combinations of 3rds and 4ths and, to a lesser extent, 5ths and 6ths, as in ex.1; and a vocal line which is often metrically free and melodically independent of the metrically regular accompaniment. Scales may be hexatonic or pentatonic; the latter takes on a particular character in Afro-Venezuelan folk music (see ex.2). The accompaniment may be composed of single figures, bi-rhythms or polyrhythms; the first results from the (varied) execution of a single rhythmic pattern, binary or ternary (ex.3a). Syncopations, cross-rhythms and occasional contrasts of accent (triplets, quintuplets) may be found in this kind of performance, especially when more than two drums are playing, or when further percussion is added by maracas or other idiophones, or when the body of the drum is beaten with small sticks, adding a new element of rhythm and timbre. Bi-rhythmic effects result from the juxtaposition of two different rhythms (ex.3b). Polyrhythms result either from the contrast of accents produced by a drum improvising freely against the regularly stressed basic rhythmic patterns of other drums or from the use of different rhythmic formulae within the same bar.

There are several types of idiophone in Afro-Venezuelan music. The quitiplás is a percussion instrument made up of four bamboo stamping-tubes which are struck on the ground and vibrate against each other. The largest is known as the macho (male) or pujao, and the smallest is called the hembra (female) or prima; the two remaining tubes are called quitiplás. The sounds and rhythms produced by the four tubes are characteristic of a dance bearing the same name, which is performed by independent, unattached couples. Maracas are played one at a time, usually by the singers, as an accompaniment for the golpe de tambor grande (ex.4) and the golpe de tambor redondo. The charrasca, also called carrasca, carraca, cacho rayao, güiro, güirio or guacharaca, among other names, can be made of wood, horn, gourd, metal or other materials. Grooves are made in the material which is then stroked hard with a stick. This instrument, played by both blacks and Creoles, is used to accompany guasas and fulías, together with the chimbanguele drums and the cuatro when it serves as a gaita accompaniment.

Of the membranophones, the tambor redondo (cylindrical drum), also known as culepuyas or culo ’e puya, is a small, wooden tubular drum, approximately 97 cm in length with a head on either end. It rests on the ground, between the player’s legs, and only the upper head is played. The drum heads are held in place by ligatures which extend the full length of the drum and around it. This drum is always played with sticks or with the hands in a group of three drums called corrío, prima or guía, cruzao and pujao; the names vary according to region. The corrío sets the basic rhythm of the golpe while the pujao and cruzao improvise freely. These traditional instruments were brought over from Angolan-Congolese regions by Congolese blacks who disembarked in Barlovento.

The mina is a single-headed drum approximately 30 cm in diameter, 2 metres in length, made out of a tree trunk, the drum-head held in place by wooden wedges driven into the main body of the drum. Due to its size it cannot rest on the floor and is therefore supported near the mouth by two crossed sticks in the shape of an X. The player, who sits facing the drum, strikes it with two small, thick beaters called laures. Two other players face the body of the drum and strike it with two laures. When it is played flat on the ground, this drum is called a quichimba. The curbata is a drum used together with the mina during the Festival in honour of St John. It also has a single head which is attached in the same way as the mina. Of normal size, resting on the ground on three feet, it is played standing, struck with two beaters acting as the guía (guide), by providing the basic rhythm for the players.

The cumaco is a tubular, cylindrical drum made out of a tree trunk with a single head which is nailed on. Between one and two metres long and 30 to 50 cm wide, it rests on the floor while the player sits on it. This drum is usually played as a pair to achieve sounds of different pitch. In the state of Lara it is played for the tamunangue dance.

The tamunango is a single-headed drum, the head attached by means of ligatures which extend to the bottom of the drum, where they are attached to a loop of rope or sisal held in place by wedges, before returning back to the drum head. Tuned by inserting wedges in the lower part of the drum, its shape can vary from cylindrical to conical, each shape having its own name: Juan mayor, tambor mayor, arriero or regañón, respuesta or respondón or tambor de respuesta, cantante, pujador or requinta duplicated by requintilla or media requinta and medio golpe.

Afro-Venezuelan chordophones include the carángano, also known as marimba, tarimba or ciriaco, a beaten chordophone with a separate resonator. Made from a stick or length of bamboo it has a taut string extended along its length which is struck with one or two small sticks. A gourd or a dried, inflated animal bladder with seeds or stones inside is used as a resonator. A second player holds the gourd or bladder on to the string, thus producing a dull, rhythmical sound. A very common instrument among the black population of the states of Aragua and Miranda, it is also made and used by creoles in various villages of the plains and in the states of Miranda and Trujillo. Bantu in origin, it used to be played during the festivals of St John and St Peter. It is normally used during Easter, as an accompaniment to aguinaldos and, in the state of Apure, to accompany the joropo.

In Afro-Venezuelan music, only two types of aerophone are played together with various types of drums during festivals in honour of St John and St Benedict: the flauta nasal (nasal flute) and the guarura.

The flauta nasal is used in the state of Zulia. Its origins are linked to magical and religious ritual. It accompanies the chimbánguele drums and is made out of orumo wood or simply out of a length of iron tube, with a mouthpiece at one end for blowing through. In some regions, the pito also exists. This is a flute which accompanies the chimbánguele drums, and which can be played either by blowing through the mouth or through the nose.

The guarura is the Venezuelan name for a sea-shell trumpet, played together with the mina and curbata during the festival of St John.

(iv) Social entertainment music.

3. Hispano-Venezuelan music.

European cultural sources became the basis of Venezuela’s folk music, in which Hispanic traits clearly predominate. From the early years of the Conquest vihuelas and guitars, scales, harmonies, rhythms, cadential formulae and dynamic conventions of European origin found their way to Venezuela. The more peaceful conditions of the late 17th and the 18th centuries led to the introduction of larger instruments such as the harp and clavichord, extending the repertory and affecting all levels of society.

In the 19th century the Venezuelan War of Independence interrupted the development of Venezuelan art music, which was then among the most promising in Latin America. Folk music, however, did not suffer in the political upheaval: its songs and instruments continued to meet the spiritual needs of field labourer and soldier.

Hispano-Venezuelan music may be divided roughly into genres according to function, such as children’s songs, work songs, religious, quasi-religious, festive music and funeral songs.

(i) Children’s songs.

(ii) Work songs.

(iii) Religious music.

(v) Galant music.

(vi) Funeral genres.

Venezuela, §II, 3: Folk music: Hispano-Venezuelan music

(i) Children’s songs.

These are of varying character and structure. Lullabies are generally very simply constructed in eight-bar phrases and duple rhythm (ex.5); some are comparable to the oldest European cradle songs. Dandling songs differ from lullabies in both structure and rhythm, as in function. They are generally livelier, and the text may consist of maternal baby-talk. Play songs still accompany many games, the structure and rhythm depending on the kind of game being played. In the simplest type of play song the melody is generally repeated frequently, the text changing as the game progresses.

Venezuela, §II, 3: Folk music: Hispano-Venezuelan music

(ii) Work songs.

Venezuelan folk music had a great variety of work songs (ex.6). Many of these are no longer practised due to socio-economic changes which have deprived them of their relevance; e.g. the canto de pilar maíz (the corn-stacking song), the cantos de faenas de ordeño (milking songs), the cantos de molienda de la caña de azúcar (sugar-cane grinding songs) also known as cantos de trapiche, among others.

Other songs are still in use, although they are gradually dying out, such as the cantos de cafetería (coffee-harvesting songs), the cantos de arreo del ganado (cattle-driving songs, ex.7) and the pregones callejeros (songs of street-criers) found in towns and villages. These songs are generally in free metre and of an improvisatory nature. The songs of pregoneros, or criers, are usually very short; some proclaim their goods with a definite musical intonation while others merely cry out an appropriate ditty.

Venezuela, §II, 3: Folk music: Hispano-Venezuelan music

(iii) Religious music.

This type of music plays a leading role in Venezuelan daily life. At times it is purely devotional in nature, at others a mixture of popular secularism and quasi-religious devotion with a tendency towards the mystical and the superstitious. These ceremonies take place during processions in honour of the child Jesús (Christmas), the Virgin Mary or other saints, and during velorios (wakes or vigils) which take place at night.

Velorios are undoubtedly one of the most important features of folk tradition whether they be velorios de angelito (a wake for a child under seven), velorios de santo (wake for a saint) or velorios de la cruz (wake for the cross). These meetings take place either as an expression of faith or to honour a promise made. The Nacimientos and Jerusalenes are performances which combine popular secular traditions and religious doctrine, the latter being subjected to a certain freedom of interpretation. The Christmas cycle (ciclo de Navidad) begins on 16 December, with preparation of nativity scenes, and ends on 2 February, with the celebration of the Virgin of Candlemas. This is the most important festivity in Venezuela, and consequently gives rise to the greatest variety of traditions. The music and songs performed during these festivities include villancicos, aguinaldos, gaitas, romances, estribillos and pasacalles, among others.

Velorios de la cruz take place in the month of May and are associated with the worship of the cross and performed at nocturnal ritual events. Crosses are put up and decorated in various parts of a house and prayers and rosaries are said and sung. The songs performed during these religious occasions when participants come together in a group in front of the cross are called tonos. Songs are dedicated to the worship of the Cross, the Virgin Mary, while others deal with human themes: the latter are divided into three categories: tonos de argumento, tonos de flores and tonos de amores (themes of debate, of flowers, of love). Depending on the region in which they take place these celebrations are also known as Fiesta de la cruz de Mayo, Rosario de cruz, Velorio de Santo (the Celebration of the May Cross, the Rosary of the Cross, the Wake of the Saint). In the state of Miranda and on the coast of the Federal District, fulías are sung for this celebration instead of polyphonic songs. Creole or Afro-Venezuelan fulías have two alternating parts: one consists of an irregular melody of eight or ten bars, sung by a soloist, followed by a reply from a chorus, in irregular phrases of five, six or seven bars, often with partial repetition of the soloist’s melody. Occasionally, Hispanic forms are mixed with musical expressions of African origin, with accompaniment from a cuatro, tambora, metal charrasca and maracas. The second part of the fulía consists in the recitation of décimas.

Tonos de velorio de la cruz (ex.8) are intoned in two parts (in parallel 3rds) or in three parts and constitute the most curious and significant musical manifestation found in certain regions of Venezuela. Sung by three men a cappella in three parts, they are sometimes accompanied by the cuatro, at other times by tiple, bandola and maracas depending on the region. The harp is very occasionally used. The voices proceed as follows: the voice known as the guía, alante or prima, which guides the song and remembers the text, begins first. After the first verse is sung, the second voice, called the farsa (falsa) or contrato (contralto) joins in. This is then followed by the tenor who sings the lower voice. The voice known as the superior or falsa is sung an octave higher in falsetto. Two verses are sung, and then fully or partially repeated (in the latter case they are completed with sung ays or with bocca chiusa, that is with wordless humming), until the full text has been sung. Some tonos have a very definite harmonic tendency while others are contrapuntal in nature. They are considered either religious or secular, according to the subject.

The aguinaldo is described as de parranda or religioso, depending on its character. The aguinaldo de parranda has a festive character associated with Christmas celebrations, although it is not religious, while aguinaldos religiosos are thematically related to Christian Christmas themes. Songs have different names in each region, and are also known as Cantos de Noche Buena, versos al niño, aguinaldas, villancicos, romances, décimas, plegaria del niño and alabanzas. They are sung by a soloist and a chorus, with maracas, cuatro, tambora and pandereta accompaniment.

The maracas are shaken idiophones, played in pairs by Creoles as rhythmic accompaniment to dance and song. Different playing styles exist, known as oriental, tuyero, llanero and larense. The tambora criolla is also called tamborete, tamborita and tambor. A membranophone with two heads either nailed or held in place by ligatures, it is played with a mallet and a stick and used to accompany all kinds of songs and dances. It is always played in aguinaldos, fulías, gaitas, pasacalles and merengues.

The pandereta or pandero is similar to the Spanish tambourine, although it is commonly played by rubbing the middle finger across the centre of the head. The instruments which accompany the aguinaldo may vary: e.g. in the state of Lara, the cinco (five-stringed chordophones) and the cinco y medio (slightly larger than the cuatro with the same strings as the cinco and an additional resonance string called the tiple) are used. The aguinaldo is written in 5/8 and 6/8 and, sometimes, in 2/4 time.

A fulía of clearly European origins is sung in the eastern part of the country (in the states of Anzoátegui, Sucre and Monagas). The melody is in measured time and its distinctive characteristics and rhythm are very similar to the dances imported from Portugal and the Canary Islands. The galerón, another type of fulía, can also be heard in the eastern states. The song begins after an initial prelude by the accompanying instruments of guitar, bandolín and cuatro. A descending melody, corresponding to the Greek hypo-Phrygian scale, is sung, while the harmony progresses from the tonic to the subdominant and dominant with guitar, bandolín and cuatro accompaniment.

The bandolín is similar to the Italian mandolin. It has four orders of double strings and is played with a plectrum as a solo instrument. The cuatro is a chordophone of the lute family directly derived from the Spanish Renaissance guitarrilla (small guitar), named after its four strings. It is popular at all levels of society for its ease of play; the strumming or charrasqueo of the strings is similar to the Spanish golpe and adaptable to singing accompaniments and different combinations of instruments. Also used as a solo instrument, its characteristics, in terms of manufacturing techniques, size, number of strings and sonority vary according to the region. In addition to the traditional cuatro, there are a number of variants known as cuatro de cinco cuerdas (five-stringed cuatro), also called the requinto, which has a double order in lieu of a single fourth string, and the cuatro y medio (four and a half): in the latter, the first string is attached to a peg which is inserted into the lower part of the instrument. The cuatro tradicional is tuned in a similar way to the Renaissance guitarrilla (or small guitar): from the first to the second string there is an ascending perfect 5th interval, followed by a descending major 3rd and a descending perfect 4th: B–F–D–A (the first string, B, is played an octave lower). Excluding romantic songs, which are accompanied by the guitar, the cuatro accompanies all Venezuelan creole dances and songs. The larger quinto or cinco has five strings while the tiple has five double or triple courses. The tiple (fig.3), derived from the ancient Spanish guitar, is also strummed to accompany songs. Although more typically a Colombian instrument, it is found in the Venezuelan Andean region, bordering with Colombia. The ordinary guitar is also used in Venezuelan folk music.

The quasi-religious genre is often connected with communal dances: saints’ feasts and other devotional occasions are celebrated with popular amusements and entertainments. Other types, such as the fulía oriental (from eastern Venezuela) and the tamunangue, are examples of music of a different character within the quasi-religious genre.

In Venezuela the fulía (a name slightly modified from the European folia) is not a dance but a devotional song. There are two types: the first is creole or Afro-Venezuelan and the second European. The latter is sung with a certain degree of metrical freedom. A man and a woman may alternate in singing the text, which is religious in tone (canto a lo divino). Ex.9 shows an example of fulía: the sung melody is repeated many times with different texts and with improvised melodic variants to the accompaniment of the bandolín and cuatro.

Venezuela, §II, 3: Folk music: Hispano-Venezuelan music

(iv) Social entertainment music.

There are many different types of entertainment music: some are traditional and connected with European art dance music; others are derived from music which in Europe served as simple entertainment and which continued to do so in Latin America; and others are relatively modern (danzas, merengues). Four of these types are the pasaje, golpe, corrido and punto. The first two accompany the joropo, Venezuela’s national dance, which is performed by independent couples: each couple may use different steps, but the dance always starts with the valseo (waltz step). More recently the name ‘joropo’ has been given to a type of composition by academically trained musicians using melodies and rhythms of a creole character.

There are two kinds of pasaje (also called revuelta), one from the Venezuelan plains, the other sung only in the north-central part of the country. The latter type of pasaje consists of four sections, each with its own name, as in European dance suites of the 17th and 18th centuries. The first part (also called pasaje) is the longest and most varied, the second (yaguaso) may modulate to a neighbouring key, returning to the tonic (sometimes by way of the relative minor) for the third section (the guabina), and the final section (marisela) is a rhythmic showpiece characterized by syncopations and cross-rhythms of 3/4 and 6/8. Ex.10 gives a general idea of the voice movement, melody and some aspects of the accompaniment of the pasaje: the singer accompanies himself with maracas, while a harp provides the musical framework, playing both an accompaniment of chords and arpeggios and melodic introduction; the vocal line is melodically independent; and the quick tempo expresses the lively character of the dance. The themes and technical resources are comparable to the best popular music of 18th-century Europe and the use of counterpoint and variations makes the pasaje unique in Venezuela’s folk music. There is a large extant repertory of pasajes used to dance the joropo.

The Venezuelan harp (fig.4) is directly related to the diatonic harps brought to America from Spain from the 16th century onwards. There are two varieties of harp: the arpa tuyera (also known by the names of aragüeña, mirandina or central, which has a wider sound box than the llanera, and 34 high-pitched metal strings) and the arpa llanera which has 32 nylon strings and is principally used alongside the cuatro and the maracas, in the dancing and singing of the joropos llaneros; for tuyeros, the harp is played together with the maracas, in which case, the maraquero or maraca-player also sings. Both types of harp have a range of almost four octaves.

The golpe is a more common and varied form than the pasaje. It is a generic term for a musical piece, whether African in character (played on the drums) or Hispanic (played on the harp or bandola, cuatro and maracas). The golpe usually consists of a melody in eight or 16 bars, sung by one or two voices. More complex structures, with a refrain, occur only in the state of Lara in central Venezuela. The European prototypes may have been waltzes or other short pieces in 3/4 time, such as ländler. The golpe may include one or more musical themes in the manner of a creole waltz with the typical syncopations and melodic and rhythmic mixtures of Venezuelan folk music.

The bandola is a chordophone of the lute family. It has a pear-shaped sound box and is played with a plectrum. There are three types of bandola in Venezuela: the bandola llanera which has four single strings, the bandola central or guariqueña and the bandola oriental, both of which have double strings, and the bandola andina with a combination of double and triple strings. This instrument also plays a part, together with the cuatro and the maracas, in the performance of the quirpa, a popular golpe among músicos llaneros or musicians of the plains.

Whereas the golpe and pasaje accompany the joropo, the corrido and punto are narrative genres. Many old European ballad themes and types of harmony and accompaniment occur in these forms, sometimes mixed with creole elements and sometimes virtually unaltered. In Venezuela there are three types of narrative song: the décima (with special text and music) and the more traditional corrido and punto.

The corrido texts derive from the Spanish romance (ballad). The term corrido denotes both text and music; the occasional use of a variant term, seis corrido, implies no difference in content or structure. The song generally begins with a sustained high-pitched note which is followed in the most traditional examples by a descending and syllabic melody (ex.11), sometimes based on a G mode. Hemiola results from the duple rhythm of the melody against the triple rhythm of the accompaniment. Occasionally the melody may move freely against the accompaniment. The text of this example recounts a theme common in Venezuelan folklore, the imprisonment of a revolutionary leader.

The term ‘punto’ is used in some Central American and Caribbean countries to denote a narrative song genre, but the Venezuelan punto is distinguished by rhythmic and other characteristics. The form is no longer current and modern examples collected in Venezuela are rare, despite the popular references to many kinds of punto (e.g. punto mampó, punto y llanto). The text is religious, as the punto was originally connected with the velorios. The melody is rhythmically free and resembles Andalusian, specifically flamenco songs in its scale, slurs and characteristic ornaments such as grupetos. The accompaniment is sometimes played only by a cuatro, but a bandola may also add a cantus firmus, and a guitar the bass part.

Venezuela, §II, 3: Folk music: Hispano-Venezuelan music

(v) Galant music.

The term ‘galant’ is applied to a repertory of love-songs, of European origin, in praise of women: mother, wife or beloved. They might be sung before a window at night, like a medieval serenade, or in a salon as entertainment. The earlier examples found in Venezuela are brief, simple melodies, similar to their European prototypes. Galant songs were current until the introduction of the Spanish theatre (in the late 18th century) and later the Italian (from the mid-19th century). The guitar accompaniment developed from simple arpeggios to tremolos, altered harmonies, preludes and interludes, following the Italian operatic fashions. The song’s structure was also changed by the incorporation of thematic contrasts with modulations to neighbouring keys and da capo. Rubato, fragmented phrases and other Romantic effects characterized this type of song, which was popular for little more than a century, until about 1920. The galant style manifested itself in other theatrical forms such as the polos, malagueñas and jotas, clearly derived from the Spanish theatre. Of these only the polo survives, very much transformed and apparently unconnected with the flamenco polo. Other Venezuelan song types within this genre (e.g. the waltz and bambuco) are more recent.

Venezuela, §II, 3: Folk music: Hispano-Venezuelan music

(vi) Funeral genres.

The principal types of folk music connected with death are the tonos, ballads and refrains of a religious character sung in memory of dead children (angelitos). Another funeral genre, canto del gritón, is a short melody used in certain parts of the state of Lara to accompany the ‘procession of souls’ or to end a ‘novenary for the dead’. In these cases the occasion is communal and solemn, dedicated not to children but to adults. The unaccompanied melody (ex.12) is sung by a single man at the head of the procession.

Popular shows called Nacimientos and Jerusalenes were performed in Caracas from the end of the 18th century. The Nacimientos were a representation of the Nativity while Jerusalenes enacted the passion and death of Jesus. In the 19th century established composers, such as José María Montero, José Lorenzo Montero and Román Isaza, wrote pieces for these plays.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

and other resources

afro-and hispano-venezuelan music

R. Olivares Figueroa: ‘Folklore venezolano’, Onza, Tigre y Leó, nos.55–66 (1944)

L.F. Ramón y Rivera: La polifonía popular de Venezuela (Buenos Aires, 1949)

J. Liscano: Folklore y Cultura (Caracas, 1950)

L.F. Ramón y Rivera: El joropo, baile nacional de Venezuela (Caracas, 1953, 2/1987)

L.F. Ramón y Rivera: Cantos de trabajo del pueblo Venezolano (Caracas, 1955)

J.A. Calcaño: La ciudad y su música (Caracas, 1958/R)

I. Aretz: ‘El polo: historia, música, poesía’, Boletín del Instituto de Folklore, iii/6 (1959), 227–73

L.F. Ramón y Rivera: ‘Supervivencias de la polifonía popular en Venezuela’, Revista Musical Chilena, xiii/66 (1959), 43–59

I. Aretz: Cantos navideños en el folklore Venezolano (Caracas, 1962)

L.F. Ramón y Rivera: ‘Rhythmic and Melodic Elements in Negro Music of Venezuela’, JIFMC, xiv (1962), 56–60

I. Aretz: ‘Notes on Ethnomusicology in Venezuela’, EthM, x (1966), 77–9

I. Aretz: Instrumentos musicales de Venezuela (Cumaná, 1967)

L.F. Ramón y Rivera: Música indígena, folklórica y popular de Venezuela (Buenos Aires, 1967)

I. Aretz: Manual de folklore venzolano (Caracas, 1969)

L.A. Domínguez and A. Salazar Quijada: Fiestas y danzas folklóricas de Venezuela (Caracas, 1969)

L.F. Ramón y Rivera: La música folklórica de Venezuela (Caracas, 1969)

I. Aretz: El tamunangue (Barquisimento, 1970)

L.F. Ramón y Rivera: La música afrovenezolana (Caracas, 1971)

L.F. Ramón y Rivera: La canción venezolana (Maracaibo, 1972)

J. Liscano: La fiesta de San Juan el Bautista (Caracas, 1973)

A. Pollak-Eltz: ‘Influencia de los cultos afroamericanos en Venezuela’, Revista Venezolana de Folklore, no.5 (1974), 83–8

L.F. Ramón y Rivera: ‘Supervivencias de la polifonía popular en Venezuela’, Revista Venezolana de Folklore, no.5 (1974), 94–120

L.F. Ramón y Rivera: La música popular de Venezuela (Caracas, 1976)

L.F. Ramón y Rivera: ‘Los cantos de trabajo en Venezuela’, Revista Inidef, (Venezuela, 1976), 14–27

A. Pollak-Eltz: Cultos afroamericanos (Caracas, 1977)

L.F. Ramón y Rivera: ‘Del villancico al aguinaldo’, Revista Inidef, no.5 (Venezuela, 1981–2), 34–43

J.A. Calcaño: La ciudad y su música (Caracas, 1985)

F. Cook: El cuatro venezolano (Caracas, 1987)

G. Alemán: Danzas y bailes (Caracas, 1988)

D. Hernández and C. Fuentes: Los fabricantes del sonido (Caracas, 1988)

J. Peñin: ‘Tenoristas, falsetistas, castrados y la voz ‘falsa’ en la polifonía popular colombo-venezolano’, Revista Musical de Venezuela, nos.30–31 (1992), 91–101

Fundación Bigott: Calendario de fiestas tradicionales venezolanas (Caracas, 1994)

amerindian music

L.F. Ramón y Rivera: ‘Music of the Motilone Indians’, EthM, x (1966), 18–27

D. Olsen: Music and Shamanism of the Winikina-Warao Indians: Songs for Curing and other Theurgy (diss., UCLA, 1973)

D. Olsen: ‘Music-Induced Altered States of Consciousness among Warao Shamans’, Journal of Latin American Lore, i (1975), 19–33

M. de Civrieux: Watunna: an Orinoco Creation Cycle (San Francisco, 1980)

E.B. Basso: A Musical View of the Universe: Kalapolo Myth and Ritual Performance (Philadelphia, 1985)

M.F. Brown: Tsewa’s Gift (Washington DC, 1985)

A. Butt Colson: ‘Routes of Knowledge: an Aspect of Regional Integration in the Circum-roraima Area of the Guiana Highlands’, Antropólogica, nos.63–4 (Caracas, 1985), 103–49

A. Seeger: Why Suyá Sing (Cambridge, 1987)

M. Taussig: Shamanism, Colonialism and the Wild Man (Chicago, 1987)

J. Hill: Rethinking History and Myth (Urbana, IL, 1988)

L. Sullivan: Icanchu’s Drum (New York, 1988)

L.E. Luna: Ayahuasca Visions (Berkeley, 1991)

O. Agüero: The Millennium among the Tupi-cocama (Uppsala, 1992)

P. Chameuil: ‘Varieties of Amazonian Shamanism’, Diogenes (1993), 101–13

J. Hill: Keepers of the Sacred Chants (Tucson, AZ, 1993)

H. Clastres: The Land Without Evil (Urbana, TL, 1995)

L. Graham: Performing Dreams (Austin, 1996)

D. Olsen: Music of the Warao of Venezuela (Gainesville, FL, 1996)

S. Staats: ‘Fighting in a Different Way: Indigenous Resistance through the Alleluia Religion of Guyana’, History, Power and Identity, ed. J. Hill (Iowa City, 1996), 161–79

J. Hill: ‘Musicalizing the Other: Shamanistic Approaches to Ethnic-Class Competition along the Upper Río Negro’, Enchanting Powers: Music in the World’s Religions, ed. L. Sullivan (Cambridge, MA, 1997), 139–58

selected recordings

Música folklórica de Venezuela, coll. I. Aretz, A. Fernaud and L.F. Ramón y Rivera, rec. 1959–68, OCORA 78 (c1975) [incl. disc notes]

Tierra de Cacao: Afro-Venezuelan music and dance, PAN 20363D (1999) [incl. disc notes by B. Duysens]

Vengerov, Maxim

(b Novosibirsk, 15 Aug 1974). Israeli violinist of Russian birth. He studied with Galina Turchaninova in Novosibirsk and later at the Moscow Conservatory, and also with Zakhar Bron. He won first prize in the Junior Wieniawski Competition in Poland in 1984, and made débuts in Moscow in 1985, in Germany in 1987 and in London in 1989. In 1990 he won the Carl Flesch Competition, and he has subsequently established an international reputation, appearing with leading orchestras and conductors. He made his début in the USA in 1991 with the New York PO, and appeared at the Proms in 1992 and 1993. Vengerov has made several recordings including virtuoso solo repertory and critically acclaimed accounts of the concertos of Tchaikovsky and Glazunov. His playing combines superb technical command with a lyrical eloquence that can captivate his audience. He plays the ‘Reynier’ Stradivari of 1727.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

W. Savenye: ‘Poetic Licence’, The Strad, cii (1991), 300–04

MARGARET CAMPBELL

Vengerova, Isabelle [Isabella Afanasyevna]

(b Minsk, 17 Feb/1 March 1877; d New York, 7 Feb 1956). American pianist and teacher of Russian origin. She studied the piano at the Vienna Conservatory with Joseph Dachs, and privately with Theodor Leschetizky; in St Petersburg she studied with Anna Esipova. From 1906 to 1920 she taught at the Imperial Conservatory in St Petersburg and then toured the USSR and Western Europe from 1920 to 1923, when she settled in the USA. In 1924 she helped found the Curtis Institute and in 1933 joined the faculty of the Mannes College. She taught at both institutions until her death and was known for painstaking attention to detail and for psychological insight that brought out the best in each pupil. While her approach was flexible and she denied having a particular method, she drilled all students in certain techniques designed to achieve expressive playing, such as moulding the hand to the keys for evenness and a seamless legato; playing deeply in the keys while using the weight of the forearm and a flexible wrist to achieve a full singing tone without harshness, and controlling tone by higher or lower positions of the wrist. Among her pupils were Barber, Bernstein, Foss, Graffman, Kalish, Kallir, Lateiner and Pennario. She was the aunt of Nicolas Slonimsky.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

R. Gerig: Famous Pianists and their Technique (Washington DC, 1974)

G. Graffman: I Really should be Practicing (New York, 1981)

R.D. Schick: The Vengerova System of Piano Playing (University Park, PA, 1982)

J. Rezits: Beloved Tyranna: the Legend and Legacy of Isabelle Vengerova (Bloomington, IN, 1995)

DAVID WRIGHT

Venice

(It. Venezia).

Italian city, capital of the Veneto region.

GIULIO ONGARO (1), ELEANOR SELFRIDGE-FIELD (2), LUCA ZOPPELLI (3)

1. To 1600.

That Venice achieved its importance as a musical centre much later than other cities in northern Italy was probably due to several of the factors that contributed to its remarkable political stability: its electoral system for public offices ensured that no individual family achieved overwhelming prominence; appointments to important military and civil offices were often spread among several of the noble families; Venetian customs and sumptuary laws discouraged excessive displays of wealth and power by an individual or family, thus limiting private patronage of music. Little is known about music in Venice during the Middle Ages, but there is evidence of the development of a chant based on the liturgy of Aquileia which diverged considerably from the Gregorian. Most of the documents about music from the period up to the late 15th century are related to service at the ducal church of S Marco or to ducal politics. This accounts in part for the fact that until relatively recently the history of music in Venice to the end of the Renaissance has been viewed primarily as a history of music at S Marco. The ducal chapel was undoubtedly the most important musical institution of the city, completely overshadowing the cathedral of S Pietro di Castello, and it was the natural centre of that combination of religion and politics so evident in Venetian pageantry and liturgy.

Research continues to deepen our knowledge of music at other institutions and of private music-making, and a fuller picture is emerging of musical life in Venice, especially for the period beginning in the late 15th century.

The earliest musical document related to music at S Marco is the appointment of a ‘Mistro Zucchetto’ as organist in 1316. The first mention of a choir is in a document of 1403 recording the establishment of a singing school to provide the choir with trained singers of Venetian birth. Music was certainly performed at important ceremonies and processions well before the 15th century: a liturgical drama was performed for the Feast of the Annunciation in 1267, and there are other sporadic references to music. A tradition of motets celebrating the authority of the doge seems to have been established by the early 14th century, when a motet, probably by Marchetto da Padova, was written for the Doge Francesco Dandolo (1329–39); one anonymous motet was written for the Doge Marco Corner (1365–8), and one, apparently by Landini, was dedicated to the Doge Andrea Contarini (1368–81). Although no motets survive from the last three decades of the 14th century, it is likely that the tradition continued. In the early 15th century motets praising the doge were written by Johannes Ciconia, Antonio Romano (the first known master of the choir school at S Marco), Christophorus de Monte and Hugo de Lantins. These pieces were probably not heard at the doge's inauguration, as previously thought, but their composition was often tied to important ceremonial events early in the doge's reign. Minor figures, such as Johannes de Quadris, can be shown to have been in Venice in the 15th century; but no native composers of distinction worked in the city during the century and no major appointments of Franco-Flemish composers and singers, customary elsewhere, occurred here.

The first surviving list of the singing chapel of S Marco, compiled on 28 April 1486, shows an establishment comparable in size to that of other leading musical centres, with ten adult singers (four of them probably of foreign provenance) and 12 choirboys: the choir was headed by an ‘oltramontano’, the unknown Alberto francese. It is not known how long a choir of this size had been the norm at the church, but it seems that the late 1480s were a time of increased music-making at S Marco: between 1486 and 1490 four new adult singers were added to the choir, and a second organ was built and staffed by an additional organist. Alberto's successor, the little-known Petrus de Fossis, might have also been a French composer: although no works of his are extant, he was praised by contemporaries for his singing and for his compositional skills. Virtually no sacred music survives from this period, but there are a few frottolas composed by musicians from S Marco, for example by the organist Francesco d'Ana.

Musical performances of sacred music were not restricted to S Marco: the city's scuole (the charitable confraternities) were already active musically in the 15th century. Less important churches within Venice, especially monastic churches, also had musical establishments, although of much smaller size than S Marco. The activities of the scuole and of the churches of the city became progressively more elaborate in the course of the 16th century. Instrumental music seems also to have flourished in Venice at the turn of the century, establishing a tradition that was kept alive well beyond the Renaissance. In the early part of the 16th century Venetian instrumentalists, especially the members of the pifferi del Doge (see fig.2), the state instrumentalists, were widely sought: Pope Leo X wrote directly to the doge to obtain the temporary services of Zuan Maria del Cornetto, and King Henry VIII of England recruited several instrumentalists – the most famous among them being the members of the Bassano family – for his court. Silvestro Ganassi, the author of two of the most important instruction books on Renaissance instrumental music (the Fontegara of 1535 on recorder playing, and the Regola Rubertina of 1542–3 on the viola da gamba), was hired as a member of the pifferi in 1517. Little documentation survives as to the repertory of these musicians, but a letter of 1494 from one of the pifferi to Francesco Gonzaga discusses instrumental arrangements of motets, a practice that might explain the features of some of the untexted pieces found in the collections printed by Petrucci.

The appointment in 1527 of the Flemish master Adrian Willaert to head the chapel of S Marco (created a basilica in 1520) should be seen as a culmination of the growth of the musical establishment there in the preceding decades. It was also part of a conscious cultural policy of the Venetian government, and especially of its doge Andrea Gritti, that sought to enhance the status of the city through public patronage of the arts. Upon his arrival Willaert found a rather large choir, which included a number of foreign singers, and he apparently felt no need to press for any immediate changes. With Willaert the Venetian government finally had a director of music of international renown; undoubtedly his presence in Venice, and his increasing reputation as a teacher, were important factors – although by no means the only ones – in the growth of the public and private musical world of the Serenissima. In addition to his importance as a composer of sacred music, for which he was held up as a model by Zarlino, Willaert helped establish a ‘Venetian’ madrigal, and his works in the lighter secular genre of the villanella and his instrumental ricercares were imitated in Venice and abroad.

A vital factor in the growth of Venetian musical life was the number of music publishing houses in the city. The first print of polyphonic music was published in Venice, by Ottaviano Petrucci, in 1501, but a more modern and commercially successful music publishing industry was established in the 1530s by the house of Scotto and by the Frenchman Antonio Gardane. By about 1545 Venetian music publishers were by far the most important in Italy, and their activities made a large body of music readily available to local musicians. Scotto and Gardane printed music by nearly every significant composer, and many musicians visited Venice specifically to oversee publication of their works, thus enhancing the international character of the republic's musical life. The music publishing trade also provided an outlet and an incentive for local composers, who were sometimes directly involved in the business as publishers and editors.

Instrument making also flourished in Venice. There were numerous harpsichord makers, organ makers and makers of plucked and wind instruments, many of them of foreign birth. Italian harpsichord makers active in Venice included Alessandro and Vito Trasuntino, G.A. Baffo and Domenico da Pesaro; more of Domenico's keyboard instruments survive than of any other 16th-century maker. Documents from the 16th century show that there were several lute-making shops, whose total output was considerable – the inventory of a single shop lists over 500 lutes – making it likely that much of it was intended for the foreign market.

When Willaert died in 1562 the procurators of S Marco sought to appoint another foreign composer of international fame. Their choice was Rore, a pupil of Willaert, and thus already known in Venice: but after only slightly more than a year in the position, Rore left Venice, apparently dissatisfied with the complicated administrative arrangements originally designed to relieve Willaert of some of his teaching duties. The procurators used the period after Rore's departure to reorganize the chapel, eliminating the division between cappella piccola and cappella grande, and then appointed as maestro another pupil of Willaert, and a native of the nearby town of Chioggia, Gioseffo Zarlino. Zarlino had no great international reputation as a composer, but the publication of his Le istitutioni harmoniche in 1558 had already established him as one of the most important theorists of his time. Zarlino does not seem to have been greatly interested in composition, but a number of musicians at S Marco, notably the organists Claudio Merulo and Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli, and the singers Giovanni Croce and Baldissera Donato, were composers of distinction. The period of Zarlino's direction saw a gradual expansion of the size and the duties of the chapel. The major change that occurred during Zarlino's tenure (1565–90) was the appointment in 1568 of a permanent group of instrumentalists to assist in the celebration of the most important feast days, a formalization of an existing practice. In subsequent decades the procurators added to this group: some of the instrumentalists were required to support the voices of the choir, others seem to have been hired exclusively to play instrumental music. On all major feast days this nucleus of instrumentalists was supplemented by anything from four to 14 additional players. The size of the choir varied, reaching a low point during the great plague of 1575–6, but often numbering close to 30 singers. The increase in the size of the performing forces, which continued into the early 17th century, mirrored the growing use of polychoral (cori spezzati) writing by Venetian composers, an idiom which dominated Venetian sacred compositions from the 1570s until well into the next century. Contrasts of sonority, of tessitura and of instrumental colour among the various groups became a distinctive trait of the Venetian style; Venetian composers also favoured lavish settings of texts found outside the Ordinary of the Mass. The amount of spatial separation between the choirs of instruments and voices used by composers such as Giovanni Gabrieli has often been overstated. Vocal polychoral pieces a due cori were generally performed with no spatial separation of the performing forces, but with a division between soloists and ripieno; the total number of singers could be as few as 12. Some of the most extravagant late 16th-century performances saw one group in each of the organ lofts, situated on either side of the altar, and a third group on a specially built temporary stage on the main floor of the church, not far from the main altar. This grandiose style, found both at S Marco and at the celebrations of the scuole, can be seen as the musical counterpart of the political writings that were establishing the so-called ‘myth of Venice’, a trend given great impetus by the aftermath of the victory at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571: this major naval defeat of the Ottoman Turks, in which the Venetian fleet played a leading role, was a source of civic pride and spurred the production of literary and artistic tributes.

The other notable presence on the Venetian musical scene was that of the scuole. The scuole grandi, the largest and most important of these charitable confraternities, employed from the late 15th century a group of singers and instrumentalists to assist in a variety of celebrations. These institutions provided a focus for the civic activities of a large segment of the population that was otherwise excluded from the exercise of political power. Competition among the scuole was fierce, sometimes creating heated exchanges over the order of precedence at official processions, and during the 16th century the scuole grandi resorted to increasingly magnificent pageantry, which included music commissioned from the best composers and performed by the best singers and instrumentalists in the city. The English traveller Thomas Coryat, visiting Venice in 1608, described a musical performance at the Scuola Grande di S Rocco with a group of 20 singers and 24 instrumentalists, whose music made him feel ‘rapt up with Saint Paul into the third heaven’. This was very profitable work for Venetian musicians, and the procurators of S Marco used the existence of these opportunities as a recruiting tool: in a famous letter to Alessandro Striggio the younger, written in 1620, Monteverdi estimated that he could earn from commissions received from the scuole a sum equal to half of his basic salary as maestro at S Marco.

Musical life in the minor churches of the city could not equal the magnificence of that at S Marco or the scuole grandi. However, many of the most important churches maintained a musical establishment: among the maestri di cappella in the 16th century were Ludovico Balbi at the Franciscan church of S Maria Gloriosa dei Frari (where Monteverdi was later buried) and Ippolito Baccusi at the Augustinian church of S Stefano. The size of their choir was often very small, with no more than four or five singers; but by the late 16th century efforts were made to improve the quality of the establishments, while some emulated S Marco in hiring a small group of instrumentalists to play at important feasts.

2. 1600–1750.

Venice in the 17th and early 18th centuries provided one of the richest and most varied environments for music-making of the past millennium. Around 1600 Venice could bask in the glory of its political prestige. A signal event was the republic's stand-off with the Church of Rome in 1607; in questions of liturgy as in questions of ecclesiastical rule, Venetians did things in their own way. Semi-detachment from Rome had three chief consequences for sacred music in the first half of the 17th century: the (Friulian) rite of Aquileia prevailed in S Marco; the mood of religious piety converged with the new idiom of monody to produce poignantly expressive works for solo voice; and Counter-Reformation pleas for uncluttered settings of liturgical texts were ignored.

The rite of Aquileia varied from that of Rome in such details as the psalm texts prescribed for Vespers. Vespers for certain feasts made elaborate use of music, particularly polychoral psalms utilizing not only the two choirs of professional singers maintained by the basilica but also a choir of young priests. Instrumental works of various kinds may have been interleaved with vocal works, but the practice is better documented at monastic churches, where the Roman rite was in use. The cult of St Mark that took root in Aquileia was a joyous one that celebrated its beliefs in song and dance. The rapt attention paid to music in S Marco was in character with the tradition associated with its name.

It may be because of its retention of this older rite that S Marco so regularly avoided engaging maestri from outside the Veneto in the 17th and 18th centuries: Rovetta (1644–68), Cavalli (1668–76), Monferrato (1676–85), Legrenzi (1685–90), Volpe (1690–91), Partenio (1692–1701), Biffi (1702–32), Lotti (1736–40), Antonio Pollarolo (1740–46) and Giuseppe Saratelli (1747–62) all came either from Venice itself or from outlying parts of the republic. Monteverdi was the sole ‘foreigner’ in this succession; his predecessors Zarlino, Donati (1590–1603), Croce (1603–9) and Martinengo (1609–13) were all Venetians.

A curious aspect of Monteverdi's impact on music in Venice is that, while many of those in his charge (Grandi, Berti, etc.) wrote poignant sacred monodies (collected principally in two anthologies – the Ghirlanda sacra of 1625 and Sacra corona of 1636), his own monodies were confined almost entirely to dramatic works. It was incumbent upon the maestro to write for the great mass of personnel employed by the basilica. It is the savouring of the experience of performance itself that emanates from the solo motets of the lesser composers of the time: they abound with runs, passage-work and written-out ornaments, with unexpected harmonies, melismas on key words and a stylistic freedom that stood in contrast to the techniques of paraphrase and formal design in which maestri and organists were trained. Monody became a second language for musical expression.

If composers in Venice did not defer to Roman injunctions, they nonetheless set texts with great care. While Monteverdi's influence on the development of monody was immense, the publication of his most celebrated sacred works, the Vespro della Beata Vergine of 1610, predated his appointment as maestro di cappella at S Marco by three years. The chapel of the court he had vacated in Mantua was much less public than the ducal basilica in Venice, where the adjoining piazza was traversed by Venice's large nobility, by sailors and merchants and by revellers visiting the city during Carnival.

There were, however, foreign influences on music at S Marco in the 17th century. In the 16th century it had fallen to the second organist of the basilica to organize wind music for important ceremonies, and this tradition may well have continued through the following century. An indoor ensemble, modelled on the famous piffari who played straight silver trumpets in processions (until the practice was terminated in 1706), was officially added to the church's ranks in 1614, but it is clear that such a group had existed informally since 1568 or earlier. Most of Giovanni Gabrieli's ensemble canzonas, in which trombones are consistently mentioned, seem to have been composed for this group. The works were probably conducted by Gabrieli during his tenure as second organist (1585–1612). The idea of assembling masses of ten or 12 (or 15 or 21) instrumentalists may have blended elements of Venetian and Bavarian ceremonial life, as the Gabrielis and some members of the instrumental group had encountered them at the court in Munich, where they stayed in the 1570s.

Over the course of the 17th century, the composition of the ensemble (originally consisting chiefly of cornettists, trombonists and bassoonists) gradually shifted to include violinists (starting with Rovetta in 1614) and double bass players (also from 1614), cellists (from 1638), viola players (from 1656), trumpeters (from 1691) and players of bowed instruments with sympathetic strings (from c1690). It may be assumed that as the ranks of string players increased, those of trombonists decreased. In 1698 the cornett was officially replaced by the oboe. Until 1750 no flutes (which were considered to have lascivious associations) were used in the basilica. Many instrumental works were accompanied on the smaller second organ, while positive organs were used to support multiple groups in polychoral works. During Monteverdi's tenure several singers who could also accompany themselves on the theorbo were hired. The practice of accompanying the lessons during Holy Week on the harpsichord can be traced back at least to 1615. The use of a violin solo at the Elevation of the Host for masses at Christmas and Easter was instituted at about the same time. Thus did monody make its inroads. Young musicians who wished to pursue the polychoral style after the death of Gabrieli (among them Valentini and Priuli) seem to have found better opportunities in Austria where Monteverdi, through his Mantuan connections, also retained ties.

Within its six districts, Venice housed a great range of other venues in which music was produced. These included parish churches, convents and monasteries; scuole grandi e piccole (the former confraternities of merchants, the latter clubs of artisans and tradesmen); the ospedali which cared for (chiefly female) orphans; the palaces and gardens of the nobility; public and private theatres; gambling casinos; and the canals themselves. By 1750 a different musical genre could be associated with each venue.

Among all of these, it was the theatres that brought the greatest challenges to the stability of Venetian musical culture. Although their activities were severely controlled by government decrees, theatres defied the musical status quo for various reasons. The singers could be women. The audience for opera was less specifically Venetian than it was for other genres. The message of the text could be conveyed through the use of mechanically operated scenery, so that the burden of purely aural communication was diluted. While there was relatively little difference in musical idiom between sacred and secular monodies, the recitatives through which secular texts were declaimed had no analogues in the church repertory. Theatre orchestras were small (usually consisting of five strings and two harpsichords) throughout the century. Venetian operas almost always concentrated on solo singing. In the last three decades there was an increasing use of trumpets in sinfonias and of oboes (or occasionally of theorbos) in obbligatos; simple continuo accompaniments were gradually superseded by orchestral accompaniments in important arias. Choruses were rarely used in Venetian opera. To give a sense of culmination to individual acts, mock battles or imaginative dances were often introduced in the later 17th century. These gave way in the 18th century to other incidental entertainments such as comic intermezzi at S Cassiano or violin solos between acts at S Angelo. Gods and goddesses descended to earth in prologues and returned to heaven in finales with the help of elaborate machinery.

Until the end of the 17th century S Marco managed to hold its own in the general scheme of musical life. It never lacked for gifted performers or for new music from its maestri. The international visitors that opera brought to Venice duly noted the basilica's embarrassment of musical riches, and the ranks of the cappella were raided over and over by foreign diplomats seeking to fill orders for captivated employers, even though opera singers sang in the basilica only (if at all) on Christmas Eve. Many maestri (Monteverdi, Rovetta, Cavalli, Legrenzi), nearly all vicemaestri starting with Sartorio, 1676–80 (e.g. Legrenzi, 1681–5; Partenio, 1685–91; C.F. Pollarolo, 1692–1723; Antonio Pollarolo, 1723–40; Saratelli, 1740–47; and Galuppi, 1748–62) and several organists (Cavalli, 1639–69; P.A. Ziani, 1669–77; and Lotti, 1692–1736) were also opera composers. The need to create new works for the theatres created unprecedented pressures: a typical opera production lasted from three to five hours, and the ink on the score was often barely dry at the first performance. The composition of new sacred works for S Marco dropped off sharply in the later part of the 17th century, although Rovetta and others began to create Passion settings with choruses.

As a group, the musicians of S Marco were most likely to compose for the Teatro S Giovanni Grisostomo. S Giovanni, which opened with great fanfare in 1678, was the showpiece among Venice's numerous theatres (fig.6). The Grimani brothers, who operated it, catered especially for the tastes of dignitaries visiting from lands important to Venice's political interests. S Giovanni was the most extravagant theatre in matters of staging, the most expensive, the most prestigious and the most conservative in its musical tastes. Pallavicino (1678–88) and C.F. Pollarolo (1692–1722) were among the composers most consistently active at S Giovanni.

Among the other theatres, S Cassiano, which opened in about 1637, enjoyed the distinction of having been the first ‘public’ theatre. ‘Public’ meant that the theatre was operated by an impresario for a paying public. Boxes were typically let by the year, and many remained within families for several generations. S Cassiano suffered from several fires, and was eclipsed in the later 17th century by S Salvador (also called S Salvatore or S Luca), which had the reputation of providing excellent singers; by SS Giovanni e Paolo (1639; fig.7), which had many of the aspirations ultimately achieved by S Giovanni Grisostomo; and by S Angelo, which opened in 1677. S Angelo was a theatre that struggled more than most to survive financially, and therefore sought less costly ways of producing operas. In that role it was upstaged at the turn of the 18th century by the small Teatro S Fantin, near the site of the later Teatro La Fenice.

These differences of profile had important implications for the kinds of opera that were presented. Until 1714, when Gian Carlo Grimani died, the most ambitious works (often glorifying some figure from antiquity) were being given at S Giovanni, which presented the stars of the time – Faustina Bordoni, Vittoria Tesi, Santa Stella, Nicola Grimaldi, Domenico Cecchi and, in the late 1720s, Carlo Broschi (Farinelli). According to one critic, Farinelli's musical acrobatics rendered his performances close to solo concerts. But Farinelli's English admirers, prodded in part by the collapse of the Royal Academy in London, followed in his wake and brought fresh (English) patronage to S Giovanni. This did not prevent the lavish scenery from being criticized for depicting situations unrelated to the plots for which it was used. The unity of subject, scene and song which had been sought so rigorously over the past half century disintegrated within a few years.

The revived Teatro S Cassiano relied heavily on the works of Albinoni and Gasparini. It seems to have formed a symbiotic relationship with the Teatro di Via del Cocomero in Florence, for many works enjoyed productions in both places. This connection with Florentine theatre may help to explain S Cassiano's important role in implanting the comic intermezzo, which flourished for three decades from 1706 in Venice. Albinoni's Pimpinone (1708) enjoyed a particular success. S Moisè and S Angelo were lower-budget theatres; both seem to have maintained numerous ties with patrons abroad, in the former case with Bohemia and the ruling house of Brunswick, in the latter with Saxony and the Rhineland. Vivaldi had ties to both but was chiefly active at S Angelo. S Angelo was a haven for Bolognese singers; they (as well as Vivaldi and Orlandini) are among the many victims of Benedetto's noted satire on Venetian opera, Il teatro alla moda (1720).

Dramatic changes in Venetian comedy resulted from the collapse of the Duchy of Mantua in the first decade of the 18th century. The comedy troupes of S Salvador and S Samuele, which had survived as extensions of commedia dell'arte since the late 16th century, were forced to adopt new strategies for survival. Troupes became larger and developed stronger skills in singing and dancing. Improvised lines were replaced by scripts. Spoken comedy with musical numbers came into its own in the 1730s. Goldoni elevated comedy to a position of respectability that enabled it to compete successfully with serious opera. Serious operas of the 1730s and 40s rarely involved new libretti but instead relied on recycled texts. The reasons were partly economic: singers' salaries had become so audacious that little was left for sets, costumes, dancers, librettists or composers. Serious opera gave way to pastorales and satirical works, and they in turn gave way to opera buffa.

Venice's four ospedali – the Incurabili, Mendicanti, Derelitti (or Ospedaletto) and Pietà – all maintained musical chapels in the 17th century. These reached their peak in the early 18th century. Virtuosity was widely cultivated in the ospedali, although its promoters would have maintained that its purpose was to encourage devotional thoughts in the listener. The cultivation of organ playing and singing skills was expanded in the late 17th century to include string ensembles. Piffari instruments were maintained at the Mendicanti, where music was directed by a series of maestri (Monferrato, Legrenzi and Partenio) associated with S Marco. Most of the music written for the Mendicanti, as well as for the Derelitti and Ospedaletto (the latter served by Pallavicino and Pollarolo), is lost.

Proficiency on many more unusual instruments (such as the viola d'amore) was cultivated at the Pietà, from which much music, chiefly by Gasparini and Vivaldi, survives. The paramount musical genre of the conservatories (as the ospedali can more accurately be called) was the oratorio. Although in its musical idiom the oratorio was similar to the opera, it was supposed to represent a purer form of communication, one unsullied by commercial motives and unaided by elaborate scenery. Instrumental colour was a substitute for scenery, and composers rose to the challenge. Vivaldi's oratorio Juditha triumphans (1716), celebrating Venice's victory over the Turks, shows the genre at its best. Vivaldi's innovations in locating performing groups in the galleries of the church for the performance of instrumental pieces gave impetus to the concerto, a genre to which he contributed abundantly.

The rapid development of orchestras of mixed timbres in Venice in the early 18th century was stimulated in part by the mixture of musical cultures. Woodwind players seem in several cases to have come from France, but the practice of having winds double string parts was cultivated especially in Dresden, which sustained numerous interchanges with Venice through such figures as Schütz and Pallavicino in the 17th century, and through Heinichen, Pisendel and Lotti (as well as Pallavicino's son, the librettist Stefano) in the early 18th century. The idea of framing virtuoso solos (or ensembles) of wind players, however, is one that seems to have originated in Venice itself.

Despite Venice's many public venues for music, there was no shortage of splendid music for private gatherings. Musical dialogues and instrumental pieces were written for ducal banquets in the 17th century. Nuns formed brass ensembles and wrote and performed in musical plays within convents. On the feast of St Cecilia (22 November), more than 100 members of the musicians' guild would perform a celebratory concert. Pedagogy, like instrument manufacture, flourished. Serenatas and instrumental pieces were written (in many cases by Albinoni and Vivaldi) in the 18th century for diplomatic events of many kinds and for weddings of the nobility. Daughters from noble families were sometimes given tuition by S Marco musicians prior to taking the veil. Marcello's celebrated psalm settings in Estro poetico-armonico (1724–6) were set in the vernacular to suit chamber performance. Candlelit serenades were given on the Grand Canal on summer evenings. Strolling ensembles entertained visitors in Venice's numerous casinos. Venetians excelled in every aspect of music-making; yet the Republic's gradual loss of political power during the course of the 18th century led to the disintegration of many of its institutions, causing even its most celebrated musicians to seek their fortunes elsewhere.

3. After 1750.

There were clear signs of crisis in the final years of the republic, although there was still a great deal of operatic activity. The Teatro S Giovanni Grisostomo came to be considered too large, and was replaced as the city's leading theatre by the smaller S Benedetto, constructed by the Grimani family in 1768 and rebuilt in 1774 by a new group of box-owners. Following a lawsuit, they abandoned the S Benedetto in 1787 and built the Teatro La Fenice, on a plan by G.A. Selva. The new theatre was the first in Venice to proclaim its status in its elegant façade, and was inaugurated in 1792 with Paisiello's I giuochi d'Agrigento. The lesser theatres were mostly devoted to comic opera. However, Venice continued to be a centre of theatrical experiment: the type of dramma giocoso which Goldoni devised in the 1750s and 60s became a model throughout Europe, and in the 1780s and 90s librettists such as Giuseppe Foppa, Simeone Sografi and Alessandro Pepoli were responsible for the revival of opera seria. The one-act farsa, inspired by French models from the Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods, also flourished in Venice.

The situation with the ospedali was more serious. When the Incurabili went bankrupt in 1776 it caused the immediate bankruptcy of the others, with the exception of the Pietà, which managed to survive until the early 19th century through private donations. At S Marco a radical reform of the choir and orchestra was carried out in 1765–6, during Galuppi's directorship; standards were raised, and the layout, still tied to 16th-century practice, modernized. The practice of having famous singers perform solos at S Marco during the Christmas festivities continued well into the 19th century.

The succession of occupying foreign powers (France 1797, Austria 1797–1805, France 1805–14, Austria 1814–66) confirmed Venice's status as an economic and political backwater. Many of the minor theatres closed: S Angelo in 1803, S Cassiano in 1804 and S Moisè in 1818, soon after staging the premières of Rossini's first farse. Important Rossini premières (L'italiana in Algeri, 1813; Eduardo e Cristina, 1819) also took place at the S Benedetto (later the Gallo, then the Rossini, and finally converted into a cinema). But, like the S Salvador (later the Apollo and the Goldoni), the S Giovanni Grisostomo (later the Malibran) and the S Samuele (later the Camploy, demolished in 1894), the S Benedetto was gradually obliged to produce more popular forms of entertainment. The exception was La Fenice, burnt down and rebuilt in 1837, which managed to remain one of Italy's leading theatres. Librettists such as Gaetano Rossi and Francesco Maria Piave, and designers such as Giuseppe Borsato, Francesco Bagnara and Giuseppe and Pietro Bertoja, were among those employed by the theatre. Many famous premières were given there, including Cimarosa's Gli Orazi ed i Curiazi (1796), Rossini's Tancredi (1813), Sigismondo (1814) and Semiramide (1823), Meyerbeer's Il crociato in Egitto (1824), Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi (1830) and Beatrice di Tenda (1833), Donizetti's Belisario (1836), Pia de' Tolomei (1837) and Maria di Rudenz (1838), and Apolloni's L'ebreo (1855). Verdi composed five operas for La Fenice: Ernani (1844), Attila (1846), Rigoletto (1851), La traviata (1853) and Simon Boccanegra (1857), of which the last two were decidedly mixed successes. Crispino e la comare by the Ricci brothers, the last successful example of the Italian opera buffa tradition, was one of the works which received its première in the smaller theatres (Gallo, 1850). In the final years of Austrian domination (1859–66) La Fenice remained closed as a sign of protest.

The cappella of S Marco was directed by Ferdinando Bertoni from 1785, by Bonaventura Furlanetto from 1808 and then, from 1817, by Giovanni Agostino Perotti, a musician and theorist of conservative stamp, and one of the intellectuals associated with the neo-classical circle of the Accademia di Belle Arti of Leopoldo Cicognara. While Perotti was unable to halt the decline of the cappella that had begun in the final years of the 18th century, he was responsible for encouraging the protection of its archives and library, a display of a typically Venetian historical awareness. From 1855 the maestro di cappella was Antonio Buzzolla, formerly an opera composer in the Rossini mould. His successors included the composer and musicologist Giovanni Tebaldini and Lorenzo Perosi, appointed in 1894 by the Patriarch Giuseppe Sarto, the future Pope Pius X, with whom he had close ties.

Composers such as Simon Mayr, Giovan Battista Perucchini and Buzzolla made 19th-century Venice a centre of liriche da camera (chamber songs) to both Italian and dialect texts, in part inspired by the pseudo-folk canzoni da battello, or gondola songs, beloved of foreign visitors. Between 1816 and 1818 Andrea Erizzo organized a number of important academies, in the course of which Haydn's late oratorios were performed – with obvious pro-Austrian political implications – as well as Handel's Messiah. Haydn's symphonies had been played at amateur academies in the city from the end of the 18th century. The public concerts given in the Piazza S Marco by Austrian military bands played an important role in popularizing music. Lastly, the city's modest instrumental tradition produced at least one able performer and composer, the pianist Antonio Fanna (1792–1845).

During the 19th century no attempt was made to found a quartet society or institute regular orchestral concerts. Because of the city's increasing provincial isolation and the classical prejudices of influential figures such as Perotti, Perucchini, Buzzolla, Luigi Plet (Boito's first teacher) and the critic Tommaso Locatelli, Venice remained behind the prevailing trends in European taste. On the other hand, nostalgia for the glories of the republic prompted some pioneering work in music history from scholars such as Francesco Caffi and Pietro Canal. For much of the 19th century Venice was unable to create a permanent institution for music teaching: succeeding each other with equal lack of success were the Istituto Filarmonico founded by Caffi (1811–16), the Orfanotrofio dei Gesuati, the Scuola di Canto e Ballo del Teatro La Fenice (1831–46), the Istituto Musicale Privato (from 1838) created by the impresario Giuseppe Camploy and directed by the teacher Ermagora Fabio, and a Scuola Comunale di Musica (from 1856).

Italian unification did not draw Venice out of its provincial isolation. Financial difficulties obliged theatres to remain closed for long periods, and also caused an overall lowering of standards. The city where Wagner died in 1883 saw the Italian première of the complete Ring in the same year, performed by Angelo Neumann's travelling company, but generally Venice was slow to take on new works both from Italy and abroad. There were few important premières at La Fenice, with the exception of Leoncavallo's La bohème in 1897. In 1935 the proprietors of the opera house sold it to the Comune; after restoration La Fenice reopened in 1937 under the management of Goffredo Petrassi.

Music disappeared almost entirely from all the other theatres in the city. However, Venice played a crucial role in the rediscovery of Italian music of the 17th and 18th centuries, from Monteverdi to Galuppi. At the forefront of this activity was the Liceo Musicale Benedetto Marcello, founded in 1876 and made a state conservatory in 1940. Notable directors include Marco Enrico Bossi (1896–1902), Wolf-Ferrari (1903–9), Malipiero (1939–52) and Renato Fasano (1952–60).

In keeping with Venice's new role in the second half of the 20th century as an international tourist and cultural centre, the Teatro La Fenice rose again to the level of the leading Italian opera houses. The Fenice has also played an important role in collaboration with the Festival Internazionale di Musica Contemporanea, later renamed the Biennale Musica. Founded in 1930, it developed after the war into one of the most prestigious festivals of its kind. Under its auspices world premières have been given of works by composers such as Stravinsky (The Rake's Progress, 1951, Canticum sacrum ad honorem Sancti Marci Nominis, 1956, Threni, 1958), Britten (The Turn of the Screw, 1954), Prokofiev (The Fiery Angel, 1955), Nono (Intolleranza 1960, 1961, La fabbrica illuminata, 1964, Prometeo, 1984), Maderna (Hyperion, 1964), Bussotti (The Rara Requiem, 1969–70, Lorenzaccio, 1972), Ferneyhough (Firecycle Beta, 1976), Sciarrino, Castiglioni, Manzoni, Rihm, De Pablo, Guarnieri and others. Performances by the Fenice and the Biennale Musica have occasionally been held in other locations, such as the Teatro Malibran (reconstructed in 1919) and the Teatro Goldoni (restored in 1974 and generally used for straight theatre). On the night of 29 January 1996 La Fenice was completely destroyed by fire, depriving the city of its most important musical venue. The theatre was in the process of being rebuilt at the turn of the century.

The last three decades of the 20th century saw a spectacular growth in musicological research in Venice, due to the expansion of the university and the activities of private institutions which promote conferences, publications and major research projects: the Fondazione Giorgio Cini (which includes the Istituto per le Lettere, il Teatro e il Melodramma, the Istituto per la Musica and the Istituto Italiano Antonio Vivaldi) and the Fondazione Ugo e Olga Levi. There is important musical material at the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana (including the 17th-century operas in the Contarini collections and the librettos of A. Zeno's collection), the Fondazione Cini (librettos from the Rolandi collection, source material on Boito, Respighi, Milloss, Casella, Malipiero and Rota), the Fondazione Levi (which also houses the Archivio Storico del Teatro La Fenice and the archive of the cappella of S Marco), the conservatory (housing the material belonging to the Museo Correr), the Istituti di Ricovero e di Educazione (IRE), which holds the archives of the ospedali, the Casa Goldoni (librettos), the Biblioteca Querini-Stampalia, the Archivio Storico delle Arti Contemporanee della Biennale and the Archivio Luigi Nono.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A General. B Sacred music. C Theatre. D Instruments and instrumental music. E Teaching institutions.

a: general

ES (M.T. Muraro)

C. Ivanovich: Minerva al tavolino (Venice, 1681, 2/1688)

P. Canal: ‘Della musica in Venezia’, Venezia e le sue lagune, i (Venice, 1847), 473

G. Bernoni, ed.: Canti popolari veneziani (Venice, 1872)

V. Malamani: ‘La musa popolare veneziana del Settecento’, Giornale storico della letteratura italiana, xii (1888), 109–80

T. Wiel: I codici musicali contariniani del secolo XVII nella R. Biblioteca di San Marco in Venezia (Venice, 1888)

A. Solerti: ‘Le rappresentazioni musicali di Venezia dal 1571 al 1605 per la prima volta descritte’, RMI, ix (1902), 503–58

C. van den Borren: Les débuts de la musique à Venise (Brussels, 1914)

K. Jeppesen: ‘Ein venezianisches Laudenmanuskript’, Theodor Kroyer: Festschrift, ed. H. Zenck, H. Schultz and W. Gerstenberg (Regensburg, 1933), 69

R. Lunelli: ‘Contributi dalmatini e sloveni alla rinascita e alla diffusione dell'arte organaria veneziana settecentesca’, Archivio veneto, 5th ser., xxx–xxxi (1942), 194

G. Damerini: ‘Venezia al tempo di Monteverdi’, Musica II (Florence, 1943), 105

D. Arnold: ‘Music at the Scuola di San Rocco’, ML, xl (1959), 229–41

L. Ronga: La civiltà veneziana nell'età barocca (Florence, 1959)

A. Della Corte: ‘La Musica’, La civiltà veneziana del settecento: Venice 1959, ed. D. Valeri and others (Florence, 1960), 153–86

D. Arnold: ‘Music at a Venetian Confraternity in the Renaissance’, AcM, xxxvii (1965), 62–72

R. Giazotto: ‘La guerra dei palchi’, NRMI, i (1967), 245–86, 465–508; iii (1969), 906–33; v (1971), 1034–52

L. Bianconi and T. Walker: ‘Dalla Finta pazza alla Veremonda: storie di Febiarmonici’, RIM, x (1975), 379–454

E. Rosand: ‘Music in the Myth of Venice’, Renaissance Quarterly, xxx (1977), 511–37

MT, cxix/April (1978) [Venice issue, incl. D. Stevens: ‘Ceremonial Music in Medieval Venice’, 321–7; D. Arnold: ‘Venetian Motets and their Singers’, 319–20; M. Talbot: ‘Vivaldi's Venice’, 314–19]

E. Selfridge-Field: ‘One Hundred Venetian Arias of the Late Seicento in the Bodleian Library’,Notes, xl (1983–4), 503–09

F. Passadore and I. Cavallini, eds.: La musica nel Veneto dal 16. al 18. secolo (Adria, 1984)

Galuppiana: Venice 1985

D. and E. Arnold: ‘Russians in Venice: the Visit of the Conti del Nord in 1782’, Slavonic and Western Music: Essays for Gerald Abraham, ed. M.H. Brown and R.J. Wiley (Ann Arbor and Oxford, 1985), 123–30

E. Selfridge-Field: Pallade Veneta: Writings on Music in Venetian Society, 1650–1750 (Venice, 1985)

G. Morelli: ‘La musica a Venezia nel tempo della Restaurazione’, Il Veneto e l'Austria: vita e cultura artistica nelle città venete, 1814–1866 (Milan, 1989), 462–5

G. Vio: ‘Musici veneziani dei primi decenni del Seicento: discordie e busterelle’, Rassegna veneta di studi musicale, v–vi (1989–90), 375–85

H. Dörge: Musik in Venedig: ein moderner Stadtführer zu den Zeugen der Musik und Bildenden Kunst (Wilhelmshaven, 1991)

D. Launay: ‘La musique à Venise vers 1645: Ismael Boulliau, astronome français, mélomane et voyageur’, RdM, lxxvii (1991), 269–77

R. Carnesecchi: ‘Cerimonie, feste e canti: lo spettacolo della “Democrazia veneziana” dal maggio del 1797 al gennaio del 1798’, Studi veneziani, new ser., xxiv (1992), 213–318

D. Stevens: ‘Musicians in Eighteenth-Century Venice’, EMc, xx (1992), 402–8

J.L. Baldauf-Berdes: Women Musicians of Venice: Musical Foundations, 1525–1855 (Oxford, 1993)

M. Laini: Vita musicale a Venezia durante la Repubblica: istituzioni e mecenatismo (Venice, 1993)

E. Rosand: ‘Venice, 1580–1680’, The Early Baroque Era: from the Late 16th Century to the 1660s, ed. C. Price (London, 1993), 75–102

E. Selfridge-Field: ‘Venice: Musical Expression in an Era of Political Decline’, The Late Baroque Era: from the 1680s to 1740, ed. G.J. Buelow (London, 1993), 66–93

A. Carlini: ‘Le bande militari austriache a Venezia: dieci anni di concerti tra il 1856 e il 1866’, Rassegna veneta di studi musicali, ix–x (1993–4), 215–52

R. Carnesecchi: ‘Venezia sorgesti dal duro servaggio’: la musica patriottica negli anni della repubblica di Manin (Venice, 1994)

S. Mamy: Les grands castrats napolitains à Venise au XVIIIe siècle (Liège, 1994)

A. Bernardi: ‘Il Mecenatismo musicale a Venezia nel primo Settecento’, Intorno a Locatelli: studi in occasione del tricentenario della nascita di Pietro Antonio Locatelli (1695–1764), ed. A. Dunning (Lucca, 1995), i, 1–128

G.M. Ongaro: ‘All Work and No Play? The Organization of Work among Musicians in Late Renaissance Venice’, Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, xxv (1995), 55–72

S. Mamy: La musique à Venise et l'imaginaire français des Lumières (Paris, 1996)

R. Miller: ‘New Information on the Chronology of Venetian Monody: the “Raccolte” of Remigio Romano’, ML, lxxvii (1996), 22–33

b: sacred music

F. Caffi: Storia della musica sacra nella già cappella ducale di S Marco dal 1318 al 1797 (Venice, 1854–5/R, repr. 1931), ed. E. Surian (Florence, 1987)

F. Fapanni and G. Fantoni: ‘La cappella musicale’, La Basilica di San Marco in Venezia, ed. C. Boito (Venice, 1880–93; Eng. trans., 1888–95), i, 72–90

La scuola veneta di musica sacra: rivista liturgica musicale (Venice, 1892–5)

E. Hertzmann: ‘Zur Frage der Mehrchörigkeit in der ersten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts’, ZMw, xii (1929–30), 138–47

G. d'Alessi: ‘Precursors of Adriano Willaert in the Practice of Coro Spezzato’,JAMS, v (1952), 187–210

D. Arnold: ‘Ceremonial Music in Venice at the Time of the Gabrielis’, PRMA, lxxxii (1955–6), 47–59

D. Arnold: ‘The Monteverdian Succession at St Mark's’, ML, xlii (1961), 205–11

E. Selfridge: ‘Organists at the Church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo’, ML, l (1969), 393–9

D. Bryant: ‘The cori spezzati of St. Mark's: Myth and Reality’, EMH, i (1981), 165–86

J.H. Moore: Vespers at St. Mark's: Music of Alessandro Grandi, Giovanni Rovetta, and Francesco Cavalli (Ann Arbor, 1981)

J.H. Moore: ‘The Vespro delli Cinque Laudate and the Role of Salmi spezzati at St. Mark's’, JAMS, xxxiv (1981), 249–78

O. Termini: ‘Singers at San Marco in Venice: the Competition between Church and Theatre (c.1675–c.1725)’, RMARC, no.17 (1981), 65–96

J.H. Moore: ‘Bartolomeo Bonifacio's Rituum ecclesiasticorum ceremoniale: Continuity of Tradition in the Ceremonial of St. Mark's, Venice’, IMSCR XIII: Strasbourg 1982, iii, 365–408

D. and E. Arnold: The Oratorio in Venice (London, 1985)

H. Geyer-Kiefl: Aspetti dell'oratorio veneziano nel tardo Settecento (Venice, 1985)

G. Cattin: Musica e liturgia a San Marco: testi e melodie per la liturgia delle ore dal XII al XVII secolo, dal graduale tropato del Duocento ai graduali cinquecenteschi (Venice, 1990–92)

A. Chegai: ‘La musica a San Pietro in Castello, duomo di Venezia, fra XVI e XVII secolo: notizie da una fonte settecentesca’, Recercare: rivista per lo studio e la pratica della musica antica, iii (1991), 219–29

P.G. Gillio: ‘Saggio bibliografico sui libretti di mottetti pubblicati dagli Ospedali di Venezia (1746–1792)’, Rivista internazionale di musica sacra, xiv (1993), 118–91

La cappella musicale di S. Marco nell'età moderna: Venice 1994

J. Bettley: ‘The Office of Holy Week at St. Mark's, Venice, in the Late Sixteenth Century’, EMc, xxii (1994), 45–60

F. Passadore and F. Rossi: San Marco, vitalità di una tradizione: il fondo musicale e la cappella dal Settecento ad oggi (Venice, 1994–6)

E. Quaranta: Oltre San Marco: organizzazione e prassi della musica nelle chiese di Venezia nel Rinascimento (Florence, 1998)

c: theatre

C. Bonlini: Le glorie della poesia e della musica (Venice, 1730/R) [catalogue of operas performed in Venice]

A. Groppo: Catalogo di tutti i drammi per musica recitati ne' teatri di Venezia dall'anno 1637 in cui ebbero principio le pubbliche rappresentazioni de' medesimi, fin all'anno presente 1745 (Venice, 1745/R)

A.M. Fabris: La Fenice (Venice, 1868)

G. Salvioli: ‘Saggio di drammaturgia veneziana’, Archivio veneto, xii (1876), 193–203, 432–40; xiii/1 (1877), 451–67; xv/2 (1878), 195–213, 374–403

L.N. Galvani [G. Salvioli]: I teatri musicali di Venezia nel secolo XVII (1637–1700): memorie storiche e bibliografiche (Milan, 1879/R)

T. Wiel: I teatri musicali veneziani del Settecento (Venice, 1879/R)

H. Kretzschmar: ‘Die venetianische Oper und die Werke Cavallis und Cestis’, VMw, viii (1892), 1–76

D. Forti: ‘I drammi pastorali del 1600 e le rappresentazioni a Venezia prima del teatro’,Ateneo veneto, xxvi (1903), 25–40

H.C. Wolff: Die venezianische Oper in der zweiten Hälfte des 17. Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 1937/R)

S.T. Worsthorne: ‘Venetian Theatres: 1637–1700’, ML, xxxix (1948), 263–75

S.T. Worsthorne: ‘Some Early Venetian Opera Productions’, ML, xxx (1949), 146–51

S.T. Worsthorne: Venetian Opera in the Seventeenth Century (Oxford, 1954/R)

W. Osthoff: ‘Maske und Musik: die Gestaltwerdung der Oper in Venedig’, Castrum Peregrini, lxv (1964), 10–49

P. Petrobelli: ‘L' “Ermiona” di Pio Enea degli Obizzi e i primi spettacoli d'opera veneziani’, Quaderni della RaM, no.3 (1965), 125–41

L. Zorzi and others: I teatri pubblici di Venezia (secoli XVII–XVIII) (Venice, 1971) [exhibition catalogue]

Venezia e il melodramma nel Seicento: Venice 1972

Venezia e il melodramma nel Settecento: Venice 1973–5

N. Mangini: I teatri di Venezia (Venice, 1974)

J. Glover: ‘The Peak Period of Venetian Public Opera: the 1650s’, PRMA, cii (1975–6), 67–82

H.S. Saunders: The Repertory of a Venetian Opera House (1678–1714): the Teatro di San Giovanni Grisostomo (Ann Arbor, 1985)

T. Bauman: ‘The Society of La Fenice and its First Impresarios’, JAMS, xxxix (1986), 332–54

M. Brusatin and G. Pavanello: Il Teatro la fenice: i progetti, l'architettura, le decorazioni (Venice, 1987)

D. Lazzari: La censura teatrale nel Veneto degli anni della Restaurazione (diss., U. of Venice, 1987)

H. Leclerc: Venise et l'avènement de l'opéra public è [sic] l'age baroque (Paris, 1987)

S. Mamy: ‘I rapporti fra opera e ballo a Venezia nel Settecento’, Danza italiana, v/6 (1987), 17–33

L. Trezzini: ‘Venezia, la Fenice, la Biennale nell'Europa musicale’, L'Europa musicale: un nuovo rinascimento, la civiltà dell'ascolto, ed. A.L. Bellina and G. Morelli (Florence, 1988), 297–316

M. Girardi and F. Rossi: Il Teatro la Fenice: cronologia degli spettacoli, 1792–1936 (Venice, 1989)

G. Vio: ‘Una satira sul teatro veneziano di Sant'Angelo datata “febbraio 1717”’,Informazioni e studi vivaldiani, x (1989), 103–30

M.G. Miggiani: ‘Il teatro di S. Moisè (1793–1818): cronologia degli spettacoli’,Bollettino del Centro rossiniano di studi, xxx (1990), 5–213

B.M. Antolini: ‘Cronache teatrali veneziane, 1842–1849’, Musica senza aggettivi: studi per Fedele d'Amico, ed. A. Ziino (Florence, 1991), 297–322

E. Rosand: Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice: the Creation of a Genre (Berkeley, 1991)

M. Girardi and F. Rossi: Il Teatro la Fenice: cronologia degli spettacoli, 1938–1991 (Venice, 1992)

I. Alm: Theatrical Dance in Seventeenth-Century Venetian Opera (diss., UCLA, 1993)

F. Mancini, M.T. Muraro and E. Povoledo: I teatri del Veneto (Venice, 1995–6)

D.E. Freeman: ‘La guerriera amante: Representations of Amazons and Warrior Queens in Venetian Baroque Opera’, MQ, lxxx (1996), 431–60

E. Selfridge-Field: ‘La Guerra dei Comici: Mantuan Comedy and Venetian Opera c.1700’, Recercare, x (1998), 209–48

d: instruments and instrumental music

W. Shewring: ‘Organs in Italy: Venice, Treviso, Trent’, The Organ, xxxvi (1956–7), 18–31

R. Lunelli: Die Orgelwerke von San Marco in Venedig (Mainz, 1957)

S. dalla Libera: L'arte degli organi a Venezia (Venice, 1962)

D. Arnold: ‘Orchestras in Eighteenth-Century Venice’, GSJ, xix (1966), 3–19

E. Selfridge-Field: ‘Annotated Membership Lists of the Venetian Instrumentalists' Guild, 1672–1727’,RMARC, no.9 (1971), 1–52; no.12 (1974), 152–5

E. Selfridge-Field: Venetian Instrumental Music from Gabrieli to Vivaldi (Oxford, 1975, 3/1994)

G. Vio: ‘Documenti di storia organaria veneziana’, L'organo, xiv (1976), 33–131; xv (1977), 41–95; xvi (1978), 169–200; xvii (1979), 181–207

E. Selfridge-Field: ‘Venetian Instrumentalists in England: a Bassano Chronicle (1538–1660)’,Studi musicali, xiii (1979), 173–221

M. Talbot: ‘The Serenata in Eighteenth-Century Venice’, RMARC, no.18 (1982), 1–50

G. Morelli and E. Surian: ‘La musica strumentale e sacra e le sue istituzioni a Venezia’, Storia della cultura veneta, v: Dalla Controriforma alla fine della Repubblica, ed. G. Arnaldi and M. Pastore Stocchi, i (Vicenza, 1985), 401–28

G. Ongaro: ‘Sixteenth-Century Venetian Wind Instrument Makers and their Clients’, EMc, xiii (1985), 391–7

S. Toffolo: Antichi strumenti veneziani, 1500–1800; quattro secoli di liuteria e cembalaria (Venice, 1987)

M.C. Bradshaw: ‘The Influence of Vocal Music on the Venetian Toccata’, Musica disciplina, xlii (1988), 157–98

T. Bauman: ‘Musicians in the Marketplace: the Venetian Guild of Instrumentalists in the Later Eighteenth Century’, EMc, xix (1991), 345–55

G.M. Ongaro: ‘The Tieffenbruckers and the Business of Lute-Making in Sixteenth-Century Venice’,GSJ, xliv (1991), 46–54

e: teaching institutions

D. Arnold: ‘Orphans and Ladies: the Venetian Conservatoires (1690–1797)’, PRMA, lxxxix (1962–3), 31–47

D. Arnold: ‘Instruments and Instrumental Teaching in the Early Italian Conservatoires’,GSJ, xviii (1965), 72–81

S.H. Hansell: ‘Sacred Music at the Incurabili in Venice at the Time of J.A. Hasse’,JAMS, xxiii (1970), 282–301, 505–21

P. Verardo, ed.: Il Conservatorio di Musica Benedetto Marcello di Venezia, 1876–1976: centenario della fondazione (Venice, 1977)

G. Ellero, J. Scarpa and M.C. Paolucci: Arte e musica all'Ospedaletto: schede d'archivio sull'attività musicale degli ospedali dei derelitti e dei mendicanti di Venezia (sec. XVI–XVIII) (Venice, 1978) [exhibition catalogue]

D. Arnold: ‘Music at the Mendicanti’, ML, lxv (1984), 345–56

M. Talbot: ‘Musical Academies in Eighteenth-Century Venice’, NA, new ser., ii (1984), 21–65

E. Selfridge-Field: ‘Music at the Pietà before Vivaldi’, EMc, xiv (1986), 373–86

D. Arnold: ‘Music at the Ospedali’, JRMA, cxiii (1988), 156–67

P.G. Gillio: ‘La stagione d'oro degli Ospedali veneziani tra i dissesti del 1717 e 1777’, Rivista internazionale di musica sacra, x (1989), 227–307

J.L. Baldauf-Berdes: Women Musicians of Venice: Musical Foundations, 1525–1855 (Oxford, 1993)

B. Over: Per la gloria di Dio: solistische Kirchenmusik an den venezianischen Ospedali im 18. Jahrhundert (diss., U. of Bonn, 1993)

F.S. Tanenbaum: The Partbook Collection from the Ospedale della Pietà and the Sacred Music of Giovanni Porta (diss., New York U., 1993)

M. Talbot: ‘Tenors and Basses at the Venetian Ospedali’, AcM, lxvi (1994), 123–38

Veni Creator Spiritus

(Lat.: ‘Come Creator Spirit’).

A hymn for Whitsuntide in the Latin rite; outside the Pentecost season it was and is also used for liturgical and non-liturgical solemnities. It first appears in manuscripts dating from the 10th century and its earliest recorded use was at the Council of Rheims (1049). The text has been attributed variously to St Gregory, St Ambrose, Charlemagne and, more plausibly, to Hrabanus Maurus, and it has been suggested that the melody (LU, 885) may predate the text, having served originally the Ambrosian hymn Hic est dies verus Dei. The hymn is found in several Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, in one case (GB-Ccc 391) with a tune (in unheighted neumes) that is clearly a version of the usual one. The melody was used also in the Sarum rite for the hymn Salvator mundi. Keyboard settings based on the melody survive by 16th-century composers including Bull and Byrd, as does a vocal setting by Tallis, Adesto nunc (the second stanza of Salvator mundi). Occasionally the text and music of Veni Creator Spiritus and those of the sequence Veni Sancte Spiritus were combined simultaneously in one composition (e.g. by Dunstaple and Heinrich Finck). Veni Creator Spiritus was also set in the alternatim manner by Costanzo Festa and has served as the basis of masses by many composers, including a six-voice one by Palestrina.

See also Hymn, §§II, III.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ReeseMMA

ReeseMR

M.I.J. Rousseau: ‘Veni Creator Spiritus’, New Catholic Encyclopedia (New York, 1967)

Venier, Jean Baptiste

(fl 1755–84). French music publisher. He lived in Paris, and his first privilege for music publishing dates from 1755. At that time he apparently had no premises of his own, but in 1760 the address of his firm is given as rue St-Thomas-du-Louvre. After September 1778 he moved to rue Traversière-St-Honoré, where he was active until about 1784, when Charles-Georges Boyer acquired his stock.

Venier published mostly instrumental works – symphonies, concertos and chamber music. His catalogues give a picture of the international character of Parisian musical life at that time as well as the different influences on the development of the French symphony. At first he published Italian symphonies by Castrucci, Galuppi, Jommelli and Giuseppe Sammartini and, later, works by contemporary German, Bohemian and Austrian composers, including J.C. Bach, J.J.C. Bode, Hasse, Kammel, Mysliveček, Dittersdorf and G.C. Wagenseil. The Mannheim school is richly represented in his catalogues with works by Franz Beck, Christian Cannabich, Anton Fils, Ignaz Fränzl, Holzbauer, F.X. Richter and Johann Stamitz. He also published many works by Boccherini, and he was the first to publish a symphony by Haydn, Sinfonie a più stromenti composte da vari autori, no.14 (1764; h I:2).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BrookSF

DEMF

HopkinsonD

JohanssonFMP

M. Brenet: ‘La librairie musicale en France de 1653 à 1790, d’après les registres de privilèges’, SIMG, viii (1906–7), 401–66

CARI JOHANSSON

Veni Sancte Spiritus

(Lat.: ‘Come Holy Spirit’).

The sequence for Pentecost (LU, 880); it was one of the four sequences retained by the Council of Trent (1545–63). The text has been ascribed to Pope Innocent III (d 1216) and Stephen Langton (d 1228); its ten stanzas are set as five double versicles. There are settings by Du Fay, Josquin, Willaert (two), Palestrina (two), Lassus and Victoria, among others (see Sequence (i), §11). The text, though not the melody, was incorporated by Dunstaple into his famous motet Veni Sancte Spiritus et emitte/Veni Sancte Spiritus et infunde/Veni Creator/Mentes tuorum. Here the top part sets the sequence text, while the second voice sings an otherwise unrecorded paraphrase of it. The borrowed melodic material of this motet, however, is drawn exclusively from the Office hymn Veni Creator Spiritus. Another combination of these two texts, this time using both melodies, is Heinrich Finck's Veni Creator (HAM, no.80).

JOHN CALDWELL

Venite

(Lat.: ‘Come’).

In the Roman rite, the opening chant of Matins, properly Venite exultemus Domino (Psalm xciv [xcv]), sung in alternation with an antiphon (see Invitatory). In the Anglican liturgy, Venite (‘O come let us sing unto the Lord’) is the first canticle of Matins (see Service).

Venkatamakhin

(fl c1630). South Indian poet, musician and musical scholar. The son of Govinda Dīksita, a minister of the Nāyak rulers of Thanjavur, he became the minister of the king Vijayarāghava Nāyak (reigned 1633–73) and wrote the Sanskrit music-theoretical treatise Caturdandīprakāśikā at his bidding. The title of this work, which survives only in part, refers to a system of four divisions of composition, namely ālāpa (rhythmically free exposition of a rāga), thāya (melodic inflection), gīta (vocal composition in a rāga) and prabandha (a compositional structure). The work uses a scheme of 19 mela, classificatory scales under which the current south Indian rāgas could be accommodated. The system closely resembles that of Rāmāmātya in his Svaramelakalānidhi, though not in every detail. Venkatamakhin is credited (perhaps erroneously) with the invention of the system of 72 melakartā, much as was in use in Karnatic music of the late 20th century and became current from the late 17th century. The system is worked out in a text appended to the Madras edition of the Caturdandīprakāśikā. It seems that Venkatamakhin considered only a limited number of these scales to be practically useful in classifying rāgas.

WRITINGS

Caturdandīprakāśikā, ed. D.K. Joshi and B.S. Sukthankar (Poona, 1918)

Caturdandīprakāśikā, ed. S. Subrahmanya Sastri, T.V. Subba Rao and T.L. Venkatarama Aiyar (Madras, 1934)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

V. Raghavan: ‘Later Sangīta Literature’, Journal of the Music Academy, Madras, iv (1933), 62–4

V. Raghavan: ‘Venkatamakhin and the 72 Melas’, Journal of the Music Academy, Madras, xii (1941), 67–79

S. Seetha: Tanjore as a Seat of Music (Madras, 1981)

N. Ramanathan: ‘Influence of Śāstra on Prayoga: the Svara System in the Post-Sangītaratnākara Period with Special Reference to South Indian Music’, The Traditional Indian Theory and Practice of Music and Dance, ed. J.B. Katz (Leiden, 1992), 75–105

JONATHAN KATZ

Vennard, William

(b Normal, IL, 31 Jan 1909; d Los Angeles, 10 Jan 1971). American singer and voice science researcher. He studied English at Taylor University, Upland, IN (AB 1930) and music at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL (BM 1941) and at the American Conservatory, Chicago (MM 1943). After teaching at the Chicago Evangelistic Institute, DePaul University and the American Conservatory, he became a member of the faculty of music at the University of Southern California (1946), chairing its voice department (1950–71). Among the associations to which he belonged are the National Association of Teachers of Singing, which he served in several capacities, including national president. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from Pepperdine University College, Malibu, CA in recognition of his outstanding contributions to singing and the science of singing (1970).

As a singer, Vennard was active in opera, oratorio and solo song; as a teacher of singing, his students, among them Marilyn Horne, achieved worldwide success. His renowned text, Singing, the Mechanism and the Technique, is a constant resource for teachers and researchers alike. Vennard’s collaboration with Janwillen van den Berg resulted in his film Voice Production: the Vibrating Larynx. Winning several awards, including best medical research film from a festival in Prague in 1960, it shows the anatomy and physiology of voice production in the excised larynx. He was a pioneer in the science of singing and in voice pedagogy and was instrumental in fostering collaborative efforts between singers, physicists, psychologists and voice scientists.

WRITINGS

‘Building Correct Singing Habits’, Voice and Speech Disorders, ed. N.M. Levin (Springfield, IL, 1962), 498–532

‘An Experiment to Evaluate the Importance of Nasal Resonance in Singing’, Folia Phoniatrica, xvi (1964), 146–53

Singing, the Mechanism and the Technique (New York, 1967)

with M. LeCover and H.J. Rubin: ‘Vocal Intensity, Subglottic Pressure and Air Flow Relationships in Singers’, Folia Phoniatrica, xix (1967), 393–413

with M. Hirano and J. Ohala: ‘The Function of Laryngeal Muscles in Regulating Fundamental Frequency and Intensity of Phonation’, Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, xii (1969), 616–28

‘Regulation of Register, Pitch and Intensity of Voice: an Electromyographic Investigation of Intrinsic Laryngeal Muscles’, Folia Phoniatrica, xxii (1970), 1–20

TOM CLEVELAND

Vent

(Fr.).

Wind, as in instruments à vent, wind instruments.

Vent, Jan.

See Went, Johann.

Ventapane, Lorenzo

(fl c1800–c1840). Italian violin maker. His instruments date from soon after 1800 until after 1830. It seems certain that he was a pupil of one of the Gaglianos, possibly of Giovanni, or of his son, Nicola Gagliano (ii), whose work his own very much resembles. In the varnish and in many details Ventapane’s instruments are identical to those made by the Gaglianos, usually being distinguished by a certain flatness towards the edges, where a Gagliano would often be rather full in model. Like the later members of the Gagliano family, Ventapane was variable in the quality of his work. Visually some of his instruments are dull, even crude, though others are attractive and carefully made; all, when well adjusted, have that Neapolitan character of tone which makes Ventapane an important name among players. He is one of the best-known Neapolitan violin makers outside the Gagliano family. (LütgendorffGL; VannesE)

CHARLES BEARE

Vente, Maarten Albert

(b Nieuwerkerk aan de IJssel, 7 June 1915; d Utrecht, 13 July 1989). Dutch musicologist. He studied history and geography at the University of Utrecht and, being interested in the history of musical instruments, especially the organ, he made a close study of organ building in the Netherlands and Belgium. In 1942 he took the doctorate under Albert Smijers with a dissertation on 16th-century organs in the Low Countries. From 1939 to 1958 Vente taught history and geography at secondary schools at Leeuwarden, Zwolle and Utrecht. Attached to the institute of musicology at the University of Utrecht from 1958, he became curator in 1959 and, in 1965, lecturer in organology; shortly before his retirement in 1980 he was made professor there. His main area of study was the history and construction of the organ, especially in the Low Countries. Vente was often consulted for the restoration of historical organs or the construction of new ones, in the Netherlands and abroad.

WRITINGS

Bouwstoffen tot de geschiedenis van het Nederlandse orgel in de 16de eeuw (diss., U. of Utrecht, 1942; Amsterdam, 1942)

Proeve van een repertorium van de archivalia betrekking hebbende op het Nederlandse orgel en zijn makers tot omstreeks 1630 (Brussels, 1956)

Die brabanter Orgel: zur Geschichte der Orgelkunst in Belgien und Holland im Zeitalter der Gotik und der Renaissance (Amsterdam, 1958, enlarged 2/1963)

‘Aeneas Egbertus Veldcamps, drager van oudhollandse orgeltradities (1686–1741)’, TVNM, xx/4 (1967), 249–64

Vijf eeuwen Zwolse orgels 1441–1971 (Amsterdam, 1971)

ed., with F. Peeters: De orgelkunst in de Nederlanden (Antwerp, 1971; Eng trans., 1971)

Orgels en organisten van de Dom te Utrecht van de 14de eeuw tot heden (Utrecht, 1975)

Utrechtse orgelhistorische verkenningen (Amsterdam, 1989)

ELLINOR BIJVOET/A.J. GIERVELD

Ventil

(Ger.; It. ventile).

(1) In organ construction, any large valve which admits wind to a chest or stop. In 19th-century French organs the reed stops sometimes had a separate pallet box and could be brought on with dramatic effect by use of a ventil pedal.

(2) See Pallet.

(3) See Valve (i)).

Ventilhorn

(Ger.).

Valve horn. See Horn.

Vento, Ivo [Yvo] de

(b between c1543 and 1545; d Munich, 1575). Composer and organist possibly of Flemish birth, active in Germany. He was taken from Antwerp to Munich to be a choirboy at the Bavarian court, probably in September 1556. Suggestions by scholars that he was of Spanish origin or that his name was a Latinized form of ‘De Winde’ have been abandoned; there is as yet no proof of Huber's hypothesis that he belonged to a family originally from Limoges and was related to (though not the same person as) Ivo Barry and to Leonardo Barré, singers in the papal chapel in the second quarter of the 16th century. A Johannes de Vento was connected with the Antwerp printer Plantin in the 1550s; since Lassus was in Antwerp at this time and left for Munich at about the time that Vento seems to have done, it is possible that he took Vento with him. Vento joined the Bavarian Hofkapelle at a time of reorganization during which Flemish singers were newly in fashion. Records show that his father was paid for the boy's service over a three-year period ending in September 1559. In 1560 he was sent at Duke Albrecht's expense to Venice, presumably to study the organ with Claudio Merulo. Evidence that he learnt Italian musical ways and had joined the circle of musicians round Merulo may be seen in pieces he contributed to Venetian anthologies of the 1560s, including a six-part battaglia in a volume of greghesche of 1564. During these years he may also have written four pieces – three motets and a madrigal – whose texts had previously been set by Ivo Barry; these works have led to much confusion and speculation about the identity or possible relationship of the two composers.

On his return to Munich, Vento, now considered an Italian and an instrumentalist, a combination perennially in fashion at Munich, was appointed third organist in the Hofkapelle (the first two organists were both Italian). Though he is not mentioned in Lassus's correspondence, he may have studied with Lassus; his masses, surviving in manuscript copies of the 1560s and 1570s, show Lassus's influence, and a number of the motets in his five-part Latinae cantiones (1570) are to texts previously set by Lassus. In style, however, his works, whether to Latin or German texts, are not very close to Lassus. By 1568, the year of the splendid wedding ceremonies for the marriage of Duke Wilhelm, Albrecht V's heir, Vento had achieved a certain reputation; he is mentioned in Massimo Troiano's account of these festivities and is included among the ‘virtuosi’ of the court chapel in a collection of madrigals that Troiano assembled in 1569. After Wilhelm's marriage he followed him to his court at Landshut, where he served as choirmaster for a year. He resumed his post at Munich in 1569 and held it, sometimes as sole organist, until his death. The last years of his life were marked by a steady stream of publications, comprising 98 motets and 112 German songs in 11 volumes, most of them dedicated to members of the Wittelsbach ducal family.

Vento's motets apparently did not create a lasting impression, nor have they yet been seriously studied. His songs, which were often reprinted, exerted a considerable influence on Lechner and even Hassler and figure as representative pieces in many 19th- and 20th-century collections of Renaissance lieder. He was conservative in taste, choosing texts from the early 16th century rather than from the Italianized poetry of his own time, and avowing a ‘Pythagorean’ preference for pure music over madrigalian conceits (see the preface to his Neue teutsche Lieder of 1570/71). The lieder are thus less strikingly individual than those of Lassus, but they are attractive and expertly written, with an orderly texture and some harmonic colouring, perhaps of Venetian origin, which distinguishes them from lieder of the generation of Senfl. Two manuscripts in Perugia (I-PEc 431, 322) contain respectively a canon and a set of Regole del contrapunto ascribed to ‘ecc.mo Ivo’. Whether these rules are by Ivo de Vento or Ivo Barry is unclear; whoever wrote them knew only eight modes and appears not to have read Zarlino.

WORKS

all published in Munich

sacred vocal

Latinae cantiones, quas vulgo moteta vocant, 4vv (1569)

Latinae cantiones, quas vulgo moteta vocant, 5vv (1570)

Liber motetorum, 4vv (1571)

Mutetae aliquot sacrae, 4vv (1574)

3 masses, 4–6vv, D-As, Mbs (1, Surrexit Pastorbonus, also attrib. Lassus)

secular vocal

Neue teutsche Liedlein, 5vv (1569)

Neue teutsche Lieder, 4–6vv (1570); 1 ed. H. Mönkemeyer, Antiqua Chorbuch, i (Mainz, 1951)

Neue teutsche Lieder, 4vv, samt zweien Dialogen (1570, altered to 1571); 1 ed. P. Winter, Lob des Weines (Frankfurt, 1969); 8 ed. in Anthologies of Renaissance Music, viii (London, 1977)

Neue teutsche Lieder, 3vv (1572); 2 ed. in Antiqua Chorbuch, i–ii (1951); 6 ed. M. Rössler, Ivo de Vento: Geistliche Liedsätze (Neuhausen-Stuttgart, 1973); 8 ed. in Anthologies of Renaissance Music, vii (London, 1978)

Schöne auserlesene neue teutsche Lieder, 4vv (1572)

Teutsche Lieder, 5vv, samt einem Dialogo, 8vv (1573); 1 ed. P. Winter, Lob des Weines (1969)

5 motetae, 2 madrigalia, [2] gallicae cantiones … et 4 germanicae, 5, 8, 9vv (1575); 2 ed. in Cw, xxx (1934/R)

8 Italian secular works, 3, 5, 6vv, 1564¹⁶ (ed. S. Cisilino, Celebri raccolte musicali venete del cinquecento, i, Padua, 1974), 1565¹², 1566³, 1569¹⁹, 1569²⁰, 1575¹¹

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BoetticherOL

MGG1 (H. Osthoff)

M. Troiano: Discorsi delli trionfi … nelle nozze dell'illustriss. et eccellentiss. S. Duca Guglielmo (Munich, 1568); facs. with Ger. trans. and commentary by H. Leuchtmann (Munich, 1980)

K. Huber: Ivo de Vento (ca. 1540–1575) (Lindenberg im Allgäu, 1918)

R. Casimiri: ‘Le “Regole del contraponto” di Ivo de Vento?’, Cantantibus organis (Rome, 1924), 399–410

H. Osthoff: Die Niederländer und das deutsche Lied, 1400–1640 (Berlin, 1938/R)

A. De Groote: ‘Ivo de Vento und seine Liber mottetorum (München, 1571): Ein Überblick’, Musik in Bayern, xxxiii (1986), 139–49

JAMES HAAR

Vento, Mattia [Matthias]

(b Naples, 1735; d London, 22 Nov 1776). Italian composer. A student at the Conservatorio di S Maria di Loreto in Naples, he achieved his first operatic successes in Italy. His Le deluse accortezze (1756) and La finta semplice (1759) were given at Rome; L’egiziana was produced both in Venice and Milan in 1763. Late in 1763, at Giardini’s invitation, Vento went to England, where he was active as a composer and harpsichord teacher until his death. For the London opera he first produced the pasticcio Leucippo e Zenocrita on 10 January 1764, which was repeated later the same month in a command performance for the wedding of Princess Augusta (sister of George III). In the following seasons Vento produced Demofoonte (1765), Sofonisba (1766), and La conquista del Messico (1767), as well as contributions to pasticcios. His aria ‘Caro amor’ was inserted with great success in London performances of Piccinni’s La buona figliuola (1766). After a lapse of some years he produced Artaserse (1771) for the Harmonical Meeting, Soho Square, set up by Giardini and others in competition with the King’s Theatre. In the 1775–6 season, during which Vento was listed as a director at the King’s Theatre, he produced both comic and serious operas: Il bacio, the favourite of the season, La vestale and further pasticcios. During this period he also served as conductor at public concerts including those at the Pantheon.

Vento’s music was popular in England; in 1776 a visitor from Germany listed him among the several major composers then in London. Burney’s enthusiasm, however, was tempered. He described Demofoonte as ‘natural, graceful and pleasing, always free from vulgarity, but never very new or learned’. In answer to criticism that his music (La vestale) was too simple for great singers, Vento replied, ‘God forbid I should ever compose difficult music’ (Rees’s Cyclopaedia, 1819–20). Burney also found Vento’s published duets ‘trivial and uninteresting’. Nevertheless, individual songs from both the operas and the published sets were widely performed and reprinted in anthologies.

Another side to Vento’s London activity is shown in his 11 collections of keyboard sonatas, most with subordinate violin accompaniments. Burney described these as ‘flimsy and so much alike, that the invention with respect to melody and modulation, may be compressed into two or three movements’. It must then have been their ‘graceful, easy, and flowing melody’ which caused them to be reprinted in Paris and to be retained in publishers’ catalogues for half a century. There is some truth in Burney’s allegation of sameness, but the 65 sonatas, spanning from 1764 to 1776, mirror subtle stylistic changes taking place at the time – for example, towards pianistic dynamics, greater symmetry and periodization, and stronger metricality.

Torrefranca advanced a case for Vento’s having played a special role in the formulation of the Classical style. While he did bring to London the latest operatic style from Naples, the subtle changes noticeable in the sonatas suggest that Vento also responded to the pre-Classical synthesis of German, Italian and English elements taking place around him.

Most early posthumous accounts of Vento, probably derived from Burney, specially noted that Vento, who had every reason to die wealthy, instead left his widow in penury; apparently this mystery has never been solved.

WORKS

stage

arias from London productions published in Favourite Songs

Le deluse accortezze di Don Gianserio (int), Rome, 1756

La finta semplice (op, ? C. Goldoni), Rome, 1759

L’egiziana (dg, F. Ronzi), (Venice, 1763), A-Wn; arr. F.L. Gassman as Zingara, Vienna, 1769

Demofoonte (op, 3, P. Metastasio), London, King’s, 2 March 1765

Sofonisba (op eroica, 3, G.G. Bottarelli), London, King’s, 21 Jan 1766, US-Wc; as pasticcio, 1772–3

La conquista del Messico (La conquista del vello d’oro) (op, Bottarelli), London, King’s, 4 April 1767; ov., arias GB-Mp

Artaserse (op, ?Metastasio), London, 1771

Il bacio (comic op, 3, C.F. Badini), London, King’s, 9 Jan 1776

La vestale (serious opera, Badini), London, King’s, 6 Feb 1776

Music in: Leucippo e Zenocrita (1764); Ezio (1764); Berenice (1765); Daphne and Amintor (1765); Solimano (1765); [The Revenge of] Arthridates (1766); Love in the City (1767); Lionel and Clarissa (1768), rev. as School for Fathers (1770); The Captive (1769); La sposa fedele (1775); Antigono (1776); The Castle of Andalusia (1782)

other vocal

La musica e la poesia (cant.) (London, 1768)

6 Canzonets (London, c1770)

A Second (–Fourth) Book of 6 Canzonets (London, c1770–72)

Threnodia augustalis (cant., Goldsmith) (London, 1772), in memory of Augusta, dowager Princess of Wales

A Collection [from Pantheon concerts] of Favourite Italian Songs and a Duet (London, 1774)

9 duets and 16 Ariette veneziane, GB-Lbl

Numerous songs pubd singly and in 18th-century anthologies

instrumental

6 Sonatas, hpd, vn/fl (London, 1764)

6 Sonatas, 2 vn, bc (London, c1764)

6 Sonatas, hpd, vn/fl [‘2d sett’] (London, c1765)

A Third (–Tenth) Book (Sett) of 6 Sonatas, hpd, vn/fl (London, 1766–76); bks 7–11 for hpd/pf, vn/fl; bk 9 for hpd/pf solo

6 Overtures in 8 Parts (London, c1774)

A Last Sett of 5 Sonatas, hpd/pf (London, 1777)

Other works in GB-Lbl

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BurneyH

EitnerQ

ETM

FiskeLS

NewmanSCE

GerberL

GerberNL

Briefe über dem gegenwärtigen Zustand von England (Leipzig, 1777) [reviewed in J.N. Forkel: Musikalisch-kritische Bibliothek, iii (1779/R), 316–20]

F. Torrefranca: ‘Influenza di alcuni musicisti italiani vissuti a Londra su W.A. Mozart (1764–65)’, Musikwissenschaftlicher Kongress: Basle 1924, 336–62

C.S. Terry: John Christian Bach (London, 1929, 2/1967)

F. Torrefranca: Le origini italiane del romanticismo musicale (Turin, 1930/R)

R.R. Kidd: The Sonata for Keyboard with Violin Accompaniment in England (1750–1790) (diss., Yale U., 1967), 170

R.R. Kidd: ‘The Emergence of Chamber Music with Obbligato Keyboard in England’, AcM, xliv (1972), 122–44

F. Petty: Italian Opera in London, 1760–1800 (Ann Arbor, 1980)

J. Johnson: ‘Music Found in a Portuguese Organ Case: a Sonata by Carvalho or Vento?’, Early Keyboard Journal, iii (1984–5), 35–59

R. Fiske: ‘Concert Music II’, Music in Britain: the Eighteenth Century, ed. H.D. Johnstone and R. Fiske (Oxford, 1990), 205–60

RONALD R. KIDD

Ventura, Angelo Benedetto

(b c1781; d 1856). Inventor, composer and teacher. He worked in London from at least 1813 and taught Princess Augusta Charlotte from that year until her death in 1817. This opportunity, and an early partnership with Edward Light, enabled him to create and market eight harp-lute-guitar hybrids, for which he gave lessons and published simple song arrangements and 16- or 32-bar compositions, mostly in binary form.

His most important invention was the ‘Harp Ventura’, patented in 1828, a 17–19-string harp-lute, measuring about 83 × 33 × 13 cm, and apparently tuned diatonically from e to b', with three notes on the fingerboard: c'', c''' and a'''. This was perhaps the most flexible harp-lute for song accompaniments with awkward modulations, or in unusual keys. Its seven pushstops (later levers) raised the open strings by a semitone, using forks similar to Erard's fourchettes of the 1780s. An attractively decorated example (see illustration) is displayed in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (no.248).

Ventura's other inventions were the single-fingerboard 12-string Imperial ottavino, measuring 66 × 30 × 13 cm; the 13- or 14-string Imperial harp-lute (first announced in 1814); three lyre guitars (the ‘Imperyal’ lyre and ‘Ventura’ lyre, both with 12 strings, and the nine-string ‘New British Ventura’); and two guitars (the venturini, a seven-string, easily modulated guitar patented in 1828, and the venturine, a small – 51 × 16 cm – four-string guitar). All appear to have been intended mainly for such elegant ladies as those to whom his compositions are liberally dedicated.

WORKS

all published in London

Duetto con variazioni, harp-lute, gui (1813)

12 … Ariettes, harp-lute acc. (1813–14)

6 … Ariettes, gui acc. (1814)

A Collection of 6 Beautiful Minuets, March, Waltz &c, 2 gui (1814)

A New & Elegant Collection of Waltzes Minuets & Marches, Imperial harp-lute/Imperial lyre, gui acc. (1814)

Thema with 6 Variations, Imperial harp-lute/Imperial lyre, pf/gui acc. (1814)

A Collection of 12 Favorite Italian Canzonetts, Harp-Ventura/gui acc. (1832)

Periodical Amusements, 1/2 gui

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A. le D. de Pontécoulant: Organographie: essai sur la facture instrumentale, art, industrie et commerce, ii (Paris, 1861/R)

R.B. Armstrong: Musical Instruments, ii (Edinburgh, 1908)

S. Bonner: Angelo Benedetto Ventura (Harlow, 1971)

STEPHEN BONNER

Ventura, Giuseppe

(b Naples, ?1702; d after 1751). Italian composer. He provided one of the settings for Pietro Trinchera's earliest dialect comedy, Prìzeta correvata, an adaptation from an unknown author. The other setting, Li 'nnamorate correvate (Angri, near Salerno, August 1732), was composed by ‘Jacovo d'Ambrosio’, probably Giacomo d'Ambrosio, the principal buffo singer at the Naples Teatro dei Fiorentini between 1728 and 1741; it is not known which performance was first. In collaboration with Nicola Logroscino, Ventura also wrote the comedy Amore figlio del piacere (A. Palomba; Naples, Nuovo, Carnival 1751). The intermezzo Le deluse accortezze di Don Gianserio (Rome, 1756), sometimes attributed to him, was written by Mattia Vento.

WORKS

Prìzeta correvata (dialect comedy, P. Trinchera), Aversa, nr Naples, Nuovo, aut. 1732

Il Sisara (azione sacra, D. Ravizza di Lanciano), Fermo, 1740, L'Aquila, 1745

Debora e Giaele vincitrici di sisara (azione sacra, Ravizza di Lanciano), Chieti, 1744

Il sacrificio di Abramo (componimento sacro), Chieti, 1744

Il fondamento della chiesa (componimento sacro, S. Sevario), Atri, Monastero di S Pietro, 1746

La fedeltà ossequiosa (serenata, Sevario), Teramo, 1747

Amore figlio del piacere (comic op, A. Palomba), Naples, Teatro Nuovo, carn. 1751, collab. N. Logroscino

La esaltazione di Elia (op, Sevario), Teramo, 1761

La regina Vasti (melodramma per le laudi della gloriosa Vergine, S.C. Serrario), Teramo, Monastero di S Angelo

BIBLIOGRAPHY

FlorimoN

M. Scherillo: L'opera buffa napoletana durante il Settecento: storia letteraria (Naples, 1883, 2/1916/R), 229–30

A. Cametti: Il teatro di Tordinona poi di Apollo (Tivoli, 1938), ii, 383

JAMES L. JACKMAN (work-list with ROSA LEONETTI)

Ventura, José (María de la Purificación)

(b Alcalá la Real, 2 Feb 1817; d Figueras, 24 April 1875). Catalan composer. He was familiarly known as ‘Pep Ventura’, ‘L’avi Pep’ or ‘En Pep de la Tenora’. The son of an infantry sergeant, he grew up in Figueras, where he was apprenticed to a tailor and learnt the rudiments of music from Juan Llandrich and to play the instruments of the popular Catalan band known as the cobla. In 1840 at Perpignan he met the instrument maker Antoine Toron, who awakened his interest in the tenora, a member of the shawm family (see Shawm, §5), which he soon mastered and added to the woodwind quartet comprising the cobla. After making Barcelona his base in 1860, he increased the size of the cobla to 12 instruments; during the next 15 years he dominated Catalan popular music. Apart from numerous ephemeral dances and songs he composed approximately 200 sardanas, of which the most enduring include A Font Romeu, Ay de l’amor, El cant dels aucells, El toc d’oració, En aquell temps, La barretina vermella, La Carmela, L’anyorança, Les noietes de Figueras, Per tu ploro, Totes volen hereus and Una mirada. He also wrote Christmas carols, Goigs a Sant Josep (Gozos a San José) and settings of the Miserere and Te Deum.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

P. Corominas: Vida d’En Pep de la Tenora (Barcelona, 1953)

J. Miracle, ed.: Llibre de la Sardana (Barcelona, 1953, 2/1964)

ROBERT STEVENSON

Venture, Jo. a la

(fl ?c1500). Composer. A four-voice passion setting elsewhere attributed to Obrecht, La Rue and Antoine de Longueval (edns in J. Wolf: Werken van Jacob Obrecht, Amsterdam, 1908–21, xxviii, repr. 1968, viii; New Obrecht Edition, xviii, 1999; and Reich, 1990) is attributed to him in E-Tc 23 and I-Rvat C.S.42. It has been suggested that he may be identifiable with Longueval, and that ‘a la Venture’ may be a French translation of the latter’s name (the Flemish word ‘ongeval’ means ‘misfortune’). This seems unlikely, however, since Longueval was himself French (his surname should probably be connected with the village of Longueval on the Somme), and his first name was not Johannes but Antoine. Identification with the Italian singer Ventura detto Musini who sang at Mantua Cathedral between 1509 and 1511 is also unlikely.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

MGG1(‘Longueval, Antoine de’; J. Robijns)

A. Smijers: ‘ De Matthaeus-Passie van Jacob Obrecht’, TVNM, xiv (1932–5), 182–4

C. van den Borren: ‘Fausses attributions et travestissements musicaux’, Académie royale de Belgique: bulletin de la classe des beaux-arts, xxii (1940), 7–17

P.M. Tagmann: Archivalische Studien zur Musikpflege am Dom von Mantua (1500–1627) (Berne, 1967), 32–3, 77

H. Maas: ‘A l’aventure: een onderzoek naar de authenticiteit van een vroege meerstemmige passie’, TVNM, xxiii (1973), 92–102

R. Heyink: ‘ Die Passionsmotette von Antoine de Longueval: Herkunft, Zuschreibung und Überlieferung’, AfM, xlvii (1990), 217–44

W. Reich: Georg Rhau: Musikdrucke aus den Jahren 1538–1545, x (Kassel, 1990)

ERIC JAS

Venture, Johannes à la.

See Longueval, Antoine de.

Venturelli, Giuseppe

(b Rubiera, nr Modena, 1711; d Modena, 31 May 1775). Italian composer. He studied composition with Riccardo Broschi, probably while the latter was touring north Italy from 1728 to 1734 with his younger and more celebrated brother Carlo (the castrato singer known as Farinelli). Venturelli’s exact professional status has not been discovered; he may have been an organist as well as a composer (as suggested in SchmidLD), but a libretto of 1735 names him as ‘dilettante’. Although he wrote two works for the comic theatre, the opera Il matrimonio disgraziato (Modena, Teatro Rangoni, carn. 1741) and the intermezzo La moglie alla moda (the same, carn. 1755), his principal compositions were for the church. A mass for four voices and orchestra was performed in Modena Cathedral in 1733; two later settings of the Stabat mater were unsuccessful; around 1735 the Duke of Modena commissioned Venturelli to write La passione di Gesù Cristo Signor Nostro (Metastasio). According to Fétis, who described Venturelli as a skilful composer rather than a man of genius, much of his music survived in manuscript: arias, psalm settings, hymns, motets, masses, cantatas, symphonies, and concertos for various instruments (FétisB). None of this music has been located in modern catalogues.

JAMES L. JACKMAN

Ventures, the.

American pop instrumental group. Its members include Bob Bogle (b Portland, OR, 6 Jan 1937; bass guitar), Don Wilson (b Tacoma, WA, 10 Feb 1937; guitar), Howie Johnston (b Washington DC, 1938; drums) and Nokie Edwards (b Oklahoma City, OK, 9 May 1939; guitar). Over the decades numerous session musicians augmented the line-up for recording but the only substantive changes were the replacement of Johnston by Mel Taylor and the addition of Johnny Durrill (keyboards). Since the late 1960s, Jerry McGee has on occasion temporarily replaced Edwards as principal lead guitarist.

The Ventures was among the most popular of guitar instrumental groups in the early 1960s, with neatly arranged versions of such tunes as Johnny Smith’s Walk don’t run and Alberto Dominguez’s Perfidia. After further hits with Ram-Bunk-Shush and Lullaby of the Leaves, they became less prominent, although with the producers Bob Reisdorff and Joe Saraceno they recorded over 50 albums (1960–76) on which they adapted tunes from new pop trends such as surf and psychedelic music to their own style. The group’s largest following was in Japan where they toured frequently from the mid-1960s onwards, sold over 40 million records and inspired numerous imitators. In the USA their instructional records, Play with the Ventures, initiated thousands of teenagers into popular music performance.

DAVE LAING

Venturi, Pompilio

(b Siena; fl 1569–1583). Italian composer and poet. He was a dilettante who claimed acquaintance with a number of prominent Roman families. His second book of villanellas, dedicated to Cleria Farnese Cesarini, contains 52 compositions in praise of various Roman noblewomen and others, all of whom he claimed to know either ‘by sight or reputation’. Cesarini is the subject of six pieces, the ladies of the Colonna family four, and the Orsini (including the musician, Isabella de’ Medici Orsini) three. A bilingual comic song describes the author’s encounter with ‘una Thodesca’ in a Viennese tavern. His couplet-based doggerel poems, described as ‘canzonelle’, frequently open with puns on the ladies’ names. A highly declamatory style, parallel 5ths, and strict homophonic textures characterize the musical style.

WORKS

Il primo libro delle villotte alla napolitana, 3vv (Venice, 1569)

Il secondo libro delle villanelle … fatte in lode di molte signore et gentildonne romane, 3vv (Venice, 1571)

Il terzo libro delle villanelle, 3vv (Venice, 1583)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

EinsteinIM

G.M. Monti: Le villanelle alla napoletana e l’antica lirica dialettale a Napoli (Città di Castello, 1925)

C. Assenza: ‘La trasmissione dei testi poetici per canzonetta negli ultimi decenni del secolo XVI’, RIM, xxvi (1991), 205–40

DONNA G. CARDAMONE

Venturi del Nibbio, Stefano

(fl 1592–1600). Italian composer. He was in Venice when his first two publications appeared in 1592, but by May 1594 he had moved to Florence. Various scholars have assumed that he was a member – even a founder-member – of the Accademia degli Elevati, which Marco da Gagliano established in Florence in 1607, but this is not substantiated by any known documents relating to the academy; indeed it is not even known that he was still in Florence in 1607. There is likewise no evidence for the assertion that he was an active supporter of the new monodic music in Florence; all his known music is vocal polyphony, and there is no indication whatever that he composed monody or wrote in the stile rappresentativo. The truth seems to be that, like Luca Bati, he was on friendly terms with the circle of progressive musicians in Florence at the turn of the century but was regarded as a polyphonist and a master of ensemble vocal music. His published works consist almost entirely of madrigals, of which he produced at least five books between 1592 and 1598. Two of those in his first 1592 book were adapted to English words and published in London. One of them, Quell'aura che spirand'a l'aura mia (as As Mopsus went hir silly flock foorth leading), appeared in the Madrigals to Five Voyces (RISM 1598¹⁵) of Morley, who, in his comments on it (1597), praised ‘the excellency of his judgment in expressing and gracing his ditty’ and recommended him as a model composer in the genre. From the Descrizione (1600) by the younger Michelangelo Buonarroti of the festivities for the wedding of Henri IV of France and Maria de' Medici in Florence, it is known that Venturi composed a chorus and a ‘gran musica delli Dei simili a coro’ for Caccini's Il rapimento di Cefalo, which was presented on 9 October 1600; these pieces were never published and are now unknown.

WORKS

published in Venice unless otherwise stated

Il primo libro de madrigali, 5vv (1592) [two pubd with Eng. texts 1597²⁴; 1598¹⁵, ed. C.A. Murphy, Thomas Morley Editions of Italian Canzonets and Madrigals (Tallahasee, FL, 1964)]

Il primo libro de madrigali pastorali, 5vv (1592)

Madrigali, 4vv (1594)

Il terzo libro de madrigali, 5vv (Florence, 1596/7)

Il quarto libro de madrigali, 5vv (1598)

3 sacred works, 7, 8vv, 1600²; ed. F. Commer, Musica sacra, xvi (Berlin, 1875)

2 choruses in G. Caccini: Il rapimento di Cefalo, 9 Oct 1600, lost

BIBLIOGRAPHY

KermanEM

StrunkSR2

T. Morley: A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (London, 1597/R); ed. R.A. Harman (London, 1952, 2/1963/R), 291–2, 294

E. Vogel: ‘Marco da Gagliano: zur Geschichte des Florentiner Musiklebens von 1570–1650’, VMw, v (1889), 396–442, esp. 418–19; 509–68, esp.551

A. Solerti: Gli albori del melodramma, i (Milan, 1904/R), 73–4

A. Obertello: Madrigali italiani in Inghilterra (Milan, 1949), 116, 118, 302, 328

A.M. Nagler: Theatre Festivals of the Medici, 1539–1637 (New Haven, CT, 1964/R), 93, 97

E. Strainchamps: ‘New Light on the Accademia degli Elevati of Florence’, MQ, lxii (1976), 507–35

D.S. Butchart: The Madrigal in Florence, 1560–1630 (diss., U. of Oxford, 1979)

R. Charteris: ‘The Huntington Library Part Books, Ellesmere MSS EL 25 A 46–51’, Huntington Library Quarterly, l (1987), 59–84

W. Kirkendale: The Court Musicians in Florence during the Principate of the Medici (Florence, 1993), 139

EDMOND STRAINCHAMPS

Venturini, Francesco

(b ?Brussels, c1675; d Hanover, 18 April 1745). German composer and violinist of uncertain extraction, possibly Walloon. Despite the modish Italian form of his name he seems to have originated from France or the Low Countries: the record of his marriage in Hanover to Anna Maria Ennuy, a resident of that city, on 13 January 1697 describes him as ‘gallus’. Baptismal records of their children go further, adding ‘Bruxellensis’ to the father's name. It is also significant that documents from the Hanoverian court, to which he was attached from Easter 1698 or earlier, until his death, always list him with the French musicians. The court orchestra was directed by J.-B. Farinel (alias G.B. Farinelli), a native of Grenoble, and performed a repertory entirely in the French style, whereas it was left to the chamber musicians to cultivate Italian music. Having sometimes deputized for Farinel (whose pupil he was, according to Walther), Venturini became official Konzertmeister in 1713. His sole extant publication, a set of 12 richly scored orchestral suites misleadingly entitled ‘concerti’, was probably composed soon afterwards in token of his new appointment, being dedicated to the elector. Whatever credit he gained thereby, he incurred Georg Ludwig's displeasure (if Mattheson's report is reliable) by the composition of a vocal piece to the New Testament text Herr, gedenke mein, wenn du in dein Reich kommst (‘Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom’) on the elector's departure for England in 1714 to become George I. The presumption must have been forgiven, however, for Venturini later became Kapellmeister at Hanover, a post which passed on his death to a pupil, J.B. Lutter.

Several other musicians by the name of Venturini are known to have been active in Hanover and other German cities at the same time. Some were relatives (including a son, August, and a presumed son, Georg), but others – including two who shared his first name, to the further confusion of biographers – were apparently not. A Franciscus Venturini served in the Württemberg court orchestra at Stuttgart from 1700 to 1745 as a violinist, while Francesco Maria Venturini, a Venetian singer, was engaged by the Bavarian court in 1715.

Venturini's very attractive Concerti da camera op.1 (Amsterdam, c1714), for four to nine parts, consists of a series of dance movements (allemanda, gavotte, passepied etc.) often mingled with ‘novelty’ movements (aria, canon, Furies); a tripartite ouverture opens the odd-numbered works, and a concerto (a fast movement, repeated after – in one case, together with – a slower section) the even-numbered ones. Some of the dances include an alternate movement, called ‘trio’ in the frequent cases where the instrumentation is reduced to a pair of oboes and a bassoon. A solo violin, a bassoon, a pair of flutes and a pair of solo cellos are variously added in certain movements, increasing the number of parts from eight to a maximum of 11. The better-known op.5 (1719) of Dall'Abaco closely resembles Venturini's op.1, though the similarities may merely reflect the predominantly French orientation of south German court orchestras of the time. A manuscript concerto by Venturini, possibly one of the above, for two violins, strings and continuo, is in the University Library, Uppsala.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

MatthesonGEP

ScheringGIK

WaltherML

G. Fischer: Musik in Hannover (Hanover and Leipzig, 1903) [2nd edn of Opern und Konzerte im Hoftheater zu Hannover bis 1866]

H. Sievers: Die Musik in Hannover (Hanover, 1961)

MICHAEL TALBOT

Veprik, Aleksandr Moiseyevich

(b Balta, nr Odessa, 11/23 June 1899; d Moscow, 13 Oct 1958). Russian composer and musicologist. He went to school in Warsaw, then studied the piano under Wendling at the Leipzig Conservatory until 1914; he then continued his studies with N.A. Dubasov (piano, 1914–17) and A.M. Zhitomirsky (composition, 1917–20) at the St Petersburg Conservatory. He was a pupil of Myaskovsky at the Moscow Conservatory (1920–23), where he then taught orchestration (1923–41), and was made a professor in 1930 and head of faculty from 1938. He was later professor at conservatories in Sverdlovsk and Saratov (1942). On his return to Moscow in 1943 he resumed composition and research.

Veprik was a reformer of musical education in the 1920s, when he joined a faction of ‘Red Professors’. In 1925 he initiated the invitation to Arnold Schoenberg to head the composition class at Moscow Conservatory (which he refused); in 1927 he travelled to Austria, Germany and France where he studied methods of teaching orchestration and where he met Schoenberg, Hindemith, Ravel and Honegger. He was an editor of the St Petersburg Melos journal (1917–18) and of the periodical Muzïkal'noye obrazovaniye (‘Music education’) (1925–9); from 1929 he was a member of the State Academy for Art Research (GAKhN) and the State Academy of Knowledge of Art (GAIS). During the 1936 controversy surrounding Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth, Veprik was among the leaders of the Union of Composers, and he strongly supported the work. In 1938 he received a commission from the Kirghiz State Theatre for the opera Toktogul, which was completed the following year. Under the Stalinist regime he was sent to a prison camp (1950–54). Veprik’s works are written in an emotional, ornamented manner, and while they clearly show his inclination to the Jewish school, some have distinctly modernist tendencies.

WORKS

(selective list)

Toktogul (op, 4, D. Bokombayev), 1938–9, rev. (5, K. Malikov), collab. A. Maldïbayev, 1949–50

Vocal orch: Cant. (A. Blok), solo vv, chorus, orch, op.2, 1921–2; Dyevushka i smert' [A Girl and Death] (A.M. Gor'ky), spkr, solo vv, pf, 1925; Na barrikadakh (1905 god) [On the Barricades (1905)], chorus, orch, op.18, 1932–4; Stalinstan (I. Kharik), chorus, orch, op.19, 1932–4, arr. 1 solo v, chorus, pf, 1932; Toktogul, suite from the opera, solo vv, chorus, orch, 1942; Proklatiye fashizmu [A Curse on Fascism], cant., 1944; Narod–geroy [The People–the Hero] (cant., A. Mashistov, chorus, orch, 1950–5

Orch: Plyaski i pesni getto [Dances and Songs of the Ghetto], op.12, 1927; 5 malenkikh p'yes [5 Little Pieces], op.17, 1930, rev. 1958; Sym. no.1, 1931; Traurnaya pesnya [Funeral Song], op.20, 1932, rev. 1958; Pyesnya likovaniya [Song of Rejoicing], op.20, 1934–5, rev. 1959; Sym. no.2, 1937–8; Pastoral 1945–6; 2 poėmï, 1956–7; Improvizatsiya, 1958

Solo vocal (1v, pf, unless otherwise stated): Kaddish (textless), S/T, va/fl/ob, pf (1925); 2 yevreyskiye narodnïye pesni [2 Hebrew Folksongs], 1926; Snezhniki [Snowflakes] (D. Bednïy), 1932; Pesnya o Kotovskom [Song on Kotovsky] (Ye. Bagritsky), 1932; Changriyskaya pesnya [Yangtze Song] (A. Glebov), 1937; 2 ukrainskiye pesni [2 Ukrainian Folksongs] (trad.), 1943

Pf: Sonata no.1, op.3, 1922; Sonata no.2, op.5, 1924; Sonata no.3, 1925; Tanets [Dance], 1927; 3 narodnïye plyaski [3 Folk Dances], op.13b, 1928; Detskiy al'bom [Children’s Album], op.16, 1930; Lyogkiye p'yesï dlya detey [Easy Pieces for Children], pf 4 hands, 1946; Syuita na kirgizskiye temï [Suite on Kyrgyz Themes], 1947

Chbr: Pesni ob umershikh [Songs of the Dead], va, pf, op.4, 1923; Suite, vn, pf, op.7, 1925; Strogy napev [Austere Melody], cl, pf, op.9, 1926; Rapsodiya, va, pf, op.11, 1926–7

Film score: Poslednyaya noch' [The Last Night], 1936

Principal publishers: Muzïka, Schott, Sovetskiy Kompozitor, Soviet State Publishing House, Universal

WRITINGS

O metodakh prepodavaniya instrumentovki: k voprosu o klassovoy obuslovlennosti orkestrovogo pis'ma [Methods of instrument teaching: on the question of the class-conditioning in orchestral writing] (Moscow, 1931)

Traktovka instrumentov orkestra [The treatment of orchestral instruments] (Moscow, 1948, 2/1961)

Ocherki po voprosam orkestrovïkh stiley [Essays on questions of orchestral style] (Moscow, 1961)

Numerous essays on contemporary composers, etc.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L. Sabaneyev: Yevreyskaya natsional'naya shkola v muzïki (Moscow, 1924; Ger. trans., 1927; Heb. trans., 1978)

A. Abramsky and V. Belyayev: ‘Moskauer Komponisten’, Musikblätter des Anbruch, vii (1925), 168

A. Alshvang: ‘O tvorčestre A. Veprika’ [The work of A. Veprik], SovM (1933), no.4, pp.43–53

M. Chulaki: ‘Knigi A.M. Veprika’ [Veprik’s books], SovM (1962), no.12, pp.134–6

V. Bogdanov-Berezovsky: A.M. Veprik (Moscow and Leningrad, 1964)

V. Delson: ‘A.M. Veprik’, Muzïkal'naya zhizn' (1969), no.12, p.19 only

D. Gojowy: Neue sowjetische Musik der 20er Jahre (Laaber, 1980)

F.C. Lemaire: La musique du 20e siècle en Russie et dans les anciennes républiques soviétiques (Paris, 1994), 331–3

L. Sitsky: Music of the Repressed Russian Avant Garde, 1900–29 (Westport, CT, 1994), 236–41

G. Eberle: ‘Wirrwarr’ und ‘atonale Geräusche’. Die Hetze gegen Hindemith und Schostakowitsch: Bekämpfung moderner Musik in NS-Staat und in Stalinismus (Munich and New York, 1996), 368

INNA BARSOVA/DETLEF GOJOWY

Vera, Edoardo [Odoardo]

(b Rome, Feb 1821; d Rome, March 1889). Italian composer. He studied music with his mother, the singer Charlotte Häser, and appeared as a pianist in concerts in London and Paris. His first opera, Anelda da Messina, was given at La Scala on 17 October 1843. He went to London, where he published a quantity of vocal music, including songs dedicated to Pauline Viardot. His sister, the soprano Sofia Vera-Lorini (d Livorno, 8 January 1882), was much admired for her interpretations of Gluck, Mozart and Beethoven; his other operas were both written for her. Adriana Lecouvreur (dramma lirico, 4, A. de Lanzières) was first given during the carnival season at Florence in 1859, and Valeria (tragedia lirica, 4, A. Ghislanzoni) at the Teatro Comunale, Bologna, on 16 March 1869. Adriana and the dual roles of Valeria/Licisca (a Greek courtesan) require a singer capable of both coloratura and dramatic declamation. With their sextet finales in two sections modelled on those of Donizetti, Vera's operas must have seemed old-fashioned even in the 1860s. Valeria contains a mad scene for the emperor, Claudio (baritone), created by Antonio Cotogni.

PATRICK O'CONNOR

Veracini, Antonio

(b Florence, 17 Jan 1659; d Florence, 26 Oct 1733). Italian violinist and composer, uncle of Francesco Maria Veracini. He presumably had his early training from his father Francesco di Niccolò, a noted violinist with whom Antonio frequently performed in his youth. For example, they played regularly at the opera performances produced for Grand Prince Ferdinando de' Medici at Pratolino, 1677–85. Veracini entered the service of Grand Duchess Vittoria of Tuscany on 3 March 1682. After her death in 1694 he received a pension of half pay. At the death of Pietro Sammartini in 1700, he became maestro di cappella at S Michele Berteldi (now S Gaetano) in Florence, and he provided music to other churches of the city on at least an occasional basis. Veracini was an important freelance musical director, providing oratorios for the company of S Marco (1703–5), S Jacopo del Nicchio (1720) and S Niccolò del Ceppo (1702–30). From at least 1718 he was a member of the musicians’ company in Florence, serving at various times as councillor and sexton. Around 1708 Veracini assumed direction of his father’s music school, in which he trained his nephew Francesco Maria. Unlike his nephew, he rarely travelled. He visited Rome twice, where he seems to have met Corelli, whose portrait he owned. In 1720 he made a brief visit to Vienna, but he was certainly at home at least every Easter from 1685 to 1733 since his name is in every parish census from those years.

Only Veracini’s printed violin music survives. The treatment of tonal harmony in it is not as clear as Corelli’s. But the music generally possesses grandeur, derived from the unusually long phrases extended by frequent deceptive suspensions at cadences and broad melodic contours, and strength resulting from energetic and emphatic, often fanfare-like, rhythms and triadic motifs. The extensive use of repetition in place of sequences and an expanded rhythmic vocabulary were taken up by his nephew, who established these among the features of the galant style of the early 18th century. Veracini's occasional singing melodies recall G.M. Casini’s statement about him and his nephew, that ‘the heart, rather than cleverness, guided and accompanied the finger and bow of these virtuosos’.

WORKS

oratorios

all performed Florence; only published librettos extant

Il figliuol prodigo, 1693

La caduta de’ Filistei nella morte di Sansone (G.P. Berzini), 1695

I trionfi di Giosuè (Berzini), 1703; incl. music by other composers

Assalon punito (D. Canavese), 1708

Giosuè in Gabaon (Berzini), c1710 [? the same as I trionfi di Giosuè]

chamber music

[10] Sonate a tre, 2 vn, vle/archlute, bc (org), op.1 (Florence, 1692)

[10] Sonate da camera, vn, op.2 (Modena, c1694)

[10] Sonate da camera a due, vn, vle/archlute, bc (hpd), op.3 (Modena, 1696)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A. Ademollo: I primi fasti del teatro di via della Pergola in Firenze (1657–1661) (Milan, 1885)

M. Fabbri: ‘Gli ultimi anni di vita di Francesco Maria Veracini’, CHM, iii (1962–3), 91–6

J.W. Hill: The Life and Works of Francesco Maria Veracini (Ann Arbor, 1979)

J.W. Hill: ‘Oratory Music in Florence, II: at San Firenze in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, AcM, li (1979), 246–67

J.W. Hill: ‘Oratory Music in Florence, III: the Confraternities from 1655–1785’, AcM, lviii (1986), 127–77

J.W. Hill: ‘Antonio Veracini in Context: New Perspectives from Documents, Analysis and Style’, EMc, xviii (1990), 545–62

JOHN WALTER HILL

Veracini, Francesco Maria

(b Florence, 1 Feb 1690; d Florence, 31 Oct 1768). Italian composer and violinist. Veracini was born into a family of musicians and artists. His grandfather was one of the first violinists of Florence; his uncle Antonio Veracini was that and a fine composer as well. Francesco Maria’s father Agostino was, ironically, one of the few Veracinis who did not play the violin even as an amateur; he was a druggist and undertaker. Veracini’s early training was provided by his uncle Antonio with whom the promising boy often performed in public. His other instructors in Florence were G.M. Casini and his assistant Francesco Feroci. In particular, Casini, the organist at Florence Cathedral and composer of church music in a highly individual, neo-Palestrinian style, left his mark upon Veracini’s subsequent works. His last teacher was apparently G.A. Bernabei, with whom he may have studied in 1715 when he was in southern Germany. There is no solid evidence that he studied with Corelli, as is sometimes asserted.

Veracini left Florence before Easter 1711. On 24 and 25 December 1711 he was a soloist at the Christmas masses at S Marco, Venice, but was never a regular member of the chapel orchestra (as Caffi claimed). On 1 February 1712 he played at the church of S Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in Venice during a Mass in honour of the new Holy Roman ambassador (the concerto he played is in A-Wn). Although he returned to Florence in spring 1712 for a performance of his oratorio Il trionfo della innocenza patrocinata da S Niccolò, his centre of activity remained Venice, where he played again for the Christmas masses at S Marco in 1712. Evidence suggests (but see Tartini, Giuseppe) that on 10 March 1712 Tartini heard Veracini play in Venice and was so impressed that he fled to Ancona to study the better use of the bow in imitation of the older player. A letter of 1764 from Domenico Palafuti of Florence to G.B. Martini states that Pietro Locatelli studied with Veracini; this was probably in Florence, before the publication of Locatelli’s first sonatas.

From 23 January to 24 December 1714 Veracini appeared in a series of benefit concerts, and as soloist between the acts of operas, at the Queen’s Theatre in London. The year 1715 appears to have been spent in Düsseldorf at the court of Elector Palatine of the Rhine Johann Wilhelm. There Veracini played violin sonatas by Antonio Bonporti and dedicated his setting of an oratorio, Mosè al mar’ rosso, to the elector.

On 26 July 1716 Veracini was again in Venice, where he dedicated a set of 12 solo sonatas to Prince Elector Friedrich August of Saxony. Though knowing that a violinist was not needed at the Dresden court, and that he risked friction with J.B. Volumier, the established director of the orchestra there, the prince persuaded his father to retain Veracini. After another oratorio performance in Florence, 25 January 1717, Veracini travelled to Dresden where he was transferred from the prince’s private employment to the regular court payroll on 20 November 1717. His salary was equal to Heinichen’s, Volumier’s and Johann Schmidt’s, and far exceeded those of the other composers, J.G. Pisendel, Christian Pezold and J.D. Zelenka. In February 1719 Veracini was entrusted with hiring more singers for the court while he was in Bologna and Venice. He returned to Dresden where he remained until 1722, when on 13 August he leapt from a third-storey window in a fit of madness brought on by too much application to music and reading of alchemy, according to Mattheson. Veracini’s treatise hints that there was a plot against his life inspired by jealousy, however.

Having left Dresden before February 1723, Veracini returned to Florence, via Prague, before Easter of that year. That he re-established his reputation as a performer on his return to Italy we learn from Burney’s amusing story in which he arrogantly showed Girolamo Laurenti ‘the way to play the first fiddle’. Nevertheless, the documents from this time (1723–33) most often reveal Veracini as composer and performer of religious music, principally of oratorios produced by lay religious companies, but also of a mass and Te Deum in celebration of the election of the Florentine Pope Clement XII, 20 and 21 July 1730. He also played the violin at private concerts.

Between 9 and 27 April 1733 he made his way back to London, where he began to play so often that Burney reported: ‘There was no concert now without a solo on the violin by Veracini’. Perhaps he began immediately to play for the Opera of the Nobility, Handel’s rival, which presented his first opera, Adriano in Siria, for a run of 20 performances beginning on 26 November 1735, with the composer leading and playing. The same company gave his second opera, La clemenza di Tito, its four performances, 12–23 April 1737, as well as his third, Partenio, 14 March–6 June 1738.

There being no opera in London for the season of 1738–9, Veracini returned briefly to Florence where his uncle, wife and mother had died in his absence. Charles de Brosses heard him play there in 1739, and reported that ‘his playing is just, noble, knowledgeable and precise, but a little lacking in grace’. Burney concurred, writing (also from first hand) that ‘the peculiarities of his performance were his bow-hand, his shake, his learned arpeggios, and a tone so loud and clear, that it could be distinctly heard through the most numerous band of a church or theatre’. All agreed that he was the first, or at least one of the first, violinists of Europe (see illustration).

On 28 February 1741 Veracini was back in London, playing a concerto between the acts of Handel’s Acis and Galatea. Nine days later he gave a concert of his own compositions including ‘A New Eclogue’ of 12 vocal duets entitled Nice e Tirsi. In spring 1741 he appeared at two more benefit concerts, and during autumn 1742 he played concertos as entr’acte music at 21 dramatic performances at Drury Lane. A run of ten performances of his last opera, Rosalinda, an Italian adaptation by Paolo Rolli of Shakespeare’s As You Like It, began on 31 January 1744. Veracini’s inclusion of the popular ballad tune The Lass of Paties Mill in this opera greatly annoyed Burney, who condemned Veracini’s own arias as ‘wild, aukward, and unpleasant; manifestly produced by a man unaccustomed to write for the voice, and one possessed of a capo pazzo’. Though he may have been mad, Veracini was certainly not inexperienced in vocal music. At least half of his known output is for the voice.

In the same year, 1744, Veracini published his finest sonatas, the Sonate accademiche op.2, which also use a ballad tune, Tweed’s Side. The title of this collection suggests that the sonatas were of the sort to be played at private concerts (accademie in Florentine parlance) rather than in theatre, church or chamber; they are not academic in the modern English sense. Burney must have heard them when he attended one of Veracini’s concerts in 1745. It was his last in England, since Burney reported that shortly after it Veracini was shipwrecked crossing the Channel. The composer himself tells us he lost a manuscript at sea.

We next hear of Veracini in a letter of 8 May 1750 from the British envoy, Horace Mann, who heard him play the sonata with Tweed’s Side in Florence. On 7 June 1750 the Marquis d’Orbessan heard him in a performance of Galuppi’s La vittoria d’Imeneo in Turin. Back in Florence, Veracini dictated his first will, 8 March 1751, in favour of an English widow, Mary Jane Atkinson.

Veracini once again became a church musician during his last years in Florence. From 1755 until his death he served as maestro di cappella for the Vallambrosan fathers in the church of S Pancrazio, and from 1758 he filled the same post for the Theatine fathers in the church of S Michele Berteldi (now S Gaetano). In the many accounts of his church performances, Veracini is described as conducting or beating time, but he also continued to play the violin in his old age. On 6 October 1765 and on 15 November 1766 he performed at the grand-ducal court. His last years were therefore active.

A parish priest who knew him characterized Veracini as one who left several good positions because he valued independence more than wealth. The reports of diarists and journalists reveal him as an eccentric and at times even a seeming madman. Burney stressed his arrogance. Hints of all these traits can be found in his treatise, Il trionfo della pratica musicale, which he wrote during his last years in Florence.

Burney remarked that ‘by travelling all over Europe he formed a style of playing peculiar to himself’. The same might be said of his style of composing. His later concertos, when compared to his first (1712), clearly reveal the influence of Vivaldi’s concertos op.3 (1711) which he certainly heard during his years in Venice. His sonatas of 1716 are somewhat like Corelli’s, but use no fugues or imitation, frequently employ repetition in place of sequence, display symmetrical phrasing and show a strong preference for tonic recapitulations. In a word, they seem as modern as those of Tartini and Locatelli published in the 1730s. But the op.1 sonatas of 1721 are more contrapuntal, perhaps owing to the influence of the German composers at Dresden, from whom he certainly got the idea of beginning a suite of dances with a French overture (unheard of in Italian solo sonatas).

Veracini’s operas resemble those of his Italian colleagues in London as to general musical style, but contain more strongly expressive arias (as do Handel’s). The op.2 sonatas clearly show the influence of opera arias in places, but in other places become even more elaborately contrapuntal than those of op.1. Veracini’s increasing interest in the thorough application of fugue, canon, inversion and imitation can be traced in his revisions of Corelli’s op.5 sonatas, in his revisions of his own music, and in his treatise, both in the musical examples (containing revisions of Corelli and Geminiani) and in the text. Having begun as a fashionable progressive, Veracini, in his customarily independent manner, deliberately pursued an eccentric course and eventually expressed his contempt for the homophonic style he once cultivated, equating it with ignorance, laziness and the same immorality which he felt led Handel and others to plagiarism; Veracini himself was original and independent.

WORKS

librettos published unless otherwise stated

operas

all produced London, King's Theatre

Adriano in Siria (A.M. Corri, after P. Metastasio), 26 Nov 1735, GB-Mp; arias, Lbl, I-Rsc (London, 1736); 2 interludi, Rsc

La clemenza di Tito (Corri, after Metastasio), 12 April 1737

Partenio (P.A. Rolli), 14 March 1738; ov., GB-DRc; arias, GB-Lgc, I-Mc

Rosalinda (Rolli), 31 Jan 1744; arias, D-Dlb (London, 1744)

oratorios

music lost

Il trionfo della innocenza da S Niccolò (G.P. Berzini), Florence, ?1712

Mosè al mar’ rosso, ovvero Il naufragio di Faraone, Düsseldorf, ?1715; lib, I-Fn

L’incoronazione di Davidde (Berzini), Florence, 25 Jan 1717 (1st perf. 1714, according to Rolandi)

La caduta del savio nell’idoltria di Salomone (Berzini), Florence, 31 March 1720

La liberazione del popolo ebreo nel naufragio di Faraone (Berzini), Florence, ?1723; rev. of Mosè al mar’ rosso

L’empietà distrutta nella caduta di Gerico (Berzini), Florence, 19 March 1724 (1st perf. c1715, according to Fabbri, CHM)

L’errore di Salomone, London, 20 March 1744; text lost

L’Assalone, ovvero L’infedelta punita (F.M. Veracini); text lost

1 aria in Sara in Egitto (D. Cavanese), Florence, 1707, repeated in L’onesta combattuta di Sara, 1708

church music

Componimento musicale da cantarsi (Berzini), 2 sets; libs only (Florence, 1729)

2 motets; texts only, I-Fn

2 masses, Te Deum, vespers; texts lost

cantatas and songs

Cantano gl’augelletti, ?before 1717, I-MOe

Mira Clori gentil (Berzini), ?before 1717, MOe

Và tu sei ben felice, ?before 1717, Ac

Parla al ritratto della amata, c1720, A-Wn

Nice e Tirsi, perf. London, 9 March 1741, D-Dlb

Prendi amor, ?before 1745, GB-Lbl; rev. as Non per anni, ?after 1745, I-Fc

Piangete al pianto mio, ?after 1745, Fc

Qui guirommi un, mentioned in Breitkopf catalogue of 1765

Nò Tirsi tu non hai, in Raccolta di varie canzoni (Florence, 1739)

sonatas

[12] Sonate, vn/rec, bc, 1716, D-Dlb; ed. W. Kolneder (Leipzig, 1959–61)

[12] Sonate, vn, bc, op.1 (Dresden, 1721); ed. W. Kolneder (Leipzig, 1958–9)

[12] Sonate accademiche, vn, bc, op.2 (London, Florence, 1744); ed. F. Bär (Kassel, 1959–); 1st pubn incl. canon, 2vv

[12] Dissertazioni … sopra l’opera quinta del Corelli, I-Bc; ed. W. Kolneder (Mainz, 1961)

8 sonatas, vn, bc: 1, ?before 1716, A-Wn; 2, c1717, D-Dlb; 5, c1722, A-Wn

other instrumental works

1 concerto each in VI concerti à 5 stromenti (Amsterdam, c1719); Concerti à cinque … libro secondo (Amsterdam, c1718); VI concerti a cinque stromenti … libro secondo (Amsterdam, c1736)

Concerto a otto stromenti, 1712, A-Wn

Concerto a 5, D-SWl; Overture, I-Vc

THEORETICAL WORKS

Il trionfo della pratica musicale, osia Il maestro dell’arte scientifica dal quale imparsi non solo il contrapunto ma (quel che più importa) insegna ancore con nuovo e facile metodo l’ordine vero di comporre in musica, op.3, I-Fc; contains canons, fugues etc.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BoydenH

BurneyH

FürstenauG

NewmanSBE

J. Mattheson: Critica musica, i (Hamburg, 1722/R), 153, 224, 287

C.F. Cramer, ed.: Magazin der Musik, ii (1785/R), 373ff

C. de Brosses: Lettres familières sur l’Italie, ed. Y. Bézard (Paris, 1931, 2/1969 ed. P.A. Weber)

A.R. Naldo [Arnaldo Bonaventura]: ‘Un trattato inedito e ignoto di F.M. Veracini’, RMI, xlii (1938), 617–35

U. Rolandi: ‘Oratorii stampati a Firenze dal 1690 al 1725’, NA, xvi (1939), 32–9, esp. 38

I. Becker-Glauch: Die Bedeutung der Musik für die Dresdener Hoffeste bis in die Zeit Augusts des Starken (Kassel, 1951)

M. Fabbri: ‘Gli ultimi anni di vita di Francesco Maria Veracini’, CHM, iii (1962–3), 91–6

M. Fabbri: ‘Le acute censure di Francesco M. Veracini a “l’arte della fuga” di Francesco Geminiani’, Le celebrazioni del 1963 e alcune nuove indagini sulla musica italiana del XVIII e XIX secolo, Chigiana, xx (1963), 155–94

H.M. Smith: F.M. Veracini’s ‘Il trionfo della pratica musicale’ (diss., Indiana U., 1963)

M. Fabbri: ‘Appunti didattici e riflessioni critiche di un musicista pre-romantico: le inedite “Annotazioni sulla musica” di Francesco Maria Veracini’, Quaderni della RaM, no.3 (1965), 25–54

M.G. Clarke [White]: The Violin Sonatas of F.M. Veracini: some Aspects of Italian Late Baroque Instrumental Style Exemplified (diss., U. of North Carolina, 1967)

F.C. Ricci: ‘Appunti per una biografia di Francesco Maria Veracini nel bicentenario della morte (1690–1768)’, Annuario dell’Accademia di Santa Cecilia (1968), 155–94

G. Salvetti: ‘Le Sonate accademiche di Francesco M. Veracini’, Chigiana, xxv, new ser., v (1968), 125–41, esp. 127

M.G. White: ‘F.M. Veracini’s “Dissertazioni sopra l’opera quinta del Corelli”’, MR, xxxii (1971), 1–26

J.W. Hill: The Life and Works of Francesco Maria Veracini (Ann Arbor, 1979)

M.G. White: ‘The Life of Francesco Maria Veracini’, ML, liii (1972), 18–35

F.C. Ricci: Note sull'opera violinistica di Francesco Maria Veracini (Rome, 1974)

J.W. Hill: ‘Veracini in Italy’, ML, lvi (1975), 257–76

J.W. Hill: ‘The Anti-Galant Attitude of F.M. Veracini’, Studies in Musicology in Honor of Otto E. Albrecht, ed. J.W. Hill (Kassel, 1980), 158–96

F.C. Ricci: ‘Presenze di Corelli nell'opera violinistica di Francesco Maria Veracini’, L'invenzione di gusto: Corelli e Vivaldi (Milan, 1982)

J.W. Hill: ‘Oratory Music in Florence, III: the Confraternities from 1655 to 1785’, AcM, lviii (1986), 127–77

J.W. Hill: ‘Antonio Veracini in Context: New Perspectives from Documents, Analysis and Style’, EMc, xviii (1990), 545–62

JOHN WALTER HILL

Veränderungen

(Ger.).

Variations, as in 33 Veränderungen über einen Walzer von Anton Diabelli für Klavier, the full title of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations op.120 (1823). The word Variationen, however, is a much commoner designation for variations in German.

Vera-Rivera, Santiago

(b Santiago, 2 Nov 1950). Chilean composer. He received instruction in composition from Carlos Botto, Alfonso Letelier, Juan Lemann, Cirilo Vila and Juan Amenábar. He attended the University of Chile (teaching degree in music, 1974; licentiate in composition, 1977–84). He has taught harmony at the University of Chile, other courses in the Santa Elvira Institute for the Arts at the University of Tarapacá and at the Inter American Institute of Music Education sponsored by the Organization of American States.

His compositions include works for soloists and orchestra, chorus and orchestra, chorus, electro-acoustic music, and chamber music for ensembles, voice, and solo instruments. The ISCM selected his Apocaliptika II (1988) for piano and string orchestra for performance by the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra in Oslo on 24 September 1990.

LEONARDO MANZINO

Veras, Ph(ilippe) F(rançoi)s

(fl 1740). French organist and composer. He is known only by his Pièces de clavecin … premier livre (privilege dated 1740/R) and the mention of a second livre in a catalogue of 1751. According to the title-page of his premier livre, Veras was organist of St Maurice at Lille in Flanders. He was one of the very few composers to take over François Couperin's term, ordre, for suite. The older composer's influence – and perhaps that of Dandrieu – shows also in the titles and general style of the pieces, though there is little real imagination or variety. The writing is mostly in two parts. One piece, La volliante, dans le goût italien, has a Trommelbass accompaniment.

DAVID FULLER

Veray, Amaury

(b Yauco, 14 June 1922; d San Juan, 30 Oct 1995). Puerto Rican composer. His formal studies in music began as a piano student of Olimpia Morel Campos and Emilio Bacó Pasarell in Ponce. After graduating from the University of Puerto Rico with a general arts degree (1943) he served in the US Air Force. Following this military service he enrolled in the New England Conservatory of Music, Boston, studying composition with Carl MacKinley and graduating in 1949. He also studied at the Manhattan School of Music in New York City and with Pizzetti at the Accademia di S Cecilia in Rome. Returning to Puerto Rico in the early 1950s, he composed a number of film scores for the new Division of Community Education of the government of Puerto Rico. In 1960 he joined the faculty of the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music as a teacher of theory and composition, remaining in that post until his death.

Veray also served as an advisor to the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture, established in 1955, and developed there an archive of Puerto Rican music which since 1966 has formed an important part of the holdings of the Puerto Rico general archive. In recognition of this and other contributions to music in Puerto Rico, Veray was elected to membership in the Puerto Rico Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Veray’s compositions of the 1950s and 1960s, especially in the fields of film, ballet and song, contributed to a strong nationalist movement in Puerto Rican music, which especially drew upon native rhythms and melodic turns. His later work displayed a broader approach, with polytonality occasionally evident. Veray wrote extensively on Puerto Rican music.

WORKS

(selective list)

Ballet: Cuando las mujeres…, 1958, La encantada, 1958; San Juan, 1958

Orch: Canto a Filí-Melé, 1959; Cuando las mujeres…, scenes from the ballet, 1964, arr. fl, ob, cl, bn, pf, 1967; Fantasía, orch [in memory of Gilberto Concepción de Gracia], 1965; Oda seráfica a San Francisco de Asís, 1972

Chbr: Suite popular, fl, ob, cl, bn, pf, 1953; Sonatina, vn, pf, 1955; Sonata, vc, pf, 1958

Vocal: Villancico yaucano, v, pf, 1951; Aguinaldo 1952, v, pf, 1952; Ave Maria, A, pf, 1955; Cansada en el alba, S, pf, 1953; Gloria y Agnus Dei, S, SATB, org, 1953; Himno a San Judas Tadeo, S, org, 1954; 3 poemas de (José de Jesús Esteves), 1956; La rosa deshojada, T, ob, pf, 1957; 3 madrigales (J.P.H. Hernández), S, pf, 1957; ‘Signum Magnum’ (cant.), S, org, 1958; Canto a Filí-Melé (L.P. Matos), T, pf, 1959

Chorus: El niño de Aguadilla, S, female chorus, orch, 1955; 2 Sacred Motets, SATB, 1956; La Virgen va caminando, SATB, 1968; De profundis, nar, SATB, 4 perc, hp, pf, str, 1970

Film: Pedacito de tierra, 1952; El puente 1953; DoÃa Julia, 1954; El de los cuatro cabos blancos, 1955; Mayo florido, 1955; La quiebra, 1978; La sombra de una huella, 1982

Pf: El canto de las piedras, 1940; Los fragmentos, 1942; 2 invenciones, 1948; Pastoral, 1951; Elegía a Julia de Burgos, 1955

BIBLIOGRAPHY

F. Caso: Héctor Campos Parsi en la historia de la música puertorriqueña del siglo XX (San Juan, 1978)

D. Thompson: ‘La música contemporánea en Puerto Rico’, RMC, xxxviii/162, (1984), 110–17

K. Degláns and L.E. Pabón Roca: Catálogo de música clásica contemporánea de Puerto Rico, (Río Piedras, PR, 1989)

DONALD THOMPSON

Verazi, Mattia

(b ?Rome, c1730; d Munich, 20 Nov 1794). Italian librettist. Librettos refer to him as ‘Romano’. Niccolò Jommelli composed the music for his first known opera libretto, Ifigenia in Aulide, for Rome in 1751. The work initiated a lifelong friendship and a series of collaborative efforts spanning 20 years. In Ifigenia Verazi already showed innovatory tendencies that challenged the conventions of Italian opera seria: Iphigenia’s main aria without subsequent exit, Eriphile’s suicide, the extensive final ensemble, an emphasis on horror and terror, and moves towards strong climaxes at the end of each act all break with mid-century practice. In 1755, Verazi was called to Stuttgart to provide two French-inspired operas, Enea nel Lazio and Pelope, for Jommelli, who had become maestro di cappella there in 1754. Catering to Duke Carl Eugen’s taste for French spectacle, these works, based on mythological subjects and involving deities, machine spectacle, chorus, pantomime and possibly dance, antedate similar works by Traetta in Parma (1759) and Gluck’s Orfeo for Vienna in 1762. In Enea his first big ensemble, a quintet near the end of Act 3, replaces the traditional succession of exit arias, and the opening scene complex with chorus replaces the usual intimate scenes for a few characters.

A year later Verazi became court poet for the Palatinate at nearby Mannheim, and by 1762 he had also become private secretary to the Elector Carl Theodor. He held both posts until the court moved to Munich in 1778, when he retired. After his début libretto, Le nozze d’Arianna (1756) for Holzbauer, Verazi wrote no new opere serie for four years. His correspondence with Jommelli and with the Württemberg court in the 1770s (D-Sl) suggests that he was revising existing librettos for Jommelli as well as Holzbauer and others in Mannheim. Two librettos Verazi revised for J.C. Bach in 1772 and 1774 acknowledge such services. Verazi’s reworking of Metastasio’s Temistocle for Bach was designed to tighten the action and direct it towards new ensemble finales. Operas for both Mannheim and Stuttgart (or Ludwigsburg) during the 1760s and 70s typically have ensembles at the close of Acts 1 and 2 some 20 years before these became common in Italian theatres.

Verazi provided new librettos at two-year intervals for a succession of three guest composers, beginning in 1760 with the formally conventional Caio Fabrizio for Jommelli. Verazi’s operas for Mannheim contain the spectacular staging, choruses and ballets associated with French opera, but at the same time, depict only natural phenomena and human activities in accordance with principles of the Italian Arcadian reform that proscribed anything supernatural. The engagement of Traetta from Parma, where early efforts at Italian opera reform had taken place, must have inspired Verazi to undertake unique and bold challenges to conventional Italian dramaturgy. In their collaborative effort, Sofonisba (1762), Verazi introduced several characteristic innovations: the opera opens with a programmatic sinfonia accompanying a battle pantomime, and later a pantomime and chorus depict gladiatorial games. Fragments of recitative invade Sofonisba’s declamatory aria, ‘Crudeli, aimè! Che fate?’, and footnotes specify extensive actions. Act 2 ends with an action ensemble of diminishing forces – a trio that becomes a solo when two of the participants leave the stage. Most significantly, Verazi challenged the dramaturgical laws of verisimilitude by staging Sofonisba’s tragic suicide rather than contriving a conventional happy ending.

Verazi’s Ifigenia in Tauride, set by Majo two years later, continued the advances of Sofonisba. Typically, Verazi emphasized the tormented and terrifying aspects of the plot. (Guillard borrowed the programmatic ‘shipwreck’ sinfonia for Gluck’s Paris opera on the same subject.) Verazi suspended the exit-aria convention to produce lengthy scene complexes that incorporate spectacle, obbligato recitative, cavatina, aria and programmatic battle music. An unconventional duet for two men contains another novelty, an interjection from a third character (pertichino). The chorus functions both as supernumeraries and as characters in the drama. In the final scene the tyrant Thoas dies in his burning temple.

In 1766 Verazi again collaborated with Jommelli, providing new and revised operas for Duke Carl Eugen’s new theatre at Ludwigsburg, which had been constructed to accommodate French spectacle. He revised Enea nel Lazio and substantially reworked Zeno’s Lucio Vero as Vologeso (which Jommelli considered among his most emotionally compelling operas.) Two years later they mounted the most radical opera of Jommelli’s career, Fetonte, a tour de force combining a complex italianate plot with spectacle based on French models, which C.F.D. Schubart extolled for the perfect blending of music, drama, stagecraft, poetry and dance and for its impact on the audience. Formally, Verazi made use of cavatinas and ensembles of diminishing personnel to avoid the traditional succession of recitative and exit arias, and the opera’s impressive and tragic conclusion takes place within the first action ensemble finale ever appended to an opera seria.

In 1778 Verazi was called to Milan to provide spectacle operas for the opening of La Scala. In prefaces to Europa riconosciuta (Salieri) and Troia distrutta (Mortellari), he claimed to have reformed longstanding abuses and added variety, verisimilitude and action in his librettos, which he termed drammi in azione. In Europa and Troia Verazi abolished the hierarchy of roles and drastically reduced the number of exit arias, replacing them with introductions, ensembles, action finales and cavatinas embedded in extensive scene complexes incorporating chorus, pantomime, and machine spectacle. The librettos contain detailed, almost line-by-line footnotes specifying action and even giving instructions to the composer regarding instrumentation and musical effects. Aegisthus is slain on stage in Europa and Troia ends tragically. Public outrage over these two works led Verazi to present a revival of his Calliroe and a far less controversial Cleopatra. Here all spectacle has disappeared, and arias remain free of action. Of Verazi’s innovations only the ensembles and the tragic ending remain. Calliroe returns to life when the potion she has drunk proves harmless, but events in Cleopatra are allowed to proceed to a staged double suicide.

Verazi returned to Germany without hope of finding a favourable reception for his innovations in his native land. But during the early 1780s composers and librettists began cautiously to incorporate them into conventional works, and by the 1790s a new genre of opera had supplanted the old.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

GroveO (M.P. McClymonds: incl. list of librettos)

StiegerO

WalterG

C. Burney: Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Abate Metastasio, iii (London, 1796), 219

C. Schubart: Gesammelte Schriften und Schicksale, i (Stuttgart, 1839), 83

J. Sittard: Zur Geschichte der Musik und des Theaters am Württembergischen Hofe 1458–1793 (Stuttgart, 1890/R)

R. Krauss: Das Stuttgarter Hoftheater von den ältesten Zeiten bis zur Gegenwart (Stuttgart, 1908)

P. Verri: Carteggio di Pietro e Alessandro Verri dal 1 luglio 1778 al 29 dicembre 1779, x (Milan, 1939), 42–3, 51

C. Vianello: Teatri, spettacoli, musiche a Milano nei secoli scorsi (Milan, 1941)

B. Cantrell: Tommaso Traetta and his opera ‘Sofonisba’ (diss., U. of California, Los Angeles, 1957)

K. Kusmick Hansell: Opera and Ballet at the Regio Ducal Teatro of Milan, 1771–1776: a Musical and Social History (diss., U. of California, Berkeley, 1980), ii, 267–75

M. McClymonds: Niccolò Jommelli: the Last Years, 1769–1774 (Ann Arbor, 1980)

S. Henze: ‘Opera seria am kurpfälzischen Hofe: Traettas “Sofonisba”, De Majos “Ifigenia in Tauride”, Bachs “Temistocle”’, Mannheim und Italien: zur Vorgeschichte der Mannheimer: Mannheim 1982, 78–96

M. McClymonds: ‘Mattia Verazi and the Opera at Mannheim, Stuttgart and Ludwigsburg’, SMC, vii (1982), 99–136

M. McClymonds: ‘The Venetian Role in the Transformation of Italian Opera Seria during the 1790s’, I vicini di Mozart: Venice 1987, 221–40

N. Baker: Italian Opera at the Court of Mannheim, 1758–1770 (diss., U. of California, Los Angeles, 1994)

M. McClymonds: ‘Transforming opera seria: Verazi’s Innovations and their Impact on Opera in Italy’, Opera and the Enlightenment, ed. T. Bauman and M.P. McClymonds (Cambridge, 1995), 119–32

M. McClymonds: ‘The Great Quartet in Idomeneo and the Italian opera seria Tradition’, Wolfgang Amadè Mozart: Essays on his Life and his Music, ed. S. Sadie (Oxford, 1996), 451–9

M. McClymonds: ‘Verazi’s Controversial drammi in azione as Realized in the Music of Salieri, Anfossi, Alessandri and Mortellari for the Opening of La Scala 1778–1779’, Scritti in memoria di Claudio Sartori, ed. M. Dona and F. Lesure (Lucca, 1997), 43–87

MARITA P. McCLYMONDS

Verben, Johannes

(fl c1430). Composer. His three voice motet O domina gloriosa is in the manuscript I-TRmp 87 (ed. in DTÖ, lxxvi, Jg.xl, 1933/R, p.70). A Gloria in I-AO 15 is ascribed to ‘Jo. Werken’ (misread by de Van as ‘Berken’); it is also in a fragmentary manuscript at Zwettl (A-Z), where it is incomplete but ascribed to ‘Johannes Verben’.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

G. de Van: ‘A Recently Discovered Source of Early Fifteenth Century Polyphonic Music: the Aosta Manuscript’, MD, ii (1948), 5–74

K. von Fischer: ‘Neue Quellen zur Musik des 13., 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts’, AcM, xxxvi (1964), 79–97

P. Wright: ‘The Compilation of Trent 87₁ and 92₂’, EMH, ii (1982), 237–71, esp. 265–70

DAVID FALLOWS

Verbesselt, August

(b Klein-Willebroek, 22 Oct 1919). Belgian composer and flautist. At the Antwerp Conservatory he studied flute with Louis Stoefs, who also encouraged his interest in new music; his other teachers at the conservatory included Lode Ontrop (harmony) and Karel Candael (counterpoint and fugue). In 1963 he was appointed to teach analysis and aesthetics at the conservatory, and in 1965 he became principal of the Music School in Niel. From 1942 he played first flute at the Royal Flemish Opera for about 40 years.

Though not a prolific composer he has written for a great variety of combinations. Throughout his career a gradual detachment from traditionalism and classical conception has taken place. Initially he wrote in a free atonal style, for example in his Concerto for flute and percussion and orchestra (1952), Ballade (1956), Concerto for Orchestra (1959) and earlier chamber-music works. Since 1964, however, his music has evolved from bitonality and polytonality towards atonality and strict 12-note technique. In more recent years his music has shown more intense instrumental colouring and greater compression.

WORKS

(selective list)

Orch: Orient, band, 1933; Conc., fl, perc, orch, 1952; Ballade, 1956; Sinfonietta, chbr orch, 1957; Conc. for orch, 1959; Triptiek, 1967; Diagrammen, chbr orch, 1972; Universum, double orch, tape, 1974; Structures, 1981; Cl Conc., 1983; Conc., cl qt, chbr orch, 1986; Ob Conc., 1986; Pax, chbr orch, 1986; Pf Conc., 1986; Kammerconcerto, b cl, str, 1988; Almtaler symphonie, 1989; Double Conc., b cl, cl, orch, 1990; Conc., a sax, brass band, 1991; Conc., ob, mar, vib, str, 1995

Vocal: Ares and Irene, chorus, orch, 1987; Moralische Ballade, solo v, chorus, str orch, pf, 1990; Nostalgie, chbr chorus/vocal qt, a sax, vc, 1990

Chbr and solo inst: Contrapunto per clavicembalo, 1964; Per violino, vn, 1987; Alpha & Beta, vc, 1979; 3 monologhi, fl, 1981; ‘Z’, pf, 1985; Per flauto, fl, 1986; solo pieces for fl, ob, cl, b cl; duos, trios, qts, qnts

Principal publishers: Andel (Oostende), Billaudot (Paris), CeBeDeM (Brussels), Metropolis (Antwerp), Scherzando (Antwerp)

DIANA VON VOLBORTH-DANYS

Verbey, Theo

(b Delft, 5 July 1959). Dutch composer. He studied at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague (1978–85) with Diderik Wagenaar, J. van Vlijman and Schat, among others. In 1982 he visited the Darmstadt summer course and participated in a Stockhausen project at the Royal Conservatory. In 1987 he received the Amsterdam Arts Fund’s incentive award for young composers for Aura, after which commissions came from the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the London Sinfonietta, the Nieuw Sinfonietta Amsterdam and the Residentie-Orkest, The Hague. In 1992 and 1997 Verbey was a juror for the Queen Elisabeth Composition Competition in Brussels and in 1997 began teaching composition at the Amsterdam Sweelinck Conservatory.

His compositions show his striving for clarity and richness in harmony and rhythm. He has also a special feeling for instrumental colour and harmonic nuance, and consistently uses self-generating musical phenomena. The inevitability of already chosen processes particularly fascinates Verbey, as is shown in complex scores such as Tegenbeweging (‘Contrary Motion’, 1986), Inversie (1987), Expulsie (1990) and Produkt (1992), which was first performed at the Donaueschinger Musiktage of 1992. Verbey has also written apparently tonal and easily intelligible music that is based on proportional ratios. His music is also naturally rooted in the significant developments of Western music. Triade (1991, revised 1994), which uses Mozart’s ‘Prague’ Symphony as a point of reference for phrasing, structural proportions and the relationships between harmonies and melodies, has changing metres in a ratio of 1:2:3:4. In Conciso (1996) Verbey uses the ratio of 4:5:3:6, which he borrowed from Beethoven’s Piano Sonata op.101. At the same time, the harmonic contour of Conciso is largely determined by Skryabin’s Piano Sonata no.8. Like most composers of his generation, Verbey is conscious that it is impossible to be impervious to a music history that has permeated our thought.

WORKS

Caprice symphonique, orch, 1976; Nocturne, pf, 1980; Triplum, wind ens, 1982; Random Syms., elecs, 1985; Aura, large ens, 1985, rev. 1989; Tegenbeweging [Contrary Motion], orch, 1986; Inversie, a fl, cl, va, db, cymbals, gui, hp, mand, pf, vib, 1987; Contractie, fl, b cl, pf, 1987; Expulsie, large ens, 1988–90; De Simorq, chbr ens, 1989; De Peryton, fl, ob, eng hn, cl, b cl, bn, hn, 1990; Triade, orch, 1991, rev. 1994; Produkt, chbr ens, 1991–2; Duet, 2 tpt, 1992; Hommage, fl, 1992; Whitman, S, orch, 1992; Notturno, ob, 2 hn, str orch, 1995; Pavane oubliée, hp, str orch, 1995; Conciso, large ens, 1996; Alliage, orch, 1997; Fandango, 4 rec, 1998; 6 Rilke-Lieder, Bar, chbr orch, 1998

Arrs., incl. A. Berg: Sonata op.1 (1984); I. Stravinsky: Sonata, 2 pf (1983)

Principal publisher: Donemus

BIBLIOGRAPHY

J. Oskamp: ‘Composer Theo Verbey: a Subtle Innovator’, Key Notes, xvi/3 (1992), 17–19

T. Verbey: ‘Pre-Composition in Passamezza’, Key Notes, xxxi/1 (1997), 17–19

B. van Putten: ‘Componist Theo Verbey wil zich niet laten kronen’, Vrij Nederland (11 April 1998)

LEO SAMAMA

Verbonnet, Johannes.

See Ghiselin, Johannes.

Verbrugghen, Henri

(b Schaerbeek, Brussels, 1 Aug 1873; d Northfield, MN, 12 Nov 1934). Belgian violinist and conductor. He studied the violin with Hubay and Ysaÿe at the Brussels Conservatory from 1886, winning a premier prix in 1889. In 1893 he joined the Scottish Orchestra in Glasgow, becoming its leader in 1903, and also played with the Lamoureux Orchestra in Paris and at the London Promenade Concerts (1902–5). He gave the British première in 1907 of Sibelius’s Violin Concerto. He conducted the Glasgow Choral Union from 1911 until 1915, when he went to Australia to direct the State Conservatorium in Sydney, and conducted its orchestra (from 1916) and the NSW State Orchestra. He settled in the USA in 1923 and was conductor of the Minneapolis SO until 1931.

D.C. PARKER/R

Verbunkos

(Hung., from Ger. Werbung: ‘recruiting’).

A traditional Hungarian dance music originally used for recruiting, of 18th-century origin and sometimes simply called a hongroise, or ungarischer Tanz. Before the Austro-Hungarian imperial army instituted conscription in 1849, recruiting presentations involving music were used in order to fill the ranks with Hungarian village recruits. About a dozen hussars (members of the Hungarian light cavalry), led by their sergeant, would be involved: first, the sergeant would dance slow and dignified figures, then the subordinate officers would join in and the music and dancing became increasingly energetic, until finally the youngest soldiers engaged in virtuosic leaps and spur-clicking. The accompanying music was usually played by Gypsy musicians. Although the verbunkos is sometimes considered Gypsy music, it was actually Hungarian, often derived ultimately from the song repertory, but played in a fashion characteristic of the Gypsy musicians. Its use as recruiting music ceased in 1849, by which time it was already evolving into the Hungarian national dance, the Csárdás. The two forms share many characteristics.

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, a verbunkos art music for middle-class consumption began to evolve, largely through the performances of such virtuosos as János Bihari (1764–1827), one of the earliest and most celebrated Gypsy bandleaders, and the demands of the amateur market. Scores of verbunkos music were published from 1784 onwards in Vienna and elsewhere, and the number of such publications listed in Papp's bibliographies suggests that they were quite popular. Composers such as Mozart and Schubert would therefore have needed no particular contact with Hungary or Hungarians, as is often implied, to encounter this music: it was all around them in Vienna.

Verbunkos had both slow (lassú or lassan) sections and fast (friss or friska) ones (ex.1); these could either form a pair or alternate at greater length. Lassú sections often featured a characteristic dotted rhythm, such as that in the opening violin figure in the first movement, ‘Verbunkos’, of Bartók's Contrasts (1938). The virtuoso running notes of the faster sections became central to the so-called Style hongrois, the evocation of Hungarian Gypsy repertories and performance styles by (primarily) Austro-German composers. Verbunkos-derived passagework is found in Mozart (e.g. the finale of the Violin Concerto k219, and Haydn (e.g. the ‘Rondo all'ongarese’ of the Piano Trio h XV:25), but is more common in 19th-century chamber music, including the finales of Schubert's String Quintet d956 and Brahms's Piano Quartet no.1 op.25.

See also Hungary, §II.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

F. Liszt: Des Bohémiens et de leur musique en Hongrie (Paris, 2/1881/R; Eng. trans., 1926/R, as The Gypsy in Music)

B. Sárosi: Cigányzene (Budapest, 1971; Eng. trans., 1978, as Gypsy Music)

G. Papp: ‘Die Quellen der “Verbunkos-Musik”: ein bibliographischer Versuch’, SM, xxi (1979), 151–217; xxiv (1982), 35–97; xxvi (1984), 59–132

T. Istvánffy: All'ongarese: Studien zur Rezeption ungarischer Musik bei Haydn, Mozart und Beethoven (diss., U. of Heidelberg, 1982)

J. Bellman: The ‘Style hongrois’ in the Music of Western Europe (Boston, 1993)

JONATHAN BELLMAN

Verbyts'ky, Mykhaylo

(b Ulyuchi, Galicia, 1815; d Mlyny, 31 Dec 1870). Ukrainian priest, composer and writer on music. As a composer he helped lay the foundations for the development of modern Ukrainian music. His works are formally unsophisticated, often strophic, and usually in the minor mode; but his stage works (notably Prostachka (‘The Simpleton’), 1870) are representative of a popular folk genre that was melodically fluid, singable, pictorial and emotionally evocative. His instrumental writing does not extend far beyond the simple development of folktunes. Nevertheless, he composed 12 so-called symphonies (really overtures), on the sixth of which Stanislav Lyudkevich based an orchestral piece and a piano trio. He also composed Zapovit (‘Testament’, 1868), a setting of Shevchenko’s poem for bass solo, double choir and orchestra, the operetta Podgoryane (Lemberg (now L'viv, 1864), sacred and secular choral works and songs. He is best known as the composer of the Ukrainian national anthem Shche ne vmerla Ukrayina (‘The Ukraine has not Perished’), which in 1917 was adopted by the new Ukrainian republican government.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Z. Lysko: ‘Povstannya nashoho natsional'noho himnu’ [The composition of our national anthem], Ukraïns'ka muzyka, nos.9–10 (1938)

R. Smereczyns'ka: Osnovy muzychnoho mystetstva: teoriya i istoriya [Rudiments of music: theory and history] (Jersey City, 1973)

V. Trembits'ky: Ukraïn'sky hymn ta inshi patriyotychni pisni [The Ukrainian national anthem and other patriotic songs] (Rome, 1973)

ANDRY V. SZUL

Verchaly, André

(b Angers, 4 Dec 1903; d Marseilles, 12 Sept 1976). French musicologist. He studied the piano with Isidore Philipp and composition with Paul Vidal (1924–30) in Paris, where he attended Masson’s musicology lectures at the Sorbonne (1942–6), taking the diplôme d’Etudes Supérieures in history. After a career as a pianist and accompanist (1925–39) he became technical adviser in music at the Ministry for Youth, where he worked from 1945 to 1968, except for four years devoted to research at the CNRS (1955–9). In 1949 he was appointed general secretary to the Société Française de Musicologie. He specialized in the study of secular vocal music under Henri IV and Louis XIII (late 16th and early 17th centuries), and in this field developed the work begun by Gérold (e.g. L’art du chant en France au XVIIe siècle, Strasbourg, 1921/R); he also contributed to the major French and foreign music dictionaries and encyclopedias. He combined rigorous scholarship with an elegant style.

WRITINGS

‘Gabriel Bataille et son oeuvre personnelle pour chant et luth’, RdM, xxvi (1947), 1–24

‘Les airs italiens mis en tablature de luth dans les recueils français du début du XVIIe siècle’, RdM, xxxii (1953), 45–77

‘Poésie et air de cour en France jusqu’à 1620’, Musique et poésie au XVIe siècle: Paris 1953, 211–24

‘Desportes et la musique’, AnnM, ii (1954), 271–345

‘A propos des chansonniers de Jacques Mangeant (1608–1615)’, Mélanges d’histoire et d’esthétique musicales, offerts à Paul-Marie Masson (Paris, 1955), ii, 169–77

ed.: Les influences étrangères dans l’oeuvre de W.A. Mozart: Paris 1956

‘Les Ballets de cour d’après les recueils de musique vocale (1600–1643)’, Société internationale des études françaises, ix (1957), 198–218

‘La tablature dans les recueils français pour chant et luth’, Le luth et sa musique: Neuilly-sur-Seine 1957, 155–69

‘La métrique et le rythme musical au temps de l’humanisme’, IMSCR VIII: New York 1961, i, 66–74

‘Le recueil authentique des chansons de Jehan Chardavoine (1576)’, RdM, xlix (1963), 203–19

‘La poésie française baroque et la musique (1580–1645)’, Actes des Journées internationales d’étude du Baroque [III]: Montauban 1968 [Baroque, iii (1969)], 127–36

‘A propos du récit français au début du XVIIe siècle’, RMFC, xv (1975), 39–46

EDITIONS

Le ‘Livre des vers du Luth’ (manuscrit d’Aix-en-Provence) (Aix-en-Provence, 1958)

Airs de cour pour voix et luth (1603–43) (Paris, 1961/R)

with H. Expert: J. Planson: Airs mis en musique à quatre parties (1587) (Paris, 1966)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

F. Lesure: ‘André Verchaly’, RdM, lxiii (1977), 192–4 [incl. list of writings]

CHRISTIANE SPIETH-WEISSENBACHER

Vercoe, Elizabeth Walton

(b Washington DC, 23 April 1941). American composer and writer on music. She was educated at Wellesley College (BA 1962), the University of Michigan (MM 1963) and Boston University (DMA 1978), where she studied composition with Gardner Read. She was a fellow at the Charles Ives Center (1984, 1992) and at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris (1983–5) and has received grants from the Artists Foundation and the NEA. She was director of the Women's Music Festival/85 in Boston and was a member of the boards of the International League of Women Composers (1980–87) and the Artists Foundation (1985–90). Her writings include articles and reviews about music by women composers. She has been a member of the music faculty of Regis College since 1997.

Read has described Vercoe as ‘a composer with a fine technical command and keen sensitivity to sound materials’. These qualities have enabled her to produce highly contrasting works, ranging from the powerful, disturbing Herstory series to the spare and suggestive Changes for orchestra. Several of her works, including Herstory II, Herstory III, Fantavia and the satirical yet elegant Irreveries from Sappho, have been recorded.

WORKS

(selective list)

Orch: Rhapsody, vn, orch, 1977; Despite our Differences no.2, pf, chbr orch, 1988; Changes: a Little Music for Mozart, 1991

Vocal: Herstory I (texts by Amer. women poets), S, vib, pf, 1975; Herstory II: 13 Japanese Lyrics, S, perc, pf, 1979; Irreveries from Sappho, S/SSA trio, pf, 1981; Herstory III: Jehanne de Lorraine, monodrama, Mez, pf, 1986; In the Storm, Mez, cl, pf, 1989; A Dangerous Man: a Monodrama on John Brown, Bar, pf, 1990; Varieties of Amorous Experience, S, pf, 1994; Herstory IV, S, mand/mar, 1997

Inst: Fantasy, pf, 1975; Persona, pf, 1980; Sonaria, vc, 1980; Fanfare, 3 tpt, timp, 1981; Fantavia, fl, perc, 1982; Suite française, vn, 1983; Despite our Differences no.1, vn, vc, pf, 1984; A la fin-tout seul, mand, opt. pf, 1985; Elegy, va, pf, 1989; 4 Humors, cl, pf, 1992

recorded interviews in US-NHoh

SHARON MABRY

Vercore, Mathias [Matthias] Herman.

See Werrecore, mathias hermann.

Verdalonga, José

(b Guadalajara; fl late 18th century and early 19th). Spanish organ builder. Little is known of his activity, but he must have been of considerable importance, judging by the organs which he either built or repaired. In 1797 he constructed an organ in Toledo Cathedral; he also built instruments for the cathedral of S Isidro in Madrid and Soria Cathedral. At the beginning of the 19th century he rebuilt and modified the two organs in the choir at El Escorial, and restored the ‘Emperor’s’ organ in Toledo Cathedral. His work as an organ builder was carried on by his son and pupil, Valentín, and his son-in-law Leandro Garcimartín.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

SubiráHME

J. Moll: ‘Documentos para la historia de la música en la catedral de Toledo’, AnM, xiii (1958), 159–66

S. Rubio: ‘Los órganos del monasterio del Escorial’, La Ciudad de Dios, no.178 (1965), 464–90

G. Bourligueux: ‘Leandro Garcimartín et l’orgue des Carmes Chaussés de Madrid’, Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez, iv (1968), 349–70

JOSÉ LÓPEZ-CALO

Verdehr Trio.

American ensemble. Founded in 1972, its members are Walter Verdehr, violin (b Kočevye, Slovenia, 31 Aug 1941), Elsa Ludewig-Verdehr, clarinet (b Charlottesville, VA, 14 April 1936) and Gary Kirkpatrick, piano (b Manhattan, KS, 7 Aug 1941). With the assistance of Michigan State University, where all three members are on the faculty, they have commissioned over 100 new works for their unusual instrumental combination. Composers who have written for them include Leslie Bassett, William Bolcom, Peter Dickinson, Ida Gotkovsky, Alan Hovhaness, Karel Husa, John McCabe, Menotti, Thea Musgrave, Ned Rorem and Gunther Schuller. The Verdehr Trio has undertaken many European and world tours, appearing not only as a chamber ensemble but as soloists in several triple concertos written for them.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

P. Weston: Clarinet Virtuosi of Today (London, 1989), 183–90

H. Roth: ‘The Making of a Medium’, The Strad, cvi (1995), 1140–44

M.A. Platt: ‘The Making of a Medium’, Strings, x/6 (1996), 46–50

PAMELA WESTON

Verdelot [Deslouges], Philippe

(b Verdelot, Les Loges, Seine-et-Marne, c1480–85; d ?Florence, ?1530–32, before 155). French composer. He was the most important composer of Italian madrigals before Arcadelt, and one of the pioneers of the genre.

H. COLIN SLIM/STEFANO LA VIA

1. Life.

Practically nothing is known of Verdelot's early career; it was presumably spent in northern France before he went to northern Italy at a fairly early stage. He may have been in Venice as early as the first decade of the 16th century. According to Vasari (Le vite, 2/1568, later followed by Vincenzo Borghini in Il riposo, 1584), shortly before leaving Venice for Rome in 1511 the artist Sebastiano del Piombo painted ‘Verdelot franzese musico eccellentissimo’ together with ‘Ubretto suo compagno cantore’. Despite much research this painting has not yet been identified and dated with certainty, nor has any light been shed on the identity of Verdelot's companion. Some (including Freedberg and Slim, later questioned by Pirrotta and by Hirst) believe that Vasari was referring to a painting (once housed at the Kaiser-Freidrich Museum in Berlin, but destroyed at the end of World War II) that portrays Verdelot at a little over 40 years old (30 according to Amati-Camperi) in the company of the younger composer Hubert Naich (fig.1). Others (from Friedeberg to Ramsden), however, believe the painting is the famous Concerto at the Palazzo Pitti in Florence, variously attributed to Giorgione and Titian and dating from c1505, in which Verdelot and Jacob Obrecht are depicted together with a younger, anonymous person. Yet there is still no concrete documentary evidence to support these and other hypotheses (e.g. by Prunières; Ravaglia; Einstein, 1949; Quitin, Sidona). In particular, these two attempts to identify Ubretto are hardly plausible: Obrecht, too well-known and influential to be named after Verdelot and simply as ‘cantore’, died of the plague at Ferrara in the summer of 1505 at the age of 52, while Naich, born around 1505–10, seems to have been active in Italy only from the 1530s and outside Venetian circles. It is more likely that the companion in Vasari's picture is a third and less well-known figure, perhaps Verdelot's future colleague in Florence, listed with him in the Libri di cassa of the Opera of S Maria del Fiore as ‘Bruet’ (1 July 1523) or ‘Urbech’ (28 June 1527); later Verdelot himself mentioned his inseparable companion ‘Bruett’ in one of the conversions recalled by Antonfrancesco Doni in I Marmi (1552).

If he was in northern Italy in the first decade of the century, he seems to have moved south by the 1520s. Two of his madrigals (Torela mo vilan and O singular dolcezza) may indicate that he was in Venice and spent some time at Bologna; his music first appears in sources from the Veneto dating from the early 1520s (Fenlon and Haar). The provenance and dating of the manuscript motet Beati qui habitant, however, suggest that he was already in Rome between 1510 and 1513 (Böker-Heil, and the presence of Non pò far morte ’l dolce viso amaro in a printed fragment (the ‘Fossombrone fragment’, c1520, see Haar, 1981) points to another sojourn in Rome around 1520.

Verdelot arrived in Florence in May of 1521; he may have taken part in meetings at the Orti Oricellari, where he would have met Machiavelli and other republican intellectuals. It is unlikely, however, that he would have participated in the Oricellari’s anti-Medicean plots against his first and most important Florentine patron, Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici. He was probably offered service at Cardinal Giulio’s court before attaining two of the most prestigious musical positions in the city: maestro di cappella at the baptistry of S Maria del Fiore (from 24 March 1522 at the latest to 7 September 1525) and at the cathedral (2 April 1523 to 28 June 1527). In this period Verdelot seems to have been away from the city at least twice, once between 4 December 1523 and 16 January 1524, when he was chosen together with two singers of the cathedral to accompany Giulio de’ Medici to Rome on the occasion of the latter’s elevation to the papacy (as Clement VII). In the Dialogo della musica (1544) and I marmi, Antonfrancesco Doni showed Verdelot’s assimilation into Florentine social, artistic and political life in the 1520s, citing two seven-part madrigals and a frottola (all of which are now lost), and noting that Verdelot’s name was a byword for superior musicianship.

During the Florentine republic (1527–30) Verdelot probably allied himself against papal and imperial forces seeking to return Florence to the Medici. Doni observed in I marmi: ‘I know that Verdelot did not willingly suffer these praises given to the Spanish, as the partisans quickly discovered!’. Several of Verdelot’s motet texts refer to the war, famine and pestilence which afflicted the last republic. Like Michelangelo, Verdelot was apparently forgiven, perhaps posthumously, for his anti-Medici position: the staunch supporter of the Medici, Cosimo Bartoli, in his Ragionamenti of 1567 described Verdelot as ‘amicissimo’ (probably referring to the period before 1527, when Bartoli fled Florence).

It is not known whether Verdelot was in Florence during the siege (1529–30), whether he survived it and, if so, whether he remained in Florence afterwards or went elsewhere. It has been suggested (Hersh, 1963) that the madrigal Italia, Italia, ch’hai sì longamente refers to Rome under Paul III (1534–49), although like Italia mia benché ’l parlar and Trist’Amarilli mia it could equally well refer to the sack of Rome in 1527. There is no evidence for dating any other of Verdelot’s music after about 1530. He was definitely dead some time before 1552 for Ortenzio Landi (Sette libri de cathalogi, 1552) wrote: ‘Verdelot, the Frenchman, was singular in his time’.

A passage in Doni’s Dialogo della musica seems to imply that by 1544 Verdelot’s music (at least his celebrated setting of Petrarch’s Passer mio solitario) was already regarded as old-fashioned; but other 16th-century commentators testify that it was still performed and highly appreciated throughout the 1550s and 60s. His madrigals continued to be reprinted almost without interruption until 1566. In 1534 Pietro Aretino wrote approvingly of a performance of four singers and a lutenist of Divini occhi sereni which, although first published in 1533, did not appear in an arrangement for lute and voice (by Willaert) until 1536. Andrea Calmo (c1544, in 1548, and c1560) mentioned Verdelot among great madrigal composers, including Arcadelt, Willaert, Rore and Perissone Cambio. Around 1549 Antonfrancesco Grazzini (‘il Lasca’) spoke of young people, presumably in Florence, who were singing ‘certain five-voice madrigals by Verdelot and Arcadelt’. Lodovico Guicciardini (Descrittione, 1567) included Verdelot among those composers between Josquin and Clemens non Papa ‘who restored music to its true perfection’, while Bartoli (Ragionamenti, 1567) believed Verdelot's madrigals capable of expressing the ‘propriety of words’ with impressive faithfulness and power.

2. Works.

Both of Verdelot’s extant masses are related to Richafort’s four-voice motet Philomena praevia. The Missa ‘Philomena’ parodies it and quotes its opening point of imitation as a head-motif in the superius at the beginnings of the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo and Sanctus, and the motet’s opening motif appears in the tenor of the five-voice Agnus Dei. The other mass borrows for its Kyrie several motifs from the secunda pars of Philomena praevia. (Böker-Heil conjectured that the scribe may have added Verdelot’s name to the piece in the belief that he was copying Missa ‘Philomena’.)

Verdelot wrote about 58 motets, displaying the early 16th-century preference for this genre. Böker-Heil proposed three main stylistic phases. In the earliest he included Sancta Maria succurre miseris and Gaudeamus omnes in Domino; their melodic style with conjunct progressions, considerable melismas, narrow-range and short, closed phrases resembles that of Mouton (particularly his Non nobis Domine and Ave fuit prima salus, both composed around 1510) and led Böker-Heil to suggest dates for Verdelot’s early style period as from about 1510 to about 1520. Tanto tempore vobiscum sum honours Verdelot’s name saint, Philip, and its opening motif, re re sol, corresponds to the vowels in ‘Verdelot’. Gaudete omnes et letamini is also written in this ‘early’ style. Dunning believed that it was written in celebration of Giulio de’ Medici’s election as Pope Clement VII in November 1523.

The motets of Böker-Heil’s ‘middle’ period (c1520–25) reveal a more declamatory style and a concern that the melody should adequately express textual rhythms. Examples of this later style are Ad Dominum cum tribularer and Gaudent in celis.

A final mature phase is evident, chiefly in motets for more than four voices, including O dulcissime Domine Jesu Christe and Si bona suscepimus and particularly the motets such as Congregati sunt and Letamini in Domino which celebrate Florentine revivals of Savonarola’s theological and political doctrines during the last republic or relate to the plague, famine and strife that beset Florence between 1527 and 1530. All are characterized by fewer rhythmic contrasts and melismas in non-imitative passages, longer note values, short phrases often emphasizing one note and rarely exceeding a 5th or a 6th in compass, and close attention to the unifying of text and music, both accentually and symbolically.

Although not as prolific as Josquin, Mouton, Gombert, Clemens non Papa or Willaert, Verdelot nonetheless influenced his contemporaries and later motet and mass composers. Among others, Arcadelt, Palestrina, Gombert, Lassus and Morales parodied his motets. Si bona suscepimus appeared frequently in 16th-century sources: it is found in at least six printed anthologies, 27 manuscripts and 11 intabulations. In 1545 it even served as theatrical music in a German play.

The surprisingly small number of chansons by Verdelot seems to confirm his early departure from France. Seule demeure et despourvue is closer stylistically to Josquin than to the later Parisian chanson and Qui la dira la peine, a virtuoso quadruple canon (8 ex 4), resembles the work of Mouton. The addition of a voice to an existing work, Janequin’s chanson La guerre, is another retrospective trait.

Verdelot’s most important contribution is as a pioneer of the genre of the madrigal. His partial setting of Petrarch’s sonnet Non pò far morte ’l dolce viso amaro appeared in the first printed book of madrigals (the ‘Fossombrone fragment’) around 1520. The piece bears the hallmarks of the earliest madrigals: largely homophonic texture and syllabic text setting with a heavy reliance on melodic and rhythmic repetition. In these features Haar (1981) saw traces of the frottola, the improvisatory tradition and also the French chanson of the early 16th century (as represented in the early Petrucci prints) – all genres that have been thought to be sources for the early madrigal style. Two Florentine manuscripts (I-Bc Q21, copied c1526, and the Newberry-Oscott partbooks, c1528), both copied by Giovanpietro Masaconi, together with a single alto partbook of Northern Italian provenance (US-NH Misc.Ms179, c1525), contain many other early settings for four to six voices. Many were composed in Florence and Medicean Rome around 1520–27, although called madrigals only in collections printed from 1530.

Occasions and composition dates can be conjectured for several of the madrigals. The homophonic setting of Panfilo Sasso’s strambotto Quando madonna io veng' a contemplarte may have been composed as early as around 1520: not only are some of its stylistic features typical of strambotto settings in Petrucci’s and Antico’s early books, but its cantus part is included together with a lira da braccio in a female portrait (Rome, Spada Gallery, no.52) by an unidentified artist of north central Italy, perhaps Paolo Morando (‘Il Cavazzola’) who died in 1522 (Slim, 1988). Haymè ch’abandonato and Mandàti qui d'Amor may have been carnival songs for Florence, and if so, would date from about 1522–7. Ardenti miei sospiri and Non mai donna più bella, naming the courtesan Tullia d’Aragona, and Tu che potevi sol may have been inspired by Verdelot’s visit to Rome in 1523–4. Amor io sento l’alma, a setting of Machiavelli’s ballata to his mistress Barbera Salutati, dates from about 1523–7.

Five madrigals in the Newberry-Oscott partbooks have texts by Machiavelli, four of them setting canzoni from his plays, La Clizia and La Mandragola, first performed with their canzoni in 1525 and 1526 respectively. (Machiavelli, in a letter of 3 January 1526, mentioned that the canzoni of La Mandragola had already been set to music.) Verdelot also set choruses to two Florentine tragedies, Orfeo’s lament by Poliziano and Tullia by Ludovico Martelli; Slim (1983) suggested that the latter chorus, Quante lagrime, aimè, quanti sospiri, was probably composed ‘in the mid-1520s when Martelli and Verdelot were both in Florence’. Three pieces (Italia, Italia, ch’hai sì longamente, Italia mia benché ’l parlar’ and Trist’Amarilli mia) date from after the sack of Rome in 1527.

There are many problems in the attribution of these pieces to Verdelot. Out of a corpus of about 147 madrigals, ten bear unsolved conflicting attributions to leading contemporaries and another 48 appear anonymously in printed and manuscript collections in which, admittedly, Verdelot is the best represented composer. Of the anonymous works, six survive only in manuscript (three uniquely in the Newberry-Oscott partbooks), 29 are mostly in printed anthologies of various genres, and the remaining 13 are unique in the so-called Primo libro a cinque, of which only two parts are extant (without frontispiece, index or attributions) and only seven pieces of 21 can be confidently attributed to Verdelot based on concordances with other sources. Similarities of style among the early madrigalists make definitive ascriptions difficult, but it is possible to be reasonably certain about authorship in some cases.

The madrigals are set to a wide variety of poetic forms: ballatas, canzoni and their derivatives, 16th-century madrigals, sonnets (sometimes shortened), ottave rime, Trecento-like madrigals and villottas; there is one capitolo (O pessimo destino), one hybrid form similar to that of a canto carnascialesco (Haymè ch’abandonato) and two works are in prose (O singular dolcezza and Chi bussa?). The early madrigal was sometimes strophic. Five canzoni and two ballatas have more than one stanza in their poetic sources; La bella donna a cui donasti’ il core requires its ensuing stanzas in order to make grammatical sense. The majority of the poetic texts are of a clear petrarchist bent and are dedicated to the sufferings of love, they make generous use of antithesis, oxymoron and more or less obvious sexual metaphor.

It is possible to identify two opposing tendencies in Verdelot’s musico-poetic exegesis: one formalist and little interested in a deep ‘reading’ of the poetic text, and the other more experimental and already modern in expression. (These two approaches cannot, however, be associated with distinct ‘phases’ of a linear stylistic development like that reported by Böker-Heil in regards to the composer’s sacred production.) In many ways Verdelot’s compositional practice is not very different from that of his contemporaries active in Florence and Rome. Homophonic chordal writing, sometime with textual declamation lightly staggered, is employed with the same frequency as imitative counterpoint, with ample display of florid melismatic figuration and decorated cadences (especially in the five- and six-voice madrigals); not infrequently the two types of writing alternate in the same setting. Each poetic line is set by a single musical phrase, delimited more or less clearly by cadences; similar cadential figures, or cadences on the same pitch, are often used to emphasize textual assonance (Dentr’al mio cor is one of the most notable examples). A high degree of tonal coherence, a tendency towards a restricted melodic ambitus, a straightforward harmonic language, substantial rhythmic uniformity and the recurrence of small rhythmic and melodic fragments (or even entire phrases and sections, which in some pieces give a semi-strophic character) are among the expedients adopted to assure unity of form and affect. Also typical is the adoption of cadential extensions in a function of closure, a technique already found in the motet and chanson of the period, but used here to expressive as well as structural ends. The use of musical pictorialism, dissonance and false relations is still contained and usually involves only a few key words, never seriously disturbing the unity of the overall affect. While usually showing an acute sensibility to the poetic text, Verdelot does not always demonstrate an interest in preserving its intelligibility. The text of Donna la fiamma sete, for example, is obscured by the pervasive superimposition of different verses. Indeed, he sometimes seems little interested in the poem's content, as, for example, in the unusually restrained settings of two laments, Occhi infelici and La dolce vista e ’l bel sguardo soave. Often the demands of superficial formal symmetry or textual metre and prosody take precedence over expressive considerations.

Elsewhere Verdelot experimented with every possible compositional technique to exegetical and expressive ends. He had at his disposal a rich cadential vocabulary – innovations such as the deceptive and ‘evaporated’ cadence as well as the established plagal, phrygian and half cadences – which he used in a highly expressive manner. He also made extensive use of contrasting textures, especially in the five- and six-part madrigals. Even in the four-voice works, sudden reductions to a three-voice quasi-fauxbourdon texture are used in a way that looks forward to the madrigals of Rore and even Monteverdi. Also forward-looking is his treatment of syllabic declamation with an attention to the text that approaches the later ‘recitative’ style, most evident in the four-voice works (La bella man mi porse is a good example).

Like his motets, Verdelot’s madrigals were widely known throughout the 16th century. In the Intavolatura of 1536, Willaert edited personally the arrangement for lute of 22 pieces from the Primo libro; Claudio Merulo, in the last, 1566 edition of Verdelot’s first two four-voice collections, tried to adapt them to later taste. Parody by other madrigalists, including Arcadelt, Berchem, Scotto, Gero and Doni, was also frequent. Razzi used Quanto sia lieto il giorno for several laudi. There are parody masses by Berchem, Guerrero, G. Alberti and Monte and A. Rosso.

WORKS

Editions:Philippe Verdelot: Opera omnia, ed. A.-M. Bragard, CMM, xxviii/1–3 (1966–79) [B]Treize livres de motets parus chez Pierre Attaingnant en 1534 et 1535, ed. A. Smijers and A.T. Merritt (Paris and Monaco, 1934–64) [SM]Theatergesang und darstellende Musik in der italienischen Renaissance, ii, ed. W. Osthoff (Tutzing, 1969) [O]A Gift of Madrigals and Motets, ii, ed. H.C. Slim (Chicago, 1972) [S]Intavolatura de li madrigali di Verdelotto da cantare et sonare nel lauto, intavolati per Messer Adriano; ed. B. Thomas, Renaissance Music Prints, iii (London, 1980) [Th]Madrigals for Four or Five Voices: Philippe Verdelot, ed. J.A. Owens, SCMad, xxviii–xxx (1989) [Ow xxviii–xxx]

madrigals

Madrigali di diversi musici, libro primo de la serena (Rome, 1530²) [1530]

Il primo libro de madrigali, 4vv (Venice, 1533²) [1533]

Il secondo libro de madrigali, 4vv (Venice, 1534¹⁶) [1534]

Madrigali a cinque, libro primo, 5vv (Venice, c1536–7) [1536]

Intavolatura de li madrigali di Verdelotto da cantare et sonare nel lauto, intavolati per Messer Adriano (Venice, 1536/R) [1536a]

Il terzo libro de madregali, 4vv (Venice, 1537¹¹) [1537]

De i madrigali di Verdelotto et de altri eccellentissimi auttori, 5vv (Venice, 1538²¹) [1538]

Di Verdelotto tutti li madrigali del primo, et secondo libro, 4vv (Venice, 1540²⁰) [1540]

Le dotte et eccellente compositioni dei madrigali a cinque voci da diversi perfettissimi musici fatte, 5vv (Venice, 1540¹⁸) [1540a]

La più divina et più bella musica che se udisse giamai delli presenti madrigali, 6vv (Venice, 1541¹⁶) [1541]

Afflicti spirti mei, 4vv, 1533, US-Cn; S (intabulated in 1536a; Th)

Altro non è ’l mio amor che ’l paradiso, 5vv, 1536 (anon.)

Altro non è ’l mio amor che ’l proprio inferno (L. Cassola), 5vv, 1538, Cn, I-Fn Magl.XIX.122–5; O, S

Amor io sento l’alma (Machiavelli), 4vv, 1534¹⁶, US-Cn, I-Fc Basevi 2495; S

Amor quanto più lieto, 4vv, 1530, Fc Basevi 2495 (attrib. Arcadelt in 1539²⁴, 1541¹², 1545¹⁸); ed. in CMM, xxxi/5 (1968), Hersh, Ow xxviii

Amor se d’hor in hor (M. Bandello), 4vv, 1533, US-NH Misc.Ms179, I-Bc Q21, Fc Basevi 2495; Ow xxviii (intabulated in 1536a; Th)

Amor tante virtu[de], 4vv, 1534, MOe γ.L.11.8; Ow xxviii

Ardenti mei desiri, 5vv, 1536 (anon.)

Ardenti miei sospiri (in praise of Tullia [d’Aragona]), 6vv, 1541 (anon.); ed. in Amati-Camperi (1994)

Ardo per voi madonna, 5vv, 1538 (anon.), US-BE 121; Ow xxviii

Benché ’l misero cor, 4vv, 1533, I-Fc Basevi 2495; Ow xxviii (intabulated in 1536a; Th)

Ben m’è nemic’el mio destin fallace, 4vv, 1537¹¹, Fc Basevi 2495, Fn Magl.XIX.99–102; Ow xxviii

Che sentisti madonna?, 4vv, 1537 (attrib. A. de Silva in 1544²⁰); ed. in PÄMw, iii (1875)

Chi bussa?, 6vv, 1541; ed. in Harrán (1968), Amati-Camperi (1994)

Chi non fa prova Amore (Machiavelli), 4vv, US-Cn; S

Come posso dir io (F.M. Molza), 4vv, 1537 (anon.); Ow xxviii

Con lacrim’et sospir, 4vv, 1530, Cn (attrib. Arcadelt in 1540²⁰); S

Con lagrime et sospir, 4vv, 1533; ed. in EinstenIM, Ow xxviii (intabulated in 1536a; Th)

Con l'angelico riso (Martelli, trans. of Pontano, Cum rides mihi), 4vv, 1533, Cn; S (intabulated in 1536a; Th)

Con suave parlar (B. Bonaccorsi), 4vv, 1534, NH Misc.Ms179, I-Bc Q21, Fc Basevi 2495, Fn Magl.XIX.122–5; Ow xxviii

Cortese alma gentile, 4vv, US-Cn (anon.); S

Deh perché sì veloce, 4vv, 1533; Ow xxviii

Dentr’al mio cor, 4vv, Cn, I-Fc Basevi 2495 (anon.); S

Dio per monstrare in vita, 4vv, 1530

Ditemi o diva mia, 6vv, 1541 (attrib. Maistre Jhan); ed. in Amati-Camperi (1994)

Divini occhi sereni (P. Aretino), 4vv, 1533, Fc Basevi 2495, Fn Magl.XIX.122–5; ed. in Mw, xxii (1962; Eng. trans. 1964), Ow xxviii (intabulated in 1536a; Th)

Dolce nemica mia nel cui bel grembo, 6vv, 1541 (anon.); ed. in Amati-Camperi (1994)

Dolce nimica mia, o non, 5vv, [c1538]²⁰=1554 (anon.); Ow xxviii

Donna che deggio far, 6vv, 1541, ed. in Amati-Camperi (1994)

Donna che sete fra le donne belle (Martelli), 4vv, 1533, US-Cn; S (intabulated in 1536a; Th)

Donna la fiamma sete, 5vv, 1538; Ow xxviii

Donna leggiadra et bella (G. Brevio), 4vv, 1533, I-Bc Q27/ii, US-Cn, I-Fc Basevi 2495, MOe γ.L.11.8, Vc Torrefranca B32; ed. in Hersh, S (intabulated in 1536a; Th)

Donna se fera stella, 5vv, 1536, US-Cn, I-Fn Magl.XIX.122–5; ed. in Hersh, S

Donne che di bellezze (Martelli), 6vv, 1541 (anon.); ed. in Amati-Camperi (1994)

Dormend’un giorno a Baia (A. Broccardo), 5vv, 1536, Fn Magl.XIX.122–5 (attrib. Arcadelt in 1542¹⁸, 1566²⁷); Ow xxviii

El ciel se rinovella, 4vv, 1537; ed. in Hersh, Ow xxviii

Far la vendetta bramo, 5vv, 1536 (anon.)

Fedele et bel cagnuolo, 4vv, 1530¹, US-NH Misc.Ms179, I-Bc Q21, Vc Torrefranca B32; ed. in Bragard (1964), Hersh

Fuggi fuggi cor mio, 4vv, 1533; Ow xxviii (intabulated in 1536a; Th)

Fuggite l’amorose cure acerbe (B. Accolti), 5vv, 1536 (anon.); O

Gloriarmi poss’io donne, 4vv, 1533, Fc Basevi 2495; ed. in EinstenIM, Ow xxviii (intabulated in 1536a; Th)

Gran dolor di mia vita, 4vv, 1534; ed. in Hersh, Ow xxviii

Haymè ch’abandonato, 5vv, 1536 (anon.)

Hoimè che la brunetta mia, 6vv, 1541; ed. in Amati-Camperi (1994), Hersh, O

Hor credetemi amanti, 6vv, 1541 (anon.); ed. in Amati-Camperi (1994)

Igno soave ove il mio foco alento, 4vv, 1533; Ow xxviii (intabulated in 1536a; Th)

In me cresce l’ardore, 6vv, 1541 (anon.); ed. in Amati-Camperi (1994)

Io nol dissi giamai, 5vv, 1538²⁰ (anon.); Ow xxviii

Io son talvolta donna, 4vv, 1539²⁴, 1545¹⁸ (attrib. Arcadelt in 1541¹²); ed. in CMM, xxxi/5 (1968), Hersh

Italia, Italia ch’hai sì longamente, 5vv, 1538 (anon.); Ow xxviii

Italia mia benché ’l parlar sia indarno (Petrarch), 5vv, 1538, US-Cn, I-Bc R142; ed. in Bragard (1964), Hersh, S

Ite a vostro bel haggio, 6vv, 1541 (anon.); ed. in Amati-Camperi (1994)

Ite caldi sospiri, 5vv, 1538, Fn Magl.XIX.122–5; ed. in Hersh, Ow xxix

I vaghi fiori e l’amorose fronde, 4vv, 1537 (anon.); Ow xxix

I vostri acuti dardi, 4vv, 1534, US-Cn, I-Fc Basevi 2495, Fn Magl.XIX.122–5; S

La bella donna a cui donast’ il core (Trissino), 4vv, 1534, US-Cn, I-Fc Basevi 2495, MOe γ.L.11.8; ed. in S, Slim: Ten Altus Partbooks

La bella man mi porse, 4vv, 1533; Ow xxix

La dolce vista della donna mia, 6vv, 1541 (anon.); ed. in Amati-Camperi (1994)

La dolce vista e ’l bel sguardo soave (Cino da Pistoia), 5vv, 1538; Ow xxix

Lagrime calde uscian de gli occhi miei, 4vv, 1541¹⁵; Ow xxix

Lasso che se creduto, 4vv, 1533, US-Cn, I-Fc Basevi 2495; S

Leggiadre rime et voi parole accorte, 4vv, 1540, US-NH Misc.Ms179; Ow xxix

Lieta è madonna et io pur come soglio (B. Bonaccorsi), 4vv, 1534, Cn; S

Madonna il tuo bel viso, 4vv, 1533², I-Fc Basevi 2495, Fn Magl.XIX.122–5; ed. in EinsteinIM, Ow xxix (intabulated in 1536a; Th)

Madonna io non so dir (i) (D. Bonifazio), 4vv, 1537 (anon.); Ow xxix

Madonna io non so dir (ii) (D. Bonifazio), 4vv, Fc Basevi 2495, US-NH Misc.Ms179 (anon.)

Madonna io v’amo et taccio (?L. Cassola), 5vv, 1536, Cn, I-Fn Magl.XIX.122–5; ed. in Hersh, 1963, S

Madonna io vi vo dir, 4vv, 1537 (anon.); Ow xxix

Madonna i preghi mei, 5vv, 1536 (anon.)

Madonna non so dir (D. Bonifazio), 5vv, 1536, Fn Magl.XIX.122–5; Ow xxix

Madonna per voi ardo (? D. Bonifazio), 4vv, 1533, US-Cn, I-Fc Basevi 2495; S (intabulated in 1536a; Th)

Madonna qual certezza (D. Bonifazio), 4vv, 1533, US-Cn; ed. in EinsteinIM, S (intabulated in 1536a; Th)

Madonna quando io v'odo, 4vv, Messa motteti canzoni (1526), NH Misc.Ms179, I-Bc Q21; ed. in C. Gallico: Un canzoniere musicale italiano del Cinquecento (Florence, 1961)

Mandàti qui d’Amor, 6vv, 1541 (anon.); ed. in Amati-Camperi (1994), O

Né per gratia giamai, 4vv, 1534; Ow xxix

Non è ver che pietade, 4vv, 1537, I-Fc Basevi 2495, MOe γ.L.11.8; Ow xxix

Non fia ch’io tema mai, 4vv, 1544¹⁶, MOe γ.L.11.8; Ow xxix

Non fu già ver’amore, 4vv, 1537 (anon.); Ow xxix

Non mai donna più bella (in praise of ‘Tullia di Ragona’ [Tullia d’Aragona]), 5vv, 1536, Fn Magl.XIX.122–5; Ow xxix

Non pò far morte ’l dolce viso amaro (Petrarch), 4vv, ‘Fossombrone fragment’ (c1520); ed. in Haar (1981), Ow xxix

Non vi fidate o simplicetti amanti, 4vv, 1533; ed. in Hersh, Ow xxix

Occhi infelici ch'a mirar sì pronti, 4vv, 1537, US-NH Misc.Ms179, I-Bc Q21; Ow xxix

Occhi più che sereni (P. Aretino), 5vv, 1536 (anon.)

O Dio com’é possibil che costei, 5vv, 1538 (anon.); Ow xxix

O dolce notte (Machiavelli), 4vv, 1537, US-Cn, I-Fc Basevi 2495; ed. in PirrottaDO, O, S

Ogn’hor per voi sospiro, 4vv, 1534, Fn Magl.XIX.99–102, MOe γ.L.11.8; ed. in EinsteinIM, Ow xxix

Ognun si duol d’amore, 4vv, MOe γ.L.11.8, US-Cn (anon.); S

O pessimo destino, 4vv, 1537 (anon.); Ow xxix

O singular dolcezza, 4vv, 1534; ed. in Hersh, Ow xxix

Passer mio solitario (Petrarch), 4vv, 1540²⁰, NH Misc.Ms179, I-Fc Basevi 2495, Fn Magl.XIX.122–5; ed. in Hersh, Ow xxix

Perché piangi alma, 5vv, 1536 (anon.)

Perché più acerba set’et più rubella, 4vv, 1542¹⁷; ed. in Bragard (1964), Hersh, Ow xxix

Per mio servir senza timor con fede, 4vv, 1537 (anon.), Fn Magl.XIX.111; Ow xxix

Piansi donna per voi, 6vv, 1541 (anon.); ed. in Amati-Camperi (1994)

Piove dagli occhi della donna mia, 4vv, 1533, US-Cn; S (intabulated in 1536a; Th)

Pur troppo donn'in van tant’ho sperato, 5vv, 1536, Cn; ed. in Hersh, S

Qual maraviglia o donna, 4vv, 1534; Ow xxx

Qual più saggie parole, 5vv, 1536 (anon.)

Qual sera mai sì miserabil pianto (Poliziano), 5vv, 1536 (anon.)

Quand’havran fin Amor gli affanni mei (Martelli), 5vv, 1538, I-Fn Magl.XIX.122–5; Ow xxx

Quando Amor i begli occhi a terr’inchina (i) (Petrarch), 4vv, 1533; Ow xxx; (intabulated in 1536a; Th)

Quando Amor i begli occhi a terr’inchina (ii) (Petrarch), 4vv, 1540²⁰

Quando benigna stella, 6vv, 1541 (anon.); ed. in Amati-Camperi (1994)

Quando madonna Amor lasso m’invita, 4vv, 1534; ed. in Hersh, Ow xxx

Quando madonna io veng’a contemplarte (P. Sasso), 4vv, 1537, Fc Basevi 2495; ed. in Slim (1988), Ow xxx

Quando nascesti Amore? (P. Sasso), 6vv, 1541¹⁶, US-Cn; ed. in Amati-Camperi (1994), Hersh, S

Quanta dolceça Amore, 4vv, Cn; ed. in PirrottaDO, S

Quant’ahi lass’il morir, 5vv, 1538, I-Bc Q21, Fn Magl.XIX.122–5; Ow xxx

Quante lagrim’aimè (Martelli), 4vv, 1537 (anon.), MOe γ.L.11.8; ed. in Slim (1983), Ow xxx

Quanto sia lieto il giorno (Machiavelli), 4vv, 1533², US-Cn; ed. in Bragard (1964), Hersh, O, PirrottaDO, S (intabulated in 1536a; Th)

Quella ch’a Babilonia, 4vv, 1537 (anon.); Ow xxx

Quella che sospirando, 4vv, 1530, I-Fc Basevi 2495; ed. in Hersh, 1963, Ow xxx

Queste non son più lagrime (Ariosto), 6vv, 1541 (anon.); ed. in Amati Camperi (1994), Hersh

Se ben li occhi mia infermi, 4vv, US-Cn (anon.); S

Se del mio amor temete, 4vv, 1530

Se del mio amor temete, 4vv, 1534; ed. in Hersh, Ow xxx

Se dimostrarvi a pieno, 4vv, 1534, I-Fc Basevi 2495, Fn Magl.XIX.122–5, Fn Magl.XIX.99–102; Ow xxx

Se gli occhi ond’io tutt’ardo (N. Amanio), 4vv, 1530, Fc Basevi 2495; Ow xxx

Se l’ardor fuss’equale, 4vv, 1530, Fc Basevi 2495; ed. in Hersh, Ow xxx

Se ’l vostro aspetto divo, 5vv, 1536 (anon.)

Se mai provasti donna, 4vv, 1533, US-NH Misc.Ms179, I-Bc Q21, MOe γ.L.11.8; Ow xxx; (intabulated in 1536a; Th)

Se ’n voi fosse pietà, 5vv, 1538; ed. in Hersh, Ow xxx

Se per ventura veggio, 5vv, 1538, Fn Magl.XIX.122–5; Ow xxx

Se voi porgesti una sol fiata, 4vv, 1533; Ow xxx

Sì come chiar si vede, 5vv, 1536, Fn Magl.XIX.122–5; Ow xxx

Sì lieta e grata morte, 4vv, 1533, Fc Basevi 2495; ed. in Einstein (1906–7), Ow xxx; (intabulated in 1536a; Th)

S’in voi madonn’è fé quant’è beltade, 5vv, 1536 (anon.)

S’io pensasse madonna (? Molza or Guidetti), 4vv, 1533; Ow xxx; (intabulated in 1536a; Th)

Sì suave è l’inghanno (Machiavelli), 4vv, US-Cn (anon.); S

Torela mo vilan, 4vv, 1537 (anon.), I-MOe γ.L.8.11; ed. in Hersh, Ow xxx

Trist’Amarilli mia, 4vv, 1530; ed. in Bragard (1964), Hersh, O, Ow xxx

Tu che potevi sol, 6vv, 1541 (anon.); ed. in Amati-Camperi (1994), Hersh

Tutt’il dì piango (Petrarch), 6vv, 1546 (anon.); ed. in Amati-Camperi (1994), Hersh

Ultimi miei sospiri (Martelli), 6vv, 1541, US-Cn, I-Bc R142; ed. in Amati-Camperi (1994), S

Vita de la mia vita (F. Ciprio), 4vv, 1533, US-NH Misc.Ms179, I-Bc Q21, Fn Magl.XIX.111, Vc Torrefranca B32; ed. in Luisi (1986), Ow xxx; (intabulated in 1536a; Th)

Vita de la mia vita (F. Ciprio), 5vv, 1536 (anon.)

Vostr’harmonie celeste, 5vv, 1538 (anon.); Ow xxx

chansons

Et dont venés-vous Madame Lucette, 4vv, 1535⁹, inc.

Qui la dira la peine de mon coeur, 8vv, 1572² (first pubd 1560), ed. in SCC, xxii (1992)

Seule demeure et despourvue, 4vv, 1529² (‘Deslouges’), ed. in MMRF, vii (1897)

Quintus (si placet) part to Janequin’s La guerre, 1545¹⁷, ed. A.T. Merritt and F. Lesure, Clément Janequin: Chansons polyphoniques, i (Monaco, 1965/R)

masses, magnificat

Missa, 4vv, P-Cug M.M.9

Missa ‘Philomena’, 4vv, 1544² (on Richafort’s motet), B i

Magnificat sexti toni, 4vv, I-Fd, B i

motets

Ad Dominum cum tribularer (2p. Heumihi), 4vv, 1549¹², US-Cn; B iii, S

Angelus Domini, 4vv, 1554¹⁰

Antoni pastor inclite, 6vv, I-Rv; B ii

Attende Domine (2p. Recordare), 6vv, I-Pc A 17 (copied 1522); B iii

Ave gratia plena, 5vv, 1559¹, US-Cn; S

Ave Maria gratia plena, 6vv, I-Rv; B ii

Ave sanctissima Maria, 4vv, 1526⁵; SM ii

Beata es virgo (2p. Ave Maria), 7vv, Rv; B ii

Beati qui habitant, 5vv, Rv; B ii

Benedictus Dominus Deus, 4vv, Fd; B ii

Celorum candor splenduit (2p. Sancte Francisce), 5vv, Rv; B ii

Congregati sunt (2p. Disperge illos), 6vv, 1542¹⁰, US-Cn (parodied by Arcadelt); B ii, S

Da pacem Domine, 4vv, H-BA 23

Deus in nomine tuo (2p. Ecce enim; 3p. Averte mala), 6vv, US-Cn; B ii, S

Dignare me, 4vv, 1534⁵; SM iii

Domine Deus qui conteris, 4vv, 1549¹²

Domine ne in furore (2p. Discedite ame), 4vv, 1544⁴, I-Bc Q20; B iii

Ecce nunc benedicite, 4vv, D-Ga 1740 (olim Königsberg University Library 1740) (only B extant)

Ecce quam bonum, 4vv, Ga 1740 (olim Königsberg University Library 1740) (only B extant)

Gabriel archangelus, 4vv, 1532¹⁰ (parodied by Gero, Palestrina); SM i

Gaudeamus omnes in Domino, 4vv, 1534⁴, US-Cn; B iii, SM ii, S

Gaude Maria virgo, 4vv, 1549¹²

Gaudent in celis, 8vv, I-VEaf 218; B iii

Gaudete omnes et letamini, 4vv, 1549¹² (probably composed in 1523); ed. in Bragard (1964)

Hesterna die Dominus, 4vv, US-Cn; S

Hic est beatissimus, I-Bc Q27 (I) (only Sup extant)

Incipit oratio Jheremie (2p. Jherusalem), 5vv, I-Rv (composed c1527–30); B ii

Infirmitatem nostram, 5vv, Rv; B ii, SM iv

In te Domine speravi, 4vv, 1539¹³

In te Domine speravi (2p. Educes me), 5vv, US-Cn; B ii, S

Inviolata integra et casta, 8vv, 1564¹ (anon.) D-Mbs (also attrib. Gombert and Mouton in I-VEaf 218)

Laudate Dominum omnes gentes, 4vv, Fd, B ii

Laudate Dominum omnes gentes, 9vv, VEaf 218, Biii

Letamini in Domino, 6vv, Rv; B ii

Levita Laurentius, 4vv, 1549¹⁵

Ne projicias nos, 5vv, 1535²; SM x

Non turbetur cor vestrum, 5vv, 1540⁶

Non turbetur cor vestrum, 5vv, Bc Q27 (I)

O dulcissime Domine Jesu Christe, 5vv, US-Cn; B ii, SM xi, S

Pater noster, 6vv, I-Rv; B ii

Recordare Domine (2p. Adjuva nos deus), 5vv, US-Cn; B ii, SM iv, S

Respia [?] quesumus, B-LVu 163, lost

Salve Barbara dignissima, 4vv, 1529¹; SM i

Salve regina, 4vv, I-BGc 1208 D

Salve regina (2p. Eya ergo; 3p. Et iesum), 6vv, Rv; B ii

Sancta Maria succurre míserís, 4vv, Pc (attrib. ‘Deslouges’ in 1529¹, anon. in Pc A 17; parodied by Gombert); SM ii

Sancta Maria virgo virginum, 6vv, 1528², US-Cn (parodied by Handl); B ii, S

Si bona suscepimus, 5vv, Cn (parodied by Jacquet of Mantua, Lassus, Morales, Paciotto, Prenner); B ii, S

Sint dicte grates Christo (2p. Est Florentini populi), 7vv, I-Rv; B ii

Tanto tempore vobiscum sum, 4vv, Messa motteti canzonni novamente stampate libro primo (Rome, 1526); SM iv

Veni Domine et noli tardare, 4vv, 1549⁹, B-LVu 163 (lost); ed. in Böker-Heil

Veni in ortum meum (2p. Veni dilectus meus), 6vv, I-Rv; B ii

Verbum caro factum est … in hoc anni circulo, Bc Q27 (I) (only Sup extant)

Victimae paschali laudes, 4vv, US-Cn; SM ii, S

doubtful works

Amor quanto più lieto, 4vv, attrib. Verdelot in 1530², attrib. Arcadelt in 1539²⁴, attrib. Verdelot in 1540²⁰; ed. in O, CMM, xxxi/5 (1968), OW xxviii

Che sentiesti Madonna?, 4vv, attrib. Verdelot in 1537¹¹, attrib. A. de Silva in 1544²⁰; ed. in PÄMw, iii (1875)

Deh quanto è dolc’amor (? Tolomei or F.M. Molza), 4vv, US-Cn (anon.); attrib. Maistre Jhan in 1541¹⁵; parodied by anon. composers in I-Bc Q21; S

Ditimi o diva mia, 6vv, attrib. Maistre Jhan in 1541¹⁶, attrib. Verdelot in 1546¹⁹, 1561¹⁶; ed. in Amati-Camperi (1994)

Dormendo un giorn’a Baia (A. Broccardo), 4vv, 1537¹¹ (anon.); attrib. Arcadelt in 1542¹⁸, 1566²⁷; ed. in CMM xxiii/7 (1969), Ow xxviii

Io son talvolta donna, 4vv, I-Fc Basevi 2495 (anon.), Fn Magl.XIX.122–5 (anon.); attrib. C. Festa in 1534¹⁶, 1536⁷, 1537¹⁰, 1540²⁰; attrib. Willaert in 1541¹⁸; attrib. Verdelot in 1549³³, 1556²⁷, 1566²²; ed. in Hersh, Ow xxviii

Io son tal volta, 4vv, attrib. Verdelot in 1539²⁴, attrib. Arcadelt in 1541¹², attrib. Verdelot in 1545¹⁸; ed. in CMM, xxxi/5 (1968)

Lasso che mal accorto (Petrarch), 4vv, attrib. Maistre Jhan in 1533², attrib. Verdelot in 1537⁹

Madonna il bel desire, 4vv, attrib. Willaert in 1534¹⁶, 1536⁷, 1537¹⁰, 1540²⁰, attrib. Verdelot in 1540²⁰

Madonna io sol vorrei, 4vv, I-MOe γ.L.11.8 (anon.); attrib. A. de Silva in 1533², 1536⁸, 1540²⁰; attrib. Verdelot in 1537⁹, 1540²⁰, 1545¹⁹; attrib. C. Festa in 1545¹⁹; ed in Hersh (intabulated in 1536a; Th)

Madonna se ’l morire, 5vv, c1536–7 (anon.); attrib. G. Fogliano in his Primo libro a 5 (1547)

Madonna somm’accorto, 5vv, 1538²¹ (anon.); attrib. G. Fogliano in his Primo libro a 5 (1547); Ow xxix

Per alti monti (Petrarch), 4vv, anon. in Fc Basevi 2495, Fn Magl.XIX.99–102, Fn Magl.XIX.122–5, 1534¹⁶ (anon.); attrib. C. Festa in 1540²⁰; attrib. Verdelot in 1541¹⁸; ed. in Bragard (1964)

Se ’l foco in cui sempr’ardo (A. Mezzabarba), 5vv; attrib. Verdelot and Arcadelt in 1540¹⁸, 1541¹⁷; ed. in CMM, xxxi/7 (1969)

Ave sanctissima Maria, 6vv, attrib. Verdelot and Sermisy in 1534⁵, anon. in B-Br 228; ed. in SM iii, Mw, xxii (1962; Eng. trans., 1964)

Tribulatio et angustia, 4vv, attrib. Verdelot in 1526⁵, attrib. Josquin in 1537¹; ed. A. Smijers, Josquin Desprez: Motetten, Werken, iii/13, fasc.37 (Amsterdam, 1954)

2. Life and works, 1813–39.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BrownI

EinsteinIM

PirrottaDO

G. Vasari: Le vite de’ più eccellenti architetti, pittori et scultori italiani: reviste et ampliate (Florence, 1568)

A. Einstein: ‘Claudio Merulo's Ausgabe der Madrigale des Verdelot’, SIMG, viii (1906–7), 220–254, 516

E.E. Lowinsky: ‘A Newly Discovered Sixteenth-Century Motet Manuscript at the Biblioteca Vallicelliana in Rome’, JAMS, iii (1950), 173–232

A.-M. Bragard: ‘Verdelot en Italie’, RBM, xi (1957), 109–24

J. Quitin: ‘A propos de Hubert Naich de Liège et d'un tableau de la Galleria Pitti à Florence’, RBM, xi (1957), 134–40

E. Sidona: ‘È Hubert Naich e non Jacob Hobrecht il compagno cantore del Verdelot nel quadro della Galleria Pitti’, AcM, xxix (1957), 1–9

D. Hersh [Harrán]: Philippe Verdelot and the Early Madrigal (diss., U. of California, Berkeley, 1963)

A.-M. Bragard: Etude bio-bibliographique sur Philippe Verdelot, musicien français de la renaissance (Brussels, 1964)

N. Böker-Heil: Die Motetten von Philippe Verdelot (Cologne and Weisbaden, 1967)

D. Harrán: ‘Chi bussa? Or the Case of the Anti-Madrigal’, JAMS, xxi (1968), 85–93

R. Chiesa: ‘Machiavelli e la musica’, RIM, iv (1969), 3–31

A. Dunning: Die Staatsmotette 1480–1555 (Utrecht, 1970)

D. Harrán: ‘The “Sack of Rome” Set to Music’, Renaissance Quarterly, xxiii (1970), 412

F.A. D’Accone: ‘The Musical Chapels at the Florentine Cathedral and Baptistry during the First Half of the 16th Century’, JAMS, xxiv (1971), 1–50

F.A. D’Accone: ‘Transitional Text Forms and Settings in an Early 16th-Century Florentine Manuscript’,Words and Music: the Scholar’s View … in Honor of A. Tillman Merritt, ed. L. Berman (Cambridge, MA, 1972), 29–58

J. Haar: ‘Altro non è il mio amor’, Words and Music: the Scholar’s View … in Honor of A. Tillman Merritt, ed. L. Berman (Cambridge, MA, 1972), 93–114

H.C. Slim: A Gift of Madrigals and Motets (Chicago, 1972)

H.C. Slim: ‘An Anonymous Twice-Texted Motet’, Words and Music: the Scholar’s View … in Honor of A. Tillman Merritt, ed. L. Berman (Cambridge, MA,1972), 293–316

J. Haar: ‘Madrigals from the Last Florentine Republic’, Essays Presented to Myrone P. Gilmore, ed. S. Bertelli and G. Ramakus (Florence, 1978), ii, 383–403

H.C. Slim: ‘A Royal Treasure at Sutton Coldfield’, EMc, vi (1978), 57–74

H.C. Slim: Ten Altus Partbooks at Oscott College, Sutton Coldfield (Santa Ana, CA 1978)

J. Haar: ‘The Early Madrigal: a Re-appraisal of its Sources and its Character’, Music in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Patronage, Sources and Texts, ed. I. Fenlon (Cambridge, 1981), 163–92

M. Hirst: Sebastiano del Piombo (Oxford, 1981)

E.H. Ramsden: “Come, Take this Lute”: a Quest for Identities in Italian Renaissance Portraiture (Salisbury, 1983)

H.C. Slim: ‘Un coro della “Tullia” di Lodovico Martelli messo in musica e attribuito a Philippe Verdelot’, Firenze e la Toscana dei Medici nell’Europa del Cinquecento: Florence 1983, 487–511

R. Sherr: ‘Verdelot in Florence, Coppini in Rome, and the Singer “La Fiore”’, JAMS, xxxvii (1984), 402–11

S. Boorman: ‘Some Non-Conflicting Attributions and Some Newly Anonymous Compositions, from the Early Sixteenth Century’, EMH, vi (1986), 109–57

F. Luisi: ‘Una sconosciuta fonte per la canzone vocale e proto-madrigalistica redatta intorno al 1530 (Venezia, Biblioteca del Conservatorio, Torrefranca Ms. B.32)’, NA, new ser., iv (1986), 9–104

I. Fenlon: ‘Context and Chronology of the Early Florentine Madrigal’, La letteratura, la rappresentazione, la musica al tempo e nei luoghi di Giorgione, ed. M. Muraro (Rome, 1987), 281–92

I. Fenlon and J. Haar: The Italian Madrigal in the Early Sixteenth Century: Sources and Interpretation (Cambridge, 1988)

H.C. Slim: ‘An Iconographical Echo of the Unwritten Tradition in a Verdelot Madrigal’, Studi musicali, xvii (1988), 33–54

H.M. Brown: ‘Bossinensis, Willaert and Verdelot: Pitch and the Conventions of Transcribing Music for Lute and Voice in Italy in the Early Sixteenth Century’, RdM, lxxv (1989), 25–46

N. Böker-Heil: ‘Josquin und Verdelot: Die Konfliktzuschreibungen’, Josquin Symposium: Utrecht 1986, 55–8

A.D. Amati-Camperi: An Italian Genre in the Hands of a Frenchman: Philippe Verdelot as Madrigalist, with Special Emphasis on the Six-Voice Pieces (diss., Harvard U., 1994)

S. La Via: ‘“Natura delle cadenze” e “natura contraria delli modi”: punti di convergenza fra teoria e prassi nel madrigale cinquecentesco’, Il Saggiatore musicale, iv (1997), 5–51

A.D. Amati-Camperi: ‘A Fresh Look at the Life of Verdelot, Maestro di Cappella at the Duomo di Firenze’, Cantate Domino: musica nei secoli per il Duomo di Firenze: Florence 1997 (forthcoming)

Verdi, Giuseppe (Fortunino Francesco)

(b Roncole, nr Busseto, 9/10 Oct 1813; d Milan, 27 Jan 1901). Italian composer. By common consent he is recognized as the greatest Italian musical dramatist.

1. Introduction.

3. Life, 1839–53.

4. Operas: ‘oberto’ (1839) to ‘La traviata’ (1853).

5. Life, 1853–71.

6. Operas: ‘Les vêpres siciliennes’ (1855) to ‘Aida’ (1871).

7. Interregnum: the 1870s and the ‘Requiem’ (1874).

8. Life, 1879–1901.

9. The last style: ‘Otello’ (1887) and ‘Falstaff’ (1893).

10. Scholarship, dissemination, Verdi in the 20th century.

ROGER PARKER

1. Introduction.

A month after Verdi's death, a solemn procession through Milan accompanied by hundreds of thousands of mourners assisted the transfer of his remains to their final resting place. The procession was sent on its way by a rendition of ‘Va pensiero’, the chorus of Hebrew slaves from one of Verdi's earliest operas, Nabucco.

It is easy to see why this event has captured the imagination and assumed significance. By the time of his death, Verdi had established a unique position among his fellow countrymen: although many of his operas had disappeared from the repertory, he had nevertheless become a profound artistic symbol of the nation's achievement of statehood. Parts of his operatic legacy had entered into a kind of empyrean, divorced from the checks and balances of context and passing fashion. The fact that ‘Va pensiero’, written some 60 years earlier, could express contemporary Italians' feelings for their departed hero demonstrated the extent to which Verdi's music had been assimilated into the national consciousness.

However, 100 years after Verdi's death, such an event is likely to take on other meanings, and it can serve as a cautionary note on which to introduce an account of the life and works. To begin at the end of Verdi's long life is a reminder of our present perspective. Verdi's story has continually been written backwards, the early events and achievements accruing narrative force and meaning through the powerful attraction of our sense of their ending. Such is of course true of all biography, but the extent to which it has influenced our perception of Verdi nevertheless makes his an exceptional case. In an attempt to revalue (rather than evade) that perspective, the present survey will follow much recent scholarship in attempting to place Verdi's operas more firmly in the context of their time; and, perhaps more important, it will treat their reception as a separate historical phenomenon, so far as is possible disentangled from present-day views of the composer.

After an outline of Verdi's early years, his life and works will be discussed within three unequal periods. This particular grouping of works is unusual, though as defensible as any other on artistic grounds; it is, however, made primarily for practical reasons and should not be taken to imply the kind of hierarchy of value traditionally signalled by subheadings such as ‘youth’ or ‘maturity’. The first period takes in the 19 operas from Oberto (1839) to La traviata (1853). Claims are frequently made for a qualitative leap to a ‘second period’, beginning some time in the late 1840s or early 1850s, with Macbeth, Luisa Miller or Rigoletto as the watershed; but the entire period is probably best seen as a gradual unfolding within the Italian operatic tradition. A second period, during which the influence of French grand opera is of great importance, includes the operas from Les vêpres siciliennes (1855) to Aida (1871). After the Messa da Requiem and the compositional hiatus of the 1870s, a final period, that of Verdi's last style, includes the revisions to Simon Boccanegra and Don Carlos, the operas Otello (1887) and Falstaff (1893), and the final religious works.

2. Life and works, 1813–39.

Verdi was born in Roncole, a small village near Busseto in the Duchy of Parma. His exact birth date is uncertain. The baptismal register of 11 October records him as ‘born yesterday’, but as days were sometimes counted as beginning at sunset, that could mean either 9 or 10 October. The birth register describes his father Carlo (1785–1867) as an ‘innkeeper’, his mother Luigia Uttini (1787–1851) as a ‘spinner’: both belonged to families of small landowners and traders, certainly not the illiterate peasants from which Verdi later liked to present himself as having emerged.

In typically middle-class fashion, Carlo Verdi was energetic in furthering his son's education. Before the age of four, Verdi began instruction with the local priests, probably in music as well as other subjects; his father bought him an old spinet when he was seven, and he was soon substituting as organist at the local church of S Michele, taking the position permanently at the age of nine. In 1823 he moved to Busseto, and at the age of 11 he entered the ginnasio there, receiving training in Italian, Latin, humanities and rhetoric. In 1825 he began lessons with Ferdinando Provesi, maestro di cappella at S Bartolomeo, Busseto, and director of the municipal music school and local Philharmonic Society. The picture emerges of youthful precocity eagerly nurtured by an ambitious father and of a sustained, sophisticated and elaborate formal education – again something Verdi tended to hide in later life, giving the impression of a largely self-taught and obscure youth.

In 1829 Verdi applied unsuccessfully for the post of organist at nearby Soragna. He was becoming increasingly involved in Busseto's active musical life, both as a composer and as a performer. As he later recalled:

From the ages of 13 to 18 I wrote a motley assortment of pieces: marches for band by the hundred, perhaps as many little sinfonie that were used in church, in the theatre and at concerts, five or six concertos and sets of variations for pianoforte, which I played myself at concerts, many serenades, cantatas (arias, duets, very many trios) and various pieces of church music, of which I remember only a Stabat mater.

In May 1831 he moved into the house of Antonio Barezzi, a prominent merchant in Busseto and a keen amateur musician. Verdi gave singing and piano lessons to Barezzi's daughter Margherita (b 4 May 1814; d 18 June 1840) and the young couple became unofficially engaged.

At about the same time, it became clear that the musical world of Busseto was too small, and Carlo Verdi applied to a Bussetan charitable institution (the Monte di Pietà e d'Abbondanza) for a scholarship to allow his son to study in Milan, then the cultural capital of northern Italy. The application, bolstered by glowing references from Provesi and others, was successful; but no scholarship was available until late 1833. However, Barezzi guaranteed financial support for the first year and in May 1832, at the age of 18, Verdi travelled to Milan and applied for permission to study at the conservatory. He was refused entry, partly for bureaucratic reasons (he was four years above the usual entering age and was not a resident of Lombardy-Venetia), partly on account of his unorthodox piano technique; it was an ‘official’ rejection that Verdi felt until the end of his life. Barezzi agreed to the added expense of private study in Milan, and Verdi became a pupil of Vincenzo Lavigna, who had for many years been maestro concertatore at La Scala.

According to Verdi's later recollections, his lessons with Lavigna involved little but strict counterpoint: ‘in the three years spent with him I did nothing but canons and fugues, fugues and canons of all sorts. No one taught me orchestration or how to treat dramatic music’. This insistence was probably a further attempt to fashion his image as a ‘self-taught’ composer. Contemporary evidence suggests that Lavigna encouraged Verdi to attend the theatre regularly, and his letters of recommendation specify study in ‘composizione ideale’ (free composition) as well as in counterpoint. Lavigna also helped his pupil into Milanese musical society; in 1834 Verdi assisted at the keyboard in performances of Haydn's Creation given by a Milanese Philharmonic Society directed by Pietro Massini, and a year later co-directed with Massini performances of Rossini's La Cenerentola.

By the time Verdi had completed his studies with Lavigna, in mid-1835, Busseto had again claimed his attention. Provesi had died in 1833, leaving open the post of musical director there; by June 1834 one Giovanni Ferrari had been appointed organist at S Bartolomeo but, encouraged by Barezzi, Verdi was eventually appointed maestro di musica (that is, to the secular portion of Provesi's post) in March 1836, though not before a prolonged struggle between rival factions in the town. On 4 May 1836 Verdi married Margherita Barezzi and settled in Busseto, directing and composing for the local Philharmonic Society and giving private lessons. He held the post for nearly three years, during which time he and Margherita had two children, Virginia (b 26 March 1837; d 12 Aug 1838) and Icilio Romano (b 11 July 1838; d 22 Oct 1839).

Verdi's provincial existence is best seen as an irritating delay in his professional career, and there is evidence that he was actively pursuing more ambitious plans. In April 1836 he renewed contact with Massini's Milanese society by composing for them a cantata, to words by Count Renato Borromeo, in honour of the Austrian Emperor Ferdinand I. A series of letters to Massini informs us that during 1836 Verdi composed an opera entitled Rocester, to a libretto by the Milanese journalist and man of letters, Antonio Piazza. During 1837 he tried unsuccessfully to have the opera staged at the Teatro Ducale in Parma. But eventually, again with Massini's help, Verdi arranged for a revised version of the opera, now entitled Oberto, conte di San Bonifacio, to be performed at La Scala. In October 1838 he resigned as maestro di musica of Busseto and in February 1839 left for Milan. Nine months later his first opera received its première in the Lombard capital's most famous theatre.

Little remains of Verdi's music from this period, though some of the liveliest pieces were perhaps recycled in his early operas. What has come down to us are mostly pièces d'occasion, written either for the church or for the Bussetan Philharmonic Society and other local groups. The influences are predictable, with Rossini much in evidence in the pieces that approach the operatic. A collection of songs, entitled Sei romanze, was published by the Milanese house of Giovanni Canti in 1838.

3. Life, 1839–53.

From the première of Oberto until at least the midpoint of his long career, the outward progress of Verdi's life is inseparable from that of his professional activities: a continual round of negotiations with theatres and librettists, of intense periods of composition, arduous travel, and exhausting preparations for and direction of premières and revivals.

The success of Oberto apparently encouraged Bartolomeo Merelli, impresario at La Scala, to offer Verdi a contract for three more operas, to be composed over two years. The first was the comic opera Un giorno di regno, which failed disastrously on its first night in September 1840. Verdi's later autobiographical glosses on this period (which are notoriously unreliable) state that this professional failure, together with the tragic loss of his young family (his wife Margherita died in June 1840; they had lost their two children in the previous two years), caused him to renounce composition. This may be partly true: his next opera, Nabucco, appeared some 18 months later, an unusually long delay. However, Verdi certainly continued a level of professional activity by writing new music for, and supervising several revivals of, Oberto.

After Nabucco, whose public success in Milan was unprecedented, the round of new operas was virtually unremitting: in the 11 years from March 1842 (the première of Nabucco) to March 1853 (the première of La traviata), Verdi produced 16 operas, an average of one every nine months. He also supervised numerous revivals, on occasion writing new music to accommodate a star performer. Although this rate of production was positively torpid by the standards of a Pacini or a Donizetti (the latter produced some 70 operas in 25 years), Verdi nonetheless found himself constantly moving from one operatic centre to another, dividing what time remained between Milan and Busseto. The years 1844–7 were particularly arduous (eight operas appearing in less than four years); his health broke down frequently, and more than once he vowed to renounce operatic composition once he had achieved financial security and fulfilled outstanding contracts. His gathering fame did, however, have its advantages. He was soon able to charge unprecedentedly high fees for supplying a theatre with a new opera, and even though copyright protection was not fully established, he would supplement this income with rental fees and sales of printed materials. As early as 1844 he began to acquire property and land in and around Busseto. The success of Nabucco opened doors in Milanese society, and Verdi soon made some longstanding friendships, notably with Countess Clara Maffei, whose salon he frequently attended. It is likely that during these early years of success he formed a lasting attachment to the soprano Giuseppina Strepponi, who was to become his lifelong companion.

Apart from a brief visit to Vienna in 1843, Verdi remained within the Italian peninsula until March 1847 when he undertook a long foreign expedition, initially to supervise the premières of I masnadieri in London and Jérusalem in Paris (his first operas to be commissioned from outside Italy). He set up house with Strepponi in Paris, staying there about two years, although with a visit to Milan during the 1848 uprisings, and a trip to the short-lived Roman Republic to supervise the première of La battaglia di Legnano in early 1849. Verdi returned with Strepponi to Busseto in mid-1849, still unmarried and causing a local scandal; in 1851 they moved to a permanent home in the nearby farm of Sant'Agata, land once owned by Verdi's ancestors.

(iv) Harmony, tinta, local colour.

4. Operas: ‘oberto’ (1839) to ‘La traviata’ (1853).

(i) Composition.

(ii) Dramatic forms.

(iii) Lyric prototype.

(v) Influences.

(vi) Singers and musical characterization.

(vii) Individual operas.

(viii) Reception and politics.

Verdi, Giuseppe, §4: Operas: ‘Oberto’ (1839) to ‘La traviata’ (1853)

(i) Composition.

The genesis of a Verdi opera of this period follows a fairly predictable pattern, one that can teach us a good deal about the composer's artistic priorities and aims. The first step almost always involved negotiations with a theatre, an agreement of terms (the theatre would typically buy the rights to a first performance) and deadlines. Unlike most of his Italian predecessors, Verdi was reluctant to deal through theatrical agents, preferring to negotiate fees for the première directly with the theatre management. As his career progressed, Verdi's publisher (almost always the Milan firm of Ricordi) took an active part in commissioning new works. The eventual contract with the theatre often included stipulations about the cast of the première, and Verdi chose operatic subjects with a direct eye to the available performers. The subject itself was then decided upon either by Verdi or his librettist, although – as success brought a new level of artistic freedom – Verdi became increasingly likely to reserve for himself this crucial decision. He favoured works that had proved their worth as spoken dramas, and he had a fondness for foreign subjects, in particular Romantic melodramas set in the Middle Ages, by Byron, Schiller and Hugo, or by their more obscure contemporaries. In searching for new subjects he constantly stressed the need for unusual, gripping characters, and for what he called ‘strong’ situations: scenes in which these characters could be placed in violent confrontation.

The first stage in fashioning an opera from the source text would typically involve a parcelling of the action into musical ‘numbers’ such as arias, duets and ensembles, the location of a convincing central finale (the so-called concertato) often proving a crucial first step in deciding on the overall structure. This was often done by annotating a prose summary of the source, and would typically be a collaborative effort between Verdi and his librettist. Once the work's essential formal outlines had been fixed, the librettist would prepare a poetic text in which the configuration of verse forms would reflect in detail the various musical forms agreed upon, and in which the individual dispositions of characters would often be inflected by the personalities and capabilities of the singers engaged as their ‘creators’.

Verdi's relationships with his librettists varied considerably. In the early operas written in collaboration with Temistocle Solera (Nabucco, I Lombardi, Giovanna d'Arco), he tended by his own admission to alter the text very little, possibly because Solera was himself a powerful personality, and had as much theatrical experience as Verdi. With other figures he respected, such as Salvadore Cammarano (Alzira, La battaglia di Legnano, Luisa Miller, Il trovatore), the author of some of Donizetti's most famous librettos, he sometimes negotiated for changes and was usually – not always – accommodated. But with his favoured collaborator in this period, Francesco Maria Piave, he became ever more dictatorial and exigent, so much so that the dramatic shape of operas they created together was sometimes more the work of the composer than his ‘poet’. More than this, Verdi might require certain sections to be cut down (he was in general anxious to avoid long passages of recitative), might ask for changes of poetic metre in fixed forms, and even for line by line rewording to clarify the dramatic effect.

Finally came composition of the score, which typically occurred in stages. After miscellaneous jottings, with or without words, Verdi drafted the opera in short score, usually on just two or three staves (only a few of these so-called ‘continuity drafts’ – those for Rigoletto, Stiffelio and La traviata – are currently available, although we can infer from the structure of Verdi's autographs that similar documents existed at least from the time of Nabucco). Although the libretto was almost always complete before this stage began, we know that on several occasions Verdi rejected the words he had before him, and composed arias (and even recitative passages) without text, relying on his librettist to furnish suitable verses after the event. In writing this short-score draft, Verdi differed from predecessors such as Rossini and Donizetti, who typically moved from the ‘jotting’ phase straight to the autograph; the practice perhaps gives an indication of the care and time he was willing to spend on each new work. The second stage of composition involved transferring the draft to the autograph (a loose gathering of fascicles of orchestral-score manuscript paper), adding essential instrumental lines (usually the first violin and bass) to create what has been termed a ‘skeleton score’ (see fig.4). From this skeleton score, vocal parts would be extracted by copyists and given to the singers of the première. Pressure of time dictated that only when Verdi arrived at the venue of the first performance, and had heard his singers in the theatre, would he complete (often in extreme haste) the orchestration. Verdi's contracts often stipulated that he would ‘direct’ the first three performances: this rarely meant ‘conduct’ in the modern sense (that co-ordinating function was shared between the principal violin and the maestro al cembalo); but he would certainly be near at hand, ready to appear before the audience and accept their applause after successful numbers.

Verdi, Giuseppe, §4: Operas: ‘Oberto’ (1839) to ‘La traviata’ (1853)

(ii) Dramatic forms.

It is clear from the preceding summary that various fixed forms were at the basis of Verdian musical drama; and these forms, geared as they mostly were to the individual expression or patterned confrontation of the major characters, arose from an awareness of the overwhelming importance of the principal performers in the success of an operatic event. The basic forms, inherited by Verdi from his Italian predecessors, are fairly simple to outline. The normative structure was the solo aria, called ‘cavatina’ if it marked the first appearance of a character, and typically made up of an introductory scena and recitative followed by three ‘movements’: a lyrical first movement, usually slow in tempo, called ‘cantabile’, ‘primo tempo’ or (preferably) ‘adagio’; a connecting passage, often stimulated by some stage event – the entrance of new characters or the revelation of new information – and called the ‘tempo di mezzo’; and a concluding cabaletta, usually faster than the first movement and requiring agility on the part of the singer. The grand duet was identically structured, though with an opening block before the Adagio, commonly employing patterned exchanges between the characters and termed by Abramo Basevi, one of Verdi's earliest commentators, the ‘tempo d'attacco’. Large-scale internal finales followed the pattern of the grand duet, though often with a more elaborate tempo d'attacco; the Adagio in ensembles was often called the ‘largo’ or ‘largo concertato’, and the final movement was called a ‘stretta’. Ranged around these large, multi-sectional units were shorter, connecting pieces, notably various choral movements and shorter, one-movement arias, often called ‘romanza’. There is a close parallel between musical and poetic forms, each ‘movement’ tending to be in a different type of versi lirici (rhyming stanzas of fixed line length and syllable count) while recitative is almost always in versi sciolti (unrhymed successions of seven- and eleven-syllable lines). Given the nature of the opera's genesis, this parallel is of course unremarkable; the fact that it has occasioned so much detailed discussion of late is perhaps as much due to the possibilities it furnishes for formal abstraction as to the insights it occasionally offers.

The demands of principal singers ensured that, at the start of this period, the overall structure of an opera had many essential ingredients. If there were three principals (increasingly the norm), each would require a multi-movement entrance aria; and each would expect to appear in at least two grand duets. Particularly important singers would expect a further solo (often a one-movement piece such as a romanza) later in the action. The rest of the numbers (there were usually between ten and 14 in total) would comprise the inevitable central concertato, one or two choruses (sometimes front-of-tabs numbers to allow changes of scene), and perhaps a brief solo for a secondary character. The action was preceded by an instrumental movement: sometimes a full-scale overture (either of the ‘potpourri’ type or of more ‘symphonic’ construction), but more frequently an atmospheric prelude.

In discussing Verdi's individual approach to these fixed forms, there has been a tendency to paint a romantic picture, one that equates release from formal ‘constraints’ with ‘progress’, and that celebrates the composer's gradual emancipation from formal ‘tyranny’. According to this interpretation Verdi is a formal revolutionary, constantly striving towards a more naturalistic mode of musical drama. A few of Verdi's letters, in particular some often-quoted ones to Salvadore Cammarano about the libretto of Il trovatore, seem to support this, with Verdi sometimes showing a fondness for adopting a ‘revolutionary’ epistolary pose:

If in the opera there were no cavatinas, duets, trios, choruses, finales, etc., and if the whole work consisted … of a single number I should find that all the more right and proper.

There is some truth in this image: as the 19th century progressed, opera in all countries turned to looser, less predictable musical forms. However, Verdi is perhaps better seen as a conservative influence within this broad trend, especially in the context of his immediate predecessors in Italy. The operas up to La traviata, while they show a progressive trend away from formal fixity, are for the most part at least as easy to codify in formal terms as those, for example, of Donizetti. As for statements such as the one quoted above, it is well to remember that, whatever his aesthetic pronouncements, Verdi declared himself well satisfied with the resolutely number-based libretto of Il trovatore that Cammarano eventually produced.

True, Verdi sometimes radically altered or ignored traditional forms. There are classic examples: the introduction of Macbeth by means of an understated duettino, ‘Due vaticini’, rather than a full-scale cavatina; the curious Act 1 duet between Rigoletto and Sparafucile, which is a kind of free conversation over an instrumental melody; the stretta-less grand finales of Nabucco Act 2, I due Foscari Act 2, Attila Act 1, Luisa Miller Act 1 and Il trovatore Act 2; the complete absence of a concertato finale in I masnadieri and Rigoletto. Other moments are less often mentioned: the duets of La battaglia di Legnano Act 1 and Stiffelio Act 3 follow the fluctuations of character confrontation so minutely that they are extremely difficult to parcel out into the traditional four ‘movements’; the Act 1 duet in Alzira moves from tempo d'attacco straight to cabaletta, a process repeated in the Act 1 finale of Il trovatore.

However, much more often Verdi chose to manipulate forms from within, preserving their boundaries but expanding and condensing individual movements as the drama dictated. Famous examples include the Violetta-Germont duet in La traviata Act 2, which boasts a vastly expanded and lyrically enriched opening sequence, so much so that Basevi's single term tempo d'attacco seems inadequate to encompass its complexity; and Leonora's aria in Il trovatore Act 4, in which the usually transitional tempo di mezzo expands to become the famous ‘Miserere’ scene. Equally important in this enrichment is Verdi's tendency to focus musical weight on ensemble numbers and to concentrate in these numbers on the opposition between characters. In this respect the rarity in his works of the so-called ‘rondò finale’ (a favourite Donizettian form in which a soloist, usually the soprano, closes the opera with an elaborate, two-movement aria) is significant, as is its replacement by ensemble finales such as those of Ernani or Il trovatore. The lyrical movements of Verdi's ensembles, particularly of the grand duets, tend to establish at the outset a vivid sense of vocal difference, and often retain that sense until the last possible moment. The extended passages in parallel 3rds or 6ths so well-known in Donizetti and Bellini are rare, such vocal ‘reconciliation’ is usually reserved as coda material.

Certain operas of this period, particularly those written in collaboration with Temistocle Solera, are notable for a dynamic new use of the chorus. While choruses in the earlier 19th century had typically served a neutral, scene-setting function, Verdi's chorus frequently appears in the vocal forefront, offering sonic enrichment and a considerable presence in ensemble numbers, and even intruding into the soloists' domain. Nabucco offers many early examples, from the dramatic incursion of the chorus in both the Adagio and cabaletta of Zaccaria's Act 1 aria, their climactic appearance in the Act 2 canonic ensemble, ‘S’appressan gl'istanti', and of course ‘Va pensiero’ in Act 3, where the chorus sings mostly in unison, with a directness and simplicity of emotional appeal that had traditionally been heard only from soloists.

Verdi, Giuseppe, §4: Operas: ‘Oberto’ (1839) to ‘La traviata’ (1853)

(iii) Lyric prototype.

In attempting to summarise the smaller-scale level of Verdi's lyrical movements, many critics have again appealed to a traditional norm, though one more abstractly analytical than the set-piece forms and one whose limitations and partiality need to be remembered. This is the ‘lyric prototype’, a four-phrase pattern usually represented by the scheme AA'BA'' or (its common variant) AA'BC. Such a model could also include subscript numbers to indicate phrase length – the normative phrase would be four bars – and poetic lines can also be incorporated, as the usual consumption of text exactly parallels the musical periodicity, with two poetic lines matching one four-bar period. The prototype does, however, ignore harmonic movement, which can vary significantly within pieces that would have an identical phrase scheme. What is more, in its ‘pure’ form the scheme appears only rarely, usually as one character's solo statement in an ensemble movement: in solo arias, some level of expansion, typically in coda material, is clearly necessary to achieve adequate length. These limitations notwithstanding, the prototype has proved the most reliable and flexible method of codifying Verdi's basic lyric shapes.

A very early example of the model, close to its basic form, comes in the cabaletta of the protagonist's aria in Act 2 of Oberto (ex.1). Even at this early stage, a Verdian novelty can be discerned in the comparative restriction of the formal scheme. In the hands of Verdi's predecessors, the prototype tends to be less useful: many of Donizetti's or Bellini's arias start with ‘open’ declamatory phrases, finding a regular pattern only in the latter stages; and many others (particularly cabalettas) start periodically but dissolve after the B section into looser periods of ornamental vocal writing and word repetition. Verdi did occasionally write arias of the latter type: for Riccardo in Act 1 of Oberto, or – significantly as the part was expressly written for the ‘old-fashioned’ virtuosa Jenny Lind – for Amalia in both Acts 1 and 3 of I masnadieri. However, his typical practice, even when writing a bravura aria, was to bind the ornamentation strictly within a periodic structure, even as an aria reached its final stages.

As with his conservatism in larger formal matters, this self-imposed restriction had the effect of channelling Verdi's invention into manipulations of the prototype from within, into expansions, contractions and enrichments of the lyric form. Elvira's Andantino in Act 1 of Ernani, for example, sees a dramatic expansion of the B section that injects a new sense of dialectic tension into the aria. More than that: far from ‘dissolving’ into ornamental writing at the end, the aria continues to subordinate, or rather harness, the ornamentation, containing it within a strictly controlled periodicity (ex.2). Such examples, which could easily be multiplied, demonstrate at least a part of how that energy so typical of Verdi's early operas is created, essentially through a tightening of form coupled with an expansion of expressive content.

As the 1840s unfolded, Verdi's lyrical forms increasingly showed the influence of French models, especially after his prolonged stay in Paris in 1847–9. Il corsaro, for example, starts with two slow arias that, if in very different ways, are both organized in two strophes. Later, more famous examples include the couplet forms (so-called because of the shorter refrain line that ends each stanza) found in Rodolfo's ‘Quando le sere al placido’ (Luisa Miller Act 2) and Germont's ‘Di Provenza il mar, il suol’ (La traviata Act 2). However, none of these examples entirely abandons the lyric prototype; indeed, in one sense it is more pervasive, tending to appear in miniature in each stanza. As we move to the early 1850s, the variety of internal structures proliferates, giving rise to such startling experiments as Gilda's ‘Caro nome’ (Rigoletto Act 1), in which the second half of an initial A A'B A'' form, remarkable for its simplicity, is subjected to an elaborate series of surface variations.

Verdi, Giuseppe, §4: Operas: ‘Oberto’ (1839) to ‘La traviata’ (1853)

(iv) Harmony, tinta, local colour.

Verdi's small-scale harmonic language is for the most part simple and direct, following general patterns that can easily be summarised within the lyric prototype. The opening A sections concentrate on tonic and dominant harmonies, sometimes ending with a modulation to a near-related key; the B section is comparatively unstable; the final A (or C) section returns to a stable tonic. Secondary modulations within an aria are frequently to keys a 3rd apart, thus allowing new harmonic underpinning for important vocal sonorities. In large set pieces, notably in the Largo concertato, there is often a dramatic plunge into a distant key near the end, one from which Verdi occasionally found some difficulty in extricating himself. A few ‘character’ pieces show that Verdi was fully capable of an advanced, colouristic chromaticism – the ‘Salve Maria’ from I Lombardi Act 1 is an early example, the openings of the preludes to Acts 1 and 3 of La traviata a later, more persuasive one; but for the most part his liking for strict periodic structures made elaborate chromatic effects difficult to employ except at moments of high relief.

The extent to which organized, directed tonality may be traced at a larger level is still a matter for debate. Like most of his contemporaries and immediate predecessors, Verdi seemed indifferent to tonal closure at the level of the multi-movement ‘number’ (something that had been important only a few decades earlier): most arias, duets and ensembles begin in one key and end in another; nor do individual acts, let alone entire operas, often display any obvious tonal plan. It seems likely that Verdi chose the tonalities of movements within set pieces primarily with a view to the vocal tessituras he wished to exploit, and various last-minute transpositions he effected to accommodate individual singers would seem to support this theory. There is, though, evidence in some operas of an association between certain keys or tonal regions and certain characters or groups of characters. Il trovatore is an obvious example: the flat keys are linked with the ‘aristocratic’ world of Leonora and Count di Luna, while sharp keys tend to accompany Manrico, Azucena and the world of the gypsies. Macbeth shows a similar binary divide (Macbeth and Lady Macbeth on the flat side, the witches on the sharp side). Such associations may also attend other harmonic recurrences, such as the occasional repetition of large-scale tonal progressions (so-called ‘double cycles’). But these rather loose juxtapositions – by no means rigidly maintained – probably represent the ultimate point of tonal organization in Verdi: there have as yet been no convincing demonstrations of ‘directed tonal motion’ across large spans of Verdian musical drama, nor evidence that the composer considered such motion a desirable aesthetic goal.

More important than harmony as a means of establishing what Verdi called the tinta or tinte (identifying colour or colours) of a given opera are various recurring melodic shapes. These should not be confused with recurring motifs, which Verdi occasionally used to great effect by association with an important element in the drama (the horn call in Ernani is a classic early example), and which gain their effect by means of a straightforward semantic identification and a sense of isolation from the basic musical fabric. Nor are they connected with the proto-leitmotivic experiment of I due Foscari, in which the main entrances of certain characters or groups are marked by the repetition of a ‘personal’ instrumental theme (an interesting case in that the curiously undramatic tone of these recollections illustrates, as Carl Dahlhaus has suggested, that leitmotivic technique is basically incompatible with Italian opera's tendency to create a vivid sense of the affective present). On the contrary, these recurring shapes will tend to hover on the edge of obvious reminiscence, thus contributing to a sense of musical cohesion without accruing semantic weight: their very vagueness is essential, as it precludes their needless and tautological mirroring of the opera's narrative thread. The rising 6th that begins so many lyric pieces in Ernani, the ‘bow shape’ of Attila, perhaps even the stepwise rising line of Oberto are possible examples, ones that could cautiously be multiplied.

At least until the later part of this period, the fixing of an opera within a specific ambience, the use of what is often called ‘local colour’, was sporadic and often routine. The single gesture towards the exotic ambience of Nabucco (the chorus that opens Act 3) is probably the opera's least inspired number, and one reason why Nabucco is more successful than I Lombardi (Verdi's next opera, and one that resembles Nabucco in many ways) is that the later opera's frequent changes of locale and ambience necessitate a larger amount of this rather pallid, ‘colouristic’ music. By the end of the 1840s, however, and after his exposure to the French stage, Verdi's attitude changed. In Luisa Miller the Alpine ambience is an important element of the opera's tinta, joining with certain recurring shapes (in this case as much rhythmic ideas as melodic ones) to give the work a pronounced individuality. This merging of local colour with other recurring elements is also evident in Il trovatore, where the ‘Spanish’ atmosphere is intimately bound to the musical sphere inhabited by Azucena. It reaches a pinnacle in La traviata, in which much of the opera moves in telling refractions of the waltz-laden social world so vividly depicted in the opening scene.

Verdi, Giuseppe, §4: Operas: ‘Oberto’ (1839) to ‘La traviata’ (1853)

(v) Influences.

When Verdi first began to make an operatic career, his main stylistic influences were undoubtedly those of his immediate Italian predecessors. Rossini, the inevitable point of reference a decade earlier, was now rather outdated in the field of serious opera (as Un giorno di regno shows, his idiom remained sovereign in the declining genre of opera buffa). There are, however, definite echoes of the Rossinian model in certain full-scale overtures (Giovanna d'Arco and La battaglia di Legnano); and the ‘oratorio-like’ style of Verdi's first successes (Nabucco in particular) owes something to Rossini's Mosè. The influence of Bellini, who had died in 1835 but whose operas were by the 1840s at the height of their fame, is sometimes heard, but it has a significant impact only in Oberto (in Riccardo's Act 1 cavatina and, especially, in the Straniera-like declamation of Leonora's rondò finale). Perhaps Bellini's ‘trademark’ melodic style – close attention to melodic detail within arias that are often loosely structured at the individual phrase level, seemingly constructed out of declamatory fragments – was simply too caught up in nuances of sentiment: what Verdi was later to describe as Bellini's ‘melodie lunghe, lunghe, lunghe’ were thus unsuited to the younger composer's directness of approach and easily graspable periodic structures. Possibly more significant (though more research is needed) was the example of Mercadante, whose elaborate, rather academic manner left several traces in the earliest operas, not least in their occasional displays of contrapuntal expertise.

The most important of Verdi's first influences was undoubtedly Donizetti, by far the most successful composer then active in Italian opera. Charting the details of such influence is problematic, in particular because the relative fixity of Italian prosody and its relation to musical rhythm makes it inevitable that melodic profiles will recur across this broad repertory. Rather than such fleeting ‘echoes’, it is safer to locate moments of larger musical-dramatic similarity. One occurs in Act 1 of Giovanna d'Arco, in which the usual progression from lachrymose Andante to energetic cabaletta is reversed in Giacomo's cavatina, producing a moderate-paced, unusually touching, ‘Donizettian’ cabaletta, quite lacking in Verdian rhythmic drive. Another much grander example occurs in the Act 1 concertato finale of Alzira, ‘Nella polve, genuflesso’, which is modelled on the famous sextet in Lucia di Lammermoor, sharing the key of D major and several melodic and harmonic ideas. However, the differences are also instructive. The Lucia sextet is a classic ‘frozen moment’ in which the principals, albeit at a moment of maximum interpersonal conflict, join in a long, lyrical sweep that enwraps all their accumulated tension. Verdi, on the other hand, fragments the moment, highlighting the sense of conflict that was so important to his operatic style; and Verdi's ensemble is set in a dynamic harmonic context, as if the conflict, far from being encased in a lyrical idea, is developing before our ears.

As already mentioned, the late 1840s saw the gathering influence of French models on Verdi's aria forms. But this was not the only level on which the lure of Paris is felt. The remaking of I Lombardi into Jérusalem for the Paris Opéra (1847) put in the clearest context the effect that French grand opera was beginning to have, in particular in expanding Verdi's harmonic and orchestral imagination, and in broadening his conception of local colour. However, the influence of Meyerbeerian dramaturgy was mostly a thing of the future. More important at this stage was the impact of non-operatic French theatre, in particular the mélodrame tradition he was able to sample at first-hand during his long stay in Paris between 1847 and 1849. The final scene of Stiffelio, for example, which is directly derived from a contemporary mélodrame, all but dispenses with lyrical vocal expression in favour of the atmospheric orchestral background, tense declamation and telling visual images so typical of French boulevard theatre. This may be an extreme example, but melodramatic effects can be found in several other operas of the period, most famously at the start of the final scene of La traviata, in which Violetta reads Germont's letter to the sentimental strains of a solo violin reminiscence motif.

Verdi, Giuseppe, §4: Operas: ‘Oberto’ (1839) to ‘La traviata’ (1853)

(vi) Singers and musical characterization.

During his early career, Verdi was of his time in the care he took to mould individual roles to the skills of the singers who would ‘create’ them. It was completely in his interests to do so, both because the success of a first performance was often important to the speed of a work's subsequent dissemination, and because singers were themselves influential in a theatre's choice of repertory. A good case in point is his treatment of the soprano Antonietta Ranieri Marini, who created the leading female roles in his first two operas: Leonora in Oberto and the Marchesa del Poggio in Un giorno di regno. In both cases Verdi took care to exploit the peculiarities of Ranieri Marini's voice, in particular what we would now call her ‘mezzo’ range; and in the case of Oberto his efforts were rewarded – nearly all of the early revivals of the opera featured her in the cast, and we can assume that she was instrumental in each decision to revive the work.

It is sometimes suggested that this attitude to performers changed once Verdi's fame assured him a degree of artistic independence. In support of this come anecdotes such as his refusal to write German soprano Sophie Loewe a rondò finale in Ernani; or his withering scorn when asked to accommodate another soprano with an additional aria for Gilda to Rigoletto (‘Had you been persuaded that my talent is such that I could not have done better than I did in Rigoletto, you wouldn't have asked me for an aria for that opera’). However, there is on balance little evidence that Verdi's eagerness to suit roles to the skills of his first interpreters diminished greatly with time. Often his decision to set one subject rather than another was strongly inflected by the available cast: a typical example is his wavering between various operatic subjects in the summer of 1846 (to fulfil a contract with the Teatro Pergola, Florence), and his decision to tackle Macbeth only after he knew of the engagement of Felice Varesi, one of the finest actor-singer baritones of the day.

What is more, Verdi's knowledge of the strengths and limitations of his cast often profoundly affected the vocal character of a given opera. A case in point concerns the strongly contrasting roles he created for two very different early sopranos, Loewe (he probably wrote Abigaille with her in mind, and she created Elvira in Ernani and Odabella in Attila) and Erminia Frezzolini (Giselda in I Lombardi and Giovanna in Giovanna d'Arco). Loewe's voice had power rather than beauty, but was extremely flexible and boasted an impressive chest register. Frezzolini, on the other hand, excelled in delicacy and beauty of tone, and in ornamental passages; but she had little power below the staff. In some cases – Loewe as the sword-wielding Odabella, or Frezzolini as anxious Giselda – the singer-type seemed to suit the character-type very well; but in others – particularly the casting of Frezzolini as Joan of Arc – Verdi and his librettist used considerable skill to tailor the role to the ‘creator’, making sure that the gentler side of the character was whenever possible emphasized.

Within this framework of accommodation, however, there is no doubt that vocal style was gradually changing, and that a ‘modern’ type of singer came to be associated with Verdi: in all voice ranges robustness and sheer volume began to make inroads into vocal flexibility, and a new immediacy and ‘realism’ in acting style went hand-in-hand with a tendency to indulge ever more intensely in vehement declamato rather than seamless bel canto. We can see this change most obviously in the emergence of the ‘Verdian’ baritone; characterized by the consistency of high tessitura and the relative absence of ornamental writing – a very different animal from the ‘basso cantante’ of 20 years earlier. Of course Verdi was in no important sense responsible for what was, after all, a pan-European shift. Exploit it magnificently though he did, he was merely one element in a complex symbiotic process involving changes in theatre architecture, in the socio-economic make-up of audiences, in ideas about ‘realism’, in the range of repertory that a singer would be required to tackle, in the power of orchestral instruments, and in a host of other factors.

Though Verdi's close attention to singers' capabilities would continue throughout his long life, towards the end of this period we can perhaps locate a change of attitude, one that found him less willing to ‘tailor’ his roles so specifically. Again this shift made practical sense – his fame now virtually assured his operas a wide dissemination – and it may also reflect his gathering sense of an ‘international’ singing style, a levelling out of peculiarities among the leading singers brought on by the emergence of a fixed Italian repertory. On the other hand, we can see in Gilda (Rigoletto) and Violetta (La traviata) a new type of role, one in which radical changes in the character's attitudes, brought on by developments in the plot, are articulated through radically altering vocal personae. Thus the pleasure-loving Violetta of Act 1 sings very differently from the passionately intense Violetta of Act 2, or again from the invalid of Act 3. This was a daring experiment, one not much followed up in the later operas, and one that has continued to present difficulties for performers. It reflects, though, something of the intensity of Verdi's relationship with the human voice, and the manner in which his vision of drama was always projected principally through these fragile vessels.

Verdi, Giuseppe, §4: Operas: ‘Oberto’ (1839) to ‘La traviata’ (1853)

(vii) Individual operas.

The foregoing discussion has mostly involved ‘synchronic’ matters – the way in which Verdi's operas can be summarised as a coherent group. Many aspects, in particular on the formal level, benefit from such an approach. But an important feature of this, and indeed every period in Verdi's life, is the manner in which he continued to experiment, in particular on the broadest levels of operatic articulation, where he was very rarely content to repeat himself even when a formula had proved its success with the public.

Little of this is, however, evident in the first two operas: Oberto, conte di San Bonifacio is hampered by a curiously sprawling structure, even if individual moments powerfully anticipate his later manner; and Un giorno di regno explores a Rossinian opera buffa vein that was never to reappear. But with Nabucco an important strand of the Verdian style was immediately established: a grandiose, oratorio-like vein, with a directness of vocal effect and a rhythmic vitality, together with an unusually prominent role for the chorus. What is more, numbers such as the ‘Coro e Profezia’ in Act 3 show how Verdi could bind these elements into compelling scenic units: the highly novel, aria-like choral writing of ‘Va pensiero’ is violently countered by the energetic prophesy that follows, but the two halves of the scene are intimately linked by shared rhythmic and melodic motifs. So successful was Nabucco that Verdi’s next opera, I Lombardi alla prima crociata constitutes one of the few times in which he was content to repeat himself, producing another oratorio-like opera with impressive choral effects, although one whose overall character was certainly softened by the presence of a less forceful leading soprano.

These first four operas had been written with the comparatively large stage of La Scala, Milan, in mind. But Verdi’s next opera, Ernani, written for the more intimate context of Venice’s La Fenice, broke new ground. True, elements of the Nabucco style remain, but the overall effect is far more subdued, and the drama of individual characters is brought to the fore. What is more, in Act 3 Verdi extended to an entire act the kinds of musical continuities previously encountered only at scene level. Set in subterranean vaults containing the tomb of Charlemagne at Aix-la-Chapelle, the act charts King Carlo’s gradual coming of age, his acceptance of the responsibility of power. The action unfolds in a continuous musical arc, one given direction by the development of various musical devices, some rhythmic, some melodic, some timbral: from the dark instrumental colours that begin the act, to Carlo’s great turning point in the aria ‘O de’ verd'anni miei’, to the conspirators' chorus ‘Si ridesti il Leon di Castiglia’, to the magnificent finale in which Carlo forgives all and, with his closing peroration to Charlemagne, ‘Oh sommo Carlo’, draws everyone into his musical orbit. Throughout we see Verdi’s gathering sense of musical drama’s larger rhetoric, the third act of Ernani setting an imposing standard of coherence that is rarely equalled until the operas of the early 1850s.

The achievement of Ernani ushered in a period of more restless innovation, of operas that often differed substantially in their modes of experimentation. As mentioned earlier, in the first of them, I due Foscari, Verdi used a system of recurring themes to identify the principal characters, suggesting that he was anxious to find new ways of binding together the musical fabric; perhaps to the same end, he also made repeated attempts to remind the audience musically of the geographical venue of the drama. Both devices, particularly the recurring themes, are here applied somewhat mechanically; but in doing so Verdi could explore ways in which characters' vocal personae might differ from their orchestral surroundings; and this was a valuable lesson for the future. In Alzira, written the following year, the articulation swings wildly between extremely economic closed forms and a much freer, ‘declamatory’ style, often triggered by narrative: Zamoro's Act 1 aria ‘Un Inca … eccesso orribile!’, for example, starts off conventionally, but breaks into angry declamation, and closes switching wildly between this style and tender recollections of his beloved Alzira, never settling on the lyrical synthesis we expect of a closed form aria. In this and other moments, Verdi seemed intent above all on mirroring a psychological process, responding to each nuance of the words rather than developing a rounded musical statement; he was experimenting with a type of ‘realism’ in which attention to the individual meanings of words and phrases would substitute for the catharsis of the well-turned tune.

Attila addresses very different issues. As many have pointed out, it started life as a further example of the grandiose, ‘oratorio’ vein, but as the opera develops the focus turns to individuals, so much so that the closing scenes have minimal choral participation. This may in part be due to the fact that Solera, the great architect of Verdi's ‘oratorio’ style, deserted the project before it was completed, and that Piave had to finish the libretto. But it may also reflect an attempt on Verdi's part to reconcile his two ‘styles’ – find new ways of grafting a drama of individuals (such as Ernani or I due Foscari) onto one that is essentially public (such as Nabucco or I Lombardi).

Macbeth is often considered a watershed in Verdi's early career, much being made of the fact that it is based on Shakespeare, an author for whom Verdi frequently voiced great admiration. There is a new level of attention to detail in orchestration and harmony, and another melding of the public and personal manner. But what also singles the opera out is an element that recent commentators have found troublesome: its exploitation in the witches' music of the ‘genere fantastico’ (the fantastic or supernatural genre). There are early attempts in this vein in Giovanna d'Arco, but in Macbeth this alternative ‘colour’ is vividly explored, and placed in juxtaposition to the dark, personal world of Macbeth and his wife, thus expanding the range of the opera by centring it around a violent conflict between two musically distinct worlds. (Incidentally, this experiment might also be linked to Verdian interest – never very strong – in the trappings of Romanticism, which tended to be more a style than a fully-fledged movement in Italy, in spite of periodic importations from France and elsewhere.)

I masnadieri and Il corsaro, although they continue to explore new formal solutions, in the latter case ones borrowed from France, do not break significant new ground on larger levels of dramatic articulation, possibly because both were essentially conceived before Macbeth. The subject matter and public circumstances of La battaglia di Legnano might have made it the apotheosis of Verdi's ‘oratorio’ manner, but instead it again melds this style with one focussing on personal expression, and again shows the increasing influence of French formal models and orchestral sophistication. But the next opera, Luisa Miller, once more made a radical break, marking a new type of Verdian opera, albeit one he was to use only sparingly in the years to come. This was recognized early on, Abramo Basevi announcing that the opera initiated Verdi's ‘second manner’ in its reliance on Donizetti rather than Rossini. Certainly the relationship to Donizetti’s Linda di Chamounix is evident in many places, but the debt is less to a specific composer or work than to a genre, that of opera semiseria – a ‘mixed’ genre that partook both of comic and serious elements. Again this called for stylistic expansion, a broader musical canvas on which to play out the drama, one enriched by extensive attention to depiction of the Alpine setting so typical of semiserie.

Although extravagant claims have recently been made for Stiffelio, it is best seen as a consolidation of previous models. Commonplace though it may be to say so, it is the next opera, Rigoletto, that breaks decisive new ground. One could mention many levels: a new ‘expansion’ of genres, which saw further use of comic opera styles within a serious context; a daring appropriation of Hugolian character types, in which the outwardly disfigured baritone father claims more sympathy than the romantic tenor lead. But even more important is that, for the first time, the differences between the main characters are articulated through the manner in which they are defined formally, through the very nature of their musical discourse. In this sense it is telling that Rigoletto, the emotional centre of the drama, has no formal aria but instead typically sings in the declamatory style that Verdi had experimented with in Alzira. The Duke, on the other hand, perpetually inhabits highly conventional formal numbers, both his charm and superficiality projected through this relative predictability. Caught between these two pronounced styles, forever responding to one and then the other, is Gilda, whose formal discourse moves from the most simple to the most fragmentary as she grows painfully through the drama. This new level of dramatic articulation was as much a technical as an emotional conquest: it entailed a mature acceptance of conventional discourse, and an acutely developed perspective on precisely when the traditional forms could be ignored, when exploited.

Il trovatore clearly started life as a sequel to Rigoletto, this time with an outcast female protagonist (the gypsy Azucena) claiming sympathy. But the drama's operatic manifestation proved very different, almost a contradiction of the ‘advances’ made in the earlier opera. There is no ‘fusion’ of genres, indeed all the main characters express themselves in the traditional forms of serious Italian opera, the symmetries of the overall organization (four acts, each divided into two) echoed in their patterned confrontations. But in fact the achievement of the opera lies precisely in this restriction of formal discourse, the emotional energy of the drama being constantly channelled through the most tightly controlled formal units. The success of Trovatore should remind us that it is dangerous to see Verdian development in too simple a line, still less tie it unthinkingly to a gradual ‘emancipation’ from formal restrictions: in spite of its celebration of traditional forms, the opera is anything but a throw-back to earlier achievements.

The last opera of this period, La traviata, is again anomalous, again a new adventure. It gestures towards a level of ‘realism’ very rare in earlier operas (perhaps Stiffelio is its nearest cousin): the contemporary world of waltzes pervades the score, and the heroine's death from disease is graphically depicted in the music – from the first bars of the prelude to the gasping fragmentation of her last aria, ‘Addio, del passato’. Within this radically new atmosphere there are, however, many surprising continuities: a reliance on conventional formal models, for example, even when – as in the case of Germont's double aria in Act 2 – their presence seems to interrupt the focus of the drama. But this should not surprise us. One of Verdi's greatest strengths was his ability to balance formal and other continuities – his conservatism of attitude – against his desire always to try new dramatic solutions.

Verdi, Giuseppe, §4: Operas: ‘Oberto’ (1839) to ‘La traviata’ (1853)

(viii) Reception and politics.

By the 1850s, Verdi had become the most famous and frequently performed Italian opera composer in Europe, having wrested the former epithet from Rossini, the latter from Donizetti. He commanded unprecedented fees for new operas (although he lagged some way behind the most famous singers in earning potential), could choose more-or-less freely which theatres were to launch his latest works, and had begun to acquire substantial assets in farm lands and buildings. Admittedly, Verdi's ‘noisy’ orchestration (perhaps in particular his favouring of the middle to low register of the orchestra), his often extreme demands on singers and his taste for extravagant melodramatic plots had on occasions brought him criticism in the press during the 1840s; and several of his operas failed to find a place in the ‘repertory’ that was rapidly forming during this period. But by the early 1850s, and despite the occasional public failure such as that which initially greeted La traviata, opponents of Verdi (at least within Italy) were an eccentric minority. Resistance was greater and more prolonged elsewhere: although France was largely won over by the early 1850s, neither England nor Germany would be wholeheartedly enthusiastic until much later in the century.

The vast majority of Verdi's premières thus remained within the Italian peninsula, and on occasion it seemed that the composer's most serious opposition came from those elaborate and multifarious organs of state censorship that policed artistic expression in all parts of Italy. Librettos could be subject to modification on religious, moral or political grounds; and in Milan and Naples (perhaps elsewhere) the censor would also attend the dress rehearsal, to ensure that the music and staging produced no improprieties. However, severity varied greatly from state to state, and because censorship in the northern states (in which Verdi concentrated his early career) was far more easygoing than that in Rome or Naples, the composer encountered few difficulties with his early operas. Religious scruples were most easily offended; but at least until the eve of the 1848 revolutions political matters were largely ignored. The Zaccaria of Nabucco, for example, ended his Act 1 cabaletta with the words ‘Che dia morte allo stranier’ (‘That gives death to the foreigner’) without censorial interference in a huge number of early productions, and even the ‘revolutionary’ Ernani encountered only minor obstacles in the north. After 1848 the situation worsened, and it is significant that Verdi's most severe bouts with the censor occurred in the austere, counter-revolutionary atmosphere of the late 1840s and 1850s, over the religious subject matter of Stiffelio and over many aspects of both Rigoletto and Un ballo in maschera.

The business of government censorship inevitably leads to a consideration of Verdi's political status during this period and of the extent to which his operas served to heighten the Italian people's national consciousness. Although Verdi's – or any one else's – operas were far from ‘popular’ in the modern sense, only a tiny elite having the financial resources to attend such places as La Scala, it is true that the theatre fulfilled an important social function, being almost the only place in which large gatherings of people were permitted. What is more, there is no doubt that Verdi himself was a staunch patriot, as can be seen from many of his letters, and from his return to Milan during the 1848 uprisings. The 1848 revolutions also inspired him to attempt an opera in which the theme of patriotism would be overt: La battaglia di Legnano saw its première in a beleaguered Roman republic in January 1849, by which time Milan and many other northern cities were long back in Austrian hands.

However, before 1846 there is hardly any evidence that Verdi's operas were regarded as especially dangerous politically or that they excited patriotic enthusiasm in their audiences. In the period between the liberal reforms of Pius IX in 1846 and the revolutions of 1848, the theatre sometimes became a focus of political demonstrations, but Verdi's operas seem to have accompanied such outbursts no more often than those of other composers. It is also significant that during the months of mid-1848 when the Milanese governed their own city, neither the newly-liberated theatrical press nor the public seemed especially interested in Verdi or his music. What is more, when the Austrians returned to Milan, in the midst of an extreme clamp-down on any expression that could lead to further civil unrest, the 1848–9 La Scala season staged revivals of Ernani and I due Foscari; Attila and Nabucco followed in the next full season. It seems inconceivable that any of these operas had been actively associated with the failed revolutions. This is not to deny the stirring force of Verdi's early music, in particular his treatment of the chorus (i.e. ‘the people’) as a dynamic new expressive power; but connections between his music and political events were largely made later in the century, some considerable time after the revolutionary atmosphere had cooled.

5. Life, 1853–71.

After the première of La traviata in March 1853, the pace of Verdi's operatic production slowed considerably. The 11 years up to Traviata had produced 16 operas; the 18 years that followed saw only six new works: Les vêpres siciliennes, Simon Boccanegra, Un ballo in maschera, La forza del destino, Don Carlos and Aida. Admittedly, such a comparison gives a slightly exaggerated picture. Two of the operas (Vêpres and Don Carlos) were written for the Paris Opéra; they are thus both considerably longer than any other of Verdi's scores and required the composer's presence in Paris during extended rehearsal periods. Furthermore, Verdi devoted much time and creative energy to revising various works: there were relatively minor adjustments to La traviata and Simon Boccanegra after unsuccessful first performances (the latter would undergo further and more important alterations later), and to Il trovatore for its Paris version; a thorough overhaul of Macbeth, again for Paris; the refashioning of Stiffelio as Aroldo; and substantial revisions to La forza del destino for a series of performances at La Scala. Such efforts notwithstanding, however, Verdi now spent an increasing amount of time away from the theatre, and on at least one occasion – in the more than three-year gap between finishing Un ballo in maschera (early 1858) and starting La forza del destino (mid-1861) – he seems to have decided to stop composing altogether.

His three most extensive foreign expeditions were all related to professional engagements: a two-year period in Paris (1854–5) saw the completion and performance of Les vêpres siciliennes; La forza del destino required two trips to Russia, with interim visits to Paris, London and Madrid (1862–3); and the production of Don Carlos kept him in Paris for nearly a year (1866–7). When not travelling, Verdi divided his time between periods of intense activity on his farmlands at Sant'Agata (he added substantially to his estate in 1857, and supervised extensive renovations in the 1860s) and visits to friends in other cities, notably Naples and Venice. In 1859, after more than ten years together, Verdi and Giuseppina Strepponi were secretly married in the village of Collange-sous-Salève, near Geneva. In 1866 they set up permanent winter quarters in Genoa, finding the climate of Sant'Agata too hostile.

Verdi entered briefly into public political life, becoming in 1861 – after personal urging from none other than Cavour – deputy for Borgo San Donnino (now Fidenza) in the first Italian parliament, a post he retained until 1865, though attending sessions only sporadically after the first few months. For reasons that remain obscure, he lost touch with friends in Milan, his centre of professional operations and social milieu through most of the 1840s; after his dramatic return during the 1848 revolutions, he seems hardly to have visited the city for 20 years. (As early as 1845 he had quarrelled with the directors of La Scala over what he considered the unacceptable production standards, but this could not have been the whole story.) But the late 1860s saw a rapprochement. In 1868 he returned to the city to visit Clara Maffei, and to meet for the first time Alessandro Manzoni, whom he had long revered. A year later he re-established contact with La Scala, supervising there the première of the revised Forza del destino. On hearing of the death of Rossini (in November 1868), Verdi suggested to Ricordi that a commemorative Messa per Rossini be written jointly by a team of the most prominent Italian composers of the day. The Mass was duly completed, Verdi supplying the final ‘Libera me’, but there was much bitter wrangling over administrative problems and the work was never performed.

(v) Harmony, tinta, local colour.

6. Operas: ‘Les vêpres siciliennes’ (1855) to ‘Aida’ (1871).

(i) Expansion.

(ii) Composition.

(iii) Dramatic forms.

(iv) Lyric prototype.

(vi) Influence.

(vii) Individual operas.

(viii) Reception and politics.

Verdi, Giuseppe, §6: Operas: ‘Les vêpres siciliennes’ (1855) to ‘Aida’(1871)

(i) Expansion.

If one had to encapsulate in a single term the key difference between Verdi's works of this period and those of the previous one, ‘expansion’ would be a strong contender. Almost all the operas are far longer than any up to La traviata, and added length routinely brought an expansion of the cast-list – rather than the classic ‘love triangle’, more principals and secondary characters vie for attention – and often a broadening of the geographical sweep of the plot, with more opportunities for (increasingly, obligations to provide) orchestral depiction of changed ambience and couleur locale. The sheer volume of sound also increased: voices, particularly male voices, tended to be heavier and so less agile, coloratura passages becoming an almost exclusively female domain; and these vocal changes were linked to the increasing size of orchestras, and the extra power of individual instruments, in particular the lower brass. Generic boundaries also broadened, with a mixture of comic and serious styles within the same work becoming common. With the advent of new technologies, particularly in lighting, staging practices became more elaborate (and sometimes more cumbersome), and detailed disposizioni sceniche (production books, after the fashion of French livrets de mise en scène) began to appear, offering an exhaustive account of stage movement and scenic effect. In short, more and more performers crowded on to ever more elaborately bedecked stages; and they sang louder and louder, at greater and greater length. Theatres expanded their auditoriums and stage space whenever possible, increasing the numbers of people that could attend a performance.

Of course, these changes echoed a general shift in Italian opera, indeed in European opera as a whole. The reasons behind such changes will always be complex, but in the case of Italy, which became a modern nation state in 1861, one of the most powerful was an increasing desire, in both creators and audiences, to feel ‘international’, to enter the ‘modern’ world. The most important musical model in attaining this desire was the type of grand opera associated with that most cosmopolitan of European cities, Paris. So Italian opera, perhaps for the first time in its history, began to fashion itself along ‘foreign’ lines. But there were other, perhaps equally important reasons. One was the development of an operatic ‘repertory’, a body of works that continued to be revived even after they became old-fashioned in style. Rather than having constantly to produce new works, composers could now invest greater time on each creation; what is more, increased copyright protection (particularly after 1865) ensured that they could earn substantial amounts from revivals of such ‘repertory’ operas.

Verdi was actively involved with these fundamental changes, indeed such was his primacy in Italian opera that he almost inevitably led the way. But he was nevertheless aware that progress came at a price. In a famous letter of the late 1860s to the Parisian librettist and opera director Camille Du Locle, he voiced serious doubts about the Parisian way:

Everyone wants to express an opinion, to voice a doubt; and the composer who lives in that atmosphere of doubt for any length of time cannot help but be somewhat shaken in his convictions and end up revising, adjusting, or, to put it more precisely, ruining his work. In this way, one ultimately finds in one's hands not a unified opera but a mosaic; and, beautiful as it may be, it is still a mosaic. You will argue that the Opéra has produced a string of masterpieces in this manner. You may call them masterpieces all you want, but permit me to say that they would be much more perfect if the patchwork and the adjustments were not felt all the time.

The letter places the blame squarely on staging conditions in Paris, in particular the collaborative nature of the enterprise; Verdi goes on to say that the situation in Italy was, at least for someone of his reputation, different – there the composer was assured of absolute control. But the problem was at least as much internal – within the very nature of ‘modern’ opera – as it was external; opera had become too complex to be under any single person's jurisdiction. Verdi's works, whether created in Italy or elsewhere, were no exception.

Verdi, Giuseppe, §6: Operas: ‘Les vêpres siciliennes’ (1855) to ‘Aida’(1871)

(ii) Composition.

The genesis, and thus to a certain extent the aesthetic premises, of a Verdi opera of this period had changed a little from those in the earlier period, the principal difference being that the composer's burgeoning reputation now allowed him greater artistic freedom. He was besieged by offers from the major theatres of Italy, Europe and beyond, and could choose the venue and subject of any new opera. He was also free to refuse commissions much more often than he had been in the hectic 1840s, as he could live from accumulated wealth for long periods. But when he did work the old patterns remained. Although with the rise of the repertory system singing style was becoming more homogenous, Verdi was still wary of committing himself to a subject before the principal singers had been engaged, refusing to sign a contract for La forza del destino, for example, before the company had been fixed. He still composed by way of a prose scenario to clarify the musical forms, a libretto that reflected those forms, a continuity draft and then a ‘skeleton score’, and finally an orchestration of that score, this last stage still often completed near to the date of the première. He continued to compose with great facility and, allowing for the vastly increased length of several of these operas, probably took no longer drafting the operas than he had when writing his earlier works.

On the surface at least, the type of subject he chose was also unchanged: he remained loyal to Schiller and also to the greater and lesser lights of Romantic melodrama. Towards the end of the period, however, there is evidence of a decisive move away from melodramatic extremes. In revising Macbeth in 1865, for example, he replaced the final, onstage death scene with a Victory Chorus; more telling still, in the 1869 revision of La forza del destino, he replaced the bloody dénouement (in which the tenor flings himself from a precipice) with an ensemble of religious consolation. This move away from melodrama is part of a larger change in the dramatic and stylistic scope of his operas. Verdi now repeatedly called for more variety in his operatic subjects, and he castigated his earlier operas as one-dimensional. He strove to blend or juxtapose comic and tragic scenes and genres (notably in Un ballo in maschera and La forza del destino) and to explore greater extremes of musical and dramatic ambience.

In his dealings with librettists Verdi became if anything more exigent. Even from French librettists he demanded important revisions (Scribe, his collaborator on Les vêpres siciliennes, did not always comply). In his Italian operas he sometimes reduced the task of the librettist to that of a versifier. For example, Piave set to work on Simon Boccanegra according to precise instructions: Verdi supplied a complete prose sketch of the action, one so detailed that he insisted that it (rather than a libretto draft) be submitted to the censors for approval. In the case of Un ballo in maschera and Aida, Antonio Somma and Antonio Ghislanzoni (both inexperienced in libretto-writing) received a huge volume of advice on every aspect of the task.

Verdi, Giuseppe, §6: Operas: ‘Les vêpres siciliennes’ (1855) to ‘Aida’(1871)

(iii) Dramatic forms.

Were we to judge solely from Verdi's correspondence, it would seem that this period saw the composer seeking radical alternatives to the fixed dramatic forms that had characterized his early operas. In negotiations over a possible setting of King Lear, for example, he more than once voiced his need for entirely new structures, and in discussing Un ballo in maschera, he warned the Neapolitan impresario Torelli that Scribe's libretto (on which the opera would be loosely based) ‘has the conventional modes of all operas, a thing that I have always disliked and now find insufferable’. However, these radical epistolary statements are better taken as hortatory rather than prescriptive: a way of encouraging his librettists not to lapse into the merely routine. When it came to the discussion of concrete detail, Verdi often continued to think along traditional lines, and the eventual librettos for Re Lear and Un ballo in maschera are largely constructed in the conventional manner. As in the earlier period, the bulk of Verdi's operatic music remains definable within traditional formal types, although his tendency to manipulate these types according to the particular dramatic situation became ever more extreme.

The most fragile unit of the old, multi-movement structure was the cabaletta (which, in its ensemble form as stretta, had already disappeared from certain finales in the 1840s). When Verdi revised Macbeth in 1865, one of the most prominent casualties was Lady Macbeth's Act 2 cabaletta, and a similar fate would greet Amelia's ‘Il palpito deh frena’ (Simon Boccanegra Act 1) when that opera was revised in the 1880s. Verdi was also inclined to shorten cabalettas (for example in the Henri-Montfort duet of Les vêpres siciliennes Act 3) making them nothing more than a fast coda section with no independent thematic ideas, or even omitting them entirely, ending the number with some stage action or declamatory passage (as in the Boccanegra-Fiesco duet in the prologue of Simon Boccanegra), or with a final, climactic melody (as in Riccardo's aria in Act 3 of Un ballo in maschera). But, in particular with the earlier movements of set pieces, his usual practice was to continue those complex expansions and manipulations found in Leonora's aria-with-Miserere in Act 4 of Il trovatore, or the Violetta-Germont duet in La traviata Act 2; the multi-movement form became extremely flexible, and was thus able more powerfully to articulate important stages in the dramatic development. A magnificient example is the ‘seduction’ duet between Amelia and Riccardo in Act 2 of Un ballo in maschera, which charts the rising passion of the lovers in a succession of contrasting ‘dialogue’ movements before closing with a cabaletta a due; and there are several classic illustrations of this internal renewal of form in the last opera of this period, Aida, which boasts a magnificient series of grand duets, each traceable to traditional patterns but each offering a profoundly individual solution to the dramatic situation it underpins.

It is entirely in keeping with Verdi's ambivalent position towards formal conventions that, even as the various ‘movements’ of set pieces became less and less predictable, he sought ever more vivid ways of using the moments of transition between one movement and the next to articulate dramatic turning points. One outward manifestation of this search was his coining of the term ‘parola scenica’, a ‘scenic utterance’ (typically a few short words) that would be declaimed immediately before a lyrical set piece, making verbally manifest the key issues of a dramatic situation (he described it to Ghislanzoni as a device that ‘sculpts and renders clear and evident the situation’). Utterances such as Amonasro's ‘Dei Faraoni tu sei la schiava!’ in his Act 3 duet with Aida signal with a violent injection of musical prose that a new stage of the dramatic conflict, and a new lyrical stage of the set piece, is to ensue. Although the technique clearly owes something to the already well-established aesthetics of melodrama, it also makes manifest the way in which Verdi's operatic aesthetic was becoming more dependent on isolated verbal effects to articulate an increasingly ‘prosaic’ musical drama.

Although examples in which traditional structures can still be found constitute the main stylistic line, there are, especially in the French operas, passages where a new aesthetic emerges. Arias such as Philip II's ‘Elle ne m'aime pas’ (Don Carlos Act 4) show comparatively little tendency to formal partition, and are better regarded as descendants of the great ariosos of Verdi's youth, especially those for Macbeth and Rigoletto. Some duets go in the same direction: the Henri-Montfort confrontation in Act 3 of Les vêpres siciliennes departs strikingly from Italian formal practice. In numbers such as the Elisabeth-Don Carlos duet in Act 2 of Don Carlos it may even be nugatory to search for remnants of traditional forms: the musical discourse follows in minute and constantly changing configuration the ebb and flow of the confrontation, creating a kind of ‘musical prose’ (or, as Verdi would call it, musical Dramma – the capital D important) that was rapidly becoming the norm in European opera.

Verdi, Giuseppe, §6: Operas: ‘Les vêpres siciliennes’ (1855) to ‘Aida’(1871)

(iv) Lyric prototype.

The proliferation of lyric types towards the end of the previous period continues into this one, with the influence of French operatic forms increasingly evident. While solo statements within duets and ensembles frequently retain the old AA'BA'' form, full-scale aria movements commonly show a typically French ternary form, with larger A sections (often themselves based on the old ‘lyric prototype’) flanking a looser, declamatory B section. Amelia's ‘Come in quest'ora bruna’ (Simon Boccanegra Act 1) is a fine example of this form at its most extended; the classic condensed example is Radames's ‘Celeste Aida’ (Aida Act 1), which brings back elements of the B material to fashion a delicate coda.

When Verdi chose to retain the old-fashioned Italian model, he usually did so for characters in old-fashioned melodramatic situations: Posa's ‘C'est mon jour’ in Don Carlos Act 4 is an obvious example. And frequently he made telling changes, ones indicative of a general shift in his lyric language. In Don Carlo's ‘Urna fatal’ (La forza del destino Act 3), the harmonic openness at the start of each lyric segment undermines the AA'BC form, encouraging us to hear the first two sections as one limb, and thus as the first part of a larger, ternary structure.

While the move towards larger, looser periods underlies much of Verdi's music during this period, he also continued to experiment in the opposite direction: following the example of ‘Caro nome’, he was occasionally encouraged by the dramatic situation to construct lyric movements of extreme formal simplicity. The final section of the Aida-Radames duet (Aida Act 4) is a most telling example (ex.3). This passage, first sung by Aida, is repeated literally by Radames and then repeated again by both characters in unison. The energy is, as it were, turned inwards, the extreme angularity and sheer difficulty of the vocal line forming an uncanny complement to the well-nigh obsessive formal repetition.

Verdi, Giuseppe, §6: Operas: ‘Les vêpres siciliennes’ (1855) to ‘Aida’(1871)

(v) Harmony, tinta, local colour.

In comparison with that of his French and German contemporaries, Verdi's harmonic language remained for the most part within a firm diatonic framework. However, the musical surface of operas became increasingly complex. Devices seen only exceptionally in the early operas – passages of rootless chromaticism, sudden shifts into remote keys (notably by way of unprepared 6-4 chords), a tendency to add surprising harmonic colour to much-used vocal sonorities – now become the norm. Nor are such devices so frequently subordinate to a firmly diatonic melody. Even in conventional arias such as Posa's ‘C’est mon jour’, the vocal line may now be co-opted into a colouristic chromatic shift, creating a melody that makes little sense without its harmonic underpinning (ex.4). The effect, out of context, may sound wildly empirical; but, unlike some parallel moments in the earlier operas, these daring harmonic shifts are often prepared locally. In the present case the slideslip onto a 6-4 chord of G major halfway through the third bar (G minor would have been conventionally lachrymose) is foreshadowed by a tonicization of G minor in the preceding B section).

The ‘preparation’ of such moments may spread further still. For example, in ‘C'est mon jour’ the shift up a semitone to an unexpected major-mode sonority can be traced back through the preceding recitative and, by means of motivic transformations there, ultimately linked to the solemn chanting of the monks that begins Act 2 (‘Charles-Quint, l'auguste Empereur’), which is recalled orchestrally at the start of Act 5, and ends the entire drama. On a more local but more immediately perceptible level, the unusual harmonic span in the first limb of ‘Celeste Aida’, which moves from B major to D major, only to shift back to B at the start of the next limb (ex.5), is anticipated by unmediated juxtapositions between and around these chords in the preceding scene, first in the recitative between Ramfis and Radames that begins the action, and then in Radames's recitative immediately before the aria.

These moments (and there are many more) contribute to the tinta of an opera, its overall sense of musical identity; but there remains little evidence of more purposeful and wide-ranging harmonic organization, still less of long-range ‘goal direction’. Indeed, the relative broadness of dramatic scope and looseness of construction among these operas (what Verdi might have called their mosaic tendencies) works against even that patterned juxtaposition of tonal regions or melodic types found in operas such as Macbeth or Il trovatore. Occasionally a key centre or progression may briefly shoulder the burden of semantic weight: the key of D in Un ballo in maschera, for example, is persistently associated with the death of the protagonist, and the opera also makes much of juxtapositions between the major and minor mode; but the continuing formal fixity of Verdi's musical language militates against programmatic use of such devices, and they never approach an important level of ‘structural’ significance.

There is no doubt, however, that recurring motifs become an increasingly vital aspect of Verdian tinta, though one should again be cautious in making claims for their centrality – certainly nothing like a Wagnerian leitmotif technique is ever attempted. A case in point is La forza del destino, in which the presence of recurring themes, in particular the main theme of the overture, frequently dubbed a ‘destiny’ or ‘fate’ motif, is sometimes advanced to exemplify the score's ‘musical unity’. Perhaps this is so, but one could also see such elements as giving a degree of musical connectedness to a score that in other respects conspicuously lacks the cohesion Verdi so surely achieved in his middle-period works. The most thoroughgoing use of recurring themes is in Aida, but even there thematic appearances sharply diminish towards the end of the opera. Far from emerging through developmental chains to become centrally expressive of the drama (as they can in Wagner's later operas), these themes have a fixity that tends to restrict them to the expository stages of the plot: they are points from which the musical drama develops and rarely become implicated in the great turning-points and clarificatory moments.

The use of local colour also becomes an ever more important connective device, perhaps as a necessary corrective to the expansion of dramatic scope and mood. The final act of Les vêpres siciliennes begins with three ‘atmospheric’ numbers (the chorus ‘Célébrons ensemble’, Hélène's sicilienne ‘Merci, jeunes amies’, and Henri's mélodie ‘La brise souffle au loin’) in which the plot is barely advanced but local colour is richly explored; the last act of Aroldo seems as much concerned with its startling new ambience as with the dénouement of the plot. What is more, several of the operas take on a particular colour intimately associated with its setting – the sea images of Simon Boccanegra and the exotic Iberian character of Don Carlos. Again, the climax comes in the exoticism of Aida, arguably the first Italian opera in which depiction of geographical location becomes an essential aspect of the musical atmosphere. This added dimension is intimately bound up with Verdi's increasingly sophisticated use of the orchestra. This period saw the rise of more disciplined, conductor-led orchestras in Italy and, particularly after his experience with the young Angelo Mariani at the première of Aroldo, Verdi was quick to exploit the opportunities this development provided for more complex instrumental effects. By the time of Aida, he was capable of setting up a classic ‘nature’ scene such as the prelude to Act 3, in which the elements of harmony, melody and rhythm are all subsumed under a mantle of evocative orchestral colour.

Verdi, Giuseppe, §6: Operas: ‘Les vêpres siciliennes’ (1855) to ‘Aida’(1871)

(vi) Influence.

One might assume that the primary influences on the young Verdi, namely his Italian predecessors, would now have faded; and clearly his new musical style was very different from anything in Donizetti or Bellini. However, this period offers some striking ‘reminiscences’: the opening bars of the orchestral introduction to Ulrica's ‘Re dell'abisso (Un ballo in maschera Act 1) is virtually identical to that of Essex's ‘prison’ scene in Roberto Devereux Act 2; La favorite and La forza del destino share several ecclesiastical effects; and the famous triumphal scene in Aida is anticipated by a similar moment in Poliuto. These similarities (and there are others) are probably less acts of deliberate homage than evidence that Verdi was still ready to draw on the lingua franca of Ottocento opera, in particular when ‘characteristic’ effects were called for, as in all these cases. Rather different, though, is an aria such as Leonora's ‘Pace, pace, mio Dio!’ from La forza del destino Act 4, which sounds like a distant homage to Bellini, whose ‘long, long, long melodies’ Verdi had so admired but found antithetical to his rhythmically direct early manner. He could now on occasions achieve Bellinian length and, perhaps more significantly, enrich the vocal line with those declamatory asides and harmonic shifts for which Bellini was so justly famous.

However, the most important new influences came from France, in particular from Meyerbeer, the acknowledged master of the grand Parisian manner. This debt is most obvious in Les vêpres siciliennes, Verdi's attempt to meet Meyerbeer on his own ground, which shows a tendency towards the German composer's ‘musical prose’ in a lengthening and fragmenting of melodic lines. On the other hand, this tendency can also be seen in the Italian operas, endecasillabi and other lengthy verse lines becoming more common in lyrical numbers; and there the Meyerbeerian tone is harder to locate. Undoubtedly the new level of orchestral detail was in part inspired by Parisian models, although even at his most elaborate Verdi never attempted those minute nuances of detail for which Meyerbeer was so famous. Nor was grand opera the only reference. Un ballo in maschera demonstrates that Verdi also took a lively interest in the opéra comique tradition, and found ways of using this very different style as a foil for his more serious inspirations.

Verdi, Giuseppe, §6: Operas: ‘Les vêpres siciliennes’ (1855) to ‘Aida’(1871)

(vii) Individual operas.

Verdi's first creative period was earlier characterized as striking a balance, sometimes precarious, between conservatism in formal matters and a continual desire to experiment with dramatic types. The same could be said of this period, although with changed emphasis. Formal continuities certainly remain, but the manner in which each opera strikes new ground is more thoroughgoing, biting deeper into the dramatic and musical fabric and embracing further aspects of style. Verdi's operas certainly had ‘individuality’ in the 1840s, but they were also part of a close-knit family; now each work creates its own world, forming its own terms of communicative reference with the audience.

In many ways the first opera, Les vêpres siciliennes, constitutes the most the radical break with the past, being difficult to compare with any of the earlier operas. It was verging on a pastiche experiment for Verdi, an attempt to write a different kind of opera, one that would compete in the arena of Parisian grand opera. This entailed aspects as large as the five-act structure typical of the genre, with a corresponding weakening of concentration on individuals; but it also engaged stylistic traits as basic as adaptation to French prose rhythms – not only in recitative but in lyric forms, where the relative weakness of French accentuation encouraged Meyerbeerian diffuseness, a slackening of the characteristic rhythmic incisiveness of Verdi's early manner. There were of course continuities, not least in moments of individual contemplation such as Montfort's ‘Au sein de la puissance’, in which Verdi's earlier experiments with French lyric form are powerfully wedded to the arioso style of his most famous baritone protagonists.

With the next opera, Simon Boccanegra, we find yet another radical departure, both from Vêpres and the last Italian opera, La traviata. There is little trace of the Gallic mode, whether the salon-like one of Traviata or the more grandiose explorations of Vêpres, but instead an exploration of the gloomy side of the Italian tradition. This is above all striking in the cast-list: there are no secondary female roles, but a preponderance of low male voices. Most important, however, after the lyricism of La traviata and the extended ‘musical prose’ of Vêpres, Boccanegra is characterized by an extreme economy of vocal writing, with the declamatory mode more prominent than ever before. This is most obvious in the music of the baritone protagonist: Boccanegra could be compared to Rigoletto in having no solo arias, instead expressing his inner thoughts through declamatory ariosos; but Rigoletto was depicted thus to emphasize his ‘otherness’, surrounded as he is by the lyricism of Gilda and the Duke. Boccanegra's spare language is, on the other hand, the standard discourse of the opera, to which the secondary male characters so important to the opera's atmosphere all tend.

After the interlude of Aroldo comes another volte-face. If Simon Boccanegra is characterized by a single-mindedness of tone and purpose, Un ballo in maschera is a masterpiece of variety, of the blending of stylistic elements. What is more, after Verdi's experiment with a ‘pure’ version of French grand opera in Les vêpres siciliennes, in Ballo the gestures are predominantly towards the lighter side of French opera, in particular the opéra comique of Auber and his contemporaries. The juxtaposition of this style with a newly intense, interior version of Italian serious opera is extremely bold, particularly in sections such as the finales of Act 1 or Act 2 (the so-called ‘laughing’ chorus), in both of which the styles meet head on with little mediation. Just as important, this new stylistic breadth brings with it a corresponding balance of musical personalities. At the outer limits lie two extremes: Oscar is throughout cast in an unambiguously Gallic mould of light comedy; Ulrica's musical personality is drawn from the darkest and most austere vocabulary of Italian melodrama. Between these extremes lie Renato and Amelia, characters cast in the Italian style, fixed in their emotional range, but from time to time inflected by the influence of their surroundings. And at the centre is Riccardo, who freely partakes of both worlds, and who mediates between them so movingly and persuasively. In this sense the clash of styles in Ballo is intimately written onto the key confrontations of the drama.

Like Ballo, La forza del destino attempts boldly to incorporate a variety of styles, but the mixture is far less controlled, with little of the previous opera's balance. The famously episodic plot and extended geographical and temporal span is matched by an extraordinary range of operatic manners: frankly post-Rossinian buffa with Fra Melitone; frankly opéra comique with Preziosilla; Meyerbeerian scenes of religious grandeur; and at the centre a classic love-triangle in the best Italian tradition. The opera is undoubtedly Verdi's most daring attempt at mosaic drama, and is, unusually for Verdi, fuelled by an abstract idea – the ‘fate’ (destino) of the title – as much as by the progress of individual characters. In spite of the liberal recurring themes, we will look in vain for the unifying colours of a Rigoletto or Il trovatore, or even the patterned juxtaposition of Un ballo in maschera. It is surely significant that when Verdi decided to revise the opera in the late 1860s he rearranged certain sequences in the action, even – in Act 3 – transferring passages from one part of the action to another. And the revision's radical alteration of the dénouement, replacing the fatalità of the original melodramatic ending with a trio of religious consolation, is, rather than a clarification of the drama, merely the replacing of one possible stylistic strand with another.

Don Carlos, Verdi's second and final attempt to write a French grand opera, both tends towards the mosaic and has a famously unstable text, the work changing shape significantly during its rehearsal period and then over several years after its first performance. After the experiences of the previous three Italian operas, Verdi was more secure in his handling of the large French canvas, particularly in matching his lyrical gifts to the French language. However, difficulties remained in establishing the comparative weight of the various principal characters. Philip and Eboli are perhaps the most successful and well-rounded portraits, though arguably Elisabeth achieves her proper sense of importance by means of her magnificent fifth-act aria and duet. Posa's musical physiognomy is strangely old-fashioned: his music almost all dates from the earliest layers of the score, and even then recalls the Verdi of the early 1850s (or 1840s). On the other hand, it could be argued that this sense of anachronism is in keeping with Posa's dramatic position – as a nostalgic look at youthful days of action within the context of sterner political realities. With Carlos, however, few would deny an unsolved problem: his musical portrait never seems to find a centre, a true nexus of expression such as each of the other principals achieves. It is perhaps an indication of our changing views and tastes that, in spite of these difficulties, Don Carlos has become one of the best-loved and most respected of Verdi's operas.

Lastly there was yet another change, again in a surprising direction: the outward structure of Aida is remarkably conservative. We return to the classic love triangle of Verdi's first manner and – just as important – a return to earlier ideas of musical characterization. In common with the characters of Il trovatore and many earlier works, the principal roles in Aida – with the partial exception of Amneris – hardly develop, tending to remain within their conventional vocal personalities as the plot moves their emotions hither and thither. As mentioned earlier, Aida also shows a consistent attempt to renew (rather than discard) the standard forms of Ottocento opera, with very few essays into the ‘musical prose’ found elsewhere. On the other hand, there is one important aspect in which Aida remains the most radical and ‘modern’ of Verdi's scores to date: in its use of local colour. Aida, constantly alluding to its ambience in harmony and instrumentation, is an important indication of the influence local colour would have over fin-de-siècle opera, and an object lesson in the delicacy and control with which this colour could be applied to the standard forms and expressive conventions of Italian opera.

Verdi, Giuseppe, §6: Operas: ‘Les vêpres siciliennes’ (1855) to ‘Aida’(1871)

(viii) Reception and politics.

As the 1850s unfolded, Verdi's pre-eminence in Italian music, and his international reputation, became ever more secure; although many of the early operas had been forgotten, Rigoletto, Il trovatore and La traviata quickly became cornerstones of the newly-emerging Italian operatic repertory. This did not, however, stop a continuation of the composer's occasional clashes with the operatic censor; indeed, the revolution-shy 1850s created more obstacles than ever. Les vêpres siciliennes caused continual difficulties in Italy, and was often performed in a bowdlerized version (as Giovanna de Guzman). More troublesome still was Un ballo in maschera. As soon as a synopsis reached the Neapolitan censors, it became clear that the assassination of a head of state would not be permitted, and even when this aspect was altered, there was still the problem of Amelia's adultery (the censor suggested she should become a sister rather than a wife of Riccardo). Negotiations broke down, and the opera eventually saw its première at Rome's Teatro Apollo, even then not without a change in locale being enforced.

Despite these irritations, each new Verdi opera generated enormous interest, both in Italy and in the international press. By the mid 1860s, however, it gradually became clear that Verdi's more recent works were not duplicating his successes of the early 1850s. Neither Les vêpres siciliennes nor Don Carlos established themselves at the Opéra, and both had difficulties in transplanting to the Italian stage. Simon Boccanegra was poorly received and Un ballo in maschera and La forza del destino made their way comparatively slowly. Part of the problem undoubtedly lay in the seeming conservatism of Verdi's new creations. Although operas such as Il trovatore had quickly attained ‘classic’ status, a new generation of Italians was emerging, with young artistic revolutionaries such as Arrigo Boito calling for an end to the insular, ‘formulaic’ musical dramas of the past, and in 1864 announcing that Meyerbeer had ‘caused Italian operas to collapse by the hundreds like the bricks of the walls of Jericho’. Italian intellectuals began to read Wagner, and Italian theatres began to open their doors to French (and later to German) operas.

The paradox of this uncertain reaction to Verdi's ‘new manner’ was that it went hand-in-hand with his institution as a national figure beyond the operatic world. In 1859, his name was briefly taken up as an acrostic message of Italian nationalistic aspirations (‘Viva VERDI’ standing for ‘Viva Vittorio Emanuele Re D'Italia’) and by the late 1860s certain pieces of early Verdi had begun to be canonized through supposed association with the revolutionary struggles of the 1840s. This was particularly true of the chorus ‘Va pensiero’, whose rapidly achieved iconic status was encouraged by the composer, who reserved for it a central, revelatory role in the ‘official’ story of his early career he allowed to be disseminated. Such myth-making was perhaps made more urgent by the economic collapses and social tensions of the newly-formed Italian state, engendering as it did a nostalgia for a past age in which Italians had been united against a ‘foreign’ enemy.

In the face of these momentous cultural and political developments, and despite periodic bursts of professional and social activity, Verdi chose strategic withdrawal: physically behind the walls of Sant'Agata; mentally into an image of himself as a rough, untutored man of the soil, the peasant from Roncole, the self-made man, an ‘authentic’ Italian willing to set himself against the tide of cosmopolitan sophistication he saw washing around him. It was overwhelmingly this image that he offered to those interviewers who now began to pester him for his pronouncements on cultural matters and for biographical tidbits; the resulting self-portrait was one he sedulously cultivated (along with his farm lands) for the rest of his long life.

7. Interregnum: the 1870s and the ‘Requiem’ (1874).

After Aida in 1871 there was to be no Verdian operatic première for 16 years. The creative stagnation was not, of course, quite so complete. In 1873, while supervising performances of Aida at the Teatro S Carlo in Naples, Verdi wrote and had privately performed the String Quartet in E minor. And in 1874 came the Messa da Requiem, composed in honour of Alessandro Manzoni. But the fact remains that the 1870s and early 80s, years in which we might imagine Verdi at the height of his creative powers, saw no new operas. The reasons for this silence are of course complex: his increasing financial security no longer made work a necessity; more of his energies went into the development of substantial land holdings, and – increasingly – into various charitable causes. He also spent considerable time supervising and directing performances of Aida and the Requiem, in 1875 undertaking a mini-European tour (Paris, London, Vienna) with the latter work. At the same time, his personal life underwent an upheaval brought about through a continuing public scandal that caused much private anguish between him and his partner. The reason was his relationship with the soprano Teresa Stolz, who had been the first Leonora in the 1869 version of La forza del destino, the first Aida in the Milanese première of that opera (1872), and for whom Verdi wrote the soprano solo in the Requiem. Matters between her, Strepponi and Verdi came to a crisis in 1876 but eventually resolved with the status quo intact, Stolz remaining a close friend of Verdi, perhaps also of Strepponi, for the rest of their lives.

But surely the most serious obstacle to continued creative activity was an increasing sense of disenchantment with the direction of newly-cosmopolitan Italy. Early in the 1870s Verdi was asked for advice about a revised curriculum for the reformed Italian conservatories. His suggestions were austere in the extreme: students should submit to daily doses of fugue and study only the old Italian masters; budding composers ‘must attend few performances of modern operas, and avoid becoming fascinated either by their many beauties of harmony and orchestration or by the diminished 7th chord’. On many other occasions he voiced his discontent at the cosmopolitan direction Italian music was taking, in particular its newest ‘fascination’ for the Germanic and ‘symphonic’. It is easy to see how such a reaction further fuelled the reluctance to compose which Verdi had already shown in the 1860s. It would take all the ingenuity of his closest friends to coax him from this self-imposed retirement.

The 1870s did, though, produce the Requiem, and that is no small achievement. As already mentioned, the origins of the piece began in 1868 with Verdi's suggestion for a composite Requiem in honour of Rossini, to be written by ‘the most distinguished Italian composers’. This was duly completed but plans to perform the piece came to nothing; in April 1873 Verdi's contribution, the ‘Libera me’ movement, was returned to him. It seems likely that about that time he decided to write an entire Requiem himself, a decision perhaps precipitated, perhaps strengthened, by the death in May of Alessandro Manzoni, to whom the work was dedicated.

In the circumstances, it is probably inevitable that the theatrical nature of the Requiem should be a principal matter for debate: Hans von Bülow famously referred to it as an ‘Oper in Kirchengewande’ (opera in ecclesiastical dress) even before its first performance. Such sentiments can only be strengthened by the knowledge that a duet for Carlos and Philip, discarded from Don Carlos during rehearsals in Paris, formed the basis of the ‘Lacrymosa’ section of the Dies irae. More operatic still is the manner in which the soloists occasionally take on what can only be called ‘personalities’. This is most noticeable in the final ‘Libera me’, in which the soprano, isolated from the other soloists, seems in active dialogue with both the chorus and the orchestra, for all the world like a beleaguered heroine trying finally to make sense of the world in which she has been cast.

On the other hand we should not exaggerate. The main theme of the ‘Lacrymosa’ may have originated in an opera, but it develops in a markedly different fashion, without the vocal contrasts that almost invariably fuel Verdian musical drama. In fact, none of the ensemble scenes or choruses (of which there is an unoperatic preponderance) remotely resembles the texture of their operatic equivalents, in particular by their frequent employment of contrapuntal writing and by the relative lack of differentiation between individuals. What is more, the levels of purely musical connection (particularly in motivic and harmonic gestures) are far greater than Verdi would have deemed appropriate in a drama, where contrast and tension between characters is so important a part of the effect.

But the presence of that counterpoint may perhaps recall those admonitions to future conservatory pupils, to study fugue rather than ‘modern [i.e. foreign or foreign-influenced] operas’, which might in turn recall that Verdi's original idea for a composite Requiem was as a celebration of Italian art and artists during a period he thought of as in cultural crisis: as he said in his first letter about the project, ‘I would like no foreign hand, no hand alien to art, no matter how powerful, to lend his assistance. In this case I would withdraw at once from the association’. In that sense, the decision to write a Requiem, and thus to celebrate through counterpoint a glorious era in Italy's musical past, makes the work as ‘political’ as any of the composer's operas.

8. Life, 1879–1901.

In June 1879 Giulio Ricordi and Arrigo Boito mentioned to Verdi the possibility of his composing a version of Shakespeare's Othello, surely a canny choice given Verdi's lifelong veneration for the English playwright, and his attempts after Macbeth to tackle further Shakespearean topics, notably King Lear. Verdi showed cautious enthusiasm for the new project, and by the end of the year Boito had produced a draft libretto, one full of ingenious new rhythmic devices but with an extremely firm dramatic thread. After almost ten years without an operatic project, Verdi again started to create musical drama.

The project was long in the making. First came two other tasks, extensive revisions to Simon Boccanegra (effected with the help of Boito) and to Don Carlos, both of which can be seen in retrospect as trial runs for the new type of opera Verdi felt he must create in Italy's new artistic climate. After many hesitations and interruptions, Otello was finally performed at La Scala in February 1887. Some two years later, Boito suggested a further opera largely based on Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor. Verdi was immediately enthusiastic about the draft scenario Boito concocted, made relatively few structural suggestions, and by August 1889 announced that he was writing a comic fugue (quite possibly the fugue that ends Falstaff). Composer and librettist worked closely together during the winter 1889–90, and by the spring of 1890 the libretto of Falstaff was complete. As with Otello, composing the opera took a considerable time, or rather involved short bursts of activity interspersed with long fallow periods. The opera was first performed, again at La Scala, in February 1893. These years also saw the appearance of various sacred vocal pieces, some of which were later collected under the title Quattro pezzi sacri.

Verdi continued to divide his life between Milan, Genoa and Sant'Agata, where he oversaw his lands and added to his property. In his last years, he devoted a considerable amount of money and energy to two philanthropic projects: the building of a hospital at Villanova sull'Arda Piacenza and the founding of a home for retired musicians, the Casa di Riposo, in Milan. In November 1897 Strepponi died at Sant'Agata. In December 1900 Verdi made arrangements for his youthful compositions (including, one assumes, those ‘marches for band by the hundred’) to be burnt after his death, and left Sant'Agata for Milan. On 21 January he suffered a stroke from which he died on 27 January. He was buried next to his wife in Milan's Cimitero Monumentale; a month later, amid national mourning, their bodies were moved to the Casa di Riposo. Before the procession left the Cimitero, Arturo Toscanini conducted a massed choir. They sang, of course, ‘Va pensiero’.

9. The last style: ‘Otello’ (1887) and ‘Falstaff’ (1893).

(i) An intangible divide.

In spite of the chronological gap, critics have tended to see Verdi's last two operas as a logical continuation (and almost always as the ‘culmination’) of his previous work, thus stressing stylistic continuity across his entire career. There is much to be said for such an approach. Although Verdi was now firmly established as an international figure who could – and did – dictate his own terms, he continued to compose in the old manner: from sketches to continuity draft to ‘skeleton score’ to full orchestration. He also continued to pay careful attention to the singers at his disposal, and was willing to adjust passages to accommodate them: the Act 2 quartet in Otello was transposed down a half-step in the passage from continuity draft to autograph, clearly to ease its tessitura; and the role of Quickly in Falstaff was amplified at a late stage after Verdi had heard (and approved of) the singer destined to create the role. Verdi also continued his unshakable allegiance to the grandest of the traditional Ottocento set pieces, the Largo concertato, examples of which occur in the revised Boccanegra, Otello and Falstaff.

However, the strain and difficulty with which a suitable concertato was eventually accommodated into Otello indicates a fundamental change in Verdian dramaturgy. At some time during the fallow period between Aida and Otello we might hazard that Verdi passed an intangible divide, and now saw the basis of his musical drama residing in continuous ‘action’ rather than in a patterned juxtaposition of ‘action’ and ‘reflection’. (It was the difficulty of embedding comprehensible ‘action’ into the Act 3 concertato of Otello that continued to pose problems, even causing Verdi to revise the number for the opera's Parisian première in 1894.) The long Act 2 duet between Otello and Iago is a good example of how the new hierarchy worked. The duet itself cannot usefully be parsed as a set piece in contrasting ‘movements’; and the true set pieces – the Credo, Homage Chorus, Quartet and Racconto – are embedded within the larger structure, acting as interruptions rather than points of arrival.

The dynamics of this change, this crossing of the ‘intangible divide’, are intimately linked to Verdi's relationship with his last librettist.

(ii) Verdi and Boito.

It seemed at first an unlikely collaboration, though it started smoothly enough in 1862, when Verdi and Boito worked together briefly on the Inno delle nazioni for the Great London Exhibition. But in the cultural context of the 1860s a more likely exchange occurred a year later. Boito, a leading figure in the scapigliatura, a nascent Italian branch of the bohemian movement, improvised an ode ‘All'arte italiana’ that described the ‘altar’ of Italian art as ‘defiled like the wall of a brothel’. Not surprisingly, Verdi took this personally. Perhaps, though, the acrimony Boito's comment generated holds a key, in that one of the most significant aspects of the Verdi-Boito collaboration was precisely that they came from different generations, and thus had sharply divergent attitudes to the Italian operatic tradition. That the collaboration happened at all is in part thanks to the patient and sensitive manoeuvering of Verdi's publisher Giulio Ricordi; but it also reflects the fact that Boito had mellowed by the late 1870s. His magnum opus, the opera Mefistofele, had failed disastrously at La Scala in 1868, and when he restaged it seven years later, he toned down many of its most radical aspects, replacing them with more traditional operatic solutions. Here was rapprochement of a kind.

But the generational gap remained, and it is hardly surprising that the early days of work on Otello were punctuated by some remarkably basic differences of opinion about the structure of the opera. In Verdi's first letter commenting on Boito's draft libretto, the composer suggested that the ‘dramatic element’ was missing after the Act 3 concertato in which all on stage react to Otello's striking of Desdemona. His solution was a radical departure from Shakespeare in which, true to the theatrical conventions of his past, an external event (a resurgence of the warlike Turks) would lead the musical drama onwards. Boito strongly disagreed: for him Otello was above all a modern, claustrophobic, psychological drama, one that took place essentially within the psyche, in the realm Wagner liked to call that of the ‘inner drama’, a place of dense symbolic meaning in which characters are trapped, deprived of autonomy. To have Otello heroically rally his troops would have shattered the spell. But what is most striking about the difference of opinion is that, as on many other occasions, Verdi – earlier a veritable tyrant in his dealings with librettists – gave way to Boito, trusting the younger man's perception of what modern drama needed. This trust obliged him to do nothing less than re-invent his operatic language, to find a newly flexible mode of musical expression.

(iii) Technical features.

This need for the music to react minutely and spontaneously to constant changes typical of spoken dialogue brought about a loosening of the traditional links between prosody and music. Boito was particularly adept at constructing verses that, although obeying the rules of Italian prosody, could simultaneously be read in a variety of verse metres, thus offering something like the flexibility of a prose libretto. There was also an inevitable decrease in periodic structures, and when aspects of the ‘lyric prototype’ can be found, they are usually placed in a dynamic harmonic context that obscures their origin in Verdi's earlier style. Vestiges of the old Ottocento forms are – with the exception of the Largo concertato, which continued even into Puccini's last works – equally hard to locate. Some have found shards of the old four-movement structure in the Act 1 love duet between Otello and Desdemona; but the divergences and anomalies are apt to make such demonstrations of continuity a little desperate.

On rare occasions, Verdi may have sought to replace these losses with purely musical structures: the sonata-form subtext of the opening scene in Falstaff, or its closing comic fugue, are likely examples, although both forms are, as it were, placed in inverted commas, ironically drawing attention to their structural difference from the norm. The necessary level of purely musical coherence was, however, often supplied by local increases in harmonic, motivic and orchestral activity, all of which carried further the developments seen in the period between Les vêpres siciliennes and Aida. Passages such as the Act 3 orchestral prelude to the revised Don Carlos (1884) show how a short motivic fragment is now sufficient to construct large spans of music, so extensive is Verdi's control over orchestral nuance and chromatic detail.

Clearly, recurring motivic and harmonic aspects are sometimes found on a larger level. The so-called ‘bacio’ theme in Otello, which first occurs near the end of the Act 1 love duet and then appears twice in the final scene of the opera, has a function difficult to compare with previous recurring themes: unlike those in Aida, which fade away as the drama reaches its climax, the final statement of the ‘bacio’ theme seems like a musical summing-up of the dénouement, thus having more in common with famous Puccinian endings, in spite of its restraint. More than this, the ‘bacio’ theme's harmonic character, with its typical late Verdian device of a pre-dominant pause on a tonally distant 6-4 chord, also casts an influence over earlier confrontations between Otello and Desdemona. Other motifs can approach a level of Wagnerian density over shorter spans: the Act 3 prelude to Don Carlos has already been mentioned; the ‘jealousy’ motif that winds through the prelude to Otello Act 3, and the ‘dalle due alle tre’ motif that underpins Ford's famous monologue in Act 2 of Falstaff, are further instances.

(iv) Meanings for the last works.

A common view of Verdi's last works sees them as divorced from everyday concerns, a trope often used in discussing an artist's final creative stage: as one commentator put it, Otello and Falstaff are ‘the old man's toys’. The image chimes well with those famous pictures of Verdi in the 1880s and 90s: the felt hat, the simple frock coat, the all-knowing, gentle smile. So far as Falstaff is concerned, Verdi himself encouraged such interpretations, frequently reiterating in letters and interviews that ‘in writing Falstaff I haven't thought about either theatres or singers. I have written for myself and my own pleasure’. It may be comforting to nurture this picture of serene old age, and it is indeed true that neither of Verdi's last operas much resembles any other work, whether by Verdi or by anyone else. However, there is much evidence suggesting that the composer was far from serene about the political and artistic direction his country was taking, and that the last operas in some ways reflect this dissatisfaction.

Perhaps a key to Otello in this regard is offered in a late letter by Verdi himself:

Desdemona is a part in which the thread, the melodic line, never ceases from the first note to the last. Just as Jago has only to declaim and laugh mockingly, and just as Otello, now the warrior, now the passionate lover, now crushed to the point of baseness, now ferocious like a savage, must sing and shout, so Desdemona must always, always sing.

Taking up the terms of this interpretation, we might suggest that Verdi managed to channel Boito's tendency towards the symbolic and the interior to his own ends, making the conflicts between the main characters in Otello into a story about the violent upheavals of Italian fin-de-siècle musical drama. The opera's principals vocally embody the violently conflicting demands of the lyrical and the declamatory, the old style and the new. Iago, the modern man, is constantly in the declamatory mode – when he sings beautifully, it is merely to deceive; and Desdemona is a symbol of that lost time when bel canto was at the centre of theatrical communication. Otello, like Verdi himself, is caught between the new and the old; but, despite or even because of this, the composer managed to renew himself, perhaps in part by symbolically recreating his creative struggle within the very fabric of the opera's central concerns.

Falstaff, an opera that begins with a mock sonata form and ends with a fugue, is in one sense easier to decode, gesturing as it so vividly does to those admonitions for young Italian composers to study counterpoint and avoid the ‘symphonic’ at all costs. Needless to say, the further we move from large formal units to more detailed technical observations, the less easy it is to fashion such neat parallels. For example, Falstaff is more highly chromatic than any other Verdi opera, but equally it is obsessed by cadence, forever punctuated by unequivocal gestures of closure. Related to this, but on a larger level, is the contrast between the work's enormous variety of expression and looseness of form on the one hand, and on the other its many periods of massive closure, its huge orchestral climaxes that seem to overwhelm what precedes them. Perhaps these matters can cautiously be related to Verdi's complex reaction to musical modernity, to his desire to progress from his own past, harmonically and formally, but also his need aggressively to counter what he saw as the disastrously dispersive tendencies of his younger contemporaries.

Whatever the case, the story does not quite end with Falstaff. During this last period, Verdi wrote a number of religious choral works, some of which were collected under the title Quattro pezzi sacri. It is certainly no accident that in these pieces Verdi made gestures to two figures from the Italian past that he considered central to the cultural unity of the country. Most obviously there are texts by Dante. But in pieces such as the so-called ‘Laudi alla Vergine Maria’, the musical gestures – both in contrapuntal treatment and word painting – are to Palestrina, the composer whose style should in Verdi's view have remained an essential point of departure for Italian musical art. This last, ‘antique’ style might well suggest an old man's retreat from the world; but on another level it speaks yet again of Verdi's passionate concern for the national traditions into which he had been born, and with which he had so constantly engaged.

By the 1930s the ‘Renaissance’ had spread, with revivals of ‘forgotten’ works springing up all over Europe and America. Appropriated by fascists and anti-fascists alike, Verdi's music survived World War II relatively untarnished, as did his reputation as ‘vate del risorgimento’, the bard of Italy's achievement of statehood. In the 1950s and 60s his operas became the core repertory of the global opera industry, and since then the boom shows no signs of losing momentum. ‘Forgotten’ works continue to be revived, and today more Verdi operas are in the repertory than ever before. Verdi continues to inspire performers and audiences to fresh interpretations and renewed energies. It is now hard to imagine an operatic world in which they will cease to do so.

10. Scholarship, dissemination, Verdi in the 20th century.

(i) Scholarship and editions.

Although there continue to be pockets of resistance, it is rare these days to meet with easy dismissals of Verdi's art. One reflection of this new standing is that scholarly attention to his music is now fully respectable. During Verdi's lifetime there were of course many valuable critiques of his work, almost all initially appearing in periodicals. The most influential has been Abramo Basevi's Studio sulle opere di Giuseppe Verdi (1859), which deals in technical detail that, although unusual for the period, chimed well with the analytical concerns of our recent past. 19th-century biographies of Verdi were all of the ‘anecdotal’ kind, the most influential being Arthur Pougin's, which in its Italian translation contained annotations by ‘Folchetto’ (the journalist Jacopo Caponi) that included a – highly unreliable – ‘autobiographical sketch’ supposedly dictated by the composer himself.

The first 60 years of our century saw an indispensable series of epistolary and biographical publications, among them the Copialettere of 1913 and volumes by Gatti, Luzio, Abbiati and Walker. Since the 1960s the most important stimulus has come from the Istituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani in Parma, which has assembled a considerable archive and has published a vast amount of biographical and critical writing. In the 1970s, an American Institute for Verdi Studies was founded at New York University. Much of this activity was brought to a larger audience, and magnificently synthesized, by Julian Budden's three-volume commentary on the operas; the most recent full-scale biography is by Mary Jane Phillips-Matz. The Istituto Nazionale has inaugurated a multi-volume edition of Verdi's correspondence.

The librettos of almost all Verdi's operas were first sold in printed form to those who attended performances, and were usually custom made, containing a cast-list, details of the orchestral and other executants, and the exact literary text performed; towards the end of the 19th century ‘generic’ librettos (not tied to a particular performance) began to replace these valuable documents. No critical edition of Verdi's librettos exists, and the most satisfactory editions remain those published by Ricordi, in particular the (incomplete) series issued recently under the editorship of E. Rescigno. Most modern printings of the texts obscure important information by ignoring the lineation, verse forms and indentations of the original. Tutti i libretti di Verdi (ed. L. Baldacci, Milan, 1975), which contains Italian librettos of all the operas except Stiffelio, has some useful facsimile pages and other illustrations, but also ignores details of the verse layout.

Vocal scores remain the primary means by which the musical text of Verdi's operas is disseminated. First editions usually appeared near the time of the first performance (an exception is that of Un giorno di regno, which appeared c1845). Most were first published by Ricordi, the exceptions being Attila, I masnadieri and Il corsaro (by Lucca); Stiffelio (by Blanchet) and the French operas Jérusalem, Les vêpres siciliennes and Don Carlos (by the Bureau Central de la Musique/Escudier). Vocal scores of the more popular operas were translated into many languages as Verdi's international reputation grew. Another enormously important avenue of dissemination were the numerous published arrangements of the operas (for piano, piano duet, many solo instruments, brass band, etc.) which brought Verdi's music into new domestic and public spaces during the 19th century. This considerable industry was gradually replaced by the gramophone in the 20th century.

Performance material (parts and full scores) at first circulated in manuscript copies. During the latter half of the 19th century Ricordi began to print full scores and (sometimes) parts. The first printed full score (La traviata) appeared in about 1855, and later in the century or during the first half of this century all the operas except Oberto, Un giorno di regno, Alzira, I masnadieri, Jérusalem, Il corsaro and Stiffelio appeared in this format. These editions were, however, for hire only, although some of them have subsequently appeared for sale in ‘pirated’ editions. The first printed full score on public sale was Del Monaco's La traviata (Naples, c1882). In 1913–14, Ricordi published ‘study scores’ of Rigoletto, Il trovatore, La traviata, Un ballo in maschera, Aida, Otello and Falstaff; in the 1980s a study score of La forza del destino appeared. A complete critical edition of the composer's works is in progress, published jointly by the University of Chicago Press and Ricordi under the general editorship of Philip Gossett.

(ii) Reception and posthumous reputation.

By the time Verdi wrote his last operas, he had become a national monument: the premières of Otello and Falstaff were cultural events of almost unprecedented importance, occasioning a flood of publicity all over Europe. Both works, inevitably in the circumstances, were heralded as brilliant successes, but – like so many of the operas after La traviata – neither established a place at the centre of the Italian repertory. The operatic times had changed and, in an era when Wagner and the Italian veristi were making the headlines, Otello and Falstaff, for all their ‘modernity’, were seen as sui generis, unsuitable for the common round of smaller theatres in particular.

So far as performances and purely musical reputation were concerned, the years around the turn of the century represented a low point in Verdi's fortunes. In the increasingly sophisticated, cosmopolitan atmosphere of fin-de-siècle Italy, it became commonplace to find Verdi's musical personality too simple and direct. Although Rigoletto, Il trovatore and La traviata remained the staple of smaller opera houses, they were rarely granted the prestige of important revivals. The situation was little different in other major European centres at the turn of the century. In both England and France, for example, a decisive shift away from Italian opera came in the wake of regular Wagner stagings in the 1880s and 90s. Nor did Verdi have much noticeable influence on younger generations of composers. The case of Puccini is instructive: although by his own admission an early experience of Aida was crucial to his development, Puccini's first operas show very few traces of the Verdian style, deriving predominantly from French models; the influence he struggled to overcome (we can see the struggle at its most intense in the second act of Manon Lescaut) was overwhelmingly that of Wagner.

Although there was some renewed attention to Verdi in his centenary year of 1913, the crucial change in his fortunes began in Weimar Republic Germany. This so-called ‘Verdi Renaissance’ is sometimes traced to the first production of Franz Werfel's version of La forza del destino (Dresden, 1926), or to the publication of Werfel's novel Verdi: Roman der Oper in 1924, but in fact the movement was far too widespread to be attributed to just one figure, with numerous restagings of ‘forgotten’ operas, a considerable periodical literature and several important monographs. As was recognized at the time, the ‘return’ to Verdi had much to do with an awareness that opera was in ‘crisis’ – that new works were not taking their place in the repertory – and also with a widespread reassessment (in some cases outright rejection) of the Wagnerian aesthetic. In the latter guise, as noble antithesis to Wagner, Verdi was even taken up by the avant garde: some of the most innovative stagings of the period involved Verdi revivals and an arch modernist such as Stravinsky could praise his achievement and even pay him veiled homage in works such as Oedipus Rex.

WORKS

Edition:The Works of Giuseppe Verdi, ed. P. Gossett and others (Chicago and Milan, 1983–) [V]

operas

Genre and librettist (when not in square brackets) are as stated on the libretto of the first performance (except for ‘I masnadieri’, which the London libretto describes as a ‘tragic opera’ and ‘Macbeth’, ‘Il corsaro’, ‘Stiffelio’, ‘La traviata’, ‘Simon Boccanegra’ and ‘Aroldo’, in which the libretto gives no genre).



Title	Genre, acts	Libretto	First performance; remarks	V; autograph

Oberto, conte di San Bonifacio	dramma, 2	T. Solera, from A. Piazza's lib. Rocester	Milan, Scala, 17 Nov 1839	I-Mr
Un giorno di regno [Il finto Stanislao]	melodramma giocoso, 2	F. Romani, [? rev. Solera], from Romani's lib. for A. Gyrowetz's Il finto Stanislao (1818), after A.V. Pineu-Duval: Le faux Stanislas (play, 1808)	Milan, Scala, 5 Sept 1840; alternative title first used 1845	Mr
Nabucodonosor [Nabucco]	dramma lirico, 4 pts	Solera, after A. Anicet-Bourgeois and F. Cornu: Nabuchodonosor (play, 1836) and A. Cortesi: Nabuccodonosor (ballet, 1838)	Milan, Scala, 9 March 1842	1/iii; Mr
I Lombardi alla prima crociata	dramma lirico, 4	Solera, after T. Grossi (poem, 1826)	Milan, Scala, 11 Feb 1843	Mr
Ernani	dramma lirico, 4 pts	F.M. Piave, after V. Hugo: Hernani (play, 1830)	Venice, Fenice, 9 March 1844	1/v; Mr
I due Foscari	tragedia lirica, 3	Piave, after Byron: The Two Foscari (play, 1821)	Rome, Argentina, 3 Nov 1844	Mr
Giovanna d'Arco	dramma lirico, prol., 3	Solera, in part after F. von Schiller: Die Jungfrau von Orleans (play, 1801)	Milan, Scala, 15 Feb 1845	Mr
Alzira	tragedia lirica, prol., 2	S. Cammarano, after Voltaire: Alzire, ou Les Américains (play, 1736)	Naples, S Carlo, 12 Aug 1845	1/viii; Mr
Attila	dramma lirico, prol., 3	Solera [and Piave], after Z. Werner: Attila, König der Hunnen (play, 1808)	Venice, Fenice, 17 March 1846	Gb-Lbl
Macbeth	opera, 4	[Piave and A. Maffei], after W. Shakespeare (play, 1605–6)	Florence, Pergola, 14 March 1847	I-Mr
rev. version	opéra, 4	Piave, from 1847 lib.; Fr. trans. by C. Nuitter and A. Beaumont	Paris, Lyrique, 21 April 1865	F-Pn (part autograph)
I masnadieri	melodramma, 4 pts	[Maffei], after Schiller: Die Räuber (play, 1781)	London, Her Majesty's, 22 July 1847	I-Mr
Jérusalem	opéra, 4	A. Royer and G. Vaëz, from Solera's 1843 lib. I Lombardi alla prima crociata	Paris, Opéra, 26 Nov 1847	F-Pn
Il corsaro	opera, 3	Piave, after Byron: The Corsair (poem, 1814)	Trieste, Grande, 25 Oct 1848	1/xiii; I-Mr
La battaglia di Legnano	tragedia lirica, 4	Cammarano, after J. Méry: La bataille de Toulouse (play, 1828)	Rome, Argentina, 27 Jan 1849	Mr
Luisa Miller	melodramma tragico, 3	Cammarano, after Schiller: Kabale und Liebe (play, 1784)	Naples, S Carlo, 8 Dec 1849	1/xv; Mr
Stiffelio	opera, 3	Piave, after E. Souvestre and E. Bourgeois: Le pasteur, ou L'évangile et le foyer (play, 1849)	Trieste, Grande, 16 Nov 1850; autograph used for Aroldo, 1857	Mr
Rigoletto	melodramma, 3	Piave, after Hugo: Le roi s'amuse (play, 1832)	Venice, Fenice, 11 March 1851	1/xvii; Mr
Il trovatore	dramma, 4 pts	Cammarano [and L.E. Bardare], after A. García Gutiérrez: El trovador (play, 1836)	Rome, Apollo, 19 Jan 1853	1/xviii; Mr
La traviata	opera, 3	Piave, after A. Dumas fils: La dame aux camélias (play, 1852)	Venice, Fenice, 6 March 1853	1/xix; Mr
Les vêpres siciliennes	opéra, 5	E. Scribe and C. Duveyrier, after their lib. Le duc d'Albe (1838)	Paris, Opéra, 13 June 1855	F-Pn
Simon Boccanegra	opera, prol., 3	Piave [and G. Montanelli], after García Gutiérrez: Simón Bocanegra (play, 1843)	Venice, Fenice, 12 March 1857	I-Mr
rev. version	melodramma, prol., 3	Piave [rev. A. Boito], from 1857 lib.	Milan, Scala, 24 March 1881	Mr
Aroldo	opera, 4	Piave, from his lib. Stiffelio (1850)	Rimini, Nuovo, 16 Aug 1857	Mr
Un ballo in maschera	melodramma, 3	A. Somma, from Scribe's lib. for Auber's Gustave III, ou Le bal masqué (1833)	Rome, Apollo, 17 Feb 1859	Mr
La forza del destino	opera, 4	Piave, after A. de Saavedra, Duke of Rivas: Don Alvaro, o La fuerza del sino (play, 1835) with a scene from Schiller: Wallensteins Lager (play, 1799), trans. by Maffei	St Petersburg, Imperial, 10 Nov 1862	Mr
rev. version	opera, 4	Piave [rev. A. Ghislanzoni], from his 1862 lib.	Milan, Scala, 27 Feb 1869	Mr
Don Carlos	opéra, 5	Méry and C. Du Locle, after Schiller's dramatic poem (1787)	Paris, Opéra, 11 March 1867	F-Pn
rev. version, Don Carlo	opera, 4	[rev. Du Locle] from Méry's and Du Locle's 1867 lib.; It. trans. by A. de Lauzières and A. Zanardini	Milan, Scala, 10 Jan 1884	I-Mr
Aida	opera, 4	Ghislanzoni, from A. Mariette's scenario	Cairo, Opera, 24 Dec 1871	Mr
Otello	dramma lirico, 4	Boito, after Shakespeare: Othello, or the Moor of Venice (play, 1604–5)	Milan, Scala, 5 Feb 1887	Mr
Falstaff	commedia lirica, 3	Boito, after Shakespeare: The Merry Wives of Windsor (play, 1600–01) and King Henry IV (plays, 1597–8)	Milan, Scala, 9 Feb 1893	Mr
For alternative or additional numbers in Oberto, Nabucco, I Lombardi, Ernani, I due Foscari, Giovanna d'Arco and Attila, see D. Lawton and D. Rosen: ‘Verdi's Non-definitive Revisions: the Early Operas’, Studi verdiani III: Milan 1972, 189–237.

other works

choral

Messa di Gloria, S, A, T, B, mixed vv, orch, 1832–4; first perf. 15 Sept 1835, Busseto, BScr (collab. with F. Provesi)

Inno popolare (Suona la tromba) (G. Mameli), TTB, pf, 1848 (1848)

Inno delle nazioni (A. Boito), solo v, mixed vv, orch, 1862, London, Her Majesty's, 24 May 1862, vs (1862)

Libera me, S, mixed vv, orch, 1868–9 [from collab. Requiem for Rossini; incorporated in Messa da Requiem, 1874]

Messa da Requiem, S, A, T, B, mixed vv, orch, 1874, Milan, S Marco, 22 May 1874, vs (1874); with new setting of Liber scriptus, 1875, London, Albert Hall, May 1875, vs (1875), fs pr. (c1877), pubd (1913), autograph [with both settings of Liber scriptus] I-Ms, facs. (1941); facs. of Libera me (1988); V, 3/i

Pater noster (attrib. Dante), SSATB, 1880 (1880), Mr

Quattro pezzi sacri, pubd together in vs (1898), fs (London, 1973):

Ave Maria (Scala enigmatica armonizzata a quattro voci miste), SATB, orig. version, 1889, Parma, 1895, 8 bars in Gazzetta musicale di Milano, l (1895), 454; rev. version (1898)

Laudi alla Vergine Maria (Dante: Paradiso, xxxiii), S, S, A, A, c1890, Paris, 7 April 1898 (1898)

Te Deum, SATB, SATB, orch, 1895–6, Paris, 7 April 1898, fs pr. (1898), pubd (Leipzig, c1935)

Stabat mater, SATB, orch, 1896–7, Paris, 7 April 1898, fs pr. (1898), pubd (Leipzig, c1935)

songs and vocal trio

for 1 voice, piano unless otherwise stated

Edition:G. Verdi: Composizioni da camera per canto e pianoforte (Milan, 1935) [CC]

Brindisi (Maffei), 1st version, ?1835 (1935), CC, Mr

6 romanze (1838), CC, Mr: Non t'accostare all'urna (J. Vittorelli), More, Elisa, lo stanco poeta (T. Bianchi), In solitaria stanza (Vittorelli), Nell'orror di notte oscura (C. Angiolini), Perduta ho la pace (Goethe, trans. L. Balestra), Deh, pietoso, oh Addolorata (Goethe, trans. Balestra)

Notturno (Guarda che bianca luna) (Vittorelli), S, T, B, fl obbl, pf (1838), Ms

L'esule (Solera) (1839), CC, Mr

La seduzione (Balestra) (1839), CC, Mr

Chi i bei di m'adduce ancora (Goethe, trans. ?Balestra), 1842, ed. in MR, ix (1948), 13

È la vita d’un mar d’affanni, 1844

Era bella ancor piu’ bella, 1844

Il tramonto (Maffei), 1st version, 1845, US-NYpm

6 romanze (1845), CC, I-Mr: Il tramonto (Maffei) [2nd version], La zingara (S.M. Maggioni), Ad una stella (Maffei), Lo spazzacamino (F. Romani), Il mistero (Romani), Brindisi (Maffei) [2nd version]

Il poveretto (Maggioni) (1847), CC

L'abandonnée (M. L. E[?scudier]) (1849)

Barcarola (Piave), 1850, facs. in G. Stefani: Verdi e Trieste (Trieste, 1951)

Sgombra, o gentil, 1858

La preghiera del poeta (N. Sole), ?1858, ed. in RMI, xlv (1941), 230

Il brigidino (F. dall'Ongaro), 1861, facs. in Scenario, x/2 (1941)

Stornello (anon.) (1869), CC

Cupo è il sepolcro e mutolo, 1873, Ms

Pietà, Signor (Boito) (1894)

other vocal

Io la vidi (from C. Bassi: Il solitario ed Eloisa), aria, T, [T], orch, ?1832–5, US-NYpm, facs. 3 pp. [of 24] in Verdiana, vi (1951), 14ff, in Abbiati: Verdi, i (1959), facing p.160, and in M. Chusid: A Catalog of Verdi's Operas (Hackensack, NJ, 1974), 19, ed. in Inediti per tenore (Milan, 1978)

Tantum ergo, T, orch, 1836, Ms, ed. in Inediti per tenore (Milan, 1978)

Ave Maria (Dante), S, str, 1880, arrs. incl. for v, pf (1880), Mr

instrumental

Sinfonia, A, orch, BScr

Adagio, tr, orch, BScr

Sinfonia, D, orch, ?1832–5, Ms, facs. in Studi verdiani, ix (1993)

Romanza senza parole, pf, 1844 (1865)

Waltz, pf, facs. in Discoteca, iv/30 (1963), 19

String Quartet, e, 1873 (1876), Nc

e: special periodical numbers and commemorative volumes

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A Bibliographical. B Catalogues. C Iconography. D Letters and documents. E Special periodical numbers and commemorative volumes. F Biography, life and works. G Locative studies and annals. H Libretto studies. I Musical studies. J Textual studies. K Performing practice and staging. L Individual works.

a: bibliographical

b: catalogues

c: iconography

d: letters and documents

f: biography, life and works

g: locative studies and annals

h: libretto studies

i: musical studies

j: textual studies

k: performing practice and staging

l: individual works

a: bibliographical

MGG1 (H. Kühn)

L. Torri: ‘Saggio di bibliografia verdiana’, RMI, viii (1901), 379–407

C. Vanbianchi: Nel I° centenario di Giuseppe Verdi, 1813–1913: saggio di bibliografia verdiana (Milan, 1913)

C. Hopkinson: ‘Bibliographical Problems concerned with Verdi and his Publishers’, Studi verdiani I: Venice 1966, 431–6

D. Lawton: ‘Per una bibliografia ragionata verdiana’, ibid., 437–42

M. Pavarani: ‘Per una bibliografia e documentazione verdiana’, ibid., 446–51

O. Strunk: ‘Verdiana alla Biblioteca del Congresso’, ibid., 452–7; Eng. orig. in Essays on Music in the Western World (New York, 1974), 192–200

G. Tintori: ‘Bibliografia verdiana in Russia’, ibid., 458–63

D. Kämper: ‘Das deutsche Verdi-Schrifttum: Hauptlinien der Interpretation’, Verdi-Wagner: Rome 1969, 185–99 [AnMc, no.11 (1972)]

M. Conati: ‘Bibliografia verdiana: aspetti, problemi, criteri per la sistemazione della letteratura verdiana’, Studi verdiani III: Milan 1972, 546–63

M. Mila: La giovinezza di Verdi (Turin, 1974), 501–17

E. Surian: ‘Lo stato attuale degli studi verdiani: appunti e bibliografia ragionata (1960–1975)’, RIM, xii (1977), 305–29

A. Porter: ‘A Select Bibliography’, The Verdi Companion, ed. W. Weaver and M. Chusid (New York, 1979), 239–54

M. Conati: ‘Bibliografia verdiana’, Studi verdiani (1982–) [each vol. carries an extensive list of pubns covering the following years: i (1977–9), ii (1980–82), iii (1983–4), iv (1985–6), v (1987–8), vi (1988–9), vii (1989–91), viii (1991–2), ix (1992–3), x (1994–5), xi (1996), xii (1997)

M. Conati: ‘Fonti verdiane: i giornali dell'Ottocento’, Nuove prospettive nella ricerca verdiana: Vienna 1983, 130–37

b: catalogues

D. Lawton and D. Rosen: ‘Verdi's Non-Definitive Revisions: the Early Operas’, Studi verdiani III: Milan 1972, 189–237

C. Hopkinson: A Bibliography of the Works of Giuseppe Verdi, 1813–1901, i (New York, 1973) [vocal and instrumental works excluding operas]; ii (New York, 1978) [operas]

M. Chusid: A Catalog of Verdi's Operas (Hackensack, NJ, 1974)

M. Chusid, J. Nadás and L. Jensen: ‘The Verdi Archive at New York University: Part I’ [catalogued and uncatalogued material in the collection], Verdi Newsletter, no.7 (1979)

M. Chusid, L. Jensen and D. Day: ‘The Verdi Archive at New York University: Part II (A List of Verdi's Music, Librettos, Production Materials, Nineteenth-Century Italian Periodicals, and other Research Materials)’, Verdi Newsletter, nos.9–10 (1981–2)

S. Casale: A Catalogue of Letters from Verdi and Giuseppina Strepponi Verdi to the Escudiers (thesis, New York U., 1983)

M.A. Bacherini Bartoli: ‘Aggiunte, integrazioni e rettifiche alla Bibliography of the Works of Giuseppe Verdi di Cecil Hopkinson: edizioni verdiane nella Biblioteca nazionale centrale di Firenze’, Studi verdiani, iv (1986–7), 110–35

L.B. Fairtile: ‘The Verdi Archive at New York University: a List of Verdi's Music’, Verdi Newsletter, nos.17–18 (1989–90) [incl. more details of sources and the music than nos.9–10]

A. Pompilio: ‘La collezione scalvini dell'Istituto nazionale di studi verdiani’, Studi verdiani, vii (1991), 111–88; viii (1992), 118–43

c: iconography

G. Monaldi: Saggio d'iconografia verdiana (Bergamo, n.d.)

G. Bocca: ‘Verdi e la caricatura’, RMI, viii (1901), 326–59

H. Schultz: Giuseppe Verdi 1813–1901: sein Leben in Bildern (Leipzig, 1938)

C. Gatti: Verdi nelle immagini (Milan, 1941) [incl. sketches, pp.64f, 184, 186–7]

H. Kuehner: Giuseppe Verdi in Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten (Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1961)

R. Petzoldt: Giuseppe Verdi 1813–1901: sein Leben in Bildern (Leipzig, 1961)

W. Weaver: Verdi: a Documentary Study (London, 1977)

Con Verdi a Casa Barezzi [photographs and essays] (Busseto, 1985)

Giuseppe Verdi: vicende, problemi e mito di un artista e del suo tempo, Palazzo ducale di Colorno, 31 Aug – 8 Dec 1985 (Colorno, 1985) [exhibition catalogue; incl. essays by E. Baker, F. Benedetti, M. Conati, M. Dall'Acqua, G. Guccini, G. Marchesi, P. Petrobelli]

Verdi: album per un maestro, ed. Istituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani (Florence, 1991)

d: letters and documents

I. Pizzi: Ricordi verdiani inediti (Turin, 1901)

A. Pascolato: Re Lear e Ballo in maschera: lettere di Giuseppe Verdi ad Antonio Somma (Città di Castello, 1902)

T. Costantini: Sei lettere inedite di Verdi a Giovanni Bottesini (Trieste, 1908)

G. Cesari and A. Luzio: I copialettere di Giuseppe Verdi (Milan, 1913; Eng. trans., much abridged, as Letters of Giuseppe Verdi, ed. C. Osborne, 1971)

J.G. Prod'homme: ‘Unpublished Letters from Verdi to Camille Du Locle’, MQ, vii (1921), 73–103; ReM, x (1928–9), no.5, pp.97–112; no.7, pp.25–37

J.G. Prod'homme: ‘Verdi's Letters to Léon Escudier’, ML, iv (1923), 62–70, 184–96, 375–7; It. orig., RMI, xxxv (1928), 1–28, 171–97, 519–52

A. Damerini: ‘Sei lettere inedite di Verdi a G.C. Ferrarini’, Il pianoforte, vii/Aug–Sept (1926)

A. Della Corte: ‘Lettere a Maria Waldmann’, Il pianoforte, vii/Feb (1926)

F. Werfel and P. Stefan: Das Bildnis Giuseppe Verdis (Vienna, 1926; Eng. trans., enlarged, as Verdi: the Man in his Letters, 1942)

A. Luzio: ‘Il carteggio di Giuseppe Verdi con la contessa Maffei’, Profili biografici e bozzetti storici, ii (Milan, 1927), 505–62

G. Morazzoni and G.M. Ciampelli: Verdi: lettere inedite: le opere verdiane al Teatro alla Scala (1839–1929) (Milan, 1929)

A. Alberti: Verdi intimo: carteggio di Giuseppe Verdi con il conte Opprandino Arrivabene (1861–1886) (Verona, 1931)

L.A. Garibaldi: Giuseppe Verdi nelle lettere di Emanuele Muzio ad Antonio Barezzi (Milan, 1931)

R. De Rensis: Franco Faccio e Verdi: carteggio e documenti inediti (Milan, 1934)

A. Luzio: Carteggi verdiani, i–ii (Rome, 1935); iii–iv (Rome, 1947)

G. Bongiovanni: Dal carteggio inedito Verdi-Vigna (Rome, 1941)

A. Oberdorfer: Giuseppe Verdi: autobiografia dalle lettere (Verona, 1941 [under pseud. C. Graziani; censored], 2/1951, enlarged 3/1981, M. Conati)

F. Walker: ‘Verdi and Francesco Florimo: some Unpublished Letters’, ML, xxvi (1945), 201–8

F. Walker: ‘Four Unpublished Verdi Letters’, ML, xxix (1948), 44–7

‘Cinque lettere verdiane’, RaM, xxi (1951), 256–61

F. Schlitzer: ‘Inediti verdiani nella collezione dell'Accademia musicale chigiana’, Bollettino dell'Accademia musicale chigiana [special issue] (1951), 30–36; enlarged 1953 as Inediti verdiani nell'archivio dell'Accademia chigiana, Quaderni dell'Accademia chigiana, xxvii

F. Walker: ‘Verdi and Vienna: with some Unpublished Letters’, MT, xcii (1951), 403–5, 451–3

F. Walker: ‘Verdian Forgeries’, MR, xix (1958), 273–82; xx (1959), 28–37; It. trans., RaM, xxx (1960), 338–49

W. Klein: ‘Verdian Forgeries – a Summing-up’, MR, xx (1959), 244–52

T. Jauner: Fünf Jahre Wiener Operntheater, 1875–1880: Franz Jauner und seine Zeit (Vienna, 1963)

U. Günther: ‘Documents inconnus concernant les relations de Verdi avec l'Opéra de Paris’, Studi verdiani III: Milan 1972, 564–83

A. Di Ascoli: Quartetto milanese ottocentesco (Rome, 1973) [letters of Verdi, Strepponi, A. Maffei, C. Maffei, C. Tenca and others]

G.N. Vetro: ‘Giuseppe Verdi Maestro di Musica in Busseto: il giudizio inedito di Alinovi e altre carte dell'archivio di stato di Parma’, Verdi: Bollettino dell'Istituto di studi verdiani, iii/8 (1973), 1142–9, 1503–15

E. Zanetti: ‘La corrispondenza di Verdi conservata a S. Cecilia’, ibid., 1131–41, 1485–1502

M. Conati: ‘Le lettere di Giuseppe Verdi e Giuseppina Verdi a Giuseppe Perosio’, Nuova rassegna di studi musicali, i (1977), 47–67

M. Medici and M. Conati: Carteggio Verdi-Boito (Parma, 1978; Eng. trans., ed. W. Weaver, 1994, as The Verdi-Boito Correspondence)

G. Marchesi: Verdi, merli e cucù: cronache bussetane fra il 1819 e il 1839 (Busseto, 1979)

M. Conati: Interviste e incontri con Verdi (Milan, 1980; Eng. trans., 1984, as Encounters with Verdi)

F. Cella and P. Petrobelli: Giuseppe Verdi-Giulio Ricordi: corrispondenza e immagini 1881–1890 (Milan, 1981)

E. Baker: ‘Lettere di Giuseppe Verdi a Francesco Maria Piave, 1843–1865: documenti della Frederick R. Koch Foundation Collection e della Mary Flagler Collection presso la Pierpont Morgan Library di New York’, Studi verdiani, iv (1986–7), 136–66

C.M. Mossa: ‘Le lettere di Emanuele Muzio alla Casa Ricordi’, ibid., 167–201

P. Petrobelli, M. Di Gregorio Casati and C. Matteo Mossa, eds.: Carteggio Verdi-Ricordi 1880–1881 (Parma, 1988)

L. Jensen: Giuseppe Verdi and Giovanni Ricordi, with Notes on Francesco Lucca: from ‘Oberto’ to ‘La Traviata’ (New York, 1989)

L. Sartoris: Nuovi inediti verdiani: carteggio di Giuseppe e Giuseppina Verdi con Giuseppe De Amicis (Genova, 1861–1901) (Genoa, 1991)

F. Cella, M. Ricordi and M. Di Gregorio Casati, eds.: Carteggio Verdi-Ricordi 1882–1885 (Parma, 1994)

L. Serianni: ‘Spigolature linguistiche dal Carteggio Verdi-Ricordi’, Studi verdiani, x (1994–5), 104–17

e: special periodical numbers and commemorative volumes

article titles listed in M. Mila: ‘La giovinezza di Verdi’ (Turin, 1974), 514–15

La farfalla, 1896

*Gazzetta musicale di Milano, lvi (1901), March

Natura ed arte (1901)

*RMI, vii/2 (1901)

*Nuova antologia, clxvii (16 Oct 1913)

Die Musik, xiii (1913–14) [incl. articles by E. Istel, R. Specht, A. Weissmann]

Illustrazione italiana (26 Jan 1941)

*Aurea Parma, xxv (1941), Jan–Feb

Verdi, Studi e memorie a cura del Sindacato nazionale fascista musicisti nel XL anniversario della morte (Rome, 1941)

*La regione Emilia-Romagna (1950), nos.9–12

Verdiana: bollettino di notizie (1950–51) [12 issues]

*ZfM, Jg.112 (1951), Jan

*Das Musikleben, iv (1951), Feb

*Il diapason (1951), Feb

*Melos, xviii (1951), Feb

*Opera, ii/2 (1951)

*La fiera letteraria (22 April 1951)

*RaM, xxi (1951), July

*Giuseppe Verdi (Milan, 1951) [pubn of Teatro alla Scala, ed. F. Abbiati]

Per il cinquantenario della morte di Giuseppe Verdi (Naples, 1951) [pubn of Teatro S Carlo]

Collana di saggi verdiani nel primo cinquantenario della morte di Giuseppe Verdi, ed. A. Zecchi (Bologna, 1952)

M. Hinrichsen: ‘Anno verdiano’, HMYB, vii (1952), 494–509

HiFi, xiii (1963), Oct [incl. articles by A. Moravia and W. Weaver, and on early New York productions]

Verdi-Wagner: Rome 1969 [AnMc, no.11 (1972); incl. essays by A.A. Abert, R. Celletti, F. D'Amico, L. Finscher, K. Hortschansky, D. Kämper, W. Witzenmann, E. Zanetti]

19CM, ii/2 (1978–9) [incl. articles by D. Coe, S. Levarie, G.A. Mendelsohn, A. Porter]

OQ, v/2–3 (1987) [incl. articles by J. Ardoin, H. Busch, M. Chusid, W. Ducloux, G. Martin, R. Parker, M. Valente]

Verdi Festival: 12 June – 22 July 1995, ed. A. Latham (London, 1995) [incl. articles by J. Budden, G. Dotto, E. Downes, A. Latham, P. O'Connor, M.J. Phillips-Matz, A. Porter, J. Rosselli]

f: biography, life and works

E. Bermani: ‘Schizzi sulla vita e le opere di G. Verdi’, GMM, v (1846)

G. Demaldè: Cenni biografici (MS, c1853, archives of Monte di Pietà, Busseto); pubd in Newsletter of the American Institute for Verdi Studies, nos.1–2 (1976) and Verdi Newsletter, no.3 (1977)

H. Cavalli: Biografías artísticas contemporaneas de los célebres José Verdi, maestro de música y Antonio Canova escultor (Madrid, 1867)

M. Lessona: ‘Parma: Giuseppe Verdi’, Volere è potere (Milan, 1869), 287–307

G. Monaldi: Verdi e le sue opere (Florence, 1878)

A. Pougin: Giuseppe Verdi: vita aneddotica (Milan, 1881) [trans. and annotated by ‘Folchetto’ [J. Caponi] from articles in Le ménestrel, 1878]; repr., ed. M. Conati, 1989; Fr. orig., incorporating Caponi's additions, 1886; Eng. trans., 1887)

E. Checchi: Giuseppe Verdi: il genio e le opere (Florence, 1887)

A.G. Barrili: Giuseppe Verdi, vita e opere (Genoa, 1892)

G. Monaldi: Verdi: la vita e le opere (Turin, 1899, 4/1951)

M. Basso: Giuseppe Verdi: la sua vita, le sue opere, la sua morte (Milan, 1901)

O. Boni: Verdi: l'uomo, le opere, e l'artista (Parma, 1901)

F.T. Garibaldi: Giuseppe Verdi nella vita e nell'arte (Florence, 1904)

G. Bragagnolo and E. Bettazzi: La vita di Giuseppe Verdi narrata al popolo (Milan, 1905)

F. Werfel: Verdi: Roman der Oper (Berlin, 1925, 2/1930; Eng. trans., 1947) [novel]

F. Bonavia: Verdi (London, 1930)

B. Barilli: Il paese del melodramma (Lanciano, 1931)

C. Gatti: Verdi (Milan, 1931, 2/1951; Eng. trans., abridged, 1955, as Verdi: the Man and his Music)

F. Toye: Giuseppe Verdi: his Life and Works (London, 1931)

H. Gerigk: Giuseppe Verdi (Potsdam, 1932)

D. Hussey: Verdi (London, 1940, 5/1973)

G. Cenzato: Itinerari verdiani (Parma, 1949, 2/1955)

F. Walker: ‘Vincenzo Gemito and his Bust of Verdi’, ML, xxx (1949), 44–55

M. Mila: Giuseppe Verdi (Bari, 1958)

F. Abbiati: Giuseppe Verdi (Milan, 1959)

F. Walker: The Man Verdi (London, 1962)

G. Martin: Verdi (New York, 1963, 2/1964)

C. Mingardi: ‘Composizioni giovanili di Giuseppe Verdi in quattro programmi inediti della Filarmonica bussetana del 1838’, Biblioteca 70, i (1970), 39–44

C. Sartori: ‘La Strepponi e Verdi a Parigi nella morsa quarantottesca’, NRMI, viii (1974), 239–53

G.A. Mendelsohn: ‘Verdi the Man and Verdi the Dramatist’, 19CM, ii (1978–9), 110–42; iii (1979–80), 214–30

M. Baroni: Il declino del patriarca: Verdi e le contraddizioni della famiglia borghese (Bologna, 1979)

G. Marchesi: Giuseppe Verdi: l'uomo, il genio, l'artista (Milan, 1979)

W. Weaver and M. Chusid, eds.: The Verdi Companion (New York, 1979)

M. Mila: L'arte di Verdi (Turin, 1980)

D.R.B. Kimbell: Verdi in the Age of Italian Romanticism (Cambridge, 1981)

W. Marggraf: Giuseppe Verdi: Leben und Werk (Leipzig, 1982)

A. Porter: ‘Giuseppe Verdi’, The New Grove Masters of Italian Opera, ed. S. Sadie (London, 1983), 193–308

J. Rosselli: ‘Verdi e la storia della retribuzione del compositore italiano’, Studi verdiani, ii (1983), 11–28

J. Rosselli: The Opera Industry in Italy from Cimarosa to Verdi: the Role of the Impresario (Cambridge, 1984; It. trans., enlarged, 1985, as L'impresario d'opera: arte e affari nel teatro musicale italiano dell'Ottocento)

J. Budden: Verdi (London, 1985)

C. Mingardi: Con Verdi in casa Barezzi (Busseto, 1985)

C. Osborne: Verdi: a Life in the Theatre (New York, 1987)

G. Martin: Aspects of Verdi (New York, 1988)

R. Parker: Studies in Early Verdi 1832–1844: New Information and Perspectives on the Milanese Musical Milieu and the Operas from ‘Oberto’ to ‘Ernani’ (New York, 1989)

F. Ortombina: ‘“Sgombra, o gentil”: un dono di Verdi all'amico Delfico’, Studi verdiani, viii (1992), 105–17

M.J. Phillips-Matz: Verdi: a Biography (Oxford, 1993)

g: locative studies and annals

article titles listed in M. Mila: ‘La giovinezza di Verdi’ (Turin, 1974), 514–15

F. Resasco: Verdi a Genova (Genoa, 1901)

G. Bottoni: Giuseppe Verdi a Rimini (Rimini, 1913)

Giuseppe Verdi, Chigiana, no.8 (1951)

La passione verdiana di Trieste (Trieste, 1951)

G. Steffani: Verdi e Trieste (Trieste, 1951)

*Verdi e la Fenice (Venice, 1951)

*Verdi e Roma (Rome, 1951)

Verdi e Firenze (Florence, 1951)

P.P. Varnai: ‘Verdi in Hungary’, Verdi: Bollettino dell'Istituto di studi verdiani, ii/5 (1962), 949–1030, 1429–1503; iii/7 (1969), 246–332, 718–89; iii/8 (1973), 1038–1130, 1409–84

M. Labroca: ‘Verdi e Venezia’, Studi verdiani I: Venice 1966, 367–74

R. Massarani: ‘Giuseppe Verdi a Rio de Janeiro’, ibid., 383–412

G. Gualerzi and C.M. Roscioni: ‘Il Verdi “minore” dal 1945 al 1971’, La Fenice, Venice 1970, 335 [programme book; list of perfs. in Italy]

K. Hortschansky: ‘Die Herausbildung eines deutschsprachigen Verdi-Repertoires im 19. Jahrhundert und die zeitgenössische Kritik’, AnMc, no.11 (1972), 140–84

M. Chusid: ‘Casts for the Verdi Premières in the U.S. (1847–1976)’, Newsletter of the American Institute for Verdi Studies, no.2 (1976), 16–18; Verdi Newsletter, no.3 (1977), 11–12

G. Marchesi: Giuseppe Verdi e il Conservatorio di Parma (1836–1901) (Parma, 1976)

M. Conati: ‘Saggio di critiche e cronache verdiane dalle Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung di Lipsia (1840–48)’, Il melodramma italiano dell'Ottocento: studi e ricerche per Massimo Mila, ed. G. Pestelli (Turin, 1977), 13–43

M. Chusid: ‘Casts for the Verdi Premières in London (1845–1977)’, Verdi Newsletter, no.5 (1978), 13–17; no.6 (1979), 15–19

U. Dauth: Verdis Opern im Spiegel der Wiener Presse von 1843 bis 1859: ein Beitrag zur Rezeptionsgeschichte (Munich, 1981)

M. Conati: La bottega della musica: Verdi e la Fenice (Milan, 1983)

L. Sartoris: Verdi a Genova: 1841–1901 (Genoa, 1983)

M. Conati: ‘Verdi per Napoli’, Il Teatro di San Carlo 1737–1987, ed. B. Cagli and A. Ziino (Naples, 1987), iii, 179–223

T. Kaufman: Verdi and his Major Contemporaries: a Selected Chronology of Performances with Casts (New York, 1990), 263–564

G. Martin: Verdi at the Golden Gate: Opera and San Francisco in the Gold Rush Years (Berkeley, 1993)

R. Meloncelli: ‘Giuseppe Verdi e la critica francese’, Studi verdiani, ix (1993), 97–122

G. Kreuzer: ‘“Zurück zu Verdi”: the “Verdi Renaissance” and Musical Culture in the Weimar Republic’, Studi verdiani, xiii (forthcoming)

h: libretto studies

U. Rolandi: Il libretto per musica attraverso i tempi (Rome, 1951), 126ff

L. Baldacci: ‘I libretti di Verdi’, Il melodramma italiano dell'Ottocento: studi e ricerche per Massimo Mila, ed. G. Pestelli (Turin, 1977), 113–24

M. Lavagetto: Quei più modesti romanzi: il libretto nel melodramma di Verdi: techniche costruttive, funzioni, poetica, di un genere letterario minore (Milan, 1979)

F. Portinari: Pari siamo! Io la lingua, egli ha il pugnale: storia del melodramma ottocentesco attraverso i suoi libretti (Turin, 1981)

J.N. Black: ‘The Libretto of La creazione del mondo, Milan – April 1834: a Note’, Studi verdiani, ii (1983), 147–9

J.N. Black: The Italian Romantic Libretto: a Study of Salvadore Cammarano (Edinburgh, 1984)

D. Goldin: La vera fenice: librettisti e libretti tra Sette e Ottocento (Turin, 1985)

M. Girardi: ‘Verdi e Boito: due artisti fra tradizione e rinnovamento’, Arrigo Boito musicista e letterato, ed. G. Tintori (Milan, 1986), 97–106

C.M. Mossa: ‘A Monk and at Least some New Things: Verdi, Cammarano, and L'assedio di Firenze’, Verdi's Middle Period (1849–1859), ed. M. Chusid (Chicago, 1997), 99–126

i: musical studies

A. Basevi: Studio sulle opere di Giuseppe Verdi (Florence, 1859); repr. in Studi e testi verdiani, iii (1978)

H.F. Chorley: Thirty Years' Musical Recollections (London, 1862, 2/1926)

E. Hanslick: Die moderne Oper (Berlin, 1875), i, 217–55

F. Filippi: Musica e musicisti: critiche, biografie ed escursioni (Milan, 1876)

G.B. Shaw: ‘A Word More about Verdi’, Anglo-Saxon Review, vii/March (1901), 221–9; repr. in London Music in 1881–89 (London, 1937), 386–97

A. Soffredini: Le opere di Verdi: studio critico analitico (Milan, 1901)

L. Torchi: ‘L'opera di Giuseppe Verdi e i suoi caratteri principali’, RMI, viii (1901), 279–335

C. Bellaigue: Verdi (Paris, 1912)

D. Alaleona: ‘L'evoluzione della partitura verdiana’, Nuova antologia, clxvii (1913), 521–8

G. Roncaglia: Giuseppe Verdi: l'ascensione dell'arte sua, con uno studio di Alfredo Galletti sui libretti musicati dal Verdi e il dramma romantico (Naples, 1914)

M. Mila: Il melodramma di Verdi (Bari, 1933)

P. Bekker: Wandlungen der Oper (Leipzig, 1934; Eng. trans., 1935), 110–26

J. Loschelder: Das Todesproblem in Verdis Opernschaffen (Cologne and Stuttgart, 1938)

G. Roncaglia: L'ascensione creatrice di Giuseppe Verdi (Florence, 1940)

G. Roncaglia: ‘Il “tema-cardine” nell'opera di Giuseppe Verdi’, RMI, xlvii (1943), 218–29

A. Della Corte: Le sei più belle opere di Giuseppe Verdi: Rigoletto, Il trovatore, La traviata, Aida, Otello, Falstaff (Milan, 1947, 3/1948)

M. Mila: ‘Verdi e Hanslick’, RaM, xxi (1951), 212–24

I. Pizzetti: ‘Contrappunto ed armonia nell'opera di Verdi’, ibid., 189–200

R. Vlad: ‘Anticipazioni nel linguaggio armonico verdiano’, ibid., 237–45

G. Roncaglia: ‘Il cammino e l'insegnamento di Giuseppe Verdi’, ibid., 114–20

E.T. Cone: ‘The Old Man's Toys: Verdi's Last Operas’, Perspectives USA, vi (1954), 114–33; repr. in Music: a View from Delft (Chicago, 1989), 159–75

A. Porter: ‘Verdi and Schiller’, Opera Annual, iii (1956), 52–63

F.I. Travis: Verdi's Orchestration (Zürich, 1956)

G. Roncaglia: Galleria verdiana: studi e figure (Milan, 1959)

W. Siegmund-Schultz: ‘Gedanken zum Verdischen Melodie-Typus’, Verdi: Bollettino dell'Istituto di studi verdiani, ii/4 (1961), 255–84, 671–710

L. Dallapiccola: ‘Parole e musica nel melodramma’, Quaderni della RaM, no.2 (1965), 117–39; Eng. trans. in The Verdi Companion, ed. W. Weaver and M. Chusid (New York, 1979), 193–215

M. Chusid: ‘The Organization of Scenes with Arias: Verdi's Cavatinas and Romanzas’, Studi verdiani I: Venice 1966, 59–66

J. Kovács: ‘Zum Spätstil Verdis’, ibid., 132–44

F. Lippmann: ‘Verdi e Bellini’, ibid., 184–96

P.P. Várnai: ‘Contributo per uno studio della tipizzazione negativa nelle opere verdiane: personaggi e situazioni’, ibid., 268–75

P. Pinagli: Romanticismo di Verdi (Florence, 1967)

L.K. Gerhartz: Die Auseinandersetzungen des jungen Giuseppe Verdi mit dem literarischen Drama: ein Beitrag zur szenischen Strukturbestimmung (Berlin, 1968)

S. Hughes: Famous Verdi Operas (London, 1968)

J. Kerman: ‘Verdi's Use of Recurring Themes’, Studies in Music History: Essays for Oliver Strunk, ed. H.S. Powers (Princeton, 1968/R), 495–510

M. Mila: ‘L'unità stilistica nell'opera di Verdi’, NRMI, ii (1968), 62–75

A.A. Abert: ‘Über Textentwürfe Verdis’, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Oper, ed. H. Becker (Regensburg, 1969), 131–8

L. Finscher: ‘Wort und Ton in den Opern Verdis’, Verdi-Wagner: Rome 1969, 255–71 [AnMc, no.11 (1972)]

C. Osborne: The Complete Operas of Verdi (London, 1969)

G. Baldini: Abitare la battaglia: la storia di Giuseppe Verdi (Milan, 1970; Eng. trans., 1980, as The Story of Giuseppe Verdi: ‘Oberto’ to ‘Un ballo in maschera’)

P. Petrobelli: ‘Osservazioni sul processo compositivo in Verdi’, AcM, xliii (1971), 125–42

A.A. Abert: ‘Leidenschaftsausbrüche zwischen Recitativ und Arie’, Studi verdiani III: Milan 1972, 56–70

W. Dean: ‘Some Echoes of Donizetti in Verdi's Operas’, ibid., 122–47

C. Casini: ‘L'analogo sintattico: sul recitativo del primo Verdi’, Spettatore musicale, vii/4 (1972), 38 only

G. Pestelli: ‘Le riduzioni del tardo stile verdiano’, NRMI, vi (1972), 372–90

J. Budden: The Operas of Verdi, i: From Oberto to Rigoletto (London, 1973); ii: From Il trovatore to La forza del destino (London, 1978); iii: From Don Carlos to Falstaff (London, 1981)

D. Lawton: Tonality and Drama in Verdi's Early Operas (diss., U. of California, Berkeley, 1973)

F. Lippmann: ‘Der italienische Vers und der musikalische Rhythmus: zum Verhältnis von Vers und Musik in der italienischen Oper des 19. Jahrhunderts, mit einem Rückblick auf die 2. Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts’, AnMc, no.12 (1973), 253–369; no.14 (1974), 324–410; no.15 (1975), 298–333 (It. trans., rev., 1986, as Versificazione italiana e ritmo musicale: i rapporti tra verso e musica nell'opera italiana dell'Ottocento)

M. Mila: La giovinezza di Verdi (Turin, 1974, 2/1978)

F. Lippmann: ‘Verdi und Donizetti’, Opernstudien: Anna Amalie Abert zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. K. Hortschansky (Tutzing, 1975), 153–73

V. Godefroy: The Dramatic Genius of Verdi: Studies of Selected Operas, i: ‘Nabucco’ to ‘La traviata’ (London, 1975); ii: ‘I vespri siciliani’ to ‘Falstaff’ (London, 1977)

R.A. Moreen: Integration of Text Forms and Musical Forms in Verdi's Early Operas (diss., Princeton U., 1975)

F. Noske: The Signifier and the Signified: Studies in the Operas of Mozart and Verdi (The Hague, 1977/R)

R. Dalmonte: ‘Da Oberto a Rigoletto: precisazione di una formula’, Ricerche musicali, iii (1979), 53–69

P. Ross: Studien zum Verhältnis von Libretto und Komposition in den Opern Verdis (diss., U. of Berne, 1980)

G. Tomlinson: ‘Verdi after Budden’, 19CM, v (1981–2), 170–82

P. Weiss: ‘Verdi and the Fusion of Genres’, JAMS, xxxv (1982), 138–56

J. Budden: ‘Problems of Analysis in Verdi's Works’, Nuove prospettive nella ricerca verdiana: Vienna 1983, 125–9

S. Balthazar: Evolving Conventions in Italian Serious Opera: Scene Structure in the Works of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi, 1810 to 1850 (diss., U. of Pennsylvania, 1985)

P. Weiss: ‘“Sacred Bronzes”: Paralipomena to an Essay by Dallapiccola’, 19CM, ix (1985–6), 42–9

M. Beghelli: Atti performativi nella drammaturgia verdiana (diss., U. of Bologna, 1986)

A. Roccatagliati: Drammaturgia romantica verdiana: ‘Luisa Miller’, ‘Stiffelio’ e ‘Rigoletto’ (diss., U. of Bologna, 1986)

M. Baroni: ‘Le formule d'accompagnamento nel teatro del primo Verdi’, Studi verdiani, iv (1986–7), 18–64

G. Tomlinson: ‘Italian Romanticism and Italian Opera: an Essay in their Affinities’, 19CM, x (1986–7), 43–60

M. Beghelli: ‘Per un nuovo approccio al teatro musicale: l'atto performativo come luogo dell'imitazione gestuale nella drammaturgia verdiana’, Italica, lxiv (1987), 632–53

H.S. Powers: ‘“La solita forma” and “The Uses of Convention”’, AcM, lix (1987), 65–90 [also in Nuove prospettive nella ricerca verdiana: Vienna 1983, 74–109]

D. Rosen: ‘How Verdi Operas Begin: an Introduction to the Introduzioni’, Tornando a ‘Stiffelio’: popolarità, rifacimento, messinscena, effettismo e altre ‘cure’ nella drammaturgia del Verdi romantico, ed. G. Morelli (Florence, 1987), 203–21; repr. in Verdi Newsletter, no.16 (1988), 3–18

S. Balthazar: ‘Rossini and the Development of the Mid-Century Lyric Form’, JAMS, xli (1988), 102–25

M. Engelhardt: Die Chöre in den frühen Opern Giuseppe Verdis (Tutzing, 1988)

E. Lendvai: Verdi and Wagner (Budapest, 1988)

R. Parker: ‘On Reading Nineteenth-Century Opera: Verdi through the Looking-Glass’, Reading Opera, ed. A. Groos and R. Parker (Princeton, 1988), 288–305

G. Tomlinson: ‘Opera and Drame: Hugo, Donizetti, and Verdi’, Music and Drama, Studies in the History of Music, ii (New York, 1988), 171–92

W. Osthoff: ‘Dante beim späten Verdi’, Studi verdiani, v (1988–9), 35–64

C. Abbate and R. Parker, eds.: Analyzing Opera: Verdi and Wagner (Berkeley, 1989)

S. Balthazar: ‘The Primo Ottocento Duet and the Transformation of Rossinian Code’, JM, vii (1989), 471–97

S. Balthazar: ‘Analytic Context and Mediated Influences: the Rossinian “Convenienze” and Verdi's Middle and Late Duets’, JMR, x (1990), 19–45

M. Girardi: ‘Per un inventario della musica in scena nel teatro verdiano’, Studi verdiani, vi (1990), 99–145

P. Gossett: ‘Becoming a Citizen: the Chorus in Risorgimento Opera’, COJ, ii (1990), 41–64

G. de Van: ‘La notion de tinta: mémoire confuse et affinités thématiques dans les opéras de Verdi’, RdM, lxxvi (1990), 187–98

G. de Van: ‘Musique e narration dans les opéras de Verdi’, Studi verdiani, vi (1990), 18–54

H. Powers: ‘Tempo di mezzo: Three Ongoing Episodes in Verdian Musical Dramaturgy’, Verdi Newsletter, no.19 (1991), 6–36

L. Zoppelli: ‘Verdi “narratore”: omniscienza, timbro puro e oggetto psichio’, Studi verdiani, vii (1991), 57–78

G. de Van: Verdi, un théâtre en musique (Paris, 1992; Eng. trans., 1998, as Verdi, Man of the Theater)

M. Engelhardt: Verdi und andere: ‘Un giorno di regno’, ‘Ernani’, ‘Attila’, ‘Il corsaro’ in Mehrfachvertonungen (Parma, 1992)

A. Gerhard: Die Verstädterung der Oper (Stuttgart, 1992; Eng. trans., 1998, as The Urbanization of Opera)

S. Huebner: ‘Lyric Form in Ottocento Opera’, JRMA, cxvii (1992), 123–47

D. Rosen: ‘How Verdi’s Serious Operas End’, Verdi Newsletter, no.20 (1992), 9–15

R.M. Marvin: ‘A Verdi Autograph and the Problem of Authenticity’, Studi verdiani, ix (1993), 36–61

P. Petrobelli: ‘Verdi e la musica tedesca’, AnMc, no.28 (1993), 83–98

H. Powers: ‘Il “Do del baritono” nel “gioco delle parti” verdiano’, Opera & Libretto II, ed. G. Foleno and others (Florence, 1993), 267–81

D. Rizzo: ‘“Con eletta musica del Sig. Verdi da Busseto, fu celebrata la messa solenne”’, Studi verdiani, ix (1993), 62–96

E. Hudson: Narrative in Verdi: Perspectives on his Musical Dramaturgy (diss., Cornell U., 1993)

F. Della Seta: ‘“Parola scenica” in Verdi e nella critica verdiana’, Le parole della musica, ed. F. Nicolodi and P. Trovato (Florence, 1994), 259–86

P. Petrobelli: Music in the Theater: Essays on Verdi and Other Composers (Princeton, 1994)

A. Cantoni: ‘Verdi e Stravinskij’, Studi verdiani, x (1994–5), 127–54

K.A. Jürgensen: The Verdi Ballets (Parma, 1995)

E. Sala: ‘Verdi and the Parisian Boulevard Theatre, 1847–49’, COJ, vii (1995), 185–205

W. Osthoff : ‘Verdi l'inattuale: esempi e paragoni’, Studi verdiani, ix (1996), 13–39

M. Chusid, ed.: Verdi’s Middle Period (1849–1859) (Chicago, 1997)

R. Parker: Leonora’s Last Act: Essays in Verdian Discourse (Princeton, 1997)

M.A. Smart: ‘Verdi sings Erminia Frezzolini’, Verdi Newsletter, no.24 (1997), 13–22

R. Parker: ‘Arpa d'or’: the Verdian Patriotic Chorus in the 1840s (Parma, 1998)

j: textual studies

D. Vaughan: ‘Discordanze tra gli autografi verdiani e la loro stampa’, La Scala, no.104 (1958), 11–15, 71–2

G. Gavazzeni: ‘Problemi di tradizione dinamico-fraseologica e critica testuale, in Verdi e in Puccini’, RaM, xxix (1959), 27–41, 106–22; repr. with Eng. trans., 1961 [see also D. Vaughan and G. Gavazzeni, RaM, xxx (1960), 60–67; Musica d'oggi, iv (1961), 65–8]

D. Vaughan: ‘Meeting Verdi on his Own Ground’, Verdi: Bollettino dell'Istituto di studi verdiani, i/2 (1960), pp.lxvii–lxxviii

D. Vaughan: ‘The Inner Language of Verdi’s Manuscripts’, Musicology, v (1979), 67–153

Nuove prospettive nella ricerca verdiana: Vienna 1983 [incl. essays by M. Chusid, C. Gallico, P. Gossett, U. Günther, D. Lawton]

D. Lawton: ‘Why Bother with the New Verdi Edition?’ OQ, ii/4 (1984–5), 43–54

J.A. Hepokoski: ‘Compositional Emendations in Verdi's Autograph Scores: Il trovatore, Un ballo in maschera, and Aida’, Studi verdiani, iv (1986–7), 87–109

P. Gossett: ‘Censorship and Self-Censorship: Problems in Editing the Operas of Giuseppe Verdi’, Essays in Musicology: a Tribute to Alvin Johnson, ed. L. Lockwood and E.H. Roesner (Philadelphia, 1990), 247–57

k: performing practice and staging

Disposizioni sceniche or livrets de mise en scène (contemporary production books) were printed for the following operas: Les vêpres siciliennes (1856, Paris); Giovanna de Guzman [It. version of Les vêpres siciliennes] (?1856, Milan); Le trouvère [Fr. version of Il trovatore] (?1857, Paris); Un ballo in maschera (1859, Milan); La forza del destino (?1863, Milan); Don Carlos (1867, Milan, 3/1886); Aida (1873, Milan); Simon Boccanegra (1883, Milan); Otello (1888, Milan). For availability in modern editions, see under Individual Works. For bibliographic details of the French publications, together with details of manuscript staging materials in Parisian libraries for Aida, Attila, Le bal masqué [Fr. version of Un ballo in maschera], Ernani, Jérusalem, Rigoletto, La traviata and Le trouvère, see R.H. Cohen: ‘A Survey of French Sources for the Staging of Verdi's Operas: “Livrets de mise en scène”, Annotated Scores and Annotated Libretti in two Parisian Collections’, Studi verdiani, iii (1985), 11–44

M.T. Muraro: ‘Le scenografie delle cinque “prime assolute” di Verdi alla Fenice di Venezia’, Studi verdiani I: Venice 1966, 328–34

D. Rosen: ‘The Staging of Verdi's Operas: an Introduction to the Ricordi Disposizioni sceniche’, IMSCR XII: Berkeley 1977, 444–53

M. Chusid: ‘Verdi's own Words: his Thoughts on Performance with Special Reference to Don Carlos, Otello, and Falstaff’, The Verdi Companion, ed. W. Weaver and M. Chusid (New York, 1979)

R.H. Cohen (with S. l'Ecuyer Lacroix and J. Léveillé): Les gravures musicales dans ‘L'Illustration’, 1843–1899 (Quebec, 1982–3)

W. Crutchfield: ‘Vocal Ornamentation in Verdi: the Phonographic Evidence’, 19CM, vii (1983–4), 3–54

G.W. Harwood: ‘Verdi's Reform of the Italian Opera Orchestra’, 19CM, x (1986–7), 108–34

R. Meucci: ‘Il cimbasso e gli strumenti affini nell'Ottocento italiano’, Studi verdiani, v (1988–9), 109–62

N. Cipriani and M. Stefanoni: Verdi dal vivo: antologia di edizioni discografiche (Parma, 1989)

M. Chusid: ‘A Letter by the Composer about Giovanna d'Arco and some Remarks on the Division of Musical Direction in Verdi's Day’, Performance Practice Review, iii (1990), 7–57; repr. in Studi verdiani, vii (1991), 12–56

H.R. Cohen and M. Conati: ‘Un élément inexploré de la mise en scène du XIXe siècle: les “figurini” italiens des opéras de Verdi’, Opera & Libretto, ed. G. Folena and others (Florence, 1990), 281–97

L. Jensen: ‘The Emergence of the Modern Conductor in 19th-Century Italian Opera’, Performance Practice Review, iv (1991), 34–63

R.M. Marvin: ‘Verdi and the Metronome’, Verdi Newsletter, no.20 (1992), 4–8

L.B. Fairtile: ‘The Violin Director in Trovatore and Trouvère’, Verdi Newsletter, no.21 (1993), 16–26

O. Jesurum: ‘Girolamo Magnani, “primo scenografo d'Italia”’, Archivio storico per le provincie parmensi, xlv (1993), 419–30

P. Petrobelli and F. Della Seta, eds.: La realizzazione scenica dello spettacolo verdiano: Parma 1994

‘Sorgete! Ombre serene!’ L’aspetto visivo dello spettacolo verdiano (Parma, 1994, 2/1996) [incl. essays by J. Nigro Covre and P. Petrobelli]

O. Jesurum: ‘Le prime opere di Verdi nella interpretazione scenografica di Romolo Liverani’, Studi verdiani, xi (1996), 222–40

F. Piperno and others: ‘Le orchestre dei teatri d'opera italiani nell'Ottocento: bilancio provvisorio di una ricerca’, Studi verdiani, xi (1996), 119–221

L.B. Fairtile: ‘The Violin Director and Verdi's Middle-Period Operas’, Verdi's Middle Period (1849–1859), ed. M. Chusid (Chicago, 1997), 413–26

R.M. Marvin: ‘Aspects of Tempo in Verdi's Early and Middle-Period Italian Operas’, ibid., 393–411

Jérusalem: see I Lombardi

l: individual works

Oberto

C. Sartori: ‘Rocester, la prima opera di Verdi’, RMI, xliii (1939), 97–104

M. Conati: ‘L'Oberto, conte di San Bonifacio in due recensioni straniere poco note e in una lettera inedita di Verdi’, Studi verdiani I: Venice 1966, 67–92

D.R.B. Kimbell: ‘Poi … diventò l'Oberto’, ML, lii (1971), 1–7

P.D. Giovanelli: ‘La storia e la favola dell'Oberto’, Studi verdiani, ii (1985), 29–37

L. Jensen: ‘The Early Publication History of Oberto: an Eye Toward Nabucco’, Verdi Newsletter, no.13 (1985), 6–20

R. Parker: ‘The Autograph Score of Oberto, conte di San Bonifacio’, Studies in Early Verdi (1832–1844) (New York, 1989), 63–82

Il corsaro

La battaglia di Legnano

Les vêpres siciliennes

Simon Boccanegra

Aroldo: see Stiffelio

Quattro pezzi sacri, etc.

Un giorno di regno

R. Parker: ‘Un giorno di regno: from Romani's Libretto to Verdi's Opera’, Studi verdiani, ii (1983), 38–58

M. Engelhardt: ‘Nuovi dati sulla nascita dell'opera giovanile di Verdi Un giorno di regno’, Studi verdiani, iv (1986–7), 11–17

Nabucco

P. Petrobelli: ‘Nabucco’, Associazione Amici della Scala: Milan 1966–7, 17–47; Eng. trans. as ‘From Rossini's Mosé to Verdi's Nabucco’, Music in the Theater: Essays on Verdi and Other Composers (Princeton, 1994), 8–33

D. Lawton: ‘Analytical Observations on the Nabucco Revisions’, Studi verdiani III: Milan 1972, 208–20

L'avant-scène opéra, no.86 (1986) [Nabucco issue]

R. Parker: ‘The Critical Edition of Nabucco’, OQ, v (1987), 91–8

I Lombardi

Gerusalemme, Quaderni dell'Istituto di studi verdiani, ii (1963)

D.R.B. Kimbell: ‘Verdi's First Rifacimento: I Lombardi and Jérusalem’, ML, lx (1969), 1–36

A. Quattrocchi: ‘Da Milano a Parigi: Jérusalem, la prima revisione di Verdi’, Studi verdiani, x (1994–5), 13–60

Ernani

L.K. Gerhartz: Die Auseinandersetzungen des jungen Giuseppe Verdi mit dem literarischen Drama: ein Beitrag zur szenischen Strukturbestimmung der Oper (Berlin, 1968), 30–82, 453–4

J. Kerman: ‘Notes on an Early Verdi Opera’, Soundings, iii (1973), 56–65

G. Paduano: ‘Turbamenti del triangolo: il sistema delle autorità e delle tenerezze nell'Ernani’, Noi facemmo ambedue un sogno strano: il disagio amoroso sulla scena dell'opera europea (Palermo, 1982), 22–59

R. Parker: ‘Levels of Motivic Definition in Verdi's Ernani’, 19CM, vi (1982–3), 141–50

Ernani: ieri e oggi: Modena 1984 [Bollettino dell’Istituto di studi verdiani, no.10 (1987; Eng. trans., 1989)]

M. Spada: ‘Ernani e la censura napolitana’, Studi verdiani, v (1988–9), 11–34

P. Gossett: ‘The Composition of Ernani’, Analyzing Opera: Verdi and Wagner, ed. C. Abbate and R. Parker (Berkeley, 1989), 27–55

I due Foscari

C. Simone: ‘Per la cabaletta de I due Foscari’, Nuova antologia (1934), 327–34

G. Biddlecombe: ‘The Revision of “No, non morrai, chè i perfidi”: Verdi's Compositional Process in I due Foscari’, Studi verdiani, ii (1983), 59–77

D. Lawton: ‘A New Sketch for I due Foscari’, Verdi Newsletter, no.22 (1995), 4–16

Alzira

M. Mila: ‘Verdi minore: lettura dell'Alzira’, RIM, i (1966), 246–67

P. Petrobelli: ‘Pensieri per Alzira’, Nuove prospettive nella ricerca verdiana: Vienna 1983, 110–24; Eng. trans. as ‘Thoughts for Alzira’, Music in the Theater: Essays on Verdi and Other Composers (Princeton, 1994), 75–99

Attila

M. Noiray and R. Parker: ‘La composition d'Attila: étude de quelques variantes’, RdM, lxii (1976), 104–24

M. Mila: ‘Lettura dell'Attila di Verdi’, NRMI, xvii (1983), 247–76

P. Gossett: ‘A New Romanza for Attila’, Studi verdiani, ix (1993), 13–35

M.A. Smart: ‘“Proud, Indomitable, Irascible”: Allegories of Nation in Attila and Les vêpres siciliennes’, Verdi's Middle Period (1849–1859), ed. M. Chusid (Chicago, 1997), 227–56

Macbeth

G. Cora Varesi: ‘L'interpretazione del “Macbeth”’, Nuova antologia, ccclxiv (1932), 433–40

L.K. Gerhartz: Die Auseinandersetzungen des jungen Giuseppe Verdi mit dem literarischen Drama: ein Beitrag zur szenischen Strukturbestimmung der Oper (Berlin, 1968), 82–193, 465–75

W. Osthoff: ‘Die beiden Fassungen von Verdi's Macbeth’, AMw, xxix (1972), 17–44

F. Noske: ‘Schiller e la genesi del Macbeth verdiano’, NRMI, x (1976), 196–203

F. Degrada: ‘Lettura del Macbeth di Verdi’, Studi musicali, vi (1977), 207–67; repr. in Il palazzo incantato: studi sulla tradizione del melodramma dal Barocco al Romanticismo (Fiesole, 1979), ii, 79–141

E. Antokoletz: ‘Verdi's Dramatic Use of Harmony and Tonality in Macbeth’, In Theory Only, iv/6 (1978–9), 17–28

D. Goldin: ‘Il Macbeth verdiano: genesi e linguaggio di un libretto’, AnMc, no.19 (1979), 336–72; repr. in La vera fenice: librettisti e libretti tra Sette e Ottocento (Turin, 1985), 230–82

M. Conati: ‘Aspetti della messinscena del Macbeth di Verdi’, NRMI, xv (1981), 374–404

L'avant-scène opéra, no.40 (1982) [Macbeth issue]

D. Rosen and A. Porter, eds.: Verdi's ‘Macbeth’: a Sourcebook (New York, 1984)

M. Chusid and T. Kaufman: ‘More about the Performance History of Macbeth’, Verdi Newsletter, no.13 (1985), 38–41

N. John, ed.: Macbeth (London, 1990) [ENO opera guide]

A. Chegai: ‘Seduzione scenica e ragione drammatica: Verdi ed il Macbeth fiorentino del 1847’, Studi verdiani, xi (1996), 40–74

F. Vittorini: ‘“Quelche chose pour le ténor”: i finali del Macbeth verdiano’, RIM, xxxi/2 (1996), 327–62

I masnadieri

R.M. Marvin: ‘Artistic Concerns and Practical Considerations in the Composition of I masnadieri: a Newly-Discovered Version of “Tremate, o miseri!”’, Studi verdiani, vii (1991), 79–110

R.M. Marvin: Verdi's ‘I masnadieri’: its Genesis and Early Reception (diss., Brandeis U., 1992)

R.M. Marvin: ‘Censorship of I masnadieri in Italy’, Verdi Newsletter, no.22 (1993), 5–15

Jérusalem: see I Lombardi

Il corsaro

Il corsaro, Quaderni dell’Istituto di studi verdiani, i (1963)

M. Mila: ‘Lettura del Corsaro di Verdi’, NRMI, v (1971), 40–73

S. Town: ‘Observations on a Cabaletta from Verdi's Il corsaro’, CMc, no.32 (1981), 59–75

D. Lawton: ‘The Corsair Reaches Port’, ON, xlvi/20 (1981–2), 16, 18, 42

La battaglia di Legnano

J. Budden: ‘La battaglia di Legnano: its Unique Character, with Special Reference to the Finale of Act I’, Studi verdiani III: Milan 1972, 71–80

F. Noske: ‘Verdi und die Belagerung von Haarlem’, Convivium amicorum: Festschrift Wolfgang Boetticher, ed. H. Hüschen and D.-R. Moser (Berlin, 1974), 236–45

Luisa Miller

L.K. Gerhartz: Die Auseinandersetzungen des jungen Giuseppe Verdi mit dem literarischen Drama: ein Beitrag zur szenischen Strukturbestimmung der Oper (Berlin, 1968), 193–270, 475ff

P. Ross: ‘Luisa Miller – ein kantiger Schiller-Verschnitt?: Sozialkontext und ästhetische Autonomie der Opernkomposition im Ottocento’, Zwischen Opera buffa und Melodramma: Italienische Oper im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert, ed. J. Maehder and J. Stenzl (Frankfurt, 1994), 159–78

M. Engelhardt: ‘“Something's been Done to make Room for Choruses”: Choral Conception and Choral Construction in Luisa Miller’, Verdi's Middle Period (1849–1859), ed. M. Chusid (Chicago, 1997), 197–205

E. Senici: Virgins of the Rocks: Alpine Landscape and Female Purity in Early-Nineteenth-Century Italian Opera (diss., Cornell U., 1998)

Stiffelio

V. Levi: ‘Stiffelio e il suo rifacimento (Aroldo)’, Studi verdiani I: Venice 1966, 172–5

Stiffelio, Quaderni dell'Istituto di studi verdiani, iii (1968)

G. Morelli, ed.: Tornando a ‘Stiffelio’: popolarità, rifacimento, messinscena, effettismo e altre ‘cure’ nella drammaturgia del Verdi romantico (Florence, 1987)

P. Gossett: ‘New Sources for Stiffelio: a Preliminary Report’, COJ, v (1993), 199–222; repr. in Verdi's Middle Period (1849–1859), ed. M. Chusid (Chicago, 1997), 19–43

K.K. Hansell: ‘Compositional Techniques in Stiffelio: Reading the Autograph Sources’, Verdi's Middle Period (1849–1859), ed. M. Chusid (Chicago, 1997), 45–97

Rigoletto

C. Gatti: Introduction to L'abbozzo del Rigoletto di Giuseppe Verdi (Milan, 1941) [sketches]

G. Roncaglia: ‘L'abbozzo del Rigoletto di Verdi’, RMI, xlviii (1946), 112–29; repr. in Galleria verdiana (Milan, 1959), 87–100

P. Petrobelli: ‘Verdi e il Don Giovanni: osservazioni sulla scena iniziale del Rigoletto’, Studi verdiani I: Venice 1966, 232–46; Eng. trans. as ‘Verdi and Don Giovanni: on the Opening Scene of Rigoletto’, Music in the Theater: Essays on Verdi and Other Composers (Princeton, 1994), 34–47

C. Gallico: ‘Ricognizione di Rigoletto’, NRMI, iii (1969), 855–901

Verdi: Bollettino dell'Istituto di studi verdiani, iii/7–9 (1969–82)

M. Lavagetto: Un caso di censura: il ‘Rigoletto’ (Milan, 1979)

N. John, ed.: Rigoletto (London, 1982) [ENO opera guide]

M. Conati: ‘Rigoletto’ di Giuseppe Verdi: guida all'opera (Milan, 1983)

W. Osthoff: ‘Verdis musikalische Vorstellung in der Szene III, 4 des Rigoletto’, Nuove prospettive nella ricerca verdiana: Vienna 1983, 57–73

C. Danuser: Studien zu den Skizzen von Verdis ‘Rigoletto’ (diss. U. of Berne, 1985)

S. Döhring: ‘Le roi s'amuse – Rigoletto vom “drame” zum “melodramma”’, Oper als Text: romanistische Beiträge zur Libretto-forschung, ed. A. Gier (Heidelberg, 1986), 239–47

U. Günther: ‘Rigoletto à Paris’, L'opera tra Venezia e Parigi: Venice 1986, 269–314

L'avant-scène opéra, nos.112–13 (1988) [Rigoletto issue]

M. Chusid: ‘The Tonality of Rigoletto’, Analyzing Opera: Verdi and Wagner, ed. C. Abbate and R. Parker (Berkeley, 1989), 241–61

M. Conati: Rigoletto: un'analisi drammatico-musicale (Venice, 1992)

E. Hudson: ‘Gilda Seduced: a Tale Untold’, COJ, iv (1992), 229–51

Il trovatore

P. Petrobelli: ‘Per un'esegesi della struttura drammatica del Trovatore’, Studi verdiani III: Milan 1972, 387–400; repr. as ‘Towards an Explanation of the Dramatic Structure of Il trovatore’, Music Analysis, i (1982), 129–40

W. Drabkin: ‘Characters, Key Relations and Tonal Structure in Il trovatore’, ibid., 143–53

R. Parker: ‘The Dramatic Structure of Il trovatore’, ibid., 155–67

J. Black: ‘Salvadore Cammarano's Programma for Il trovatore and the Problems of the Finale’, Studi verdiani, ii (1983), 78–107

N. John, ed.: Il trovatore (London, 1983) [ENO opera guide]

L'avant-scène opéra, no.60 (1984) [Il trovatore issue]

D. Lawton: ‘Le trouvère: Verdi's Revision of Il trovatore for Paris’, Studi verdiani, iii (1985), 79–119

J. Greenwood: ‘Musical and Dramatic Motion in Verdi's Il trovatore’, JbO, ii (1986), 59–73

J. Rosenberg: ‘A Sketch Fragment for Il trovatore’, Verdi Newsletter, no.14 (1986), 29–35

M. Chusid and T. Kaufman: ‘The First Three Years of Trovatore’, Verdi Newsletter, no.15 (1987), 30–49

H.R. Cohen, ed.: The Original Staging Manuals for Twelve Parisian Operatic Premières/Douze livrets de mise en scène lyrique datant des créations parisiennes (Stuyvesant, NY, 1991) [incl. production book for Le trouvère]

C.M. Mossa: ‘La genesi del libretto del Trovatore’, Studi verdiani, viii (1992), 52–104

M.A. Smart: ‘Dalla tomba uscita’: Representations of Madness in Nineteenth-Century Italian Opera (diss., Cornell U., 1994)

A. Gerhard: ‘Dalla fatalità all'ossessione: Il trovatore fra mélodrame parigino e opera moderna’, Studi verdiani, x (1994–5), 61–6

M. Chusid: ‘A New Source for El trovador and its Implications for the Tonal Organization of Il trovatore’, Verdi's Middle Period (1849–1859), ed. M. Chusid (Chicago, 1997), 207–25

J. Hepokoski: ‘Ottocento Opera as Cultural Drama: Generic Mixtures in Il trovatore’, ibid., 147–96

La traviata

M. Chusid: ‘Drama and the Key of F Major in La traviata’, Studi verdiani III: Milan 1972, 89–121

J. Budden: ‘The Two Traviatas’, PRMA, xcix (1972–3), 43–66

D. Rosen: ‘Virtue Restored’, ON, xlii/9 (1977–8), 36–9

N. John, ed.: La traviata (London, 1981) [ENO opera guide]

L'avant-scène opéra, no.51 (1986) [La traviata issue]

F. Della Seta: ‘Il tempo della festa: su due scene della Traviata e su altri luoghi verdiani’, Studi verdiani, ii (1983), 108–46

C. Dahlhaus: ‘Realism in Italian Opera’, Realism in Nineteenth-Century Music [trans. of Musikalischer Realismus: zur Musikgeschichte der 19. Jahrhunderts (1982)] (Cambridge, 1985), 63–71

J.A. Hepokoski: ‘Genre and Content in Mid-Century Verdi: “Addio, del passato” (La traviata, Act III)’, COJ, i (1989), 249–76

W. Osthoff: ‘Aspetti strutturali e psicologici della drammaturgia verdiana nei ritocchi della Traviata’, Opera & Libretto I, ed. G. Folena and others (Florence, 1990), 315–60

F. Della Seta: ‘Varianti (d'autore e non) ne La traviata’, Napoli e il teatro musicale in Europa tra Sette e Ottocento, ed. B.M. Antolini and W. Witzenmann (Florence, 1993), 417–35

N. John, ed.: Violetta and her Sisters: ‘The Lady of the Camellias’: Responses to the Myth (London, 1994)

A. Groos: ‘“TB Sheets”: Love and Disease in La traviata’, COJ, vii (1995), 233–60

Les vêpres siciliennes

P. Bonnefon: ‘Les métamorphoses d'un opéra: lettres inédites de Eugène Scribe’, Revue des deux mondes, xli/4 (1917), 877–99

J. Budden: ‘Varianti nei Vespri siciliani’, NRMI, vi (1972), 155–81

M. Mila, R. Celletti and G. Gualerzi: Opera: collana di guide musicali, 1st ser., i (Turin, 1973) [essays with Fr./It. lib.]

R. Vlad: ‘Unità strutturale dei Vespri siciliani’, Il melodramma italiano dell'Ottocento: studi e ricerche per Massimo Mila, ed. G. Pestelli (Turin, 1977), 45–90

A. Porter: ‘Les vêpres siciliennes: New Letters from Verdi to Scribe’, 19CM, ii (1978–9), 95–109

F. Noske: ‘Melodia e struttura in Les vêpres siciliennes di Verdi’, Ricerche musicali, iv (1980), 3–8

J. Budden: ‘Verdi and Meyerbeer in relation to Les vêpres siciliennes’, Studi verdiani, i (1982), 11–20

M. Conati: ‘Ballabili nei Vespri: con alcune osservazioni su Verdi e la musica popolare’, ibid., 21–46

L'avant-scène opéra, no.75 (1985) [Les vêpres siciliennes issue]

A. Gerhard: ‘“Ce cinquième acte sans intérêt”: preoccupazioni di Scribe e di Verdi per la drammaturgia de Les vêpres siciliennes’, Studi verdiani, iv (1986–7), 65–86

H.R. Cohen, ed.: The Original Staging Manuals for Twelve Parisian Operatic Premières/Douze livrets de mise en en scène lyrique datant des créations parisiennes (Stuyvesant, NY, 1991) [incl. production book for Les vêpres siciliennes]

P.P. Varnai: ‘La struttura ritmica come mezzo di caratterizzazione ne I vespri siciliani’, Studi verdiani, x (1994–5), 93–103

J. Langford: ‘Poetic Prosody and Melodic Rhythm in Les vêpres siciliennes’, Verdi Newsletter, no.23 (1996), 8–18

Simon Boccanegra

F. Walker: ‘Verdi, Giuseppe Montanelli and the Libretto of Simon Boccanegra’, Verdi: Bollettino dell'Istituto di studi verdiani, i/3 (1960), 1373–90

W. Osthoff: ‘Die beiden Boccanegra-Fassungen und der Beginn von Verdis Spätwerk’, AnMc, no.1 (1963), 70–89

L'avant-scène opéra, no.19 (1979) [Simon Boccanegra issue]

E.T. Cone: ‘On the Road to Otello: Tonality and Structure in Simon Boccanegra’, Studi verdiani, i (1982), 72–98

J. Kerman: ‘Lyric Form and Flexibility in Simon Boccanegra’, ibid., 47–62

P.P. Várnai: ‘Paolo Albiani: il cammino di un personaggio’, ibid., 63–71

M. Conati: Il ‘Simon Boccanegra’ di Verdi a Reggio Emilia (1857): storia documentata: alcune varianti alla prima edizione dell'opera (Reggio Emilia, 1984)

D. Goldin: ‘Il Simon Boccanegra da Piave a Boito e la drammaturgia verdiana’, La vera fenice: librettisti e libretti tra Sette e Ottocento (Turin, 1985), 283–334

N. John, ed.: Simon Boccanegra (London, 1985) [ENO opera guide]

D. Puccini: ‘Il Simon Boccanegra di Antonio García Gutiérrez e l'opera di Giuseppe Verdi’, Studi verdiani, iii (1985), 120–30

H. Busch: Verdi's ‘Otello’ and ‘Simon Boccanegra’ (revised version) in Letters and Documents (Oxford, 1988)

A. Sopart: Giuseppe Verdis ‘Simon Boccanegra’ (1857 und 1881): eine musikalisch-dramaturgische Analyse, AnMc, no.26 (1988)

H. Powers: ‘Simon Boccanegra I.10–12: a Generic-Genetic Analysis of the Council Chamber Scene’, 19CM, xiii (1989–90), 101–2

M. Conati and N. Grilli: Simon Boccanegra di Giuseppe Verdi, Collana di disposizioni sceniche, ed. F. Degrada and M. Viale Ferrero (Milan, 1993)

J. Budden: ‘The Vocal and Dramatic Characterisation of Jacopo Fiesco’, Studi verdiani, x (1994–5), 67–75

Aroldo: see Stiffelio

Un ballo in maschera

A. Pascolato: Re Lear e Ballo in maschera: lettere di Giuseppe Verdi ad Antonio Somma (Città di Castello, 1902)

Verdi: Bollettino dell'Istituto di studi verdiani, i/1–3 (1960)

S. Levarie: ‘Key Relations in Verdi's Un ballo in maschera’, 19CM, ii (1978–9), 143–7; see also J. Kerman, ‘Viewpoint’, ibid., 186–91, and G.A. Marco and S. Levarie, ‘On Key Relationships in Opera’, ibid., iii (1979–80), 83–9

L'avant-scène opéra, no.32 (1981) [Un ballo in maschera issue]

S. Levarie: ‘A Pitch Cell in Verdi's Un ballo in maschera’, JMR, iii (1981), 399–409

R. Parker and M. Brown: ‘Motivic and Tonal Interaction in Verdi's Un ballo in maschera’, JAMS, xxxvi (1983), 243–65

P. Ross: ‘Amelias Auftrittsarie im Maskenball: Verdis Vertonung im dramaturgisch-textlichem Zusammenhang’, AfM, xl (1983), 126–45

N. John, ed.: Un ballo in maschera (London, 1990) [ENO opera guide]

E. Hudson: ‘Masking Music: a Reconsideration of Light and Shade in Un ballo in maschera’, Verdi's Middle Period (1849–1859), ed. M. Chusid (Chicago, 1997), 257–72

H. Powers: ‘“La dama velata”: Act II of Un ballo in maschera’, ibid., 273–336

La forza del destino

Verdi: Bollettino dell'Istituto di Studi Verdiani, ii/4–6 (1961–6)

E. Rescigno: La forza del destino di Verdi (Milan, 1981)

N. John, ed.: The Force of Destiny (London, 1983) [ENO opera guide]

J. Nadás: ‘New Light on Pre-1869 Revisions of La forza del destino’, Verdi Newsletter, no.15 (1987), 7–29

W.C. Holmes: ‘The Earliest Revisions of La forza del destino’, Studi verdiani, vi (1990), 55–98

Don Carlos

A. Porter: ‘A Sketch for Don Carlos’, MT, cxi (1970), 882–5

Studi verdiani II: Verona, Parma and Busseto 1969

A. Porter: ‘The Making of Don Carlos’, PRMA, xcviii (1971–2), 73–88

U. Günther: ‘La genèse de Don Carlos’, RdM, lviii (1972), 16–64; lx (1974), 87–158

U. Günther: ‘Zur Entstehung der zweiten französischen Fassung von Verdis Don Carlos’, IMSCR XI: Copenhagen 1972, 396–402

A. Porter: ‘A Note on Princess Eboli’, MT, cxiii (1972), 750–4

U. Günther and G. Carrara Verdi: ‘Der Briefwechsel Verdi-Nuitter-Du Locle zur Revision des Don Carlos’, AnMc, no.14 (1974), 1–31; no.15 (1975), 334–401

A. Porter: ‘Preamble to a New Don Carlos’, Opera, xxv (1974), 665–73

M. Clémeur: ‘Eine neu entdeckte Quelle für das Libretto von Verdi's Don Carlos’, Melos/NZM, iii (1977), 496–9

F. Degrada: ‘Don Carlos: il teatro musicale e la funzione critica’, Il palazzo incantato: studi sulla tradizione del melodramma dal Barocco al Romanticismo (Fiesole, 1979), ii, 143–54

G. Paduano: ‘Noi facemmo ambedue un sogno strano’, Noi facemmo ambedue un sogno strano: il disagio amoroso sulla scena dell'opera europea (Palermo, 1982), 60

U. Günther: ‘Wagnerism in Verdi's Don Carlos von 1867?’, Wagnerliteratur – Wagnerforschung, ed. C. Dahlhaus and E. Voss (Mainz, 1985), 101–8

P. Robinson: ‘Realpolitik: Giuseppe Verdi's Don Carlo’, Opera and Ideas: from Mozart to Strauss (Ithaca, NY, 1985), 155–209

L'avant-scène opéra, nos.90–91 (1986) [Don Carlos issue]

U. Günther: ‘La genèse du Don Carlos de Verdi: nouveaux documents’, RdM, lxxii (1986), 104–77

D. Rosen: ‘The Operatic Origins of Verdi's “Lacrymosa”’, Studi verdiani, v (1988–9), 65–84

J. Batchelor, ed.: Don Carlos (London, 1992) [ENO opera guide]

F. Noske: ‘From Idea to Sound: Philip's Monologue in Verdi's Don Carlos’, Studi verdiani, x (1994–5), 76–92

Aida

A. Luzio: ‘Come fu composta l'Aida’, Carteggi verdiani, iv (Rome, 1947), 5–27

E. Lendvai: ‘Verdis Formgeheimnisse’, Studi verdiani I: Venice 1966, 157–71

Genesi di ‘Aida’, Quaderni dell'Istituto di studi verdiani, iv (1971)

U. Günther: ‘Zur Entstehung von Verdis Aida’, Studi musicali, ii (1973), 15–71

P. Gossett: ‘Verdi, Ghislanzoni, and Aida: the Uses of Convention’, Critical Inquiry, i (1974–5), 291–334

L'avant-scène opéra, no.4 (1976) [Aida issue]

J. Humbert: ‘A propos de l'égyptomanie dans l'oeuvre de Verdi: attribution à Auguste Mariette d'un scénario anonyme de l'opéra Aida’, RdM, lxii (1976), 229–56

L. Alberti: ‘I progressi attuali [1872] del dramma musicale: note sulla Disposizione scenica per l'opera “Aida”’, Il melodramma italiano dell'Ottocento: studi e ricerche per Massimo Mila, ed. G. Pestelli (Turin, 1977), 125–55

H. Busch: Verdi's ‘Aida’: the History of an Opera in Letters and Documents (Minneapolis, 1978)

N. John, ed.: Aida (London, 1980) [ENO opera guide]

P. Petrobelli: ‘Music in the Theatre (a propos of Aida, Act III)’, Themes in Drama (Cambridge, 1980), iii, 129–42; repr. in Music in the Theater: Essays on Verdi and Other Composers (Princeton, 1994), 113–26

G. de Bosio: Aida 1913, 1982: diario per una regia all'Arena (Milan, 1982)

M. Conati: ‘Aspetti di melodrammaturgia verdiana: a proposito di una sconosciuta versione del finale del duetto Aida-Amneris’, Studi verdiani, iii (1985), 45–78

D. Lawton: ‘The Autograph of Aida and the New Verdi Edition’, Verdi Newsletter, no.14 (1986), 4–14

G. Erasmi: ‘Norma and Aida: momenti estremi della concezione romantica’, Studi verdiani, v (1988–9), 85–108

D. Lawton: ‘Tonal Systems in Aida’, Analyzing Opera: Verdi and Wagner, ed. C. Abbate and R. Parker (Berkeley, 1989), 262–75

R. Parker: ‘Motives and Recurring Themes in Aida’, ibid., 222–38

F. Della Seta: ‘“O cieli azzurri”: Exoticism and Dramatic Discourse in Aida’, COJ, iii (1990), 49–62

K.A. Jürgensen: ‘Le coreografie originali di Aida (Paris, Théâtre de l'Opéra, 1880)’, Studi verdiani, vi (1990), 146–58

P. Robinson: ‘Is Aida an Orientalist Opera?’, COJ, v (1993), 133–40

G. Oliviero: ‘Aida: tra egittologia ed egittomania’, Studi verdiani, x (1994–5), 118–26

M. Viale Ferrero: ‘Aida à Milan: l'image de l'Egypte aux archives Ricordi’, L'Egyptomanie à l'épreuve de l'archéologie: Paris and Brussels 1994, ed. J.-M. Humbert (Paris and Brussels), 531–50

N. Wild: ‘Eugène Lacoste et la première d'Aida à l'Opéra de Paris’, ibid., 507–29

E. Kahlke: ‘Vers und Musik in der Aida’, Studi verdiani, xi (1996), 75–118

Otello

F. Busoni: ‘Verdi's Otello: eine kritische Studie’, NZM, liv (1887), 125–7

Otello: dramma lirico in quattro atti … Giudizi della stampa italiana e straniera [suppl. to GMM, xlii/13] (Milan, 2/1887)

Verdi e l'Otello [special issue of Illustrazione italiana] (Milan, 1887)

V. Maurel: ‘A propos de la mise-en-scène du drame lyrique Otello’ [1888], Dix ans de carrière (Paris, 1897/R), 1–148

J. Kerman: ‘Verdi's Otello, or Shakespeare Explained’, Opera as Drama (New York, 1956, 2/1988), 100–39

W. Dean: ‘Verdi's Otello: a Shakespearean Masterpiece’, Shakespeare Survey, xxi (1968), 87–96

L'avant–scène opéra, no.3 (1976) [Otello issue]

D. Lawton: ‘On the “Bacio” Theme in Otello’, 19CM, i (1977–8), 211–20

D. Coe: ‘The Original Production Book for Otello: an Introduction’, 19CM, ii (1978–9), 148–58

F. Degrada: ‘Otello: da Boito a Verdi’, Il palazzo incantato: studi sulla tradizione del melodramma dal Barocco al Romanticismo (Fiesole, 1979), ii, 155–66

N. John, ed.: Otello (London, 1981) [ENO opera guide]

R. Parker and M. Brown: ‘“Ancora un bacio”: Three Scenes from Verdi's Otello’, 19CM, ix (1985–6), 51–62

J.A. Hepokoski: Giuseppe Verdi: Otello (Cambridge, 1987)

K. Bergeron: ‘How to Avoid Believing (While Reading Iago's “Credo”)’, Reading Opera, ed. A. Groos and R. Parker (Princeton, 1988), 184–99

H. Busch: Verdi's ‘Otello’ and ‘Simon Boccanegra’ (revised version) in Letters and Documents (Oxford, 1988)

J.A. Hepokoski: ‘Boito and F.-V. Hugo's “Magnificent Translation”: a Study in the Genesis of the Otello Libretto’, Reading Opera, ed. A. Groos and R. Parker (Princeton, 1988), 34–59

J.A. Hepokoski: ‘Verdi's Composition of Otello: the Act II Quartet’, Analyzing Opera: Verdi and Wagner, ed. C. Abbate and R. Parker (Berkeley, 1989), 125–49

J.A. Hepokoski and M. Viale Ferrero: Otello di Giuseppe Verdi, Collana di disposizioni sceniche, ed. F. Degrada and M. Viale Ferrero (Milan, 1990)

C. Polo: ‘L'Otello di Verdi nelle traduzioni shakespeariane dell'Ottocento’, NRMI, xxxix (1995), 419–30

Falstaff

Verdi e il Falstaff [special issue of Illustrazione italiana] (Milan, 1893)

H. Gal: ‘A Deleted Episode in Verdi's Falstaff’, MR, ii (1941), 266–72

E.T. Cone: ‘The Stature of Falstaff: Technique and Content in Verdi's Last Opera’, Center, i (1954), 17–23

G. Barblan: Un prezioso spartito di Falstaff (Milan, 1957)

D. Sabbeth: ‘Dramatic and Musical Organization in Falstaff’, Studi verdiani III: Milan 1972, 415–42

W. Osthoff: ‘Il sonetto nel Falstaff di Verdi’, Il melodramma italiano dell'ottocento: studi e ricerche per Massimo Mila, ed. G. Pestelli (Turin, 1977), 157–83

D. Linthicum: ‘Verdi's Falstaff and Classical Sonata Form’, MR, xxxix (1978), 39–53

J.A. Hepokoski: The Compositional History of Verdi's ‘Falstaff’: a Study of the Autograph Score and Early Editions (diss., Harvard U., 1979)

J.A. Hepokoski: ‘Verdi, Giuseppina Pasqua and the Composition of Falstaff’, 19CM, iii (1979–80), 239–50

N. John, ed.: Falstaff (London, 1982) [ENO opera guide]

J.A. Hepokoski: Giuseppe Verdi: Falstaff (Cambridge, 1983)

J.A. Hepokoski: ‘Under the Eye of the Verdian Bear: Notes on the Rehearsals and Première of Falstaff’, MQ, lxxi (1985), 135–56

T. Baumann: ‘The Young Lovers in Falstaff’, 19CM, ix (1985–6), 62–9

L'avant-scène opéra, nos.387–8 (1986) [Falstaff issue]

J. Hepokoski: ‘Overriding the Autograph Score: the Problem of Textual Authority in Verdi's Falstaff’, Studi verdiani, viii (1992), 13–51

M. Girardi: ‘French sources in Falstaff and some Aspects of its Musical Dramaturgy’, OQ, xi (1994–5), 45–63

Il re Lear

A. Pascolato: Re Lear e Ballo in maschera: lettere di Giuseppe Verdi ad Antonio Somma (Città di Castello, 1902)

M. Medici: ‘Lettere su Re Lear’, Verdi: Bollettino dell'Istituto di studi verdiani, i/2 (1960), 767–78, 1039–56

L.K. Gerhartz: ‘Il Re Lear di Antonio Somma ed il modello melodrammatico dell'opera verdiana: principi per una definizione del libretto verdiano’, Studi verdiani I: Venice 1966, 110–15

L.K. Gerhartz: Die Auseinandersetzungen des jungen Giuseppe Verdi mit dem literarischen Drama: ein Beitrag zur szenischen Strukturbestimmung der Oper (Berlin, 1968), 277–8, 497–8

G. Martin: ‘Verdi, King Lear and Maria Piccolomini’, Columbia Library Columns, xxi (1971), 12–20

G. Schmidgall: ‘Verdi's King Lear Project’, 19CM, ix (1985–6), 83–101

Requiem

I. Pizzetti: ‘La religiosità di Verdi: introduzione alla Messa da Requiem’, Nuova antologia, i (1941), 209–13

G. Roncaglia: ‘Il Requiem di Verdi’, Le celebrazioni del 1963 e alcune nuove indagini sulla musica del XVIII e XIX secolo: numero unico per la XX ‘Settimana Musicale Senese’, ed. M. Fabbri (Florence, 1963), 99–115

D. Rosen: ‘Verdi's “Liber scriptus” Rewritten’, MQ, lv (1969), 151–69

D. Rosen: ‘La Messa a Rossini e il Requiem per Manzoni’, RIM, iv (1969), 127–37; v (1970), 216–33

D. Rosen: The Genesis of Verdi's Requiem (diss., U. of California, Berkeley, 1976)

M. Girardi and P. Petrobelli, eds.: Messa per Rossini: la storia, il testo, la musica, Quaderni dell'Istituto di studi verdiani, v (1988)

G. Martin: ‘Verdi, Manzoni, and the Requiem’, Aspects of Verdi (New York, 1988), 31–58

D. Rosen: ‘The Operatic Origins of Verdi's “Lacrymosa”’, Studi verdiani, v (1988–9), 65–84

J. Roeder: ‘Pitch and Rhythmic Dramaturgy in Verdi's “Lux aeterna”’, 19CM, xiv (1990–91), 169–85

J. Roeder: ‘Formal Functions of Hypermeter in the “Dies irae” of Verdi's Requiem’, Theory and Practice, xix (1994), 84–104

D. Rosen: ‘Reprise and Resolution in Verdi's Messa da Requiem’, ibid., 105–17

D. Rosen: Verdi: ‘Requiem’ (Cambridge, 1995)

1. Terminology and origins.

Quattro pezzi sacri, etc.

M.C. Caputo: ‘La Scala-Rebus e le Ave Maria di G. Verdi’, GMM, l (1895), 453–4

H. Scherchen: ‘I quattro pezzi sacri’, Il diapason, ii/1–2 (1951)

F. Walker: ‘Verdi's Four Sacred Pieces’, Ricordiana, vi/2 (1961), 1–3

D. Stivender: ‘The Composer of Gesù morì’, AIVS, no.2 (1976), 6–7

M. Conati: ‘Le Ave Marie su scala enigmatica di Verdi dalla prima alla seconda stesura (1889–1897)’, RIM, xiii (1978), 280–311

P. Petrobelli: ‘On Dante and Italian Music: Three Moments’, COJ, ii (1990), 219–49

Verdi, Pietro.

See Verdina, Pietro.

Verdiales.

Fandango-style song and dance of Andalusian origin. See Spain, §II, 4.

Verdier [Werdier], Pierre

(b Paris, ? 6 Sept 1627; d Stockholm, 20 Sept 1706). French composer and musician active in Sweden. His probable relationship with one or more known French musicians of the time with the same surname has not been conclusively established. It seems likely, however, that he is identifiable with the Pierre Verdier (b 1627) who was a son of the musician Robert Verdier. Pierre Verdier arrived in Sweden late in 1646 or early 1647 as one of a group of six French violinists brought to Stockholm by the Swedish Count Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie. They were allotted salaries at the royal court from March 1647. Verdier was apparently the outstanding member of this band: in 1650, for instance, he was awarded 100 ducats by Queen Christina. During the early 1650s the band gradually dissolved. Several of its members left Sweden, but Verdier stayed behind and for the rest of his life was a member of the German–Swedish court chapel under the leadership of the Düben family. His ability as a musician can be tentatively inferred from a study of his position in the yearly accounts relating to the musicians of the court chapel: in the 1680s, for example, he is listed third (or second) out of some 15 musicians. As a member of the chapel he participated in several royal events, including the coronation of Carl XI in Uppsala in 1675. The presence in Sweden during the second half of the 17th century of another composer and musician called Pierre Verdier, said to have been a son of his, has been tentatively suggested by Cotte, but this is unambiguously contradicted by several documents of the period relating to Verdier, in various Swedish archives.

In his first appointment Verdier composed dance music in the French style, which was highly valued at the court during Christina’s reign (1644–54); his known output from this period – suites and separate dances for instrumental ensemble – is in a unique large tablature volume of such music that very likely formed the repertory of the French band. Among the several known works from Verdier’s later years are a four-part instrumental lament and sonata and a motet.

WORKS

Edition: 17th-century Instrumental Dance Music in Uppsala, ed. J.J.S. Mráček, MMS, viii (1975)

in S-Uu unless otherwise stated

6 suites, 9 dance movts, a 4, compiled 1651–62

Sonata, a 4; Lament, a 4

Christus är mitt lijf, motet, 2vv, 4 str

Several inc. inst works

2 arias, 4vv, a 4, possibly by Verdier

Gavotte, S-Sk

BIBLIOGRAPHY

LabordeMP

T. Norlind: Allmänt musiklexikon (Stockholm, 1912–16, 2/1927–8)

T. Norlind and E. Trobäck: Kungliga hovkapellets historia 1526–1926 (Stockholm, 1926)

T. Norlind: Från tyska kyrkans glansdagar [From the golden age of the German Church] (Stockholm, 1944–5)

N. Schiørring: ‘En svensk kilde til belysning af “Les 24 violons du Roi’s” repertoire’ [A Swedish source for the clarification of the repertory of ‘Les 24 violons du roi’], STMf, xxxvi (1954), 26–37

R. Cotte: Compositeurs français émigrés en Suède (Paris, 1962)

J.J.S. Mráček: 17th-century Instrumental Dances in Uppsala University Library ‘IMhs 409’: a Transcription and Study (diss., Indiana U., 1965)

B. Kyhlberg: Musiken i Uppsala under stormaktstiden. I. 1620–1660 (Stockholm, 1974) [with Eng. summary]

ERIK KJELLBERG

Verdina [Verdi, Värdi, Vardina], Pietro

(b Verona, c1600; d ?Vienna, July 1643). Italian composer. In 1618, the year when his only published music appeared, he is recorded as a student of the acolytes’ school in Verona and as a pupil of Stefano Bernardi, maestro di cappella at Verona Cathedral. Stefano Pasino (in the dedication of his Sonate, Venice, 1679) said that at one time Verdina lived at Lonato (also in northern Italy) – he presumably went there from Verona. By 1630 at the latest he was Kapellmeister to the King of Bohemia and Hungary and was also in the service of his father, the Emperor Ferdinand II. When, on the latter’s death in 1637, the king succeeded him as Ferdinand III, Giovanni Valentini retained the office of imperial Kapellmeister, and Verdina had to content himself with being vice-Kapellmeister at the same court. Antimo Liberati, in his Lettera (Rome, 1685), named Verdina, with Valentini and Antonio Bertali, as one of the most famous Italian musicians at Ferdinand III’s court, and Pasino’s praise of him in 1679 testifies to his reputation nearly 40 years after his death. His canzonas are among the earliest examples of the genre.

WORKS

Missa Theophili, 8 solo vv, 8vv, 4 trbn, 2 cornettinos, 6 solo str, org, A-KR

Missa crucificationis, 6vv, 6 viols, bc, D-Lr

Missa longa et brevis, 8vv, bc, Lr

Nunc, 5vv, 2 vn, 4 viols, bc, Lr

Motets: Ave regina, 5vv, bc; Cum invocarem exaudivit, 5vv, 2 vn, bc; Ecce nunc benedicite, 5vv, 2 vn, bc; In te domine speravi, 5vv, 2 vn, bc; Laudate dominum, 8vv, 2 vn, 2 va, 1 viol, bc; Qui habitat in adjutorio altissimi, 5vv, 2 vn, bc; Te lucis ante terminum, 5vv, bc: all in D-Lr; 2 motets, 3vv, bc, 1618⁵; 2 motets, A-KR

2 canzonas, a 3, 1618⁵

Messa S Jacobi; Salmi per il vespero, 1v, insts; Messa, 5vv; Messa, 6vv; Messa ‘Justus non timebit’, 5vv; Messa, 8vv; Letanie, 5vv: all lost, listed in an inventory of music belonging to Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, see Koczirz

BIBLIOGRAPHY

KöchelKHM

A. Koczirz: ‘Exzerpte aus den Hofmusikakten des Wiener Kammerarchivs’, SMw, i (1913), 278–303

P. Nettl: ‘Zur Geschichte der kaiserlichen Hofmusikkapelle von 1636–1680’, SMw, xvi (1929), 70–85; xvii (1930), 95–104

H. Federhofer: ‘Graz Court Musicians and their Contributions to the Parnassus musicus Ferdinandaeus (1615)’, MD, ix (1955), 167–244, esp. 194

A. Kellner: Musikgeschichte des Stiftes Kremsmünster (Kassel, 1956), 221–7

HELLMUT FEDERHOFER

Verdon, Gwen [Gwyneth Evelyn]

(b Culver City, CA, 13 Jan 1926). American actress, singer and dancer. With careers on both stage and screen, Verdon is one of the most versatile musical performers of the 20th century. Her Broadway roles include Claudine in Can-Can (1953), Lola in Damn Yankees (1955, including ‘Whatever Lola Wants’), Anna Christie in New Girl in Town (1957), Essie Whimpole in Redhead (1959), Charity Hope Valentine in Sweet Charity (1966, including ‘If my friends could see me now’) and Roxie Hart in Chicago (1975), the last of which was choreographed by her husband Bob Fosse. Film credits include On the Riviera (1951) and Damn Yankees (1958). As a senior citizen she has appeared in a number of non-musical films, including The Cotton Club (1984), Cocoon (1985), Cocoon II: The Return (1988) and Marvin's Room (1996). Verdon's singing voice reflected and grew out of her speaking voice, allowing her to project her stage persona to the audience. Well established as a popular-style singer, Verdon’s simple and clear voice has given her the opportunity to maximize its effectiveness as a dramatic vehicle.

WILLIAM A. EVERETT, LEE SNOOK

Verdonck [Verdonch, Verdonk, Verdoncq], Cornelis

(b Turnhout, 1563; d Antwerp, 5 July 1625). Flemish composer and singer. According to Sweerts, he spent his earliest years in the house of Cornelis Pruenen, treasurer and senator of Antwerp; he was to enjoy Pruenen's protection for many years. Verdonck was undoubtedly a choirboy at Antwerp Cathedral under Geert van Turnhout, when in 1572 he was enrolled by Turnhout as a chorister at the Madrid court of Felipe II. Among his fellow choristers were Peeter Cornet and Philippe Rogier. When their voices changed, Felipe wrote to his nephew Alessandro Farnese on 16 February 1580 requesting that Verdonck and two other choristers be enrolled at Douai University or elsewhere. Verdonck then became a pupil in Antwerp of Séverin Cornet, who included one work of the younger composer in each of his three publications of 1581. In 1584 Verdonck returned to Madrid as a singer in the royal chapel; he remained there until 1598. The dedication of his 1599 chanson print confirms that he had returned to Antwerp by April of that year. Later in 1599 he took an active part in the preparations for the triumphal entry of Archduke Albert and Archduchess Isabella into Antwerp; his motet for the occasion, Prome novas, Hymenae, was performed by an ensemble of boys riding atop an artificial elephant. Verdonck's madrigal book of 1603 suggests that he was then in the service of Pruenen's nephew, Johannes Carolus de Cordes, governor of Wichelen and Serskamp, to whom he dedicated his book. He also held a prebend at Eindhoven until 1622. He died at the age of 62, according to the inscription on his memorial dedicated by his patron. Several writers have supposed there were two musicians by this name, one active in Madrid, the other in Antwerp.

Verdonck's six-voice Prome novas, Hymenae is well-crafted in its rhetorical expression. Two sacred works, appearing in copper engravings of the Virgin by Marten de Vos, are predominantly imitative; one of these, a Magnificat for five voices, features a strict canon derived from the tenor. Amor Jesu dulcissime (RISM 1629²) is an early example of the cantiones natalitiae.

Secular works dominate Verdonck's output. His chansons are typically northern in their contrapuntal textures and large voicings, though they make use of madrigalisms as well. Helas quel jour (RISM 1594⁵) makes brief reference to the Lassus setting of the same text. Along with his mentor Séverin Cornet, Verdonck is an important exponent of the madrigal in the north. Both composers set Italian texts by local northern poets: Verdonck set one by his patron Cornelis Pruenen. Verdonck's four-voice Donna belle e gentile appears as Lady your look so gentle in Nicholas Yonge's Musica transalpina of 1588. Sweerts described Verdonck in 1628 as ‘renowned in music’ claiming that ‘if we believe Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck … he could match any Italian composer’.

WORKS

sacred

Ave gratia plena, 4vv (Antwerp, 1584, copper engraving); ed. in Musica Sacra, xxi (Regensburg, 1880) and Seiffert (1918–19)

Magnificat, 5vv (Antwerp, 1585, copper engraving); ed. in Trésor Musical, musique sacrée, ii (Brussels, 1866/R) and Seiffert (1918–19)

3 motets, 1581¹, 1609¹, 1629²

1 motet, 6vv, in J. Bochius: Historica narratio profectionis et inaugurationis serenissimorum Belgii principum Alberti et Isabellae (Antwerp, 1602); ed. in Trésor Musical musique sacrée, ii (Brussels, 1866/R) and Wind

1 motet, lost (formerly D-KAu)

secular

Poésies françaises de divers autheurs mises en musique par C. Verdonck, 5, 10vv (Antwerp, 1599)

Madrigali, 6vv (21 madrigals, 1 chanson) (Antwerp, 1603)

Chansons, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8vv, 1581⁴, 1590¹⁹, 1594⁵, 1597¹⁰

Madrigals, 2, 4–8vv, 1581⁷, 1585¹⁹ (1 repr. with Eng. text, 1588²⁹), 1590¹⁹, 1591¹⁰, 1596⁸, 1596¹⁰, 1597¹⁵, 1600⁸, 1601⁵, 1610¹⁴

2 chansons, GB-Lbl

BIBLIOGRAPHY

F. Sweerts: Athenae Belgicae (Antwerp, 1628), 198–9

M. Seiffert: ‘Cornelis Verdonck’, TVNM, v/3 (1897), 191–216 [incl. list of works]

M. Seiffert: ‘Bildzeugnisse des 16. Jahrhunderts für die instrumentale Begleitung des Gesanges und den Ursprung des Musikkupferstiches’, AMw, i (1918–19), 49–67

P. Bergmans: La biographie du compositeur Corneille Verdonck (Brussels, 1919)

P. Becquart: Musiciens néerlandais à la cour de Madrid: Philippe Rogier et son école (1560–1647) (Brussels, 1967)

B. Huys: ‘Twee huldemotetten ter gelegenheid van Blijde Intreden te Antwerpen, door Plantin gedrukt’, Renaissance-muziek 1400–1600: donum natalicium René Bernard Lenaerts, ed. J. Robijns and others (Leuven, 1969), 149–53

G. Spiessens: ‘De Antwerpse muziekolifant van 1599’, Breesgata (Belgium), iii (1984), 4–13

R. Rasch: De Cantiones natalitiae en het kerklijke Muziekleven in de zuidelijke Nederlanden gedurende de zeventiende eeuw (Utrecht, 1985)

T. Wind: ‘Musical Participation in Sixteenth-Century Triumphal Entries in the Low Countries’, TVNM, xxxvii (1987), 111–69

G. Hoekstra: ‘The Reception and Cultivation of the Italian Madrigal in Antwerp and the Low Countries, 1555–1620’, MD, xlviii (1994), 125–87

R.B. LENAERTS/KRISTINE FORNEY

Verdugo, Sebastián Martínez.

See Martínez Verdugo, Sebastián.

Verdzhaket.

Sign marking a main pause and raising of the voice in Armenian Ekphonetic notation.

Verecore, Mathias [Matthias] Hermann.

See Werrecore, mathias hermann.

Verein für Musikalische Privataufführungen.

Society founded in Vienna in 1918 to promote contemporary music. See Vienna, §5(iv).

Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis.

Former name of the Koninklijke Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis.

Vereshchahin, Yaroslav Romanovich

(b Kiev, 8 Dec 1948; d Kiev, 8 Aug 1999). Ukrainian composer. In 1973 he graduated from the Kiev Conservatory (class of M.M. Skoryk) and then worked as editor and later deputy chief editor of the publishers Muzichna Ukraïna (1975–9 and 1985–7). From 1979 to 1983 he was executive secretary of the Ukrainian Union of Composers, in 1980 became a Laureate of the N.A. Ostrovsky Prize and since 1987 has composed full-time. His music is notable for its subtle and innate refinement; although he continues the lyrical traditions of Stepovy and Kosenko, Vereshchahin's nationalist roots are combined with a large measure of rationalism that originates in his interest in Webern and Stravinsky's chamber works. One scholar noted the coexistence and interlinking of lyrically warm and heartfelt writing with a distinctively intellectual approach (Lavrichenko, p.19). He integrates classical and contemporary techniques with a significant degree of impressionism. Like his Ukrainian precursors mentioned above, Vereshchahin conceives his music with chamber forces in mind; his achievements in the genre of the chamber cantata are significant (he is one of the pioneers of this trend in Ukrainian music). His preference for the pastoral is reflected in Peysazhi (‘Landscapes’), Musica rustica and Bukolicheskaya stsena (‘Bucolic Scene’).

WORKS

Vocal: 3 pesni [3 Songs] (Ukr. texts), S, chbr ens, 1973–5; 3 romansa [3 Romances] (Korean poets), B, chbr ens, 1973; Diptikh (M. Bakhtinsky), B, orch, 1978–89; Smeyotsya rodnik [The Spring Laughs] (chbr cant., V. Mordan'), Mez, chbr orch, 1978; Predchuvstviye vesnï [Presentiment of Spring] (M. Dolengo, M. Dray-Khmara, P. Tychina, D. Zachulo), song cycle, Bar, pf, 1987; Oseniy triptikh [Autumn Triptych] (Mordan'), Bar, pf, 1992; Peyzazhi [Landscapes] (chbr cant., T.S. Eliot), S, chbr orch, 1992

Orch: Variatsii, str, 1968; Syuita [Suite], str, 1969; Divertisment [Divertimento], 1972; Va Conc, 1972–3; Prazdnichnaya uvertyura [Festival Ov.], 1978; Bukolicheskaya stsena [Bucolic Scene], 15 str, 1995

Chbr and solo inst: Trio-syuita, fl, va, pf, 1968; Pf Qnt, 1971; Conglomerato piccolo, 4 brass insts, 1972; Mozaika, vn, pf, 1973; Freska [Frescoes], db, pf, 1974; Igra [Game], cl, pf, 1974; Sonatina-collage, cl, pf, 1975; Voyennaya muzïka [War Music], ww, perc, 1975; Avgustovskaya kassatsiya [August Appeal], s sax, cl, bn, 1975–6; Str Qt no.1 ‘Pastoral'nïy’ [The Pastoral], 1976; Qnt no.1, ww, 1977; Sonatina, vn, pf, 1979; Concertino, 4, trbn, timp, 1980; 3 posvyashcheniya [3 Dedications], fl, ob, bn, 1980; Str Qt no.2, 1980–81; Sekstet pamyati Borisa Lyatoshinskogo [Sextet in Memory of Borys Lyatoshyns'ky], ww, 1987; Qnt no.2, ww, 1989–90 [2 versions]; Sonata, vn, 1993; Sonata improvvisata, vc, pf, 1995

Pf: Sonata no.1, 1970; Sonatina, 1972; 6 bagateley [6 Bagatelles], 1972–5; 6 dvukhgolosnïkh inventsii [6 Two-Part Inventions], 1973–6; Sonata no.2, 1974–5; 3 novolettï [3 Novelettes], 1975–94; Musica rustica, 1978; 3 polifonicheskiye p'yesï [3 Polyphonic Pieces], 1991

Other: music for children; incid music; choral works; folksong arrs.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ya. Vereschagin: ‘Avtorï rasskazïvayut’ [Composers speak to us], SovM, 1986, no.10, pp.112–13

Ye. Zin'kyevich: ‘Iz prem'yer minuvshego sezona’ [Last season's premières], Muzïka, 1978, no.5, p.9

G. Kon'kova: ‘Razmïshleniya o molodïkh’ [Reflections about the young generation], SovM, 1981, no.12, p.17

I. Peskovsky: ‘Prinimaya estafetu pokoleniy’ [Taking up the racing baton of the generations], SovM, 1982, no.12, p.55

NINA SERGEYEVNA SHUROVA

Veress, Sándor

(b Kolozsvár [now Cluj-Napoca], 1 Feb 1907; d Berne, 4 March 1992). Swiss composer of Hungarian origin. The first half of his life was spent in Hungary; the second, from 1949, in Switzerland, of which he became a citizen in the last months of his life. His father was a historian and his mother a singer. In 1923 he began studies with Emanuel Hegyi (piano) and Kodály (composition) at the Budapest Academy of Music; he completed his piano studies under Bartók, taking a teacher's diploma in 1932. From 1928 to 1933 he worked as an assistant to Lajtha at the Budapest Ethnographical Museum. A year later Bartók chose Veress as his research assistant in his work at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences classifying folksongs, a position Veress retained until 1949. He became an excellent researcher into Hungarian folk music, and, as professor of ethnomusicology at Berne University, would later show himself to be a follower of the teachings of Bartók and Kodály. Veress's most important folk music collection was that of 1930, the Moldvai gyűjtés (‘Moldovian collection’), which was published in Budapest in 1989.

In 1933 in Budapest he made his début as a composer in a concert organized jointly with Kadosa and Farkas; the programme included his Piano Sonatina, which he played himself, and his First String Quartet. For a short while he taught the piano before going to Berlin in 1934 to study music teaching methods. During the 1940s, back in Budapest, he organized music education seminars with Erna Czövek. At this time his work as a writer on music began to expand.

He achieved international recognition through performances at ISCM Festivals: of the First Quartet in Prague in 1935, and the Second Quartet in Paris two years later. The première of his Divertimento in 1939 by the BBC Orchestra under Lambert and the performance of the Second Violin Sonata by Sándor Végh at the Venice Biennial festival (1941) were also important in this regard. He spent a considerable time in London, and also visited Amsterdam and The Hague (1938–9), giving concerts with Végh. Between 1941 and 1942 he was in Rome, where he wrote the ballet Térszili Katicza (‘Katicza from Térszil’), and in 1943 he became professor of composition at the Budapest Academy of Music; his students there included Ligeti and Kurtág. After the war he was appointed to the Hungarian Artistic Council, which he served until 1949. By this time he had completed such major works as the Violin Concerto, the First Symphony and Szent Ágoston psalmusa az eretnekek ellen (Sancti Augustini psalmus…). Other compositions of this period include Billegetőmuzsika (‘Fingerlarks’), a piano tutor based on his pedagogical ideas, and a song cycle to verse by Attila József in which he aligned himself with progressive Hungarian poetry.

In the postwar years Veress's journeys abroad became more regular: in 1947 he spent some time in London, and in 1948 took part in the IFMC conference at Basle; in 1948–9 he stayed in Rome and travelled to Stockholm for the first performance of Katicza from Térszil, which was also later given in Florence and Vienna. He was living in Rome when he had news of the political changes in Hungary. Unable to reconcile himself to these, he emigrated. In autumn 1949 he was invited to Berne University as a guest professor and this time settled permanently in the city. In 1950 he was appointed to teach theory and composition at the Berne Conservatory, where his students included Holliger, Peter Schneider and Wyttenbach. By this stage several important performances of his newer works had been given, some of which were inspired and conducted by Paul Sacher. While retaining his chair at the conservatory, he accepted guest appointments at institutions in the USA and Australia: at the Peabody Conservatory (1965–6), Goucher College, Baltimore (1966–7), Adelaide University (1967) and the University of Portland (1972). From 1968 to 1977 he taught musicology and ethnomusicology at Berne University. He also continued his work as a jury member, notably, from 1948, at the Llangollen International Eisteddfod, of which he was made vice-president in 1974.

Veress was an outstanding representative of the Hungarian generation which followed Bartók and Kodály. His work combined several contemporary trends while adhering to the Hungarian musical heritage: Kodály gave him lasting respect for melodic craftsmanship and a passion for teaching, and he followed Bartók in his restless innovatory spirit and stubborn consistency. He reached a new level of achievement in the early 1950s when in works such as the Second Symphony and the String Trio he arrived at a 12-note serial technique that was of his own making. In the 1960s he entered a new, freer phase of serialism with works such as the Piano Trio and Wind Quintet. At the centre of his later works is the choral poem Das Glasklängespiel (1977–8); other important works include Orbis tonorum (1986), the Clarinet Concerto (1981–2), the Tromboniade Concerto (1989–90), Concertotilinkó and the chamber works Memento and the Trio for bartitone and strings.

Veress was awarded the Kossuth Prize in 1949 in Hungary (though as an émigré he was unable to collect this award) and the Bartók-Pásztory Prize in 1985; in Switzerland he received the Berne canton prize in 1976.

WORKS

(selective list)

ballets

Csodafurulya [The Miraculous Pipe] (choreog. A. Milloss), 1937, Rome, 1940; Térszili Katicza [Katicza from Térszil] (choreog. Milloss), 1942–3, Stockholm, 1949

instrumental

Orch: Divertimento, 1935; Partita I, 1936, unpubd; Partita II, 1936, unpubd; Ária, vn, orch, 1937 [movt 1 of Vn Conc.]; Sym. no.1., 1940; Cuka szőke csárdás [Hungarian Folkdance], vn, orch, 1940, unpubd; Csodafurulya [The Miraculous Pipe], suite, 1947 [from ballet]; Nógrádi verbunkos [Hungarian Suite] (1953); Vn Conc., 1937–9, 3rd movt, 1948; Threnos (in memoriam Béla Bartók), 1945; Respublica, ov., 1948; unpubd; 4 danze transilvane, str, 1943–9; Hommage à Paul Klee, fantasia, 2 pf, str, 1951; Pf Conc., str, perc, 1952; Sonata, 1952–3; Sym. no.2 (Sinfonia minneapolitana), 1952–3; Conc., str qt, orch, 1960–61; Passacaglia concertante, ob, str, 1961; Variations on a theme by Zoltán Kodály, 1969 [movt 4 Veress, other movts A. Doráti, T. Serly, G. Frid]; Expovare (EXPOsition-VAriation-REcapitulation), chbr orch, 1964; Cl Conc., 1981–2; Orbis tonorum, chbr orch, 1986; Double Trbn Conc. ‘Tromboniade’, 1989–90; Concertotilinkó, fl, str, 1991, unpubd

Chbr and solo inst: Sonatina, ob, cl, bn, 1931; Str Qt no.1., 1931; Borica tánc Moldvából [Borica Dance from Moldova], cl, vn, timp, drum, 1932, unpubd; Sonatina, vn, pf, 1933; Sonatina, vn, pf, 1933; Sonata, vn, 1935; Str Qt no.2, 1936–7; Nógrádi verbunkos [Nógrád Recruiting Dance], vn, pf, 1939; Sonata no.2, vn, pf, 1939; Str Trio, 1954; Trio (3 Quadri), pf, vn, vc, 1963; 2 Stücke, 2 vc, 1964; Musica concertante, 12 str, 1965; Sonata, vc, 1967; Diptychon, wind qnt, 1968; Introduzione e Coda – trio, cl, vn, vc, 1972; Szatmári táncok [Szatmár Dances], str trio, 1977, unpubd; Memento, va, db, 1983; incid music, film scores, folksong arrs., transcrs.

Pf: Sonata (1929); Sonatina, 1932; Sonatina gyermekeknek [Sonatina for Children], 1932; Sonatina kezdő zongoràzóknak [Sonatina for Young Pianists], 1933; 15 kis zongoradarab [15 Pf Pieces], 1935; 20 zongoradarab [20 Pf Pieces], 1935, unpubd; Kis szvit [Little Suite], pf, 1938 [from 20 Pf Pieces, 1938]; 6 csárdás, 1938 [from 20 Pf Pieces]; 7 danze ungheresi, 1938 [from 20 Pf Pieces]; Billegetőmuzsika [Fingerlarks], 77 educational pieces, 1940–46, expanded to 88, 1969; Homage to Wales, 1948

vocal

Choral: 2 moldvai csángó magyar népdal [2 Hung. folksongs from Moldova], male chorus, 1932, unpubd; Népdalszvit [Folksong Suite], 1933; 14 férfikar magyar népi dallamokra [14 Hungarian Folksongs for Male Chorus], 1934; Fúj, süvölt a Mátra szele, 1934, unpubd [folksongs arrs.]; Karácsonyi kantáta [Christmas Cant.] (folktexts), children's chorus, 1934, unpubd; Erdélyi kantáta [Transylvanian Cant.], 1936; 15 gyermekkar [15 Children's Choruses], 1936; 2 virágének [2 Flowersongs], 1936; Betlehemi kántáló [Christmas Carols], female/children's chorus, 1937, unpubd; Dudari nóták [Folksongs from Dudar], 1939; Guzsalyasban, 1939 [after 4 folksongs from Moldova]; Kárpátokon innen és túl [The Carpathians and Beyond], 1939; [after 5 folksongs from Transylvania, Bukovina, Moldova]; Rábaközi nóták [Folksongs from Rábaköz], male chorus, 1940; Szent Ágoston psalmusa az eretnekek ellen (Sancti Augustini psalmus contra partem Donati) (M. Babits), B, chorus, orch, 1943–4; Én elmentem a vásárra [I went out a-marketing], female chorus, 1950; 2 svájci népdal [2 Swiss Folksongs], children's chorus, 1953, unpubd; Laudatio musicae (V. Rathgeber), S, chorus, chbr orch, 1958; Mary had a little lamb (Roedd gan mair un oenig dof), SSA/TTB, 1961; Óda Európához [Ode to Europe] (G. Illyés), 1962; Songs of the Seasons (madrigals, C. Brennan), 1967; Das Glasklängespiel (H. Hesse), chorus, 1977–8

Solo vocal: 5 népdal énekre a moldvai csángó gyűjtésből [5 Folksongs from the Moldovian csángó collection], 1v, 1936; 3 népdal, 1v, pf, 1937; 3 népdal, 1v, pf, 1941, unpubd; Dudari népdalok [Folksongs from Dudar], 1v, pf, 1943, unpubd; Canti ceremissi, 1v, pf, 1945; József Attila dalok [József Songs], 1v, pf, 1945; Elegia (W. von der Vogelweide), Bar, hp, str, 1964; Trio, Bar, va, vc, 1985, unpubd

MSS in CH-Bps

Principal publishers: Magyar Kórus, Universal, Suvini Zerboni

WRITINGS

‘Népzenei gyűjtés a moldvai csángók között’ [Folk music collection among the Csángós of Moldova], Ethnographia, xlii (1931), 133–42

with L. Lajtha: ‘Népdal, népzenegyűjtés’ [Folksong, folk music collecting], Magyar muzsika Könyve, ed. I. Molnár (Budapest, 1936), 172–9

‘A magyar népzene vázlatos ismertetése’ [Outline survey of Hungarian folk music], A zene, xx (1938), 34–5, 56–8, 82–5, 102–4

‘Erdélyi népdalok – régi magyar népzene’ [Transylvanian folksongs – old Hungarian folk music], Fényjelek, ii (1940)

‘Magyar parasztdal – európai zenekultúra’ [Hungarian peasant song – European musical culture], Magyar dal, xlv/6 (1940), 1–2

‘Bartók Béla 60 éves’, Ethnographia-Népélet, lii/1 (1941), 1–4

‘Gondolatok hangszertanításunk reformjáról’ [On the reforms of instrumental teaching], Magyar zenei szemle, i (1941), 67–73

‘La raccolta della musica popolare ungherese’, Rendiconti dell'Accademia d'Ungheria in Roma (Rome, 1941), 3–27

‘Székely népballadák változatai Moldvában’ [Variants of Transylvanian ballads], Néprajzi értesitő, xxxiii/2 (1941), 159–69

‘Hallásképzés és zenekultúra’ [Aural training and musical culture], Magyar zenei szemle, i (1941), 185–95

‘La musique populaire hongroise’, Nouvelle revue de Hongrie (1942), March, pp.2–10

‘Bartók Béla huszonhét kórusa’ [Bartók’s 27 Choruses], Magyar dal, xlviii/8–9 (1943), 1–3

‘Az óvodai zenetanításról’ [Music teaching in nursery schools], Az óvoda a nemzetnevelés szolgálatában (1943), 77–83

‘Kodály Zoltán hatvan éves’ [Kodály's 60th birthday], Emlékkönyv Kodály Zoltán hatvanadik születésnapjára, ed. B. Gunda (Budapest, 1943), 169–72 [incl. bibliography]

‘Bartók Béla hegedűversenye’ [Bartók's Violin Concerto], Magyar csillag, iv (1944), 292–6

‘Hungary's New Music’, New Meridian, i (1947), 55 only

Béla Bartók, the Man and the Artist (London, 1948)

‘Folk Music in Musical and General Education’, JIFMC, i (1949), 40–43

‘Bluebeard's Castle’, Tempo, no.13 (1949), 32–6; no.14 (1949–50), 25–35

‘Einführung in die Streichquartette von Béla Bartók’, SMz, xc (1950), 437–43

‘Hungary’, Folk Songs of Europe, ed. M. Karpeles (London, 1956), 157–62

‘Liszt Ferenc az ember és a művész’ [Liszt the man and artist], Új látóhatár, iv (1961), 489–93

‘Der Mikrokosmos in Bartóks musikalischer Welt’, Atlantis (1961), no.2

‘Kodály Zoltán’, Új látóhatár, v (1962), 509–14

‘Hommage à Lajtha’, Etudes Finno-Ougriennes, v (1968), 67–72

‘Béla Bartóks 44 Duos für zwei Violine’, Erich Doflein: Festschrift, ed. L.U. Abraham (Mainz, 1972), 31–57

‘Sándor Veress über seine Passacaglia concertante’, Mitteilungen der Bernischen Musik-Gesellschaft (1974), Oct–Nov, 9–11

‘Der “homo ornans” in der Musik’, SMz, cxxii (1982), 243–59

‘Moldvai gyűjtés’ [The Moldovian Collection], Magyar népköltési gyűjtemény űj folyam, xvi (1989), 421

BIBLIOGRAPHY

KdG A. Traub

D. Hassid: ‘L'avenir de la musique en Hongrie’, Art musical, iv (1939), 109

J. Demény: ‘A folytatás' Veress Sándor útja’ [The Way of Veress], Sorsunk (1944), 395–402

P. Járdányi: ‘Zenei figyelő’ [Musical observer], Válasz, viii (1948), 282–3

G. Ligeti: ‘Neue Musik in Ungarn’, Melos, xvi (1949), 5–8

J.S. Weissmann: ‘The Contemporary Movement in Hungary’, Music Today, i (1949), 81–96

E. Doflein: ‘Sándor Veress’, Melos, xxi (1954), 74–7

C. Mason: ‘Sándor Veress’, Ungarische Komponisten, Musik der Zeit, ix (1954), 60–62

C. Regamey: ‘Sándor Veress’, Musique du XXe siècle, ed. du Cervin (Paris, 1966), 120–23

J. Demény: ‘Sándor Veress’, Tempo, no.88 (1969), 19–22

J. Weismann: ‘The String Quartets of Sándor Veress’, Miscellanea del cinquantenario Edizioni Suivini Zerboni (Milan, 1978), 130–45

J. Demény: ‘Veress Sándor négy levele Bartók Bélához’ [4 letters of Veress to Bartók], Jelenkor, xxiv (1981), 221–7

M. Berlász, J. Demény, E. Terényi, J. Ujfalussy: Veress Sándor, ed. M. Berlász (Budapest, 1982)

M. Berlász: ‘Werkverzeichnis von Sándor Veress’, SMz, cxxii (1982), 275–8 [incl. bibliography and publications]

A. Traub: ‘Die Passacaglia concertante von Sándor Veress’, Mf, xxxvii (1984), 122–30

A. Traub: Sándor Veress: Festschrift (Berlin, 1986) [incl. W. Rathert: ‘Zum zweiten Streichquartett von Sándor Veress’; M.U. Stieren: ‘Aurél M. Milloss und Sándor Veress’; S. Ziegler: ‘Einige Bemerkungen zur Transsylvanischen Kantate von Sándor Veress’; A. Traub: ‘Sándor Veress: Lebensweg-Schaffensweg’; A. Traub: ‘Zum ersten Satz des Streichtrios’]

M. Berlász: ‘Veress Sándor moldvai gyűjtőnaplója’ [The diary of Veress in Moldova], Zenetudományi dolgozatok (1988), 169–82

F. Bónis: ‘Three days with Sándor Veress’, New Hungarian Quarterly, no.108 (1987), 201–10; no.109 (1988), 217–25; no.111 (1988), 208–14

A. Traub: ‘Zum instrumentalen Frühwerk von Sándor Veress’, AMw, xlv (1988), 224–47

M. Berlász: ‘Úgy szeretem Helvétiát, hogy nem feledhetem Kolozsvárt’, Magyar nemzet (25 March 1992)

M. Berlász: ‘… Veress Sándor emlékezete’ [The memory of Veress], Muzsika, xxxv (1992), 11–14

M. Berlász: ‘Veress Sándor kórusműveir’ [The choral compositions of Veress], Zeneszó (1992), July, 4

M. Berlász: ‘Veress Sándor és a moldvai magyarok népzenéje’ [Veress and the folk music of the Csángos in Moldova], Tanulmányok Domokos Pál Péter emlékére (Budapest, 1993), 106–9

M. Berlász: ‘Ad Trio d'archi: ein Dokument zum harmonischen Denken von Sándor Veress’, Mitteilungen der Paul Sacher Stiftung, vii (1994), 30–34

M. Berlász: ‘Die Moldauer Sammlung von Sándor Veress und ihre Notationsweise in synoptischen Tafeln’, Perspektiven der Musikethnologie, ed. B. Reuer and L. Tari (Munich, 1994), 118–26

M. Kunkel: ‘Sándor Veress “Orbis tonorum” no.4, “Intermezzo silenzioso” und Anton Weberns op.10 no.3 (“Rückkehr”): ein Vergleich’, Mf, il (1996), 368–82

M. Berlász, ed.: A Veress Sándor Társaság Hírelvele [Newsletter of the Veress society] (1997–)

JÁNOS DEMÉNY/MELINDA BERLÁSZ

Veretti, Antonio

(b Verona, 20 Feb 1900; d Rome, 14 July 1978). Italian composer and music critic. He studied at the Bologna Liceo Musicale with Guglielmo Mattioli and Alfano, and graduated in 1921. Also in Bologna, he was introduced by Riccardo Bacchelli, librettist of some of his operas, to the circle associated with the literary journal Ronda. He began to compose in 1926 in Milan, where he was also music critic for La fiera letteraria. Subsequently settling in Rome, he founded the Conservatorio Musicale della Gioventù Italiana, where he taught until 1943. Later he was director of the conservatories in Pesaro (1950–52), Cagliari (1953–5) and Florence (1956–70). He was a member of the Accademia di S Cecilia and the Accademia Filarmonica in Rome, the Accademia Filarmonica di Bologna and president of the Accademia Luigi Cherubini in Florence. He also wrote film music.

An exponent of what Mila defined as the ‘follow-up generation’, Veretti shared in both the revival of 16th- and 17th-century Italian traditions characteristic of Italian composers in the first half of the 20th century, and in the acquisition of the formal and linguistic innovations of the European modernism. He was influenced particularly by Pizzetti and Casella and assimilated the typical manners of neo-classicism in his early work in an idiom of great formal balance and considerable sobriety both in instrumental music (e.g. the Sinfonia italiana) and vocal and operatic output. In the last (e.g. Il favorito del re and Una favola di Andersen) he introduced forms from instrumental music in an attempt to find new solutions to go beyond verismo opera. In the 1950s, from the Piano Concerto onwards, 12-note technique became a fixed part of his style. He had arrived at it by way of a natural stylistic evolution, moulding its procedures to suit his own expressive idiom in characteristically linear writing (I sette peccati) before reaching, in Prière pour demander une étoile, the compositional process of Webernian serialism.

WORKS

(selective list)

Stage: Il medico volante (farsa, 3, R. Bacchelli, after Molière), 1923, unperf.; Il favorito del re (comic op, 3, A. Rossato), Milan, Scala, 17 March 1932, rev. as Burlesca (opera-ballet, 1), Rome, 29 Jan 1955; Il galante tiratore (azione coreografica, 1, Bacchelli, after C. Baudelaire), Sanremo, Casino, 11 Feb 1933; Una favola di Andersen (azione mimo sinfonica, Veretti), Venice, 1934; I sette peccati (mistero musicale e coreografico), Milan, Scala, 24 April 1956

Vocal: Il figliuol prodigo, orat., solo vv, chorus, orch, 1942; Sinfonia sacra, male chorus, orch, 1946; 4 poesie di Vigolo, 1v, orch, 1950; L’allegria (Ungaretti), 1v, pf, 1957; Elegie (Friulan text), 1v, vn, cl, gui, 1964; Prière pour demander une étoile, chbr chorus, 1966, rev. chorus, orch, 1967

Orch: Sinfonia italiana, 1929; Sinfonia epica, 1938; Pf Conc., 1949; Ouverture della campana, 1951; Concertino, str, fl, pf, 1957; Fantasia, cl, orch, 1958

Other inst: Partita, pf, 1926; Divertimento, hpd, 6 insts, 1939; Sonata, vn, pf, 1952; Bicinia, vn, va, 1975

Film scores

Principal publishers: Bongiovanni, Ricordi

BIBLIOGRAPHY

DeuMM (A. Truolu)

F. Brusa: ‘“Il favorito del Re” di Antonio Veretti e Arturo Rossato’, RMI, xxxix (1932), 152–9

M. Rinaldi: ‘Musicisti della generazione di mezzo: Antonio Veretti’, Musica d’oggi, xxiii (1941), 227–37, 264–71

N. Costarelli: ‘Musicisti del nostro tempo: Antonio Veretti’, RaM, xxv (1955), 26–32

N. Costarelli: ‘Antonio Veretti e la sua Prière pour demander une étoile’, Chigiana, new ser., iii (1966), 291–6

R. Zanetti: La musica italiana nel Novecento (Busto Arsizio, 1985), 937–47, 1230–36

ALBERTO PIRONTI/ROBERTA COSTA

Verger, Giovanni Battista [Giambattista]

(b Rome, 1796; d ?Palermo, after 1840). Italian tenor. After studying in Rome, he made his début at the Royal Theatre, Malta, prompting a critic to predict accurately Verger's place among the primi tenori of Italy. On 26 December 1819 he created Carlo in Donizetti's early Il falegname di Livonia in Venice. He appeared in Trieste during Carnaval 1822–3 in Mercadante's Elisa e Claudio, and his career took off in 1824 with roles in operas by Pacini and Carafa among others. His last collaboration with Donizetti took place in 1828, with the role of Seide, written specially for him, in Alina, regina di Golconda. Other significant role-creations came with the premières of Coccia's Rosamunda, Generali's Francesca da Rimini (1829) and Mercadante's I Normanni a Parigi (1832). His agility and nuanced expression was within an almost baritone tessitura, similar to that of García. His repertory included works by Paer, Meyerbeer, Bellini and especially Rossini, who particularly admired his talents. A tenore serio, he excelled in Maometto II, La donna del lago, Tancredi, Semiramide and Otello. However, his significance lies in his impact on the transformation of the tenor voice, reflected in parts written for him by Donizetti, Mercadante and others. His last known appearance was in 1839. He later settled in Palermo, where he became an impresario organizing engagements in Spain.

His wife, Amalia Brambilla-Verger (1811–80), daughter of composer Paolo Brambilla (1786–1838), was a contralto of distinction, creating Osvino alongside him in Mercadante's I Normanni a Parigi. Their son Napoleone Verger (b Palermo c1840; d Madrid 1907) had a distinguished career as a baritone, and their daughter Maria Verger enjoyed an important career as a mezzo-soprano.

RICCARDO LA SPINA

Vergil.

See Virgil.

Verhaar, Ary (Gerardus Petrus)

(b The Hague, 23 April 1900; d The Hague, 5 March 1994). Dutch composer and pianist. It was not until after he had trained as a teacher and a lecturer in calligraphy and drawing (Academy of Plastic Arts in The Hague) that Verhaar devoted himself completely to music. As a self-taught musician, he developed into a skilled pianist, earned his spurs in both jazz and classical music and was a much sought-after lecturer. Verhaar published small biographies of Schubert (1950), Debussy (1951), Bartók (1951) and Ravel (1953) and for a short time was the music correspondent of the Haagsch dagblad (1961–64).

Verhaar was also self-taught as a composer. His more than 100 works in many genres are for the most part composed in a moderately modern idiom. Although he was a traditionalist, the influence of Schoenberg is not absent, as in the fugue of the Third Piano Sonata, for which he received the Visser-Neerlandia Prize in 1959. This prize was awarded to him again in 1962, partly for the String Quartet no.1. His best-known works also include the oratorios Ichnaton’s Zonnehymme and Spiegel van het menschelijk bedrijf, based on etchings of craftsmen by the 17th-century Dutch poet and artist Jan Luyken. In 1968 Verhaar wrote music for the film Elektronen mikcroskopie.

WORKS

(selective list)

Vocal: Ichnaton’s Zonnehyme, op.5, solo vv, chorus, orch, 1933; Spiegel van het menschelijk bedrijf, op.28, solo vv, chorus, orch, 1944; Mouvements chimériques, op.45, chorus, orch, 1951; Simples prières (3 songs, A. Maurel, P. Verlaine, F. Jammes), op.70, v, pf, 1975; Salut au monde (W. Whitman), op.81, vv, 1985

Orch and inst: Divertimento, fl, str trio, 1937; Symfonietta, op.26, Opus A, 8 vc, orch, 1953; Sonata, pf, 1959; Arcangeli, op.58, org, 1960; Str Qt no.1, 1962; Priamel, op.62, str, perc, 1964; Conc., ob, str, 1964; Str Qt no.2, 1965; Monoloog, op.61, vn, 1971; Monoloog, op.61, b, 1971; Monoloog, op.68, rec, 1974; Clarina Suite, op.77, 4 cl, 1981; Silvester Trio, op.78, vn, va, vc, 1981

Film music: Elektronen mikroskopie, op.65, 6 inst, tape, 1968

Principal publisher: Donemus

EMILE WENNEKES

Verheyen, Pierre (Emmanuel)

(b Ghent, 1750; d Ghent, 11 Jan 1819). Flemish composer and singer. As a choirboy at St Baaf Cathedral, Ghent, he took his music lessons with the organist J.J. Boutmy. Later he studied composition with Ignaz Vitzthumb, a director of the Théâtre de La Monnaie, Brussels, and with F.-J. Krafft, the music director at St Baaf Cathedral, Ghent. As a singer, he was employed at churches in Bruges and Ghent and by several lyric theatres; he was also a conductor in Maastricht. His first compositions, which are church music, date from the year 1778; in 1786 he was appointed compositeur ordinaire to Prince Ferdinand Lobkowitz, the Bishop of Ghent. Having lost his voice, Verheyen obtained an administrative post under the French regime and was appointed organist at the Temple de la Raison in 1793 and later at the Ursuline Convent. He was one of the founders of the Société des Beaux-Arts in Ghent. Verheyen admired Haydn and composed a Requiem in his memory; he imitated Haydn's style in his piano sonatas, which are in a single movement. He left an extensive output, which for the most part remains unpublished and awaits rediscovery.

WORKS

most unpublished; MSS in B-Bc, Gu, D-Bim

Sacred: 27 masses, vv, insts/orch, some unacc.; Requiem; 3 TeD; 6 Laudate pueri; 4 Dixit Dominus; 3 Confitebor; 2 Beatus vir; 4 Audite caelii; 4 Salve regina; 5 Alma mater; 3 Ave regina; 3 Regina caeli; 50 élévations, 9 lamentations; La mort de Jésus-Christ (orat, Le Boeuf)

Stage: Les chevaliers, ou Le prix de l'arc (op), Ghent, 20 Jan 1779; De jagtparty van Hendrik IV (op), 1794; Le jardin d'amour, ou Les noces d'Alexis, 1794

Other vocal: La journée de Waterloo (cant., P. Lesbroussart), 1816; airs, romances, songs

Inst: 4 sonatas, 2 andantes, march, pf/org, 1813, all ed. A. Carideo (Bologna, 1998); ariettes, arr. kbd; 5 str qts

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Vander StraetenMPB, iii, iv

P. van Duyse: ‘Notice biographique sur Pierre Verheyen’, Messager des sciences historiques de Belgique (1841)

E.G.J. Grégoir: Les artistes-musiciens belges au XVIIIe et au XIXe siècle (Brussels, 1885–90), i, 454; iii, 237–39

HENRI VANHULST

Verhulst, Johannes (Josephus Hermanus)

(b The Hague, 19 March 1816; d Bloemendaal, 17 Jan 1891). Dutch composer and conductor. He was one of the first pupils at the Koninklijke Muzijkschool in his native city, where he studied the violin and theory with J.H. Lübeck and C.J. Lechleitner. From 1832 he was a church organist and also played in the orchestras of the royal chapel and the Théâtre Français, whose conductor, C.-L.-J. Hanssens, taught him orchestration. After receiving Mendelssohn’s praise in 1836 for his Overture op.2 he decided to continue his studies in Leipzig. He went first to Cologne, studying briefly with Josef Klein, and in early 1838 arrived in Leipzig, where he became a close friend of Schumann and conducted the Euterpe orchestra (1838–42) in programmes even more progressive than those of the Gewandhaus orchestra. After returning to the Netherlands in 1842 he became music director at the court of Willem II, and conductor of the Rotterdam Toonkunst choir (1843–4, 1848–63). He achieved international fame as director of the 1854 Rotterdam festival held to celebrate 25 years of Toonkunst’s existence. During the 1860s he assumed virtual control of Dutch musical life, becoming director of the Diligentia concerts in The Hague (1860), the choir of the Amsterdam section of Toonkunst and the Caecilia orchestra (both 1864) and the Felix Meritis orchestra (1865). His antipathy to the New German School (although he introduced Bruckner’s Third Symphony to the Netherlands in 1885) forced his resignation from the Diligentia concerts in 1886, and he withdrew completely from public life shortly afterwards.

The stylistic influence of Schumann and Mendelssohn pervades Verhulst’s instrumental works, although he experimented with chromaticism in the Symphony in E minor and introduced a recognizably New German flavour with his declamatory treatment of Dutch song texts while adhering to classical formal principles. His choral music is weak, and only in the hymn Clemens est Dominus and the Kyrie of the Mass op.20 are original traits to be found.

WORKS

(selective list)

Choral: Tantum ergo, SATB, orch, op.5 (Rotterdam, 1837); Missa, S, A, T, B, SATB, orch, op.20, 1840–43 (Mainz, 1845); Koning en vaderland, TTBB, orch, op.11 (The Hague, 1843); Clemens est Dominus, SATB, SATB, orch, op.12 (Mainz, 1844); Ps lxxxiv, S solo, SATB, orch, op.42 (The Hague, 1845); Vlaggelied, TTBB, brass, op.35 (The Hague, 1850); Ps cxliv, S, A, T, B, SATB, orch, op.45 (Amsterdam, 1851); Veni Creator, TTBB, org, op.47 (Mainz, 1853); Requiem, TTBB, brass, timp, org, op.51 (The Hague, 1854); 5 cantica, Bar, TTBB, org, op.54 (Amsterdam, c1860); 3 masses, TTBB, org, opp.50, 52, 55 (Amsterdam, c1860); TeD, T solo, TB, orch, op.56bis (Utrecht, 1871); Benedicamus, TTBB, orch, op.57 (Amsterdam); Missa brevis, boys’ chorus, men’s chorus, op.58bis (Amsterdam); Ave Maria, S, female chorus; 7 cants., other unacc. works

Solo vocal (pf acc. unless otherwise stated): Der deutsche Rhein (The Hague, 1841); 8 liederen, op.9 (Amsterdam, c1844); Afscheid, Afzijn, Wederzien, S, T, unacc., op.14 (Amsterdam); 6 liederen, op.16 (The Hague, c1845); 7 geestelijke liederen, op.22 (The Hague, c1845); Concert aria, S, orch, op.24, S, pf (The Hague); 12 liederen, op.26 (The Hague, c1848); Liederkrans, op.27 (The Hague, c1849); Gezangen en psalmen, op.28 (The Hague, c1849); 6 liederen, op.29 (Rotterdam, c1849); Kinderleven, op.30 (The Hague, c1849) [some for children’s chorus]; 2 Lieder, op.31 (Amsterdam, c1849); Kindertoonen, op.39 (Rotterdam, c1851)

Orch: Ov., b, op.2 (Rotterdam, 1838); Gijsbrecht van Aemstel, ov., c, op.3 (Rotterdam, 1839); Gruss aus der Ferne, int, A, op.7 (Leipzig, 1840); Ov., d, op.8 (Leipzig, 1840); Sym., e, op.46, 1841 (Mainz, 1853), ed. J. ten Bokum (Amsterdam, 1971)

Other inst: 2 str qts, d, A, op.6 (Leipzig, 1840); Notturno/Andante, E pf (Leipzig, 1840); Str Qt, E, op.21 (Leipzig, 1845); Arabeske/Scherzo, g, pf (Amsterdam, 1848); Herfstblaadje, D, pf (The Hague, 1860)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

J.C.M. van Riemsdijk: J.J.H. Verhulst (Haarlem, 1886) [incl. list of works]

E. Reeser: Een eeuw Nederlandse muziek (Amsterdam, 1950, 2/1986)

M. Venderbosch: ‘De liederen van Johannes Verhulst: “eene nieuwe baan”’, Muziek en wetenschap, iii (1993), 267–95

JAN TEN BOKUM

Verio, Juan.

Musician probably identifiable with Joanne Verius.

Verismo

(It.: ‘realism’; Fr. vérisme).

A movement in Italian literature, and subsequently in opera, which developed in the 1870s. Its major literary representatives are the Sicilian writers Giovanni Verga (1840–1922), Luigi Capuana (1839–1915) and Federico De Roberto (1861–1927).

Although sharing certain characteristics with naturalism – an impersonal narrative style, an interest in the lower social strata, a true-to-life approach in dealing with contemporary reality – verismo developed distinctive traits. The veristi gave a markedly regional character to their works; they reassessed the link between art and reality, established by Zola as a fundamental aesthetic premise, to allow greater freedom to the imagination; and they arrived at an objectivity that implied total consistency of form and content.

Verismo entered opera through ‘scene popolari’, such as Verga’s Cavalleria rusticana (1884), which was the first text to be turned into an opera. In 1888 the publisher Edoardo Sonzogno advertised a competition for a one-act opera by a young Italian composer. Mascagni had no innovatory intentions in his choice of Verga’s popular one-act play. The libretto preserved the vivid dialogue and the rapid pace but the operatic version was distanced from the veristic play by a distortion of its social characteristics and a dilution of its down-to-earth language with traditional high-flown libretto jargon. The opera’s success, however (1890, Rome), led to Cavalleria rusticana becoming the prototype of a new genre. The term verismo was adopted, to designate the subject of the libretto and the work's musico-dramatic structure. The 1890s witnessed a brief flowering of operas on veristic subjects, both in Italy and abroad.

A ‘Neapolitan’ brand of operatic verismo was launched with Giordano’s Mala vita (1892, Rome). The libretto marked an appreciable advance on the Cavalleria prototype: Nicola Daspuro treated Di Giacomo’s ‘scene popolari’ with scrupulous respect for layout, characterization and environment. The sordid conditions prevailing in the alleys of a big city and the mala vita (‘wretched life’) of a prostitute were transposed without softening their crude reality. The work was, however, a failure in Naples (1892), where the display of the miseries of the urban proletariat raised outraged protests. The second most famous veristic opera was Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci (1892, Milan), a sensational and more complex work. Leoncavallo wrote both libretto and music. The operatic ‘slice of life’ he so skilfully contrived is the result of a subtle blending of various ingredients: a village murder, the device of the play-within-a-play with commedia dell’arte masks, the Pierrot pantomime as revived in Paris in the 1880s, and the open-air revels associated with a religious festival as exemplified by the Easter celebrations in Cavalleria.

In the following years, the customs of Italy’s poor regions were exploited by the opera industry for the production of plebeian stage works, and there was a tendency to lapse into picturesqueness and sensationalism, inherent in the veristic theatre. Popular songs accompanied by guitars and mandolins, tarantellas, saltarellos or other local dances, drinking songs, litanies and religious hymns, were inserted on the slightest pretext. The vocal style and the musico-dramatic structures had three main references: the scrapyard of romantic opera, the contemporary ‘veristic’ manner of the giovane scuola, and the drawing-room song style. Feeble stories with colourful vignettes were inflated and sustained by violent vocal outbursts, heavy orchestration, big unison climaxes, agitated duets and mellifluous intermezzos, a tendency that culminated in Wolf-Ferrari’s I gioielli della Madonna (1911, Berlin).

The veristic fashion spread. In France, Massenet composed La Navarraise (1894, London), a two-act opera closely modelled on Cavalleria. In Germany, Eugen d’Albert wrote Tiefland (1903, Prague), a two-act opera set in Catalonia. Frédéric d’Erlanger composed Tess, a four-act ‘dramma’ by Illica after Hardy’s novel Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1906, Naples). Bretón’s La Dolores (1895), Janáček’s Jenůfa (1904) and Smyth’s The Wreckers (1906), should also be mentioned. The constant presence of low-life subjects and the high concentration of quotations (popular songs, dances, street cries) in Italian operas following Cavalleria have been taken to justify the general designation ‘operatic verismo’ for this genre. The genre itself petered out in the early years of the 20th century, leaving Cavalleria and Pagliacci as its best contributions to the musical theatre.

Verismo is misleading and inadequate as a term for turn-of-the-century Italian opera. It may, however, serve as a general description of the musical style of the giovane scuola as characterized by a new emotional rhetoric influenced partly by Massenet and, to some degree, by Wagner: passionate tension alternates with sentimental languor, and delicacy with violence, especially in the vocal lines; recitatives, solo pieces and ensembles enjoy equality of status, textural cohesion being supplied by the use of orchestral motifs; and there is a total absence of bel canto coloratura. Such features need to be viewed in the context of a steady trend in late 19th-century opera towards dramatic continuity, in which the canons of musical and spoken drama draw closer, allowing the possibility of Literaturoper such as Mascagni’s Guglielmo Ratcliff (1895), Montemezzi’s L’amore dei tre re (1913) and Zandonai’s Francesca da Rimini (1914), settings respectively of plays by Heine, Sem Benelli and D’Annunzio; hence, too, a new rapidity of action, especially notable in Act 1 of Giordano’s Fedora (1898) and in Mascagni’s Il piccolo Marat (1921). It was left to Puccini in his operas from Manon Lescaut (1893) onwards to achieve the most satisfactory synthesis and, by enriching a highly personal idiom with elements derived from his younger European contemporaries, to lead Italian opera into the 20th century.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

E. Hanslick: Fünf Jahre Musik (1891–1895) (Berlin, 1896/R)

L. Torchi: ‘The Realistic Italian Opera’, Famous Composers and their Works, new ser., i, ed. P. Hale (Boston, 1900), 183ff

L. Laloy: ‘Le drame musical moderne: les véristes français: Gustave Charpentier’, Mercure musical, i (1905), 169–77

G. Bastianelli: Pietro Mascagni (Naples, 1910)

M. Rinaldi: Musica e verismo (Rome, 1932)

R. Dumesnil: ‘Réalistes et naturalistes’, Histoire de musique, iv (Paris, 1958)

J.W. Klein: ‘Pietro Mascagni and Giovanni Verga’, ML, xliv (1963), 350–57

M. Morini, ed.: Pietro Mascagni (Milan, 1964)

G. Ugolini: ‘La traviata e i rapporti di Verdi con l’opera verista’, Il congresso internazionale di studi verdiani: Venice 1966, 261–7

G. Abraham: ‘Realism in Janáček’s operas’, Slavonic and Romantic Music (New York, 1968), 83–98

M. Morini, ed.: Umberto Giordano (Milan, 1968)

S. Ferrone: Il teatro di Verga (Rome, 1972)

A. Barsotti: Verga drammaturgo (Florence, 1974)

R. Mariani: Verismo in musica (Florence, 1976)

R. Tedeschi: Addio fiorito asil: il melodramma italiano da Boito al verismo (Milan, 1978)

E. Voss: ‘Verismo in der Oper’, Mf, xxxi (1978), 303–13

J. Davies: The Realism of Luigi Capuana (London, 1979)

J. Nicolaisen: Italian Opera in Transition, 1871–1893 (Ann Arbor, 1980)

F. Nicolodi: ‘Parigi e l’opera verista: dibattiti, riflessioni, polemiche’, NRMI, xv (1981), 577–623

C. Dahlhaus: Musikalischer Realismus: zur Musikgeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Munich, 1982; Eng. trans., 1985)

G. Favre: Musique et naturalisme: Alfred Bruneau et Emile Zola (Paris, 1982)

R. Taruskin: ‘Handel, Shakespeare, and Musorgsky: the Sources and Limits of Russian Musical Realism’, Studies in the History of Music, i (1983), 247–68

C. Casini, F. Cella, F. Nicolodi and others: Mascagni (Milan, 1984)

M. Kelkel: Naturalisme, vérisme et réalisme dans l’opéra de 1880 à 1930 (Paris, 1984)

L. Baldacci: ‘I libretti di Mascagni’, NRMI, xix (1985), 395–410

M. Sansone: Verismo: from Literature to Opera (diss., U. of Edinburgh, 1987)

J. Smaczny: ‘Czech verismo in the 1890s’, Janáček and Czech music: St Louis 1988, 33–43

M. Sansone: ‘Verga, Puccini and La lupa’, Italian Studies, xliv (1989), 63–76

M. Sansone: ‘The ‘verismo’ of Ruggero Leoncavallo: a Source Study of Pagliacci’, ML, lxx (1989), 342–62

M. Sansone: ‘Verga and Mascagni: the Critics’ Response to Cavalleria rusticana’, ML, lxxi (1990), 198–214

J.-H. Lederer: Verismo auf der deutschprachigen Opernbünne 1891–1926 (Vienna, 1992)

A. Guarnieri Corazzol: ‘Opera e verismo: regressione del punto di vista e artificio dello straniamento’, Ruggero Leoncavallonel suo tempo: Locarno 1991, 13–31; Eng. trans. in COJ, v (1993), 39–53

M. Sansone: ‘Giordano’s Mala vita: a “verismo” Opera too True to be Good’, ML, lxxv (1994), 381–400

M. SANSONE/R

Veritophilus.

See Raupach family, (1).

Verius, Joanne [? Verio, Juan; van Vere]

(fl c1560–86). Flemish composer. He was probably the ‘Juan Verio de nacion flamengo’ described by Cerone as the kapelmeester to Margaret of Parma (daughter of Charles V and half-sister to Philip II), who served in Brussels as regent of the Low Countries from 1559 to 1567. According to Pietro Cerone, Verio helped and advised him on musical matters when Cerone was in the service of the Bishop of Cività-Ducale in Abruzzi-Molise. This may have been between 1583 and 1586, when Margaret and her chapel returned to Italy from the Low Countries and resided in Aquila in the Abruzzi. Five chansons (three for four voices; two in lute intabulations) survive, ascribed to ‘Verius’ in French and Flemish anthologies (RISM 1568²³, 1571¹⁶, 1578⁶, and 1578¹³). One of these, Que pleust a Dieu, appears set for lute in two Phalèse anthologies and for voices in a Le Roy and Ballard collection. Senn has further identified two books of chansons, now lost, by Joanne Verius, published in Leuven in 1560 (for four and five voices) and 1566 (for four to six voices) and listed in a 1577 inventory prepared by lutenist Sixt Kargel of books belonging to the Bishop of Strasbourg. Verius is not to be confused with the 15th-century musician Jean Cornuel who was nicknamed Verjus or Verjust.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Vander StraetenMPB, vi

P. Cerone: El melopeo y maestro (Naples, 1613/R)

F. Senn: ‘Ein Notenverzeichnis des Bischofs van Strassburg aus dem Jahre 1577’, Renaissance-Musiek 1400–1600: donum natalicium René Bernard Lenaerts, ed. J. Robijns and others (Leuven, 1969), 241–6

R. Stevenson: Review of P. Cerone: El melopeo y maestro, facs repr. (Bologna, 1969), JAMS, xxiv (1971), 477–85

H. Vanhulst: Catalogue des éditions de musique publiées à Leuven par Pierre Phalèse et ses fils, 1545–1578 (Brussels, 1990), 79, 122

HOWARD MAYER BROWN/KRISTINE FORNEY

Verjus (i) [Cornuel, Jean; Tribot, Sot, Saupicquet]

(b Boulonnais, c1435; d Cambrai, Aug 1499). French singer. According to a laudatory poem by his friend Molinet (Regime de Verjus, vicaire de Cambray), he was known under different names wherever he lived: ‘Tribot’ at Tours, ‘Sot’ at Milan and Thérouanne (where he presented farces, thereby earning the name), ‘Saupicquet’ at Saint Quentin and ‘Verjus’ at Cambrai. Molinet’s poem also refers to visits by Verjus to Hungary and the Rhineland. From March 1465 to 1467, ‘Jo. Cornuel, contratenorista’ was a singer at S Pietro, Rome, and in 1474 he was a member of the chapel of Galeazzo Maria Sforza in Milan. Early in 1475 he became petit vicaire at Cambrai Cathedral, with duties that included the singing of the Office. In March 1499 he resigned his post, and he died in August of that year.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

E. Droz: ‘Notes sur Me Jean Cornuel, dit Verjus’, RdM, vii (1926), 173–89

A. Pirro: ‘Jean Cornuel, vicaire à Cambrai’, RdM, vii (1926), 190–203

C.A. Reynolds: Papal Patronage and the Music of St. Peter’s, 1380–1513 (Berkeley, 1995), 127, 307

MARTIN PICKER

Verjus (ii) [Verjeust, Verjust; Guillot, Estienne]

(b c1450; d Paris, summer 1518). French singer and composer. An early period of service in Anjou, before he joined the French royal chapel, is suggested by his death notice which refers to ‘le feu prevost d'Anjou Verjust’. He is recorded in the accounts of the royal chamber of 1490–91 as ‘Estienne Guillot, dit Verjeust, chantre et varlet de chambre’. In Crétin's Déploration for Ockeghem (d 1497), ‘Prevost Verjust’, along with other presumed chapel singers, is called upon to sing for their colleague. His presence in the royal chapel is noted during the visit of Philip the Fair and his court to Blois in 1501. The royal chapels of Philip and Louis sang together at mass, and an anonymous chronicler remarks that a singer of Louis's chapel named Verjus ‘was the second master after Alexander [Agricola] and is well liked by the King and everyone’. In the winter of 1506–7, when Verjus was curé of St Nicolas at Blois, Louis heard him sing mass 31 times in the private chapel of the royal château. ‘Le prevost Verjust’ is listed among the singers of the royal chapel in 1517–18 and his death is noted in the summer of 1518.

The three-voice rondeau An hault de la roue de fortune is attributed to ‘Verjeust’ in F-Pn f.fr.2245 (ed. in Droz), a manuscript probably compiled for Louis XII when he was crowned in 1498. Although Droz identifies the composer as Verjus (i), the latter, in view of Guillot's association with the French royal court, is by far the more likely composer (see Bonime). Verjus is sometimes confused with the later Verius, Flemish kapelmeester of Margaret of Parma.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

S. Bonime: Anne de Bretagne (1477–1514) and Music: an Archival Study (diss., Bryn Mawr College, 1975), esp. 40–49

J.T. Brobeck: ‘Musical Patronage in the Royal Chapel of France under Francis I (r. 1515–1547)’, JAMS, xlviii (1995), 187–239, esp. 195–8

MARTIN PICKER

Verlaine, Paul

(b Metz, 30 March 1844; d Paris, 8 Jan 1896). French poet. ‘De la musique avant toute chose’: the first line of his Art poétique announced the principle that underlies most of Verlaine’s work. He brought back to French poetry the musical qualities which had not been cultivated so consciously since the Renaissance – euphony, elegance of rhythm, metric virtuosity and compact formal perfection – and drew much of his imagery from music, particularly in the Fêtes galantes. In this collection, which has attracted more settings than any other, he created a world of Watteauesque artifice and commedia dell’arte disguise, a mask of sophistication that half-conceals deeper emotions. Both aspects, the musical finesse and the exquisite ambiguities, appealed to the young Debussy, who was the first composer of any importance to set Verlaine. The best of Debussy’s early work is that based on Verlaine: the songs of 1880–92, the Suite bergamasque for piano and the Petite suite for piano duet. His lead was soon followed by Fauré, notably with the song cycle La bonne chanson op.61 (1892–4), and Hahn, and then by many others, to the extent that Verlaine has probably received more settings than any other French poet of his time. Verlaine wrote librettos for two opéras bouffes by Chabrier: Fisch-Ton-Kan (1863–4) and Vaucochard et fils 1er (1864). Chabrier finished neither.

SETTINGS OF VERLAINE POEMS

from Poèmes saturniens (pubd 1866): C. Bordes, 1884; G. Charpentier, 1890; F. Schmitt, 1891–2; R. Hahn, 1892; A. Diepenbrock, 1897; H. Panizza, 1899; C. Koechlin, 1900–01, 1901–16; P. Ladmirault, 1901; M. Loeffler, 1904; A. Casella, 1905; P. Le Flem, 1911; A. Doyen, 1912; F. Delius, 1913; Poldowski, 1913; H. Bosmans, 1921; P. Hall, 1922, 1924; L. Vierne, 1924; P. Bonneau, 1925; A. Wachtmeister, 1925, 1932; P. Gaubert, 1926; K. Sorabji, 1926; J. Zoubaloff, 1926; R. Laparra, 1927; P. Revel, 1927; B. Britten, 1928; M. Briclot, 1929; H. Gil-Marchex, 1931; W. Josten, 1931; T. Aubin, 1933; R. Bergman, 1935; J. Koffler, 1936; K. Stougie, 1938; M. Gaillard, 1943; L. Aubert, 1949; A. Prévost, 1953; R. Chevreuille, 1959; J. Wilson, 1962; J.M. Komter, 1963; D. Milhaud, 1964; A. Kunz, 1966; J. F. Perrenoud, 1966; B. Elias, 1969; J. Lang Zaimont, 1974; L. Klein, 1978; R. Turner, 1978; L. Orthel, 1980; P. Hammond, 1987; J. Van Amelsvoort, 1996

from Fêtes galantes (pubd 1869): C. Bordes, 1884; E. Bozza, 1936; C. Debussy, 1882, 1883, 1889, 1891, 1904; G. Fauré, 1887, 1891; R. Hahn, 1891–5; L. Dumas, 1896; J. Durand, 1896; P. Pitt, 1896; J. Ryelandt, 1897; A. Diepenbrock, 1898; Panizza, 1899; J. Canteloube, 1901–3; R. de Castera, 1902; S. Lazzari, 1904; M. Ravel, 1907; O. Schoek, 1907; R. Herberigs, 1910; G. Fabre, 1911; W. Josten, 1911; P. Le Flem, 1911; R. Pick-Mangiagalli, 1912; M. Kowalski, 1913; A. Remacle, 1914; D. Harvey, 1916; W. Pijper, 1916; K. Sorabji, 1924; M. D'Ollone, 1925; R. Laparra, 1927; Poldowski, 1927; L. Saminsky, 1927; F. De Bourguignon, 1928; R. Colaco Osorio-Swabb, 1932; L. Hyde, 1933; E. Bozza, 1936; M. Gaillard, 1943; V. Christoff, 1950; P. Bonneau, 1955; R. Armbruster, 1967; R. Defossez, 1967; A. Voormolen, 1969; G. Condé, 1973; J. Lang Zaimont, 1974; N. Schuyt, 1982; G. Charpentier, 1984

from La bonne chanson (pubd 1870): C. Bordes, 1890; G. Fauré, 1892–4; R. Hahn, 1892; C. Koechlin, 1901–16; F. Delius, 1910; A. Diepenbrock, 1910; I. Stravinsky, 1910; A. Doyen, 1912; Poldowski, 1912; J. Ryelandt, 1914; R. Moulaert, 1917; M. Loeffler, 1923; J. Szulc, 1924; Zoubaloff, 1926; T. Aubin, 1933; G. Berg, 1937; E. Mulder, 1949; J. M Komter, 1963; R. Armbruster, 1967; W.F. Bon, 1967; J. Van Amelsvoort, 1996

from Romances sans paroles (pubd 1874): C. Bordes, 1886; C. Debussy, 1885, 1887, 1888; F. Schmitt, 1891-2; G. Fauré, 1892–4, 1889; R. Hahn, 1892; G. Charpentier, 1893; Delius, 1895; P. Ladmirault, 1899; Panizza, 1899; C. Koechlin, 1900–01; A. Caplet, 1902; J. Canteloube, 1903; C. Loeffler, 1904; J. Pillois, 1909; R. Herberigs, 1910; Poldowski, 1911, 1913, 1924; R. Pick-Mangiagalli. 1912; J. Ireland, 1917; R. Moulaert, 1917; W. Pijper, 1921; P. Büsser, 1924; L. Vierne, 1924; J. Szulc, 1926; H. Gil-Marchex, 1927; P. Hall, 1929; J. Louel, 1939; M. Gaillard, 1943; Mulder, 1949; V. Christoff, 1950; M. Dela, 1950; P. Bonneau, 1955; C. Pépin, 1958; W. Zillig, 1959; M. Short, 1966, R. Armbruster, 1967; K. Keff, 1967; J. Lang Zaimont, 1974; G. Victory, 1978; H. De Regt, 1980; M. Gibbons, 1986; C. Diethelm, 1992; K. Miehling, 1994; J. van Amelsvoort, 1996

from Sagesse (pubd 1880): Christoff, 1883; C. Bordes, 1888; C. Debussy, 1891; G. Fauré, 1894; F. Delius, 1895; M. Ravel, 1895; E. Chausson, 1898; A. Diepenbrock, 1898; D. de Severac, 1904; E. Varèse, 1905; N. O’Neill, 1907; R. de Castera, 1908; R. Vaughan Williams, 1908; G. Grovlez, 1909; I. Stravinsky, 1910; Poldowski, 1911; A. Doyen, 1912; C. Tournemire, 1921; L. Vierne, 1924; A. Wachtmeister, 1925; B. Britten, 1928; L. Hyde, 1929; M. Canal, 1931; M. Gaillard, 1943; A. Honegger, 1944–5; E. Mulder, 1948; L. Aubert, 1949; W.F. Bon, 1967; Amelsvoort, 1996

from Jadis et naguère (pubd 1884): Poldowski, 1913; M. d’Ollone, 1922; A. Le Guillard, 1923; P. Büsser, 1924; T. Aubin, 1933; W. F. Bon, 1970

from Amour (pubd 1888): C. Bordes, 1884

from Parallèlement (pubd 1889): G. Charpentier, 1894; Poldowski, 1913; L. Vierne, 1924; T. Aubin, 1933; L. Hyde, 1933; L. Vellere, 1949

from Chansons pour elle (pubd 1891): R. Hahn, 1893

from Liturgies intimes (pubd 1892): R. Bernier, 1940; H. Tomasi, 1955

from Poèmes divers: L. Boellman, 1897; D. Milhaud, 1962

BIBLIOGRAPHY

T. Leclère: ‘Les musiciens de Verlaine’, Revue bleue (Paris, 14 Nov 1903)

G. Jean-Aubry, ed.: ‘Lettres inédites de Gabriel Fauré, Paul Verlaine, Albert Samain’, in P. Fauré-Fremiet and R. Dumesnil, eds.: Le centenaire de Gabriel Fauré (1845–1945), ReM, 1945, [special issue]

C.H. Moore: ‘Verlaine’s opéra bouffe’, Publications of the Modern Language Association, lxxxiii (1968), 305–11

L.M. Porter: ‘Meaning in Music: Debussy and Fauré as Interpreters of Verlaine’, Topic, xxxv (1981), 26–37

B. Camoni: ‘Fauré e Verlaine’, Poesia e musica nella Francia di Fine Ottocento (Milan, 1991), 54–94

D. Taddie: ‘Fêtes Galantes, set 1: Verlaine, Debussy and the Fusion of the Arts’, Yearbook of the Interdisciplinary Studies in the Fine Arts, iii (1992), 501–29

R. White: Verlaine et les musiciens, avec une chronologie des mises en musique et un essai de répertoire biographique des compositeurs (Paris, 1992)

PAUL GRIFFITHS

Verlit [Verlith], Gaspar de

(bap. Mons, 22 May 1622; d Brussels, 19 Dec 1682). Flemish composer. By 1633 he was a choirboy at the royal chapel in Brussels and was still a singer there in 1641. In 1645 he registered at Leuven University. In 1649 or 1650 he became maître de chant of the church of St Nicolas in Brussels, and probably remained there until 1664. He held the same post at the church of St Géry from 1668 to 1669. From 1658 or even before that date he was an altar chaplain at the royal chapel and he still held this position in 1679. After a collection of Flemish and Latin noëls (1660), he published at Antwerp two collections of masses and motets. In the first volume the contrast of solo and ripieno vocal groups gives rise to some pleasing effects. Frequent references to him in inventories are evidence of the success that his music enjoyed in the 17th and 18th centuries.

WORKS

Cantiones natalitiae, 4–5vv/insts, bc (Antwerp, 1660)

Missae et motetta nec non quatuor antiphonae B. Mariae Virginis, 4–6vv, 2 vn, bn, bc (Antwerp, 1661)

Missae et motetta nec non quatuor antiphonae B. Mariae Virginis, 3–4vv, 2 vn, bc (Antwerp, 1668)

Credo quod redemptor, 1671, B-Bc (inc.)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Vander StraetenMPB, i, ii, v

R.A. Rasch: De cantiones natalitiae en het kerkelijk muziekleven in de zuidelijke Nederlanden gedurende de zeventiende eeuw (Utrecht, 1985)

HENRI VANHULST

Verloge, Hilaire [Alarius]

(b Ghent; d Ghent, 1734). Flemish cellist, viol player and composer. His name appears in Parisian sources from 1709, when he was listed with Forqueray, Anet and others as a musician in the service of the exiled Elector of Bavaria (who had been in the Low Countries). He was later an ordinaire de musique de la chambre du roy; Couperin mentioned him as a participant in performances of the Concerts royaux in the Versailles Sunday concerts, 1714–15. His name appears in court records from 1717: he received payments (some of them unusually large) for performances, and permission to travel to Flanders (1720, 1731 and on his retirement in 1733) and to Lyons (1722, in the service of the Marshal of Villeroy). He often played in concerts at Marly and Versailles, where he lived, at least from 1725. He provided the instrumental music for Matho’s ballet, Le ballet de la jeunesse (L'union de la jeunesse avec la sagesse), performed before the king at the Tuileries in February 1718 (to words by Beauchamp), and music for an entertainment for the Count of Prade in May 1723; neither survives. La Laurencie’s reference to a Ballet de la jeunesse at Versailles in 1686 (to words by Dancourt) would seem to be a confusion with a work by Lalande of that name.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BenoitMC

L. de La Laurencie: L’Académie de musique et le concert de Nantes à l’Hôtel de la Bourse (1727–1767) (Paris, 1906/R), 78–9

L. Vallas: Un siècle de musique et de théâtre à Lyon, 1688–1789 (Lyons, 1932/R)

M. Antoine: ‘Note sur les violonistes Anet’, RMFC, ii (1961–2), 81–93

M. Benoit: Versailles et les musiciens du roi, 1661–1733 (Paris, 1971), esp. 315

M. Benoit, ed.: Dictionnaire de la musique en France aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris, 1992), 11

JULIE ANNE SADIE

Vermeeren [Vermeren], Anthonis [Anthoni]

(b Wilrijk, 1618; d ?Antwerp, after 1667). Flemish composer and organist. He spent his life at Antwerp. He was paid as an occasional organist at Antwerp Cathedral in 1630–31, when only 13 years old. In 1640–42 he served as an instrumentalist at the Andrieskerk, and during the period 1648–68 he was organist at the citadel church of St Philippus and St Jacobus, where in 1653/4 he became also choirmaster. He married Joanna vande Moortel in 1653; the elder of their two sons, Franciscus Daniel (1654–1719), was organist at the same castle church in 1702.

Vermeeren's known works comprise 19 motets, six masses and two Flemish Christmas songs. Although not of the highest standard, his compositions (including the lost op.2) were nevertheless performed, since they are listed in several 17th- and 18th-century church inventories in Antwerp, Huy, Oudenaarde, Ghent, Hasselt and Lübeck.

WORKS

Missae et motetta … [liber primus], 1–4vv, insts (Antwerp, 1660, rev. 2/1668)

Missae et motetta … [liber secundus] (Antwerp, c1661–4), lost

Missae et motetta … liber tertius, 5–12vv/insts (Antwerp, 1665)

2 Christmas songs, 2vv, 3 insts, bc (Antwerp, ?1655–60), lost; bc pt in 1648²

4 motets in 1661¹

5 motets, 1–3vv, 5 viols, org, 1664–5, S-Uu, from 1660 Missae

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BNB (R. Vannes)

Vander StraetenMPB, i

VannesD

M. Seiffert: ‘Anthoni Vermeren, ein vergessener holländischer Musiker?’, TVNM, v/3 (1897), 137–8

G. Spiessens: ‘Anthonis Vermeeren, organist en zangmeester van de Antwerpe Citadel in de 17de eeuw: een rechtzetting’, Orgelkunst, vii (1984), 21–2

R. Rasch: De Cantiones natalitiae en het kerkelijke muziekleven in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden gedurende de zeventiende eeuw (Utrecht, 1985)

GODELIEVE SPIESSENS

Vermeer Quartet.

American string quartet. It originated in 1969 as a trio of string players brought in as artists-in-residence at Northern Illinois University, De Kalb. The founding members were the violinist Shmuel Ashkenasi, the viola player Scott Nickrenz and the cellist Richard Sher; in 1970 second violinist Pierre Menard was added. Marc Johnson replaced Sher as cellist in 1973; after Nickrenz, the viola players have been Nobuko Imai, Jerry Horner, Bernard Zaslav and Richard Young, the last having joined the group in 1985. The quartet, acclaimed for solid performances of repertory of all periods, tours widely in the USA and has performed regularly at the Marlboro Music Festival and at the Mostly Mozart festival in New York; it has also been featured at the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto. Its recordings include a complete cycle of Beethoven string quartets.

JAMES WIERZBICKI/R

Vermeersch, Peter

(b Waregem, 25 Sept 1959). Belgian musician. After receiving elementary tuition in theory and clarinet at the Waregem music academy, he studied architecture at the St Lucas Institute in Ghent. There he played clarinet and saxophone in Union, a group specializing in jazz, rock and punk. He was a member of the group Maximalist! from its foundation, as composer and clarinettist. He then co-founded the Ictus Ensemble, which at first played mostly works by Vermeersch and Thierry De Mey for the dance productions of Wim Vandekeybus. Vermeersch is also active in rock-inspired groups like X-Legged Sally. He has written music mostly for dance and theatre groups such as Rosas (with Anne Theresa De Keersmaeker), for Vandekeybus, Josse De Pauw and the group Radeis. Although his music is functional to the scenic event, without being purely decorative, it is also designed to be played independently from the visual scenic action, in the concert hall. As an architect, his approach to music is that of a constructivist; nevertheless, as a musician he feels free from the functional constraints of architecture. His compositions are simple, using repetitive patterns and cellular augmentation and diminution. He has also written for classical ensembles.

WORKS

(selective list)

Music-theatre pieces De oplosbare vis (J. De Pauw), 1994; Music Hall, 1996

Incid music for plays Echafaudages, 1983–4; Usurpation (V. Ostaijen), 1985

Dance productions: Rosas danst Rosas [collab T. De Mey]; What the body does not remember, 1987; Roseland, 1990; La mentira, 1992–3; Her body doesn’t fit her soul, 1993

Songs and instrumental pieces for Union, Maximalist! and X-Legged Sally

Other inst: 10 Pieces, small orch; 3 Pieces, str qt

BIBLIOGRAPHY

C.J. De Boever: ‘Peter Vermeersch’, Tijdschrift van de Nieuwe Muziekgroep, xvi (1988), 11–14

Y. Knockaert: ‘Peter Vermeersch: de architect als musicus’, Kunst en cultuur, xxvii/2 (1994), 20–21

E. Rutten: ‘De oplosbare vis’, Muziek en woord, xx/2 (1994), 47 only

Y. Knockaert: ‘Als een vis in het water’, Ons erfdeel, xli/5 (1998), 731–6

YVES KNOCKAERT

Vermeulen, Matthijs [Van der Meulen, Mattheus Christianus Franciscus]

(b Helmond, 8 Feb 1888; d Laren, 26 July 1967). Dutch composer and writer on music. Having been recognized for many years chiefly for his literary qualities, Vermeulen is now regarded as a composer of international significance and as the most important symphonist of the Netherlands.

1. Life.

The oldest son of a blacksmith, his passion for music was revealed at the age of 14 at the seminary in Heeswijk, where he was taught the rudiments of 16th-century counterpoint and received piano lessons. A short period (1904–05) spent at a Jesuit boarding school in Belgium provided him with a thorough schooling in the classical writers and a fluent mastery of French. After he abandoned his plan to become a priest, Vermeulen moved to Amsterdam in 1907 to submit his first samples of composition to the director of the conservatory, Daniël de Lange, who gave him lessons for two years. At the age of 21, Vermeulen became a critic on the daily newspaper De Tijd; shortly afterwards he fulfilled the same role on the progressive weekly De Amsterdammer.

During this period he made the acquaintance of Diepenbrock, who became his mentor and was of great significance for the development of his range of ideas. Diepenbrock’s influence is particularly noticeable in Vermeulen’s treatment of the antithesis between the Germanic and Latin spirit in the arts. As an advocate of the new French music, Vermeulen came into conflict with Willem Mengelberg, whom he regarded highly as a conductor but considered to be remiss in his duties as the musical director of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra, because of his bias towards German musical culture. It was apparent that this criticism was not appreciated when Mengelberg refused even to consider performing Vermeulen’s First Symphony.

In 1915 Vermeulen became arts editor at De Telegraaf; in his column he opposed German war policy. Vermeulen’s commitment is also evident in the choice of texts for his songs of 1917, including the dramatic La veille. Shortly after he married in 1918, Vermeulen composed his Cello Sonata no.1, in which he explored free atonality. In 1920, a year after he had started on his Second Symphony, full of daring experimentation, he gave up his writing career to devote himself entirely to composing, supported financially by friends. After a last vain appeal to Mengelberg, Vermeulen moved to France with his family in the hope of finding a more suitable climate for his music. In La Celle-St Cloud, near Paris, he completed the Third Symphony, the String Trio and the Violin Sonata.

However, there was no breakthrough. Although Pierné and Koussevitzky were very interested in Vermeulen’s work, and Nadia Boulanger and Prunières both made efforts to promote it, none of the symphonies were performed. Only some of his chamber music found a platform at the Société Musicale Indépendante and the Revue Musicale. Out of sheer necessity, Vermeulen returned to journalism and in 1926 became general correspondent for a newspaper in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), to which for 14 years he contributed hundreds of brilliantly written ‘Letters from Paris’ on the most varied subjects. In 1930 he was commissioned to write the music for an open-air play back in the Netherlands, De vliegende Hollander by Martinus Nijhoff. But afterwards he did not compose anything for a considerable time, depressed over his lack of prospects, until in 1937 he picked up the thread of the Second Cello Sonata, which he had left half-finished ten years earlier.

Two years later his fortune took a vital upward turn with the première of the Third Symphony in Amsterdam by the Concertgebouw Orchestra under Eduard van Beinum. After so long, the performance finally provided him with proof of the effectiveness of his concepts. His fourth and fifth symphonies followed during 1940–45, their sub-titles ‘Les victoires’ and ‘Les lendemains chantants’ symbolizing Vermeulen’s confidence in the successful conclusion of the war. However, personal tragedy struck in the autumn of 1944 when Vermeulen lost in quick succession his wife and his most beloved son, who perished in the French Resistance. His diary, published as Het enige hart, presents a poignant account of the process of grieving. In his search to make sense of these losses, Vermeulen came to a philosophical position which he elaborated in his book Het avontuur van den geest: behind all manifestations of matter and life lies a ‘creative spirit’, the awareness of which may bring mankind to an understanding of his responsibility for the future of the earth. In this credo, Vermeulen hoped to offer a counterpart to existentialism, his vehement protests against nuclear arms proliferation in the 1950s falling within the same framework.

In 1946 Vermeulen re-married and returned to the Netherlands, where he worked for ten years on the weekly De Groene Amsterdammer. His articles on music, with their international perspective, are compelling. In 1949 Vermeulen’s fourth and fifth symphonies were first performed, with varying success. However, the performance of the Second Symphony (to which a prize was awarded at the Queen Elisabeth competition of 1953) during the Holland Festival in 1956 instigated a new period of creativity, in which he composed the Symphony no.6, followed by various songs and the String Quartet. His last work, the Seventh Symphony, speaks of unbroken optimism matched by the sub-title ‘Dithyrambes pour les temps à venir’.

2. Style.

Vermeulen’s earliest composition, the First Symphony, is in some passages reminiscent of Debussy, Diepenbrock, Bruckner and Mahler, four of his great models. In this work bursting with youthful élan – which according to the composer ‘plays on the boundary between the 19th and 20th centuries, when the great shadow [World War I] had not yet fallen’ – Vermeulen had already left behind traditional harmony. The freely handled part-writing repeatedly leads to complex chords, while conventional cadences are virtually absent. Modality does, however, play a major role, as in the anti-war songs of a few years later. The transition from diatonic thinking to an integral chromatic concept came, at the age of 30, in the First Cello Sonata, and it was consolidated in the Second Symphony (‘Prélude a la nouvelle journée’), which dates from the expectant atmosphere of the postwar years. Revolutionary with respect to melody, harmony, form and instrumentation, the piece confirmed Vermeulen’s personal style, coupling overwhelming power and vitality with tenderness and lyricism. Extended passages are of a density and energetic pulse encountered in little other 20th-century music, while organic transitions to simpler, open textures, which radiate contemplative rest, are equally striking.

Although significant developments occurred during the course of his output and works differ appreciably in character and structure, a number of basic principles remained the same: primacy of melody in all parts, equality of voices, no regulation in the succession of notes, and ‘unlimited chord formation’. Vermeulen regarded melody as the representation in sound of a person, as the expression of emotion. Polymelody, i.e. the interaction of several independent melodies (in his symphonies mostly three to six and occasionally even eight or nine, in his chamber music two to four) acquired the significance of a reflection of an ideal society in which freedom, equality and fraternity prevail. General aspects of Vermeulen’s melodic writing are a commonly vocal character, the preference for asymmetrical and long-spanned phrasing, varied repeats of interval patterns, the prevalence of small intervals, a tendency to chromatic completion (combining a minor 2nd in one direction with a major 2nd in the opposite direction is a common device), rhythmic variation (frequently, in melodies with a slow tempo each beat has a different sub-division from the last) and the avoidance of regular metric division (floating rhythm). Despite an overall atonality, many times a melody is spun around a focal pitch, upon which it begins and ends. Such perpetually circling movement and gradual unfolding gives an insistent, often oriental flavour to the music, while the regular use of ostinatos and fixed or slowly moving ‘harmonic fields’ adds to the mesmerizing effect, as does, in the symphonies, the richness of orchestration. Unusual timbral combinations are evident, while the melodies are frequently given special colour through being played in parallel intervals or chords, much in the manner of Debussy. Another notable feature of Vermeulen’s music is differentiated application of canonic technique, most frequently in the String Trio and Symphony no.3, in which in particular shows how a step-by-step shortening of the distance between dux and comes is applied to build up to a climax.

Formally Vermeulen’s symphonies and chamber works are highly diverse, consisting of contrasting parts which generally merge into each other without interruption. Various pieces show a particular relationship between outer movements, the ends of the Cello Sonata no.1 and the String Trio, for example, recalling their meditative beginnings by means of varied repetition of the first theme. Such symmetries are worked out on a larger scale in the Third Symphony – a broad A–B–A form with introduction, of which B has a rondo structure; and in the Fourth Symphony, where a complex of three themes returns. In terms of musical materials, the earlier large-scale Violin Sonata is not untypical in its economy, dominated melodically, harmonically and architectonically, by the interval of the major 7th. The later Fifth Symphony takes a new path, in its constant developing, the first and second parts of the symphony each built out of one theme of which elements are incorporated into a sequence of long self-renewing melodies. The Sixth Symphony (‘Les minutes heureuses’) returns to pervasion by a single motif – A(la)–C(do)–D(re) – Vermeulen spelling the notes in French to give ‘l’adorée’, to translate into sound his philosophy of mankind’s admiration for the miracle of life.

In the dissemination of a spiritual idea of this kind – the message behind all his instrumental music and the subject of most of his songs – Vermeulen felt that he formed part of a long tradition. Although he always looked out for new developments with interest, he had, finally, little affinity with the main currents in 20th-century music. In particular he rejected Stravinsky’s neo-classicism. He also saw a fallacy in Schönberg’s series technique, for him a self-imposed limitation which destroyed the freedom, only just acquired, of atonality. The string quartet (1960–61), for example, demonstrates – without recourse to serial procedures of inversion, retrograde and so on – the equality of the chromatic total, in the form of various 12-tone melodies (Vermeulen calls them ‘pantonic’) at important structural points.

WORKS

Orch: Sym. no.1 ‘Symphonia carminum’, 1912–14; Sym. no.2 ‘Prélude à la nouvelle journée’, 1919–20; Sym. no.3 ‘Thrène et Péan’, 1921–2; De vliegende Hollander [The Flying Dutchman] (incid music, M. Nijhoff), 1930; Sym. no.4 ‘Les Victoires’, 1940–41; Sym. no.5 ‘Les lendemains chantants’, 1941–5; Sym. no.6 ‘Les minutes heureuses’, 1956–8; Sym. no.7 ‘Dithyrambes pour les temps à venir’, 1963–5

Chbr: Sonata no.1, vc, pf, 1918; Str Trio, 1923; Sonata, vn, pf, 1924–5; Sonata no.2, vc, pf, 1927–38; Str Qt, 1960–61

Songs: On ne passe pas (V. le Jeune), T, pf, 1917; Les filles du roi d’Espagne (P. Fort), Mez, pf, 1917; The Soldier (R. Brooke), Bar, pf, 1917; La veille (F. Porché), Mez, pf, 1917, arr. Mez, orch. 1932; Trois salutations à Notre Dame, Mez, pf, 1941; Le balcon (C. Baudelaire), Mez/T, pf, 1944; Prélude des origines (G. Ribemont-Dessaignes), Bar, pf, 1959; Trois chants d’amour, Mez, pf, 1961–2; Dernier poème (Li Tai Po), La maison dans le coeur (Tu Fu), Hymne (Baudelaire)

Principal publisher: Donemus

WRITINGS

(selective list)

De twee muzieken (Leyden, 1918)

Klankbord [Soundboard] (Amsterdam, 1929)

De eene grondtoon [The one keynote] (Amsterdam, 1932)

Het avontuur van den geest [The adventure of the spirit] (Amsterdam, 1947)

Princiepen der Europese muziek (Amsterdam, 1949)

De muziek dat wonder [Music, a miracle] (The Hague, 1958)

De stem van levenden (Arnhem, 1981)

Het enige hart (Amsterdam, 1991)

Mijn geluk, mijn liefde (Amsterdam, 1995)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

(selective list)

W. Pijper: ‘Matthijs Vermeulen: sonate voor violoncel en piano’, De Muziek, i (1926–7), 391–2

P. Sanders: Moderne Nederlandsche componisten (The Hague, 1930), esp. 30–31

W. Paap: ‘Nederlandse componisten van deze tijd: Matthijs Vermeulen’, Mens en melodie, xi (1956), 162–7

N. Loeser: ‘Matthijs Vermeulen’, Musikschaffen zeitgenössischer Komponisten der Niederlande, v (Amsterdam, 1958), 86–111

R. de Leeuw: ‘Matthijs Vermeulen’, De gids, cxxx/2 (1967), 155–8; Eng. trans. in Sonorum speculum, lii (1973), 1–11

W. Paap: ‘In memoriam Matthijs Vermeulen’, Mens en melodie, xxii (1967), 257–62; Eng. trans. in Sonorum speculum, xxxii (1967), 32–3

T. Vermeulen-Diepenbrock: ‘Ter voorkoming van legendevorming’, Mens en melodie, xxiii (1968), 11–14

J. Bernlef: ‘De zaak Dreyfus van ons muziekleven’, De haagse post, lviii/34 (1971), 48–51; Eng. trans., ‘Matthijs Vermeulen (1888–1967) “I’ve Never Felt the Need of a System”’, Key Notes, iii (1976), 34–40

O. Ketting: ‘Prelude as Postlude: on Matthijs Vermeulen’s Second Symphony, Prélude à la nouvelle journée, and the song Les Filles du Roi d’Espagne’, Key Notes, iii (1976), 42–5

P. Rapoport: ‘Matthijs Vermeulen and his Symphony No.2 “Prélude à la nouvelle journée”’, Opus est: Six Composers from Northern Europe (London, 1978), 25–47 [incl. work-list and discography]

C. van der Meulen: Matthijs Vermeulen: zijn leven, zijn muziek, zijn proza (Nieuwkoop, 1982)

L. Samama: ‘Prélude à la nouvelle journée’, Zeventig jaar Nederlandse muziek 1915–1985 (Amsterdam, 1986), 25–68, esp. 59–68

T. Braas: ‘Matthijs Vermeulen’s Symphonies’, Key Notes, xxv (1988–9), 18–24

L. Samama: ‘Vermeulen, Pijper en Escher: drie erflaters in de muziek van de twintigste eeuw, drie vrienden’, Erflaters van de twintigste eeuw (Amsterdam, 1991), 264–89

T. Braas: ‘Matthijs Vermeulen’s Second Symphony “Prélude à la nouvelle journée”: an Analysis’, Key Notes, xxix/2 (1995), 15–19 [incl. CD]

T. Braas: De symfonieën en de kamermuziek van Matthijs Vermeulen: poëtica en compositie (diss., U. of Utrecht, 1997)

T. Braas: Door het geweld van zijn verlangen: een biografie van Matthijs Vermeulen (Amsterdam, 1997)

TON BRAAS

Vermillion, Iris

(b Bielefeld, 1960). German mezzo-soprano. She studied with Mechthild Böhme (Detmold) and Judith Beckmann (Hamburg) and was a prizewinner at the Cardiff Singer of the World competition before making her stage début at Brunswick in 1986 as Zulma (L'italiana in Algeri). She joined the Deutsche Oper in Berlin in 1988, and remained there as an ensemble member until 1993. Her roles include Cherubino, Dorabella, Sextus, Judith (Duke Bluebeard's Castle), Charlotte (Werther) and Clairon (Capriccio), which she sang to marked effect at the Salzburg Festival in 1990: she is, like Clairon herself, an accomplished actress. The following year she was Third Lady in the Salzburg Festival Zauberflöte, conducted by Solti. She is a sought-after soloist in choral works, including Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and Missa solemnis (both of which she has recorded), and a discerning interpreter of lieder. In the latter field she has made a speciality on disc of Loewe's songs. Vermillion is also a warm, expressive soloist in Das Lied von der Erde, which she has recorded with Sinopoli.

ALAN BLYTH

Vermont, Pernot [Pierre] [le jeune]

(b c1495; d ?Paris, 1558). French singer, possibly related to Pierre Vermont l’aîné. Like the elder Vermont, Pernot sang as a choirboy in the Ste Chapelle, Paris, before 31 December 1513 and went on to serve as a cleric in the chapel. Pernot Vermont received a domicile from the canons of the Ste Chapelle on 24 November 1520, but was not among those receiving a chapel distribution on 15 February 1522. He celebrated his first Mass at the Ste Chapelle on 1 January 1523, and his name also appears in a list of chapel clerics dated 26 February 1523. That he was irregular in his attendance to his chapel duties is suggested by the reassignment of his domicile to another cleric on 3 February 1526 and a fine he received on 14 April 1526 for being absent without leave. In 1528 Vermont was successfully recruited for the papal choir by Jean Conseil, and served Pope Clement VII up to at least June 1532. He returned to the French court not later than 1 January 1533, and sang tenor for the royal chapel throughout that year. Court documents from 1546 and 1547 identify him as a chapelain des hautes messes for the royal chapel. He sang in the chapel at least through 1555, picking up a perpetual chaplaincy at the Ste Chapelle in 1539 and benefices in Tully and Béthencourt in Picardy. He probably composed none of the music ascribed to ‘Vermont’.

For bibliography see Vermont, Pierre.

JOHN T. BROBECK

Vermont, Pierre [l’aîné] [Vermont primus, Vermond seniorem]

(b c1495; d before 22 Feb 1533). French composer and singer, possibly a relative of Pernot Vermont. The careers of the two musicians are closely intertwined but clearly distinguishable. On 1 January 1510 the elder Vermont was one of six choirboys in the maîtrise of the Ste Chapelle, Paris, a group that often travelled with and sang treble for the itinerant personal chapels of the French kings. By November 1511 he had left the maîtrise to complete his formal education at royal expense at the nearby Collège de Navarre, but returned to the Ste Chapelle the following year as one of the lower clerics charged with the performance of its daily liturgy. Sometime between 1521 and 1525 he took over as the music master of the Ste Chapelle’s maîtrise, a position that would have required frequent travel with the royal chapel. Perhaps owing to his new position, on 23 January 1525 he was able to obtain the chantry of St Quiriace de Provins from Louise de Savoy upon the resignation of one of her own chaplains, Jean Baillet. He led the maîtrise until at least 23 October 1527 and appears also to have sung basse-contre for the royal chapel from 1525 until his death.

Pierre Vermont l’aîné almost certainly composed all 12 works that have come down under the name of ‘Vermont’. Eight motets are attributed to ‘Vermont primus’ (one falsely) as well as one chanson, and the four chansons ascribed simply to ‘Vermont’ had all been printed by April 1533, not long after his death and a quarter of a century before Pernot Vermont’s. Although the elder Vermont’s career lay entirely in Paris, most of his compositions differ markedly in character from comparable pieces by ‘Parisian’ contemporaries such as Claudin or Certon. Three of his seven motets are for five voices, and two employ a tenor cantus firmus with a separate text. In contrast to Claudin’s limpid works, Vermont’s pervasively imitative motets generally evince little textural variety. Their melodies often are sinuous and lengthy, and few employ sectional repetitions. The chansons also tend towards imitation, and even Las voulez vous, which mirrors many of the formal and rhythmic clichés of Claudin’s homophonic chansons, is far more sprawling in its counterpoint.

WORKS

Edition: Treize livres de motets parus chez Pierre Attaingnant en 1534 et 1535, ed. A. Smijers and A.T. Merritt (Paris and Monaco, 1934–63) [S]

Adest namque beati Dionysii Gaude prole, 5vv, S iii; Adorna thalamum tuum Syon, 4vv, S iv; Benedicat nos Deus noster, 4vv, S i; In Domino confido quomodo dicitis, 4vv, S ix; Recordare Domine testamenti tui, 4vv, S xi; Regina caeli laetare, 5vv, S xii; Virgo flagellatur Virgo sancta Katherina, 5vv, S vii

Ce n’est pas trop que d’avoir ung amy, 4vv, 1529², ed. in Les maîtres musiciens de la Renaissance française, v (1897/R); Hayne et amour dedans mon cueur se tiennent, 4vv, 1533¹; Las voulez vous que une personne chante, 4vv, 1528³, ed. in CMM, xx (1961), kbd intabulation in 1531⁸, ed. ibid.; Les yeulx bendez de triste congnoissance, 4vv, 1533¹; On dit qu’amour luy mesmes l’aymera, 4vv, 1533¹

misattributed work

Ave virgo gloriosa O clemens o pia, 6vv, 1534⁵, S iii; by Jacquet of Mantua (Ave virgo gratiosa)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BrenetM

MGG1 (F. Lesure)

F.X. Haberl: Die römische ‘Schola cantorum’ und die päpstlichen Kapellsänger bis zur Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts, Bausteine für Musikgeschichte, iii (Leipzig, 1888/R), 73–4

M. Brenet: ‘Deux comptes de la chapelle-musique des rois de France’, SIMG, vi (1904–5), 1–31; pubd separately (Leipzig, 1904)

C. Marot: Oeuvres, iv, ed. G. Guiffrey, J. Plattard and R. Yve-Plessis (Paris, 1911/R)

J. Brobeck: The Motet at the Court of Francis I (diss., U. of Pennsylvania, 1991)

JOHN T. BROBECK

Vernacular music.

Classifications and ontologies of music that distinguish between musical practices in which few or many participate give rise to the concept of vernacular music. Unlike musics known and practised by a socio-cultural and professional élite, vernacular music is accessible to the majority of people because of their familiarity with its forms and functions and because they are able to acquire knowledge of it through everyday practice, that is, without any specialized skills. Unifying otherwise distinctive concepts of vernacular music is the metaphorical relationship between linguistic and musical models. One acquires a vernacular music as one would a language, naturally and through communication with others. Vernacular musics possess aspects of orality, such as dialect differences, which distinguish them from written traditions, whose complex structures and social contexts are rarely accessible to all. Viewed cross-culturally vernacular musics are more likely to be grounded in vocal than in instrumental traditions, especially those vocal traditions expressed through everyday practice.

Distinctions between musics considered vernacular and those regarded as élite or classical have played a special role in American-music historiography, often exhibiting a dialectical tension. H. Wiley Hitchcock (1988) has positioned vernacular music against cultivated music, claiming that the latter must be approached with considerable effort. Social, if not moral, implications in the distinctions between vernacular and élite traditions reflect and proliferate the cultural hierarchies, of which American music cultures are components. In American-music historiography vernacular music exists at the greatest distance from imported Europeanness.

In European folksong scholarship the conceptualization of the vernacular reflects social hierarchies quite unlike those in North America, usually reflecting greater concern for class and the distinctions between rural and urban music cultures. The common language of North European ballads, for example, is the written language, such as High German in Central European repertories or the literary English of broadsides and print culture in the ballads collected by F.J. Child (1882–98). Regional and local dialects, as well as the folksongs that utilize these, are therefore the repertories to which the folk, imagined or self-identified, have the greatest access.

Vernacular musics occupy yet another position in Asian cultures, especially because of the impact of religious thought on the ontology of music. The linguistically-unified music of Asian Muslims, in the Middle East and elsewhere, is sacred and text-based, relying often on the classical Arabic of the Qur'an. It is, nonetheless, obligatory for devout Muslims to learn or at least to understand classical Arabic. As anthropologists and ethnomusicologists extended Western classificatory methods to Asia during the 20th century, particularly through the dichotomy between ‘great’ and ‘little traditions’ (e.g. Singer, 1972, or Powers, 1979), the ‘little’ traditions took on the profile of vernacular musics, whereas the ‘great’ traditions, their wide geographical distribution notwithstanding, were elevated to the status of élite or classical musics.

With the explosion of inexpensive technologies for the dissemination of music in the late 20th century more individuals acquired greater accessibility to a greater diversity of musical practices. The social transformation of everyday life on a global level concomitantly multiplied the contexts for vernacular musics.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

F.J. Child: The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (Boston, 1882–98)

J. Meier and others, eds.: Deutsche Volkslieder mit ihren Melodien (Freiburg, 1935–96)

J. Kouwenhoven: Made in America: the Arts in Modern Civilization (New York, 1949)

L. Shepard: The Broadside Ballad: a Study in Origins and Meanings (London, 1962)

H.W. Hitchcock: Music in the United States: a Historical Introduction (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1969, 3/1988)

M. Singer: When a Great Tradition Modernizes (New York, 1972)

E. Seemann: ‘Die europäische Volksballade’, Handbuch des Volksliedes, i, ed. R.W. Brednich, L. Röhrich and W. Suppan (Munich, 1973), 37–56

L.I. al-Fārūqī: ‘The Status of Music in Muslim Nations: Evidence from the Arab World’, AsM, xii/1 (1979), 56–85

H.S. Powers: ‘Classical Music, Cultural Roots and Colonial Rule: an Indic Musicologist Looks at the Muslim World’, AsM, xii/1 (1979), 5–39

A. Shiloah and E. Cohen: ‘The Dynamics of Change in Jewish Oriental Ethnic Music in Israel’, EthM, xxvii (1983), 227–52

L. Levine: Highbrow/Lowbrow: the Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Cambridge, MA, 1988)

W. Schepping: ‘Zur Situation des Dialektliedes heute: Belege aus dem Niederrheinraum’, Jahrbuch für Volksliedforschung, xxxvi (1991), 29–42

R. Crawford: The American Musical Landscape (Berkeley, 1993)

PHILIP V. BOHLMAN

Vernart, Esteban.

See Bernard, Etienne.

Vernici, Ottavio.

See Vernizzi, Ottavio.

Vernier, Jean Aimé [fils]

(b Paris, 16 Aug 1769; d after 1838). French harpist and composer. A child prodigy, he received training from his father, a harpist and mandolinist. At the age of 11 he performed a violin concerto at the Concert Spirituel with some success; in the next year he played the harp in a quartet there and in 1789 a harp sonata of his own composition. He was employed at the Théâtre Feydeau as a harpist from 1795 until 1813; he then succeeded Dalimare at the Opéra, where he remained until his retirement in 1838. Though Vernier was renowned as a harp virtuoso and as a teacher, his many works, nearly all including a harp, are virtually forgotten; their style suggests that he may have studied with F.J. Nadermann.

According to Gerber another Vernier fils, from Geneva, was active in Paris, and published some works for piano as well as a romance, L’hermite, to his own text.

WORKS

instrumental

all published in Paris

Hp solo: sonatas, opp.1, 4, 18, 28, 32, 34, 42, 51; variations, opp.2, 6, 11, 14, 37, 40, 49; pot pourris, opp.3, 7, 8, 25, 27, 41; Fantasies, op.39; Fantasie et variations, op.57; other variations, fantasies, preludes, dances, without op. nos.

Hp, other insts: sonatas, hp, vn, opp.5, 13, 16, 54, 55 [vn/fl]; duos, hp, pf, opp.19, 23, 48, 53; duos, 2 hps, opp.21, 30; sym., hp, vn; 3 airs variés, hp, vn, op.52; Nocturne, hp, vn, op.61 no.1; 3 sonatas, hp, vn, b, op.10; 2 trios, hp, fl, vc, op.20; conc., hp, pf, vn, op.29 (1803); Valses et sauteuses, hp, pf, vn, op.56; qt, hp, pf, hn, ob, op.33

vocal

La jolie gouvernante (oc, 2), Paris, Cirque du Palais Royal, 1798

Poésies sacrées (Racine, Rousseau, Franc de Pompignon and others), hp acc., 3 vols.

Many romances with hp acc.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Choron-FayolleD

FétisB

GerberNL

H.J. Zingel: Die Entwicklung des Harfenspiels von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart (Leipzig, 1969)

HANS J. ZINGEL

Vernizzi [Vernici, Invernizzi, Invernici], Ottavio

(b Bologna, 27 Nov 1569; d Bologna, 28 Sept 1649). Italian composer and organist. He was organist of S Petronio, Bologna, from November 1596 until his death. Under the name ‘Indefesso’ he was a member of the Accademia dei Filomusi. He taught G.C. Arresti. His published output consists entirely of church music, but he also wrote music (all of which is lost) for several intermedi performed in Bologna between 1617 and 1625. He composed on the one hand conventional double-choir music and six-part polyphony, as in the 1603 collection, with its semi-contrapuntal writing and melismas on appropriate words; and on the other hand pieces in the new small-scale concertato style for few voices and organ, as in the other four surviving motet books. In Caelestium applausus (1612), the only one to include solo motets, the contents are unusually arranged in decreasing order of textures, with four-part pieces first and solos last. The bass solo Surrexit Dominus is unified by a refrain, while the alto solo Salve regina is a simple recitative over a slow-moving bass, with chromaticism at ‘O dulcis’. These are early examples of solo motets, and their melodies are unremarkable.

WORKS

all except anthologies published in Venice

Motectorum specimen, 5–10vv, bc (org) … liber I (1603)

Armonia ecclesiasticorum concertuum, 2–4vv, bc (org/other insts), op.2 (1604)

Angelici concentus, 2–4vv, bc (org), op.3 (1606; rev. 2/1611)

Caelestium applausus variis, 1–4vv, bc (org), op.4 (1612)

Concerti spirituali, 2–4vv, bc, op.6 (1648)

5 motets in 1613⁵, 1616², 1617¹, 1623²; 1 responsory in 1612³; 3 works in PL-WRu

Intermedi for the following ops (S. Branchi), first perf. in Bologna, 1623 [music lost]: Stratira, Intermedii d'Ulisse e Circe per l'Alteo opera regia maritima, La coronatione d'Apollo, Europa rapita da Giove

Alcune conclusioni musicali, disputate in musica publicamente nell'Academia de' Filomusi di Bologna, inventate et poste in musica (Bologna, 1625) [music lost]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

G. Gaspari: ‘Dei musicisti bolognesi al XVII secolo e delle loro opere a stampa’, Atti e memorie delle RR. Deputazioni di storia patria per le provincie dell'Emilia, new ser., iv/1 (1879), 223–43, esp. 229–39

L. Frati: ‘Per la storia della musica in Bologna nel secolo XVII’, RMI, xxxii (1925), 544–65, esp. 548–53

J. Roche: North Italian Church Music in the Age of Monteverdi (Oxford, 1984)

JEROME ROCHE

Vernon, Joseph

(b ?Coventry, bap. ? 12 April 1737; d London, 19 March 1782). English tenor, actor and composer. He studied under William Savage and was still a boy when he ‘sung for the first time very well’ at Drury Lane as Puck in Queen Mab (December 1750). He created Thyrsis in Boyce’s The Shepherd’s Lottery the following year and went on to build up a repertory of minor acting and singing roles. His Savoy Chapel marriage in June 1755 to the singer Jane Poitier was declared invalid and Vernon had to give evidence against the officiating clergyman, who was transported; as a result Vernon was repeatedly hissed off stage the next season. After four years on the Dublin stage (1758–62) he remained at Drury Lane until a few months before his death. He was much admired in Shakespearean roles requiring singing, such as Amiens, Balthasar, Feste and Autolycus. He had leading roles in the all-sung English operas Almena by Arne and Battishill (1764) and Pharnaces by William Bates (1765), and took part in most of Dibdin’s Drury Lane operas (1768–76). C.H. Wilson remembered him as ‘the best acting singer we ever had, if he may have been allowed the name of singer, for it was little more than speaking musically’, and Boaden wrote that ‘his look was an invitation to be happy’.

Some songs by Vernon were published between 1758 and 1772, including the best-known setting of ‘When that I was and a little tiny boy’, which he sang as Feste in Twelfth Night. He contributed songs to Garrick’s comic interlude Linco’s Travels (6 April 1767, Drury Lane) and the pantomine The Witches (26 December 1771, Drury Lane).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BDA

DNB (L.M. Middleton)

FiskeETM

‘Mr. Vernon’, Theatrical Review, i (1763), 36

C.H. Wilson: The Myrtle and Vine (London, 1802)

C.L. Lewes: Memoirs, ii (London, 1805)

J. Boaden: Life of Mrs Siddons, i (London, 1827)

J. Cradock: Literary and Miscellaneous Memoirs, iv (London, 1828)

B. Boydell: A Dublin Musical Calender 1700–1760 (Dublin, 1988)

B.N.S. Gooch and D. Thatcher: A Shakespeare Music Catalogue (Oxford, 1991)

OLIVE BALDWIN, THELMA WILSON

Verocai, Giovanni

(b Venice, c1700; d Brunswick, ? 13 Dec 1745). Italian composer and violinist. Apparently a pupil of Vivaldi, he was recruited in 1727 by the theatre director Santo Burigotti to travel from Venice to Breslau and join the orchestra at the new Stadttheater. His first known compositions are arias that he contributed to the pasticcio Griselda (Breslau, summer 1728). In 1729 he entered the service of Friedrich August, Prince-Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, at the Dresden court. He was one of a group of 22 musicians chosen by Friedrich August to travel to Moscow in 1731; here he composed his only known cantata, for the first anniversary of the coronation of the Empress Anna Ivanova. When the Dresden musicians were recalled home, Verocai stayed on as a member of the Russian court orchestra and later moved with the court to St Petersburg, where he was involved in the first opera production in the city, La forza dell’amore e dell’odio by Francesco Araia (1736). He married the singer Sophie Amalia Kayser. Verocai left St Petersburg in June 1738 and travelled to Brunswick, where he became Kapellmeister and director of the Opera. He remained in Brunswick until his death and all his operas were produced there. Although Mooser reported the date of his death as 13 December 1745, Loewenberg pointed out that his operas were produced regularly until 1747, with no indication in the librettos that the composer had died, and it is unlikely that Verocai composed four operas long before they were to be produced, as he would not have known what singers his music would have to suit.

WORKS

operas

opere serie, first performed Brunswick, Hoftheater, unless otherwise stated

Venceslao (5, after A. Zeno), 1739

Penelope (? P. Pariati), 1740

Demofoonte (3, P. Metastasio), Feb 1742

Zenobia und Radamistus (3, G. Schürmann, after Metastasio: Zenobia), sum. 1742

Cato (3, after Metastasio: Catone in Utica), spr. 1743

Hissifile (3, after Metastasio: Issipile), 1743

La forza dell’amore e dell’odio, 1744

Sesostri (3, after Pariati), 1744

Die getreue Emirena (3, Schürmann, after Metastasio: Adriano in Siria), Candlemas 1745

Il Ciro riconosciuto (3, Metastasio), Feb 1746

Achille in Sciro (3, Metastasio), Aug 1746

Apollo fra i pastori (pastoral), 1746

Temistocle in bando (3, after Metastasio), 1747

other works

Cantata per il giorno dell’incoronatione di Sua Maesta Imperiale (de Wolsky), Moscow, May 1731

12 sonates, vn, bc, op.1 (St Petersburg, c1735–8)

Labirinto musicale, 2 vn, bc (Leipzig, c1740)

Sinfonia, D-Dlb; Arias, W, DS (cited in EitnerQ)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

EitnerQ

FétisB

LaMusicaD

RicordiE

R.-A. Mooser: ‘Violinistes-compositeurs italiens en Russie au XVIIIe siècle, I: Giovanni Verocai’, RMI, xlii (1938), 309–449

CAROLYN V. RICKETTS

Véron, Louis

(b Paris, 5 April 1798; d Paris, 27 Sept 1867). French theatre director. Displaying a keen eye for a lucrative venture, early in his career he procured the rights for a medicinal chest paste and marketed it as a cure for the common cold. He applied the same flair for publicity to the post of director of the Paris Opéra, to which he was appointed in 1831. He was the first director to be permitted to operate the institution as a private enterprise, albeit with a large state subsidy and surveillance by a government commission. With the financial backing of the Spanish banker Alexandre Aguado and new business strategies that included increasing the number of long-term subscribers, Véron amassed a considerable fortune during his four-year directorship. He steered the Opéra to a position of renewed prominence in Parisian society by creating a meeting ground for the aristocracy and upper castes of the bourgeoisie. His early triumph with the première of Meyerbeer’s Robert le diable in 1831 was followed by the successes of the ballet La sylphide (1832) and Halévy’s La Juive (1835). A revival and refashioning of Don Giovanni in 1834, with the title role sung by Adolphe Nourrit, fared less well. Following Véron’s period at the Opéra, this self-styled ‘bourgeois de Paris’ went on to acquire a major interest in the newspaper Le constitutionnel and to participate in French political life as a parliamentarian during the Second Empire. His Mémoires d’un bourgeois de Paris were published in Paris (1853–5).

STEVEN HUEBNER

Verona.

City in northern Italy. A powerful and prosperous city in Roman times, it has two surviving buildings important to its musical history: the theatre, which was probably begun in the 1st century bce, and the amphitheatre or arena (cap. 25,000), built in the 1st century ce. These are the oldest and largest Roman theatrical buildings in northern Italy. About the mid-4th century Verona belonged to the province of Venetia and Istria, and in the 5th century the diocese was under the rule of the patriarchs of Aquileia. St Zeno was Bishop of Verona from 362 to 372, and the reference to chant in his Tractatus is the earliest evidence of musical activity in the city. A schola sacerdotum was founded at the cathedral before 517, and in the 9th century the Benedictine abbey of S Zeno became an important Veronese cultural centre. The earliest musical documents are manuscripts with neumatic notation, both northern Italian and Nonantolan, dating from the 10th and 11th centuries (in I-VEcap). Two 10th-century works, a so-called salutatio magistri entitled O admirabile Veneris idolum (in Rvat Cod.lat.3227; GB-Cu Cod.Gg.5.35 olim 1577; see Paganuzzi, 1978–9) and a cantus peregrinorum entitled O Roma nobilis (in I-Rvat Cod.lat.3227; MC Cod.Q.318), are of Veronese provenance. Music was an essential part of the education of the cathedral clerics, and according to a detailed account of Raterius, Bishop of Verona for several periods between 931 and 968, the canons of the Veronese church could sing the Office (psalms, hymns and canticles) better than those of any other church in Italy (J. Migne: Patrologiae cursus completus, ser. lat. (Paris, 1881), cxxxvi, section 479, col.615). The Carpsum ‘collection’ (I-VEcap Cod.XCIV 89), an 11th-century document containing directions for cathedral services throughout the year, including musical performance of the liturgy, is based on an earlier work by the cantor Stephen. The cantor supervised the musical education of the younger pupils as well as performing the musical part of the liturgy. After 1225 four mansionarii led the choral singing.

Verona was one of the principal centres of the Ars Nova in the first half of the 14th century. Marchetto da Padova finished his treatise Lucidarium (1309–18; GS, iii, 64–121) there, and Dante stayed at the court of Cangrande della Scala (d 1329), which had an active musical culture; at a later date Petrarch was also in Verona. A poem by the Roman Immanuel Giudeo (d 1330) indicates that the city was filled with music: ‘Chitarre e liuti, viole e flaùti, voci alt'ed acute qui s'odon cantare. Qui boni cantori con intonatori, e qui trovatori udrai concordare’. Cangrande's nephew Mastino II (d 1351) also received renowned composers as guests, including Jacopo da Bologna, Giovanni da Cascia and Magister Piero. These composers wrote madrigals to texts infused with local dialect, some on Veronese subjects. After Donato da Cascia the Servite Andrea de Florentia came from Florence in 1383 to play the organ at the convent of S Maria della Scala for the meeting of the general chapter. Two important trecento treatises on poetic-musical metre and accidence are dedicated to the Scaligeri: to Alberto II Delle rime volgari by Antonio da Tempo, a Paduan, and to Antonio (reigned 1374–87) Lo tractato e la arte de li rithimi volgari by Gidino da Sommacampagna, based on Tempo's treatise.

The end of the Scaligeri rule in 1387, and the struggles between the Carraresi and the Visconti and between the Visconti and the Venetians, led to a decline in musical life in Verona, which in 1405 surrendered to the Venetians and in 1439 became part of the Venetian Republic. The following year, Pope Eugenio IV (the Venetian Gabriele Condulmer) founded the Mensa Acolythorum (college of acolytes) for the religious, literary and musical education of the clergy and of gifted, poor young men. The accoliti were instructed by 12 sacerdoti. Gaffurius was in Verona in 1476–7 as teacher of the accoliti, indicating a musical revival further evidenced by the flowering of a generation of Veronese frottolists, most of them former accoliti, including Michele Pesenti, Marchetto Cara, Giovanni Brocco, Antonio Rossetto and Peregrinus Cesena.

One of the most notable members of the college was Biagio Rossetti, first a pupil and later a teacher, who became a chaplain, cantor and organist at the cathedral, and also published Libellus de rudimentis musices (Verona, 1529), a manual for the training of choirboys and cantors, concentrating on plainchant. The book is dedicated to Bishop Gian Matteo Giberti (1524–43), who required excellent musicians for the school and the cathedral. Maestro di cappella in the first half of the century were Girolamo Richini (to 1520), Francesco ‘Gallo’ (i.e. French; 1520–25), Francesco da Lodi (1525–7), Jacques Colebault (later called Jacquet of Mantua; 1527–33), Jacques (?Du Pont, from Rome; 1534–5), G.M. Lanfranco (c1535–8), Nicolaus Olivets (1539–46) and Jacquet de Berchem, formerly appointed in 1546.

The progressive political and economic consolidation in Verona during the early 16th century stimulated one of the most important eras in the city's musical history. The Accademia Filarmonica was formed on 23 May 1543, from the union of two earlier academies – the Incatenata and the Filarmonica. At first the academy's activities centred on music (although later literature and philosophy were also cultivated); in 1549 Il Geloso by Ercole Bentivoglio was given with music written and performed by members. Musicians engaged by the Accademia included Jan Nasco, Vincenzo Ruffo, Alessandro Romano, Lambert Courtois, Agostino Bonzanino (one of the academy's founders), Ippolito Chamaterò, Pedro Valenzuela, Paolo Bellasio, Alessandro Sfoi, Paolo Masnelli, Stefano Bernardi and Carlo Calzareri, who was also maestro di cappella of the municipality. Other academies and ridotti (‘retreats’) in the city included the ridotto of Count Mario (and later his nephew Alessandro) Bevilacqua, famous in Italy and abroad; the Accademia alla Vittoria, which united with the Filarmonica in 1564; the Accademia dei Moderati, of which Giammateo Asola was a member; the Accademia dei Novelli, directed by Pietro Cavatoni; and the ridotto Ridolfi.

In addition to the flourishing musical activities in the academies, sacred music was cultivated in the cathedral and the churches of S Maria in Organo, S Eufemia, S Fermo Maggiore and S Anastasia. From the second half of the 16th century the cathedral maestri di cappella were Vincenzo Ruffo (1551–60, with interruptions), G.B. Girri (1561–?1566), Gabriele Martinengo (1566–84), Bartolomeo Spontone (1586–8), Asola (1590–91), Ippolito Baccusi (1592–1608), G.F. Anerio (periodically 1609–11), Stefano Bernardi (periodically 1611–24), Cristoforo Guizzardo (1624–34), Simone Zavaiolo (1635–44), Nicolò Fontei (1645–7), Dionisio Bellante (1658–85), Gasparo Gaspardini (1685–1714), Giovanni Porta (1714–16) and Domenico Zanata (1724–46). As elsewhere, the use of instruments in musical ensembles increased during the 16th century. Noted violinists at the cathedral were Giuseppe Maccacaro (from 1566), Francesco Lauro and Antonio Bertali, who were both engaged by the Accademia Filarmonica. Giuseppe Torelli was violinist at S Stefano (occasionally, 1676) and then at the cathedral (1683–4). The most important maestri at other churches were Valerio Bona at S Fermo Maggiore (1613–c1620) and Carlo Milanuzzi at S Eufemia (1621–2).

Only from the 18th century was there any important theatrical activity. One of the earliest public theatres after Roman times was the Teatro dei Temperati (1656; after 1677 called di Palazzo), a small theatre seating 108 which operated until 1715, reopening for a short time in 1749. The most important theatre, the Teatro Filarmonico, was inaugurated on 6 January 1732 with the pastoral play La fida ninfa by Scipione Maffei, with music by Vivaldi (see fig.1). The theatre, built on a site owned by the Accademia Filarmonica, was designed by Francesco Galli-Bibiena and was one of the most beautiful in Italy. In 1744 it gave the première of Il Tigrane by the Veronese composer Daniel Dal Barba; it burnt down in 1749 but was reopened in 1754 with Hasse's Alessandro nell'Indie and David Perez's Lucio Vero. Mozart gave a concert there on his first trip to Italy in 1770. Several works had their premières at the Filarmonico during the 18th and 19th centuries, including Traetta's Olimpiade (1758), Cimarosa's Giunio Bruto (1781) and Pedrotti's Romea di Montfort (1846). Bombed and burnt in February 1945, it was rebuilt (1961–71) and thereafter managed by the municipal Ente Lirico. The Teatro dell'Accademia (later called Vecchia) presented operas from 1722 until the 19th century; it was closed in 1873. There were several theatres briefly active during the 19th century, including the Teatro di S Tomìo (or Teatro Morando), the Teatro Ristori and notably the Teatro Nuovo, which opened in 1846 with Verdi’s Attila and gave the premières of Pedrotti's Fiorina (1851) and Tutti in maschera (1856). On the initiative of the tenor Giovanni Zenatello, a series of open-air performances at the Arena was inaugurated in 1913 with a performance of Aida. With the exception of the war years, operas have been mounted there each summer and are among the most important musical events in the city (fig.2).

Other musical organizations include the Società Amici della Musica, active from 1909; and more recently the celebrated Coro dei Concerti Spirituali della Cattedrale. The Scuola d'Arco (founded 1877) and the Scuola di Pianoforte, Composizione e Organo were amalgamated in 1927 as the Civico Liceo Musicale, which became a state conservatory in 1968 known as the Conservatorio E.F. Dall'Abaco (in honour of one of the city's many natives who had important musical careers elsewhere). The Biblioteca Capitolare has a music collection, and the Accademia Filarmonica holds a collection of 16th- and 19th-century instruments.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

G.B. Giuliari: ‘Della musica sacra in Verona’, Rassegna nazionale, i (1879), 884

A. Spagnolo: ‘Le scuole accolitali di grammatica e di musica in Verona’, Atti e memorie dell'Accademia d'agricoltura, scienze, lettere, arti e commercio di Verona, 4th ser., v (1904–5), 97–330

V. Cavazzocca Mazzanti: ‘Contributo alla storia dell'Accademia Filarmonica Veronese, 1543–1553’, Atti e memorie dell'Accademia di agricoltura, scienze e lettere di Verona, 5th ser., iii (1926), 67–115

G. Turrini: Biblioteca della Soc. Accademia Filarmonica di Verona (Parma, 1935/R)

G. Turrini: L'Accademia Filarmonica di Verona dalla fondazione (maggio 1543) al 1600 e il suo patrimonio musicale antico (Verona, 1941)

G. Turrini: Il patrimonio musicale della Biblioteca capitolare di Verona dal secolo XV al XIX (Verona, 1952)

R. Brenzoni: Verona nella vita di W.A. Mozart (Verona, 1954)

A. Gajoni Berti: Dizionario dei musicisti e cantanti veronesi (1400–1966) (Verona, 1966)

E. Girardi: Gli organi della città di Verona (Alba, 1968)

G.M. Todescato: ‘Ordini religiosi del '300: Le origini di S. Maria della Scala a Verona 1324–1329’, Studi storici veronesi, xviii–xix (1968–9), 153–205

A.H. Preston: Sacred Polyphony in Renaissance Verona (diss., U. of Illinois, 1969)

E. Paganuzzi: ‘Mario Bevilacqua, amico della musica’, Per una storia del collezionismo: la galleria Bevilacqua, ed. L. Franzoni (Milan, 1970)

L. Rognini: ‘L'antico organo di S. Maria in Organo (con cenni sulla tradizione musicale degli Olivetani in Verona)’, Studi storici veronesi, xx–xxi (1970–71), 139–88

E. Paganuzzi: ‘Documenti veronesi su musicisti del XVI e XVII secolo’, Scritti in onore di Mons. Giuseppe Turrini (Verona, 1973), 543–75

E. Paganuzzi: ‘Domenico Foroni Maestro di canto dell'Istituto Filarmonico degli Anfioni’, Vita veronese, xxvii (1974), 282–93

E. Paganuzzi and others: La musica a Verona (Verona, 1976)

E. Paganuzzi: ‘O admirabile Veneris idolum: puer – non puer’, Atti e memorie dell'Accademia di agricoltura, scienze e lettere di Verona, 6th ser., xxx (1978–9), 279–92

V. Donella: Cento anni di musica liturgica a Verona e in Italia (Verona, 1979)

J.H. van der Meer and R. Weber: Catalogo degli strumenti musicali dell'Accademia Filarmonica di Verona (Verona, 1982)

E. Paganuzzi, ed.: L'Accademia Filarmonica di Verona e il suo teatro (Verona, 1982)

M. Materassi: ‘La cappella musicale del duomo di Verona, 1620–1685: qualche integrazione’, Musica e filologia, i (Verona, 1983), 115–34

L. Och: ‘Interessi ed erudizione di Scipione Maffei nelle “cose per musica”’, Civiltà veronese, i/3 (1985), 31–40

M. Materassi: ‘ “Origine et progressi dell'Accademia Filarmonica” (Verona, 1543–1553): una rilettura’, Rassegna veneta di studi musicali, iv (1988), 51–91

E. Paganuzzi: ‘La musica alla Corte Scaligera’, Mostra ‘gli Scaligeri 1277–1387’ (Verona, 1988), 527–32

E. Negri: Il fondo musicale Malaspina nell'Archivio di Stato di Verona (Rome, 1989)

P. Rigoli: ‘L'esordio dell'opera a Verona (1651)’, Seicento inesplorato: Lenno, nr Como 1989, 539–58

C. Bologna and others: L'Accademia Filarmonica di Verona per il bicentenario Mozartiano (1791–1991) (Verona, 1991)

E. Paganuzzi: ‘I maestri di cappella della cattedrale di Verona dal 1520 al 1562 (correzioni e aggiunte)’, Civiltà veronese, iv (1991), 27–41

E. Paganuzzi: ‘Verona e la musica durante il primo dominio veneziano’, Il primo dominio veneziano a Verona (1405–1509): Verona 1988 (Verona, 1991), 227–56

E. Negri: ‘Giuseppe Tartini e l'ambiente musicale veronese’, Tartini: il tempo e le opere: Padua 1992, 67–77

C. Bologna and others: 80 anni di vita musicale a Verona: Gli Amici della Musica (Verona, 1993)

A. Piazzi and others: Biblioteca Capitolare, Verona (Florence, 1994)

ENRICO PAGANUZZI

Veronensis, Peregrinus Cesena.

See Cesena, Peregrinus.

Verovio, Simone

(b 's-Hertogenbosch; fl Rome, 1575–1608). Dutch calligrapher, editor and engraver of music. He moved to Rome not later than 1575 and in 1586 he began to publish music books, among the first to be printed entirely from engraved plates. (The Intabolatura da leuto del divino Francesco da Milano, imperfectly engraved in about 1535, inspired no immediate imitations of the technique.) Two of these were entitled Diletto spirituale, one with keyboard score and lute tablature (see illustration), and one with only the vocal parts; the third was Peetrino's Primo libro delle melodie spirituali. In two of the books Verovio called himself ‘scrittore’, but in all three books the phrase ‘Martinus van Buijten incidit’ appears on the title-page. Van Buyten may have engraved all of the plates for the Peetrino book and the purely vocal version of Diletto spirituale as well as other Verovio books. However, the version of Diletto spirituale with instrumental music was ‘collected by Simon Verovio, engraved and printed by the same’. In some later editions Verovio clearly stated that he was the engraver, others he signed ‘appresso Simone Verovio’ or ‘stampate da S.V.’, and some he did not sign at all.

Verovio's 18 signed music books show his cursive hand; the music hand is neat, with shaded and rounded note-heads. The books are largely devoted to three-voiced canzonette spirituali, often with optional instrumental parts, by composers then active in Rome. Musically his most impressive books are Luzzaschi's Madrigali (1601) and Merulo's two books of Toccate d'intavolatura (1598, 1604). He also probably printed Anerio's Gagliarde of 1607. Verovio also wrote or contributed to at least five writing books between 1587 and 1598, two of them broadsides.

Verovio's Gesu sommo conforto appears in the Diletto spirituale, but his musical activities cannot be further traced. Several Roman musicians of the early part of the 17th century were named Verovio and were probably his children. They include Giacomo (fl 1607), singer in the Oratorio dei Filippini; Giovanni (fl 1614), also a singer; Michelangelo del Violino, whose mordents and vibrato on the violin were mentioned by Arteaga; and La Verovia, a nun in the convent of the Holy Spirit, famed for her singing. Della Valle cited the ‘tenore famoso’ who sang in his carro simply as ‘Verovio’.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BrownI

MGG1 (C. Sartori)

SartoriB

SartoriD

VogelB

P. della Valle: ‘Della musica dell'età nostra … Discorso’ (1640), in G.B. Doni: De' trattati di musica, ii (Florence, 1763), 249

S. Arteaga: Le rivoluzioni del teatro musicale italiano, i (Bologna, 1783/R, 2/1785), 345

R. Casimiri: ‘Simone Verovio da Hertogenbosch’, NA, x (1933), 189–99

R. Casimiri: ‘Simone Verovio: Aggiunte’, NA, xi (1934), 66–7

B. Becherini: ‘Giovanni Francesco Anerio ed alcune sue gagliarde per cembalo’, La bibliofilia, xlii (1940–41), 159–64

A.F. Johnson: ‘A Catalogue of Italian Writing-Books of the Sixteenth Century’, Signature, new ser., no.10 (1950), 22–48

C. Bonacini: Bibliografia delle arti scrittorie e della calligrafia (Florence, 1953)

A.H. King: Four Hundred Years of Music Printing (London, 1964, 2/1968), 15ff, pl.XIV

A.J. Ness, ed.: The Lute Music of Francesco Canova da Milano (1497–1543), HPM, iii–iv (1970), 12

G.L. Anderson: The Canzonetta Publications of Simone Verovio, 1586–1595 (diss., U. of Illinois, 1976)

A. Morelli: ‘Nuovi documenti frescobaldiani: i contratti per l'edizione del primo libro di Toccate’, Studi Musicali, xvii (1988), 255–65, esp. 263–4

R.A. Edwards: Claudio Merulo: Servant of the State and Musical Enterpreneur in Later Sixteenth-Century Venice (diss., Princeton U., 1990), 196, 281–2

S. Morison: Early Italian Writing-Books: Renaissance to Baroque (Verona, 1990), 119, 128–9, 138–40

P.A.L. Boncella: The Classical Venetian Organ Toccata (1591–1604): an Ecclesiastical Genre Shaped by Printing Technologies and Editorial Policies (diss., Rutgers U.,1991), esp. 219–39

T. Carter: Music in Late Renaissance and Early Baroque Italy (London, 1992)

THOMAS W. BRIDGES

Verrall, John (Weedon)

(b Britt, IA, 17 June 1908). American composer. Early studies in composition with Donald Ferguson were followed by studies with R.O. Morris in London and Kodály in Budapest. He attended the Minneapolis School of Music and Hamline University (BA 1932) and continued his studies with Copland (at the Berkshire Music Center), Harris, and Jacobi. Verrall taught at Hamline University (1934–42), Mount Holyoke College (1942–6), and from 1948 at the University of Washington, from which he retired as professor emeritus in 1973. He received numerous awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship (1947) and a D.H. Lawrence Fellowship (1964). From the late 1940s, he used as the tonal basis for his music a nine-pitch scale consisting of two tetrachords on either side of a central pitch, itself alterable (C–D–E–E, F or F, G–A–B–B). This collection lends itself to symmetrical harmonic formations and melodic contours which, with equivalent rhythmic and metrical formations, generate the global and local pitch and rhythmic relations in his music.

WORKS

Dramatic: Minnesota Document (film score), 1941; The Cowherd and the Skymaiden (op, 2, E. Shephard, after Chin. legend), 1951, U. of Washington, Seattle, 17 Jan 1952; The Wedding Knell (chbr op, 1, after N. Hawthorne), 1952, U. of Washington, Seattle, 5 Dec 1952; 3 Bind Mice (chbr op, 1, G. Hughes), 1955, U. of Washington, Seattle, 22 May 1955

Orch: Sym. no.1, 1939; Concert Piece, hn, str, 1940; Portrait of Man, 1940; Vn Conc., 1947; Prelude and Allegro, str, 1948; Sym. no.2, 1948; Sym. for Young Orchs, 1948; Variations, 1955; Portrait of St. Christopher, 1956; Passacaglia, band, 1958; Dark Night of St. John, 1959; Pf Conc., 1959; Suite, 1959; Sym. no.3, 1968; Va Conc., 1968; Radiant Bridge, 1976; Rhapsody, hn, str, 1979

7 str qts: 1941, 1942, 1948, 1949, 1952, 1956, 1961

Other chbr and solo inst: Sonata no.1, va, pf, 1939; Divertimento, cl, hn, bn, 1941; Sonata, hn, 1941; Trio, 2 vn, va, 1941; 2 Serenades, wind qnt, 1944, 1950; Pf Sonata, 1951; Pf Qnt, 1953; Duo Sonata, pf 4 hands, 1954; Sketches and Miniatures, pf, 1954; Autumn Sketches, pf, 1956; Nocturne, b cl, pf, 1956; 4 sonatinas, vn, va, vc, ob, all 1956; Prelude, Intermezzo and Fugue, 2 pf, 1960; Preludes en Suite, pf, 1960; Sonata no.2, va, pf, 1963; Canzona, org, 1965; Septet, wind, 1966; Suite, 2 pf, 1967; Nonette, wind qnt, str qt, 1969; A Brief Elegy, cl, 1970; Sonata, fl, pf, 1972; Introduction, Variations and Adagio, fl, ob, vn, vc, pf, 1974; Eusebius Remembered, hn, pf, 1976; Invocation to Eos, hn, pf, 1983; Sonata, 2 pf, 1984

Vocal: Ah Come, Sweet Death, chorus, 1947; They shall never Thirst, chorus, 1954; Colonial Heritage (Colonial poets), 1v, pf, 1978; Songs of Nature (Brown), 1v, pf, 1980; several other songs

Band arrs., carillon pieces

Principal publishers: Peters, Presser, G. Schirmer

WRITINGS

Elements of Harmony (n.p., 1937)

with S. Moseley: Form and Meaning in the Arts (New York, 1958)

Fugue and Invention in Theory and Practice (Palo Alto, CA, 1966)

Basic Theory of Scales, Modes and Intervals (Palo Alto, CA, 1969)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

EwenD

J. Beale: ‘The Music of John Verrall’, American Composers Alliance Bulletin, vii/4 (1958), 10–15 [incl. complete list of works]

RICHARD SWIFT

Verrecore, Mathias [Matthias] Hermann.

See Werrecore, mathias hermann.

Verrett [Carter], Shirley

(b New Orleans, 31 May 1931). American mezzo-soprano, later soprano. She studied in Los Angeles with Anna Fitziu and Hall Johnson. After winning a television talent show in 1955, she attended the Juilliard School. While a student there she sang the solo in Falla’s El amor brujo under Stokowski and made her professional operatic début, as Lucretia in Yellow Springs, Ohio, in 1957. The following year she played (under the name Shirley Carter) Irina in Weill’s Lost in the Stars at the New York City Opera. Concerts and recitals preceded her European début in Nabokov’s Rasputins Tod (1959, Cologne). In 1962 her remarkable Carmen was first seen at the Spoleto Festival; it was later repeated at the Bol'shoy (1963), the New York City Opera (1964), her La Scala (1966) and Metropolitan Opera (1968) débuts, and Covent Garden (1973), where she had first appeared as Ulrica (Un ballo in maschera) in 1966. Her other notable roles include Gluck’s Orpheus, Donizetti’s Elizabeth I (Maria Stuarda) and Léonore (La favorite), Verdi’s Amneris, Eboli, Azucena and Lady Macbeth, Saint-Saëns’s Delilah, and Selika in Meyerbeer’s L’africaine. At the first Metropolitan performance of Les Troyens in 1973 she played both Cassandra and – because of Christa Ludwig’s illness – Dido. Her voice was richly burnished with an even range of more than two octaves, used with the utmost intelligence. In the late 1970s she began to assume soprano roles, most notably Tosca and Norma, while retaining most of her mezzo ones. On stage, especially as Delilah, Eboli or Azucena, she fused word, tone and gesture into an unforgettable characterization. She recorded several of her roles, most memorably Orpheus, Lady Macbeth, Ulrica and Eboli. Her large recital repertory included songs by Schubert, Brahms, Mahler, Milhaud, Falla and Rorem.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

SouthernB

‘Verrett, Shirley’, CBY 1967

S. Jenkins: ‘Shirley Verrett’, Opera, xxiv (1973), 585–9

J.B. Steane: The Grand Tradition (London, 1974/R), 418–19

J. Hines: ‘Shirley Verrett’, Great Singers on Great Singing (Garden City, NY, 1982), 338–47

ALAN BLYTH

Verrijt [Verrit, Verrith, Verryt], Jan Baptist

(b Oirschot, North Brabant, c1605; d Rotterdam, bur. 29 Aug 1650). Dutch composer, organist and carillonneur. He began his career as deputy organist of St Maartenskerk at Weert, near Eindhoven. In 1636 he was appointed organist of St Pieterskerk, Leuven, and at the same time became one of the city musicians; when his salary was raised the magistrates described him as an ‘organist very capable in the art’. In 1639 he became city carillonneur and organist of St Jan, 's-Hertogenbosch, for which he converted to Protestantism. For a month in 1642 he studied with Jacob van Eyck in Utrecht. From early March 1644 until his death he was organist of St Laurens, Rotterdam. He was an authority on organs and their restoration. Verrijt’s surviving publications comprise sacred and secular concerted music, generally for modest forces and in a relatively up-to-date style.

WORKS

Canzoni amorosi, 3vv (bk 1), 4vv (bk 2), bc (Antwerp, ?c1635), lost

Concentus harmonici, vulgo paduane, 5 insts (Antwerp, 1638), lost

Divinae ac piae oblectationes, motets, 8vv, 4 insts ad lib (Antwerp, 1647), lost

Flammae divinae … liber primus, op.5, 18 motets, 2 concerted masses, 2–3vv, bc (org) (Antwerp, 1649); motets ed. F.R. Noske in MNN, xvi (1989)

Mass, 6vv, St Mary's Church Archive, Elbląg [according to EitnerQ]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

EitnerQ

JoãoIL

[J.C.] Boers: ‘Orgels en organisten te Rotterdam’, Bouwsteenen: JVNM, i (1869–72), 60–61

[J.P.] Heije: ‘Muziekwerken van nederlandsche componisten’, Bouwsteenen: JVNM, iii (1874–81), 20–27, esp. 21

C.C. Vlam and M.A. Vente, eds.: Documenta et archivalia ad historiam musicae neerlandicae, i/1: Bouwsteenen voor een geschiedenis der toonkunst in de Nederlanden (Amsterdam, 1965), 17, 182

F.N. Noske: Music Bridging Divided Religions (Wilhelmshaven, 1989)

RANDALL H. TOLLEFSEN/RUDOLF A. RASCH

Vers.

A technical term in troubadour poetry, with three separate meanings. For the earliest troubadours, up to and including Marcabru, it was the usual term for a strophic song in the vernacular, encompassing both love songs and political or moralizing songs, which were called cansos (see Canso) and sirventes respectively by the troubadours of the classical period. For the last troubadours, such as Guiraut Riquier and the 14th-century Toulouse school, it means specifically a political or moralizing song, as distinct from the amorous canso. It is also the usual term for a line of verse. The word is undoubtedly related to the Latin versus (see Versus (i)), although those writers who used the term to denote a political or moralizing song believed it to be derived from verus (‘true’).

STEPHEN HAYNES

Versailles.

French royal palace 16 km west of Paris. See Paris, §V, 1.

Verschiebung

(Ger.: ‘shifting’).

A term used in connection with the use of the Una chorda pedal. See also Mute, §3.

Verschueren.

Dutch firm of organ builders. Leonard (Léon) Hubert Verschueren (1866–1957) trained with the firm of Maarschalkerweerd in Utrecht, and then founded a pipe-making workshop in his native village of Heythuysen, Limburg, on 5 May 1891. Within a few years he was supplying more than 30 organ builders at home and abroad with pipes and parts. In 1896 he built his first entirely new mechanical-action organ for the Noordkerk, Schagen. After 1904 Léon developed the business with South German organ builder Max Bittner (d 1955), making all parts in-house (a rarity at the time). Tonally their instruments blended South Dutch, Walloon, Rhineland and, through Bittner, South German styles. Actions were pneumatic (a good example is in the Petruskerk, Gulpen).

Verschueren was very struck by the Klais organ in the abbey of Rolduc, which was built in accordance with the principles of the Orgelbewegung. In response he changed his design for the new instrument at St Dyonisius, Schinnen, adopting electro-pneumatic cone-chests and a neo-Baroque specification. His magnum opus, for the Catharinakerk, Eindhoven (1936, restored 1990; main and altar organ, 71 stops), remains the most important organ of this type in the Netherlands. He maintained this style of building into the 1950s.

In the mid-1930s the firm was joined by Léon's sons Léon Gerard Joseph (1903–86) who later became its director, George Emile (1909–85) who ran the Tongeren (Belgium) branch from 1937 (which became independent in 1951) and Frans Joseph Jacques (1914–86), who after training with the Kuhn firm in Männedorf headed the pipeshop and voicing department. In 1946, another son, Antoine Henri Joseph (1911–72) joined as administrator. During the post-war period the firm’s production of new organs reached its height. Instruments were exported to locations in the USA and Japan, some still employing electric action.

In about 1970 the organologists Willem Talsma and Hans van der Harst led the firm into the historically informed organ building movement. Under Leonard (Léon) Francis Maria Verschueren (b 1947), son of Frans Joseph Jacques and director from 1977, the firm set about rethinking its methods, using fine instruments of the past as exemplars. Among the most important instruments is the organ built at the Lambertuskerk, Wouw (1984), which is rooted in the 17th- and 18th-century Hollandic tradition. From the mid-1980s Verschueren continued to build new instruments along historically informed lines, as well as restoring and reconstructing old organs with great success. On its 100th centenary in 1991 Queen Beatrix bestowed upon the firm the title Hofleverancier (supplier to the court). During the late 1990s the firm was chosen to restore the large three-manual Hagerbeer organ in the Pieterskerk, Leiden, to its 1643 condition, a project of international importance and the largest historical organ tuned in mean tone in the Netherlands. At the close of the 20th century the firm remained very active, boasting 28 employees, shipping pipes to the USA and organs to locations across Europe and North America.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

J. Jongepier: ‘De restauratie van het orgel in de St.-Cathrien te Eindhoven’, Het Orgel, lxxxviii (1992), 20–26

P. van Dijk: ‘Continuiteit en ontwikkeling: recent werk van Verschueren Orgelbouw’, Het orgel, xci (1995), 133–41

P. van Dijk: ‘Hundert Jahre Verschueren Orgelbouw betrachtet aus niederländischer Perspektive’, ISO News, ix (1995), 25–36

ADRI DE GROOT

Verschuere Reynvaan, Joos(t)

(b Middelburg, 11 Sept 1739; bur. Vlissingen, 5 May 1809). Dutch organist, composer and lexicographer. After taking the doctorate in law (Harderwijk, 1765), he practised as a lawyer in Middelburg. However, in his youth he had studied with the local well-known violinist and cellist I. Gerzony and the keyboard player Benjamin Bouchart, who succeeded Pieter Bustijn as city organist and carillonneur in Middelburg, and in 1769 he was appointed organist of the Jacobskerk in Vlissingen, where he moved in 1774. There he taught, advised on organs and served as organist at the freemason’s lodge. He retired from the Jacobskerk in 1794. Of his many compositions only the CL psalmen and the Mengeldichten have survived; the CL psalmen, written in a more secular, Italianate style, seem to have been popular abroad. His writings concerning music, especially his Muzijkaal kunst-woordenboek (the first music lexicon in the Dutch language), are of particular musicological importance as they contain much detailed information about a wide variety of subjects, especially those pertaining to the Netherlands.

WORKS

Mengeldichten, in gezangen, op muziek gebracht (Middelburg, 1774)

De CL psalmen met de lofzangen (Amsterdam, Middelburg and Vlissingen, 1789)

Gezangen der vrije metselaren (Vlissingen, 1799), text extant, music lost

Gezangen vertaalt en gevolgt, uit en naar de Lire maçonne (Vlissingen, 1801), text extant, music lost

Other lost works: 6 Sonatas, pf, vn, op.1 (Amsterdam, c1780); Beurt-en choorzang bij's Heilands geboorte (Amsterdam, Middelburg and Vlissingen, 1790); Conc., C, pf, 3 vn, b, op.2 (Middelburg, n.d.); Conc., D, pf, 2 vn/fl, op.3; several kbd works

WRITINGS

Catechismus der Muzyk (Amsterdam and Rotterdam, 1787)

Muzijkaal Kunst-Woordenboek (Amsterdam, 1795) [only part pubd]

Muzijkaal zakboekje (Vlissingen, 1805)

Lost works, all unpubd: Geschiedenis der muzijkkunst; Iets over de tempelmuziek van Salomo; Over de muzijk der Hebreën

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Vander StraetenMPB, iv

H.F. Reynvaan: Niet altijd somer: geschiedenis van het geslacht Reynvaan (Assen, 1975)

A. Clement: ‘Drie Zeeuwse componisten van psalmzettingen: Remigius Schrijver, Willem Lootens en Joost Verschuere Reynvaan’, Zeeuws tijdschrift, xl (1990), 170–88

A. Clement: ‘Dr. Joos Verschuere Reynvaan. “frère à talent”’, Zeeland. Tijdschrift van het Koninklijk Zeeuwsch genootschap der wetenschappen, i (1992), 147–52

A. Clement: ‘Maçonnerie en muziek in de tijd voorafgaand dan de Bataafse Republiek’, Hef dan! Bataaf! Beschouwingen over muziek en muziekleven in Nederland omstreeks 1795, ed. P. van Reijen (Alphen aan den Rijn 1997), 54–76

ALBERT CLEMENT

Verse (i).

(from Lat. versus).

In liturgical books of the Roman Catholic Church, a line of a psalm or canticle, or a sentence from a biblical text, such as those used in graduals, alleluias and introits (where the verse is marked V). Such verses were always sung by soloists, either in chant or polyphony, while the Responsory, or response (R), was sung by the choir. The alternation between soloists for ‘verses’ and choir for ‘responds’ was the basic principle of the Anglican verse anthem of the 16th and 17th centuries (see Anthem, §I, 3).

See also Alternatim.

Verse (ii).

The words ‘verse’, ‘versus’ and ‘verset’ (or ‘organ verse’, ‘organ verset’) are often used to denote a short, possibly improvised, organ piece used in place of a verse of a hymn, psalm, canticle or other liturgical item from the Mass or Office. The word ‘verse’ (more rarely ‘versus’) was also used in England in the 16th and 17th centuries to denote a short, freely composed organ piece.

See also Organ hymn; Organ mass; and Voluntary.

Verseghy, Ferenc

(b Szolnok, 3 April 1757; d Pest, 15 Dec 1822). Hungarian poet and composer. As a Pauline monk he studied theology and philosophy. In 1794 he joined the clandestine Hungarian Jacobin movement led by Ignác Martinovics (he was the first to translate the text of the Marseillaise into his native language). The movement was uncovered in 1794, and for his part in it Verseghy was sentenced to death in 1795; after a royal reprieve the sentence was commuted to nine years' imprisonment.

Although he played the piano and harp and was well-versed in music theory, it is as a composer of Hungarian songs that Verseghy is remembered. He set Hungarian words to Viennese songs and also composed new songs. In 1781 he compiled a manuscript collection of contemporary melodies using ancient texts, A Parnasszus hegyén zengedező magyar múzsának szózati (‘Voice of the Hungarian muse singing of Parnassus’), and in 1791 he published Rövid értekezések a Muzsikáról VI énekkel (‘Short essays on music with six songs’). In the appendix to his satiric epic Rikóti Mátyás he published four arias from Mozart's Die Zauberflöte as well as a Hungarian folksong. In 1806 he published the songbook Magyar Aglája (‘Hungarian Aglája’) with a musical appendix, and in 1807 the song collection A' Magyar Hárfásnak részént Aglájábul vett, részént ujjonon szerzett Énekei (‘Songs of the Hungarian harpist, partly taken from Aglája, partly new composed’). He sought to combine the Viennese Classical style with elements of the verbunkos. Although he included folksongs in his published collections, the freedom and lack of restraint of the traditional folksong nevertheless remained foreign to his own works. In his discovery of the unity of melody and words, and in his recognition of the possibilities of combining western and eastern European elements to create a new genre, Verseghy was a pioneer in the development of the Hungarian art song.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Z. Kodály: ‘Árgirus nótája’ [Argirus's song], Ethnographia, xxxi (1920), 25–36

E. Major: ‘Újabb adatok Verseghy költői és zeneszerzői működéséhez’ [New light on Verseghy's activity as poet and composer], Irodalomtörténeti közlemények, xxxiv (1924), 46–9

E. Major: ‘Verseghy Ferenc mint dal- és zeneszerző’ [Verseghy as composer], Irodalomtörténeti közlemények, xxxv (1925), 258–66

G. Kerényi: ‘Dalvándorlás Verseghy korában’ [Wandering songs in the age of Verseghy], Zenei szemle, x (1926), 46–8

B. Szabolcsi: ‘A 18. század magyar kollégiumi zenéje’ [Hungarian collegiate music of the 18th century], Zenei szemle, xiii (1929), 81–181

B. Szabolcsi: A XIX. század magyar romantikus zenéje [Hungarian Romantic music of the 19th century] (Budapest, 1951)

F. Bónis: ‘Mozarts geistige Anwesenheit in der ungarischen Kultur um 1800’, Wolfgang Amadeus: summa summarum, ed. P. Csobádi (Vienna, 1990), 27–35

FERENC BÓNIS

Verset.

See Verse (ii).

Versicle

(from Lat. versiculus: ‘small verse’).

In Christian liturgies any short text (often said by celebrant or deacon) followed by an answer or ‘response’ (from congregation or choir). The combination of versicle and response is generally called ‘versus’ in Latin liturgical sources. Versicles and responses are often grouped in series, and sung in litany fashion, as in the Roman rite on Sundays at Prime, or in Anglican Morning and Evening Prayer. (See also Litany; for the Preces in non-Roman Latin rites, see Gallican chant, §13; Mozarabic chant, §3(x); for the abbreviations commonly signifying ‘versicle’ and ‘response’ see Respond.)

In the Roman rite, except for the Preces (‘prayers’) at Prime on Sundays, sets of versicles and responses are said or sung singly at many places in the Office: at the beginning of each of the canonical Hours, and at the close of all but Prime and Compline; on Sundays and feast days after the nocturns of Matins, after the hymns of Lauds and Vespers and after the Short Responsory of the Little Hours. Their music follows a simple intonation formula. The versicle Benedicamus Domino, with the response Deo gratias, is one of the closing versicles of each of the Hours.

In the Anglican rite, series of versicles and responses appear twice during both Matins and Evensong. The initial petition is normally spoken by the officiating minister, the response by the congregation or choir. The terms ‘preces’, ‘responses’ and ‘suffrages’ are also used to describe some versicles. ‘Suffrages’ has the most general application: in the first Book of Common Prayer, for instance, the rubric ‘then the suffrages before assigned at Matins [follow here]’ is found at the close of the order of Evensong, referring to the versicles that follow the Creed (beginning ‘The Lord be with you’) and the term can indeed be applied to any sequence of intercessory prayers involving initial petitions and group responses (e.g. in the litany). The versicles leading up to Venite at Matins and to the psalms at Evensong (the first group in each service) are sometimes referred to as ‘preces’ (a historically inexact usage), and those after the Creed at both services as ‘responses’ (e.g. in John Barnard’s First Book of Selected Church Musick, 1641). The versicles between the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer (from ‘The Lord be with you’ to ‘Lord, have mercy upon us’) are sometimes referred to as the Lesser Litany.

The earliest English settings of the versicles for Matins and Evensong, in Merbecke’s The Booke of Common Praier Noted (1550), are adaptations of traditional pre-Reformation formulae. Composers subsequently set the versicles chorally. Probably the first to do so was Tallis, who included with the versicles simple choral settings of special psalms for the Christmas season (see Anglican chant); his versicles are based on Merbecke’s formulae. Between 1550 and 1644 over 40 groups of Preces were set, many of which were allied to festal psalm settings. During this period at least another seven complete sets of versicles were composed, some of which are free in form and unconnected with the traditional intonations. The preces and responses by William Smith (i) are certainly the most elaborate and are generally regarded as the finest.

Little attention was paid to this comparatively lowly form of Anglican liturgical music after the Restoration, although two composers, Richard Ayleward and Thomas Ebdon, provided music that still rightly holds a place in the current repertory. Several versicle settings have been written in the 20th century, notably by Bernard Rose and Kenneth Leighton (full choral settings) and by Harold Darke (for boys’ voices).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Le HurayMR

J. Jebb: The Choral Service of the United Church of England and Ireland (London, 1843)

J. Harper: The Forms and Orders of Western Liturgy from the Tenth to the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1991)

DAVID HILEY, PETER LE HURAY

Versified Office.

A form of medieval Office, of Carolingian origin and common until about 1500, in which some or all of the antiphons and responsories are in verse. The vast majority are for saints’ days, but some are for particular Sundays or other feasts, including Advent, Trinity and Corpus Christi. Both metrical and accentual versification systems were used, and the verse was frequently rhymed. At least 1500 such Offices are known, some consisting of as many as 50–60 versified items (and there are countless others with only a single item); they are found throughout western Europe, including regions such as Scandinavia and Poland, whose conversion to Christianity was relatively late. (For a discussion of the overall structure of the Office, see Divine Office.)

2. Texts.

3. Music.

RITVA MARIA JACOBSSON (1–2), ANDREAS HAUG (3)

1. Terminology and origins.

No medieval equivalent exists for the modern term ‘versified Office’. Designations from the period refer to other aspects of the texts, for example, Responsoria cum antiphonis … dulcissime modulationis (‘Responsories with antiphons of the sweetest melody’; see Jonsson, 116–18). The term historia, first used by Amalarius of Metz, denotes a coherent series of responsories (antiphons were also added on occasion) to be sung at the liturgical Hours on a particular feast day (e.g. historia de Iudith); the texts were taken from books of the Bible other than Psalms. At a later date non-biblical sources, some of which might be versified, were used for the responsories and antiphons of newly written Offices, for example, those for saints. A coherent narrative is often, though not invariably, followed within Offices of this kind.

During the later Middle Ages, there are many instances in which historia signifies ‘versified Office’. The more general term officium could also refer to such an Office. ‘Rhymed Office’, a term current since the publication of Analecta Hymnica Medii Aevi (1886–1922) and hitherto used widely (and often loosely) by scholars, nevertheless refers to a subcategory of versified Office, which itself is a subcategory of historia. The versified Office is not, however, a liturgical genre in its own right: it simply defines the textual technique of a historia.

Historiae (and hence versified Offices) are usually found in antiphoners or in special libelli for particular feasts; complete Offices, with psalms, lessons, hymns etc., are found in breviaries. With the proliferation of saints’ cults during the Middle Ages, there was a corresponding growth in the popularity of the versifed Office. New Offices (as well as hymns, tropes and sequences) were often written for well-known saints; thus, for example, 21 different versified Offices survive for St Anne alone. In many cases a clear local influence on these new compositions is evident: towns, villages, monasteries and churches were all keen to place themselves under the patronage of a saint, perhaps some long-dead figure recently brought to prominence through the discovery or translation of relics. Religious orders such as the Dominicans and Franciscans, through the composition and diffusion of their own Offices, also played an important role in the dissemination of the versified Office. In some places new, versified Offices replaced the older prose Offices, for example, the Office of St Benedict (original Offices: CAO, i–ii, nos.50⁵, 57⁵, 102⁴; versified Offices: AH, xxv, 145–52).

2. Texts.

(i) Versification, compilation and style.

Versified Office texts are often formulaic: repetition and paraphrase are common, as in hymns and sequences, and the various saints’ virtues, torments and miraculous deeds are mostly recounted in stereotyped fashion. Many texts have similar openings, as, for example, Ave gemma claritatis, Ave gemma confessorum and Ave gemma pretiosa. Frequently, the same text, with only the names changed, is used for the invitatories of different saints, as in the following example, where ‘Germanum’ might be replaced by ‘Lambertum’, ‘Mariam’ or ‘Cucufathem’, sometimes at the expense of the prosodic scheme:

Aeternum trinumque Deum laudemus et unum
qui sibi Germanum transvexit in aethera sanctum.

Nevertheless, the repertory contains much that is of both poetic and musical value.

A broad spectrum of metrical and accentual verse forms is found, including hexameters, elegiac distichs, accentual trochaic septenarii and iambic dimeters (Ambrosian strophes), as well as irregular forms (e.g. the Office of St Chrysanthus and St Daria, AH, xxv, 207). A kind of ‘prosimetrum’, a combination of prose and different kinds of verse within the same Office, is common, particularly in the earlier period (see Norberg).

All the texts within a versified Office functioned together and were always sung together during a particular liturgical celebration. Thus antiphons not infrequently reflect their psalms or canticles, and responsories echo their readings; within the whole context there is a network of allusions, quotations, themes and symbols. For example, the text of the opening of the Benedictus is as follows (Luke i.68–9):

Benedictus Dominus Deus Israel, quia visitavit et redemit populum suum,
et erexit cornu salutis nobis in domo David servi suo.

This is directly echoed by the following Benedictus antiphon (AH, xxviii, 262):

Cornu salutis erexit
nobis deus qui respexit
exaltando visitando
per utrumque Valentinum.

(It should be noted that in editions such as Analecta Hymnica, a versified Office will normally consist of the antiphons and responsories for Matins, Lauds and Vespers – the Little Hours mostly repeat pre-existing chants – but not the hymns, even in the case of late Offices where a hymn, and sometimes also a sequence, was composed together with the other pieces and appeared in the same manuscript.)

The oldest surviving source with chants for the entire Office is the Compiègne Antiphoner (F-Pn lat.17436) dating from 860–80. The antiphons and responsories it contains are compiled from the Bible and other texts such as Patristic sermons; many of the non-biblical chants focus on the Virgin. The manuscript includes versified items for Christmas, the Holy Cross, St Benedict, St Peter the Apostle and the local saint Medardus, and are derived from three main sources: hymns (metrical and accentual), metrical lives of the saints and inscriptions in churches. The Office for Christmas, for example, which includes antiphons in elegiac distichs and trochaic septenarii, uses strophes from Sedulius’s Carmen paschale (a biblical epic in hexameter verse) and from his hymn A solis ortus cardine, and an inscription from the Basilica di Santa Maria Nuova in Rome. All sources, including the Bible, were reworked in various ways, and the original versification was sometimes ignored, suggesting that even items originally in verse were chosen for their content rather than their form.

In the 10th century, versified Offices seem to have been created in much the same way, that is, through compilation and arrangement of existing textual material; there is no instance from this period in which every item of an Office is in verse. A greater overall coherence is evident in many versified Offices written during the period between the 11th century and the Council of Trent, and most of those from the later Middle Ages have the same kind of verse throughout. The stylistic history of versified Offices is in fact similar to that of hymns and sequences: the distinctions between the various genres gradually diminished. Thus, in the later Middle Ages there are more frequent and more sophisticated rhymes, but also texts written in classical hexameters. Prose Offices also continued to be composed throughout the period.

(ii) Examples of particular Offices.

Among the oldest surviving 10th-century Offices is that for the Trinity composed by Stephen of Liège. It is written in highly structured prose (with several rhymes), and is mainly compiled from verses from the Bible and hymn doxologies, including parts of Alcuin's hymn to the Trinity (PL, ci, 55). In the first antiphon at Lauds, in iambic dimeter, the three persons of the Trinity are not referred to by name but as ‘Trinitas aequalis’ and ‘una Deitas’ (CAO, iii, no.2948):

Gloria tibi, Trinitas
aequalis, una Deitas,
et ante omnia saecula
et nunc et in perpetuum.

The word order used in these terms is known as ‘chiastic’, since equivalent parts of speech form the shape of the Greek letter chi (χ). In the third antiphon at Lauds, based on a hymn to St Vedastus by Alcuin (AH, l, 155), the subject is ‘gloria’, to which two similar verbs, ‘resonet’ and ‘resultet’, are tied, both with forms of ‘laus’; the singers are present in the text through the phrase ‘in ore omnium’, and the verse form is a Sapphic stanza (CAO, iii, 1968, no.2947):

Gloria laudis resonet in ore
omnium patris genitaeque prolis,
Spiritus sancti pariter resultet
laude perenni.

Although this Office is not a historia in the narrative sense, it was known from an early date as the historia de Trinitate, and like the Office for Christmas was in widespread use until the Second Vatican Council.

The Office of St Lambert (AH, xvi, 230), also compiled by Stephen of Liège, is more conventional in that it consists mainly of items taken from pre-existing works devoted to the saint's life: the rhymed prose Gesta sancti Lamberti, mostly for the responsories, and the hexameter epos Carmen de sancto Lamberto, particularly for the antiphons. All the prose chants are fully rhymed, but many fewer than half of the hexameter parts of the Office contain Leonine rhymes. The Office also includes a Magnificat antiphon in trochaic septenarii with a few rhymes. The chants contain laudatory expressions from the Carmen and form a narrative sequence following the saint's life from childhood to martyrdom.

In the Office of St Fuscianus and his Companions (AH, xiii, 150), the earliest source for which is the 10th-century Mont-Renaud manuscript (PalMus, 1st ser, xvi, 1955/R), almost all the responsories are in prose whereas all the antiphons are in verse – hexameters and pentameters (about half of them with Leonine rhymes), a few trochaic septenarii, and other, hybrid types. The texts are drawn from the lives of the saints, including the epic Carmen de sancto Quintino, but the original prose or hexameters have been mostly reworked. For example, lines 150–51 of the Carmen are hexameters:

Regia martyrii redimitum munere caeli
sed iam Quintinum posuit super astra polorum.

(But the kingdom of heaven has already placed Quintinus
above the stars, crowned with the gift of martyrdom.)

But in the Office, at the second antiphon of the second nocturn, the second line of this text has been adapted to obtain a pentameter or kind of hybrid verse:

Regia martyrii redimitum munere caeli
sed iam Quintinum sumpserat emeritum.

(But the kingdom of heaven had already taken Quintinus, who
now had finished serving, crowned with the gift of martyrdom.)

Some Offices from the earliest group are in octosyllabic verse: the Office of St Cuthbert, found in a number of 10th-century sources (GB-Lbl Harl.1117, Ccc 183, I-Rvat Reg.lat.204, etc.), consists of octosyllabic verse with some rhymes. It follows the general outline of both of Bede’s Vitae sancti Cuthberti but seems to be an independent composition. Another, slightly later example is the well-known versified Office in honour of St Gregory the Great composed by Pope Leo IX (Bruno of Toul, d 1054; AH, v, 184). Except for the invitatory, which is in hexameters, the entire Office is in non-accentual and non-metrical octosyllabic rhyming couplets.

The Venetian Office of St Eufemia and her Companions is from a later group of Offices, and parts of it are highly structured. Thus, for example, in the invitatory (written in accentual trochaic dimeters) there is a play on the word ‘virgo’ in which the Blessed Virgin Mary is linked with Jesus and the virgin saints:

Virgo sponsum veneretur, virginem ecclesia,
Virginumque filiarum celebrat sollemnia.

(The Virgin may venerate the bridegroom and the Church the Virgin,
as it celebrates the solemnity of the virgin daughters.)

Julian of Speier (d 1250) composed the widely known versified Offices for St Francis, Franciscus vir catholicus (AH, v, 175), and for St Anthony of Padua, Gaudeat ecclesia (AH, v, 126). Both are systematically rhymed: the former is in regular accentual iambic verse and the latter in accentual trochaic septenarii. John Peckham (d 1292) wrote one of the many versified Offices modelled upon Julian’s work, the Trinity Office Sedenti super solium (AH, v, 20).

(For further information on Office texts, see the introductions to AH, 1889–1909/R, v, xiii, xivb, xvii, xviii, xxiv–xvi, xlia, xlva, xlviii, lii.)

3. Music.

(i) General characteristics.

The melodies of versified Office chants are often indistinguishable in style from those of prose Offices. There was no a priori requirement for versified Office music to differ from traditional prose chant or for composers to write in a new style; one composer, Letaldus of Micy, is even said to have ‘declined to abandon similarity to old chant’ (excedere noluit a similitudine veteris cantus) and to have disapproved of the ‘novitas’ sought by others (PL, xxxvii, 784). Thus, the versified antiphon melodies in exx.1 and 3 below are no different from the kind of standard prose antiphon melody in ex.7 below; such similarity is due to the common melodic type rather than to deliberate borrowing. A number of hymn melodies resemble versified antiphon melodies (see below, ex.8), but generally any similarity between antiphons and hymns is caused more by the hymn-like forms of antiphon texts rather than the hymn-like characteristics of antiphon melodies.

Developments in melodic style that occurred during the 11th and 12th centuries were neither exclusive to Offices with versified texts nor related in any obvious way to the use of verse. Nevertheless, certain versified Offices from the 11th to the 13th centuries, for example, the Office of St Gregory (see Hiley, 1993), the Office of St Thomas of Canterbury (Stäblein), various Offices attributed to Bruno of Toul (Bernard) and some Rhenish rhymed Offices (Jammers), reveal a more condensed musical style with a prevalence of short, self-contained lines, restricted melodic goals and closer sequences of melodic cadences (see Hiley, 1993, p.276). These stylistic changes may have arisen through the need to accommodate shorter textual units and the regular accentual verse cadences often reinforced by rhyme (particularly from the 12th century onwards).

A common musical device in medieval Office composition, appearing from the 10th century onwards and mentioned by Stephen of Liège, is the numerical ordering of chants according to their mode; but this feature was not unique to Offices with versified texts (see Hughes, 1983). Such an arrangement was probably influenced by tonaries (Huglo, 1971, p.122); in tonaries, however, the mode is a criterion by which pre-existing chant is classified, whereas in Offices it functions as a category of composition (Haug, 1991, pp.117–19).

(ii) Relation of texts and music.

Examples of pre-Carolingian versified Office chants exist, although their occurrence is sporadic. The Latin hymn also served as a concrete model for Office compositions and as a general paradigm for any attempt to represent in music the formal features of Latin verse in a linguistically competent way (see Hymn, §II). Nevertheless, the emergence of the versified Office might best be interpreted as a typically Carolingian phenomenon – a result of the encounter between a melodic idiom whose origins lay in the setting of biblical Latin prose (i.e. traditional liturgical chant) and the poetic intricacies of classical Latin verse.

An important question from both a liturgical and an aesthetic point of view concerns the extent to which the music made the verse form perceptible to those who sang or listened to it. Melodies that articulate verse structure may well indicate a genuine interest by composers in the verse per se, to a degree perhaps sufficient to have motivated the use of poetic diction within Office chant. Certainly those antiphons that are melodically similar to hymns (as in ex.1) seem to reveal an appreciation for the intrinsic song-like qualities of the verse. Also important, particularly to the music historian, is whether the more complex, ambiguous structure of certain versified texts affected the structure of the melodies. Increasing textual intricacy may not only have necessitated changes in the musical style of Latin chant but also contributed to a growth in the potential of monophonic music to articulate text. A metrical text whose syntax is as discontinuous as that of the antiphon in ex.2 (from the Office of St Fuscianus and his Companions; see §2(ii) above) poses problems of melodic composition far beyond the basic concern of rendering the text intelligible.

A widely diverse range of musical settings is evident within the repertory. Some chants focus on verbal syntax and meaning but ignore the verse form; others emphasize the verse form alone; while others reveal a subtle balance between all these elements. Such differences become apparent on close analysis of text and music, taking into account whatever performance indications are provided by the notation. By way of example, the versified antiphons in exx.3 and 4 reveal a conflict between verse form and syntax. In ex.3 the main syntactic (and sense) groups are as follows:

Gloria tibi | trinitas aequalis | una deitas

In terms of the verse form, however, the same words constitute two lines, with the line division coming after ‘trinitas’, thus causing an enjambement:

Gloria tibi trinitas / aequalis una deitas

The melody at the outset is hymn-like and resembles that of Auctor donorum in ex.1. The verse lines, rather than the sense units, are marked off with identical and unambiguous cadences. However, the neumatic notation (see illustration) indicates that the cadential effect of these figures is to be modified in performance: on the last syllable of ‘deitas’, which marks the end of both a line and a sense group, an episema signifies a lengthening of the note; however, there is no such episema on the corresponding syllable of ‘trinitas’, which occurs at the end of a line but in the middle of a sense group. In other words, although syntax and sense were subordinated to verse form in the composition of the melody, they were not entirely to be ignored during performance.

In ex.4 a similar enjambement occurs at ‘in ore / omnium’: the end of the verse line at ‘ore’ is not marked by a cadence, but instead – and in contradiction to the verse form – there is a melodic parallelism between the sense units ‘Gloria laudis resonet in ore omnium’ and ‘Patri geniteque proli spiritui sancto pariter’. As fig.1 shows, the notation includes a ‘c’ (celeriter: ‘quickly’), which prevents the performer from slowing down at the end of the verse line; moreover, the capital ‘P’ of ‘Patri’ implies a pause after ‘omnium’, that is, at the end of the sense group rather than the verse line. It appears, therefore, that the scribe and the singers for whom the book was prepared were aware of the versification of the text but also of the convention of performing it as if it were in prose (see Björkvall and Haug, 1999, pp.10–13).

A number of prose responsories and versified antiphons from the Office of St Lambert by Stephen of Liège are contained in B-Br 14650–59 (f.118), copied at the beginning of the 10th century). In this source the antiphons are written in pairs of hexameters, and the verse form is reflected in the layout of the manuscript, each line beginning with a capital letter. Two of these antiphons are transcribed in ex.5. There is no indication that the melodies were designed to reflect syllabic quantities: the setting is not sufficiently syllabic to be performed with longer and shorter notes corresponding to the long and short syllables, and there is no tendency for the longer melismas to occur on long rather than on short syllables. Indeed, there is no evidence at all that the music was conceived with the scansion of the verse in mind. If the ascent from g to c' is regarded as a melodic accent, most such accents coincide with the prose accentuation rather than with the ictus of the verse.

Although syllabic quantity and verse ictus are not integral to these examples, the music nevertheless makes essential features of the poetic metre perceptible by marking line-endings and internal caesuras with recognizable cadential figures. In ex.5 the ends of most lines are set to a recurring cadential figure. Moreover, all the lines transcribed have a caesura in the third foot, and this too is often marked by a melodic cadence. There are, however, notable exceptions to this strategy: in cases where marking the verse structure would cause an interruption to the syntax, a compromise is made so that the meaning of the words remains clear. In ex.5b there is an enjambement from the noun ‘ocellis’ to its qualifier ‘illius’; the cadential figure at the end of the other verse lines is not used at ‘ocellis’, and as a result the effect of the enjambement is veiled rather than enhanced by the music. A similar process has been observed in other Offices (see Schlager, 1993).

The text of the antiphon from the Office of St Fuscianus (see ex.2) is based on the Carmen de sancto Quintino. Since a pair of hexameters from the original poem has been transformed into an elegiac distich without any significant change of textual content, the genuine intention must have been a change of metre. Not surprisingly, therefore, the melody is clearly designed to convey the structure of the distich: every word is set to its own self-contained melodic segment, and in most cases these end with a descent either to the final f or to its upper 5th c', all with a more or less distinctively cadence-like figure. The sequence of melodic segments is not without direction. A double melodic arch is formed, rising from and returning to the final: the first arch, reaching its peak at f', constitutes the hexameter, and the second, with its peak on d', the pentameter. The lengths of the two verse lines are therefore related to the height of the melodic arches. At the same time, both verse lines end on the final, and the central caesuras of the hexameter and the pentameter are clearly marked by similar cadential figures. Thus the textual form of the elegiac distich is strongly brought out by the music, although this is achieved without regard to syntax or meaning. The melody continues over successive words that do not belong together, and sense units such as ‘redimitum munere’ (‘crowned with the gift’) are split up by cadences. In this example, however, the word order is so complex that whatever the arrangement of the melodic cadences the text could not be divided up any more meaningfully or clearly. A contrasting case is illustrated in ex.6, where a similar melody is set to a more straightforward text in rhymed prose: here melodic units correspond closely to sense units.

There appear to have been different reasons for the coexistence of Office melodies that closely follow the verse form of their texts (as also found in hymn melodies) and those that effectively neutralize that form. Genre may have been a determining factor: antiphons were more likely to have the melodic characteristics of hymns than the more elaborate responsories (or responsory verses set to the standardized tone); moreover, hymn strophes, along with Sapphic stanzas, pairs of hexameters and elegiac distichs, were of more or less the right length to be used as antiphons. On the other hand, since antiphons were sung before and after passages of straightforward psalmody, even hymn-like (i.e. moderately elaborate) antiphon settings would only be used in order to achieve a contrast in musical idiom between the psalmody and its ‘frame’. Another factor might have been verse form: iambic dimeters and trochaic septenarii are more common forms in the hymn repertory and were therefore more likely to be set to hymn-like melodies than were hexameters or elegiac distichs.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

MGG1 (‘Reimoffizium’; W. Irtenkauf)

G.M. Dreves and C. Blume, eds.: Analecta hymnica medii aevi [AH] (Leipzig, 1886–1922/R)

C. Blume: ‘Zur Poesie des kirchlichen Stundengebetes im Mittelalter’, Stimmen aus Maria-Laach, lv (1898), 132–45

H. Felder, ed.: Die liturgischen Reimofficien auf den heiligen Franciskus und Antonius (Freiburg, 1901)

P. Wagner: ‘Zur mittelalterlichen Offiziumsdichtung’, KJb, xxi (1908), 13–32

A. Auda: L’école musicale liégeoise au Xe siècle: Etienne de Liège (Brussels, 1923)

E. Jammers: ‘Die Antiphonen der rheinischen Reimoffizien’, Ephemerides liturgicae, xliii (1929), 199–219, 425–51; xliv (1930), 84–99, 342–68

R. Weakland: ‘The Compositions of Hucbald’, EG, iii (1959), 155–63

R.-J. Hesbert, ed.: Corpus antiphonalium officii [CAO] (Rome, 1963–)

A. Önnerfors: ‘Zur Offiziendichtung im schwedischen Mittelalter’, Mittellateinisches Jb, iii (1966), 55–93

Z. Falvy: Drei Reimoffizien aus Ungarn und ihre Musik (Budapest, 1968)

R. Jonsson: Historia: études sur la genèse des offices versifiés (Stockholm, 1968)

M. Huglo: Les tonaires: inventaire, analyse, comparaison (Paris, 1971)

K. Schlager: ‘Reimoffizien’, Geschichte der katholischen Kirchenmusik, ed. K.G. Fellerer, i (Kassel, 1972), 293–7

B. Stäblein: Schriftbild der einstimmigen Musik (Leipzig, 1975)

M.J. Epstein: ‘Ludovicus decus regnantium: Perspectives on the Rhymed Office’, Speculum, liii (1978), 283–333

M. Bernard: ‘Les offices versifiés attribués à Léon IX (1002–1054)’, EG, xix (1980), 89–164

Y. Delaporte: ‘Fulbert de Chartres et l'école chartraine de chant liturgique au XIe siècle’, EG, xix (1980), 51–81

K. Schlager and T. Wohnhaas: ‘Ein Ulrichsoffizium aus Mailand’, Jb des Vereins für Augsburger Bistumsgeschichte, xvi (1982), 122–58

A. Hughes: ‘Rhymed Offices’, Dictionary of the Middle Ages, ed. J.R. Strayer (New York, 1982–9)

A. Hughes: ‘Modal Order and Disorder in the Rhymed Office’, MD, xxxviii (1983), 29–51

J. Knape: ‘Zur Benennung der Offizien im Mittelalter’, Archiv für Liturgiewissenschaft, xxvi (1984), 305–20

K. Schlager and T. Wohnhaas: ‘Zeugnisse der Afra-Verehrung im mittelalterlichen Choral’, Jb des Vereins für Augsburger Bistumsgeschichte, xviii (1984), 199–226

A. Hughes: ‘Research Report: Late Medieval Rhymed Offices’, JPMMS, viii (1985), 33–49

A. Hughes: ‘Chants in the Rhymed Office of St Thomas of Canterbury’, EMc, xvi (1988), 185–202

K. Schlager and T. Wohnhaas: ‘Historia sancti Corbiniani – rediviva: die Überlieferung der mittelalterlichen Melodien zum Offizium und zur Messe am Corbiniansfest’, Beiträge zur altbayerischen Kirchengeschichte, xxxvii (1988), 21–42

K. Schlager and T. Wohnhaas: ‘“Dies nunc celebris praesulis Ottonis …”: der liturgische Tag des heiligen Otto, nach dem Zeugnis der Handschrift Lit. 114 der Staatsbibliothek Bamberg’, Bericht des Historischen Vereins Bamberg, cxxv (1989), 425–49

O.T. Edwards, ed.: Matins, Lauds and Vespers for St David’s Day (Cambridge, 1990)

A. Hughes: ‘Word Painting in a Twelfth-Century Office’, Beyond the Moon: Festschrift Luther Dittmer, ed. B. Gillingham and P. Merkley (Ottawa, 1990), 16–27

A. Haug: ‘Neue Ansätze im 9. Jahrhundert’, Neues Handbuch der Musikwissenschaft, ii (Laaber, 1991), 94–128

D. Hiley: Western Plainchant: a Handbook (Oxford, 1993)

A. Hughes: ‘British Rhymed Offices: a Catalogue and Commentary’, Music in the Medieval English Liturgy, ed. S. Rankin and D. Hiley (Oxford, 1993), 239–84

V. Kartsovnik: ‘The 11th-Century Office for St Gregory the Great in the Manuscript Tradition’, Cantus Planus VI: Éger 1993, ii, 615–27

A.-M. Nilsson: ‘Some Remarks on Melodic Influences in Swedish Rhymed Offices’, ibid., 635–51

D. Norberg: ‘Problèmes métriques dans les séquences, les offices et les tropes’, Recherches nouvelles sur les tropes liturgiques, ed. W. Arlt and G. Björkvall (Stockholm, 1993), 361–9

K. Schlager: ‘Hexameter-Melodien’, Cantus Planus VI: Éger 1993, ii, 629–34

A. Hughes: Late Medieval Liturgical Offices: Resources for Electronic Research: Texts (Toronto, 1994)

B. Haggh, ed.: Two Offices for St Elizabeth of Hungary (Ottawa, 1995)

A. Hughes: ‘Literary Transformation in Post-Carolingian Saints' Offices’, Saints: Studies in Hagiography, ed. S. Sticca (Binghamton, NY, 1995), 23–50

G. Björkvall: ‘Text und Musik im Trinitätsoffizium Stephans von Lüttich’, Die Offizien des Mittelalters, ed. W. Berschin and D. Hiley (Tutzing, 1999), 1–24

G. Björkvall and A. Haug: ‘Performing Latin Verse: Music and Text in Early Versified Offices’, The Divine Office in the Latin Middle Ages: Methodology and Source Studies, Regional Developments, Hagiography: Written in Honor of Professor Ruth Steiner, ed. M.E. Fassler and R.A. Baltzer (Oxford, 2000)

A. Hughes: ‘Echoes and Allusions: Sources of the Office for St Dominic’, Liturgie, musique et culture au milieu du XIIIe siècle: autour du ms. Rome Santa Sabina XIV.L.1, prototype de la liturgie dominicaine (forthcoming)

Vers mesurés, vers mesurés à l’antique

(Fr.).

French verses, written in the last third of the 16th century by Jean-Antoine de Baïf, a member of the group of poets known as the Pléiade, and by his followers. Baïf attempted to apply the quantitative principles of Greek and Latin poetry to the French language, by its nature accentual, and worked out an accentual version of classical metres – hexameters, Sapphic strophes, and so on – by equating long with accented syllables and short with unaccented syllables.

As a member of the Pléiade, Baïf was committed to the proposition that music and poetry should be united as they had been (according to their theories) in ancient times. Eventually, Baïf and his musical associates – Thibault de Courville, Jacques Mauduit, Guillaume Costeley and the brilliant Claude Le Jeune – devised a technique for setting vers mesurés to music. In musique mesurée à l’antique (or, more simply, musique mesurée), the composer followed the metre of the verse exactly; each long (accented) syllable was set to a minim and each short (unaccented) syllable to a crotchet. To ensure that the words would not be obscured the verses were set syllabically in an almost strictly homophonic texture broken occasionally by very brief melismas often no more than two notes long. Because of the complex patterns of classical verse musique mesurée moves in irregular rhythmic groupings, alternating between two and three beats. Since no regular musical metre is maintained such compositions are best transcribed without bar-lines, or, at most, with bar-lines marking ends of phrases. The beginning of Le Jeune’s Si le lien se voit deffait (ex.1), from his Airs of 1594, shows the austere character of the new style.

D.P. Walker, whose studies of vers and musique mesurées are the best and most thorough to date, reported that Baïf and his principal musical adviser, Thibault de Courville, began working out their theories and experimenting with practical solutions in 1567. By 1570 they had amassed enough material and gained enough support from musicians and men of letters to found an Académie de Poésie et de Musique for which Charles IX granted Letters of Patent. Baïf set ambitious goals for the Académie; it was not to be merely a literary salon where the union of music and poetry could be celebrated properly for the first time since the golden age of Greece and Rome. He intended that, through vers and musique mesurées, it would be able to revive the ethical effects of ancient music. Its aims were political and, indeed, revolutionary. An art new in its style and in its effect on listeners was to be cultivated at the concerts sponsored by the Académie in Baïf’s house. Consistent with his plans, Baïf would not tolerate anything but musique mesurée at these concerts. The statutes of the Académie reveal that there were to be two classes of members, professional musicians and auditeurs, the gentlemen who attended the concerts who were to pay annual subscriptions to subsidize the group’s work. The professional musicians were to meet every day to rehearse, and were forbidden from copying or carrying away any of the books containing vers or musique mesurées. The Académie was also to be an educational institution, training young poets and musicians, not so that they could popularize musique mesurée or introduce it to ever larger audiences, but so that the new art could be kept within a small circle of intellectuals and politically powerful men until its style was fixed and its superiority clearly recognized. Then the élite could impose their art on the general public; the musical life of the country was to become well regulated and mankind be improved.

Baïf’s grandiose plans came to very little. After initial opposition, the Académie was in fact organized and met, but it probably did not survive after Charles IX’s death in 1574. Certainly, Baïf and his circle continued to be active throughout the 1570s and 80s, but the first Académie was replaced by another – the so-called ‘Académie du Palais’ (because it met in the Louvre) – under the reign of Henri III. The new Académie had a completely different and more narrowly aesthetic character, even though many of the same members participated and it, too, enjoyed royal patronage.

Baïf’s Académie might be considered but a curious footnote to history were it not for the confined but significant influence his work had on the most important French musicians of the late 16th and early 17th centuries. No musique mesurée was published during the few years the original Académie was meeting; but collections of neo-classic verse set to musique mesurée appeared in great quantities in the 1570s and 1580s. In 1578, for instance, F.M. Caietain indicated in a preface to his Chansons that the rhythmic profile of his settings of some of Baïf’s chansonettes mesurées had been shaped under the guidance of Thibault de Courville. From thereafter a number of other composers, such as Didier Le Blanc (1579), Guillaume Tessier (1582), Nicolas de la Grotte (1583) and Claude Le Jeune (1583 and 1585) included examples of musique mesurée in their chanson publications. Jacques Mauduit issued his complete settings of Baïf’s chansonettes mesurées in 1586. The bulk of Le Jeune’s mesurées settings did not appear in print until shortly after his death, in Le printemps of 1603, a book issued under the editorial supervision of his sister Cecile. Despite the specialized social and aesthetic origins of the genre, vers and musique mesurées continued to be written; the posthumous Meslanges (1610) by Eustache Du Caurroy, for example, includes a good many settings of neo-classical poetry by Nicolas Rapin.

The formation of Baïf’s Académie and the subsequent history of the specialized musical settings that derived from it have long held the attention of those interested in the French Renaissance, thanks to the pioneering researches and early modern editions of Walker, Expert and Yates. Musique mesurée has also been viewed in somewhat broader and less isolated musical and cultural contexts. It has long been acknowledged, for instance, that the lyrical impulse of the nascent musique mesurée recall that of the homophonic airs (earlier called vaudevilles) in mid-15th-century French music prints, even if the latter were based on rhymed poetry rather than on texts written in emulation of Greek or Latin metrical schemes. Perhaps more surprisingly, some of Baïf’s poems (and Le Jeune’s settings in particular) are closely modelled on villanesche and villotte published in Venice during the 1550s and later. One of the most famous examples of the repertory and among the very first of Le Jeune’s airs mesurés to appear in print, Une puce j’ay dedans l’oreille, seems to be a reworking of the poem No pulice m’entrato nell’orecchia from Donato’s Le napollitane et alcuni madrigali of 1550. Of new interest, too, are the parallels that exist between the classicizing tendencies of the Académie and other attempts to align current French musical practice with the expressive ideals and ethical effects of ancient poetry and music, from the retrospective anthologies of chansons issued during the late 16th century to the musical poetics of Ronsard’s Amours and the philosophical dialogues of Pontus de Tyard.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

M. Augé-Chiquet: La vie, les idées et l’oeuvre de Jean-Antoine de Baïf (Paris, 1909/R)

H. Prunières: Le ballet de cour en France avant Benserade et Lully (Paris, 1914/R)

P.M. Masson: ‘Le mouvement humaniste’, EMDC, I/iii (1921), 1298–342

D.P. Walker: ‘The Aims of Baïf’s Académie de poésie et de musique’, JRBM, i (1946–7), 91–100

F.A. Yates: The French Academies of the Sixteenth Century (London,1947/R)

K.J. Levy: ‘Vaudeville, vers mesurés et airs de cour’, Musique et poésie au XVIe siècle [Paris 1953], ed. J. Jacquot (Paris, 1954, 2/1974), 185–99

M.M. McGowan: L’art du ballet de cour en France, 1581–1643 (Paris,1963)

E. Weber: La musique mesurée à l’antique en Allemagne (Paris, 1974)

R. Hyatte: ‘Meter and Rhythm in Jean Antoine de Baïf, “Etrenes de poezie fransoeze” and the Vers-mesures-à-l’antique of Other Poets in the Late 16th-Century’, Bibliothèque d’humanisme et renaissance, xliii (1981), 487–508

M. McGowan: Ideal Forms in the Age of Ronsard (Berkeley, 1985)

D.P. Walker: Music, Spirit and Language in the Renaissance, ed. P. Gouk (London, 1985) [incl. reprs. of seminal articles by Walker]

P. Bonniffet: Un ballet démasqué: l’union de la musique au verbe dans ‘Le printans’ de Jean-Antoine de Baïf et Claude Le Jeune (Paris, 1988)

G. Dottin: ‘Ronsard et les voix de ville’, RdM, lxxiv (1988), 165–72

G. Durosoir: L’air de cour en France, 1571–1655 (Liège, 1991)

I. His: ‘Les modèles italiens de Claude Le Jeune’, RdM, lxxvii (1991), 25–58

I. His: ‘Claude Le Jeune et le rhythme prosodique: la mutation des années 1570’, RdM, lxxix (1993), 201–26

H.M. Brown: ‘Ut musica poesis: Music and Poetry in France in the Late Sixteenth Century’, EMH, xiii (1994), 1–63

R. Freedman: ‘Claude Le Jeune, Adrian Willaert and the Art of Musical Translation’, EMH, xiii (1994), 123–48

I. His: ‘Italianism and Claude Le Jeune’, EMH, xiii (1994), 149–70

HOWARD MAYER BROWN/RICHARD FREEDMAN

Verso, Antonio il.

See Il Verso, Antonio.

Verstimmung

(Ger.).

See Scordatura.

Verstockt, Serge

(b Brasschaat, 28 Feb 1957). Belgian composer. He studied clarinet at the Antwerp Conservatory and composition, electronic and computer applications with Gottfried Michael Koenig at the Instituut voor Sonologie in Utrecht (1983–5). He works at the Contactorgaan voor Elektronische Muziek studio in Arnhem and teaches computer music at the Arnhem Conservatory; he has also worked at the IPEM in Ghent. In 1988 he founded the new music ensemble Champ d’Action; Verstockt is the artistic director of the ensemble. His music is based on his own computer composition program ‘Trans’, which defines symbols as well as the relationship between the symbols. These symbols are linked with musical quantities; the relations give rise to gradual transitions from one musical quantity to another. Thus ‘Trans’ generates musical processes with infinite possibilities; no aesthetic or style is imposed on the user. The audible result consists of abstract sounds of great complexity, but very controlled. The music exploits transitions within traditional parameters as well as within range and texture, voice-leading and density, tempo and episode duration. Every musical episode is characterized by the explicit accentuation of some parameters, while others stay in the background, in a continually changing process. Verstockt applies his computer working method to electronic as well as acoustic means.

WORKS

(selective list)

Tape: Interfractions, 1984; Correlations, 1985; 60 M, 1990

Other: Champ I, cl, trbn, pf, computer, 1987; Tri, cl, trbn, pf, computer, 1987; Champ II, fl, ob, cl, trbn, 2 pf, 1989; DMAP, chbr orch, 1990–91; MAP, ob, cl, 2 pf, perc, computer, 1990–91; Apeiron, chbr orch, 1993; Feuillages du coeur (M. Maeterlinck), S, chbr orch, 1994

Principal recording company: Megadisc

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Y. Knockaert: ‘Voor Serge Verstockt zijn emoties bijzaak’, Kunst en cultuur, xxv (1992), 30–31

YVES KNOCKAERT

Verstovsky, Aleksey Nikolayevich

(b Selivertsovo estate, Michurin region, Tambov district, 18 Feb/1 March 1799; d Moscow, 5/17 Nov 1862). Russian composer and theatre official.

EDWARD GARDEN

1. Life.

Son of a wealthy, music-loving landowner, Verstovsky was educated in St Petersburg at the Institute of the Corps of Engineers; simultaneously, he studied the piano with Daniel Steibelt and John Field (to whom he dedicated a boyhood sonata), the violin with Ludwig Maurer and thoroughbass with Karl Zeuner. Maurer and Steibelt, employed by the Imperial Theatres, encouraged the young man to compose kupletï (‘couplets’ or ‘verses’, more particularly strophic ballads or songs, usually satirical or sentimental) as well as other music for theatrical entertainments, particularly opera-vaudevilles. When he left the institute in 1817 he abandoned engineering, and the first of his vaudevilles, translated from the French, was given as early as November 1817. He proved talented, and, either alone or with older composers such as Alyab'yev and Cavos, wrote no fewer than 33 opera-vaudevilles.

In 1823 he moved to Moscow, where the Imperial Theatres organization was just being made independent of St Petersburg. In 1825 he was appointed ‘inspector of music’, in 1830 inspector of the Moscow Theatrical Repertory, and in 1848 manager to the administrative board of the Moscow Imperial Theatres, thereafter playing an all-important part in their development and improvement until his retirement in 1860. The dramatist Ostrovsky testified to Verstovsky's friendly relations with the actors and actresses, who greatly valued his opinion.

In 1828 his first more ambitious work for stage, an opera with spoken dialogue entitled Pan Tvardovskiy (‘Twardowski’), was produced; in 1830 he gave up writing or contributing to opera-vaudevilles and concentrated on operas. Out of the five that followed Twardowski only one, his third opera Askol'dova mogila (‘Askold's Grave’), achieved lasting success, becoming the most popular Russian opera of the 19th century.

2. Works.

Verstovky's best-received vaudeville written (with Maurer) before he moved to Moscow was Karantin (‘Quarantine’; 1820), like his first effort adapted from a French source; his best (though not immediately popular) opera-vaudeville, however, composed soon after his arrival in Moscow to a libretto by P. Vyazemsky and Aleksandr Griboyedov, the well-known author of the comedy Gore ot uma (‘Woe from Wit’), was a travesty-farce Kto brat, kto sestra, ili Obman za obmanom (‘Which is the Brother, Which the Sister, or Ruse upon Ruse’; 1824). All the ingredients of the finest opera-vaudevilles are to be found in it: dances (especially waltzes, mazurkas and polonaises), racy or sentimental kupletï in profuse variety, and good ensembles which further the action no less than the spoken dialogue does. It contains numbers adapted from previous opera-vaudevilles and provided material for later ones, especially Stanislav, ili Ne vsyaskiy ėto sdelayet (‘Stanislav, or Not Everyone will Do it’; 1829). Such borrowing was typical of the ephemeral opera-vaudevilles, an important element of which was topical parody. (For several synopses, see Karlinsky, 1985.) Only Which is the Brother has been published in its entirety (Moscow, 1949). Numbers from various opera-vaudevilles were published by Verstovsky in Dramaticheskiy al'bom (1826) and in issues of Muzïkal'nïy al'bom from 1823; some have appeared in modern volumes.

Although Verstovsky wrote conventional salon romances, songs and ‘Russian’ songs (sad pseudo-folksongs for the drawing-room, usually in the minor mode), his most important vocal solos with piano were his dramatic ballads (or cantatas), which were extended enough to allow space for development of characterization, changes of key and tempo, and variation of accompaniment figures. Some were performed in semi-staged, orchestrated versions. Two are particularly distinguished: his setting of Pushkin's ‘Chornaya shal'’ (‘The Black Shawl’), no less than 219 bars in length, and his highly dramatic Tri pesni skal'da (‘Three Songs of the Skald’ [Scandinavian bard]), with a text by Zhukovsky after Uhland's Die drei Lieder; the latter's march-like opening anticipates later Russian ballads. But his version of Zhukovsky's ‘Nochnoy smotr’ (‘The Night Review’), a translation of Zedlitz's ‘Die nächtliche Heerschau’, though interesting, was inferior to Glinka's setting. Most of these were written in the 1820s, just when Carl Loewe wrote many of the ballads for which he is chiefly remembered.

Der Freischütz was the catalyst for Verstovsky's eventual move from opera-vaudeville to what may be called Russian opera-Singspiel. It was first performed in St Petersburg in 1824, originally in German, and soon afterwards in Russian; that version received its first Moscow performance in 1825 under Verstovsky's supervision. In an essay ‘Fragments from the History of Dramatic Music’, published in Dramaticheskiy al'bom the following year, he gave the highest praise to Mozart and his ‘not unworthy’ successors Cherubini and Méhul; but most important of all for the future of musical beauty, he asserted, was Freischütz. Twardowski, in his opera of that name derived from a Polish legend, is a Slavonic Caspar, from whose clutches Julia is eventually rescued by the hero, whose aria at the beginning of Act 1 is typical of romantic melodies by later Russian composers. In his next opera, Vadim (1832), Verstovsky deliberately introduced ‘Russian’ characteristics which, however, are rather flavourless; again there is the element of Weberian evil magic, and a descent into hell in Act 2.

Neither opera was successful, but they gave Verstovsky the experience necessary to produce his runaway success, Askold's Grave, which received its première in Moscow in 1835 and its first St Petersburg performance in 1841. The libretto was based by Mikhail Zagoskin on his historical novel published in 1833 to an acclaim in which he was hailed as a Russian Scott. Verstovsky asked him for two changes: first, the heroine Nadezhda should not be of noble birth (for nobles and their followers would not use folk materials) but a Christian fisherman's daughter; secondly, she and her lover, ward of the ruler of as yet pagan Kievan Rus', should not finally cast themselves into the swollen river Dnepr from Prince Askold's burial mound but should be pardoned and rescued in the nick of time. The work thus follows paths well worn in previous Russian operas; it was a ‘rescue opera’ with folk intonations, especially noticeable in two fishermen's choruses in Act 1. Rescue elements are to be found, for example, in Cavos's Ivan Susanin (1815), and there are folk intonations in the Cavos opera; such material had often been used, as in Titov's unaccompanied women's chorus in Act 1 of his opera The Bridal Party (1808), where the imitation of folksong and the periodic coalescence of the parts into unison is similar to Verstovsky's material in Askold's Grave. Clearly, Verstovsky had carefully calculated the formulae for his opera.

The most important characters are neither the passive heroine, Nadezhda (soprano), two of whose arias, in time-honoured opera-vaudeville fashion, had been taken from pre-existing songs with quite different words, nor Vseslav (tenor), who sings only in ensembles. The enigmatic, rather ominous figure of the Unknown (Neizvestnïy; bass) and Toropka Golovan (tenor), a gudok-playing skomorokh (jester), dominate the stage, and initiate all the action and have the strongest arias. The finest scene of continuous music is the ‘finale’ of Act 3, in which the action is taken forward without need for the spoken word; it is longer than all the musical numbers of the rest of the act put together. It includes a song for Toropka, at the concluding climax of which a well-known patter drinking-song of 18th-century origin is introduced, the only true ‘folk’ material employed by Verstovsky; this is one of many instances of vaudeville style. Another of Toropka's numbers, ‘Uzh kak veyet veterok’ (‘How the Wind blows’), became the most popular operatic song of its day, beyond anything subsequently written by Glinka. At the beginning of Act 4 there is a scene where magic is used to find the hiding lovers: here, set in the witch's ramshackle hut complete with broom, cat, owl and cauldron, the most pronounced influence of Der Freischütz is to be found, with an obvious debt to the Wolf's Glen music. The influence of Weber can also be heard in the sweeping cadences and the shapes of phrases.

Verstovsky's next completed opera, Toska po rodine (‘Homesickness’; 1839) mostly takes place in contemporary Spain, with feeble attempts at Spanish idioms (according to Findeyzen). Not much more successful were his last two historical operas, Son nayavu, ili Churova dolina (‘A Waking Dream, or Chur's Valley’; 1844) and Gromoboy (1857), though the latter, which was through-composed, enjoyed a lavish production.

Verstovsky died resenting that what he felt was his just position as the originator of truly Russian elements in music had been usurped by Glinka. As early as December 1836, after the first performances of A Life for the Tsar, he had written to Prince Odoyevsky, one of the writers who had lavishly praised the Glinka opera, claiming pride of place: ‘I shall not and cannot yield the claim of precedence [to Glinka]’. Disagreeing with the contemporary assessment of Verstovsky, the critic and composer Aleksandr Serov, while acknowledging Glinka's superiority in some respects, praised aspects of Verstovsky's music, including the female chorus and the ensuing alla polacca dance at the beginning of Act 3 of Askold's Grave, and he was influenced by Verstovsky in his own historical opera, Rogneda. But no other composer of consequence owed any significant debt to Verstovsky. It was not so much that he and Glinka both used Russian folk material or intonations as what they did with them: the chorus praised by Serov is very simply harmonized and repeated once in strophic fashion. That naive treatment cannot be compared with Glinka's harmonically inventive orchestral accompaniment of, for example, the melody in the chorus of Persian slave-girls at the beginning of Act 3 of Ruslan and Lyudmila, whose sinuous ‘oriental’ triplets influenced, among others, Balakirev (in Tamara) and Rimsky-Korsakov (in Sheherazade). There is nothing in Verstovsky's music to compare with Glinka's originality and his fertile imagination.

Yet Verstovsky's music was known by everybody, from the greatest composers to the humblest amateurs (who made arrangements of his popular pieces). In 1892, Rimsky-Korsakov mentioned Askold's Grave to his ‘Boswell’, V.V. Yastrebtsev, if only to agree, tongue in cheek, with the (ill-founded) rumour that it must have been composed by Varlamov and not Verstovsky, since ‘everything else by Verstovsky is terribly bad’. Also in the 1890s, the critic K.N. Chernov tried (unsuccessfully) to persuade that great piano improviser Balakirev to write down his extemporized variations on the csárdás from Gromoboy.

Nevertheless, it is for Askold's Grave that Verstovsky is remembered. It was written quickly for the forces at his disposal early in the 1835–6 Moscow season, the wholly spoken parts (15 out of a total of 28) being taken by actors and the small sung parts by singer-actors or chorus members, with only three full-blown operatic parts. With this rather motley assembly he put together the last and best opera of the old school, containing elements of previous Russian operatic successes mixed with the Western operatic ingredients he admired. The reason he failed to match Askold's Grave in his later operas may be that he was trying too hard to achieve something beyond his powers. Although these works suffered from tame harmonic writing, unimaginative orchestration and amateurish counterpoint, his melodic fecundity and innate feeling for the stage ensure for him a small but important place in the history of Russian music.

WORKS

MSS mainly in RU-SPsc and SPtob

operas

all first performed at Moscow, Bol'shoy Theatre; excerpts from all complete operas in 1963 edition of ‘Askold's Grave’

Pan Tvardovsky [Twardowski] (romantic magic op, 3, S. Aksakov and M.N. Zagoskin), 24 May/5 June 1828; excerpts in IRMO, iii, ov. [condensed] in Rabinovich

Vadim, ili Probuzhdeniye dvenadtsati spyashchikh dev [Vadim, or The Awakening of the Twelve Sleeping Maidens] (magic-romantic op, prol., 3, S.P. Shevïryov, A.A. Shakhovskoy, Aksakov and Zagoskin, after V.A. Zhukovsky: Gromoboy, or The 12 Sleeping Maidens, pt ii), 28 Nov/10 Dec 1832; excerpts in IRMO, iii, and Rabinovich.

Askol'dova mogila [Askold's Grave] (romantic op, 4, Zagoskin, after his novel), 16/28 Sept 1835, vs (St Petersburg, 1836); vs, ed. B.V. Dobrokhotov (Moscow, 1963) [incl. material from all Verstovsky's other operas]; vs, ed. M. Shcherbakova (Leningrad, 1983) [incl. all orig. spoken dialogue]; excerpts in IRMO, iii

Zheleznoye pero [The Iron Quill] (N. Polevoy), 1836–7, inc., unperf.

Toska po rodine [Homesickness] (comic op, 3, Zagoskin, after his novel), 21 Aug/2 Sept 1839

Son nayavu, ili Churova dolina [A Waking Dream, or Chur's Valley] (magic op, 3, Shakhovskoy, after Cossack Lugansky [V.I. Dal']: A Night at the Crossroads and Slavonic legends), 1841, 28 Nov/10 Dec 1844

Gromoboy (grand fantastic op, 4, D.T. Lensky, after Zhukovsky: Gromoboy, pt i), 1853–4, 24 Jan/5 Feb 1857, vs (Moscow, 1857); excerpts in IRMO, iii

other stage

Edition: A. Verstovskiy: romansï, pesni i kupletï iz muzïki k vodevilyam i p'yesam [Romances, songs and couplets from music to vaudevilles and plays], ed. A.V. Voynova (Moscow, 1971) [V]

Opera-vaudevilles: Kto brat, kto sestra, ili Obman za obmanom [Which is the Brother, Which the Sister, or Ruse upon Ruse] (I.A. Griboyedov and P. Vyazemsky), Moscow, 24 Jan/5 Feb 1824, vs (Moscow, 1949); 32 others (excerpts from 16 in V [full list in GroveO])

Incid music: Gesiod i Omer soperniki [The Rivalry of Homer and Hesiod] (K. Batyushkov), 1827; Vïkup barda [The Bard's Ransom] (I. Dmitriyev, N. Yazïkov), 1827

Erato's Hymn, S solo, in prol to Torzhestvo Muz [The Triumph of the Muses] (Dmitriyev), for opening of Bol'shoy Theatre, Moscow, 1825 [other music by Alyab'yev and F.E. Shol'ts (Scholtz)]

Songs for dramas: Roslavev, 1832; Kremnyov, 1839

choral

Pevets vo stane russkikh voinov [Singer in the Camp of the Russian Warriors] (hymn, Zhukovsky), unison vv, military band, 1827

Hymn on the death of Aleksandr I (D. Khvostov), chorus, orch, 1825

Tri obednya [3 Liturgies], 1830

Velik Gospod' [Great is the Lord] (hymn, Yazïkov), chorus, orch, 1831

Cantata for the inauguration of the Moscow Society of Lovers of Russian Literature, reciter + hp, chorus, orch, c1850

Cantata for the centenary of Moscow University (Shervïryov), 1855

Vostorg voinov [The Warriors' Rapture] (N.V. Kukol'nik), ?1856

songs

all for solo voice and piano

Edition: A. Verstovskiy: izbrannïye romansï i pesni [Selected Romances and Songs] (Moscow, 1980) [IRP]

Bednïy pevets [The Poor Singer] (Zhukovsky), 1823; Chornaya shal' [The Black Shawl] (A.S. Pushkin), 1823, IRP; Kolokol'chik [The Little Bell], 1823, IRP; Tri pesni skal'da [Three Songs of the Skald] (Zhukovsky, after L. Uhland: Die drei Lieder), 1823, IRP; Dubrava shumit [The Oak Trees Rustle] (Zhukovsky), 1827; Kak trava v polyakh [Like Grass in the Fields], 1827; Kto pri zvezdakh, pri lune [Who by the Stars, the Moon], 1827; Luna srebrila tok spokoynïy [The Moon Silvered the Quiet Stream] (‘A.M.’), 1827; Tsïganskaya pesnya: Starïy muzh, groznïy muzh [Gypsy Song: Old Husband, Cruel Husband] (Pushkin), 1827, IRP

Ya schastliv bïl [I was Happy] (Dmitriyev), 1827; Gispanskaya pesnya: Nochnoy zefir struit efir [Hispanic Song: The Night Breeze Stirs the Air] (Pushkin), 1827, IRP; Son [A dream] (Zhukovsky), 1828; Dva vorona [The Two Ravens] (Pushkin), ?1820s, IRP; Ne govori ni da, ni net [Say neither Yes, nor No] (N.F. Pavlov), 1830; Pevets [The Singer] (Pushkin), 1831, IRP; Nochnoy smotr [The Night Review] (Zhukovsky, after J.C. von Zedlitz: Die nächtliche Heerschau), ?1830s; other songs, unpubd

other works

Orch: Polonaise for the coronation ball (for Nikolay I), 1826; Festival Ov., for the reopening of the Malïy Theatre, Moscow, 1841; Polonaise, for the opening of the Great Palace in the Kremlin, 1849

Pf: 2 valses, 1809; 2 Russ. songs with variations, 1815; March, 1815; Sonata, c1817; 2 mazurkas, E, B, 1827; Mazurka, C, 1828; Valse, Mazurka and Polonaise, c1840

(1) Gaetano (Appolino Balthasar) Vestris

BIBLIOGRAPHY

GroveO (R. Taruskin; also ‘Askold's Grave’)

IRMO

N. Findeyzen: ‘Aleksey Nikolayevich Verstovskiy’, EIT 1896–7, suppl.2 (1898), 86–134

K.N. Chernov: ‘M.A. Balakirev (po vospominaniyam i pis'mam)’ [Balakirev according to reminiscences and letters], Muzïkal'naya letopis', iii (1925), 51–2

A.S. Rabinovich: Russkaya opera do Glinki [Russian opera before Glinka] (Moscow, 1948)

D.B. Dobrokhotov: A.N. Verstovskiy: zhizn' teatral'naya deyatel'nost, opernoye tvorchestvo [Life, theatrical activities, operatic works] (Moscow and Leningrad, 1950)

B. Shteynpress: ‘Glinka, Verstovsky i drugiye’ [and others], M.I. Glinka: sbornik materialov i stat'yey (Moscow and Leningrad, 1950), 120–69

B. Asaf'yev: ‘Kompozitor iz pleyadï slavyano-rossiyskikh bardov: Aleksey Nikolayevich Verstovskiy’ [A composer from the galaxy of Slavonic-Russian bards], Izbrannïye trudï, ed. T.N. Livanova and others, iv (Moscow, 1955)

A.N. Serov: ‘Verstovskiy i yeo znacheniye dlya russkogo iskusstva’ [Verstovsky and his significance for Russian art] [orig. pubd 1862], Izbrannïye stat'i, ed. G.N. Khubov, ii (Moscow, 1957), 44–8

A. Gozenpud: Muzïkal'nïy teatr v Rossii (Leningrad, 1959)

V.V. Yastrebtsev: Nikolay Andreyevich Rimskiy-Korsakov: vospominaniya [Reminiscences], ed. A.V. Ossovsky, i (Leningrad, 1959), 52; (Eng. trans., 1985), 19

A. Gozenpud: Russkiy opernïy teatr XIX veka 1836–1856 (Leningrad, 1969), 257–91

B. Vol'man: Russkiye notnïye izdaniya: XIX – nachala XX veka [Russian editions of music: 19th – beginning of the 20th century] (Leningrad, 1970), appx, 182–204 [incl. details of musical albums pubd 1823–54; music from opera-vaudevilles and songs by Verstovsky were included in these each year, 1823–7, thereafter periodically until 1840]

R. Taruskin: Opera and Drama in Russia as Preached and Practised in the 1860s (Ann Arbor, 1981), 102–11

N.A. Vol'per: ‘A.N. Verstovskiy’, Russkaya muzïkal'naya literatura, ed. E.L. Frid and others, i (Leningrad, 7/1982), 118–34

G. Abraham: ‘The Operas of Verstovsky’, 19CM, vii (1983–4), 326–35

S. Karlinsky: Russian Drama from its Beginnings to the Age of Pushkin (Berkeley, 1985)

Yu. Keldïsh: ‘A.N. Verstovskiy’, Istoriya russkoy muzïki, v (Moscow, 1988), 97–131

Versus

(Lat.).

A general term used to designate, among many other things, a particular kind of Latin sacred song popular from the 11th century on. Its distinguishing features are rhyme and accentual scansion in the text; frequent but varied and imaginative use of strophe, couplet and refrain; and clear, songlike phrases in the melody.

In so far as it is equivalent to the English ‘verse’, the Latin versus is a frequently used formal term in early medieval music, and perhaps one of the most confusing. There are at least three main contexts in which the term is used, with many additional shades of meaning. The first is specifically that of metrics. Augustine (De musica) described the versus as the metric unit after which one ‘turns back’ (revertere) to begin the next line or ‘verse’. A versus, therefore, is either a line of metric poetry, or a poem using a pattern of such lines. The opposite of verse in this sense is prose: prosa, from prorsus oratio, i.e. ‘straight-on’ diction with no (regular) line pattern. For the early Middle Ages the versus often meant a particular kind of pattern, one for which a classical quantitative model existed. This was most often the dactylic hexameter. Carolingians tended to use versus to label the thousands of hexameters and elegiac distichs that they composed.

The second context is the Latin Psalter. Even though Jerome's translation resulted in the psalms being in prose not verse, every psalm was divided into ‘verses’ (as was all scripture); when sung to a psalm tone, the tone or formula was used once for each verse.

The third context is the most important for music, and the hardest to specify. Many kinds of Gregorian chant (and other repertories), e.g. introit, gradual, alleluia, offertory, communion, responsory, use versus to designate a secondary section – a Nebensatz (in popular music a ‘bridge’, or actually ‘verse’ as opposed to ‘chorus’). In this context versus has nothing to do with metrics or with psalmody (even though the text of a gradual verse, for example, is often a verse from a psalm), but rather has to do with an episodic musical function that needs to be much more closely identified.

In medieval historiography the term has become most prominent in the first context, but by a circuitous route. The words of the Gregorian repertory are in prose; items in verse are rare, and that, apparently, for reasons of principle. But post-Gregorian medieval music – Latin, vernacular, sacred, secular – is predominantly in verse of some kind, and there was a whole procession of different kinds. In between the Carolingian forms of versus and prosa there gradually appeared new forms sometimes derived from classical models, sometimes invented anew. Here the traditional quantitative procedures were often replaced with syllable-count, word accent being handled with freedom and imagination or simply ignored, depending on the choice and ability of the author. There is great variety in technique, with little or no consistent terminology to describe it.

A certain group of pieces has been described as ‘sequences with double cursus’ (‘sequences’ because of a couplet structure a¹a²b¹b²c¹c² …; ‘double cursus’ because of a large-scale melodic repeat A¹A²); examples are Rex caeli (see Phillips and Huglo) and Sancte Paule (N. de Goede, ed.: The Utrecht Prosarium, MMN, vi, 1965, p.lxi) and others studied by Spanke and Stäblein. But these pieces can just as well be treated as instances of ‘Carolingian versus’; in any case their melodic phrase structure is basically distinct from that of the sequence repertory. A famous collection, written in the late 9th or early 10th century, of versus of many kinds, including classicist models (Boethius) as well as more recent products survives in F-Pn lat.1154; some melodies, unfortunately indecipherable, are provided. CH-SGs 381 contains some distinctive St Gallen versus.

The influence of various metrical models, the Ambrosian hymn in particular, and the steady pressure towards rhyme and an attendant regularity in accentual pattern combined to produce in the 11th century a new kind of versus, one which can be more specifically designated as ‘rhyming, scanning versus’. As in medieval verse generally, the base of the scansion is provided by the syllable-count of the verses. What characterizes the new versus of the 11th century is a high degree of regularity in the placement of word accents. These accents occur in one of two modular patterns (always with some slight irregularity or inconsistency): either every other syllable, or every third syllable, carries an explicit or implicit accent; but lines in the two-syllabled pattern can alternate with lines in the three-syllabled pattern with great variety and originality. This accented regularity in verse structure is confirmed by an intense use of rhyme, with both end-rhyme and internal rhyme being used to an extent not exceeded in any other phase of European literature. Couplet and strophe are also highly developed; refrains, both simple and complex, are very frequent.

In addition, many of the musical features of the 11th-century versus can be derived from the hymn of the preceding century; yet there is apparent in the versus melodies a lilt, a lyricism not previously discernible. Some melodies, furthermore, suggest by their typical procedures a derivation from the kind of intonation formula used for the versicles of Matins, which have, in their simplest form, a reciting note with a short descending terminal melisma.

Incorporation of the Matins versicle Benedicamus Domino makes such a piece a Benedicamus-versus, a category important in the 12th century. The St Martial manuscript F-Pn lat.1139, from which the following example is taken, contains the most famous early collection of such versus.

Vállus móntem, lápis fóntem, spína rósam speciósam édidit;
Vírga núcem, vírgo dúcem, máter fácta sed intácta rédidit;
Stélla sólem, vírgo prólem, cáro númen párit lúmen cécitas,
Et látuit quod pátuit sub servíli cárne víli déitas;
Érgo nos púro ánimo
Benedicámus dómino!

The liturgical use of Benedicamus-versus can be surmised from the liturgical tag incorporated at the ends of the stanzas. But apart from such tags, the liturgical function is known only from the assignment of items in an antiphoner or gradual (either by rubric or position in the series), or by position in an analogous book. The Offices of Sens and Beauvais provide much information for the versus as well as other kinds of medieval chant; but the Aquitanian manuscripts are not much help in this respect.

What the contents of F-Pn lat.1139 do show is that the Latin versus is an important point of departure for two other developments. First, the manuscript contains the earliest Provençal songs, an indication of the central role played by the Aquitanian versus in the development of the troubadour repertory. Secondly, it contains the first examples of Aquitanian polyphony, whose primary form is that of the polyphonic versus: text structure is exactly that of the monophonic versus, and musical structure is so similar that one of the two polyphonic parts could often be mistaken for a monophonic versus melody. This kind of piece was later often called a conductus.

The repertory of 11th-century versus is largely unknown, except to specialists; very few examples have been printed. The most accessible ones are in the items cited below by Crocker, Stäblein (1966 and MGG1) and Gennrich.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

MGG1 (‘Saint-Martial’; B. Stäblein)

H. Spanke: ‘St. Martial Studien’, Zeitschrift für französiche Sprache und Literatur, liv (1930–31), 282–317, 385–422; lvi (1932–33), 450

H. Spanke: ‘Rhythmen- und Sequenzen-Studien’, Studi medievale, new ser., iv (1931), 286–320

F. Gennrich: Grundriss einer Formenlehre des mittelalterlichen Liedes (Halle, 1932/R), 209–10, 235

B. Stäblein: ‘Von der Sequenz zum Strophenlied: eine neue Sequenzenmelodie “archaischen” Stiles’, Mf, vii (1954), 257–68

B. Stäblein: Hymnen: die mittelalterlichen Hymnenmelodien des Abendlandes, Monumenta monodica medii aevi, i (1956), 478–500

R.L. Crocker: A History of Musical Style (New York, 1966), 49–51

B. Stäblein: ‘Zur Musik des Ludus de Antichristo’, Zum 70. Geburtstag von Joseph Müller-Blattau, ed. C.-H. Mahling (Kassel, 1966), 312–27

L. Treitler: The Aquitanian Repertories of Sacred Monody in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (diss., Princeton U., 1967)

E. Jammers: ‘Rhythmen und Hymnen in einer St Gallen Hs. des 9. Jh’, Festschrift Bruno Stäblein, ed. M. Ruhnke (Kassel, 1967), 134–42

W. Arlt: Ein Festoffizium des Mittelalters aus Beauvais in seiner liturgischen und musikalischen Bedeutung (Cologne, 1970)

S. Fuller: ‘Hidden Polyphony – a Reappraisal’, JAMS, xxiv (1971), 169–92

M.B. Berendes: The Versus and its Use in the Medieval Roman Liturgy (diss., U. of Pittsburgh, 1973)

N. Phillips and M. Huglo: ‘The Versus Rex caeli: Another Look at the So-Called Archaic Sequence’, Journal of the Plainsong and Medieval Music Society, v (1982), 36–43

RICHARD L. CROCKER

Versus, Antonio il.

See Il Verso, Antonio.

Vert.

See Ouvert.

Verte

(Lat.: ‘turn’).

See Volti subito.

Verticalization.

The simultaneous statement, in a 12-note composition, of two or more adjacent members of a 12-note set (see Twelve-note composition). Verticalization is thus significant in that it fails to define any ordering of pitch classes. In early atonal works, such as Schoenberg’s Piano Piece op.11 no.1, a ‘cell’ or collection of pitch classes, under transpositional equivalence, is used to generate chords as well as lines. In the tonal system ‘cells’ such as triads function both as horizontal and vertical determinants, but in atonality there are not the same methods of creating functional differentiation explicitly between vertical and horizontal events (as contained in the concept of a passing note or neighbour note, for example).

PAUL LANSKY, GEORGE PERLE

Vertical pianoforte.

See Upright pianoforte.

Vertonung

(Ger.).

See Text-setting.

Verulus.

See Vetulus de Anagnia, Johannes.

Verve.

American jazz and popular record company. It was established in Los Angeles in 1956 by Norman Granz, whose earlier labels Clef and Norgran were absorbed into the new company. Clef, formed by 1946, had functioned as a subsidiary of Mercury until 1953, when Granz briefly ran it independently; it issued recordings by groups associated with his organization Jazz at the Philharmonic and by many leading swing and bop musicians, notably Charlie Parker. Later in 1953 Granz formed Norgran, which reissued material from Clef and produced new recordings predominantly by swing and bop combos. With Verve, Granz continued this policy, reissuing Clef and Norgran recordings and organizing outstanding new swing and bop sessions by veteran players, including Stan Getz and Dizzy Gillespie. Concurrently, Ella Fitzgerald's series of recorded ‘songbooks’ (to 1961) were of even greater significance; carrying Verve into the realm of American popular song, these albums offered definitive interpretations of the music of Porter, Rodgers and Hart, and the Gershwins.

In 1960 MGM bought the company from Granz, but it continued to issue new recordings, most notably those directed by Creed Taylor between 1961 and 1967. Numerous sessions were issued by Columbia and HMV in England and Barclay and Blue Star in France.

In 1965, under Jerry Schoenbaum, the company branched out into folk, blues and rock music. A series called Verve Folkways was set up in association with the Folkways company owned by Moses Asch. Artists appearing on the label included Mark Spoelstra, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Dave Van Ronk, Doc Watson and Dock Boggs. Another series, Verve Forecast, issued recordings by young white blues groups such as the Blues Project led by Al Kooper. The Forecast roster also included Ritchie Havens, one of the few black performers of the American folk revival. Verve benefited from the services of Tom Wilson, who produced one of the most influential albums in rock music history, The Velvet Underground and Nico and signed up Frank Zappa, but Verve's greatest commercial success came from the Righteous Brothers, notably their 1966 hit record You're My Soul and Inspiration.

In 1967 Polydor purchased Verve and the following year the company ceased to operate. Items from its catalogue continued to be re-released in the 1970s and 80s by affiliated companies, including an ambitious reissue project by Polygram, using the Verve label, on which it also began to put out new albums. Granz retained the rights to Art Tatum's Verve recordings and later released them on his new label Pablo.

Revitalized from the late 1980s under the direction of Richard Seidal, Verve again became an important jazz label. While taking over the jazz labels Antilles, Bird-ology (from France) and JMT (from Germany), and introducing two subsidiary labels, a revived Verve Forecast and the new Verve World (the latter devoted to ‘world music’), it offered important new jazz sessions from such established players as Getz, Abbie Lincoln, Betty Carter and Joe Henderson, and recorded many young musicians. In 1998 Polygram was taken over by Seagram leading to the merger of Verve with other jazz labels, such as GRP and Impulse, under the rubric ‘Verve Music Group’.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A. Morgan: ‘The Verve History of Jazz’, JJI, xxxi/4 (1978), 18–19

M. Ruppli and B. Potter: The Clef/Verve Labels: a Discography (New York, 1986)

B. Primack: ‘Label Watch – Verve – Living up to the Legacy’, JT, xxiii/9 (1993), 24–5

BARRY KERNFELD, DAVE LAING

Verykivs'ky, Mykhailo Ivanovych

(b Kremianets, Volhynia region, 8/20 Nov 1896; d Kiev, 14 June 1962). Ukrainian composer and conductor. He attended the Kiev Conservatory where he studied with Yavorsky, graduating in 1923. In 1919 he had already been appointed director of the Ukrainian National Chorus and later ran the Leontovych Society (1921–8). He later conducted both the Kiev Opera (1926–8) and the Khar'kiv Opera (1928–35) and was invited to appear as guest conductor in Kiev, Khar'kiv, Moscow and – during World War II – Ufa. For a while (1928–30) he was head of VUTORM, the All-Ukrainian Society of Revolutionary Musicians. He was appointed to teach at the Lysenko Institute while still a student and later taught, from 1946 as a professor, at the Kiev Conservatory, retiring in 1960. He was the first Ukrainian composer of the Soviet era to write a ballet – Pan Kanyovs'ky, 1931 – and led the way for many of his compatriots in other genres. The influences of constructivism and Expressionism are evident in his first mature works such as the Himny svyatoi Terezy (‘Hymns of St Theresa’, 1923) and Tanez' in voyovnychyy marsh (‘Dance and Battle March’, 1924); during the mid-1920s he wrote much innovative music. Near the end of his life, during the Krushchyov thaw, he returned to the Yavorskian aesthetic which informed his early works with the 11 Little Preludes (1957–8) which delightfully recall Prokofiev's Visions fugitives. He also developed a personal manner of varying folksong material over ostinato melodic patterns. One of the first works to employ this technique is the attractive orchestral suite Vesnyanky (‘Spring Songs’) of 1924. His works of the 1930s, 40s and 50s continue this trend and reflect the Ukrainian reaction to socialist realism. He became an Honoured Artist of the Ukrainian SSR in 1944.

WORKS

(selective list)

Stage: Pan Kanyovs'ky/Bondarivna (ballet, 4), 1930, rev. 1953; Dila nebesni [Heavenly Acts] (op, 1, after O. Vyshnya), 1931; Sotnyk [The Lieutenant] (op, 2 scenes, T.H. Shevchenko), 1938, Odessa, 1939; Naimychka [The Maid] (op, 3, 5 scenes, Verykivs'ky and K. Herasymenko, after Shevchenko), 1939–43, Irkutsk, 1943, rev. 1956–60; Bayka pro budyaka i troyandu [The Fable of the Thistle and the Rose] (op-étude, L. Hlibov), 1948; Vtikachi [Fugitives] (op-étude, 3 fragments, after M. Kotsiubyns'ky), 1948, Kiev Radio, 1948; Slava [Glory] (op, 4, after V. Huseyva), 1955–62

Choral: Haidamaky (fantasia, Shevchenko), solo vv, chorus, pf, 1919; Rekviyem pamyati M. Leontovycha [Requiem in Memory of M. Leontovych] (P. Tychyna), B, chorus, pf, 1921; Duma pro divku-branku Marusiu Bohuslavku [Elegy for the Captive Marusia Bohuslavka] (orat), solo vv, chorus, pf, 1923, orchd 1954; 1905 rik [The Year 1905] (O. Oles), 1925; Zhovten [October] (cant., M. Ryl's'ky), chorus, orch, 1936; Hniv slovyan [Anger of the Slavs] (cant., R. Stiyens'ky), B, chorus, orch, 1941; Varshavskyy tsykl [Warsaw Cycle] (L. Dmyterka), solo vv, chorus, orch, 1952; Vesnyana suita [Spring Suite] (I. Franko), 1956

Other vocal: Himny svyatoi Terezy [Hymns of St Teresa] (M.V. Semenko), 1923; 4 Romances (L. Ukraïnka), 1938, rev. 1958; 2 Romances (Franko), 1939–40; V dni viyny [Days of War], song cycle, 1942–3; Monoloh Skovorody [Monologue of Skovoroda] (Tychyna), 1944; Monoloh Yaroslava Mudrohd [Monologue of Yaroslav Mudryi], 1945; Bdzhilky zolotysyi [Golden Bees] (Ryl's'ky), S, 1948; Pisniakh Safo [Songs of Sappho], 1958; 3 Romances (Y. Slovats'ky), 1958

Orch: Vesnyanky [Spring Songs], suite, 1924, rev. 1956; Berezil, ov., 1925; Tatars'ka, suite, 1928, rev. 1948; Petro Konashevych-Sahaidachnyy, sym. poem, 1944; Ukraïns'ka Siuita [Ukrainian Suite], vn, orch, 1948; Sportyvne svyato v Bershadi [A Sports Holiday in Bershad], sym. panorama, 1951

Chbr and solo inst: 3 Preludes and Valse, pf, 1920; Sonata-Allergo, pf, 1923; Str Qt, a, 1923; Tanez' in voyovnychyy marsh [Dance and Battle March], pf, 1924; 2 Preludes, pf, 1939; Volyns'ki akvareli [Volhynis's Aquarelles], pf, 1943; Pf Conc., 1950; Prelude, Nocturne and Dance, pf, 1952; 11 Little Preludes, pf, 1957–8; 8 Novelettes, wind qt, 1960; Rondo, vc, pf, 1960

Film scores, incid music, c70 popular songs, folksong arrs.

Principal publisher: Soviet State Publishing House

BIBLIOGRAPHY

N. Herasymova-Persyds'ka: M.I. Verykivskyy (Kiev, 1959)

N. Shurova: Mykhailo Verykivskyy (Kiev, 1972)

N. Toloshnyak: ‘Kamerna opera M. Verykivs'koho’ [Verykivs'ky's Chamber Opera], Muzyka [Kiev] (1986), no.6, pp.20–21

VIRKO BALEY

Veselá [Štěpánková], Alena

(b Brno, 7 July 1923). Czech organist. She studied the organ with Michálek at Brno Conservatory (1942–7) and at the Janáček Academy (1947–51). Her first appearances abroad date from the early 1960s and she has given recitals in most important music centres of Europe, in the USA and in Canada. Her repertory covers all periods of organ music up to the present day. She introduced organ concertos by Poulenc and Hindemith to Czechoslovakia and has given premières of works by such contemporary Czech composers as Ištvan, Jan Novák and Eben, some of which have been dedicated to her. She has played as a soloist with many leading Czech and foreign orchestras. In 1964 she began teaching the organ at the Janáček Academy in Brno; she also acts as a member of organ competition juries and is an artistic adviser on organ construction. She was elected chancellor of the Janáček Academy for two periods in the 1990s. Her recordings include much of Bach’s organ music, organ concertos by old Czech masters and organ pieces by Czech contemporary composers (Eben, Parsch and Kabeláč).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

P. Skála, ed.: Čeští koncertní umělci: instrumentalisté (Czech concert artists: instrumentalists] (Prague, 1983), 167–8

ALENA NĚMCOVÁ

Veselinović-Hofman, Mirjana

(b Belgrade, 29 June 1948). Serbian musicologist. She studied musicology at the Academy of Music in Belgrade, graduating in 1971 and taking the master’s degree under Nikola Hercigonja in 1974. She took the doctorate under Radoslav Joksimović at the University of Belgrade in 1981, with a dissertation on the creative presence of the European avant garde in Serbia. She became a professor at the Slavenski Music School in 1972, and in 1973 a professor at the Faculty of Musical Art. She attended the Darmstadt summer courses in 1968 and 1974, and was a visiting lecturer in Rostock in 1997; DAAD in Cologne (1997). Her chief areas of interest are contemporary music and multimedia; she has introduced new trends in Serbian musicology, and is Editor-in-chief of the international magazine for music New Sound.

WRITINGS

Krešimir Baranović: stvaralački uspon [Baranović: his creative rise] (Belgrade, 1979)

Stvaralačka prisutnost evropske avangarde u nas [The creative presence of the European avant garde in Serbia] (diss., U. of Belgrade, 1981; Belgrade, 1983) [with Eng. summary]

‘Konjovič i Janáček: odnos izmedju stila i metoda’ [Konjović and Janáček: the relationship between style and method], Život i delo Petra Konjovića: Belgrade 1983, 51–7 [with Eng. summary]

‘Duh antifolklora u savremenoj srpskoj muzičkoj kulturi’ [The spirit of anti-folklorism in contemporary Serbian musical culture], Folklor i njegova umetnička transpozicija [I]: Belgrade 1987, 219–31 [with Eng. summary]

‘Objavljeni tekstovi Vladana Radovanovića o muzici: estetika kao središnja ideja’ [Vladan Radovanović’s published texts on music: aesthetics as a central idea], Zbornik Matice srpske za scenske umetnosti i muziku, no.1 (1987), 187–208 [with Eng. summary]

‘Smisao mimesisa u poetici Gustava Mahlera’ [The meaning of mimesis in the poetics of Gustav Mahler], MZ, xxiii (1987), 79–88

ed.: Aspekti interpretacije: Belgrade 1988

‘Folklor u muziči postmoderne’, Folklor i njegova umetnička transpozicija II: Belgrade 1988, 261–70

‘Vladan Radovanović i problematika vokovizuela’ [Radovanović and the problems of vocovisual], Zbornik Matice srpske za scenske umetnosti i muziku, no.3 (1988), 203–36 [with Eng. summary]

‘The Subject in Post-Modern Music’, Subjekt v postmodernizmu: Ljubljana 1989 (Ljubljana, 1989), 187–98

‘Folklorni uzorak pred izazovima elektronskog medijuma u muziči postmoderne’ [The Folklore Sample and its Relations with the Electronic Medium in Postmodern Music], Folklor i njegova umetnička transpozicija III: Belgrade 1991, 443–62, 463–87

Umetnost i izvan nje: poetika i stvaralaštvo Vladana Radovanovića [Art and beyond: the poetics and creativity of Vladan Rasovanović] (Novi Sad, 1991)

‘Postmoderno muzičko pozoriste u Srbiji: uvodne napomene o kriterijumima za definiciju’ [Postmodern music theatre in Serbia: introductory remarks on defining criteria for a definition], Srpska muzička scena: Belgrade 1993, 396–405

Fragmenti o muzičkoj postmoderni [Fragments on musical postmodernism] (Novi Sad, 1997)

ROKSANDA PEJOVIĆ

Veselka, Josef

(b Nové Město, 7 March 1910; d Prague, 22 Oct 1992). Czech choral conductor. He studied music, classical philology and philosophy at Brno University (1929–35) and studied with Steinmann (1931–2) at the choral conductors’ school of the vocal ensemble Opus, of which he was a member and later assistant conductor. In 1931 he founded a male-voice choir, Akademické pěvecké sdružení Moravan (‘Academic Singing Association Moravan’), which he continued to conduct after his departure in 1959 for Prague, where he became conductor of the Prague Philharmonic Choir for 22 years. Under his direction both ensembles achieved high reputations. Veselka’s thorough knowledge of the human voice and its capabilities enabled him to give lively and convincing interpretations, rich in colour, rhythm and dynamics. With the Moravan ensemble he gave notable performances of the choral works of Křížkovský, Smetana and in particular, Janáček; with the Prague choir he gave larger works, including Stravinsky’s Oedipus rex, Prokofiev’s Aleksandr Nevsky, Berlioz’s Requiem and Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass. Veselka taught choral singing at the Brno and Prague conservatories, the Janáček Academy, Brno, and the Prague Academy of Musical Arts. He also wrote many reviews and articles.

ALENA NĚMCOVÁ

Veselý, Jan Pavel.

See Wessely, Johann.

Vesely, Raimund Friedrich.

See Raymond, Fred.

Vesi, Simone

(b Forlì, c1610; d ?Padua, after 1667). Italian composer. He was a priest. On 13 December 1638 he entered Padua Cathedral as a tenor and shortly afterwards (by 1646, according to Eitner) became a chaplain there. In 1648 he was appointed to take charge of the private chapel of Giorgio Cornaro, Bishop of Padua, and he also retained his positions as singer and chaplain at the cathedral. On 22 August 1647 he competed unsuccessfully for the post of maestro di cappella at the cathedral. He retired from his post as a singer there on 19 December 1667. He may have had some connection with Faenza, because his Messa e salmi (1646) is dedicated to the Archbishop of Faenza. He taught Paolo Bettella.

Vesi’s motets and psalms for solo voice are interesting examples of the concertato style that come close to sacred cantatas: short passages of recitative alternate with passages in an arioso style. The accompanying instruments are used in introductory sinfonias and to punctuate the vocal lines, and they play an integral expressive part in each piece. In several works Vesi made notable use of elegant melodic decoration. Le mascherate (1660) is his only extant volume of secular music; the fanciful titles of the pieces show his interest in the lighter forms of semi-dramatic vocal music.

WORKS

Messa e salmi, 6vv, 2 vn (Venice, 1646)

Motetti e salmi, 1v, insts, in fine le lettanie della Madona, a 4, op.2 (Venice, 1648)

Motetti, 1v, bc, op.3 (Venice, 1652)

Salmi concertati, 3–6vv, insts, con il secondo choro ad lib (Venice, 1656)

Le mascherate, 2–4vv, 2 vn ad lib (Venice, 1660)

Salmi ariosi, 8vv, op.6 (Venice, 1663)

2 works, 3, 7vv, 1659³

4 sacred works, 1, 4vv, insts, bc, D-Bsb (according to Eitner; attrib. ‘Vesi’), S-Uu (tablature, incl. 1 work from 1646 vol.)

Mass, vespers, psalms, 1v, insts, lost (attrib. ‘Vesi’ in inventory compiled 1690 now at Villa Lagarina, nr Rovereto, see Lunelli)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

EitnerQ

R. Lunelli: ‘Le opere di Orlando di Lasso nel Trentino’, NA, iii (1926), 204–10, appx

JUDITH NAGLEY

Vespa, Girolamo

(b Naples, probably c1540–45; d after 1596). Italian composer. He took minor orders in the Franciscan convent at Naples on 26 April 1568. By 1575 he was maestro di cappella at Osimo Cathedral, and in 1584 he became maestro di cappella at Fermo; on 2 September 1584 he was paid 24 florins and, in January 1586, he received a further 16 florins with a supplement of eight scudi. In 1587 he probably stayed for some time in Ascoli, but he retained his post in Fermo until 1591. The dedication of 31 August 1591 of his fourth book of madrigals implies that he had resumed his former position as maestro di cappella at Osimo Cathedral. On 10 June 1596 he was named ‘magister musices’ of his monastic order. He apparently enjoyed a substantial reputation in his own day, both as a composer of church music and as a madrigalist. His works show his considerable contrapuntal skill in maintaining flowing lines while making strict and economical use of material. No stylistic evolution is evident across the four books of madrigals, although the later two bear a more marked mannerist style.

WORKS

all printed works published in Venice

sacred vocal

Psalmi Vespertini … per totum annum occurrentes, falsi bordones super tonos ac Te Deum laudamus modulantibus; itemque canticum divae Mariae, 4, 5vv (1589)

Sacrae cantiones (motecta noncupatae)… in singulis anni festivitatibus concinendae, 4–8vv (1594²), inc.

2 psalms, 3 motets, 5vv, 1590⁷, 1592³, 1609¹ (probably repr.)

secular vocal

Il primo libro de [29] madrigali, 5vv (1570)

Madrigali libro secondo, 4vv (1575), lost, cited in SchmidlD

Il secondo libro de [29] madrigali, 5vv (1576); 2 repr. 1583¹⁴, 1583¹⁵

Il terzo libro de [21] madrigali, 5vv (1590), inc.

Il quarto libro de [21] madrigali, 5vv (1591)

2 madrigals (intabulated for lute), 1594¹⁹, 1600^5a

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BrownI

EitnerQ

GaspariC, ii, iii

RicordiE

SchmidlD

L. Virgili: ‘La cappella musicale della Chiesa metropolitana di Fermo’, NA, vii (1930), 1–86, esp. 28–33, 36, 76, 77, 79, 83

R. Casimiri: ‘Musicisti dell’Ordine dei fratri minori conventuali dei secoli XVI–XVIII’, NA, xvi (1939), 186–99

PIER PAOLO SCATTOLIN

Vespers

(from Lat. vesper: ‘evening’).

A service of the Divine Office, traditionally performed at twilight, at the time when lamps are lit indoors. Among the services celebrated by the early secular churches was an elaborate form of ‘cathedral’ Vespers, many elements of which have survived in the evening Office of the Armenian and East Syrian churches, as well as, to a lesser extent, in the Byzantine church (see Hesperinos), but almost none in the Roman tradition, in which Vespers acquired at a very early date a strongly monastic cast. Cathedral Vespers in the 4th century began with the lucernarium, the lighting of the lamps and the blessing of the new light, after which was sung the ancient hymn Phōs hilaron; a number of psalms followed, including Psalm cxli (Vulgate cxl; this psalm seems to have early associations with the Office) accompanied by incensation, after which various other musical items such as hymns, canticles and responsorial psalms might also be included. A degree of flexibility in the choice of psalms – perhaps a sign of monastic influence – is already apparent even in those areas of western Europe, such as Gaul or Visigothic Spain, for which a cathedral Vespers is recorded. With the absorption of Vespers into the daily cursus of psalm singing, a process that was virtually complete by the time of the Rule of St Benedict (c530), the cathedral elements of Vespers had all but disappeared. A single vestige of the older tradition, though not in fact of Roman origin, is the blessing of the Paschal Candle at Easter.

Vespers begins with the versicle and response Deus in adjutorium followed, in the Roman cursus, by five psalms, each preceded and followed by an antiphon. In an ordinary week, Psalms cix–cxiii (Vulgate numbering) are sung on Sunday, and Psalms cxiv–cxlvii during the rest of the week, five each day, omitting those sung in the other services of the Divine Office. In the monastic use, four psalms are sung each day. For some feasts special series of psalms are chosen: at Christmas, for example, the psalms are cix, cx, cxi, cxxix and cxxxi. On some other feasts the psalms for Sunday are used. But on many days, even when Proper antiphons are provided, the ordinals and breviaries state that the ordinary psalms are to be used, according to the day of the week on which the feast happens to fall (‘psalmi feriales’). In different years, then, as the day of the week changes on which a particular feast falls, some vesper antiphons may be sung with changing psalms. The Roman use is more conservative than the monastic in this respect; it requires specific vesper psalms for relatively few feasts. (See particularly the 1337 Ordinale Exon., ed. J.N. Dalton, i, London, 1907.) After the psalms and antiphons comes a short reading (the capitulum). This is followed in the Roman use by a hymn. In the monastic use (and in some sources following the Roman use in most other respects) a responsory precedes the hymn: this is a full-scale greater responsory, often one that is also sung in Matins. A versicle follows and then an antiphon, rather more elaborate in style than those for the vesper psalms, introducing and following the singing of the Magnificat. The service ends with prayers and Benedicamus Domino.

Vespers and Lauds are similar in several respects: the number of psalms and antiphons, the hymn, the New Testament canticle and its antiphon. There are, however, differences, for Lauds has a unifying theme – the praise of God at sunrise. These differences are particularly evident in its psalms, which are limited in number and represent a selection made from the book of Psalms as a whole. Vespers has a larger number of psalms that are constantly changing, following each other in nearly strict numerical order, which gives it a more varied aspect. In medieval manuscripts, the section for Lauds of a particular feast day often looks entirely different from that for Vespers: whereas full sets of Lauds antiphons are common, frequently all that is given for Vespers is a Magnificat antiphon, since the ferial psalms and antiphons were retained.

On some feast days two Vespers services rather than one are found: first Vespers sung the evening before the feast and second Vespers on the day itself. It might be assumed that first Vespers was the original service, forming the beginning of the liturgical day in an echo of the procedure enjoined upon the Jews in Leviticus xxiii.32: ‘From evening to evening shall you keep your sabbath’. This seems not to have been the case: in the Rule of St Benedict, as in the Roman cursus, the series of vesper psalms began on Sunday, not Saturday. Frequently, however, Proper chants are provided for first Vespers, but not for second Vespers.

In some sources of the 12th and later centuries there are descriptions of a procession after first Vespers for which the words and music celebrate the feast of the day to come. These sources often contain references to one or more stations (stops) for prayers or the singing of particular chants. There seem to be as many formulae for the procession as there are medieval ordinals and processionals; indeed, the floor plan of a particular church, the location of the chapels and altars dedicated to individual saints, and local customs were all factors in determining the course of the procession and its length. The increase in attention to the music of Vespers evident in medieval manuscripts may have come in part from increased interest in processions. The responsory of Vespers, borrowed from Matins, is sometimes sung more elaborately at Vespers than at the earlier service. For example, in the 13th-century monastic antiphoner GB-WO f.160 (PalMus, 1st ser., xii, 1922/R) the response Verbum caro, sung as the penultimate responsory of Christmas Matins, is prescribed again for second Vespers (op. cit., p.33); but in the latter service a long melisma is appended to it. Sometimes prosulas were set to the melismas of vesper responsories, themselves often (as in the preceding instance) not part of the original chant.

There are extensive monophonic additions to Vespers in a manuscript of Sens (see Villetard). There was also some use of polyphony in Vespers in the 12th and 13th centuries. One important source of Vespers polyphony is the Beauvais manuscript GB-Lbl Eg.2615. Some of the polyphony consists of settings of texts added to the embellished first Vespers of the feast of the Circumcision in the same manuscript. One group of these added texts comes between Deus in adjutorium and the antiphon for the first psalm; the monophonic additions are the Alleluia, Veni Sancte Spiritus (replacing the simpler alleluia at the end of Deus in adjutorium), Haec est clara die, Salve festa dies, Laetemur gaudiis and Christus manens. The polyphonic version of the first of these is the motet (really a three-voice organum whose upper voices have the same text) Veni doctor previe/Veni sancte. Christus manens is also set as a three-voice organum in Notre Dame style.

Later in the service another chant, the responsory, is set polyphonically. The treatment of this at Beauvais, in the Confirmatum est (transformed by a trope into Confirma nos Christe), is uniquely complex. A number of polyphonic arrangements of vesper responsories made at Paris formed part of the Magnus liber de antiphonario (in the manuscripts containing works of the Notre Dame composers). These vesper responsories, which one expects only in manuscripts of the monastic cursus, often appear in manuscripts that otherwise have characteristics of the Roman cursus – for example, five, rather than four, vesper psalms.

The hymn usually following the vesper responsory is occasionally replaced: in both first and second Vespers at Beauvais it is replaced by a prosa – Laetabundus in the former and Hac clara die in the latter. Although the rubrics at Beauvais do not call for polyphonic performance of the Benedicamus Domino or its paraphrase Super omnes alias at second Vespers, there are numerous polyphonic works of this type in the manuscripts of the period, and the end of Vespers seems a likely place for them to have been sung.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

H. Villetard: Office de Pierre de Corbeil (Paris, 1907)

D.G. Hughes: ‘Liturgical Polyphony at Beauvais in the Thirteenth Century’, Speculum, xxxiv (1959), 184–200

H. Husmann: ‘The Origin and Destination of the Magnus liber organi’, MQ, xlix (1963), 311–30

W. Arlt: Ein Festoffizium des Mittelalters aus Beauvais in seiner liturgischen und musikalischen Bedeutung (Cologne, 1970)

G. Winkler: ‘Über die Kathedralvesper in den verschiedenen Riten des Ostens und Westens’, Archiv für Liturgiewissenschaft, xvi (1974), 53–102

M. Kanazawa: ‘Two Vesper Repertories from Verona, ca. 1500’, RIM, x (1975), 155–79

For further bibliography see Divine Office.

RUTH STEINER/KEITH FALCONER

Vespertini.

Responsorial chants sung during Vespers in the Mozarabic rite. See Mozarabic chant, §3(ix).

Vesque von Püttlingen, Johann

(b Opole, Poland, 23 July 1803; d Vienna, 29 Oct 1883). Austrian composer. He studied law and worked in the civil and diplomatic service from 1827 to 1872. In 1866 he was made a baron, and in 1876 he became a member of the German Herrenhaus. His music teachers included Sechter, Moscheles and Voříšek; and Vogl for singing. In Vienna his house was a focal point of social activity, and there, as an accomplished tenor, he gave performances of his own songs. He did much to further the city’s musical life through his efforts, both as artist and patron, his active interest in the building of the conservatory, and his support of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. He wrote an authoritative book on musical copyright Das musikalische Autorrecht (Vienna, 1864).

Vesque is primarily of interest today as a composer of the late Romantic school (his works were performed and published under the pseudonym J. Hoven). He belonged to the generation between Schubert and Loewe, and Mendelssohn and Schumann, and he had personal connections with all of them. His operas were successful in their day, and among Austrian song composers he was perhaps the most significant in the period between Schubert and Wolf. Like Wolf he had a scrupulous respect for the texts he set and a penetrating sense of literary irony, satire and symbolism. Like Wolf, too, he favoured harmonically bold accompaniments of distinct rhythmic character and conceived the lied as an integral fusion of words and music, though more in the manner of a sensitive eclectic than as the bearer of a great tradition.

WORKS

Ops incl. Turandot (2, J. Zerboni di Sposetti, after F. von Schiller’s trans. of C. Gozzi), Vienna, Kärntnertor, 3 Oct 1838, vs (Vienna, n.d.); Johanna d’Arc (3, O. Prechtler, after Schiller), Vienna, Kärntnertor, 30 Dec 1840, vs (Vienna, 1841); Liebeszauber (4, Prechtler after H. von Kleist), Vienna, Kärntnertor, 8 March 1845, vs (Mainz, n.d.); Burg Thaya (3, A. von Perger), c1844–5, inc.; Ein Abenteuer Carls des Zweiten (1, S.H. Mosenthal), Vienna, Kärntnertor, 12 Jan 1850, vs (Leipzig, c1850); Der lustige Rath (2, Mosenthal), Weimar, Hof, 12 April 1852

c300 songs incl. Die Heimkehr (Vienna, 1851) [collection of 88 songs from Heine’s Reisebildern]; some ed. H. Schultz, 45 Lieder (Vienna, 1932)

2 masses, 3 str qts, orch works, pf pieces

For fuller list see Schultz, pp.260–79

BIBLIOGRAPHY

WurzbachL

Johann Vesque von Püttlingen (J. Hoven): eine Lebensskizze aus Briefen und Tagebuchblättern zusammengestellt (Vienna, 1887)

H. Schultz: Johann Vesque von Püttlingen (Regensburg, 1930) [incl. catalogue of works]

H. Ibl: Studien zu Johann Vesque von Püttlingens Leben und Opernschaffen (diss., U. of Vienna, 1949)

REINHOLD SIETZ/CHRISTOPHER H. GIBBS

Vessel flute.

An aerophone in which the body of the pipe is globular- or vessel-shaped rather than tubular. The best-known example is the ocarina. Most vessel flutes have finger-holes; where they do, the action of opening them raises the pitch (irrespective of the order in which the holes are opened) but the change in pitch is related to the sizes of the apertures.

For a full discussion of vessel flutes, see Ocarina.

Vestris [Vestri].

French family of dancers and musicians, of Italian origin. At least five of the eight children of Tommaso (Maria) Ippolito Vestri and his wife Violante Beatrice Bruscagli had settled in Paris with their mother by about 1747.

(2) Auguste [Marie-Jean-Augustin] Vestris

(3) Lucia Elizabeth [Eliza Lucy] Vestris [née Bartolozzi]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BDA

Memoirs of the Life, Public and Private Adventures of Madame Vestris (London, 1839)

H.F. Chorley: Thirty Years' Musical Recollections (London, 1862, abridged 2/1926 by E. Newman), 155

J.R. Planché: Recollections and Reflections (London, 1872), i, 81, 178ff, 251; ii, 5ff, 22–59, 66–7, 148–9

E. Campardon: L'Académie royale de musique au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1881)

G. Capon: Les Vestris (Paris, 1908)

S. Lifar: Auguste Vestris (Paris, 1950)

W.W. Appleton: Madame Vestris and the London Stage (New York and London, 1974)

S. Pitou: The Paris Opéra (1715–1815) (Westport, CT, 1985)

I. Guest: The Ballet of the Enlightenment (London, 1996)

R.E. Cowgill: ‘Regendering the Libertine, or, The Taming of the Rake: Lucy Vestris as Don Giovanni on the Early 19th-Century London Stage’, COJ, x (1998), 45–66

IVOR GUEST (1, 2)

Vestris

(1) Gaetano (Appolino Balthasar) Vestris

(b Florence, 18 April 1729; d Paris, 23 Sept 1808). Dancer, choreographer and teacher. He is generally recognized as the greatest dancer of his time, and the exemplar of the noble or serious style of French ballet. He danced at the Paris Opéra from 1749 to 1780 (and was ballet-master from 1769 to 1776), a period which coincided with the momentous development of ballet from a decorative appanage to opera to a theatrical form in its own right. In his early years he appeared in many of the great opéras-ballets of Campra and Rameau, but later he became a staunch supporter of the ballet d'action. The experience of taking part in Noverre's ballets in Stuttgart in the 1760s came as a revelation, and he staged two versions of Noverre's Médée et Jason in Paris before Noverre himself was engaged as ballet-master there in 1776. His Italian origins equipped him to meet the new and growing need for a dancer to be skilled in mime, and his interpretation of Jason was widely praised.

He was also one of the most distinguished teachers of his day, and perfected the techniques of the two dancers who were to succeed him in the noble genre, Maximilien and Pierre Gardel. His most celebrated pupil, however, was his son (2) Auguste Vestris. Through his son's virtuosity Gaetano revealed himself as a teacher with an uncanny vision, for instead of creating a dancer in his own image, he laid the foundation for the domination of the French method of training in the century to come. He married the ballerina Anne(-Frédérique) Heinel (1753–1808) in 1792.

Gaetano's elder sister (Marie) Teresa (Francesca) (1726–1808) was one of the leading dancers of the Opéra between 1751 and 1766 and notorious as a courtesan. His brother Angiolo (Maria Gasparo) (1730–1809) was also a distinguished dancer; after performing at the Opéra from 1753 to 1757 he danced in Noverre's company in Stuttgart between 1761 and 1767. Angiolo's younger sister Violante (Maria Caterina) (c1732–1791) sang at the Concert Spirituel until 1757, under her married name of Vestris-Giardini. Louis Hoguet-Vestris, son of the dancers Michel-François Hoguet (1793–1871) and Emilie Vestris, performed at the Opéra in 1843–6.

Vestris

(2) Auguste [Marie-Jean-Augustin] Vestris

(b Paris, 27 March 1760; d Paris, 5 December 1842). Dancer and teacher, illegitimate son of (1) Gaetano Vestris and the dancer Marie Allard. He was first presented at the Opéra at the age of 12, and even then showed signs of extraordinary promise. Admitted to the ballet company of the Opéra in 1776, he quickly rose to the top rank. His style was very different from that of his father: he was a demi-caractère dancer who displayed unprecedented virtuosity. Towards the end of his career he was inevitably surpassed by younger dancers such as Louis Duport, but by then he was turning to roles demanding acting skills in narrative ballets such as Gardel's Alexandre chez Apelles (1808) and L'enfant prodigue (1812). After his retirement in 1816 he became a celebrated teacher; his pupils included Auguste Bournonville and, much later, Fanny Elssler, whom he coached in preparation for her American tour of 1841–2. He had two illegitimate sons: (Auguste-)Armand (1787–1825), a brilliant dancer who also produced ballets in London and Naples and married (3) Lucia Elizabeth Bartolozzi, and Bernardo (d 1845), a less gifted dancer who staged a number of successful ballets at La Scala, Milan, in the early 1840s. Charles (b c1795), cousin of Auguste, possibly a grandson of (1) Gaetano's brother Giovanni, made his début at the Opéra in 1809, danced for some years in Naples, and ended his career in North America in 1828–9 partnered by his wife, Maria Ronzi-Vestris.

Vestris

(3) Lucia Elizabeth [Eliza Lucy] Vestris [née Bartolozzi]

(b London, 3 Jan or 2 March 1797; d London, 8 Aug 1856). Contralto, actress and theatre manager. She was the daughter of Gaetano Stefano Bartolozzi and granddaughter of the celebrated engraver Francesco Bartolozzi and in 1813 married (Auguste-)Armand Vestris. She made her first public appearance at her husband’s benefit at the King’s Theatre (20 July 1815), in the title role of Winter’s Il ratto di Proserpina; this was highly successful although her acting and singing abilities were still limited. She made several appearances in 1816 but with less success, her faults becoming more apparent with familiarity. In the winter she appeared in Paris at the Théâtre-Italien and various other theatres, including the Théâtre-Français, where she played Camille in Les Horaces. About this time Vestris deserted her. She returned to London and on 19 February 1820 made her début at Drury Lane Theatre. Her success was immediate and she remained until her retirement in 1854 an extraordinary favourite at the patent theatres, in opera, musical farces and comedies. In some of these works she introduced well-known songs, including Cherry ripe, I’ve been roaming, and Meet me by moonlight alone, which gained their popularity through her ballad singing. At the King’s Theatre she sang in the English premières of many Rossini operas: La gazza ladra (as Pippo, 10 March 1821), La donna del lago (as Malcolm Graeme, 18 February 1823), Ricciardo e Zoraide (as Zomira, 5 June 1823), Matilde di Shabran (as Edoardo, 3 July 1823), Zelmira (as Emma, 24 January 1824) and Semiramide (as Arsace, 15 July 1824). She sang there again in 1825 and on 12 April 1826 created the role of Fatima in Oberon at Covent Garden (see illustration). She also appeared in Dublin (1824–47), but after 1830 she was more important as a theatre manager, leasing the Olympic (1831–8), Covent Garden (1839–42) and the Lyceum Theatre (1847–55), the last two with the actor Charles Mathews jr, whom she married on 18 July 1838 and with whom she made an unsuccessful tour of the USA that autumn. Many of J.R. Planché’s early ‘extravaganzas’ were brought out during her tenancy of the Olympic; at Covent Garden she occasionally mounted fine operatic productions in English. As both manager and actress, she was influential in developing the more naturalistic theatrical style of the 1860s and 1870s. But contemporary critics, for instance Chorley (1862), never quite forgave her for not becoming the greatest English operatic contralto of her age:

If she had possessed musical patience and energy, she might have queened it, because she possessed (half Italian by birth) one of the most luscious of low voices … great personal beauty, an almost faultless figure, which she adorned with consummate art, and no common stage address. But a less arduous career pleased her better; and so she could not – or perhaps would not – remain on the Italian stage.

Vetter [Vötter], Conrad [Cornu, Andreas de; Andreae, Conrad; Hueber, Martin; Hüber, Martin]

(b Engen an der Donau, Swabia, 1546; d Munich, 11 Oct 1622). German poet. He was for a few years chaplain to the convent church at Hall in Swabia, and then entered the Jesuit order in 1576. He was active as a preacher at Regensburg Cathedral, and as both preacher and teacher at Ingolstadt and St Michael, Munich. Vetter wrote numerous anti-Lutheran polemics and two books of poetry: Rittersporn, das ist Fünff ausserlessene wolgescherffte schöne und gantz Christliche Betrachtungen (Ingolstadt, 1605) and Paradeissvogel, das ist Himmelische Lobgesang und solche Betrachtungen dardurch das menschliche Hertz mit Macht erlustiget von der Erden zum Paradeiss und Himmelischen Frewden gelockt, erquickt, entzündt und verzuckt wirdt (Ingolstadt, 1613, 2/1624). The first, which contains no music, is written in doggerel verse typical of the Nuremberg poet Hans Sachs. Paradeissvogel consists of texts translated from Latin, with music by unknown composers; as well as Vetter’s own German translations, there are two songs by Johann von Schwartzenberg and one by Nicolaus von der Flüe. Included are two melodies for Planctus Beatae Mariae Virginis and a four-voice piece, Alle Tage sing und sage. Vetter also published a German verse paraphrase with music of the Philomela attributed to St Bonaventure, entitled Nachtigall dess heiligen Bonaventura (Munich, 1612); the composer of these tunes is also unknown.

Vetter’s volumes of verse represent the earliest examples in Germany of Jesuit Baroque poetry. The Jesuits recognized at an early date that Lutheran hymns in the vernacular had done much to spread that doctrine, and made a clear effort to produce German hymns as part of the re-Catholicizing efforts of the Counter-Reformation. Vetter’s texts served as an impulse to the poems of Friedrich von Spee.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Grove6 (W. Lipphardt)

W. Bäumker: Das katholische deutsche Kirchenlied in seinen Singweisen (Freiburg, 1883–1911/R), i, 76, 174ff; ii, 382, iii, 359

N. Scheid: ‘Vetter, Conrad’, The Catholic Encyclopedia, ed. C.G. Herbermann and others, xv (New York, 1912), 394

D. Breuer: Oberdeutsche Literatur 1565–1650 (Munich, 1979)

G. Dünnhaupt: Personalbibliographien zu den Drucken des Barock (Stuttgart, 1990–93)

MARA R. WADE

Vetter, Daniel

(b Breslau [now Wrocław], 1657–8; d Leipzig, 7 Feb 1721). German organist and composer. Vetter was a student in Leipzig from 1678. In 1679 he was chosen to succeed his teacher, Werner Fabricius, as organist of the Nikolaikirche, and he assumed the post on 11 August 1679, remaining there until his death.

Vetter’s Musicalische Kirch- und Hauss-Ergötzlichkeit (1709–13) was apparently the first collection of organ pieces by a Leipzig organist published in over a century. In it, well-known chorale melodies are presented in simple four-part harmonizations intended for the organ. Most of the settings are followed by a variation in broken style to be played on a spinet or clavichord. Although these pieces have been severely criticized by modern writers as primitive, the appearance of a second part suggests they were popular in their time.

The collection provides evidence of the Leipzig chorale tradition inherited by J.S. Bach. It is also of some importance in the history of the Lutheran chorale: Vetter significantly advanced the trend towards the prevailing use of even note-values in chorale melodies. One of the four hymn tunes appearing here for the first time, Liebster Gott, wann werd ich sterben, which Vetter composed in 1695, was appropriated by J.S. Bach (bwv 8).

Vetter composed at least two cycles of church cantatas for the liturgical year as well as many occasional works. A humorous wedding cantata of 1698, for which Vetter created both the libretto and the music (now lost), ‘A Debate … on the Propriety of a Bachelor’s Marrying a Widow’, is an early example of the genre later perfected in J.S. Bach’s ‘Peasant’ and ‘Coffee’ cantatas.

WORKS

Der Gutte Muth des … Herrn Joh. von Guttsmuths, S, 2 vn, 2 va, vle, bc (?Leipzig, after 1675), wedding aria

Musicalische Kirch- und Hauss-Ergötzlichkeit, org, clvd, i (Leipzig, 1709/R); ii (Leipzig, 1713/R)

1 German cant., D-Bsb; 2 German cants., Dlb; funeral motet on the death of Johann Schelle, Dlb

Lost works: over 2 annual cycles of church cants., formerly in Jacobikirche, Stettin (now Szczecin, Poland), see Freytag, and Krummacher (1965), 186; wedding cant., 1698

BIBLIOGRAPHY

EitnerQ

FrotscherG

WinterfeldEK, iii

ZahnM

R. Vollhardt: Geschichte der Cantoren und Organisten von den Städten im Königreich Sachsen (Berlin, 1899), 179; rev. 2/1978 by E. Stimme

R. Wustmann: ‘Konnte Bachs Gemeinde bei seinen einfachen Choralsätzen mitsingen?’, BJb 1909, 102–28

R. Wustmann: ‘Vom Rhythmus des evangelischen Chorals’, BJb 1910, 86–102

A. Schering: Musikgeschichte Leipzigs, ii: Von 1650 bis 1723 (Leipzig, 1926/R)

W. Freytag: Musikgeschichte der Stadt Stettin im 18. Jahrhundert (Greifswald, 1936)

F. Krummacher: ‘Zur Sammlung Jacobi der ehemaligen Fürstenschule Grimma’, Mf, xvi (1963), 324–47

W. Neumann and H.-J. Schulze, eds.: Bach-Dokumente, i: Schriftstücke von der Hand Johann Sebastian Bachs (Kassel, 1963)

F. Krummacher: Die Überlieferung der Choralbearbeitungen in der frühen evangelischen Kantate (Berlin, 1965)

W. Neumann and H.-J. Schulze, eds.: Bach-Dokumente, ii: Fremdschriftliche und gedruckte Dokumente (Kassel, 1969)

D.P. Walker and P. Walker: German Sacred Polyphonic Vocal Music between Schütz and Bach (Warren, MI, 1992)

ROBERT L. MARSHALL

Vetter, Michael

(b Oberstdorf, 18 Sept 1943). German composer, performer and teacher. He began experimenting in the late 1950s with the sound-colours of the recorder and the possibilities offered by multiphonics and microtones. His discoveries, which inspired avant-garde composers such as Bussotti, Kagel and Stockhausen to use the instrument in their compositions, were codified in Il flauto dolce ed acerbo (1969), which included an analysis of 2000 fingerings. Vetter’s second recorder tutor (1983) promoted a method of teaching improvisation and included 100 of his compositions. Later, he similarly explored performing on and composing for the tambura, koto, tam-tam, Tibetan singing bowls, piano and voice. Beginning in 1968 he worked with children to develop new methods of music education involving improvisation. In 1973 he moved to Japan, where he became a Zen monk, performed his ‘structural theatre’ and wrote on ‘experimental Zen arts’, collected in his Shijima no oto [The Sound of Silence] (1981). On his return to Germany in 1983 he founded the Zentrum für meditative Kommunikation und kommunikative Meditation in Todtmoos-Rütte, transforming it in 1993 into the Accademia Capraia near Seggiano/Grosseto, Italy, a ‘school in the art of living’. In workshops, performances and exhibitions he demonstrates and teaches ‘intermedial improvisation’ (the oneness of all creativity) and ‘transverbal poetry’ (language is movement; movement is everything).

WORKS

Felder II: ein musikalisches Projekt für Kinder (1967); Rezitative für einen Blockflötisten (1967); Figurationen III für ein beliebiges Instrument (1968); Linienspiel (1973); Liebesspiele: musikalische Konzepte (1973); Schreibspiele ohne Worte (1973); Handbewegungen I/II – Roman (1973); Cosmic Comic (1975); Hörspiele I–IV (1977); Die Wiener Blockflötenschule (1983); Wenn Himmel und Erde wieder vereinen: Gedanken, Meditationen und Übungen zum Weg der Stimme (1987); Die Oberton-Schule (1987); Maria: muzikalische Auslegung eines mantrischen Namens (1991) (in Opus magnum); Musik (1995); Pianissimo: Konzepte für Tasteninstrumente (1996); Sei-Un-Sho: ein musikalisches Orakel (1997) (in JiJing); more than 30 unpublished pieces in verbal notation realized, on recordings

WRITINGS

‘Apropos blockflöte’, Melos, xxxv (1968), 461–8

Il flauto dolce ed acerbo, i: Anweisungen und Übungen für Spieler neuer Blockflötenmusik (Celle, 1969)

‘Liebesspiele oder Zur musikalischen Zukunft der Sprache’, Melos, xl (1973), 270–72

‘Improvisation und traditionelle Notation’, Musica, xxxii (1978), 565–9

‘Spiele zum Hören’, Tibia, iv (1979), 231–6

Shijima no oto [The Sound of Silence] (Tokyo, 1981)

‘Transverbal: Gedanken zur Zukunft der Musik’, NZM, Jg.157, no.3, 54–6

Seinserfahrung: das Buch von Liebe zum Leben (Freiburg, 1988)

Die Psychologie der Seinserfahrung (Freiburg, 1997)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

J. Baur: ‘Revolution der Blockflöte’, Instrumentenbau-Zeitschrift, xvii (1963), 363–4

J.M. Thomson: ‘Michael Vetter’, Recorder and Music Magazine, iii (March 1971), 317–19; repr. in J.M. Thomson: Recorder Profiles (London, 1972)

S. Benda: ‘Michael Vetters Reisen ins Innere der Töne’, NZM, Jg.154, no.6 (1993), 42–4

G. Braun: ‘Dolce ed acerbo’, Tibia, xx (1995), 351–6

DAVID LASOCKI

Vetter, (Andreas) Nicolaus

(b ?Herschdorf, Königsee, Thuringia, Oct 1666; d Rudolstadt, 13 June 1734). German organist and composer. The most important influence on Vetter was that of Johann Pachelbel, with whom he studied in Erfurt from 1688 to 1690. Before then he had been a pupil of G.K. Wecker in Nuremberg and a student at the Gymnasium in Rudolstadt from 1683 to 1688. When Pachelbel left Erfurt for Stuttgart in 1690, Vetter assumed his position at the Predigerkirche. In July of the following year he moved to Rudolstadt as the castle organist, being succeeded in Erfurt by J.H. Buttstedt. The authorities honoured him in later years with the appointments of government advocate, church procurator and master over the page boys, positions which tend to support the theory that as a young man he had also attended the University of Erfurt.

Vetter’s contemporaries seem to have valued his chorale settings as good examples of the middle German style established by Pachelbel. There also seems to have been some confusion between his output and Bach’s, since the manuscript Mus.40035 of the Deutsche Staatsbibliothek, Berlin (now lost) once gave his name as the composer of variations eight and three of Allein Gott bwv771. World War II also saw the destruction of sources for his free organ compositions and a work for chorus and orchestra, Zum frohen Empfang Grossherzogs Carl Fürsten Primas.

WORKS

for organ unless stated otherwise

Editions: Orgelchoräle um Joh. Seb. Bach, ed. G. Frotscher (Leipzig, 1937) [F]Andreas Nicolaus Vetter (1666–1734): Koraalbewerkingen, ed. E. Kooiman (Hilversum, 1989) [K]

Ach Gott und Herr, 2 verses; formerly D-Bsb, now lost

Ach Gott vom Himmel sieh darein, 3 verses; ed. in FrotscherG, K

Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr, first setting, 2 verses, ed. F. Dietrich, Elf Orgelchoräle des siebzehnten Jahrhunderts (Kassel, 1932), K

Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr, second setting, 2 verses or perhaps all 17 attrib. Bach, bwv771; D-Bsb Bach P1143, K

Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr, third setting, 2 verses, NL-DHgm

Christ lag in Todesbanden, first setting, ed. A.G. Ritter, Zur Geschichte des Orgelspiels: Musikalische Beispiele (Leipzig, 1884), K

Christ lag in Todesbanden, second setting, F, K

Gelobet sei der Herr, der Gott Israel, formerly D-Bsb, now lost

Jesu, meine Freude, 7 verses, formerly Bsb, now lost

Jesus Christus, unser Heiland, der den Tod überwand, F, K

Komm, heiliger Geist, Herre Gott, F, K

Lobt Gott, ihr Christen allzugleich, F

Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland (Veni Redemptor gentium), ed. H. Keller, Achtzig Choralvorspiele deutscher Meister (Leipzig, 1937)

Vater unser im Himmelreich; cited without source in FrotscherG

Zum frohen Empfang Grossherzogs Carl Fürsten Primas, 4vv, 2 viols, 2 fl, 2 hn, bc; formerly DS, now lost

Free org compositions, all lost

BIBLIOGRAPHY

FrotscherG [incl. edn of Ach Gott vom Himmel]

F. Dietrich: Geschichte des deutschen Orgelchorals im 17. Jahrhundert (Kassel, 1932)

H. Keller: ‘Unechte Orgelwerke Bachs’, BJb 1937, 59–82

H. Joelson-Strohbach: ‘Nachricht von verschiedenen verloren geglaubten Handschriften mit barocker Tastenmusik’, AMw, xliv (1987), 91–140

HUGH J. McLEAN

Vetter, Walther

(b Berlin, 10 May 1891; d Berlin, 1 April 1967). German musicologist. Vetter studied at the Leipzig Conservatory, and from 1914 to 1920 (with interruptions caused by the war) he studied musicology under Abert in Halle, with philosophy, psychology and art history as secondary subjects. In 1920 he received the doctorate in Halle with a dissertation on Gluck’s arias. He was a music editor in Danzig from 1921 until 1927, when he completed his Habilitation at the University of Breslau with Das frühdeutsche Lied. He was active first as an instructor and from 1934 as a reader at the University of Hamburg, moving on to Breslau (1934) and Greifswald (1936), where he became director of the musicology institute in 1939. In 1941 he accepted a chair at the University of Posen (Poznań) and from 1946 until his retirement as professor emeritus in 1958 he directed the Institute of Musicology at Humboldt University in Berlin. He was editor of the journal Musik in Pommern, co-editor of Die Musikforschung from 1948 to 1961 and editor of the Deutsches Jahrbuch der Musikwissenschaft from 1956 to 1966.

Vetter was much influenced by Abert. His education in the humanities informed his studies of early music, which he approached as a literary, rather than a paleographic scholar. A disciple of the Halle school of musicology, he believed that since the artist and his work form an inseparable unity, one must understand the author in order to grasp his creative output. Vetter dabbled with race theories in the 1930s, extolling the potential of the Nazi state and criticizing his contemporaries for ignoring the ‘Jewish question’, interests he managed to conceal from Soviet authorities after the war.

Apart from his studies of early music, his writings fall into three main areas: the history of the German lied, Bach and the Viennese Classicists. Intended as a preliminary study for a history of German monophonic song, his book Das frühdeutsche Lied is the first substantial treatment of the development and aesthetics of the monophonic and polyphonic art song of the 17th century. His study Der Kapellmeister Bach (1950), representing 20 years of research, gave renewed impetus to Bach research by drawing attention to the instrumental works of the Cöthen period, as did Besseler and Smend in similar but independent studies. His concept of the Classical period extended beyond what is normally understood by the term; he used it to include such typical pre-Classical figures as Wagenseil, whose artistic importance he tended to overvalue, as well as Schubert, to whom he devoted two large monographs (1934; 1953). His overemphasis of Classical at the expense of the Romantic elements in Schubert's works has led to criticism of the second book. For Vetter, the essence of Classicism in music was to be found in the personality and the operas of Gluck. He studied and interpreted the works of Gluck throughout his entire career as a scholar, from his doctoral dissertation to his last completed work, the essay on Gluck (1964). Vetter also wrote several essays on contemporary music and the music of eastern Europe.

WRITINGS

Die Arie bei Gluck (diss., U. of Halle, 1920)

‘Stilkritische Bemerkungen zur Arienmelodik in Glucks Orfeo’, ZMw, iv (1921–2), 27–50

‘Glucks Entwicklung zum Opernreformator’, AMw, vi (1924), 165–212

‘Glucks Stellung zur tragédie lyrique und opéra comique’, ZMw, vii (1924–5), 321–55

‘Gluck und seine italienischen Zeitgenossen’, ZMw, vii (1924–5), 609–46

‘Georg Christoph Wagenseil: ein Vorläufer Christoph Willibald Glucks’, ZMw, viii (1925–6), 385–402

Das frühdeutsche Lied (Habilitationsschrift, U. of Breslau, 1927; Münster, 1928)

Der humanistische Bildungsgedanke in Musik und Musikwissenschaft (Langensalza, 1928)

‘Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der opera seria um 1750 in Wien’, ZMw, xiv (1931–2), 2–28

Franz Schubert (Potsdam, 1934)

Antike Musik (Munich, 1935)

‘Die Musik im platonischen Staat’, Neue Jahrbücher für Wissenschaft und Jugendbildung, xi (1935), 307–20

‘Zur Erforschung der antiken Musik’, Festschrift Max Schneider zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. H.J. Zingel (Halle, 1935), 137–46

‘Die antike Musik in der Beleuchtung durch Aristoteles’, AMf, i (1936), 2–41

‘Der Glucksche Klassizismus und die Gegenwart’, Deutsche Musikkultur, i (1936–7), 271–82

‘Eine politische Beethoven-Betrachtung’, Festschrift Arnold Schering, ed. H. Osthoff, W. Seraŭky and A. Adrio (Berlin, 1937/R) 241–9

‘Zur volklichen und landschaftlichen Bestimmung des deutschen begleiteten Sololiedes,’ JbMP 1937, 58–76

Johann Sebastian Bach: Leben und Werk (Leipzig, 1938)

‘Volkhafte Wesensmerkmale in Mozarts italienschen Opern’, ZfM, Jg.105 (1938), 852–6

‘Bachs Vokalität’, JbMP 1939, 28–35

‘Zur Erforschung des Deutschen in der Musik’, Deutsche Musikkultur, iv (1939–40), 101–6

Beethoven und die militärisch-politischen Ereignisse seiner Zeit (Poznań, 1943)

Der Kapellmeister Bach: Versuch einer Deutung Bachs auf Grund seines Wirkens als Kapellmeister in Köthen (Potsdam, 1950)

Der Klassiker Schubert (Leipzig, 1953)

‘Die Trompeten in Bachs dritter Orchesterouvertüre’, BJb 1953, 97–107

Mythos-Melos-Musica: ausgewählte Aufsätze zur Musikgeschichte (Leipzig, 1957–61)

‘Deutschland und das Formgefühl Italiens: Betrachtungen über die Metastasianische Oper’, DJbM, iv (1959), 7–37

‘Der deutsche Charakter der italienischen Oper Georg Christoph Wagenseils’, Festschrift Karl Gustav Fellerer zum sechzigsten Geburtstag, ed. H. Hüschen (Regensburg, 1962), 558–72

‘Zur Stilproblematik der italienischen Oper des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts’, SMw, xxv (1962) [Festschrift Erich Schenk], 561–73

‘Italienische Opernkomponisten um Georg Christoph Wagenseil: ein stilkundlicher Versuch’, Festschrift Friedrich Blume, ed. A.A. Abert and W. Pfannkuch (Kassel, 1963), 363–74

‘Italiens Musik im Lichte von Dichtung und Bildender Kunst: ein Beitrag zur Problematik des künstlerischen Formgefühls unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der opera seria’, DJbM, viii (1963), 54–95

Christoph Willibald Gluck (Leipzig, 1964)

EDITIONS

C.W. Gluck: Iphigenie auf Tauris (Leipzig, 1927); Ouvertüre zur tragischen Oper Alceste (Leipzig, 1929, 2/1962)

with E. Schenk: Mecklenburg und Pommern, EDM, 2nd ser. (1936–41)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

H. Wegener: ‘Gedenken an Walther Vetter’, DJbM, xi (1966), 7–8

H. Becker: ‘Walther Vetter in Memoriam’, Mf, xx (1967), 245–7

F. Blume: ‘Walther Vetter: in Memoriam’, AcM, xl (1968), 3–5

Musa – mens – musici: im Gedenken an Walther Vetter (Leipzig, 1969) [incl. complete list of writings]

LOTHAR HOFFMANN-ERBRECHT/PAMELA M. POTTER

Vetterl, Karel

(b Brno, 30 June 1898; d Brno, 30 Nov 1979). Czech musicologist and folklorist. He studied with Helfert at Brno University (1921–6), taking the doctorate with a dissertation on Rieger. Until 1928 he worked under Helfert in the music section of the Moravian Museum; he then became head of the music division of Brno Radio (1928–45), which he helped to develop to a high standard, particularly increasing its educational role in the promotion of folk and art music. After the war he was director of the Brno University library (1945–53) and then head of the Brno Institute for Ethnography and Folklore at the Czech Academy of Sciences (1953–70); he also lectured on folk studies at the university (1954–9). Although Vetterl's writings reflect his work in libraries and the radio, where he undertook valuable cataloguing projects, his chief interest was folksong. In 1933 he became a member of the Moravian-Silesian committee of the State Institute for Folksong and in 1962 of the executive board of the International Folk Music Council and president of its Czech committee. His chief concern in folk music research was the analysis and classification of folksong and the creation of a catalogue of Moravian folk tunes. His folksong editions are characterized by their clear historical viewpoint and a concentration on early sources, well demonstrated in the posthumously-published Guberniální sbírka.

WRITINGS

‘Der musikalische Nachlass des Erzherzogs Rudolf im erzbischöflichen Archiv zu Kremsier’, ZMw, ix (1926–7), 168–79

Bohumir Rieger a jeho doba [Rieger and his times] (diss., U. of Brno, 1927); extracts in Časopis matice moravská, liii (1929), 45–86, 435–500

Esquisse d'une sociologie de la musique radiodifusée (Geneva, 1936)

ed.: Katalog hudebních archivů Čs. rozhlasu [Catalogue of the music libraries of Czech radio] (Prague, 1938–9)

‘K sociologii hudebního rozhlasu’ [The sociology of musical radio], Musikologie, i (1938), 27–44

‘Některé otázky hudební folkloristiky se zvláštním zřetelem k slezské oblasti’ [Some questions of musical folklore, with special reference to the region of Silesia], Slezský sborník, lii (1954), 22–34

‘K otázkám katologisace nápěvů lidových písní’ [The cataloguing of folksong tunes], Musikologie, iv (1955), 181–98

‘K ediční problematice pisňových sborníků: na okraj některých zahraničních edicí písňových [Editorial problems of folksong collections: on the margins of several foreign editions of songs], Musikologie, v (1958), 139–52

‘K historii hanáckého tance “cófavá”’ [The history of the Haná folkdance ‘cófavá’], Český lid, xlvi (1959), 277–86 [with Ger. summary]

‘Začátky koncertního života v Brně’ [The beginnings of concert life in Brno], Brno v minulosti a dnes, ii (1960), 159–69

‘Nejstarší zprávy o gajdošīch na Valašsku’ [The oldest reports about bagpipes in Valašsko], Český lid, l (1963), 269–74 [with Ger. summary]

with J. Gelnar: ‘Die Melodienordnung auf der Basis der metrorhythmischen Formgestaltung’, Methoden der Klassifikation von Volksliedweisen: Bratislava 1965, 81–90

‘Lidová píseň v Janáčkových sborech do roku 1885’ [Folksong in Janáček’s choruses up to 1885], SPFFBU, F9 (1965), 365–78 [with Ger. summary]

‘The Method of Classification and Grouping of Folk Melodies’, IFMC Conference: Budapest 1964 [SMH, vii (1965)], 349–55

with E. Dal and others: A Select Bibliography of European Folk Music (Prague, 1966)

‘Zur Klassifikation und Systematisierung der Volksweisen im westlichen Karpatenraum’, Festschrift für Walter Wiora, ed. L. Finscher and C.-H. Mahling (Kassel, 1967), 633–40

‘Janáček's Creative Relationship to Folk Music’, Leoš Janáček et musica europaea [:Brno III 1968], 235–42

‘Lied und Gesang in tschechischen Urkunden des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts’, SMH, xiii (1971), 289–95

‘Volkslied-Sammelergebnisse in Mähren und Schlesien aus dem Jahre 1819’, SPFFBU, H8 (1973), 95–124

‘Nejstarší zápisy hanáckých písní a tanců’ [The earliest notations of Haná songs and dances], Národopísné aktuality, xxv/2 (1988), 85–9

FOLKSONG EDITIONS

Lidové pisně a tance z Valašskoklobloucka [Folksongs and dances from Valašskoklobloucko] (Prague, 1955–60)

with O. Sirovátka: Lidové písné z Podluží [Folksongs from Podluží] (Brěclav, 1976)

with O. Hrabalová: Guberniální sbírka písní a instrumentální hudby z Moravy a Slezska z roku 1819 [The Government collection of songs and instrumental music from Moravia and Silesia, 1819] (Strážnice, 1994)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

D. Holý: ‘Nad dílem Karla Vetterla’ [On the work of Karel Vetterl], Národopisné aktuality, xv (1978), 173–84

M. Toncrová: ‘Odešel Karel Vetterl’, HV, xvii (1980), 379–80 [obituary]

E. Štaudová: Karel Vetterl (30.6.1898–25.11.1979): personální bibliografie (Brno, 1988)

M. Toncrová and M. Válka, eds.: Živý odkaz Karla Vetterla [The living message of Karel Vetterl] (Brno, 1993)

R. Pečman: ‘Karel Vetterl jako hudební historik a muzikolog’ [Vetterl as musical historian and musicologist], HV, xxxv (1998), 225–31 [with Ger. summary]

JOHN TYRRELL

Vetulus de Anagnia, Johannes

(b ?Anagni; fl 14th century). Italian theorist. He may be the notary Johannes Vetulus de Anagnia, mentioned in a document of 16 August 1372. (The form ‘Verulus’ is due to a misreading of the name.) His Liber de musica (ed. in CSM, xxvii, 1977), probably written in the mid-14th century, opens with an introduction defining music and expounding its nature, origin and purpose. After a short section on musica plana, the main part of the work is devoted to mensural music: the division of time, single notes and ligatures, rests, perfect and imperfect time, the four main mensurations and a short chapter on the minima. The most original and interesting feature of the treatise is Vetulus's determination of tempo in absolute terms: the minim is taken as the unit of measure and is made equal to ¹/₇₂ of a minute. Six different mensurations are then distinguished in terms of the minim as follows:

Perfect time (tempus perfectum): maius = 12 minime; minus = 9 minime; minimum = 6 minime

Imperfect time (tempus imperfectum): maius = 8 minime; minus = 6 minime; minimum = 4 minime.

The form of Italian mensural theory expounded in the treatise is strongly influenced by 14th-century French theory. The author described the structure of the only four Italian mensurations equivalent to those of the French system. Major perfect time (duodenarium) and major imperfect time (octonarium) are ignored, since he regarded them simply as triple and double versions, respectively, of the tempus imperfectum minimum.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A. Machabey: ‘Notions scientifiques disseminées dans les textes musicologiques du Moyen-Age’, MD, xvii (1963), 7–20, esp. 16

S. Gullo: Das Tempo in der Musik des XIII. und XIV. Jahrhunderts (Berne, 1964), 69ff

F.A. Gallo: La teoria della notazione in Italia dalla fine del XIII all'inizio del XV secolo (Bologna, 1966), 65ff

J. Smits van Waesberghe: Musikerziehung: Lehre und Theorie der Musik im Mittelalter (Leipzig, 1969), 172ff

F.A. Gallo: ‘Die Notationslehre im 14. und 15. Jahrhundert’, Die Mittelalterliche Lehre von der Mehrstimmigkeit, ed. H.H. Eggebrecht and others (Darmstadt, 1984), 259–356, esp. 322ff

A.M. Busse Berger: Mensuration and Proportion Signs: Origins and Evolutions (Oxford, 1993), 46ff

E. Segerman: ‘A Re-Examination of the Evidence on Absolute Tempo before 1700’, EMc, xxiv (1996), 227–48, 681–9, esp. 227–8, 244–7

F. ALBERTO GALLO

Vevlira.

A Swedish Hurdy-gurdy.

Veyron-Lacroix, Robert

(b Paris, 13 Dec 1922; d Garches, Hauts-de-Seine, 2 April 1991). French harpsichordist. He graduated from the Paris Conservatoire, where he won premiers prix for the piano, the harpsichord and theory. He began his concert career on French radio in 1949, going on to perform as soloist and chamber player, principally with the flautist Jean-Pierre Rampal, with whom he made many recordings. He taught at the Schola Cantorum from 1956 and at the International Summer Academy in Nice from 1959. In 1967 he became professor of harpsichord at the Paris Conservatoire, serving until his retirement in 1988. In the Baroque repertory Veyron-Lacroix was much admired for his assured performing style and ingenious continuo realizations. He was also a noted exponent of French 20th-century music, giving the premières of harpsichord concertos by Françaix (1960), Damase (1966) and Milhaud (1969), as well as works by Jolivet, Ohana, Jacques Charpentier and Aubin.

HOWARD SCHOTT

Veysberg [Weissberg], Yuliya Lazarevna

(b Orenburg, 13/25 Dec 1878/6 Jan 1879 or 25 Dec 1879/6 Jan 1880; d Leningrad, 1 March 1942). Russian composer and critic. On her graduation from the St Petersburg Gymnasium (1895), Veysberg became a student at the historico-philological faculty of the Women's University, and simultaneously (from 1899) gave private lessons in music theory under the auspices of I.I. Krïzhanovsky, a pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov. From around 1902 to 1905 she studied at the St Petersburg Conservatory, where she was taught composition by Rimsky-Korsakov, orchestration by Glazunov and singing by Tsvantsiger [Zwanziger]. She was expelled from the Conservatory in 1905 for her participation in the revolutionary events of that year, but was later allowed to return; she eventually graduated in 1912, after returning from Berlin, where she had studied with Humperdinck and Reger. Back in Russia she married Andrey Rimsky-Korsakov in 1914, and worked with him in publishing and editing the journal Muzïkal'nïy sovremennik (‘The Musical Contemporary’) from 1915 to 1917 (her links with the Rimsky-Korsakov family continued during her second marriage; her son V.L. Kreytser worked with A.N. Rimsky-Korsakov and others in building electronic instruments such as the Emiriton, for which Grigory Rimsky-Korsakov wrote works).

In the 1920s Veysberg organized and participated in voluntary organisations such as the Petrograd Society for Propaganda on Behalf of Contemporary Russian Music, the Circle of Friends of Chamber Music and the Leningrad division of the Contemporary Music Association, in addition to teaching choral singing at the Workers' Youth Musical School. Although the romances conform to pre-revolutionary Russian salon standards, she also wrote ‘conjunctural’ pieces on texts from Aleksandr Bezïmensky and works for children which have won praise from critics.

WORKS

(selective list)

Ops: Rusalochka [The Little Mermaid] (children's op, S. Parnok and Veysberg, after H.C. Andersen), op.18, 1923; Gusi-lebedi [Geese-Swans] (children's op, S. Marshak and Veysberg), op.19 (1937); Gyul'nara (comic op, Parnok and Veysberg, after A Thousand and One Nights), op.32 (1935); Myortvaya tsarevna [The Dead Princess] (radio op, after A.S. Pushkin), 1937, arr. broadcast 1938; Zaykin dom [A Little Rabbit's House] (children's op, W. Weltman), Moscow, 1937

Orch: Sym., Gb, op.4; Fantaziya, op.5; Dramaticheskoye Skertso, op.6; Noch'yu [At Night], sym. picture after F. Tyutchev, op.10 (1929); Korol' Garol'd [King Harold], ballade after H. Heine, trans. Maykov, op.12 (1930); Skazochka [A Fairy Tale], op.13 (1928) [after K. Meyer: Napyorstochek, ‘Little Thimble’]

Vocal: Rautendeleyn (3 songs, G. Hauptmann: Die versunkene Glocke), op.3, 1v, orch (1912); 4 kitayskikh pesni [4 Chinese Songs], op.7, 1v, pf (1912); Lunnaya skazka [The Story of the Moon] (lullaby, P. Dehmel), op.8, 1v, fl, str qt, hp (1921); Poyedinok s sud'boy [Duel with Fate] (ballad, P. Guk, trans. M. Liverskaya), op.9, 1v, orch (1915); Poyot pechal'nïy golos [A Sad Voice Sings] (F. Solugub), op.14, 1v, orch (1924); Dvenadtsat' [The Twelve] (sym. fantasia-cant., A. Blok), op.21, chorus, orch (1928); Iz persidskoy liriki [From Persian Lyric Poetry] (O. Khayyam, trans. I. Umov), op.26, 1v, pf (1926); Negrityanskaya kolïbel'naya [A Negro Lullaby] (T. Churilin), op.33, 1v, small orch (1935); many children's songs, choral works and arrs. of Moldavian folk songs

Principal publishers: Iskusstvo, Kapella, Muzgiz

Mss in RF-Mrg; USSR-Lit

WRITINGS

‘“Ėlektra” R. Shtrausa v Mariinskom teatre’ [Strauss's ‘Elektra’ at the Mariinsky Theatre], Russkaya molva (1912)

‘Gustav Mahler’, Russkaya molva (1912)

‘Itogi deyatel'nosti “Teatra muzïkal'noy dramï”’ [Perspectives on the activity of the ‘Theatre of musical drama’], Russkaya molva (1912)

‘Kontsert D. Smirnova v pol'zu gimnazii K. Maya v Dvoryanskom sobranii’ [Smirnov's concerto in support of K. May's Gymnasium in the Noble Assembly], Russkaya molva (1912)

‘Pervïy russkiy simfonicheskiy kontsert’ [The first Russian symphonic concerto], Russkaya molva (1912)

‘203 simfonicheskiy konsert grafa Sheremeteva’ [The 203rd symphonic concerto of Count Sheremetev], Russkaya molva (1912)

‘Vagner i zhenschinï’ [Wagner and women], Russkaya molva (1912)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ME (M.G. Byalik)

SKM

Kh. Khersonsky: ‘Noveyshaya russkaya muzïka za granitsey’ [The Newest Russian Music Abroad], Izvestiya (1924), no.91, p.5

S. Bugoslavsky: ‘Simfonicheskiye kontsertï’, Izvestiya (1926), no.5, p.5

A. Uglov: ‘Muzïka v Leningrade: k itogam istekshego sezona’ [Music in Leningrad: towards perspectives on the past season], Izvestiya (1926), no.151, p.6

M.F. Gnesin: Mïsli i vospominaniya o N.A. Rimskom-Korsakove [Thoughts and reminiscences on Rimsky-Korsakov] (Moscow, 1956) [incl. Veysberg's writings and correspondence with A.K. Glazunov]

MARINA MOISEYEVNA MAZUR

Veysel, Aşık

(b Sivrialan, Sivas, 1894; d Sivrialan, Sivas, 21 March 1973). Turkish folk musician who was blind. He was the product of a rural Turkish musical culture shaped by Alevi (heterodox Islamic) mysticism since at least the 15th century and focussed on the music of the bağlama or saz (long-necked plucked lute), played by ritual specialists known as aşık (‘lovers’; see Turkey, §II, 1). Veysel was also shaped to a significant extent by the experience of nation-building in the early Turkish Republic, achieving distinction at the Republic’s decennial festival, Cumhuriyet Onuncu Yılı, in Ankara in 1933. His songs attracted the attention of the nationalist intelligentsia for their direct and unadorned expression of national sentiment and a humanistic mysticism; his work, largely improvised around fixed melodic and poetic schemes, was written down and extensively published. Songs such as Dostlar beni hatırlasın and Uzun ince bir yoldayım are widely known throughout Turkey. Along with many rural aşık he was co-opted into the Köy enstitüleri (village institute) movement, which was designed to further knowledge of and research into rural culture in Turkish villages between 1940 and 1954. In 1965 the Turkish parliament awarded him a pension for his services to the mother tongue and national unity.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aşık Veysel: Bütün şiirleri (Istanbul, 1982)

B. Pehlivan: Aşık Veysel: yaşamı, sanatı, şiirleri üzerine bir inceleme (Istanbul, 1984)

MARTIN STOKES

Vèze

(Fr.).

See Bladder pipe.

Vézina, Joseph (François)

(b Quebec, 9 June 1849; d Quebec, 5 Oct 1924). Canadian bandmaster, composer, conductor and organist. He studied at the Séminaire de Québec and at the Collège Militaire. He was mainly self-taught, although he received musical instruction from his father, François Vézina, music director of the Société St Jean-Baptiste, and studied harmony for six months under Calixa Lavallée. His career began in 1869 as bandmaster of the 9e Voltigeur de Québec. He founded and directed numerous bands, for which he made many arrangements and composed a number of pieces, including his popular Mosaïque sur des airs populaires canadiens. From 1896 to 1912 he was organist at St Patrick’s and from 1912 to 1924 choirmaster at the Basilica of Notre-Dame, both in Quebec. He taught and directed the band at the Séminaire de Québec, where many of his manuscripts remain. Active as an orchestral and choral conductor from at least 1880, in 1902–3 he founded the Société Symphonique de Québec, which he conducted until 1924. In 1922 he helped to organize the music department of Laval University, which conferred the DMus on him in that year.

WORKS

MSS at C-Qsl and Qcm; see Kallmann, 1952

Stage: Le lauréat (oc, F.G. Marchand), 1906; Le Rajah (opéra bouffe, B. Michaud), 1910; Le fétiche (oc, A. Langlais and A. Plante), 1912; La grosse gerbe (oc), inc.; vs excerpts of completed works ed. in The Canadian Musical Heritage (Ottawa, 1991)

Orch, band: Pot-pourri sur des mélodies canadiennes, band, 1877; La canadienne, band/pf, 1878; Mosaïque sur des airs populaires canadiens, orch/band, 1880, arr. pf (Quebec, 1920–24); Estrella valse, (fl, str)/pf, 1881, arr. pf (Quebec, n.d.); Souffle parfumé, orch/band/pf, 1882 (Quebec, 1887); Ton sourire, orch/band, 1882 (Ottawa, 1990); Grande valse de concert, solo cornet, band, 1883; La brise: The Quebec Yacht Club Waltz, orch/band (Quebec, 1886); De Calgary à McLeod, band, 1889, arr. pf (Quebec, 1889); Conversazione, orch/band, 1891, arr. pf (Quebec, n.d.); Friscarina, ov., band, 1905 (Boston, n.d.)

Solo inst: Les roses d’or, pf, 1876 (Quebec, 1976); L’oiseau-mouche, fl, 1880

Songs, many other marches and dances for band and pf, most unpubd

BIBLIOGRAPHY

EMC2 (J. Bourassa)

H. Kallmann, ed.: Catalogue of Canadian Composers (Toronto, 1952/R), 230–31

H. Kallmann: A History of Music in Canada 1534–1914 (Toronto, 1960/R), 127–8, 247

DALE WARD/JULIETTE BOURASSA

Viadana, Berardo Marchese da

(b Viadana, nr Parma; fl 1616–27). Italian composer. He joined the Franciscan order at the monastery of S Francesco, Viadana, and in his spiritual capacity he was sought after as a confessor. According to Frezza he spent much of his career at Modena as a ‘padre guardiano’ or ‘penitenziere’. Only two publications of church music by him remain: the Primavera ecclesiastica adorna di sacri fiori musicali a 2–4 voci con basso continuo (Venice, 1616) and the Salmi vespertini … concertati a 5 voci col basso continuo (Venice, 1617). Seven motets (possibly reprints from the former) appeared in anthologies edited by Donfrid (RISM 1622², 1623², 1627¹ and 1627²) and Reininger (1626²), showing that, though meagre in quantity, his music achieved popularity north of the Alps. The three contributions to the second volume of Donfrid’s Promptuarii (1623²) are tenor duets, of which Renovamini carissimi shows an unmelodious, discontinuous style with an awkward harmonic sense, although rhythms are lively and ornament is not lacking. Viadana, however, was unaware of the structural possibilities of refrains and repeated material.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

LaMusicaD

J. Frezza: Il cantore ecclesiastico (Padua, 1698)

J. Roche: North Italian Church Music in the Age of Monteverdi (Oxford, 1984)

JEROME ROCHE

Viadana, Giacomo Moro [Jacobi Mori] da.

See Moro, Giacomo.

Viadana [Grossi da Viadana], Lodovico

(b Viadana, nr Parma, c1560; d Gualtieri, nr Parma, 2 May 1627). Italian composer. He ranks highly among composers of his period for the freshness, fluency and notably expressive quality of his music; above all, he gave a strong impulse to the vocal concerto with basso continuo in ecclesiastical music, and acquired many pupils who continued his work.

1. Life.

According to a document dating from the end of the 18th century, he was a member of the Grossi family by birth and took the name Viadana when he entered the order of the Minor Observants some time before 1588 (see illustration). It has been asserted that he was a pupil of Costanzo Porta, but there is no confirmation of this. He was maestro di cappella at Mantua Cathedral from at least January 1594 probably until 1597. At the end of the 16th century he may have been at Padua, for he had connections with that city, and he was also in Rome. In 1602 he was maestro di cappella at the convent of S Luca, Cremona, from 1608 to 1609 of the cathedral at Concordia, near Venice, and from 1610 to 1612 of Fano Cathedral. In 1614 he was appointed diffinitor of his religious order for the province of Bologna, which included Ferrara, Piacenza and Mantua; he remained in this office for three years. Shortly thereafter a troubled time for him was caused by the enmity of some of his religious associates. In 1623 he was ordered to leave Viadana and to settle in Busseto; he later moved to the convent of S Andrea, Gualtieri, where he died.

2. Works.

In Viadana’s work, most of which survives, sacred vocal music is predominant. He cultivated the a cappella style and from op.13 onwards added a basso per l’organo which was a basso seguente rather than a true continuo bass. His style in these works ranges from the strict homorhythm of falsobordone and pseudo-polyphony to genuine polyphonic writing. The simpler music is purely functional, and as such was very successful. Even the more elaborately polyphonic music is modest in proportions and simple in text-setting. Three volumes are particularly worthy of attention: the masses of 1596, which were very popular, the Lamentationes op.22, which use fine expressive melodies and the Completorium op.16, with its brilliant interplay of choral forces.

The Concerti ecclesiastici op.12 (1602) is chronologically the first publication to include a basso continuo with sacred vocal music. It was designed to provide sacred music that could be performed by any number of singers from one to four, so that in practical performance the musical text should not become distorted through the lack of any one type of voice among the performers. In the concerti for three voices the basso continuo, which is partly figured, is indispensable, but some of those for four voices can be performed unaccompanied. The composer recommended, however, that the instrumental part, assigned to the organ, or exceptionally to the clavichord (‘manicordo’), should never be omitted. Viadana’s monody has little in common with recitative: it is a simple melodic line influenced by his a cappella practice, with varied expressive ideas and some decorative passaggi. Chromaticism is comparatively rare and quite mild; episodes in the concertante style occasionally appear. The success of op.12 and the three subsequent volumes of concerti can be attributed largely to their modernity: the works are closely aligned with progressive composition techniques in the early 17th century.

In his later works in this genre, Viadana’s vocal lines are more truly monodic, although he never abandoned his feeling for melody. There are several fine pieces in these volumes; nevertheless, with their gentle but superficial fluency, they are on the whole somewhat lacking in colour. The Missa dominicalis for one voice and basso continuo in the second volume of Concerti ecclesiastici (1607) is worthy of mention for its introduction of monody into the principal rite of Catholic worship (see Wagner, 412–13). Viadana used the concertante style with impressive effect in the Salmi a 4 cori op.27, written for a coro favorito of five solo voices, three choirs of four voices and instruments (three organs and a chitarrone for realizing the harmonies, and strings, cornetts, bassoons and trombones for doubling the vocal lines); the pieces can also be performed with only two choirs. In these works, some of the best of Viadana’s compositions, the style is on the whole very lively and rich in colour. Declamatory techniques in the choral parts offset episodes for the soloists, some of which contain varied ideas and ornamental passaggi. In design and layout these pieces anticipate the instrumental concerto. The Ventiquattro Credo (1619) are homophonic pieces, the melodies of which are taken from hymns belonging to most parts of the liturgical year; their rhythmic plan is close to the simple movement of the original plainsong.

Viadana’s surviving secular works consist of two books of canzonettas (1590, 1594) and many pieces published in collections; the canzonettas show in their delicacy some kinship with Marenzio’s villanellas. Viadana’s only instrumental publication, op.18, contains compositions for two instrumental choirs and basso continuo, reminiscent in style of the instrumental canzona; each piece is named after an Italian city (La romana, La genovese etc.); the writing is generally homophonic when in triple metre and polyphonic when in duple. A few other instrumental compositions have survived and for some of the vocal works Viadana suggested performance by instruments as an alternative, or directed that obbligato instrumental parts should accompany the vocal lines.

WORKS

published in Venice unless otherwise stated

sacred

Vespertina omnium solemnitatum psalmodia, 5vv (1588, repr with bc, 1609)

Missa defunctorum, 3vv, bc (org) (1592)

Falsi bordoni, 5vv (1596); 11, ed. in Musica divina, iii–iv (Regensburg, 1859–63/R)

Missarum liber primus, 4vv (1596, repr with bc, 1612); 1, ed. in Repertorium musicae sacrae, v (Regensburg, 1889/R); Missa Sine nomine, ed. A. Bank (Amsterdam, 1950)

Motecta, 8vv, op.10 (1597)

Completorium romanum, liber primus, 8vv (1597)

Officium defunctorum, 4vv, op.11 (1600); mass ed. in Musica divina, xix (Regensburg, 1966)

100 concerti ecclesiastici, 1–4vv, bc, op.12 (1602), some ed. in Monumenti musicali mantovani, i (Kassel, 1964)

Psalmi omnes ad Vesperas, liber secondus, 5vv, bc (org), op.13 (1604)

Officium ac Missa defunctorum, 5vv, op.15 (1604)

Letanie, 3–8, 12vv, bc (org), op.14 (1605)

Completorium romanum, liber secondus, 8vv, bc (org), op.16 (1606)

Concerti ecclesiastici, libro secondo, 1–4vv, bc, op.17 (1607) [contains 1 Missa dominicalis, 1v, bc; ed. in Musica divina, x (Regensburg, 1954, 2/1964)]

Salmi a 4 voci pari con 2 Magnificat, bc (org), op.20 (1608)

Completorium romanum, liber primus, 4vv, bc (org), op.21 (1609)

Lamentationes, 4vv, op.22 (1609)

Responsoria ad lamentationes, liber primus, 4vv, op.23 (1609); 9, ed. Musica divina, iv (Regensburg, 1863/R)

Il terzo libro de’ concerti ecclesiastici, 2–4vv, bc, op.24 (1609); pubd jointly with opp.12 and 17 (Frankfurt, 1613⁶)

Salmi campagnoli con li sicut erat, 4, 8vv, bc (org), opp.25, 26 (1612)

Salmi per cantare e concertare, 4 choirs, bc, op.27 (1612)

Falsi bordoni con i sicut erat, 4, 8vv, bc (org), op.28 (Rome, 1612)

100 concerti, 1v, op.30 (Venice, 1614)

24 Credo a canto fermo (1619)

Further works, 1598⁶, 1599¹, 1600¹, 1611¹, 1612², 1613², 1618¹, 1619⁶, 1621², 1622², 1623², 1626⁴, 1627¹, 1627², 1628², 1629², 1629⁴

secular

Canzonette, libro primo, 4vv (1590), 1 repr with Eng. text in 1597²³

Canzonette, libro primo, 3vv (1594); ed. G. Vecchi (Milan, 1965)

Sinfonie musicali, a 8, bc (org), op.18 (1610); ed. in IIM, xxi (1993)

Further works, 1588²⁰, 1598⁷

3 pieces, org, A-Wm

BIBLIOGRAPHY

DEUMM (C. Gallico)

A. Parazzi: Della vita e delle opere musicali di L. Grossi-Viadana inventore del basso continuo nel secolo XVI (Milan, 1877)

F.X. Haberl: ‘Lodovico Grossi da Viadana: eine bio-bibliographische Studie’, KJb, iv (1889), 44–67

H. Leichtentritt: Geschichte der Motette (Leipzig, 1908/R)

A.W. Ambros: Geschichte der Musik, iv (Leipzig, rev. 3/1909 by H. Leichtentritt)

P. Wagner: Geschichte der Messe (Leipzig, 1913/R)

Max Schneider: Die Anfänge des Basso continuo und seiner Bezifferung (Leipzig, 1918/R)

F. Blume: Das monodische Prinzip in der protestantischen Kirchenmusik (Leipzig, 1925/R)

F.T. Arnold: The Art of Accompaniment from a Thorough-Bass (London, 1931/R)

A. Adrio: Die Anfänge des geistlichen Konzerts (Berlin, 1935)

D. Arnold: ‘Giovanni Croce and the Concertato Style’, MQ, xxxix (1953), 37–48

C. Gallico: ‘L’arte dei Cento concerti ecclesiastici di Lodovico Viadana’, Quaderni della RaM, no.3 (1965), 55–86

F. Mompellio: Lodovico Viadana, musicista fra due secoli XVI–XVII (Florence, 1967)

H. Haack: Die Anfänge des Generalbass-Satzes: die ‘Cento concerti ecclesiastici’ (1602) von Lodovico Viadana (Tutzing, 1974)

M.T. Barzoni: I salmi a 4 chori (diss., U. of Parma, 1984)

J. Roche: North Italian Church Music in the Age of Monteverdi (Oxford, 1984)

C. Wilkinson: ‘Gabriele Fattorini: Rival of Viadana’, ML, lxv (1984), 329–36

R. Tibaldi: L’Ufficio e la Messa dei defunti di Lodovico Viadana (diss., U. of Pavia, 1988)

M.C. Bradshaw: ‘Lodovico Viadana as a Composer of falsobordoni’, Studi musicali, xix (1990), 91–131

FEDERICO MOMPELLIO

Viaera, Fredericus

(fl 1563–4). Netherlandish composer and instrumentalist. He appears to have been an amateur musician and, according to the title-page of his 1564 publication, a ‘D[octor] S[cientiarum]’ and a native of Friesland (now part of the Netherlands). He is known as the author of one of the earliest cittern books, Nova et elegantissima in cythara ludenda carmina (Leuven, 1564²¹), written for the small cittern (tuned a–g–d'–e'), which was popular among north European amateurs for 30 or 40 years from the 1550s. The book contains cittern arrangements of 68 pieces, most of them popular tunes. The first part, containing suites made up of movements entitled ‘passamezzo–padoana–saltarello’, with individual pieces called ‘gaiarda’, was adapted from Giovanni Pacolini’s volume Tabulatura tribus testudinibus (Leuven, 1564). To these pieces Viaera added a few villottas and chansons by Arcadelt, Claudin de Sermisy, Lupi and others, and some Netherlandish songs and dances. Pierre Phalèse included 27 of Viaera’s arrangements, without attribution, in his Hortulus cytharae (1570³⁴). Viaera’s music shows cittern playing at its very simplest – the two lowest positions are used almost exclusively – and is therefore close to the practice of the amateur performer. Viaera was also the author of a laudatory poem printed as an introduction to two lute anthologies, Teatrum musicum (Antwerp, 1563) and Luculentum theatrum musicum (1568²³).

IVAN F. WALDBAUER

Viana, Frutuoso (de Lima)

(b Itajubá, Minas Gerais, 6 Sept 1896; d Rio de Janeiro, 22 April 1976). Brazilian composer and pianist. He enrolled in 1917 at Rio as a pupil of Oswald (piano) and of Gouveia and França (harmony). In 1923 he travelled to Europe for further piano studies with Hanschild in Berlin, De Greef in Brussels and Selva in Paris. Back in Brazil he developed a career as a concert pianist and teacher. He was professor of piano at the conservatories of Belo Horizonte (1929–30) and São Paulo (1930–38), director of the Coral Paulistano at the São Paulo Conservatory (1938–41), professor of choral singing at the National Technical School in Rio (from 1942) and professor of piano at Bennet College. It was his participation in the Week of Modern Art in February 1922 that stimulated Viana's pursuit of musical nationalism. His works include piano miniatures that take or reconstruct thematic material from folk sources and make effective use of popular rhythmic patterns within a brilliant virtuoso style. The drive of these pieces, reminiscent of sambas and batuques, assured them a continuing popularity. Many of Viana's songs are also nationalist in aesthetic.

WORKS

(selective list)

Pf: Serenata espanhola, 1923: Variações sôbre um tema popular, 1923; Dança de negros, 1924; Capricho, 1928; Corta-jaca, 1931; Homenagem a Sinhô, 1932; Miniaturas, 1932; Valsas nos.1–6, 1934, 1935, 1938, 1945, 1949, 1959; Toadas nos.5–7, 1943, 1946, 1957; Valsinha, 1963

Songs (1v, pf): Sonâmbula (A. de Lima), 1928; Toada no.3 (C.D. de Andrade), 1928; Sem fim, 1938; Sabiá (C. Mota), 1938; Desencanto (M. Bandeira), 1948; 6 canções trovadorescas (G. de Almeida), 1951

Principal publishers: Napoleão, Ricordi, Wehrs

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Compositores de América/Composers of the Americas, ed. Pan American Union, iv (Washington DC, 1958), 126

G. Béhague: Music in Latin America: an Introduction (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1979)

V. Mariz: História da música no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro, 1981, 4/1994)

GERARD BÉHAGUE

Vianesi, Auguste Charles Léonard François

(b Legnano, 2 Nov 1837; d New York, 4 Nov 1908). Italian conductor, later naturalized French. He was taught music on the advice of Giovanni Pacini and Theodor Döhler, and went to Paris to complete his training in 1857 with a letter of introduction to Rossini from Giuditta Pasta. Following engagements at Drury Lane, London, in 1858–9 he travelled to New York and later conducted regularly at the Imperial Theatre, Moscow and at St Petersburg. He returned to London in 1870 and for ten years conducted at Covent Garden, directing the first London performances of Wagner's Lohengrin (1875) and Tannhäuser (1876). Klein commented on the latter that ‘Vianesi … knew little or nothing of Wagner’s intentions as to the reading of the score.… It satisfied curiosity without affording a true idea of the opera’. He also directed works from the Italian and French repertory, including Cherubini's Médée and Meyerbeer's L'Africaine.

On 22 October 1883 Vianesi conducted the opening night of the first season of the Metropolitan Opera, New York, returning in 1891–2, when he conducted the first performance there of Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice. In July 1887 he succeeded Altès as chief conductor of the Paris Opéra, where he commanded a broad repertory and directed the first performances of Saint-Saëns's Ascanio (1890) and Massenet's Le mage (1891).

A manuscript score (probably autograph) of an opera in three acts by Vianesi, Una fortuna in prigione, signed London, 20 October 1858, was listed in Liepmannssohn's catalogue 185, no.1236.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

H. Klein: The Golden Age of Opera (London, 1933/R)

H. Rosenthal: Two Centuries of Opera at Covent Garden (London, 1958)

W. Brockway and H. Weinstock: The World of Opera (New York, 1962)

S. Wolff: L'Opéra au Palais Garnier (1875–1962) (Paris, 1962/R)

DAVID CHARLTON

Vianna da Motta [Viana da Mota], José

(b S Tomé, 22 April 1868; d Lisbon, 1 June 1948). Portuguese pianist, teacher and composer. After early studies at the Lisbon Conservatory he went to Berlin where he had lessons from Xaver Scharwenka (piano) and Philipp Scharwenka (composition). He subsequently worked with Liszt at Weimar (1885) and Bülow at Frankfurt (1887), and made extensive tours of Europe (1887–8), the USA (1892–3, 1899) and South America (1902), sometimes playing as many as four concerted works in one programme. In Berlin he collaborated with Busoni on several editorial projects, including works by Bach and Liszt, and also performed with him in two-piano recitals; Busoni dedicated a set of transcriptions of Bach’s Chorale Preludes to Vianna da Motta. From 1915 to 1917 Vianna da Motta held the post formerly occupied by Stavenhagen at the Geneva Conservatoire, and from 1919 to 1938 was director of the Lisbon Conservatory, where the determination and meticulousness of his work led to a generation of accomplished artists including his pupil Sequeira Costa.

Vianna da Motta was particularly distinguished as an interpreter of Bach, Beethoven and Liszt, and in 1927 played Beethoven’s 32 sonatas in Lisbon, a significant event in Portuguese musical life. He was also keenly interested in the music of Field, Alkan and Falla, and was noted for his idiomatic interpretation of Falla’s Noches en los jardines de España. His refined and intellectual approach, quite distinct from the flamboyance of many other Liszt pupils, showed the extent of Bülow’s influence, and makes his few recorded performances seem remarkably modern, though not lacking in colour or spontaneity. As a composer he was instrumental in introducing into Portugal post-Beethovenian symphonic form and he pioneered the use of folksong material in serious music. His compositions include Invocação do poema de Luis de Camões Os Lusiadas for chorus and orchestra, a symphony (A Patria), a piano concerto, a string quartet, a number of songs and piano pieces as well as two-hand transcriptions of eight of Alkan’s Treize Prières, Op.64 for pedal piano.

WRITINGS

Nachtrag zu Studien bei Hans von Bülow von Theodor Pfeiffer (Berlin and Leipzig, 1896; Eng. trans., 1993)

Einige Beobachtungen über Franz Liszt (Munich, 1898)

Música e músicos alemães (Coimbra, 1941, 2/1947)

A vida de Liszt (Oporto, 1945)

Essays and articles in AMZ, Die Musik, NZM, ReM etc.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A. Arrio: José Vianna da Motta (Lisbon, 1896)

F. Lopes Graça: Viana da Mota (Lisbon, 1949)

O. Guerra, ed.: In memoriam (Lisbon, 1949)

J. de Freitas Branco: Viana da Mota (Lisbon, 1972)

CHARLES HOPKINS

Viardot, Paul.

French violinist and composer, son of Pauline Viardot.

Viardot [née García], (Michelle Ferdinande) Pauline

(b Paris, 18 July 1821; d Paris, 18 May 1910). French singer and composer of Spanish origin. She came from a family of singers: her father was the elder Manuel García, her mother María Joaquina Sitches, her brother the younger Manuel García and her sister Maria Malibran. After the death of her father in 1832, her mother took over her training. Viardot not only inspired composers such as Chopin, Berlioz, Meyerbeer, Gounod, Saint-Saëns, Liszt, Wagner and Schumann with her dramatic gifts but also collaborated on the composition of roles created especially for her. She was active as a teacher, continuing the García method. She studied the piano with Meysenberg and Liszt and composition with Reicha, but concentrated on singing after Malibran’s death in 1836. A year later, when she was 16, she made her singing début in Brussels at a concert given by her brother-in-law, the Belgian violinist Charles-Auguste de Bériot; her range of three octaves and her musical versatility caused a sensation. During her first concert tour, which took her and her brother to Germany in 1838, she performed her own songs, accompanying herself on the piano. She met Clara Wieck and Schumann in Leipzig. (Schumann published one of her songs in his Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, and later dedicated his cycle of Heine songs op.24 to her.)

She made her operatic début, like her sister, as Desdemona in Rossini’s Otello, in London on 9 May 1839, and appeared in the same role in Paris on 8 October 1839. Her first engagement in Paris was at the Théâtre Italien, where she demonstrated her talent in a variety of parts in operas by Rossini. Alfred de Musset (who said, ‘She sings as naturally as she breathes’), George Sand, who depicted her as the heroine of her novel Consuelo (1842), and Berlioz were soon among her most ardent admirers. The director of the Théâtre Italien was the writer Louis Viardot, whom she married in 1840. 21 years older than his wife, he gave up his post and accompanied her on concert tours throughout Europe in the years that followed. (Their first daughter, Louise, born in 1841, was brought up by Viardot’s mother.) The major cities in which Viardot appeared were London, Berlin, Dresden, Vienna and St Petersburg. From 1843 to 1846 she sang with the opera at St Petersburg, where she met the writer Ivan Turgenev. Turgenev fell in love with her, and lived in close proximity to the Viardot family for the rest of his life. She first appeared in St Petersburg as Norma, one of her most famous roles. While there, she sang works by Glinka and Dargomïzhsky in Russian as well as the Italian repertory. She not only spoke fluent Spanish, French, Italian, English, German and Russian, but also composed in different national styles. This stylistic versatility enabled her to assist other composers, influencing works such as Meyerbeer’s Le prophète, Berlioz’s Les Troyens and Béatrice et Bénédict, Gounod’s Sapho and Massenet’s Marie-Magdeleine.

At this time Viardot seldom appeared in Paris, where she might experience hostility as the wife of Louis Viardot, a republican and declared opponent of Louis Napoléon. However, the première in 1849 of Meyerbeer’s Le prophète, in which she created the part of Fidès, was a triumph. Meyerbeer wrote of the singer, then not quite 28 years old: ‘I owe a great part of the opera’s success to Viardot, who as singer and actress rose to tragic heights such as I have never seen in the theatre before’. Viardot sang Fidès more than 200 times, on all the great European stages. She was famous for this part and especially for Gluck’s Orpheus, to which she brought great dramatic conviction. The part, originally for castrato, was revised for her by Berlioz in a version that in 1859 brought the forgotten opera back to the stage. Viardot’s other notable roles were Beethoven’s Leonore, Gluck’s Alceste and Verdi’s Lady Macbeth (although she was unable to bring success to Macbeth itself).

In 1863, at the age of 42, she retired from the stage and left France for political reasons. With her husband, her three youngest children and Turgenev she settled in Baden-Baden, where she taught singers from all over the world. She built an art gallery in her garden and a small opera house, where she, her pupils and her children gave concerts and performed their own dramatic works. The librettos were by Turgenev. One of Viardot’s operettas, Le dernier sorcier (1869), was also performed in an orchestral version in Weimar in 1869 and in Riga and Karlsruhe in 1870. Henry Chorley wrote in the Athenaeum (12 October 1867): ‘It is not possible to conceive anything of its kind more perfect in quaint fantasy, real charm and complete execution’. She also performed piano duets with Clara Schumann and gave private organ concerts. She sang in the première of Brahms’s Alto Rhapsody (Jena, 3 March 1870) during her time in Baden-Baden. The defeat of Napoléon III in the Franco-Prussian war enabled Viardot to return to Paris (she went first to London, where there was a private performance of Le dernier sorcier on 11 February 1871). She continued to live there until her death, teaching and composing, among other works, ‘salon operettas’ such as Le conte de fées (1869) and Cendrillon (1904), and presiding over a highly regarded musical salon in the rue de Douai until the death of both her husband and Turgenev in 1883, when she moved to the boulevard St Germain.

Viardot did not regard herself as a composer, yet her work was highly professional. Like her father’s operas, her compositions arose from the pleasure she took in music and drama. They employ several different languages and styles, and were designed for her own vocal abilities and those of her colleagues. She wrote more than 100 songs and mélodies, to texts by Musset, Turgenev, Pushkin, Gautier, Mörike, Goethe and others, most of which were published in her lifetime. At least as popular as her own songs were her transcriptions of 12 of Chopin’s mazurkas, set to poems by Louis Pomey, and she often sang them in concerts. Chopin was enthusiastic about the transcriptions, which contributed considerably to his own popularity. Viardot also made similar transcriptions of waltzes by Schubert and Hungarian dances by Brahms.

Her pupils included Désirée Artôt, Aglaja Orgeni, Marianne Brandt and Antoinette Sterling. She published a manual on singing, based on the García method, Une heure d’étude: exercices pour voix de femmes (Paris, c1880/R); a collection of selected songs and arias, Ecole classique de chant (Paris, 1861), with comments on phrasing, accentuation and interpretation; and a critical edition of 50 of Schubert’s lieder. These publications and her own compositions and transcriptions are an important source for the understanding of performing practice in the 19th century.

Her eldest daughter Louise (Pauline Marie) Héritte (b Paris, 14 Dec 1841; d Heidelberg, 17 Jan 1918) became a contralto, teacher and composer. She taught singing in St Petersburg, Frankfurt, Berlin and Heidelberg. Her comic opera Lindoro was performed at Weimar in 1879 and a cantata, Das Baccusfest, in Stockholm in 1880. She published many songs and a string quartet, and Memories and Adventures (London, 1911; Fr. trans., 2/1923).

Her son Paul (Louis Joachim) (b Courtavenel, 20 July 1857; d Algiers, 11 Dec 1941) became a violinist, conductor and composer; he was a pupil of Léonard. He occasionally conducted at the Paris Opéra. Among his compositions are two violin sonatas and a piano trio. His writings include Histoire de la musique (Paris, 1905), Rapport officiel (mission artistique de 1907) sur la musique en Scandinavie (Paris, 1908) and Souvenirs d’un artiste (Paris, 1910). Pauline Viardot’s third daughter, Marianne (b 1854), was for a time engaged to Fauré; she later married the French pianist and composer V.A. Duvernoy.

WORKS

Stage (operettas unless otherwise stated): Trop de femmes (I. Turgenev), 1867; L’ogre (Turgenev), 1868; Le conte de fées, 1869; Le dernier sorcier (Der letzte Zauberer) (Turgenev), perf. Weimar, 1869; Cendrillon (oc), 1904; Au Japon (pantomime); Phèdre et Atholie; Andromaque

Choral: Choeur bohémien, soloists, SSA; Choeur des elfes, soloists, SSA; Choeur de fileuses (from L’ogre); La jeune République (P. Dupont), 1v, chorus (Paris, ?1848)

Other vocal: Duo, 2 solo vv, pf: c100 songs, incl. 5 Gedichte (St Petersburg, 1874), 4 Lieder (Berlin, 1880), [5] Poésies toscanes (L. Pomey) (Paris, 1881), 6 mélodies (Paris, 1884), [6] Airs italiens du XVIIIe siècle (trans. Pomey) (Paris, 1886), 6 chansons du XVe siècle (Paris, 1886), [3] Album russe; Canti popolari toscani; arrs. for 1v, pf of inst works by Brahms, Chopin, Haydn, Schubert; other arrs.

Inst: 2 airs de ballet, pf; Défilé bohémien, pf 4 hands [also as song]; Gavotte et sérénade, pf (Paris, 1885); Introduction et polonaise, pf 4 hands (Paris, 1874); Marche militaire, 2 fl + pic, 2 ob, 2 brass choirs; Mazourke, pf; 6 morceaux, vn, pf (Berlin, 1868); Album russe, pf; Sonatine, vn, pf (Paris, 1874); Suite arménienne, pf 4 hands

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Grove6 (A. FitzLyon)

GroveW (J. Ard, A. FitzLyon) [incl. further bibliography]

J. Becker: ‘Concert der Madame Pauline Viardot-Garcia’, NZM, xix (1843), 68 only

F. Liszt: ‘Pauline Viardot-Garcia’, NZM, l (1859), 49–54

La Mara [M. Lipsius]: Pauline Viardot-Garcia (Leipzig, 1882)

L. Pietsch: ‘Pauline Viardot: persönliche Erinnerungen’, Vossische Zeitung (29 May 1910)

T. Baker, trans.: ‘Pauline Viardot-Garcia to Julius Rietz: Letters of Friendship’, MQ, i (1915), 350–80, 526–59; ii (1916), 32–60

T. Marix-Spire, ed.: Lettres inédites de George Sand et de Pauline Viardot 1839–1849 (Paris, 1959)

‘Pis'ma Polinï Viardo k russkim znakomïm’ [Letters of Viardot to Russian acquaintances], SovM (1960), no.8, pp.89–98

A. FitzLyon: The Price of Genius: a Life of Pauline Viardot (London, 1964)

E.I. Kiyko: ‘Okonchaniye povesti “Pervaya lyubov”’, Literaturnoye nasledstvo, lxxiii/1 (1964), 59–68

R. Oliv'ye: ‘Operettï Turgeneva’, ibid., 69–90

G. Shvirts: ‘Prestavleniya operetti “Posledniy Koldun”’ ibid., 208–24

M.P. Alexeyev: ‘Stikhotvornïye teksti dlya romansov Polinï Viardo’ [Poems written as words for Viardot’s songs], Turgenevskiy sbornik, iv, ed. Alexeyev and others (Leningrad, 1968), 189–204

A. Rozanov: Polina Viardo-Garsia (Leningrad, 1969, 3/1982)

H. Granjard and A. Zviguilsky, eds.: Lettres inédites de Tourguénev à Pauline Viardot et sa famille (Lausanne, 1972) [12 letters from Pauline Viardot]

P. Waddington: ‘Henry Chorley, Pauline Viardot and Turgenev: a Musical and Literary Friendship’,MQ, lxvii (1981), 165–92

G. Dulong: Pauline Viardot: tragédienne lyrique (Paris, 2/1987)

N.G. Zekulin: The Story of an Operetta: Le dernier sorcier by Pauline Viardot and Ivan Turgenev (Munich, 1989)

N. Barry: Pauline Viardot: l’égérie de George Sand et de Tourgueniev (Paris, 1990)

B. Borchard: ‘Pauline Viardot-Garcia et Clara Schumann: une amitié franco-allemande’, Cahiers Ivan Tourgueniev, Pauline Viardot, Maria Malibran, xx (Paris, 1996) [5 letters of Viardot], 127–43

BEATRIX BORCHARD

Vibert, Nicolas

(b c1710; d Paris, 16 Aug 1772). French violinist and composer. He came from a family of luthiers, was listed among the violinists of the Paris Concert Spirituel in 1751, but made his début as a horn player, performing in a horn quartet for the Concert Spirituel in May 1750. In 1752 he gained the reversion to membership of the 24 Violons du Roi, and published two series of sonates: six unaccompanied Sonates for two violins, op.1, and Six sonates à trois, for two violins and bass, op.2. In 1753 he joined the Opéra-Comique, becoming supernumerary violinist in the Opéra orchestra in 1757. His second set of compositions, three Suites d’airs gracieux en trio for two descant viols (or violins) and bass, opp.3–5, were published c1759–60. He held the position of first violin in the Concert Spirituel orchestra from 1760 to 1763.

Vibert’s compositions reveal a virtuoso violin technique coupled with considerable inventiveness, particularly in the op.2 sonatas. These Sonates à trois appear also to have been conceived orchestrally with frequent indications of ‘solo’ and ‘tutti’. They are further distinguished in their unusual harmonies and a tendency towards strikingly descriptive and fanciful titles, such as Largo ideali and Allegro assai bizaria. The first sonata ends with a long, free-fantasy Capricio of a brilliance reminiscent of Locatelli’s works. The op.1 sonatas maintain a clear delineation of melody and accompaniment, with occasional canons usually at the unison. The three suites were probably intended for the upper nobility; they consist of a number of short characteristic pieces, often humorous and again interestingly titled in both Italian and French. The Arlequinade of the second suite is described by La Laurencie as displaying an off-handed impertinence recalling Michel Corrette’s concertos comiques.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BrookSF

La LaurencieSF

M. Brenet: Les concerts en France sous l’ancien régime (Paris, 1900)

L. de La Laurencie and G. de Saint-Foix: ‘Contribution à l’histoire de la symphonie française vers 1750’, Année musicale, i (1911), 1–123

C. Pierre: Histoire du Concert Spirituel, 1725–1790 (Paris, 1975)

STEPHANIE VIAL

Vibraharp.

Name by which the Vibraphone is known in the USA, a trade name used by Deagan of Chicago.

Vibraphone.

A metallophone of the bar percussion family. It was developed in the USA, where it is sometimes called ‘vibraharp’ (it is classified as an idiophone: set of percussion plaques). Notes are produced by vibrations of metal bars amplified by a special type of resonator or electronically, producing a pulsating tone. The bars (an alloy), which are arranged keyboard-fashion, are suspended on cords at the nodal points (see Glockenspiel (i)). They are (in contrast to the raised mounting of the ‘black-key’ bars of the normal orchestral xylophone) level-mounted to facilitate the use of three or more beaters (see fig.1). Rubber-tipped or yarn-wound rubber mallets are normally used, the texture in some cases being defined by a colour code. The celesta-like tone of the metal bars is of long duration; the instrument is equipped with a foot-controlled sustaining device, operating similarly to the piano sustaining pedal (pressure on the pedal releases the felt damper; in early models the bars ring freely, and pressure on the pedal damps the tone). The usual range of the concert vibraphone is three octaves (f–f'''); instruments of four octaves (c–c'''') became readily available in the last quarter of the 20th century, and have become common, especially in continental Europe. Alban Berg (Lulu, 1929–35), Messiaen (Trois petites liturgies, 1944) and Henze had all apparently asked for a four-octave instrument earlier in the century, a good example of the way in which percussion instruments have often developed to satisfy the demands of composers.

The outstanding feature of the vibraphone is its unique vibrato. In the tube-resonated model this is obtained by the repeated opening and closing of the upper (open) ends of the resonators by means of revolving vanes (flat metal discs; see fig.2). The vanes are attached to a spindle which is driven by a motor mechanism. The repeated breaking up of the sound causes it to emerge in a series of pulsations, the speed of which is governed by adjusting the revolutions of the spindle. Many composers have used the vibraphone without vibrato; then the vanes rest in a vertical position. (For the comparative pitch of bar and resonator see Xylophone, §2 (ii) and Acoustics, §V, 2.)

The desire for the extraordinary in early 20th-century vaudeville was probably responsible for the introduction of the vibraphone into the field of entertainment where the xylophone and numerous novel percussion instruments were popular features. In 1916 Hermann Winterhoff of the Leedy Drum Co. (USA) applied a mechanical vibrato to a ‘steel marimba’, where a vox humana effect (see Organ stop) was produced by lowering and raising the resonating chambers by means of a motor-driven apparatus. This system may have been developed from earlier experiments. In 1921 a development of the original principle was applied, whereby the vibrato was obtained by opening and closing the upper (open) ends of the resonators by means of revolving discs, and by the mid-1920s the vibraphone was an integral part of the dance orchestra. Some years elapsed before it was frequently employed in serious compositions. Possibly the first significant use of the instrument is in Havergal Brian's opera The Tigers, which calls for two vibraphones (one a bass vibraphone of unusually extended lower compass). In 1932 Milhaud scored for the vibraphone in L’annonce faite à Marie. Berg gave it a place in his opera Lulu. Britten used it in his Spring Symphony (1949) and in his opera A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1960). It appears in Walton’s Cello Concerto (1956) and Partita (1957); two are used in K.A. Hartmann’s Eighth Symphony (1960–62). Other orchestral or chamber works with vibraphone include Maderna’s Serenata no.2 for 11 instruments (1954, rev. 1957), Schuller’s Seven Studies on a Theme of Paul Klee (1959), and Vaughan Williams’s Sinfonia antartica (1949–52) and Eighth Symphony (1953–6). There are particularly challenging vibraphone parts in Boulez’s Le marteau sans maître (1953–5, rev. 1957), Tippett’s Third Symphony (1970–72), Siegfried Fink’s Concertino for Vibraphone (1958–9) and Marc Bleuse’s Moon Step for two vibraphones and percussion (1973). Milhaud’s Concerto for Marimba and Vibraphone (1947) remains an outstanding example of the possibilities of the instrument. In this work Milhaud requested that the back ends of the mallets should be used and that the bars be struck with the hands. In Ernst Toch’s First Symphony (1950) ‘Vibraphone ohne Vibrato’ is given as a substitute for marimba; in Britten’s Prince of the Pagodas (1956) and Death in Venice (1973) the vibraphone is used as a metallophone (without motor), and together with other percussion instruments provides a worthy imitation of a Javanese gamelan. Occasionally instructions are given for the vibraphone to be played with no resonance (‘pedal off’), or with a steadily accelerating (or retarding) vibrato. Possibly unique are the requests of William Kraft in his Configurations (1968) to ‘set discs so that “whites” are open [vertical], “blacks” are closed [horizontal]’ and of Lutyens for a thin metal strip to be placed on the bars of the vibraphone in Essence of our Happinesses (1968).

Experiments with electronic amplification and vibrato have resulted in such instruments as the Deagan Electra Vibe where no tube resonators are used, each bar being individually fitted with a pickup transducer. Tremolo and volume controls are incorporated.

The vibraphone (‘vibes’) is an integral instrument in the modern percussion ensemble and in jazz, where performers such as Lionel Hampton, Milt Jackson, Red Norvo and Gary Burton are famed for their virtuosity; Burton in particular has been noted for his four-mallet playing (two in each hand) and his technique of ‘bending’ or slightly lowering the pitch of a note. He has also used electronic attachments to vary the tone.

Music for the vibraphone is written in the treble clef.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BladesPI

A. Clark: Jazz Styles and Analysis: Vibes (Chicago, 1980)

JAMES BLADES/JAMES HOLLAND

Vibrato

(It., from Lat. vibrare: ‘to shake’).

A regular fluctuation of pitch or intensity (or both), either more or less pronounced and more or less rapid. The Italian term ‘tremolo’ is also occasionally used for vocal vibrato. Terminology used in music was not standardized until the 20th century; earlier terms, primarily applied to vocal vibrato, include: flattement, flatté, balancement, balancé, plainte, langueur, verre cassé; tremolo, tremolo sforzato, ardire, trilletto; Bebung, Schwebung; and sweetening, depending on the effect wanted or technique used. Terminological uncertainties arise because vibrato is regarded not as a single ornament but rather as a complex of ‘quivering’ ornaments which might be modified in performance depending on the desired expression or the emotion to be aroused. Neither intensity nor tempo, therefore, can be clearly determined, and many Baroque or Classical kinds of vibrato are only distantly related to our present concept. ‘Wobble’ (exaggerated, slow or irregular vibration of the singing voice) is a technical fault, and not to be regarded as vibrato.

Vibrato as a device can be found throughout Western music with descriptions dating from early medieval sources to the present day, but the techniques have varied. Historical descriptions are often vague and do not make clear how the vibrato was actually produced, but it seems always to have been accepted as an ornament until the first quarter of the 20th century, when its continuous use gradually became the norm.

1. Techniques.

On string instruments vibrato is produced by moving the finger on the string backwards and forwards, aided by the wrist and sometimes by the forearm. On fretted string instruments such as viols ‘two-finger’ vibrato (also known as the close shake or langueur) was used, the first finger being placed firmly on the string and the second making a trilling movement near to it, thus creating an undulation of about an eighth- to a quarter-tone. Only with the little finger was a ‘normal’ vibrato comparable to modern practice allowed as a substitute for the usual technique (sources in England and France agree on the subject). German violin sources of the late 17th century and the 18th also describe a vibrato produced without the usual rocking movements of the finger; here too, a slight beating of the string in a trill-like movement without altogether leaving it is described (e.g. Printz, 1676, or Petri, who suggests combining this technique with the inward and outward movement of the finger, thus actually describing the changes in finger pressure explained by Tartini and Leopold Mozart in their tutors). Two-finger vibrato on the violin (the ‘gypsy trill’) is not mentioned explicitly. One unclear passage in Mersenne could point to it, but more likely a beat (mordent) is meant; Tartini refers to it in passing. Rocking of the fingers has always been the usual technique for producing vibrato on string instruments of the violin family. The amount of wrist or arm movement differs according to different schools of violin playing.

On plucked instruments the same device (known variously in history as tremolo, tremolo sforzato, verre cassé, soupir, mordant) is found. The lower strings of the lute, however, demand a stronger movement: here the string is pulled back and forth (indicated by the same symbol as the mordent; on higher strings the vibrato is indicated by <).

On wind instruments during the 17th and 18th centuries vibrato was normally produced by a trill-like movement (usually made with stiff fingers) over a hole some distance from the ones covered, thus producing a very slight fluctuation in pitch. Breath vibrato is described early in the 16th century (Agricola, Ganassi) but seems to have been abandoned because of its bad effect on breathing technique. The Flattement (or sweetening, Bebung or Klopfen) was in use throughout the 17th and 18th centuries and at the beginning of the 19th. There was some experimenting in the second half of the 18th century, resulting, for example, in Lusse’s rolling of the flute to produce a vibrato by slight changes of the embouchure. When all these forms as well as the written-out measured vibrato (see below) became obsolete, there seems to have been a period with little or no vibrato on wind instruments; only in the 20th century did ‘breath’ (diaphragm) vibrato become generally accepted as the norm, even if it is still not universally used on all wind instruments (e.g. clarinets, horns, Viennese oboes).

Vocal vibrato is regarded as standard if the voice is well supported; during the 16th to 18th centuries it was supposed to be small and was considered virtually non-existent. It is impossible to establish whether ‘vibrato-free production’ (described at least until the end of the 19th century) denotes a sound entirely without vibrato in the modern sense; statements that the singing voice differs from the speaking voice in that it contains an almost inaudible vibrato rather suggest that it does not (see Dodart, 1706). Some Baroque treatises mention a vocal sound wholly without vibrato as an ornament (Bernhard, Montéclair), which would support the hypothesis that a well-trained Baroque voice normally used minimal vibrato. The same sources mention not only ornamental non-vibrato but also ornamental vibrato. The technique of the latter is described somewhat vaguely, as ‘breath vibrato’. Changes in singing technique later suggest that sound production changed in the latter half of the 19th century; vibrato would thus have had a higher priority before that time.

2. Measured vibrato.

Measured vibrato, now all but obsolete, was much used throughout the 17th and 18th centuries and in part of the 19th, mostly in orchestral music to underline passages (see below). On string instruments it is rendered by controlled pressure changes of the bow (indicated by a wavy line, and about M.M.60 or 120; a well-known example is found in the scene with the Cold Genius in Purcell’s King Arthur). The choice of quavers or semiquavers serves to suggest the tempo. On wind instruments a measured breath vibrato is indicated with the same device. Singers also use it; here too, the beats should be strictly in time. This kind of vibrato is often said to be an imitation of the Tremulant stop of the organ. Such indications as staccato (or, eventually, such counter-indications as andante) show that repeated quavers or semiquavers in slow movements were generally considered to point to the use of measured vibrato, although the actual performance may sometimes have been less a vibrato than something akin to a portato (as suggested by Roger North); from the mid-18th century on, German writers distinguish between ‘Tremolo’ and ‘Tragen der Töne’.

In ensemble music of the 17th and 18th centuries, measured vibrato is often the only kind accepted, as the specific technique, which relies mostly on carefully gauged fluctuations in intensity, helps the players to stay together and reduces the risk of intonation problems.

Although normal vibrato is also to some extent measured, and most measured vibrato involves fluctuations of pitch, both kinds were mainly connected with only one of their characteristics. As a rule, measured vibrato has strong emotional connotations; its use survives well into the 19th century, most clearly in opera, but also in the symphony. Unlike an ornamental ‘normal’ vibrato, it produces some degree of continuity.

3. History.

In Western music vibrato has been documented since the Middle Ages. It may have been in use as an ornament even in early Christian music, but here documentary confirmation is lacking. During the 16th century it became fashionable as a mannerist ornament, and towards the end of the century there seems to have been at least one (polyphonic) singing school that would eventually accept it as some sort of a continuous device (described by Zacconi in 1592 as ‘art eventually turned nature’: ‘di natura tale, che usandolo, sempre usar si deve; accioche l’uso si converti in habito’, f.60r). It was then associated with bravura and ornamentational skill (hence the term ardire, sometimes used for bravura vibrato) and was used as the basis of trilling ornaments. This more or less continuous vibrato was rejected by practitioners of solo singing and the new style in Italy, and slowly also elsewhere (in Germany the injunction to sing with a tremulous voice, found in singing tutors for boys, became obsolete during the first half of the 17th century, although some tutors, following tradition, advocated its use until the latter years of the century). As a result of this change of style, vibrato is described as an (occasional) ornament, thus conveying a meaning in accord with Baroque conceptions of passions or with a character as portrayed in a given piece of music. Even in singing tutors of the time it was not mentioned as a substantial element in sound production; there is a clear distinction between the small ‘natural’ vibrato of the well-placed voice, which is considered the same as a non-vibrated instrumental sound, and the audible ornamental vibrato. The association with well-defined passions lacks meaning if vibrato is used continuously as a means of musical tone production (see Seashore). According to 17th- and 18th-century sources, vibrato was associated with fear, cold, death, sleep and mourning, and was generally perceived as a ‘feminine’ ornament (hence denoting also sweetness or loveliness, as reflected in many of the names given to it); its use in this way was eventually superseded by the more modern idea of using vibrato to embellish the tone.

During the Baroque vibrato was used sparingly, for emphasis on long, accentuated notes in pieces with an affect or character to which it was suited. Being regarded as an ornament, in principle it was used on single notes like any other. It was usually denoted by wavy lines; in tablatures a cross (×) has the same meaning. Most of the signs used appear either in tutors or in French amateur music where unspecified ornaments are often indicated by a cross (+). Less common ornaments such as vibrato or glissando were in theory used only by soloists. In the second half of the 18th century there was a tendency towards more vibrato; in some circles it may even have been used continuously.

By the mid-18th century vibrato was gradually identified with some of its more positive connections, especially the sweetness of sound quality (‘lieblich’). With many performers it seems to have been in nearly constant use – at least on all longer notes. Such theorists as Leopold Mozart, Simon Löhlein and Tromlitz warn against overuse. In Classical orchestral works there are many written-out forms of vibrato or similar effects; as a rule these are measured (bow) vibrato, thus allowing small groups to be in time and in tune despite its use. Vibrato at that time also spread among amateur musicians (there is a warning in Bremner); finger vibrato on woodwind instruments as described for amateurs was already known, because relatively little technical knowledge was needed to produce it (English and French sources of the late 17th and early 18th centuries). The early 19th century saw, again, a much more restricted use of the device.

The extensive use of vibrato and measured vibrato in the last decades of the 18th century brought a reaction at the beginning of the 19th; a tendency developed towards a stricter use of prescribed measured vibrato in the symphonic repertory of the first half of the 19th century, and tutors warn against overuse of the normal vibrato, still described as an ornament and not as part of basic sound production. This becomes clear in the fact that during the first three decades of the 19th century wind tutors still describe finger vibrato as the standard technique (e.g. Fürstenau). Nor do singing tutors mention vibrato as a part of normal tone (e.g. Garcia, 1840), and even at the beginning of the 20th century Leopold Auer expressed reservations about the spread of continuous vibrato, which he in no way advocated. In opera abundant use is made of the measured vibrato for dramatic effect until the very end of the 19th century, suggesting that members of Italian opera orchestras were not expected to use left-hand or normal breath vibrato.

In the 20th century absence of vibrato, except for some wind instruments, came to be regarded as a special effect to be employed for character delineation. Only when continuous vibrato began to establish itself did treatises or ‘tutors’ on vibrato in singing and playing begin to appear; there are none devoted solely to the subject until the 20th century. It would seem that the use of metal strings to replace gut strings in the orchestra went hand in hand with an increasing demand for continuous left-hand string vibrato; before this, left-hand vibrato was still reserved for particular effect, as for example in Schreker’s Der ferne Klang (1912). Not until the 20th century was ‘incorrect’ vibrato first seen as a problem; earlier, it had simply been considered as resulting from generally poor technique (especially where singers and wind players were concerned). Continuous vibrato is a 20th-century phenomenon, indicating in itself that the older ornament has lost its expressive power. Regular vibrato has thus become a normal element of sound production, hence an important component of singing and playing technique.

Measured vibrato is as a rule written out by the composer, although use ad libitum may exist. It is used mainly to convey fear and awe, but also supplication and mercy. In late 17th-century German sonatas a tremolo movement is often inserted as a slow movement; this use is also documented by Roger North for the Italian style in general. In his church cantatas, Bach made ample use of measured vibrato, usually with a particular purpose, although there are indications that he and his contemporaries also used it to indicate ensemble vibrato. Especially in small ensembles this use of bow vibrato helps to avoid fluctuations in pitch and speed. Measured vibrato was still used freely by Italian opera composers of the 19th century to denote feminine mourning passions. As a technical exercise it was still taught to string players at the beginning of the 20th century; symphonies of the latter half of the 19th century still have passages with measured vibrato, suggesting that not only in opera orchestras was continuous vibrato (left-hand vibrato for strings) not established before the introduction during the 20th century of metal strings. These paved the way for changes in violin technique and sound perception, one of which was the increasing use of continuous vibrato, not only for solo use. After a period of virtually universal use, playing with little or no vibrato has become increasingly popular through the revival of early music and early singing and playing techniques.

See also Ornaments.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

C.E. Seashore, ed.: The Vibrato (Iowa City, IA, 1932)

C.E. Seashore, ed.: Psychology of the Vibrato in Voice and Instrument (Iowa City, IA, 1936)

C. Brown: ‘Bowing Styles, Vibrato and Portamento in Nineteenth-Century Violin Playing’, JRMA, cxiii (1988), 97–128, esp. 110–19

E. Fiebig: ‘Ein tüchtiger Musiker und angesehener Bürger: Johann Christoph Pezel, Stadtpfeifer in Bautzen von 1681 bis 1694’, Das Orchester, xliii/5 (1995), 10–16

F.E. Kirby: ‘The Germanic Symphony of the Nineteenth Century: Genre, Form, Instrumentation, Expression’, JMR, xiv (1995), 193–221

D. Manning: ‘Woodwind Vibrato from the Eighteenth Century to the Present’, Performance Practice Review, viii (1995), 67–72

G. MOENS-HAENEN

Vibrato linguale

(It.).

See Flutter-tonguing.

Vičar, Jan

(b Olomouc, 5 May 1949). Czech musicologist. He studied musicology at the University of Olomouc with Robert Smetana and Vladimír Hudec (MA 1972, PhDr 1974), accordion at the Ostrava Conservatory (graduated 1972), and composition with Jiří Dvořáček and music theory with Karel Risinger at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (graduated 1981, 1983). He later attended numerous courses and received scholarships in Germany, Italy, England, Japan, the USA and Chile. He taught at the department of musicology and music education at the University of Olomouc from 1973 to 1985, receiving the CSc in 1985 with a dissertation on stylistic trends in the works of Václav Trojan. From 1985 to 1989 he worked as editor and chief editor with the journal Hudební rozhledy in Prague, at the same time teaching in the music faculty of the Prague Academy of Performing Arts where, in 1988, he received the title of Docent. In 1992 he became head of the department of musicology at the University of Olomouc, becoming professor there in 1998. At the same time he has taught at the department of music theory and history of the Prague Academy of Performing Arts. His compositions include the cantata Cry (1981) and Choruses and Songs for Children (1997).

WRITINGS

Akordeon a jeho hudební unplatnění [The accordion and its use in music] (diss., U. of Olomouc, 1974; Prague, 1981)

‘K problematice 1. věty (Smrt Andrijova) Janáčkova Tarase Bulby’ [On the problems of the first movement (Andrij’s death) of Janáček’s Taras Bulba], Janáčkiana: Ostrava 1978 and 1979, 127–32

‘Kantátová tvorba mladých skladatelů 1970–80’ [Cantata composition by young composers], HRo, xxxv (1982), 83–9

‘Estetické názory mladých skladatelů’ [The aesthetic opinions of young composers], HRo, xxxvi (1983), 325–7

‘Tvorba Václava Trojana pro dětský sbor’ [Václav Trojan’s compositions for children’s choir], Hudební věda a výchova, iii (1984), 79–97

Stylové tendence v díle V. Trojana (ESc diss., U. of Olomouc, 1985)

‘Stylová problematika díla V. Trojana’ [Stylistic issues in Trojan’s works], HV, xxiv (1987), 99–120

Václav Trojan (Prague, 1989)

‘Sémantické aspekty hudební analýzy’ [Semantic aspects of musical analysis], Živá hudba, xi (1992), 44–7

‘'Václav Trojan's Film Music’, ‘The Olomouc Festival of Songs’, Musicologica [Olomouc], i (1993), 65–77, 127–33

‘Leoš Janáček's “The Diary of One who Vanished”’, ‘Music Against the War’, Musicologica [Olomouc], ii (1995), 51–84, 111–16

Hudební kritika a popularizace hudby [Music criticism and the popularization of music] (Prague, 1997)

‘Esej o hudební kritice’ [Essay on music criticism], ‘Objev autora veršů Janáčkova “Zápisníku zmizelého”’ [The discovery of the author of the text of Janáček’s The Diary of One who Disappeared], HV, xxxiv (1997), 116–22, 418–22

‘“Unknown” Czech Music after 1945’, Musicologica [Olomouc], iii (1997), 159–65

with R. Dykast: Hudební estetika [Musical aesthetics] (Prague, 1998)

KAREL STEINMETZ

Vicenot, Johannes [Joh.]

See Vincenet.

Vicente, Gil

(b ?Guimarães, northern Portugal, c1465–70; d 1536/7). Portuguese dramatist, poet, musician and courtier. He probably died in the year after his last dated play, performed in December 1536. Vicente's plays were written for the royal court during the reigns of Manuel I (1495–1521) and João III (1521–57). According to Reckert, 48 plays are extant, dated between 1502 and 1536; 20 are written in Portuguese, 12 in Castilian and the others use a mixture of languages. Vicente's early work was influenced by Juan del Encina. However, Vicente made much more use of music in his entertainments than Encina or any other of his contemporaries, as is shown by frequent textual references, citations and stage directions. Of almost 250 pieces called for in his plays, only four (which do not survive) are identifiable as his own. At least 15 compositions can be found in the Cancionero de Palacio; others belong to the religious sphere. Although in some cases the relationship between these pieces and their theatrical context is slight, in general Vicente displays amazing wit and originality in the way he makes music play a significant dramatic role. In his plays we find the earliest literary references to the ensalada (Auto da fé, 1510) and the folia (Sibila Cassandra, 1513).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

StevensonSM

A. Braamcamp Freire: Vida e obras de Gil Vicente (Oporto, 1919, 2/1944)

M.A. de Lima Cruz: Gil Vicente (Lisbon, 1937)

A.E. Beau: ‘A música na obra de Gil Vicente’, Biblos, xiv (1938), 329–55

G. Chase: The Music of Spain (New York, 1941, 2/1959)

M. Martins: ‘Canções marianas musicadas nos autos vicentinos’, Didaskalia, vii (1977), 399–432

S. Reckert: Espírito e letra de Gil Vicente (Lisbon, 1983)

D. Becker: ‘De la musique dans le théâtre religieux de Gil Vicente’, Arquivos do Centro cultural português, xxiii (1987), 461–86

ALBERT T. LUPER/MANUEL PEDRO FERREIRA

Vicentino, Michele.

See Pesenti, Michele.

Vicentino, Nicola

(b Vicenza, 1511; d Milan, c1576). Italian composer and theorist. He helped to free theory from its adherence to the ecclesiastical modes and experimented with harmonies which anticipated many later innovations. Little is known of his early years in Vicenza, but he probably came under the influence of the humanist Giangiorgio Trissino there. Perhaps the proximity of Vicenza to Venice allowed ready access to the ideas and teaching of Willaert. On the title-page of his first book of madrigals he called himself ‘pupil of the one and only Adrian Willaert’, an association confirmed in the preface to the same work. At some time during this period he was ordained to the priesthood, but his interest seems to have been chiefly in the theoretical examination of the diatonic, chromatic and enharmonic genera, and their use in practice.

It is not known when Vicentino arrived in Ferrara. Since his name does not appear in the account books of the Ferrarese court, he was probably employed by Cardinal Ippolito II d’Este rather than by the court chapel – a theory supported by later documentary evidence. Although he lacked an official connection with the ducal court, Vicentino, according to his treatise, gave musical instruction to several members of Duke Ercole II’s family; the duke himself participated in the singing and playing of Vicentino’s music.

The succeeding years saw the growing recognition of Vicentino’s work. In 1546 his first book of five-voice madrigals appeared at Venice. The central event in his life was the famous debate with the Portuguese musician Vicente Lusitano which took place in 1551 at Rome where Vicentino had moved with his patron. Vicentino’s argument was based on a particular interpretation of the genera which he later amplified in his treatise. Instead of considering the diatonic, chromatic or enharmonic tetrachord as a unit, he maintained that the use of any one of its component members was sufficient to identify the genus. Thus, chromatic could be represented either by the complete series: minor 3rd–semitone–semitone, or by the minor 3rd alone or a semitone alone. Similarly, the use of the major 3rd could be interpreted as evidence for the existence of the enharmonic genus. In essence then, the music commonly sung was a mixture of the three genera. Lusitano disputed this, arguing that most music could be explained in terms of the diatonic gender. The final judgment signed by the papal singers Bartolomeo Escobedo and Ghiselin Danckertswas in favour of Lusitano. That did not dissuade Vicentino from his experiment nor from completing his treatise L’antica musica ridotta alla moderna prattica (Rome, 1555, 2/1557) in which his theories were more fully explained (see fig.1).

The events of the next few years are outlined in the treatise. Ippolito II and his entourage returned briefly to Ferrara, then settled in Siena for almost two years and after this moved frequently between Rome and Ferrara. By the year 1561, Vicentino had completed not only the arcicembalo discussed in the fifth book of L’antica musica but had also built an arciorgano constructed along similar lines and capable of reproducing the sounds of all three genera (described in a publication dated 25 October 1561).

In this publication, Vicentino served notice of his availability for a new position, probably occasioned by the frequent absences of his patron on official ecclesiastical business; by 1563 he had left the service of the cardinal and assumed the post of maestro di cappella at Vicenza Cathedral. This position apparently did not please him for he remained there only until the end of the following year.

Where Vicentino went after he left Vicenza remains unclear. Vincenzo Galilei indicated that he had a number of private pupils who sang his music ‘in all the principal cities of Italy’ (see Palisca, pp.341–2). He was perhaps in Milan as early as 1565. Certainly by the end of 1566, probably through the agency of Nicolò Ormaneto (Carlo Borromeo’s vicar in Milan), Vicentino had been found a place as the second rector (with a small salary) of S Tommaso in Terra Amara, a parish in a populous and poor northern quarter of the city; his service there is documented for the next decade. However, his request to the cardinal for the higher-paid rectorship was not granted, his clerical work was criticized in curial visitation reports, and in 1574 Borromeo made S Tommaso into a collegiate church, effectively cutting Vicentino off from chances of ecclesiastical promotion. Before that, he applied in 1570 to Duke Wilhelm V of Bavaria, requesting a better position. The Bavarian archives later record payments to Vicentino, but it is not clear whether for personal appearances or for compositions sent to the court.

The year 1571 saw the publication of his fourth book of motets (of which only the quintus partbook is extant) by the Milanese printer Ponzio; several of the motets seem related to Milanese devotion. Together with evidence for at least one student, this shows that he remained active as a composer and a teacher in his later years. In 1572 Vicentino’s fifth book of Madrigali a cinque voci appeared. In the same year a madrigal, Passa la nave mia calma d’oblio, was printed in an anthology at Paris by Le Roy & Ballard; it is the only Italian work in the collection and its inclusion gives direct evidence of the esteem in which the French held Vicentino. Ercole Bottrigari in Il Desiderio (1594) stated that Vicentino died during the plague of 1575–6; his pastoral activities would certainly have exposed him to infection, and his post was vacant by 1577. Still, his memory continued in Milan, as his arcicembalo passed into the ownership of Prospero Visconti, and he was respectfully mentioned by Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo (Rime, 1587), in Federico Borromeo’s musical miscellany (I-Ma G.309 inf., c1595), and by Girolamo Borsieri (Il supplemento della Nobiltà di Milano, 1619).

Vicentino’s extant musical legacy consists chiefly of two books of madrigals. To these may be added a few isolated sacred and secular works in both published and manuscript sources, and several incomplete compositions including the quintus of a collection of motets. His fame, however, rests on the treatise L’antica musica ridotta alla moderna prattica. The work as a whole is divided into two main parts. The first, a single book ‘della theorica musicale’, is based chiefly on Boethius but with an emphasis on those elements that support Vicentino’s own ideas. The other part contains five books ‘della prattica musicale’, the first of which concentrates chiefly on a discussion of various intervals in their melodic functions, extended to encompass the possibilities of the three genera. The second concentrates on vertical function of intervals in contrapuntal practice. The third deals chiefly with the eight diatonic modes and their extension into chromatic and enharmonic forms. The bulk of the fourth applies all of these concepts to the actual construction of musical work and serves as a manual of composition. The fifth submits the principles and theories of the previous books to the definitive test of performance on an instrument, the arcicembalo, which was so constructed that any type of microtonal composition could be played on it. Vicentino’s instrument is provided with two keyboards, each containing three ranks or orders of keys. The diagram (fig.2) shows the disposition of the orders and the notation used by Vicentino for each sound. The names of the notes make clear the progression from one order to the next, the denomination of each note in the succeeding orders being derived from the name of the note in the first. Thus, in moving from A la mi re primo (A, in the first order) to the second order, the notation is given as G, but the note is called A la mi re secondo. In other words, Vicentino preferred to think of the location of his notes with reference to the keyboard rather than to the staff. The first order is made up entirely of white keys that correspond to those found in most keyboard instruments. The second order contains the black keys most frequently used in the 16th century: F, G, B, C and E. The keys of the second order are split and raised to provide for the third order, which is then completed by the insertion of shortened black keys between the semitones E–F and B–C. This order contains the less commonly used semitones: G, A, A, B, D, D, E.

The second frame begins with the fourth order, which contains the same white keys as the first order, but pitched a diesis higher. This interval, equal to half a minor semitone or a fifth of a tone, is represented notationally by a dot over the note. The notes of the fifth order are G, A, B, D and E, all a diesis higher than the corresponding notes in the second and third orders. The sixth order resembles the first diatonic order by using plain notes, but is a comma (equal to half a diesis) higher in sound than the first order. The notes are G, A, B, D and E, with the symbol of a comma over each note.

Vicentino’s novel and visionary concepts remain a witness to the battle of those musicians of 16th-century Italy who sought a new and contemporary art. From their innovations emerged the free chromatic style of the seconda pratica of the 17th century and the stabilization of tuning into the equal temperament of more modern times.

WORKS

Edition: N. Vicentino: Opera omnia, ed. H.W. Kaufmann, CMM, xxvi (1963)

Madrigali, 5vv, libro primo (Venice, 1546)

Moteta, 5vv, liber quartus (Milan, 1571); 2 in I-MOe

Madrigali, 5vv, libro quinto (Milan, 1572)

2 madrigals: Solo e pensoso i più deserti campi, Vnm, inc.; Passa la nave mia, 6vv, 1572²

2 motets: Heu mihi Domine, 6vv, PL-WRu; Infelix ego omnium, D-Rp

Intabulation of La pastorella mia from 1546 print in 1548¹²

WRITINGS

L’antica musica ridotta alla moderna prattica (Rome, 1555/R1959, 2/1557; Eng. trans., 1996)

Descrizione dell’arciorgano (Venice, 1561); trans. in Kaufmann, JMT, v

BIBLIOGRAPHY

O. Chilesotti: ‘Di Nicola Vicentino e dei generi greci secondo Vincentio Galilei’, RMI, xix (1912), 546–65

H. Zenck: ‘Nicola Vicentinos L’antica musica (1555)’, Theodor Kroyer: Festschrift, ed. H. Zenck, H. Schultz and W. Gerstenberg (Regensburg, 1933), 86–101

C.V. Palisca: The Beginnings of Baroque Music: its Roots in Sixteenth Century Theory and Polemics (diss., Harvard U., 1954)

G. Mantese: Storia musicale vicentina (Vicenza, 1956)

H.W. Kaufmann: ‘The Motets of Nicola Vicentino’, MD, xv (1961), 167–85

H.W. Kaufmann: ‘Vicentino’s Arciorgano: an Annotated Translation’, JMT, v (1961), 32–53

H.W. Kaufmann: ‘Vicentino and the Greek Genera’, JAMS, xvi (1963), 325–46

H.W. Kaufmann: The Life and Works of Nicola Vicentino (1511–c.1576), MSD, xi (1966)

D. Kämper: Studien zur instrumentalen Ensemblemusik des 16. Jahrhunderts in Italien, AnMc, no.10 (1970)

H.W. Kaufmann: ‘More on the Tuning of the Archicembalo’, JAMS, xxiii (1970), 84–94

D. Harrán: ‘Vicentino and his Rules of Text Underlay’, MQ, lix (1973), 620–32

M.R. Maniates: ‘Vicentino’s “Incerta et occulta scientia” Reexamined’, JAMS, xxviii (1975), 335–51

K. Berger: Theories of Chromatic and Enharmonic Music in Late Sixteenth Century Italy (Ann Arbor, 1980)

C. Dahlhaus: ‘Musikalischer Humanismus als Manierismus’, Mf, xxxv (1982), 122–9

M.R. Maniates: ‘What's in a Word? Interpreting Vicentino's Text’, Music and Civilization: Essays in Honor of Paul Henry Lang, ed. E. Strainchamps, M.R. Maniates and C. Hatch (New York, 1984), 444–56

M.R. Maniates: ‘Bottrigari versus Sigonio on Vicentino and his Ancient Music Adapted to Modern Practice’, Musical Humanism and its Legacy: Essays in Honor of Claude V. Palisca, ed. N.K. Baker and B.R. Hanning (Stuyvesant, NY, 1992), 79–107

D.B. Collins: ‘Fugue, Canon, and Double Counterpoint in Nicola Vicentino's L'antica musica’, Music and the Church, ed. G. Gillen and H. White (Blackrock, Co. Dublin, 1993), 276–301

P. Niedermüller: ‘La musica cromatica ridotta alla pratica vicentiniana: Genus, Kontrapunkt und musikalische Temperatur bei Nicola Vicentino’, Neues musikwissenschaftliches Jb, vi (1997), 59–90

HENRY W. KAUFMANN/ROBERT L. KENDRICK

Vicenza.

City in the Veneto region, in northern Italy. The canonical post of cantor in the cathedral was created between 1255 and 1270, but was abolished in 1329 because of financial difficulties, and for the rest of the century musical activity was confined to mansionarii, who operated irregularly. During the first quarter of the 15th century there were at least five cantors, including Canon Johannes Gasparus, the dedicatee of Ciconia's Liber de proportionibus. Another canon–musician (from 1412) was Matheus de Brixia, who died in Vicenza in 1419 and left (in addition to his music and books) 1200 gold ducats for the creation of a prebend for a singer; all the singers were supported by prebends, transferred from one cantor to another to assure continuity of musical activity. A performance of a liturgical play in the cathedral in 1379, including ‘cantus et melodiae variae’, is recorded by the local chronicler Conforto Pulci. In 1409 Beltram Feragut wrote the motet Excelsa civitas Vincencia for the accession of Pietro Emiliani as Bishop of Vicenza, and it was re-used for that of his successor Francesco Malipiero. A school for singing ‘cantum figuratum’ was founded in 1431, and its first teacher was probably Johannes de Lymburgia, then one of the cathedral cantores, whose motet Martires Dei incliti celebrates the two patron saints of the city. In 1460 the teaching of music in the cathedral was firmly established. Luca de Cataro and Cornelius (1487) were clergymen entrusted with the teaching of ‘cantum planum et figuratum’; the first musician employed at the cathedral was Robinus de Picardia (1488–1511).

Among maestri di canto during the 16th century were Fra Ruffino (1525–31), a figure of some importance in the development of cori spezzati, Nicolò Vicentino (1534) and the madrigalists Ippolito Camaterò (c1565) and Leon Leoni (1588–1627). Employing these few composers, the Accademia Olimpica, founded in 1555, was encouraged to add music to the normal literary and philosophic studies, and by 1596 it provided part-time employment for several musicians to teach its members. Being the most distinguished body of its kind, it entertained noble visitors to Vicenza, in 1582 receiving Duke Guglielmo III of Mantua with a concert by its virtuosos and featuring ‘ladies of Vicenza, celebrated for their singing’, which suggests an ensemble created in imitation of the famous trio of lady singers at the Ferrara court. The Accademia Olimpica was renowned for its theatre, the Teatro Olimpico, which still survives (see illustration); it was designed by Palladio and built between 1580 and 1585 by Vincenzo Scamozzi, who designed its fixed stage scenery. One of the earliest revivals of Greek drama with sung choruses was mounted there in 1585, a performance of Sophocles’ Oedipus tyrannus in an Italian translation by one of the accademici, Orsalto Giustinian, with the choral sections set by Andrea Gabrieli. The play was repeated in 1612 with music by Leoni.

In the 17th century the cathedral still employed good musicians as maestri di cappella, including Amadio Freddi (1627–34), the violinist Biagio Marini (1655–6) and the opera composer G.D. Freschi (1656–1710). The first public opera house in Vicenza was the Teatro Castelli or Teatro delle Garzerie, opened in 1656. P.P. Bissari provided the texts for at least three operas, including La Romilda (1659). The theatre, also called the Teatro di Piazza, was destroyed by fire in 1683, rebuilt by local noblemen and reopened in 1689 as the Teatro Nuovo. Theatrical life was still quite lively in the 18th century: the Teatro delle Grazie was built in 1711 and opened in 1713 with C.F. Pollarolo's La pazzia degli amanti and La violenza d'amore; it burnt down in 1784 and was replaced by the Teatro Eretenio, opened in 1784 with Cimarosa's Olimpiade. The Teatro Eretenio offered full and varied seasons during the early 19th century. It was closed between 1847 and 1850 and between 1859 and 1866, and had few important seasons after that. A new theatre, the Teatro Verdi, was inaugurated in 1923. Like the Eretenio, it was destroyed by bombing in 1944.

Cathedral music was dealt a decisive blow in 1810 when Napoleon secularized the monastery and musicians were no longer employed. In 1866 the Istituto Filarmonico was founded, sponsored by the city; it later became the Istituto Musicale F. Canneti, which in turn became part of the Venice Conservatory in 1969. In 1910 the Società del Quartetto was founded and has continued to hold concerts in the Teatro Olimpico, while regular seasons of chamber and symphonic music are given by the Amici della Musica. Operatic activity in Vicenza has been kept alive by the Comitato Spettacoli of the Teatro Olimpico and more recently by the Vicenza Festival (June to September), which has presented operas by Monteverdi and Mozart and Italian 18th-century works in the Teatro Olimpico.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

DEUMM (D. Bertoldi) [incl. further bibliography]

GroveO (P. Rigoli)

A. Alverà: I vicentini distinti nella musica (Vicenza, 1827)

G. Gasparelli: I musicisti vicentini (Vicenza, 1880)

G. Mocenigo: I teatri moderni di Vicenza dal 1650 al 1800, o Due distrutti teatri di piazza e delle grazie (Bassano, 1894)

G. Cogo: Vita teatrale vicentina 1866–1922 (Vicenza, 1922)

G. Cogo: Nei teatri di Vicenza: storia, personaggi, curiosità, avvenimenti, 1585–1948 (Vicenza, 1949)

G. Mantese: Memorie storiche della chiesa vicentina (Vicenza, 1952–74)

G. Mantese: Storia musicale vicentina (Vicenza, 1956)

A. Gallo and G. Mantese: Ricerche sulle origini della cappella musicale del duomo di Vicenza (Venice, 1964)

F.A. Gallo: La prima rappresentazione al Teatro Olimpico (Milan, 1973)

V. Bolcato and A. Zanotelli: Il fondo musicale dell'Archivio capitolare del Duomo di Vicenza (Turin, 1986)

C. Galla: La Società del quartetto: 80 anni di musica a Vicenza (Vicenza, 1990)

DENIS ARNOLD/R

Vick, Graham

(b Liverpool, 30 Dec 1953). English director. After a period as director of productions for Scottish Opera, 1984–7, he became artistic director of City of Birmingham Touring Opera in 1987. One of the most prominent directors of his generation, his penchant for visually striking but essentially non-interventionist stagings has ensured his popularity in opera houses throughout Europe and the USA. From 1993 to 2000 he was director of productions at Glyndebourne, where his work included a theatrically gripping Queen of Spades and Yevgeny Onegin (Richard Hudson's designs for both operas combining Pushkin-period naturalism with a sense of the surreal and phantasmagoric), as well as Ermione, Manon Lescaut, Lulu, Pelléas et Mélisande and the Mozart/da Ponte trilogy. His productions for Covent Garden have included Mitridate and King Arthur (1995), both wittily observed and postmodernist in their synthesis of historical detail and contemporary ironic gloss. Other notable productions for the ROH include Berio's Un re in ascolto (1989), staged as a riotous theatrical rehearsal with acrobats and trapeze artists in full swing, and a Breughelesque, nostalgic Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1993), in which acrobatics and vibrant theatricalism also played a significant role. For the Metropolitan Opera he has staged Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and Moses und Aron, as well as War and Peace at the Mariinsky Theatre and Parsifal and Don Carlos in Paris.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

H. Canning: ‘Graham Vick’, Opera, xlii (1991), 1267–72

BARRY MILLINGTON

Vickers, Jon(athan Stewart)

(b Prince Albert, SK, 29 Oct 1926). Canadian tenor. He studied at the Royal Conservatory of Music, Toronto. After appearances in Canada as the Duke, Don José and the Male Chorus in The Rape of Lucretia he joined the Covent Garden Opera in 1957, making his début as Gustavus III, but he made his most striking impression as Don José, Aeneas (Les Troyens) and Don Carlos in Visconti’s famous staging of Verdi’s opera in 1958. The same year he made his Bayreuth début as Siegmund, and sang Jason to Callas’s Medea in Dallas.

In 1959 Vickers appeared at the Vienna Staatsoper, made his San Francisco début as Radames, and sang Parsifal at Covent Garden. He joined the Metropolitan Opera in 1960, making his début as Canio, and sang there for more than 25 years; his roles included Florestan, Saint-Saëns’s Samson, Hermann (Queen of Spades), Tristan, Otello, Alvaro, Laca (Jenůfa) and Grimes. At the Salzburg Festival he appeared under Karajan as Tristan, Siegmund, Otello and Don José (the last two roles recorded on film). He sang Herod and Pollione at Orange (1974), took the title role in Benvenuto Cellini at Boston (1975) and sang Monteverdi’s Nero in Paris (1978). His heroic voice and arresting declamation are preserved on recordings of his Aeneas, Tristan, Siegmund, Radames, Otello, Florestan, Samson, Don José and Peter Grimes; his dramatic presence and committed acting are best seen in the video recording of Peter Grimes (Covent Garden, under Colin Davis).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

N. Goodwin: ‘Jon Vickers’, Opera , xiii (1962), 233–9

D. Cairns: Responses (London, 1973)

J. Ardoin: ‘Jon Vickers’, The Tenors , ed. H.H. Breslin (New York, 1974), 43–82

H. Ludwig: ‘Von der Nibelungentreue in Salzburg: Heinz Ludwig sprach mit Jon Vickers’, OW (Oct 1975), 18–19

M. Loppert: ‘Jon Vickers on Peter Grimes’, Opera , xxxv (1984), 835–43

J. Williams: Jon Vickers: a Hero’s Life (Boston, 1999)

HAROLD ROSENTHAL/ALAN BLYTH

Vico, Diana

(b Venice; fl 1707–32). Italian contralto. She was in the service of the Elector of Bavaria from 1720. She first sang in her native city in Girolamo Polani’s Vindice la pazzia della vendetta in 1707, and returned there in 1709, 1713, 1717–21, 1723 and 1726, appearing in 16 operas by Gasparini, Lotti, C.F. Pollarolo, Antonio Pollarolo, Porta and Orlandini among others, the last of them Porpora’s Meride e Selinunte. She sang at Verona (1708), Ferrara (1711), Padua (1712 and 1718), Vicenza (Vivaldi’s Ottone in villa, 1713) and Mantua (1714). For the 1714–16 seasons she was a member of the King’s Theatre company in London, making her début in a revival of the pasticcio Ernelinda in 1714. She sang Rinaldo in the 1714–15 revival of Handel’s opera, Dardano in the first production of his Amadigi (1715), and in the revival of Alessandro Scarlatti’s Pirro e Demetrio (1716). She was in constant demand in Italy, singing in Bologna (1718 and 1721), Genoa (1718 and 1724), Florence (1718–19), Turin (1719), Reggio nell’Emilia (1718–20), Modena (1720) and Milan (1720, 1722, 1726, 1729 and 1732). In 1720 she was engaged for Munich and probably sang there in later seasons. She sang in nine operas at Naples (two by Vinci) during the period 1724–6 and one at Parma in 1726. She was a specialist in male roles; all her London parts were of this kind. In 1726 Swiney dismissed her with Merighi as ‘some He-she-thing or other’. Her compass in Amadigi was narrow (b to e''), but the richness of the music suggests that Handel admired her gifts. There is a caricature of her by A.M. Zanetti in the Cini collection (I-Vgc).

WINTON DEAN

Victimae paschali laudes

(Lat.: ‘praises to the paschal victim’).

The sequence for Easter (LU, 665; HAM, no.16a). The text is ascribed to Wipo of Burgundy (d c1050). It was one of the four sequences retained by the Council of Trent (1545–63), following which the first part of the final double versicle, containing an uncomplimentary reference to the Jews, was normally omitted. It occupies a position midway between the early type and that of Adam of St Victor (see Sequence (i), §9); there is some rhyme, but the metre is still very irregular even though it was not apparently written to a pre-existing melody. It was frequently incorporated into liturgical dramas at Easter (see Medieval drama). There is a primitive organum setting in the Las Huelgas manuscript (E-BUhu; early 14th century), and an anonymous 15th-century alternatim setting survives in Trent (I-TRmnp 88). In addition there are settings by Busnoys, Josquin (two), Willaert (two), Lassus, Palestrina (four), Victoria (an incomplete setting beginning at ‘Dic nobis’), Fernando de las Infantas and Byrd. It was used as a cantus firmus in Isaac's setting of a different Easter sequence, Laudes Salvatori, and there is a partial setting, beginning at ‘Agnus redemit oves’, in Johannes Hähnel's Easter Mass. This latter is largely based on the German tune Christ ist erstanden, itself derived from parts of the plainsong of Victimae paschali, from which it was absorbed into the stream of Lutheran melodic style (see Psalms, metrical, §II, 2 for the Calvinist use of the tune).

JOHN CALDWELL

Victor.

See RCA Victor.

Victoria, Tomás Luis de

(b Avila, 1548; d Madrid, 20 Aug 1611). Spanish composer and organist partly active in Italy. He was not only the greatest Spanish Renaissance composer but also one of the greatest composers of church music of his day in Europe, who has been admired above all for the intensity of some of his motets and of his Offices for the Dead and for Holy Week.

1. Life.

2. Works: general characteristics.

ROBERT STEVENSON

1. Life.

Victoria was the seventh of 11 children born to Francisco Luis de Victoria and Francisca Suárez de la Concha, who were married in 1540. There were important relatives on both sides of the family. For example, three of his Suárez de la Concha cousins achieved success, Cristóbal as a naval commander, Hernando as a Jesuit pioneer in Mexico and Baltasar as a merchant in Florence, where he married Grand Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici’s sister-in-law and was ennobled. The uncle on his father’s side after whom Victoria was named was a lawyer who pleaded cases before the royal chancery at Valladolid; he entered the priesthood after his wife’s death and in 1577 was installed as a canon of Avila Cathedral. Victoria’s father died on 29 August 1557, and another uncle, Juan Luis, who was also a priest, took charge of the orphaned family.

Victoria learnt the rudiments of music as a choirboy at Avila Cathedral under the maestros de capilla Gerónimo de Espinar (1550–58) and Bernardino de Ribera (1559–63); Ribera and his successor, Juan Navarro (i), were among the leading Spanish composers of their time. The cathedral organists during this period were Damián de Bolea and Bernabé del Aguila. Victoria may also have known Cabezón, who played at the cathedral in November 1552 and again in June 1556; Cabezón’s wife came from Avila, and their family residence from about 1538 to 1560 was not far from Victoria’s. Victoria’s classical education probably began at S Gil, a school for boys founded at Avila by the Jesuits in 1554. The school enjoyed a good reputation from the beginning, and St Teresa of Avila insisted that her nephews attend it; in April 1557 St Francisco de Borja visited Avila to inspect it and to encourage other Jesuit establishments in the town.

After his voice had broken, Victoria was sent to the Jesuit Collegio Germanico, Rome, which had been founded in 1552. He may have been enrolled by 25 June 1563, though 1565 is a more probable date (see Casimiri). The 200 students at the college were of two kinds, a small group of young men in training for the German missionary priesthood and a much larger number of English, Spanish and Italian boarders, whose fees helped maintain the college; Victoria was among the latter group and was specifically enrolled as a singer. Here, if not already at S Gil, he achieved fluency in Latin. In the dedication of his first collection of motets (1572) he acknowledged his debt to Otto Truchsess von Waldburg, Cardinal-Archbishop of Augsburg, who with King Philip II had been a chief benefactor of the college. Victoria surely knew Palestrina, who at the time was maestro di cappella of the nearby Seminario Romano, and may even have been taught by him. He was the only peninsular composer before Manuel Cardoso to master the subtleties of Palestrina’s style, as is evident in even his earliest publications.

For at least five years from January 1569 Victoria was singer and organist at S Maria di Monserrato, the Aragonese church at Rome in which the two Spanish popes are buried; his monthly salary was one scudo. From 1568 to 1571 he may also have been maestro of Truchsess’s private chapel (Jacobus de Kerle had left the post by 18 August 1568). In September or October 1571 the rector of the Collegio Germanico engaged him to teach music to interested boarders at a monthly salary of 15 julios paid out of students’ fees. In 1573 the college authorities decided to separate the Italian boarders from the German seminarians, and on 17 October a parting ceremony was held, during which Victoria’s pupils and others sang his specially composed eight-part psalm Super flumina Babylonis. After the reorganization he was retained to teach the German seminarians, with whom he was able to converse in Latin, and was appointed maestro di cappella. The new rector, Michele Lauretano, paid him two scudi a month, increased to three in April 1574. On 9 January 1574 Pope Gregory XIII gave the Collegio Germanico the Palazzo di S Apollinare as their new home and on 15 April 1576 the adjoining church. A bull of the latter date prescribed that the student body sing the entire Office on at least 20 days of the church year. Victoria continued as maestro di cappella of the Collegio Germanico until 26 December 1576 or possibly a few months longer – his successor was in office by 20 September 1577. In 1575 he graduated from minor orders to the priesthood: Bishop Thomas Goldwell, the last surviving member of the pre-Reformation English hierarchy, ordained him deacon on 25 August and priest three days later. The ceremonies took place at the English church on the Via di Monserrato.

Victoria next joined the Congregazione dell’Oratorio, a newly formed community of lay priests led by Filippo Neri, and on 8 June 1578 he received a chaplaincy at S Girolamo della Carità, which he held until 7 May 1585. During these years he published five sumptuous volumes in folio, one each of hymns, Magnificat settings and masses, an Office for Holy Week and an anthology of motets; the last-named contained two motets by Francisco Guerrero, who was a personal friend, and one by Francesco Soriano. From 1579 to 1585 he derived his personal income largely from five Spanish benefices conferred by Gregory XIII (S Miguel at Villalbarba, S Francisco and S Salvador at Béjar, S Andrés at Valdescapa and another rent in the diocese of Osma), which produced a total of 307 ducats a year. While a chaplain at S Girolamo della Carità, and even earlier, he further increased his income by occasionally serving at S Giacomo degli Spagnoli. Each year from 1573 to 1577 this church paid him four scudi for Corpus Christi services; in 1579 he received six scudi and 60 baiocchi and in 1580 nine scudi and 60 baiocchi; on 18 November 1582 he and a number of choristers received nine scudi for celebrating the victory by Spanish naval forces at the Battle of Terceira, in the Azores. In 1583 he was elected to the office of visitor to the sick and Spanish destitute in Rome, who were under the charitable care of the Confraternity of the Resurrection. Founded in 1579, this confraternity, attached to the church of S Giacomo, subsidized the celebration of the twice-yearly Forty Hours Devotion, and paid for Easter services. Victoria's disbursements to the sick and needy were reimbursed 23 times during the time that he was visitor to the sick (19 April 1583–3 April 1584). On two occasions, 31 October 1583 and 8 March 1584, he also received 50 julios to pay the eight singers of polyphony who sang the Salve Regina in the Forty Hours Devotion. The 25 signed receipts in the archive of S Giacomo degli Spagnoli constitute the largest single collection of documents in Victoria's handwriting.

In the dedication of Missarum libri duo (1583) to Philip II, Victoria expressed his desire to return to Spain and to lead a quiet life as a priest. The king, as a reward for his homage, named him chaplain to his sister, the Dowager Empress María, daughter of Charles V, wife of Maximilian II and mother of two other emperors, who from 1581 lived in retirement with her daughter Princess Margarita at the Monasterio de las Descalzas de S Clara at Madrid. The convent was established in 1564 by Juana de la Cruz, sister of St Francisco de Borja, and liberally endowed by Charles V’s daughter Juana, who married João III of Portugal; it housed 33 strictly cloistered nuns, who heard Mass daily in an exquisite small chapel attended by priests who were required to be accomplished singers of plainchant and polyphony. Victoria served the dowager empress from 1587 at the latest until her death in 1603, with an annual salary of 120 ducats, and he was maestro of the convent choir until 1604. From then until his death he held the less arduous post of organist, earning 40,000 maravedís in each of his first two years in it and 75,000 a year thereafter. The chaplains enjoyed a number of benefits, including a personal servant, meals served in their private quarters adjacent to the convent and a month’s holiday each year. Until 1601 they were all required to participate in the daily singing of two masses, one a votive mass with deacon and sub-deacon. At the time of Victoria’s arrival the choir comprised 12 priests (three to a part) and four boys. Instrumentalists were engaged for Easter and for Corpus Christi and its octave. In 1601 a royal decree provided for a bassoonist, who was to play in all musical services, and for two clergymen chosen for their excellent voices to replace three of the foundation’s 12 chaplains. At the same time the number of choirboys was increased to six; they were required to practise daily and to learn plainchant, polyphony and counterpoint from the maestro.

Life at the convent held such advantages for Victoria that no cathedral post could tempt him – in 1587, for example, he turned down invitations from Seville and Zaragoza to become maestro de capilla there. The élite of Madrid often went to services at the convent, where his works were regularly sung. It is doubtful whether any cathedral would have allowed him the extended leave that the convent gave him in 1592 to enable him to supervise the printing at Rome of his Missae … liber secundus, which he dedicated to María’s son Cardinal Alberto. On 18 July 1593 his motet Surge Debora et loquere canticum was performed in his presence by the Collegio Germanico during Mass and Vespers at S Apollinare to celebrate the defeat of the Turks at Sisak. On 2 February 1594 he joined the cortège at Palestrina’s funeral. A royal warrant of 21 January 1594 authorized the Spanish ambassador at Rome to pay him 150 ducats owing to him from a benefice at Córdoba. He returned to Madrid in 1595.

María bequeathed three chaplaincies to the convent, one of which went to Victoria, who thereby continued to receive his salary of 120 ducats after her death. Most of his income, however, derived from his numerous simple benefices, whose yearly revenue had grown by 1605 to 1227 ducats through the addition of pensions from the dioceses of Córdoba, Segovia, Sigüenza, Toledo and Zamora. On 1 October 1598 he engaged Julio Junti de Modesti of Madrid to produce 200 copies of a collection of polychoral masses, Magnificat settings, motets and psalms in partbooks, which eventually appeared in 1600. The printer, who was paid 2500 reales in three instalments, was himself allowed an additional 100 copies to sell, beginning 12 months after publication. The masses of this collection were extremely popular at the time, but are not frequently performed today. The nine-part Missa pro victoria was a favourite work of Philip III; the eight-part Missa ‘Ave regina coelorum’ and Missa ‘Alma Redemptoris mater’ were so popular in Mexico City that in 1640 they had to be recopied by hand because the original partbooks were worn out. Victoria or his agents sent sets to such distant places as Graz, Urbino and Bogotá, Colombia. In accompanying letters he asked for contributions to cover printing costs and in at least one instance solicited money to secure the release of a younger brother from prison. His strong family ties were especially evident during the last years of his life, when two of his brothers and two of his sisters lived in Madrid; one of the brothers, Agustín, was also a chaplain of the Descalzas Reales convent. Victoria died near the convent in the chaplains’ residence. He was buried at the convent, but his tomb has not been identified.

2. Works: general characteristics.

Victoria not only left far less music than either Palestrina or Lassus but also limited himself to setting Latin sacred texts. He had a habit of reissuing works that he had already published: more than half the contents of five of his 11 prints had appeared in earlier prints, and of prints subsequent to his first only the first consists almost entirely of newly published music. Moreover, unlike Palestrina, he succeeded in publishing, usually in a luxurious format, nearly the whole of what is now recognized as his authentic oeuvre. Thus the first seven volumes of the eight-volume complete edition of 1902–13 consist wholly of music published during his lifetime; some of that in the eighth is spurious.

Victoria’s posthumous reputation has largely rested on some plangent motets in his first publication (1572) and on the Officium defunctorum of 1605, composed on the death of the Empress María. Such memorable motets as O vos omnes and Vere languores nostros and a passage such as the setting of the words ‘nihil enim sunt dies mei’ in Versa est in luctum from the Office of the Dead do indeed have a poignancy rarely encountered in other music of the period. Poignancy and mystical fervour are, however, not the only emotions in Victoria’s music, nor indeed the predominant ones. His contemporaries and immediate successors certainly saw a different side of his artistic nature. One astute critic who knew his whole oeuvre as few do today was João IV of Portugal, who, noting in his Defensa de la música moderna (1649) that he instinctively leant more towards the joyful than to the sad, observed that ‘although there is much in his Holy Week volume [1585] that exactly suits the text, nonetheless his disposition being naturally sunny he never stays downcast for long’. João IV also gave the lie to another misconception about Victoria still prevalent in the 20th century when he endorsed the liberal use of instruments to double the vocal lines, and there is other contemporary evidence confirming that doubling was widely practised in his works circulating in Spain.

3. Masses.

Confirmation of Victoria’s generally cheerful disposition can be found in his own motets that he chose as the basis of his parody masses. He based seven of his masses on his own motets – Ascendens Christus, Dum complerentur, O magnum mysterium, O quam gloriosum, Quam pulchri sunt, Trahe me post te and Vidi speciosam; the masses are parodies of motets for Ascension, Pentecost, the Circumcision, All Saints, the Conception, any Lady feast and the Assumption respectively. Five of these motets end with exultant ‘Alleluias’. His three masses based on his own Marian antiphons Salve regina, Alma Redemptoris and Ave regina, as well as the Missa ‘Laetatus sum’, based on his own psalm, display similarly positive qualities. Three other parody masses are based on works by Guerrero, Morales and Palestrina respectively. The Missa pro victoria is one of several Spanish battle masses based on Janequin’s La guerre.

There are 20 authentic masses by Victoria, all published during his lifetime. 15 are parodies, four are paraphrases (‘Ave maris stella’, De Beata Maria Virgine, Pro defunctis of 1583 and the mass sections of the Officium defunctorum), and one, Missa quarti toni, is mostly a free mass, which does, however, at the close of both Gloria and Credo (‘Amen’) quote verbatim the music of the last appearance of ‘ipsum quem genuit adoravit’ in his Purification motet Senex puerum portabat. The four masses published in the 1600 miscellany, all of which are provided with organ scores paralleling Chorus I, contrast in a number of ways with those published earlier: they are for two choirs, one for three (Laetatus), and the three new masses are in an undeviating F major. There are subtle structural differences too, such as the greater use of free episodic material, and the repetition of polyphonic blocks. These are sometimes from movement to movement: for instance, in the Missa pro victoria, first Kyrie, bars 1–8 = Agnus Dei, bars 1–8; second Kyrie, 36–42 = Agnus Dei, 16–22; Gloria, 1–3 = Credo, 83–5; Gloria, 28–34 = Agnus Dei, 8 (beat 3) – 15 (beat 3); and Gloria, 59–76 = Credo, 133–50. But there are also repetitions within the same movement: in the Missa pro victoria, Gloria, bars 59–64 = bars 67–72; Credo, 133–8 = 141–6; and Sanctus, 21–5 (beat 1) = 25–9 (beat 1) = 47–51 (beat 1) = 51–5 (beat 1). Another feature of Victoria’s late masses is his frequent recourse to triple metre: whereas ‘Ave maris stella’ and ‘Dum complerentur’ (both 1576) do not contain a single bar of triple time, the 1600 masses are full of them, the Missa pro victoria composed to celebrate the Treaty of Vervins (1598) alone containing 134.

A prominent stylistic trait in masses from all periods of Victoria’s career, and in other works, too, is the kind of tonal fluctuation represented by melodic progressions such as F–G–F#, F#–G–F and E–F–E, which are not found in, for example, the works of Palestrina or Guerrero. He anticipated both composers when in 1576 he chose to base a mass on one of his own motets (Dum complerentur). In his middle-period masses, however, he shared with Guerrero a fondness for paired imitation. His masses are on the whole much more concise than those of Palestrina or Guerrero; this is particularly true of those in the 1592 and 1600 volumes. Unlike Palestrina, he broke up his masses with frequent emphatic cadences. He often wrote functional rather than modal harmony, even in the Missa quarti toni. The modes that he used in his parody masses have been tabulated by Rive (1969), who drew attention to the high incidence of the Dorian and Ionian modes (six and five masses respectively) compared with the Mixolydian (three masses), a tendency also found in his other music. His chromatic alterations in his parodies, especially the later ones, make the Dorian mode sound increasingly like a minor key and the Ionian more and more like a major key.

4. Other works.

The principal source of Victoria’s Magnificat settings is his 1581 collection, which contains 16 of them, including the six already published in 1576; the two polychoral settings in his 1600 volume are based in part on works from the two earlier books. These works have never found as much favour as those of Morales or even Guerrero, yet they contain some of his finest inspirations. In contrast with the Magnificat settings of Morales, Guerrero and Palestrina, they are greatly coloured by musica ficta: for example, in his odd-verse Magnificat on the 7th tone (1581) he called for 69 accidentals, whereas Palestrina prescribed only 16 in his corresponding setting (1591). As with his masses, Victoria also made changes to his Magnificat settings as well. The six settings of 1576 reappear in a manuscript (E-TcMus.B.30) copied in about 1577 by the renowned Vatican music scribe, Johannes Parvus (active 1536–c1580). In this manuscript the variants consist of the addition of a fifth voice to a single verse in two of the settings, the occasional alteration of vocal textures, and the shortening of the settings of tones I and VIII by 16 bars. In addition, the two Magnificat settings in his 1600 volume show differences from the earlier settings: they are more concise, include more triple time and light parlando rhythms and fewer unaccented passing notes, and display a new aversion to canon (there is only one, and that is optional).

In the same year that Victoria published his complete Magnificat settings, he also published 32 hymns. In the 1581 volume the texts and chronological order are basically the same as in Guerrero’s Liber vesperarum (1584) and Palestrina’s Hymni totius anni (1589). Like Guerrero he provided polyphony for the even-numbered strophes (Palestrina’s hymns are basically settings of the odd-numbered ones). In their final verses Guerrero and Palestrina frequently resorted to canon and increased the numbers of voices from four to five, but Victoria shunned canon altogether and sometimes heightened final verses by returning to a four-part texture after reducing it to three voices in some middle strophes. He included two settings of Pange lingua, the second of which is marked ‘more hispano’ because it is based on the peninsular melody, not the Roman.

Victoria’s music for Holy Week, Officium Hebdomadae Sanctae (1585), comprising nine Lamentations, 18 responsories, two Passions and various other pieces, includes some of his most admired music, much of it of a plangent austerity. The Lamentations in particular display certain Spanish qualities (see illustration). In accordance with custom they are predominantly chordal, but Victoria showed great ingenuity in the way he varied the textures through a few scalic passages and contrasts of high and low voices. The responsories are also mainly homophonic, but by contrast the St Matthew Passion, for Palm Sunday, contains some contrapuntal writing, including canon. The Lamentations also exist in an earlier manuscript source (I-Rvat C.S.186), which contains significant differences from the printed version. As Rive (1965), who has studied the two versions, reported:

between the date of the first beginning of compositions and the date of publication in 1585, Victoria’s technique of composition made tremendous advances. His re-working of earlier music shows greater conciseness in melodic organization, a keen insight into the problems of apt setting of text and a greater appreciation of harmonic organization, movement, and purpose.

Victoria wore his learning lightly in his three scintillating eight-part sequences, Lauda Sion (1585), for Corpus Christi, Victimae paschali (1600), for Easter, and Veni, Sancte Spiritus (1600), for Whitsun. The Easter sequence, one of his most ebullient works, is closer in spirit to a popular villancico than almost any of his other short works and emphasizes the drama of the question-and-answer text. It moves from triple to duple metre in a most attractive manner and soars to a climax of unrestrained joy in the final ‘Alleluias’. The play of syncopated homophony at bars 36–46 of the Corpus Christi sequence echoes the strains of revelry found in the earliest surviving guineos.

The fact that Victoria composed no fewer than four different settings of Salve regina (two for five voices and one each for six and eight voices) and two each of Alma Redemptoris, Ave regina and Regina coeli (each pair for five and eight voices respectively) shows the importance that he attached to the Marian antiphon. The individuality of the Salve regina settings is remarkable, considering that they are all in the same mode and on the same plainsong. The number of manuscript copies of them both in the Iberian peninsula and in the New World suggests that they enjoyed great popularity in Victoria's own day and in the early 17th century.

All of Victoria’s published psalms are polychoral. The only one not for two choirs is Laetatus sum, which is for three, and takes pride of place as the first triple-choir work published at Rome. Except for Ecce nunc, a Compline psalm, all his others are for Vespers. All seven psalms published in 1576, 1581, 1583 and 1600 have one flat in the signature: two (Dixit Dominus and Laudate Dominum) are proleptically in G minor, while the other five are in what equates with F major. By contrast, Miserere mei (Ps 1) is in a chordal style in strict fabordón to tone IV; it has no doxology. The ‘Gloria Patri’ of other psalms always begins in homophonic triple metre, but Laetatus sum is unique in that the main body of the work begins in triple time. In all the settings except for the short psalms Laudate Dominum and Ecce nunc the composer avoided textual repetition, and he also frequently elided psalm verses.

The psalms were also republished, and in later editions he added organ parts that double the voice-parts of choir I; Victoria himself wrote that the organ could substitute for the choir if necessary. In triple-choir works he specified the use of instrumentalists to substitute for choir II. This tendency to reduce the number of voices necessary for his works is also reflected in his preparation for publication in Rome of ten plainchant-based Vespers psalms for four-part choir, which were copied in manuscript by Francisco Soto de Langa; apparently, however, Victoria's desire that they should be printed was never fulfilled.

Several earlier historians and anthologists expressed a preference for Victoria’s motets, often at the expense of all his other works. It is easy to see the attractions of so intensely passionate a work as Vere languores nostros, and there are many other arresting ones. Several include descriptive writing of a madrigalian nature prompted by the words; examples include the rising scales at ‘surge’ in Nigra sum sed formosa and at the beginning of Ascendens Christus in altum. Victoria sometimes used unusual melodic intervals, such as the diminished 4th in Sancta Maria, succurre miseris, another trait reminiscent of madrigalian music and consistent with the relatively small role played by plainchant in his motets. Several works begin with paired imitation, as in the masses and other works, and a few motets include extensive use of canon.

Despite the fact that isolated works ascribed to Victoria are still occasionally found, especially in Italian archives, it seems likely that after analysis these will be deemed to be spurious, as with the cases of the hymn Jesu dulcis memoria and the Missa Dominicalis, which are not generally held now to be by Victoria; the Missa ‘Pange lingua’, ascribed to Victoria in a manuscript in Cuenca Cathedral, is by Juán Pérez Roldán. It seems that Victoria's oeuvre as he wished it known was published by him, and this theory is reinforced by his frequent rewriting and reprinting of his works within his lifetime.

To vindicate his claim to being progressive, he wrote a letter dated 10 February 1601 to Jaén cathedral authorities in which he took pride in having preceded everyone else in providing printed organ scores to substitute for Choir I in polychoral works (Rubio, 1981). Far from being deemed too frothy, his Missa pro victoria emerged in its first recording (Accord Le parlement de musique, 1998) as an avant-garde triumph.

WORKS

Editions: Thomae Ludovici Victoria Abulensis Opera omnia, ed. F. Pedrell (Leipzig, 1902–13/R) [P]Tomás Luis de Victoria: Opera omnia, ed. H. Anglès, MME, xxv, xxvi, xxx, xxxi (1965–8) [A]Tomás Luis de Victoria: Motetes, ed. S. Rubio (Madrid, 1964) [R] [based chiefly on 1603 edn of 1583b, variants annotated; incl. 7 motets from MS sources]

published in Rome unless otherwise stated

[33] Motecta, 4–6, 8vv (Venice, 1572) [1572]

Liber primus: qui missas, psalmos, Magnificat … aliaque complectitur, 4–6, 8vv (Venice, 1576) [incl. 7 works from 1572 edn] [1576]

Cantica Beatae Virginis vulgo Magnificat, una cum 4 antiphonis [8 settings] Beatae Virginis per annum, 4, 5, 8vv (1581) [incl. 6 Magnificat, 3 Marian antiphons from 1576 edn] [1581a]

[32] Hymni totius anni secundum sanctae romanae ecclesiae consuetudinem, 4vv, una cum 4 psalmis, pro praecipuis festivitatibus, 8vv (1581, 2/1600 without 4 psalms) [incl. psalm from 1576 edn] [1581b]

[9] Missarum libri duo, 4–6vv (1583) [incl. 5 from 1576 edn] [1583a]

[53] Motecta, 4–6, 8, 12vv (1583, 2/1589 with 8 motets rev., 3/1603) [1583 incl. 33 from 1572 edn (12 rev.) and 13 from 1576; 3/1603 does not incl. revs. of 1583 or 1589] [1583b]

[37] Motecta festorum totius anni cum communi sanctorum, 4–6, 8vv (1585⁶) [incl. 25 from previous edns; 3 not by Victoria] [1585a]

[37] Officium Hebdomadae Sanctae, 3–8vv (1585) [incl. 2 from 1572, 1 from 1576, 1 from 1583 edns; ed. S. Rubio (Cuenca, 1977), ed. E. Cramer (Henryville, PA, 1982)] [1585b]

[7] Missae, una cum antiphonis Asperges, et Vidi aquam totius anni: liber secundus, 4–6, 8vv (1592) [incl. 1 mass from 1583 edn] [1592]

[32] Missae, Magnificat, motecta, psalmi et alia quam plurima, 3, 4, 8, 9, 12vv (Madrid, 1600) [incl. 19 works from previous edns] [1600]

Officium defunctorum: in obitu et obsequiis sacrae imperatricis, 6vv (Madrid, 1605) [1605]

masses

Alma Redemptoris mater, 8vv (2 choirs), org, 1600 (on own antiphon, 1581a); P iv, 99

Ascendens Christus, 5vv, 1592 (on own motet, 1572); P ii, 162

Ave maris stella, 4vv, 1576; P ii, 1; A xxv, 1

Ave regina coelorum, 8vv (2 choirs), org, 1600 (on own antiphon, 1581a); P vi, 1

De Beata Maria Virgine, 5vv, 1576; P ii, 93; A xxv, 58

Dominicalis, 4vv, E-TO (spurious, see R. Casimiri, NA, x, 1933); P viii, 5

Dum complerentur, 6vv, 1576 (on own motet, 1572); P iv, 29; A xxx, 87

Gaudeamus, 6vv, 1576 (on Morales’s Jubilate Deo, 1538); P iv, 1; A xxv, 99

Laetatus sum, 12vv (3 choirs), org, 1600 (on own psalm, 1583b); P vi, 59

O magnum mysterium, 4vv, 1592 (on own motet, 1572); P ii, 69

O quam gloriosum, 4vv, 1583a (on own motet, 1572); P ii, 56; A xxx, 30

Pange lingua, 4vv, CUi (spurious, also attrib. J. Pérez Roldán, SE)

Pro defunctis, 4vv, 1583a; P vi, 102

Pro defunctis, 6vv, 1605; P vi, 124

Pro victoria, 9vv (2 choirs), org, 1600 (on Janequin, La guerre, 1528); P vi, 26

Quam pulchri sunt, 4vv, 1583a (on own motet, 1572); P ii, 38; A xxx, 1

Quarti toni, 4vv, 1592 (on own motet, Senex puerum portabat, 1572); P ii, 81

Salve regina, 8vv (2 choirs), org, 1592 (on own antiphon, 1576); P iv, 72

Simile est regnum coelorum, 4vv, 1576 (on F. Guerrero, 1570); P ii, 21; A xxv, 31

Surge propera, 5vv, 1583a (on Palestrina, 1563); P ii, 119; A xxx, 49

Trahe me post te, 5vv, 1592 (on own motet, 1583b); P ii, 145

Vidi speciosam, 6vv, 1592 (on own motet, 1572); P iv, 56

magnificat settings etc.

verses set polyphonically given in parentheses

Magnificat primi toni (odd), 4vv, 1576; P iii, 1

Magnificat primi toni (even), 4vv, 1576; P iii, 6

Magnificat Primi toni (all), 8vv (2 choirs), org, 1600; P iii, 81

Magnificat secundi toni (odd), 4vv, 1581a; P iii, 11

Magnificat secundi toni (even), 4vv, 1581a; P iii, 16

Magnificat tertii toni (odd), 4vv, 1581a; P iii, 22

Magnificat tertii toni (even), 4vv, 1581a; P iii, 27

Magnificat quarti toni (odd), 4vv, 1576; P iii, 32

Magnificat quarti toni (even), 4vv, 1576; P iii, 37

Magnificat quinti toni (odd), 4vv, 1581a; P iii, 42

Magnificat quinti toni (even), 4vv, 1581a; P iii, 47

Magnificat sexti toni (odd), 4vv, 1581a; P iii, 52

Magnificat sexti toni (even), 4vv, 1581a; P iii, 57

Magnificat sexti toni (all), 12vv (3 choirs), org, 1600; P iii, 95

Magnificat septimi toni (odd), 4vv, 1581a; P iii, 61

Magnificat septimi toni (even), 4vv, 1581a; P iii, 66

Magnificat octavi toni (odd), 4vv, 1576; P iii, 71

Magnificat octavi toni (even), 4vv, 1576; P iii, 76

Nunc dimittis, 4vv, 1600; P iii, 107

lamentations

Cogitavit Dominus, 4vv, 1585b; P v, 151; earlier MS version, I-Rvat, P viii, 51

Ego vir videns, 5vv, 1585b; P v, 157; earlier MS version, Rvat, P viii, 36

Et egressus est, 4vv, 1585b; P v, 126; earlier MS version, Rvat, P viii, 18

Incipit lamentatio Jeremiae, 4vv, 1585b; P v, 122; earlier MS version, Rvat, P viii, 14

Incipit oratio Jeremiae, 6vv, 1585b; P v, 181; earlier MS version, Rvat, P viii, 50

Manum suam, 5vv, 1585b; P v, 130; earlier MS version, Rvat, P viii, 23

Matribus suis dixerunt, 4vv, 1585b; P v, 153; earlier MS version, Rvat, P viii, 32

Misericordiae Domini, 4vv, 1585b; P v, 175; earlier MS version, Rvat, P viii, 41

Quomodo obscuratum, 4vv, 1585b; P v, 178; earlier MS version, Rvat, P viii, 40

responsories

Aestimatus sum, 4vv, 1585b; P v, 193

Amicus meus, 4vv, 1585b; P v, 135

Animam meam dilectam, 4vv, 1585b; P v, 163

Astiterunt reges, 4vv, 1585b; P v, 192

Benedictus Deus Dominus Israel, 4vv, 1585b; P v, 143

Caligaverunt oculi mei, 4vv, 1585b; P v, 168

Credo quod Redemptor (part of Missa pro defunctis, 1583a)

Ecce quomodo moritur, 4vv, 1585b; P v, 190

Eram quasi agnus, 4vv, 1585b; P v, 139

Jesum tradidit impius, 4vv, 1585b; P v, 167

Judas mercator, 4vv, 1585b; P v, 136

Libera me (part of Missa pro defunctis, 1583a)

Libera me (part of Missa pro defunctis, 1605)

O vos omnes, 4vv, 1585b; P v, 189

Peccantem me quotidie (part of Missa pro defunctis, 1583a)

Popule meus, 4vv, improperium, 1585b; P v, 174

Recessit pastor noster, 4vv, 1585b; P v, 188

Seniores populi, 4vv, 1585b; P v, 142

Sepulto Domino.4vv, 1585b; P v, 194

Taedet animam (part of Missa pro defunctis, 1605)

Tamquam ad latronem, 4vv, 1585b; P v, 160

Tenebrae factae sunt, 4vv, 1585b; P v, 161

Tradiderunt me, 4vv, 1585b; P v, 165

Una hora, 4vv, 1585b; P v, 140

Unus ex discipulis, 4vv, 1585b; P v, 138

antiphons

Alma Redemptoris mater, 5vv, 1572; P vii, 68; A xxvi, 65

Alma Redemptoris mater, 8vv (2 choirs), org, 1581a; P vii, 73

Asperges me, Domine, 4vv, 1592; P vii, 131

Ave regina coelorum, 5vv, 1572; P vii, 81; A xxxi, 33

Ave regina coelorum, 8vv (2 choirs), org, 1581a; P vii, 85

Pueri hebraeorum, 4vv, 1572; P v, 111; A xxxi, 1

Regina coeli, 5vv, 1572; P vii, 91; A xxxi, 40

Regina coeli, 8vv (2 choirs), org, 1576; P vii, 95

Salve regina, 5vv, 1576; P vii, 104

Salve regina, 5vv, 1583b; P vii, 108; A xxxi, 46

Salve regina, 6vv, 1572; P vii, 112; A xxvi, 108

Salve regina, 8vv (2 choirs), org, 1576; P vii, 120; A xxxi, 109

Vidi aquam, 4vv, 1592; P vii, 133

psalms

Dixit Dominus (Ps cix), 8vv (2 choirs), org, 1581b; P vii, 1

Ecce nunc benedicite (Ps cxxxiii), 8vv (2 choirs), org, 1600; P vii, 63

Laetatus sum (Ps cxxi), 12vv (3 choirs), org, 1583b; P vii, 27

Laudate Dominum omnes gentes (Ps cxvi), 8vv (2 choirs), org, 1581b; P vii, 20

Laudate pueri Dominum (Ps cxii), 8vv (2 choirs), org, 1581b; P vii, 11

Miserere mei Deus (Ps 1), 8vv (2 choirs), 1585b; P v, 147

Nisi Dominus (Ps cxxvi), 8vv (2 choirs), org, 1576; P vii, 43

Super flumina Babylonis (Ps cxxxvi), 8vv (2 choirs), 1576; P vii, 53; A xxxi, 129

motets

Ardens est cor meum, 6vv, 1576; P i, 133; R iii, no.34; A xxxi, 78

Ascendens Christus in altum, 5vv, 1572; P i, 53; R ii, no.26; A xxvi, 44

Ave Maria, 4vv; P viii, 4; R iv, no.46

Ave Maria, gratia plena, 8vv (2 choirs), org, 1572, 1600 (org in 1600 edn only); P i, 146; R iv, no.44; A xxvi, 118

Beata es Virgo Maria, 6vv, D-MÜs; R iv, no.51

Beati immaculati, 4vv, MÜs; R iv, no.47

Benedicam Dominum, 4vv; P viii, 2; R iv, no.48

Benedicta sit Sancta Trinitas, 6vv, 1572; P i, 118; R iii, no.35; A xxvi, 88

Congratulamini mihi, 6vv, 1572; P i, 129; R iii, no.40; A xxxi, 82

Cum beatus Ignatius, 5vv, 1572; P i, 72; R ii, no.25; A xxxi, 63

Date ei de fructu, 4vv, I-Fc E.117 (see Cramer, 1994)

Descendit angelus Domini, 5vv, 1572; P i, 77; R ii, no.28; A xxxi, 56

Doctor bonus amicus Dei Andreas, 4vv, 1572; P i, 3; R i, no.2; A xxvi, 30

Domine in virtute tua, 8vv, D-MÜs; R iv, no.52

Domine non sum dignus, 4vv, 1583b; P i, 39; R i, no.16; A xxxi, 12

Dum complerentur dies Pentecostes, 5vv, 1572; P i, 59; R ii, no.27; A xxvi, 54

Duo seraphim clamabant, 4vv, 1583b; P i, 36; R i, no.14; A xxxi, 4

Ecce Dominus veniet, 5vv, 1572; P i, 67; R ii, no.24; A xxvi, 37

Ecce sacerdos magnus, 4vv, 1585a; P i, 46; R ii, no.20; A xxxi, 31

Ego sum panis vivus, 4vv, MÜs; R iv, no.49

Estote fortes in bello, 4vv, 1585a; P i, 41; R i, no.17; A xxxi, 23

Gaude, Maria virgo, 5vv, 1572; P i, 82; R ii, no.31; A xxxi, 53

Gaudent in coelis animae Sanctorum, 4vv, 1585a; P i, 44; R i, no.19; A xxxi, 28

Hic vir despiciens mundum, 4vv, 1585a; P i, 48; R ii, no.21

Iste sanctus pro lege, 4vv, 1585a; P i, 43; R i, no.18; A xxxi, 26

Magi viderunt stellam, 4vv, 1572; P i, 14; R i, no.7; A xxvi, 10

Ne timeas, Maria, 4vv, 1572; P i, 22; R i, no.10; A xxxi, 15

Nigra sum sed formosa, 6vv, 1576; P i, 136; R iii, no.41; A xxxi, 97

O decus apostolicum, 4vv, 1572; P i, 9; R i, no.4; A xxvi, 34

O doctor optime, 4vv, E-Bc; ed. in Rubio (1949); R iv, no.50

O Domine Jesu Christe, 6vv, 1576; P v, 119; R iv, no.43; A xxxi, 75

O Ildephonse, 8vv (2 choirs), org, 1600; P i, 153; R iv, no.45

O lux et decus Hispaniae, 5vv, 1583b; P i, 85; R ii, no.29; A xxxi, 71

O magnum mysterium, 4vv, 1572; P i, 11; R i, no.6; A xxvi, 7

O quam gloriosum est regnum, 4vv, 1572; P i, 1; R i, no.1; A xxvi, 27

O quam metuendus est, 4vv, 1585a; P i, 51; R ii, no.23

O regem coeli, 4vv, 1572; P i, 29; R i, no.5; A xxvi, 1

O sacrum convivium, 4vv, 1572; P i, 34; R i, no.15; A xxxi, 8

O sacrum convivium, 6vv, 1572; P i, 122; R iii, no.36; A xxvi, 93

O vos omnes, qui transitis per viam, 4vv, 1572; P i, 27; R i, no.13; A xxvi, 17

Pueri Hebraeorum, 4vv; R i, no.11

Quam pulchri sunt gressus tui, 4vv, 1572; P i, 6; R i, no.3; A xxvi, 20

Quem vidistis, pastores, 6vv, 1572; P i, 90; R ii, no.32

Resplenduit facies ejus, 5vv, 1585a; P i, 88; R ii, no.30

Sancta Maria, succurre miseris, 4vv, 1572; P i, 19; R i, no.9; A xxxi, 19

Senex puerum portabat, 4vv, 1572; P i, 17; R i, no.8; A xxvi, 24

Surge Debora et loquere canticum, lost, cited in Casimiri, p.158

Surrexit Pastor Bonus, 6vv, 1572; P i, 126; R ii, no.33; A xxvi, 83

Trahe me post te, 6vv, 1583b; P i, 140; R iv, no.42

Tu es Petrus, 6vv, 1572; P i, 105; R iii, no.37; A xxxi, 101

Vadam, et circumibo civitatem, 6vv, 1572; P i, 97; R iii, no.38; A xxxi, 87

Veni, sponsa Christi, 4vv, 1585a; P i, 50; R ii, no.22

Vere languores nostros, 4vv, 1572; P i, 24; R i, no.12; A xxvi, 14

Versa est in luctum (part of Missa pro defunctis, 1605)

Vidi speciosam, 6vv, 1572; P i, 111; R iii, no.39; A xxvi, 98

Vidi speciosam, 8vv, I-Rc 2295

hymns

Ad coenam agni providi, 4vv, 1581b; P v, 27

Ad preces nostras, 4vv, 1581b; P v, 17

Aurea luce, 4vv, 1581b; P v, 54

Ave, maris stella, 4vv, 1581b; P v, 47

Ave, maris stella, 4vv, 1600; P v, 100

Christe, redemptor omnium, 4vv, 1581b; P v, 4

Christe, redemptor omnium, 4vv, 1581b; P v, 67

Conditor alme siderum, 4vv, 1581b; P v, 1

Decus egregie Paule, 4vv, 1581b; P v, 45

Deus, tuorum militum, 4vv, 1581b; P v, 76

Exultet coelum laudibus, 4vv, 1581b; P v, 70

Hostis Herodes impie, 4vv, 1581b; P v, 11

Hujus obtentu Deus, 4vv, 1581b; P v, 90

Iste confessor, 4vv, 1581b; P v, 85

Jesu, corona virginum, 4vv, 1581b; P v, 88

Jesu dulcis memoria, 4vv (spurious, see von May, 1943); P viii, 1

Jesu nostra redemptio, 4vv, 1581b; P v, 31

Lauda mater ecclesia, 4vv, 1581b; P v, 57

Lucis Creator optime, 4vv, 1581b; P v, 14

O lux beata Trinitas, 4vv, 1581b; P v, 38

Pange lingua, 4vv, 1581b; P v, 39

Pange lingua ‘more hispano’, 4vv, 1581b; P v, 95

Petrus beatus, 4vv, 1581b; P v, 60

Quicumque Christum quaeritis, 4vv, 1581b; P v, 62

Quodcumque vinclis, 4vv, 1581b; P v, 43

Rex gloriose martyrum, 4vv, 1581b; P v, 84

Salvete, flores martyrum, 4vv, 1581b; P v, 9

Sanctorum meritis, 4vv, 1581b; P v, 79

Tantum ergo, 5vv, 1583; P v, 149

Te Deum, 4vv, 1600; P v, 104

Tibi, Christe, splendor Patris, 4vv, 1581b; P v, 64

Tristes erant apostoli, 4vv, 1581b; P v, 74

Urbs beata, 4vv, 1581b; P v, 92

Ut queant laxis, 4vv, 1581b; P v, 50

Veni, Creator Spiritus, 4vv, 1581b; P v, 34

Vexilla regis ‘more hispano’, 4vv, 1585; P v, 195

Vexilla regis prodeunt, 4vv, 1581b; P v, 22

Litaniae de Beata Virgine, 8vv (2 choirs), org, 1583b; P vii, 151

passions

Passio secundum Joannem, 4vv, 1585b; P v, 170

Passio secundum Matthaeum, 4vv, 1585b; P v, 113

sequences

Lauda Sion, 8vv (2 choirs), org, 1585a; P vii, 135

Veni, Sancte Spiritus, 8vv (2 choirs), org, 1600; P vii, 141

Victimae paschali, 8vv (2 choirs), org, 1600; P vii, 147

BIBLIOGRAPHY

MGG1 (R. Stevenson)

NOHM, iv (H. Anglés)

ReeseMR

StevensonSCM

F.X. Haberl: ‘Tomas Luis de Victoria: eine bio-bibliographische Studie’, KJb, xi (1896), 72–84

H. Collet: Victoria (Paris, 1914)

F. Pedrell: Tomás Luis de Victoria Abulense (Valencia, 1918)

W.D. Hirschl: The Styles of Victoria and Palestrina: a Comparative Study, with Special Reference to Dissonance Treatment (diss., U. of California, Berkeley, 1933)

R. Casimiri: ‘Il “Vittoria”: nuovi documenti per una biografia sincera’, NA, xi (1934), 111–97

F. Hernández: ‘La cuna y la escuela de Tomás L. de Victoria’, Ritmo, no.141 (1940), 27

E. Young: The Contrapuntal Practices of Victoria (diss., U. of Rochester, NY, 1942)

H. von May: Die Kompositions-Technik T.L. de Victorias (Berne, 1943)

S. Rubio: ‘Una obra inédita y desconocida de Tomás Luis de Victoria, el motete “O doctor optime … beate Augustine”, a cuatros voces mixtas’, La ciudad de Dios, no.161 (1949), 525–59

S. Rubio: ‘Historia de las reediciones de los motetes de T.L. de Victoria y significado de las variantes introducidas en ellas’, La ciudad de Dios, no.162 (1950), 313–51

N. Saxton: The Masses of Victoria (diss., Westminster Choir College, Princeton, NJ, 1951)

T.N. Rive: An Investigation into Harmonic and Cadential Procedure in the Works of Tomás Luis de Victoria, 1548–1611 (diss., U. of Auckland, 1963)

T.N. Rive: ‘Victoria’s Lamentationes Geremiae: a Comparison of Cappella Sistina MS 186 with the Corresponding Portions of Officium Hebdomadae Sanctae (Rome, 1585)’, AnM, xx (1965), 179–208

R. Stevenson: ‘Estudio biográfico y estilístico de T.L. de Victoria’, Revista musical chilena, no.95 (1966), 9–25

J.A. Kriewald: The Contrapuntal and Harmonic Style of Tomás Luis de Victoria (diss., U. of Wisconsin, 1968)

H. Anglés: ‘Problemas que presenta la nueva edición de las obras de Morales y de Victoria’, Renaissance-muziek 1400–1600: donum natalicium René Bernard Lenaerts, ed. J. Robijns and others (Leuven, 1969), 21–32

T. Rive: ‘An Examination of Victoria’s Technique of Adaptation and Reworking in his Parody Masses, with Particular Attention to Harmonic and Cadential Procedure’, AnM, xxiv (1969), 133–52

T.D. Culley: Jesuits and Music, i: A Study of the Musicians Connected with the German College in Rome during the 17th Century and of their Activities in Northern Europe (Rome,1970)

R. Stevenson: ‘Mexican Colonial Music Manuscripts Abroad’, Notes, xxix (1972–3), 203–14, esp. 213

K. Fischer: ‘Unbekannte Kompositionen Victorias in der Biblioteca nazionale in Rom’, AMw, xxxii (1975), 124–38

H.E. Gudmundson: Parody and Symbolism in Three Battle Masses of the Sixteenth Century (diss., U. of Michigan, 1976)

S. Rubio: ‘Dos interessantes cartas autógrafas de T.L. de Victoria’, RdMc, iv (1981), 333–41

J.E. Ayarra Jarne: ‘Carta da Tomás Luis Victoria al Cabildo Sevillano’, RdMc, vi (1983), 143–8

K.H. Müller-Lancé: ‘Arten der Tonalität des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts’, AnM, xxxviii (1983), 183–246, esp. 192–206

R. Stevenson: ‘Tomás Luis de Victoria’, The New Grove High Renaissance Masters (London and New York, 1984) [incl. fuller bibliography]

E.C. Cramer: ‘Tomás Luis de Victoria's Second Thoughts: a Reappraisal’, Canadian University Music Review, vi (1985), 256–83

L. Wojcicka-Hruza: The Magnificats by Tomás Luis de Victoria in Toledo Biblioteca Capitular MS. B. 30: a Comparison with the Printed Editions (1576, 1581, and 1600) (thesis, U. of Calgary, 1989)

E.C. Cramer: ‘Two Motets Attributed to Tomás Luis de Victoria in Italian Sources: an Introductory Study’, Songs of the Dove and the Nightingale: Sacred and Secular Music c.900–c.1600 (Sydney, 1994)

N. O'Regan: ‘Victoria, Soto and the Spanish Archconfraternity of the Resurrection in Rome’, EMc, xxii (1994), 279–95

L. Wojcicka-Hruza: ‘A Manuscript Source for Magnificats by Victoria’, EMc, xxv (1997), 83–98

E.C. Cramer: Tomás Luis de Victoria: a Guide to Research (New York and London, 1998) [review by J.F. Weber in Goldberg (1999/May), 10]

L. Hruza: ‘Multiple Settings of the Salve Regina Antiphon: Tomás Luis de Victoria's Contribution to the Renaissance Veneration of the Virgin Mary’, Encomium musicae: a Festschrift in Honor of Robert J. Snow, ed. D. Crawford (Stuyvesant, NY, forthcoming)

Victorinus [Victorin], Georg

(b ?Hultschin, Silesia [now Hlucin, nr Racibórz] or ?Hültschken [now Holičky], Bohemia; d probably at Munich, 1639). Music editor and composer. His possible places of birth derive from descriptions of him as ‘Hultzinensis’ (in his manuscript Magnificat of 1591 in D-Mbs) and ‘Huldschönensis’ (RISM 1596²). In 1591 he was magister chori at the Jesuit college at Munich, and he held this post until at least 1616. From 1601 to 1608 he also taught the choristers of the Munich Hofkapelle, and he was on friendly terms with Rudolph de Lassus (whose lost Cygnaeum melos he apparently edited for publication in 1626). In 1624 he was teaching at the Peterskirche, Munich, and shortly afterwards was ordained priest. He is known principally for his editing of three collections of sacred music, which include a total of 23 of his own compositions, as well as arrangements by him. As a composer he was thoroughly schooled in 16th-century polyphony but was increasingly drawn to falsobordone technique. His output ranges from two-part falsobordoni to a Litania de Beata Vergine Maria (1596²), in which a four-part choir is contrasted with a six-part one to splendid effect. (EitnerQ; MGG1, R. Machold)

WORKS

all printed works published in Munich

ed.: Thesaurus litaniarum … ad communem vero ecclesiae usum collectae, opera ac studio Georgii Victorini in aede D. Michaëlis, 4–6 and more vv (1596²) [incl. 3 litanies, 4, 10vv by Victorinus]

ed.: Siren coelestis … pro temporum dierumque, festorum diversitate concinnavit, organis item accommodavit, et in lucem dedit Georgius Victorinus, 2–4vv (1616²) [incl. 5 motets by Victorinus]

ed.: Philomela coelestis, sive suavissimae … cantiones sacrae … quas ex praecipuorum saeculi nostri musicorum recentissimis symbolis concinnavit, bonoque publico edidit Georgius Victorinus, 1–4vv, bc (1624¹) [incl. 15 works by Victorinus: 2 Magnificat, 2vv, bc; Salve regina, 1v, bc; 4 falsobordoni, 1–4vv, bc; 8 motets, 2, 4vv, bc]

ed.: R. Lassus: Cygnaeum melos (1626), lost

Magnificat super motetam ‘Laetatus sum’, 6vv, D-Mbs Mus.76 [ded. A. Gosswin, 1591]

ROBERT MACHOLD

Victorius, Lauretus.

See Vittori, Loreto.

Victory, Gerard

(b Dublin, 24 Dec 1921; d Dublin, 14 March 1995). Irish composer. After completing a degree in modern languages and Celtic studies at University College, Dublin, he received the BMus and MusD (1972) in music from Trinity College, Dublin. From 1967 until his retirement in 1982 he was the director of music at RTE. During his long and prolific career in music and broadcasting, Victory became one of the most widely published of Irish composers. Commissions from major European festivals brought him international recognition. His honours include the Order of Merit of the Federal German Republic (1975) and the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France (1975) awarded in recognition of his settings of German and French authors. An elected Fellow of the Royal Irish Academy of Music and a member of Aosdána (Ireland’s state-sponsored academy of creative artists) since its inception, Victory also served as president of UNESCO’s International Rostrum of Composers from 1981 to 1983. He was a founding member of the Association of Irish Composers.

Victory’s extensive output, the product of over 40 years of compositional activity, includes works in instrumental, vocal and electro-acoustic genres. His compositions demonstrate ease and fluency in a variety of compositional styles. Neo-Tonal writing is particularly evident in his light, celebratory music; other works employ a system of tonality in which key relationships are derived from serial techniques, rather than from the Classical tonal hierarchy. His operas have been staged in Dublin and Würzburg and broadcast in Europe and the USA; The Music hath Mischief (1960) and Chatterton (1967) are among the best known. His symphonic portrait Jonathan Swift (1970) was given its première performance at the Dublin Festival of 20th-Century Music in 1972. Among his choral works, Hymnus vespertinus was commissioned by the Heinrich Schütz Festival (1965) and a number of cantatas were composed for the BBC's educational series ‘Music Workshop’. Victory frequently stated that his ultimate compositional motivation was to communicate with his audience. Ultima rerum (1981), his ‘global Requiem Symphony’, best exemplifies this concern. First performed in 1984, this work, the first major requiem by an Irish composer, draws on a wide range of theological and philosophical literature and explores the attitude of different religions, societies and civilizations to the after-life. The recording, released in 1994, is one of only a few commercial recordings of Victory’s work.

WORKS

(selective list)

dramatic

Ops: An fear a phós balbhán [The Silent Wife] (1, T. MacAna, after F. Rabelais), 1952, Dublin, 1953; Iomrall aithne [Mistaken Identity] (1, G. Victory), 1956, Dublin, 1956; The Music hath Mischief (radio op, 1, Victory), 1960, RTE, 1967; Chatterton (3, Victory, after A. de Vigny), 1967; Eloise and Abelard (3, Victory), 1972; An Evening for Three (1, Victory, after L. Ingrisch), 1975; The Rendezvous (1, Victory, after M. Renard), 1984, Dublin, 1989

Other: Gaelic Galop (incid music), 1956; Victor Frankenstein (film score), 1977; scores for a series of animated classics (C. Dickens, O. Wilde, V. Hugo)

instrumental

Orch: Sym. no.1, 1961; Ballade, 1963; 5 Mantras, str orch, 1963; Tango Suisse, 1965; Favola di notte, 1966; Treasure Island, ov., 1966; Homage to Petrarch, str orch, 1967; 4 Tableaux, 1968; Miroirs, chbr orch, 1969; Cyrano de Bergerac, ov., 1970; Jonathan Swift, sym. portrait, 1970; Praeludium, 1970; Conc., hp, chbr orch, 1971; The Spirit of Molière, suite, 1971; From Renoir's Workshop, 1973; Olympic Festival, ov., 1975; Vc Conc., 1978; 3 Irish Pictures, 1980; 6 Epiphanies of the Author, 1981; Sym. no.3 ‘Refrains’, 1984; Marche Bizarre, 1985; Dubliners, 1988; Eblana, 1991

Chbr and solo inst: Wind Qnt, 1957; Esquisse, ob, pf, 1960; Suite rustique, cl, pf, 1960; Str Qt, 1963; 5 Tales from Andersen, pf, 1963; Rodomontade, fl, ob, cl, bn, hn, 1964; 3 Pieces, Irish hp, 1966; Sémantiques, fl, pf, 1967; 3 Legends, cl, vn, vc, pf, 1968; Triptyque, tpt, pf, 1968; 3 contes des Fées, cl, pf, 1970; Pf Qnt, 1971; Pavane, fl, pf, 1976; 5 Exotic Dances, brass qnt, 1979; Resurrection Voluntary, org, 1979; Str Trio, 1982; Commedia, brass sextet, 1985; Hn Trio, 1986

vocal

Choral: Le petit cerf, S, SATB, 1962; Hymnus vespertinus, S, SATB, 1965; Quartetto, nar, SATB, 1966; Kriegslieder (A. Stramm), T, SATB, tpt, perc, 1967; Songs of Praise, children's chorus, perc, org, 1967; Sing to the Lord, SATB, org, 1970; Hagoromo, children’s chorus, fl, ob, cl, hn, 2 perc, hpd, 1971; 4 Idylls from Theocritus, Mez, SATB, 1972; Mass for Christmas Day, SATB, org, 1974; Mass of the Resurrection, SATB, org, 1977; 3 chansons de Verlaine, SSAA, 1978; O Antiphons, SATB, org, 1978; 7 Songs of Experience, S, T, SATB, 1978; Sliabh Geal gCua [The Bright Hill of Cua], SATB, 1982; Ultima rerum (requiem cant.), S, A, T, B, children’s chorus, chbr chorus, SSAATTBB, orch, 1981; Songs from Lyonesse, SATB, pf, 1985; The Everlasting Voices, SATB, org, 1993; The Wooing of Eadaoin, solo vv, SATB, children’s chorus, 1994

Solo: Raftery the Poet, Bar, pf, 1951; The River of Heaven (cant., L. Hearn, trans. from the Jap.), S, T, orch, 1964; Voyelles, S, fl, 2 perc, str, 1966; The Island People, vv, spkr, 2 rec, 2 melodicas, chimes, glock, perc, xyl, gui, vn, 1968; The Passionate Pilgrim (4 Shakespeare Songs), song cycle, A/Bar, pf, 1968; Sailing to Byzantium, A, orch, 1975; An Old Woman of the Roads, A/Bar, pf or orch acc., 1979

MSS in EIRE-Dtc

Principal publishers: Cranz, Leduc, Novello, Ramsey (Basil), United, Vanderbeek & Imbrie

BIBLIOGRAPHY

KG (A. Klein)

M. Dawney: ‘Gerard Victory’, Contemporary Composers, ed. B. Morton and P. Collins (Chicago, 1992)

A. Murphy: The Requiem and Contemporary Irish Music (diss., St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, 1993)

A. Klein: Die Musik Irlands im 20. Jahrhundert (Hildesheim, 1996)

ANNE MARGARET MURPHY

Vic-Wells Opera.

The name of the opera company of the Old Vic theatre, London, from 1931 to 1935, when it played both at the Old Vic and at Sadler’s Wells. In 1935 it moved to the latter theatre and was renamed Sadler’s Wells Opera. See London (i), §VI, 1(i).

Vidaković, Albe

(b Subotica, 1 Oct 1914; d Zagreb, 18 April 1964). Croatian musicologist and composer. He studied composition and musicology at the Pontificio Istituto di Musica Sacra in Rome. From 1942 he was choirmaster at Zagreb Cathedral and editor of the church music journal Sv. Cecilija (1942–5, 1946), from 1951 professor of aesthetics and church music at the theology faculty at Zagreb. In 1963 he founded the Institute of Church Music. Vidaković was one of the most important Croatian musicologists. His systematic examination of Croatian music, for instance in his detailed analysis of Jelić’s works in the introduction to his edition of Parnassia militia or in his book on Križanić, where he discussed the Croatian musical theorists of the 17th century, are well known. His compositions consist mainly of vocal music and include a number of masses which, although written on the polyphonic basis, seek to capture the spirit of Croatian folk music.

WORKS

Masses: Missa caeciliana, chorus, org (1945); Missa simplex, chorus (1946); Missa gregoriana, male chorus, org (1946); Staroslavenske mise [Old Slavonic Masses], i, 2vv, org (1948), ii, female chorus, org (1950), iii, chorus, org (1953); Misa za umršeje [Requiem], chorus, org (1957); Missa brevis gregoriana (1959); Hrvatska misa [Croatian Mass], chorus, org

Tužba u hramu [The Dirge in the Temple], orat (1947), completed by A. Klobučar; Str Qt, g (1940); works for orch, org, chbr works, songs, choruses

WRITINGS

‘Đuro Arnold: prilog povijesti hrvatske glazbe’ [Arnold: a contribution to Croatian music history], Sv. Cecilija, xxxi (1937), no.3, pp.77–9; no.4, pp.108–12

‘Nekoliko nepoznatih dokumenta o glazbeniku Đuri Arnoldu’ [Some unpublished sources on Arnold], Sv. Cecilija, xxxiv/3 (1940), 55–7

Crkvena glazba u zagrebačkoj stolnoj crkvi u 19. stoljeću [Church music in Zagreb Cathedral in the 19th century] (Zagreb, 1945)

‘Sakramentar MR 126 Metropolitanske knjižnice u Zagrebu’ [Sacramentary MR 126 of the Metropolitan Library in Zagreb], Rad JAZU, no.287 (1952), 55–86

‘Tragom naših srednjevjekovnih neumatskih glazbenih rukopisa’ [On the track of our early medieval musical manuscripts with neumes], Ljetopis Jugoslavenske akademije znanosti i umjetnosti (Zagreb, 1960), 364–94

‘I nuovi confini della scrittura neumatica musicale nell’Europa Sud-Est’, SMw, xxiv (1960), 5–12

Asserta musicalia (1656) Jurja Križanića i njegovi ostali radovi s područja glazbe [Križanić's Asserta musicalia and other musical works] (Zagreb, 1965; Eng. trans., 1967)

EDITIONS

Vinko Jelić, 1596–1636? i njegova zbirka duhovnih koncerata i ricercara Parnassia militia (1622) (Zagreb, 1957)

Vincentius Jelich: Sechs Motetten aus Arion primus (1628) (Graz, 1957)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L. Galetić: ‘Musikološki rad A. Vidakovića’ [Vidaković's musicological activities], Sv. Cecilija, xxxix/3 (1969), 70–74

A. Sekulić: ‘Spomen o životu i djelatnosti Albe Vidokovića’ [Remembering the life and activities of Vidaković], Sv. Cecilija, liv/3–4 (1984), 53–60

L. Županović, ed.: Albe Vidaković: život i djelo [Vidaković: life and works] (Zagreb, 1989)

DRAGOTIN CVETKO/ZDRAVKO BLAŽEKOVIĆ

Vidal, Louis Antoine

(b Rouen, 10 July 1820; d Paris, 7 Jan 1891). French music historian. He was an excellent amateur musician (he studied the cello with Franchomme), an accomplished linguist, and a friend of the violin maker J.-B. Vuillaume. His great work was the sumptuous three-volume Les instruments à archet, published in 1876–8 with illustrations by Frédéric Hillemacher, dealing with the history of the violin, its makers, and musical typography, and including biographies of composers and an exhaustive bibliography of chamber music. The sections concerning history and manufacture, and the Corporation of St Julien des Ménétriers and the French Minstrels, were also published separately. Although it is now outdated, the work is still valued for its mass of information and its elegant style of writing.

Vidal was a member of the Société de l’Histoire de Paris et de l’Ile-de-France. He was compiling a history of the piano when he died.

WRITINGS

Les instruments à archet, les faiseurs, les joueurs d’instruments, leur histoire (Paris, 1876–8/R); extracts in Les vieilles corporations de Paris (Paris, 1878) and La lutherie et les luthiers (Paris, 1889)

BRUCE CARR

Vidal, Paul Antonin

(b Toulouse, 16 June 1863; d Paris, 9 April 1931). French conductor, teacher and composer. He attended the Toulouse Conservatoire and later the Paris Conservatoire, where he was in Massenet’s composition class. He achieved a formidable record, winning premiers prix for both harmony (1879) and counterpoint and fugue (1881) and the Prix de Rome (1883) with the cantata Le gladiateur, which was published in vocal score. During his subsequent stay in Rome he became a particular friend of Debussy, whose L’enfant prodigue won the Prix de Rome in 1884. He began his conducting career at the Paris Opéra in 1889 as assistant chorus director, becoming director of singing in 1892 and chief conductor in 1906. He directed performances at the Opéra from 1894, beginning with Chabrier’s Gwendoline. Apart from the standard opera and ballet repertory he conducted the Parisian premières of Massenet’s Ariane and Roma, d’Indy’s L’étranger and numerous other works. With Georges Marty he founded the Concerts de l’Opéra (1895–7) and from 1914 to 1919 was musical director of the Opéra-Comique.

Vidal is particularly remembered as a fine teacher who was sympathetic to new ideas. At the Paris Conservatoire he taught classes in solfège (from 1894), piano accompaniment (from 1896) and composition (from 1909). He commanded a wide field of theoretical knowledge, drawing on both Franck’s system on the French side and Riemann’s on the German, and his theatrical experience gave special value to his vocal and instrumental teaching. His Conservatoire pupils included André Caplet and Arthur Hoérée, but Vidal’s generous nature also brought him into contact with hundreds of less privileged persons, whose evening classes he taught for many years in the working-class districts of Paris.

Vidal’s most successful compositions were the ballet La maladetta (1893), which had been performed nearly 200 times by 1930, and the light opera Eros. The operas Guernica and La Burgonde were unsuccessful; extensive critiques of the libretto and music of each are printed in Clément and Larousse’s Dictionnaire lyrique. His musical style, perhaps not surprisingly for a pupil of Massenet, is professionally finished and pleasingly lyrical. Le gladiateur shows the influence of both Parsifal and French grand opera, but the sweetness and artifice in parts of Eros and the linear discipline in the music for Bouchor’s Noël suggest the music of Poulenc.

Vidal’s elder brother, Joseph Bernard Vidal (b Toulouse, 15 Nov 1859; d Paris, 18 Dec 1924), was a conductor and composer. His works include operettas, notably Le mariage d’Yvette (1896) and Le chevalier de Fontenoy, and both original compositions and arrangements (including some of Paul Vidal’s works) for wind ensembles.

WORKS

all printed works published in Paris

stage

all first performed in Paris

Eros (fantaisie lyrique, 3, J. Noriac, A. Jaime and M. Bouchor), Bouffes-Parisiens, 22 April 1892, vs (1892)

L’amour dans les enfers (1, A. Pigeon) (1892)

Guernica (drame lyrique, 3, P. Gailhard and P.B. Gheusi), OC (Lyrique), 7 June 1895, vs (1895)

La Burgonde (opéra, 4, E. Bergerat and C. de Sainte-Croix), Opéra, 23 Dec 1898 (1898)

Ramsès (drame, 1, L. de Pesquidoux), Egyptien de l’Exposition Universelle, 27 June 1900 (1902)

Ballets: La maladetta (2, Gailhard), Opéra, 24 Feb 1893 (1893); Fête russe (divertissement), Opéra, 24 Oct 1893; L’impératrice (2, J. Richepin) (1903); Zino-Zina (2, Richepin) (1908); Ballet de Terpsichore (1909)

Pantomimes: Columbine pardonnée, 1888; La révérence (1, M. Le Corbeiller) (1890); Pierrot assassin de sa femme (1, P. Margueritte) (1892); La folie de Pierrot (A. Byl and L. Marsolleau) (1895); others

Incid music: Le baiser (T. de Banville), 1888; Noël, ou Le mystère de la nativité (Bouchor), Galerie Vivienne, 25 Nov 1890 (1890); La dévotion à Saint André, Galerie Vivienne, Feb 1892; Les mystères d’Eleusis (Bouchor), Galerie Vivienne, 16 Jan 1894 (1896); Saint Georges (Bouchor), 1896 (1896); La reine Fiammette (C. Mendès), Odéon, 6 Dec 1898

other works

Vocal: Le gladiateur (cant., E. Moreau) (1883); San et Bs, 2vv, org (1896); many works for female, male, mixed vv, incl. Invocation (A. de Lamartine), mixed vv (1883), Chanson des fées (de Banville), female vv (1888), others listed in MGG1; c30 songs

Orch: Petite suite espagnole (1902); Divertissement flamand (1914); La vision de Jeanne d’Arc, sym. poem

Chbr: [2nd] Solo de concert, trbn, pf (1897); Sérénade sur l’eau, vc/vn, pf (1913); Concertino, hn/tpt, pf (1922); Mélodie, bn/vc/vn, str qt (1924); Pièce de concert, hn, pf (1924); Aria et fanfare, tpt (1927); Adagio et saltarelle, bn, pf (1929); Pièce de concert, hn (1938)

Kbd: 4 Versets–Improvisations [on Iste confessor], org (1896); pf works

Pedagogical: 52 leçons d’harmonie de Luigi Cherubini (Paris, ?n.d.); other works

Edns/arrs. of works by Bach, Beethoven, Boccherini, Gluck, Godard, Lully, Meyerbeer, Mozart; vs of E. Reyer: Sigurd (1884); music by Chopin orchd as Suite de danses, Paris, Opéra, 23 June 1913, collab. A. Messager

BIBLIOGRAPHY

MGG1 (G. Ferchault)

F. Clément and P. Larousse: Dictionnaire lyrique, ou Histoire des opéras (Paris, 2/1897, ed. A. Pougin, suppl. 1904, 3/1905/R)

C. Pierre: Le Conservatoire national de musique et de déclamation: documents historiques et administratifs (Paris, 1900)

P. Vidal: Reminiscence, in J. Massenet: Mes souvenirs (1848–1912) (Paris, 1912; Eng. trans., 1919/R), 301–2

R. Dumesnil: La musique contemporaine en France (Paris, 1930)

A. Hoérée: Obituary, ReM, nos.111–15 (1931), 463–4

H. Rebois: Les Grands Prix de Rome de musique (Paris, 1932)

Introduction to C. Debussy: Lettres à deux amis, ed. G. Jean-Aubry and R. Godet (Paris, 1942)

G. Hughes: Composers of Operetta (London, 1962/R)

S. Wolff: L’Opéra au Palais Garnier (1875–1962) (Paris, 1962/R)

Collection of articles on Vidal in F-Po C368/2

DAVID CHARLTON

Vidal, Peire

(fl c1183–c1205). Provençal troubadour. The ironic wit, fantasy and whimsical boastfulness of his verse probably contributed to the rapid spread of legendary stories concerning his life. A restless wanderer, he served Raimon V of Toulouse, Raimon Gaufridi Barral, Viscount of Marseilles, Alfonso II of Aragon, Alfonso VIII of Castile and Boniface I of Montferrat. He visited Hungary as a follower of Constance of Aragon and lived in Genoa and Pisa. Some of his poems touch on political quarrels of the time. He was a supporter of Richard the Lionheart, and supposedly accompanied him as far as Cyprus on the Third Crusade. The tale of his marriage to a Greek woman whom he thought to be the granddaughter of the Emperor of Constantinople is now regarded as fictitious.

Vidal’s poems reveal technical ease and power as well as an original approach to traditional themes. Of approximately 50 poems that are attributable to him, 12 survive with music. One anonymous work, Pos vezem, may also be his. Structural patterns employed by Vidal are to be found in some 17 other medieval lyrics that survive without music, and it is possible (though conjectural) that a few of these employed Vidal’s melodies.

Anc no mori per amor, Be·m pac d’ivern and Quant hom survive with music in more than two sources. The variants of Anc no mori and Be·m pac affect significant details of modal structure and form, while two unrelated melodies are extant for Cant hom. The poems set to music are primarily isosyllabic (either decasyllabic, octosyllabic or heptasyllabic), the opening section of the strophe is normally in an abba pattern and the closing section usually has paired c and d rhymes. The melodies generally develop freely over the span of a 9th or 10th, but Be·m pac d’ivern, one of the more florid works, attains the extraordinary compass of an octave and a 7th. A wide variety of modal structures is used. More often than not, the final does not constitute a pervasive tonal centre, and in two works it is not used cadentially before the last line. Bar form is used in Baros, de mon dan covit, Nulhs hom no·s pot and Pos vezem, while the same pair of phrases ends each of the two halves of Tart mi veiran. Repeated motifs are occasionally to be found within individual phrases, but there is little other evidence of symmetrical construction.

WORKS

Edition:Der musikalische Nachlass der Troubadours, ed. F. Gennrich, SMM, iii, iv, xv (1958–65)Las cançons dels trobadors, ed. I. Fernandez de la Cuesta and R. Lafont (Toulouse, 1979)The Extant Troubadour Melodies, ed. H. van der Werf and G. Bond (Rochester, NY, 1984)

Anc no mori per amor ni per al, PC 364.4

Baros, de mon dan covit, PC 364.7

Be·m pac d’ivern e d’estiu, PC 364.11 (written c1182–5)

Cant hom es en autrui poder, PC 364.39

Jes per temps fer e brau, PC 364.24

Neus ni glatz ni plueyas ni fanh, PC 364.30

Nulhs hom no·s pot d’amor gandir, PC 364.31

Pos tornatz sui en Proensa, PC 364.37 (written c1189)

Quant hom honratz torna en gran paubreira, PC 364.40

Si co·l paubre, can jatz el ric ostal, PC 364.36

S’ieu fos en cort que hom tengues drechura, PC 364.42

Tart mi veiran mei amic en Tolzan, PC 364.49

Pos vezem que l’iverns s’irais, PC 461.197 (anon., possibly by Vidal)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

J. Anglade: Les poésies de Peire Vidal (Paris, 1913, 2/1923/R)

H. Anglès: La música a Catalunya fins al segle XIII (Barcelona, 1935/R)

W. Bittinger: Studien zur musikalischen Textkritik des mittelalterlichen Liedes (Würzburg,1953)

A.S. Avalle, ed.: Peire Vidal: Poesie (Milan, 1960)

E. Hoepffner: Le troubadour Peire Vidal, sa vie et son oeuvre (Paris, 1961)

Z. Falvy: Mediterranean Culture and Troubadour Music (Budapest, 1986)

E. Aubrey: The Music of the Troubadours (Bloomington, IN, 1996)

For further bibliography see Troubadours, trouvères.

THEODORE KARP

Vidala.

A lyrical vocal form of Bolivia and northern Argentina. It is often confused with and thought to be descended from the yaraví of pre-Conquest, possibly Inca origins. Usually in triple metre in the minor mode, the vidala’s octosyllabic coplas (stanzas) and estribillos (refrains) are sung in parallel 3rds except, occasionally, when the melody is either tetratonic or pentatonic. Typical instrumental accompaniment is provided by the caja (frame drum), tambor (bass drum) and guitar played in arpeggio style.

WILLIAM GRADANTE

Vidala coya.

See Baguala.

Vidales, Francisco de

(b ?Mexico City, c1630; d Puebla, 2 June 1702). Mexican organist and composer. He was the nephew of Fabián Ximeno, maestro de capilla of Mexico City Cathedral, 1648–54. On Ximeno's death in 1654, the post went to the brilliant Mexican polyphonist Francisco López Capillas, and Vidales was made second organist. Vidales so impressed the cathedral chapter that they specified that López Capillas and he should alternate as organist week by week. In 1655 Vidales left Mexico City for Puebla Cathedral, where he served as principal organist for nearly half a century under such notable maestros de capilla as Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla, Juan García de Zéspedes and Antonio de Salazar. He was presumably active as a composer during this time; in 1676 he presented the Chapter with eight bound books of music (now lost), which probably contained his original compositions.

WORKS

latin sacred

All MSS in MEX-Pc; most (?all) with instruments

Missa super Exultate, 8vv

Caligaverunt oculi mei a fletu meo, 3vv; Domine memento mei dum veneris in regnum tuum, 4vv; Ecce vidimus eum non habentem speciem, 3vv; In jejunio et fletu orabunt sacerdotes, 3vv; Justus et bonum est confiteri Domino, 5vv; Non est species ei neque decor, 4vv; Plorans ploravit in nocte, 4vv; Seniores populi consilium fecerunt, 4vv; Sicut ovis ad occasionem, 3vv; Tenebrae factae sunt, 4vv

villancicos

all MSS in Mexico City, Centro Nacional de Investigación, Documentación e Información Musical; all with instruments

A la ensaladilla, SSAB; Al ayre que se llena de luçes y claridades, 8vv (inc.); Con que gala en el campo naçe la rosa (Natividad de la Virgen), SSAT; Disfrasada deidad que Dios de amor te veo, SAT, 1673; Los que fueren de buen gusto, SSAB, ed. R. Stevenson, Christmas Music from Baroque Mexico (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1974), and ed. in Ramírez Ramírez; Entremos zagales a ver la fiesta, SSAB; Miren, miren el prado, SA (inc.); Ora es menester que flota en el puerto est amarrado, SSAB; Toquen [as gaitas] a maytines que naçe el alba, SSAB, SATB

BIBLIOGRAPHY

StevensonRB

R. Stevenson: ‘Mexico City Cathedral Music, 1600–1750’, The Americas, xxi (1964), 111–35; pubd separately (Washington DC, 1964)

R. Stevenson: ‘Puebla Chapelmasters and Organists: Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Part II’, Inter-American Music Review, vi (1984–5), 29–139, esp. 119–32

F. Ramírez Ramírez: Introduction to Trece obras de la Collección J. Sánchez Garza (Mexico City, 1981)

CRAIG H. RUSSELL

Vidalita.

See Baguala.

Vidal Pacheco, Gonzalo

(b Popayán, 23 Nov 1863; d Bogotá, 21 Sept 1946). Colombian composer. Born to a musical family, he was a talented self-taught musician. He lived and worked in Medellín from 1876 until 1941. In 1889 he succeeded his father as organist of Medellín Cathedral. Vidal directed the Escuela de Música Santa Cecilia (1889–92), the Banda de Medellín (1913–27) and a small orchestra (1913), and he exercised great influence on every aspect of the musical life of Medellín. A prolific composer, Vidal wrote orchestral and religious music, salon pieces for the piano and songs. His popular pasillos, danzas, polkas, mazurkas and waltzes are still remembered.

WORKS

(selective list)

Orch: La americana, ov., 1891; Euterpe, ov., 1891

Vocal with orch.: Stabat mater, 1896; Requiem, 1924; Himno antiogueño (E. Mejía)

Pf: Siempreviva, pasillo, 1877; Valse, b, 1912; Sonata no.1, e, 1918; Sonata no.2, E, 1924; Valse fantástico, 1924; Toros y cañas, pasillo

BIBLIOGRAPHY

H. Zapata Cuéncar: Gonzalo Vidal (Medellín, 1963)

ELLIE ANNE DUQUE

Vidame de Chartres

(b 1145–55; d ?April 1204). French trouvère, probably identifiable with Guillaume de Ferrières. The evidence relating to the identification of the Vidame includes the coat of arms given in the miniature in the Manuscrit du Roi (F-Pn fr.844), the date of the Roman de la rose ou de Guillaume de Dole, which quotes two strophes from Quant la saison, the best-known chanson by the Vidame, and the reference in Combien que j’aie demouré to an enforced stay in a hated land. The coat of arms is traceable in the mid-13th century to the Meslay family, but members of this family did not become Vidames of Chartres before 1224. The Roman de la rose is now assumed to have been written in the 1220s, and it seems probable that Quant la saison was written a number of years earlier. Guillaume de Ferrières took part in the crusades of 1188–92 and 1201–4, and it is likely that the mention of an unhappy, hated land refers not to the Holy Land, but to a stay in southern or western France in 1188, when the crusaders were squabbling among themselves before their departure. The title ‘Vidame’ designated the chief lay official of a bishopric, responsible for the defence of that territory.

Only one of the eight pieces ascribed to the Vidame has no conflicting attribution; nonetheless, only Quant foillissent li boscage seems likely not to be his. The ascription ‘Li viscuens de Chartres’ attached to Desconsilliez plus que nus hom was probably intended to refer to the Vidame. Four of the eight poems attributable to the Vidame consist of isometric, decasyllabic strophes, while the body of a fifth is similarly constructed, though with the addition of two short lines in a three-line refrain. The remaining poems employ octosyllabic lines in various admixtures with shorter lines. There are considerable problems in the establishment of the musical texts – another argument in favour of the early dating of the trouvère. The main setting of Li plus desconfortés is non-repetitive, but all the other original melodies are in bar form. The melodies all move over a range of an octave or more, with Chascuns me semont spanning a diminished 12th. There is a preference for D modes, but the modal structures do not usually remain stable among the various readings. The majority of Tant ai d’amours is given in the 3rd mode in the Chansonnier Cangé (F-Pn fr.846), but modal rhythm seems ill-suited to the remaining tunes, especially the ornate Combien que j’aie demouré and D’amours vient joie.

Sources, MS

WORKS

Edition:Trouvère Lyrics with Melodies: Complete Comparative Edition, ed. H. Tischler, CMM, cvii (1997)

(V) etc. indicates a MS (using Schwan sigla: see Sources, ms) containing a late setting of a poem

Chascuns me semont de chanter, R.798 (V)

Combien que j’aie demouré, R.421 = 422 (A, R)

D’amours vient joie et honours ensement, R.663

Quant la saison du dous tens s’asseure, R.2086 (R)

Tant ai d’amours qu’en chantant m’estuet plaindre, R.130 (V)

Tant con je fusse fors de ma contree, R.502 (A)

doubtful works

Desconsilliez plus que nus hom qui soit, R.1849 (no music)

Li plus desconfortés du mont, R.1918 (A)

Quant foillissent li boscage, R.14 (V)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

H. Petersen Dyggve: ‘Personnages historiques figurant dans la poésie lyrique française des XIIe et XIIIe siècles, xxii: Le vidame de Chartres’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, xlv (1944), 161–85; xlvi (1945), 21–55

For further bibliography see Troubadours, trouvères.

THEODORE KARP

Viðar, Jórunn

(b Reykjavík, 7 Dec 1918). Icelandic composer and pianist. She began music lessons with her mother and with Páll Ísólfsson, and studied the piano with Árni Kristjánsson at the Reykjavík College of Music (1932–6). She then attended the Berlin Hochschule für Musik (1937–9) and the Juilliard School (1943–5; theory and orchestration, Vittorio Giannini; piano, Hélène Morzyn). She completed her education with further piano lessons in Vienna (1959–60). On returning to Iceland she became an active performer, showing a special affinity for the music of Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann and Debussy. In later years she taught on the faculty of the Reykjavík School of Singing.

Her music combines national and international elements in a distinctively colourful and melodious style. Much of her instrumental music – Ólafur Liljurós, Slátta (‘Touches’), Meditations on Five Icelandic Themes – draws on the metrical schemes and ornamental figures of Icelandic folksong, as does her ambitious choral work Mansöngur úr Ólafs rímu Graenlendings (‘Ballad from the Rhymes of Ólafur the Greenlander’). She is best known for her songs, many of which, including Únglingurinn í skóginum (‘The Youth in the Forest’) and Gestaboð um nótt (‘Nocturnal Visit’), display a recitative style finely attuned to the text, combined with impressionistic piano accompaniment. Her modal, folk-like tunes, for example Thað á að gefa börnum brauð (‘Children must be Given Bread’), occasionally give the impression of being actual folk material.

WORKS

(selective list)

Orch: Eldur [Fire] (ballet), 1950; Ólafur Liljurós (ballet), 1952; Slátta [Touches], pf conc., 1977

Choral: Mansöngur úr Ólafs rímu Graenlendings [Ballad from the Rhymes of Ólafur the Greenlander] (E. Benediktsson), SATB, str/pf, c1955

Other vocal: Im Kahn (C. Flaischlen), 1943; Únglingurinn í skóginum [The Youth in the Forest] (H. Laxness, c1947); Gestaboð um nótt [Nocturnal Visit] (E. Bragi), c1945; Thað á að gefa börnum brauð [Children must be Given Bread] (folk verse, c1947); Vort líf, vort líf [Our Life, Our Life] (S. Steinarr), c1950; Icelandic folksongs, arr. 1972

Chbr and solo inst: Variations on an Icelandic Folksong, vc, pf, 1962; Meditations on 5 Icelandic Themes, pf, 1965; Icelandic Suite, vn, pf, 1974

BIBLIOGRAPHY

J. Viðar: ‘Íslenzka tónlistarhátíðin’, Birtingur, iii/3 (1957), 36 only

G. Bergendal: New Music in Iceland (Reykjavík, 1991)

M. Podhajski: Dictionary of Icelandic Composers (Warsaw, 1997)

ÁRNI HEIMIR INGÓLFSSON

Vide, Jacobus

(fl ?1405–33). Franco-Flemish composer. He may have been a choirboy at the Cathedral of Notre Dame, Paris, in 1405. He was awarded a prebend in the church of St Donatian, Bruges, in 1410, at which time he may have been a singer in the chapel of John XXIII (Strohm); a document of 1410 calls him a ‘clericus’ from the diocese of Tournai, but he was not ordained. By December 1423 he had been retained as a valet de chambre to Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, and in 1426 was given charge of the upbringing of two choirboys of the Burgundian chapel. He was promoted to the post of secretary to the duke in 1428, and in the same year was given a small organ. Despite his talents as a composer, Vide was never listed as a member of the ducal chapel. His name last appeared in the Burgundian records in 1433.

Vide's surviving compositions are eight French rondeaux. All are found in GB-Ob Can.misc.213 except Qui son cuer (in I-TRmp 92). They display a simple style in which several short phrases of music are linked together through overlapping cadences. The frequent dissonances and cross-rhythms as well as the considerable melodic variety of the top voice parts lend a special charm to Vide's chansons.

WORKS

Edition:Les musiciens de la cour de Bourgogne au XVe siècle (1420–1467), ed. J. Marix (Paris, 1937/R) [M]

Amans doubles, 4vv, M

Espoir m'est venu conforter, 3vv, M

Et c'est asses, 2vv, M

Il m'est si grief, 3vv, M (Ct in E-E V.III.24 differs from that in GB-Ob Can.misc.213)

Las! j'ay perdu mon espintel, 2vv, M

Puisque je n'ay plus de maystresse, 3vv, M

Qui son cuer met a dame, 3vv, ed. in DTÖ, xxii, Jg. xi/1 (1904/R)

Vit encore ce faux dangier, 3vv, M

BIBLIOGRAPHY

J.-F. Foppens: Compendium chronologicum episcoporum Brugensium (Bruges, 1731), 116

J. Marix: Histoire de la musique et des musiciens de la cour de Bourgogne sous le règne de Philippe le Bon (1420–1467) (Strasbourg, 1939/R), 161–2

C. Wright: Music at the Court of Burgundy, 1364–1419: a Documentary History (Henryville, PA, 1979)

W. Arlt: ‘Der Beitrag der Chanson zu einer Problemgeschichte des Komponierens: “Las! j'ay perdu … ” und “Il m'est si grief … ” von Jacobus Vide’, Analysen: Beiträge zu einer Problemgeschichte des Komponierens: Festschrift für Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht, ed. W. Breig, R. Brinkmann and E. Budde (Wiesbaden, 1984), 57–75

R. Strohm: ‘Magister Egardus and other Italo-Flemish contacts’, L'Europa e la musica del Trecento: Congresso IV: Certaldo 1984 [L'Ars Nova italiana del Trecento, vi (Certaldo, 1992)], 41–68, esp. 58

W. Arlt: Italien als produktive Erfahrung franko-flämischer Musiker im 15. Jahrhundert (Basel, 1993)

CRAIG WRIGHT/R

Videl

(Ger.).

See Fiddle.

Video.

In connection with music, the term ‘video’ or ‘music video’ is used primarily to refer to a form of short film, whose soundtrack exclusively or predominantly consists of a popular song, and which is intended for television presentation with the purpose of promoting a recording of the song. Since the beginning of the 1980s, music video has been a regular component in the marketing procedures of popular music. Notwithstanding the designation, music videos or ‘video clips’ are often produced using traditional celluloid film technology and transformed to electronic media in the post-production process.

1. History.

The predecessors of music video in its modern form can be traced back to the experiments on the synchronization of film with recorded sound made since the earliest days of film. These experiments also included forms governed by the primary formal determinant serving to distinguish music video from film music: the use of the film medium for visual illustration of songs as opposed to the film music practice of providing music to accompany visual narration. Thus in the 1910s and 1920s silent ‘song-plug’ films were produced, intended for presentation accompanied by live performances of the songs that the films illustrated. Animated films with musical soundtracks were produced by the German Oskar von Fischinger from 1921 onwards, and this technique was popularized in Disney's series of Silly Symphonies short films (from 1929) and the full-length Fantasia (1940). In the 1930s and 40s a great number of musical short films were produced, each featuring one or two songs by a popular artist and intended as preludes to the main feature film in cinemas. In the 1940s ‘visual jukebox’ films under the designation Panoram Soundies were produced in the USA, followed in the 1960s by the French colour film jukebox Scopitone. Other predecessors of and possible influences on music video include such experimental films as Fernand Léger's Ballet mécanique (1924), with music by Georges Antheil; the conventions established within the Hollywood film musical from the 1930s onwards and in rock films from the 1950s onwards; the dramatization procedures used for popular songs in television shows such as the 1950s ‘Your Hit Parade’ (USA); and avant-garde art video from the 1970s onwards.

The expanding pop culture of the 1960s furthered the development of new conventions concerning the visualization of rock music, not least through the influence of the Beatles films directed by Richard Lester, A Hard Day's Night (1964) and Help! (1965). The Beatles, as well as other British groups, also produced early examples of ‘promo films’ promoting particular songs (e.g. ‘Penny Lane’ and ‘Strawberry fields forever’) intended for television presentation and featuring many of the formal characteristics typical of later videos; these, however, did not attract any wider attention or achieve tangible commercial effects. The first video alleged to have had a substantial influence on sales of a song was the clip produced by Jon Roseman and Bruce Gowers for Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody in 1975; for that reason, as well as for its then innovatory use of visual special effects, this clip is often cited as ‘the first music video’. Following this example, during the second half of the 1970s an increasing number of video clips were produced, notably by artists with a marked emphasis on visual image elements, such as David Bowie in the UK or the group Devo in the USA.

Music video proper, that is as a routine marketing technique for popular music, emerged in the early 1980s as the result of technological and demographic developments. Satellite and cable technology had enabled the establishment of specialized commercial television channels, aimed at particular segments of the audience (‘narrowcasting’). This technology was used for the dissemination of music video to a pop and rock audience whose relationship with the television medium had grown less antagonistic than it had been in the earlier days of rock history. MTV, the first 24-hour music video cable channel, was launched in the USA on 1 August 1981. Its impact as a promotional tool was allegedly demonstrated by effects such as the success of British ‘New Pop’ in the USA. Music video was rapidly established as a regular element in the marketing of popular music. Production budgets and aesthetic ambitions soon increased, an illustrative example being the extravagant 13-minute video produced for Michael Jackson's Thriller (1983). MTV was followed by other cable and satellite video services, such as VH-1 (1985) in the USA and Music Box (1984), MTV Europe (1987) and The Power Station (1990) in Europe.

2. Structure.

Since the visual dimension of music video is created with the purpose of visualizing a popular song, its formal disposition tends to be determined by the structural aspects of song form (the sequence and layout of sections such as verse, chorus etc.) rather than by previously existing models of visual narrative. Visual narration is sometimes based on narrative elements in the words of the song, but generally any narration in a video tends to be rather fragmentary. A second important category of visual content is the one constituted by imagery of musical performance, which is often set in surroundings simulating the conventions of stage performance of rock and pop music. In addition to visual narrative and performance images, many videos feature a rapidly shifting montage of more or less coherent images not immediately relatable to the words of the song; this type of visual material (‘dreamlike visuals’) has come to be regarded as particularly typical. Animation and technical special effects are often used to create striking and unusual images. Visual thematics are often strongly influenced by conventional genre norms in different popular genres, such as the gothic horror imagery common in heavy metal videos, or the use of ‘realistic’ street images in videos featuring artists who aspire to established notions of rock authenticity. In addition, visual quotations from various areas of popular culture (film, television, advertising), as well as from high art, are common.

Regardless of musical style or genre, in most videos the rhythmic characteristics of the song are at least to some degree illustrated visually, by way of co-ordination of movements depicted and/or the pace of the editing with the beat of the music; also, specific musical effects, such as rhythmic, melodic or timbre accents, are often illustrated visually. Thus, ‘mickey-mousing’ relationships between music and images, rather than being considered a flaw, as in conventional film music aesthetics, constitute an important means with which to attain qualities desirable in music video.

3. Theory.

The literature on music video has largely concentrated, on the one hand, on analysis of visual content and its effects on the audience, and, on the other, on the theorization of video as a ‘postmodern’ form. Music video has been characterized as postmodern in several respects. By combining elements from a wide variety of sources it erases genre boundaries, such as the general one between high and popular culture. Its intertextual references to these sources are often described as ‘blank’ and distanced, to the effect of creating pastiche rather than parody or critique. Further, as a commercial form and simultaneously a form of artistic expression, it blurs the distinction between commercial and autonomous art. Also, compared with other visual media forms, it appears to break established codes of linear visual narration and to thematize these codes in a self-reflexive way. However, such judgments as these are largely based on unrealistic notions of autonomous artistic expression within popular culture, and on partly irrelevant comparisons between music video and the ‘realistic’ codes of narrative film. It seems that music video in its dominant form of the late 1990s can best be analysed and explained on the basis of (a) its commercial functions, as its visual codes are closely linked with those of television commercials; (b) its adaptations and transformations of the visual conventions of stage performances of popular music; (c) genre conventions as regards visual imagery, thematics of song lyrics, behavioural codes etc. within different genres of contemporary popular music; and (d) the consequences for visual narration brought about by the subordination in music video of the visual dimension to the structural characteristics of popular song. From a musical-analytical point of view, music video as a multi-dimensional form raises important questions about musical narrative and the structuring of time in popular music. Further, its predominance within popular culture, implying that the combination of music with visual images is increasingly becoming a norm in the everyday use of popular music, may be indicative of changes affecting the modes of perception typically applied in this use. These matters, however, are still largely uninvestigated.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

M. Shore: The Rolling Stone Book of Rock Video (London, 1984)

E.A. Kaplan: Rocking around the Clock: Music Television, Postmodernism and Consumer Culture (London and New York, 1987)

A. Goodwin: Dancing in the Distraction Factory: Music Television and Popular Culture (Minneapolis, 1992)

S. Frith, A. Goodwin and L. Grossberg, eds.: Sound and Vision: the Music Video Reader (London and New York, 1993)

A. Björnberg: ‘Structural Relationships of Music and Images in Music Video’, Popular Music, xiii/1 (1994), 51–74

ALF BJÖRNBERG

Viderkehr, Jacques.

See Widerkehr, Jacques.

Viderø, Finn

(b Fuglebjerg, 15 Aug 1906; d Copenhagen, 13 March 1987). Danish organist and composer. He graduated from the Copenhagen Conservatory in 1926 and was appointed organist at several Copenhagen churches: the German-French Reformed, 1928; Jaegersborg, 1940; Trinitatis, 1947; and St Andreas, 1971. Having taken the MA in musicology at Copenhagen University in 1929, he taught music theory (1935–45) and lectured on organ and harpsichord music (1949–74) at the university. In 1959–60 he was visiting professor of organ and acting university organist at Yale University, and in 1967–8 visiting professor of organ at North Texas State University. In 1968 he was appointed to teach at the Copenhagen Conservatory. The foremost Danish organist of his time, Viderø enjoyed international esteem. He gave numerous organ recitals and broadcasts in Europe and the USA, and held masterclasses in the organ at Helsinki (1950), Bergen (1955), Andover, Massachusetts (1955), Detmold (1956), New York (1960), the International Bach Seminar at Varde, Denmark (1972), and the Bach Seminar at Oslo (1974). Among the awards he received are the Harriet Cohen Bach Medal (1961), the Buxtehude Prize (1964), the Ludvig Schytte Memorial Prize (1970) and the Gramex Prize (1973).

Viderø’s thorough studies of Gregorian chant resulted in the publication of his adaptations of Gregorian melodies to Danish texts in Det Danske Antifonale, i–ii (1971, 1977). He wrote a number of articles on 16th- and 17th-century performing practice, and published editions of organ music, hymn tunes, folksongs and choir music, and Orgelskole (with Oluf Ring, 1933, 2/1963). His own compositions include music for the fairy play Guldskoene (1945), two cantatas (Den ømskindede brudgom, 1937, and Kom Hedningers Frelsermand, 1938), organ music (Passacaglia, 1946; three chorale partitas, 1952; chorale preludes, 1946, 1966), choral music, songs and piano pieces.

TORBEN SCHOUSBOE/R

Vidošić, Tihomil

(b Boljun, Istria, 1 Aug 1902; d Zagreb, 24 Jan 1973). Croatian composer. After graduating from the Zagreb Academy of Music, where his teachers included Odak and Bersa, he worked as a conductor of military bands and choirs and, from 1945, as a teacher at the ‘Pavao Markovac’ music school in Zagreb. Vidošić developed a pleasing, communicative musical style incorporating elements of Istrian folk music. The most notable of his works is the comic opera Stari mladić (‘The Old Lad’), which succeeds in depicting a regional atmosphere, using the short motifs characteristic of Istrian folk music.

WORKS

(selective list)

Stage: Začarani rog [The Enchanted Horn], (ballet), 1951; Karnevalski capriccio [The Carnival Caprice] (musical comedy, 1, Vidošić), 1956, unperf.; Stari mladić [The Old Lad] (comic op, Vidošić), 1959, Rijeka, 11 May 1960; Čempresi i sunce [The Cypresses and the Sun] (op), 1961, lost; Umjetnik izazivlje đavla [The Artist Challenges the Devil] (ballet), 1961; incid music

Orch: Burleska, 1927; Preludij, 1927; Intermezzo, 1932; Večer na žalu [Evening on the Shore], 1933; Uvertira na narodne teme [Ov. on Folk Themes], 1933; Scherzo sinfonico, 1934; Suita, 1939; Rondo capriccioso, 1942; Concertino, vn, orch, 1943; Rhapsody, 1951; Koncertna fantazija, pf, orch, 1952; Zlatna mladost [Golden Youth], fantasy-ov., 1952; Concertino [no.2], vn, orch, 1955; Suite, cl, chbr orch, 1955; Rhapsody, 1955; Baletna scena, 1956; Koncert za mlade ruke [Conc. for Young Hands], pf, orch, 1957; Intrada, 1959; works for brass orch and tambura orch

Choral: Pod Jahorinom [Under Jahorina], solo vv, chorus, orch, 1943; Şviram u sviralu [I Play a Pipe], solo vv, chorus, orch, 1945; Cvijeće [Flowers], solo vv, chorus, orch, 1955; Radosti miće [Small Joys] (cant.), 1957; Slavan pjevač [A Glorious Singer] (burlesque), female chorus, chbr orch, 1958; other works

Chbr and solo inst: Impromptu, pf, 1946; Suita za mlade ruke [Suite for Young Hands], pf, 1948; Dječja slikovnica [Children's Picture Book], pf, 1951, orchd 1952; Scherzo, vn, pf, 1957; Sonata, vn, pf, 1961; 3 improvizacije, chbr ens, 1967

Film scores, solo songs, music for children, folk arrs.

Principal publisher: Hrvatsko društvo skladatelja

BIBLIOGRAPHY

K. Kovačević: Hrvatski kompozitori i njihova djela [Croatian composers and their works] (Zagreb, 1960), 494–9

J. Andreis: Music in Croatia (Zagreb, 1974, enlarged 2/1982)

KORALJKA KOS

Vidovszky, László

(b Békéscsaba, 25 Feb 1944). Hungarian composer. He was a student of Farkas at the Liszt Academy of Music, Budapest (1962–7) and attended Messaien's composition classes and courses organized by the Groupe de Recherche Musicale in Paris (1970–71). In 1970 he co-founded the Budapest New Music Studio with Jeney, Sáry and others, an enterprise that resulted in collective composing, improvisation and experimentation. He has taught at the teacher training college of the Liszt Academy (1972–84) and at the Janus Pannonius University in Pécs (from 1984).

Distinct characteristics of Vidovszky's work include the incorporation of visual elements into musical performance and a striking sense of humour. Autokoncert (1972) is to be performed in a theatrical space in which instruments are suspended above the stage and released by performers invisible to the audience at various intervals; the première was a seminal ‘happening’ in Hungarian postwar musical life. Schroeder halála (‘Schroeder's Death’, 1975, the title refers to the pianist in Charles M. Schultz's comic strip Peanuts) consists of a continuous, irregular scale ascending and descending over the piano keyboard; this is progressively distorted and then obliterated, note by note, by three assistants muting the strings. Later works include a series of studies for solo MIDI piano and two MIDI pianos that experiment with diverging tuning systems, ‘remake’ pieces from the past and explore algorithmic composition.

WORKS

(selective list)

Stage: Találkozás [Encounter] (op, P. Nádas), 1980; Nárcisz és Echo [Narcissus and Echo] (op, L. Ungvárnémeti Toth, trans. A. Meller and J. Rácz), 1980–81; Lear (ballet, after W. Shakespeare), 1988; Shwaaa 3C273, sewing machines, tape, 1997

Orch: Töredék [Frag.], 1970; Zene Györnek [Music for Györ], 1970–71; Induló a zászlók bevonulásához [March to the Procession of Flags], 1980; Romantikus olvasmányok [Romantic Readings], 1985; Német táncok [German dances], 1990; Ady: a fekete zongora [Ady: the Black Piano], 1996

Chbr: Kettős [Double], 2 prep pf, 1968–72; 405, pf, other insts ad lib, 1972; C + A + G + E (Music no.1), at least 5 insts, 1972; Circus, 3 elec kbd, elecs, 1974–5; Schroeder halála [Schroeder's Death], pf, 2–3 assistants, 1975; Tiszteletkör [Honour lap], insts ad lib, 1975; 3 hang felgondulások I–IV, 3 kbd, 1979–88; Szólo obligát kisérettel [Solo with obbl acc.], solo inst ad lib, acc. inst, 1979–82; 190, mixed perc, 1984; 12 duó, vn, va, 1987; German Dances, str qt, 1989; Soft Errors, chbr ens, 1989; Pastime, 2 pf, 4 muted metronomes, 1990–92; Black Qt, mixed perc, 1993–7; Mozi [Cinema], chbr ens, tape, 1993; Sonata, fl, pf, 1997

Kbd: Gépmenyassonytánczene [Mechanical Bride's Dance], player pf, 1976–89; Aboriginal Rag, player pf, 1990; Repetitív, player pf, 1990; Faust Indulója [Faust's March], player pf, 1990; Szimultán [Simultaneously], player pf, 1992; Meditations sur la mystère d'O M, org, 1993; Praeludium & Walzer, player pf, 1993; Loco-Dances, MIDI pf, 1995; A Simon-Pure Tune composed by a Studious New Musician, 1 pf + 6 pfmrs, 1996; Kilenc kis Kurtág-köszöntö korál két klavirra [9 Little Greeting Chorales to Kurtág], 1996

Vocal: Horatiusi dalok [Horatio songs], S, vn, vc, hpd, 1966; Motetta, mixed chorus, hn, 1981

Collective works: Undisturbed, chbr ens, tape, 1974, collab. Z. Jeney, L. Sáry; Hommage à Kurtág, large ens, 1975, collab. Jeney, Sáry, Z. Kocsis, P. Eötvös; Hommage à Dohnányi, S, ens, 1977, collab. B. Dukay, Jeney, Kocsis, Sáry; Dec 27, large ens, 1978, collab. G. Csapó, Dukay, Jeney, Kocsis, Sáry

Other works: Autokoncert, 1972; Aldrin (film score), 1976; A fejedelem üzenete 1–3 [Message from the Prince], 1977–81; Hang-szín-tér [Sound-colour-space], 1980; Une semaine de beauté, cptr synth, 1983–9; 3 hang felgondolások I–IV [3 pt inventions], synth, 1990; Na-ne audio video games, 1990

BIBLIOGRAPHY

V.B. András: ‘Vidovszky, László három kérdés’ [… questions], 3 kérdes 82 zeneszerző [3 questions, 82 composers], 393–5 [interview] (Budapest, 1986)

M. McLay: ‘László Vidovszky at London’, New Hungarian Quarterly

L. Vidovszky with K. Weber: Beszélgetések a zenéről [Conversations about Music] (Pécs, 1997)

RACHEL BECKLES WILLSON

Vidu, Ion

(b Mînerău, Arad district, 17/29 Dec 1863; d Lugoj, 7 Feb 1931). Romanian composer and choral conductor. He studied harmony and choral conducting at the Conservatory of Music and Declamation, Iaşi (1890–91), with Musicescu; his working life (1888–1927) was spent in furthering musical activities in a small town lacking any artistic tradition, and his success was such that, by the time of his death, Lugoj was one of the most noted centres of choral music in Romania. In 1922 Vidu founded the Banat Choral and Brass Band Society, an organization that included 10,000 peasant singers. He wrote exclusively for chorus and all his music is grounded in Romanian folk music, of which he was a passionate collector (he had connections with Bartók, Musicescu and Kiriac-Georgescu). Although he recognized the modal character of folk music, he preferred to work within the major–minor harmonic system. His first collection of choruses, Severina (1899), enjoyed such wide dissemination that Vidu’s original melodies came to be mistaken for folktunes, and the popularity of many of his later works was greatly enhanced by their intensely patriotic, anti-Habsburg spirit.

WORKS

(selective list)

Chorale: Liturghia Sf Ioan Chrisostom, 3vv, 1896; Severina, 1899; Dunărea [The Danube], solo vv, chorus, orch, 1910; Moartea lui Mihai Eroul [Brave Mihai’s Death], solo vv, chorus, pf/orch, n.d.; Stefan şi Dunărea, 1v, chorus, pf/orch, n.d.; 10 coruri bărbăteşti [10 Male Choruses] (1926); Cîntări funebrale [Funeral Songs] (1928); 12 coruri (1930)

Cîntece, doine şi strigături [Songs, Doinas and Extempore Verses], folksong arrs., ed. V. Cosma (1958)

Principal publishers: ESPLA (Bucharest), F.M. Geidel (Leipzig), folksong arrs., Iosif Sidon (Lugoj)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

T. Brediceanu: Muzica din Banat şi compozitorul Ion Vidu (Botoşani, 1932)

I. Velceanu: Doi înfăptuitori: Musicescu şi Vidu [Two creative artists: Musicescu and Vidu] (Botoşani, 1937)

V. Cosma: Ion Vidu (Bucharest, 1956)

V. Cosma: Un maestru al muzicii corale: Ion Vidu (Bucharest, 1965)

D. Popovici: Muzica corală românească (Bucharest, 1966), 63–9

V. Cosma: Muzicieni români. Compozitori si musicologi. Lexicon (Bucharest, 1970)

V. Cosma: Marte şi Euterpe (Bucharest, 1996)

VIOREL COSMA

Vidula

(Lat.).

See Fiddle.

Vidusso, Carlo

(b Talcahuano, Chile, 10 Feb 1911; d Milan, 7 Aug 1978). Italian pianist and teacher. His first studies were with Ernesto Drangosch in Buenos Aires. After his family returned to Italy, he studied with Carlo Lonati at the Milan Conservatory, and had lessons in composition with Riccardo Bossi and G.C. Paribeni. Vidusso began his concert career, which was chiefly restricted to performances in Italy, in the early 1930s, though during this period he also dedicated himself to teaching. From 1933 he was an instructor at the Istituto Musicale in Padua, moving to a similar position at Verona in 1937. From 1939 to 1951 he taught at the Parma Conservatory. A meticulously accurate pianist and a demanding teacher with an immense knowledge of the repertory, Vidusso laid special emphasis on fingering, and this extended even to numbering every note in the student's score of a Chopin study. In 1950, for the Bach bicentenary, he performed the ‘48’ in Milan, and he also became a noted champion of Casella, Pizzetti and Malipiero. Performances of several Liszt studies recorded in the early 1950s demonstrate the perfect symmetry and immaculate technique of his playing, though latterly he did not appear in public, on account of a problem with his hand. Pollini is his most famous pupil.

JAMES METHUEN-CAMPBELL

Viduus, Robert.

See Wydow, Robert.

Vieira, (José) Ernesto

(b Lisbon, 24 May 1848; d Lisbon, 26 April 1915). Portuguese lexicographer. For some time he was a teacher at the Academia de Amadores de Música. He is known by his Diccionario biografico de musicos portuguezes: historia e bibliographia da musica en Portugal (Lisbon, 1900). The subtitle is significant in differentiating this book from the dictionary by Vasconcellos; Vieira gave fewer articles, but covered his subjects in more detail, with greater emphasis on their historical importance, and with fuller lists of works.

ALEC HYATT KING

Viejas

(Sp.).

2. The rise of the imperial Hofmusikkapelle.

Vielart [Vielars, Wilars] de Corbie

(fl early 13th century). French trouvère from the region of the Ile de France. He was probably active in the first quarter of the 13th century (at the latest), since De chanter me semont Amours, one of the two songs that may be firmly attributed to him, was the basis of a contrafactum by Gautier de Coincy who died in 1236. He was thus one of the earlier representatives of the northern French tradition. The other song, Cil qui me prient de chanter, apparently served as the model for a later Latin contrafactum (text published in AH, xlv, 1945, p.68), although this is uncertain as the latter has not been preserved with music. The two remaining songs which have been attributed to him are of doubtful authenticity; in a large number of sources both are assigned to Gace Brulé.

WORKS

Edition: Trouvère Lyrics with Melodies: Complete Comparative Edition, ed. H. Tischler, CMM, cvii (1997) [T]

Cil qui me prient de chanter, R.791, T vi, no.456/1 [model for: ‘Dic, homo, cur abuteris’]

De chanter me semont Amours, R.2030, T xiii, no.1156/1 [model for: Gautier de Coincy, ‘Quant ces floretes florir voi’, R.1677]

doubtful works

Desconfortés, plain d’ire et de pesance, R.233, T ii, no.135/1 (also attrib. G. Brulé)

Moins ai joie que je ne seuil, R.998, T vii, no.584 (also attrib. G. Brulé)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

N.H.J. van den Boogaard: ‘Les chansons attribuées à Wilart de Corbie’, Neophilologus, lv (1971), 123–41 [complete edn with bibliography]

For further bibliography see Troubadours, trouvères.

ROBERT FALCK

Viele [vielle]

(Fr.; Lat. viella).

See Fiddle.

Vièle à pique

(Fr.).

See Spike fiddle.

Vielle (à roue)

(Fr.).

See Hurdy-gurdy.

Vielle organisée

(Fr.).

See Lira organizzata.

Vienna

(Ger. Wien).

Capital city of Austria. Originally a Celtic settlement, it later became a Roman military town and finally the capital of the Duchy of Austria in the 12th century. It came under Habsburg rule in 1278 and expanded greatly as the capital of the vast Austro-Hungarian Empire, which was dissolved after World War I; since that time the city has been the capital of the Federal Republic of Austria.

1. To the 15th century.

THEOPHIL ANTONICEK/R (1–3), DEREK BEALES (4), LEON BOTSTEIN (5), RUDOLF KLEIN/H. GOERTZ (6)

1. To the 15th century.

Long stretches of Vienna's history, particularly that of its music, are shrouded in obscurity; only for the modern period is the picture reasonably complete. Since Josef Mantuani (1904), the literature has been based largely upon analogies and assumptions, a failing due as much to the state of the historical data as to the loss of source materials and lack of systematic research, which is in turn the consequence of an overemphasis on the apparent highpoints of musical development.

Prehistoric relics have been found only in Vienna's more outlying areas, and even Roman traces are negligible. From the city itself Mantuani mentioned only one piece, representing a female figure playing a wind instrument (probably a flute or an aulos), and even that was probably imported. Certainly they offer no evidence of an indigenous musical culture and, together with remarks made in Eugippius's Vita S Severini (discussing Christian psalmody of the 5th century), testify to no more than the fact that there, as elsewhere, music was performed. Music emerges later than other disciplines from the uncertainty surrounding Vienna's fate during the post-Roman period. Source material remains scarce and unreliable in view of its late date and the existence of forgeries (as with the alleged 13th-century minstrels Wolfker and Eberhard). It may be assumed that liturgical music was performed in churches (the oldest of which are St Ruprecht, the Peterskirche and St Stephan) and in monasteries (the Benedictine Schottenstift, c1155), although no investigations relating directly to Vienna have yet been undertaken and important sources (including the Schottenstift's books, which were removed in 1418 when the Hibernian monks left) have been lost. The Austrian monasteries, some founded and some reorganized by the Babenberg court, were centres of plainsong, and of particular importance for Vienna was the Augustinian Klosterneuburg, the court residence until 1156. There is evidence of sacred song in the vernacular at Klosterneuburg (Christ ist erstanden, in 12th-century neumatic notation) and it may be assumed that the same practice existed in Vienna.

The first important period in Viennese music history that is reliably documented was under the last four Babenberg dukes (1177–1246). Their court in Vienna became a centre of Minnesang, with the presence there, for shorter or longer stays, of such prominent minstrels as Reinmar von Hagenau, Walther von der Vogelweide, Neidhart von Reuental and Ulrich von Liechtenstein. Their contemporaries and successors included Reinmar von Zweter, Ulrich von Sachsendorf, Tannhäuser and Hugo von Montfort (d 1423), who was a later exponent of Minnesang at the court of Leopold IV of Habsburg; and many others must have had connections with Vienna, stayed there or visited the court. Of particular importance were the wars between Rudolf of Habsburg (d 1291) and Ottokar of Bohemia, when the retinues of both rulers contained minstrels whose songs refer to the events and places involved. Of all the minstrels active under the Babenberg dukes, Neidhart is the only one to have written songs whose music has survived to any extent. Some of his melodies are contained in a manuscript dated 1457, formerly in the possession of Jörg Schrat, parish priest of the Peterskirche. This and other manuscripts attest to the continuity of the tradition.

Neidhart, Reinmar von Hagenau, Wernher der Gartenaere, Tannhäuser, Jans Enenkel and others also referred to the round-dance, which clearly involved both music and words and in which apparently even the duke's family took part. The music was played by minstrels and, according to Jans Enenkel, there was a minstrel at the Babenberg court as early as 1052. In the city laws of 1221 and 1244, minstrels were declared to have no legal rights, but that reference is chiefly to itinerant musicians; minstrels resident in a parish were expressly exempted. Their position secure, they were able to develop within the framework of municipal law; and in the Nicolai-Bruderschaft, founded by 1288 and based in the Michaelerkirche, they had their own organization, which lasted until Joseph II's general disbanding of all such brotherhoods in 1782. The post of Spielgraf also appears to date from the 13th century. In 1354 the post of Oberster Spielgraf was created. The Spielgrafen in Vienna and Lower Austria were subject to him and the Nicolai-Bruderschaft enjoyed his protection. The hereditary posts of both Oberster Spielgraf and Oberster Erbkämmerer (supreme hereditary treasurer) were held by the Eberstorff family until 1556 (the first incumbent was Peter von Eberstorff), by the Eytzingers from 1561 to 1619 and by the Breuners from 1620 until 1782.

The art of the minstrels, unlike that of their courtly contemporaries, seems to have survived the political and military upheavals between the death of the last Babenberg duke in 1246 and the Battle of Marchfeld in 1278, which resulted in the Habsburgs seizing possession of the country. Various references to ‘reciting, singing, playing string instruments’ and other such topics survive from the intervening years of Ottokar's rule, and the use of certain instruments and the names of the players are recorded from the end of the 13th century. Sacred music continued during that period, and records survive of hymns in the vernacular (In gotes namen varen wir), including a reference of 1260 to hymns sung by the flagellants (Ir slacht euch sere). There is no evidence of sacred drama until the 14th century. Easter plays are mentioned by Neidhart and were known in Klosterneuburg as early as the 13th century; they must have been performed in Vienna even earlier. One conservative 14th-century form of Easter celebration survives from the Augustinian convent of St Jakob. The Vienna Easter play of 1472 from the Augustinian monastery of St Rochus und St Sebastian is in a type of German whose dialect suggests a Silesian original. The earliest known performance was given in the duke's castle in 1432 by members of the university. Rudolf IV (d 1365) founded a Gottesleichnamsbruderschaft (‘Brotherhood of Corpus Christi’) for the performance of religious plays.

Education in schools was also in the hands of the clergy. Schools were attached to St Stephan, to the Schottenstift (where singing by the schoolboys was mentioned as an established custom in 1310), to the Michaelerkirche and to the Bürgerspital. The school of St Stephan, first mentioned in 1237, was no doubt in existence in the 12th century. In 1296 it passed out of the court's patronage into that of the townspeople, and in 1446 a set of regulations was established which provided for a Kantor and Subkantor. Polyphony (cantus figurativus) was first mentioned in a Bestelung und ordnung der Cantorey of 1460. There was a choirmaster named Gottfrid in 1287, followed in 1349 by Jacob and in 1360 by Ulrich. From 1365 there were two Kantors, Jacob (probably the one already mentioned) and Johannes (also attested in 1387). In 1356 the Kantor Thomas von Senging was connected with the Rathauskapelle.

The University of Vienna, founded in 1365, had close links with the St Stephan school; they shared the same teaching staff. In accordance with the medieval curriculum, music was one of the obligatory subjects of the Quadrivium. A supplement to the faculty of arts regulations referred in 1389 to Boethius and a Musica speculativa, probably the work of Johannes de Muris, as standard texts. There is documentary evidence that members of the university community officiated at services in St Stephan; individual teachers in the 14th and 15th centuries include Nikolaus von Neustadt in 1393, Georg von Hob in 1397, Johann Geuss von Teining in 1421 and Paul Troppauer in 1431, and writings on music by some of the other university teachers (Nikolaus von Dinkelsbühel and Thomas Ebendorfer) are extant.

Evidence of polyphonic music in Vienna, as indeed throughout Austria, is relatively late. The 1460 reference cited above does not indicate its beginnings, and an argument against so late an introduction is the importance of French cultural influences, which were felt as early as the Babenberg period (in Minnesang, in Otto von Freising and the Cistercians, for example; Fichtenau has produced evidence of a French schoolmaster in Vienna in the 12th century). French influence continued throughout the ensuing period, as is clear from the dominant role played by university professors from Paris summoned to Vienna between 1383 and 1385 to reorganize the university. There was an organ at St Stephan by 1334, and between 1370 and 1397 an organist by the name of Peter. A new organ was built between 1391 and 1412 by Jörg Beheim (perhaps identical with ‘Giorgio del fu Giovanni da Vienna’, who lived in Tolmezzo, 1436–43; Beheim is attested in Viennese records until 1438). In 1507 Burkhard Tischlinger built another organ.

Not only the Church and the city but also the court employed musicians, although little is known about their activities. Between 1287 and 1291 there were court minstrels in the service of Duke Albrecht I and in 1291 a fife player, Gemperlein, was named. Albrecht's successor, Friedrich I, Duke of Austria (1308–30), had minstrels in his service. On one occasion they performed at the court of Jaime II of Aragon; the accounts show their names as Frefre, Feoli, Lorenço and Ibarri. A larger number of minstrels served the dukes Albrecht III and Leopold III, who reigned jointly from 1365. These minstrels travelled extensively, visiting France, Spain, Switzerland, Brabant and Burgundy. The most famous of them was one whose name occurs in a variety of forms, including Ewerl (in Vienna 1376–89) and Everli (in Spain); several princes were among his patrons. Most of the other musicians played wind instruments or drums, but there was also a singer-lutenist by the name of Hans and an artifex organorum called Nicolaus. Austrian musicians continued to visit foreign countries during the 15th century. Lutenists travelled to Spain and France, Viennese singers and instrumentalists to various towns in what is now southern Germany and Switzerland, to Hamburg and Mechelen and even to Richard III’s court in England.

No Kantorei, however, is known to have existed until the time of Albrecht II (d 1439). His court, possibly not in Vienna, included Erasmus Adam, Johannes Brassart, Martin Galer (or Martingale), Johannes de Sarto and Johannes Touront (the names, which appear in a motet written for Albrecht's funeral, are not all certain). Albrecht took them over from his father-in-law, Emperor Sigismund, though apparently not until after Albrecht's election as the German king the year before his death (1439). Nonetheless, musical performances on a large scale must have been possible in Vienna even before then, as seems to be indicated by a rather cryptic note (referred to by the writer J. Angerer) stating that to celebrate the end of schism following the election of Pope Martin V in 1417 in Vienna the Te Deum ‘in una ecclesia simul in octo locis cantabatur … humanis vocibus iuncto omni genere musicalium instrumentarum’. It seems reasonable to assume that the court played a part in these celebrations.

Albrecht's successor, Friedrich III (1439–93), retained the Kantorei and may even have had a French and German one, as did his son Maximilian. Friedrich's cantor principalis was Brassart, who died soon after taking up the position. Other members of the institution were the organist Gregor Valentinus, Nicolas Mayoul, Arnold Heron, Arnold Pikart, Hans Bubay, Albrecht Morhans-Artus and possibly also Arnolt Schlick. Friedrich's court also included Erasmus Lapicida, who was probably chaplain. The court is unlikely to have spent much time in Vienna, since Friedrich chiefly resided in Graz, Wiener Neustadt and Linz. But it was in Vienna, in 1462, that he was besieged by his brother Albrecht VI (who in 1449 was in Freiburg im Üchtland with 11 musicians in his retinue), an event remembered today for having produced the Buch von den Wienern; its subject is the Angstweise (‘fear-mode’) and it is the work of Michel Beheim, one of Friedrich's beleaguered followers.

2. The rise of the imperial Hofmusikkapelle.

Maximilian I (1493–1519) kept on a number of the musicians who had served his father and maintained a Kantorei in Upper Germany and in Burgundy. The latter, which had been under Mayoul's direction since 1486, passed to Philip the Fair in 1494, while the former was transferred to Vienna on Maximilian's orders in November 1496, apparently having previously been based in Augsburg. It was then under the direction of Hans Kerner and included Heinrich Isaac. Maximilian gave instructions for this Kapelle to be reorganized in 1498, by which date it was under the direction of Georg Slatkonia. Nevertheless, although the Kapelle was then based in Vienna, its members were far from spending all their time there. Isaac, court composer from 1496, had the emperor's authority to live in Florence from 1513; he was succeeded by Senfl no later than 1517. It is unlikely that Paul Hofhaimer spent more than a few years in Vienna after the removal of the Kapelle there.

Vienna under Maximilian witnessed a number of celebrations of musical significance. In 1504 C.P. Celtis's drama Rhapsodia laudes et victoria Maximiliani de Boemannis was performed with music. Maximilian had summoned Celtis to Vienna from Ingolstadt in 1497, so that humanism actually came to Vienna under imperial protection. For music this meant the introduction of humanist drama and odes, the latter no doubt being adopted by Celtis into the syllabus of Vienna University and actively encouraged there – Senfl, Hofhaimer and his pupil Wolfgang Grefinger, the organist at the Stephansdom and a member of the university, all contributed compositions. Latin drama, meanwhile, was encouraged by an impressive performance of Voluptatis cum virtute disceptatio, written by Benedictus Chelidonius, the abbot of the Schottenkloster, to celebrate the double wedding of Maximilian's grandsons in Vienna in 1515. Hofhaimer was knighted during the festival. He and the other imperial musicians had frequent opportunity to distinguish themselves in church, in the dance room and in processions and tournaments.

One art which was cultivated both by the court and the bourgeoisie was that of lute playing, a fact attested as early as the 14th century by the names of such lutenists as Wolfhart (1368–91), Henricus (1376–1460), Hans (1390–1414) and of the lute makers Konrad (1375–1418) and Nikolaus (1397). Hans Judenkünig lived in Vienna during the time of Maximilian, and Albrecht Morhans-Artus actually served the emperor. Hans Neusidler and Bálint Bakfark, who was lutenist to Maximilian II from 1566 until at least 1569, later spent some time in Vienna.

Printed music first began to appear in Vienna during Maximilian I's reign. Johannes Winterburger printed a Missa de Requiem in 1499, followed by other liturgical works, including the first printed music textbook in Austria, Simon de Quercu's Opusculum musices (1509). Winterburger's contemporaries and successors include Hieronim Wietor and Johann Singrenius, who was responsible for the publication of the work by Chelidonius mentioned above and for the first printed German lute tablatures by Judenkünig (1523). The earliest example of printing from type in Vienna is the only surviving musical publication from the printing works of Raphael Hofhalter, a canon by Jacobus Vaet, dedicated to Maximilian II.

The Hofkapelle was disbanded on Maximilian I's death, as always happened in such cases. At first Ferdinand I had to struggle to consolidate his political power, and it was not until the beginning of 1527 that he issued a decree re-establishing a Hofkapelle. Its direction was entrusted to the 82-year-old Heinrich Finck, then living in the Schottenkloster, but he died six months later. His successor, Arnold von Bruck, who held the position from 1527 to 1545, was the first of a number of Netherlands musicians to hold the post of Hofkapellmeister; Bruck's successor Pieter Maessens (1546–62) supervised the largest number of Netherlanders. Other Netherlands musicians connected with the Kapelle were Stephan Mahu, Jacques Buus, Johannes de Cleve and Jean Guyot, who was also Hofkapellmeister for a short time.

Not only the court but also the Schottenstift had eminent musicians. Finck and Lapicida committed themselves to the care of the monks, intending to spend their declining years there. The monastery's organist was Johann Rasch, better known for his chronicle. The activities of the schoolmaster Wolfgang Schmeltzl are important for a number of reasons: his much quoted Lobspruch der Stadt Wien (1547) indicates Vienna's importance as a centre of music, and his quodlibet collection, Guter seltzamer und kunstlicher teutscher Gesäng (1544), includes a wealth of songs; further, it was Schmeltzl who introduced vernacular Schuldrama to Vienna.

When Ferdinand died in 1564, his estates, including the court musicians, were divided among his sons at the various Habsburg residences. It has generally been assumed that the Hofkapelle's centre of activity moved to Prague under Ferdinand's three successors; this may have been true for Rudolf II, but not in the case of Maximilian II (see Pass, 1972) or, probably, Matthias. Countless documents were drawn up in Vienna during Maximilian's reign, no doubt because the sacred chapter resided in Vienna (the Hofkapelle was primarily a religious body). It may therefore be assumed that the imperial Kapelle performed at least intermittently in Vienna under its Kapellmeister, Vaet, Monte, De Sayve and Christoph Strauss. Matthias, who, while he was still archduke, had been served by Alard du Gaucquier and De Sayve as Kapellmeister and by Christoph Strauss as organist, lived for a time in Vienna before his accession.

3. The Baroque era.

Compared with the Kapelle of archdukes Karl II and Ferdinand II of Styria, that of the imperial court was throughout the 16th century the embodiment of musical conservatism. Nevertheless, instrumental music had often and increasingly been entrusted to Italians from the time of Ferdinand I onwards, and the appointment of P.P. Melli as court lutenist to Matthias indicates that the court did not shun the latest musical trends. With Ferdinand II's accession in 1619, Baroque musical ideals came to be accepted in Vienna and the city became established as a European musical centre. Ferdinand made Vienna his capital and place of residence, although neither he nor his immediate successors liked to reside there permanently; other towns such as Prague, Regensburg (site of the Imperial Diet) and Graz shared Vienna's reputation as one of the places where the imperial Kapelle gave outstanding performances.

It was also under Ferdinand II, however, that prominent Italian musicians began what was to be a 200-year association with Vienna. Giovanni Priuli and Giovanni Valentini, the two Hofkapellmeister, were both pupils of Giovanni Gabrieli, as was the organist Alessandro Tadei. Musicians were engaged not only in Venice but also in other centres of Italian music, including Florence, Mantua and Rome, sometimes by envoys specially dispatched or authorized for the purpose. Ferdinand's marriage in 1622 to Eleonora Gonzaga was of crucial importance in Vienna's musical life and in its culture generally, for it led to the imperial court's establishing links with Monteverdi and to consequences far exceeding those still discernible today. The ‘Fedeli’, who had given the first performance of Monteverdi's Arianna in 1608 in Mantua, were attached to the imperial court from 1626 to 1628 and must have performed the first opera Arcas there in 1627, at a time when the court was in Prague. Il ballo delle ingrate may also have been associated with the Fedeli, if the supposed date of its performance in Vienna, 1628, is correct. The Hofkapelle engaged its first female singer in 1631 – Margherita Basile, who was to have taken the title role in Monteverdi's La finta pazza Licori (1627). Monteverdi's Selva morale (1640) was dedicated to the Empress Eleonora and his eighth book of madrigals to Ferdinand III. This contained Il ballo delle ingrate and a ballo to celebrate his coronation in 1637. It is not clear what purpose was served by the Vienna score of Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria; there is no evidence that a performance of the work ever took place there.

The influence of Valentini was considerable (and not confined to music): he was music teacher to Ferdinand II's children and continued as Kapellmeister under Ferdinand III, with the latter's own Kapellmeister, Pietro Verdina, having to make do with the post of Valentini's assistant. Ferdinand III (1637–57) was the first of the composing Habsburg emperors, who later included Leopold I (1657–1705), Joseph I (1705–11) and (though no work by him has survived) Charles VI (1711–40). All four had a sound musical training and were able to take part in and even direct performances. Not only the emperors but also the empresses had their own Kapelle. The most important patron apart from the emperors was Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, who had in his service numerous musicians, including Orazio Benevoli and Antimo Liberati, as well as the librettist Orazio Persiani. Giacinto Cornacchioli was twice sent to Italy in order to engage musicians for his court. The archduke employed Valentini to teach the young Kerll, and Leopold Wilhelm was the dedicatee of Kircher's Musurgia universalis.

Even after Valentini's death, leading Italian musicians continued to be engaged as Kapellmeister and for other court posts. When Giovanni Rovetta declined the appointment, Antonio Bertali, who had been working in Vienna since about 1623, was appointed Valentini's successor. His opera L'inganno d'amore was performed by the Vienna Hofkapelle at the Regensburg Imperial Diet of 1653 and caused something of a sensation. His vice-Kapellmeister and successor was G.F. Sances, who had acquired a knowledge of opera during his years of service with the Obizzi family.

Many of the documents relating to the output and repertory of the Hofkapelle are lost, particularly those regarding operas and other dramatic genres performed during the first half of the century. It must, however, have been only slowly and with a good deal of interruption that such works could become a permanent feature of the repertory; and every performance was in any case dependent on some external event, usually family celebrations (such as birthdays) or official ceremonies. The earliest genuine operas given in Vienna were probably La Maddalena (1629), with a text by Giovanni Andreini and music either by Valentini or Ludovico Bartolaia, and La caccia felice (1631), to a libretto by Cesare Gonzaga, Prince of Guastalla. The revivals of Cavalli's Egisto (1642–3) and Giasone (1650) were outstanding among opera revivals of this period. The first oratorio performed in Vienna was probably the anonymous Il secondo Abramo disformato nel riformare il primo, in 1649. Complete records begin with the reign of Leopold I and show that from that time all the dramatic genres were regularly performed. The emperor's love of music was known throughout Europe, and his musical tastes are shown not only by his own compositions but also by his library, which has survived. His reign divides, musically speaking, into two parts; the first was characterized by a large number of composers and a varied repertory, the second by the dominant though not exclusive influence of Antonio Draghi. Draghi, who at the beginning of his career in Vienna had also been a librettist (even supplying the emperor with librettos), was astonishingly prolific in all forms of vocal music. By 1674 he could list his occupations not only as conductor to the dowager empress but also as director of theatre music. His many-sided talents must have been recognized long before his appointment as Hofkapellmeister in 1682.

During the early years of his reign, Leopold I maintained close links with his uncle Leopold Wilhelm and his stepmother Eleonora Gonzaga II. The latter was responsible for a second great wave of Italian culture at the imperial court, particularly in the academies which owed their foundation to Eleonora's influence and in which music was widely taught. Eleonora maintained her own Kapelle, its members including Draghi, Pietro Ziani, Giovanni Pederzuoli and Giuseppe Tricarico. Numerous performances were given in the emperor's honour at what the librettos refer to as Eleonora's ‘comando’. Oratorio and sepolcro were encouraged both in her Kapelle and at the imperial court. The Italian sepolcro tradition dates back in Vienna to Valentini's Santi risorti of 1643 and soon became a feature of Vienna's musical life (see Gruber, 1972); only in the late Baroque period did it become increasingly confused with the oratorio. Oratorio and sepolcro were reserved for Lent, and it was opera and its related genres (such as the serenata, which stands in the same subordinate relationship to opera as the sepolcro does to the oratorio) which were predominant in the court’s musical culture. Composers such as Bertali, Ziani, Sances, Antonio Cesti and others established a repertory comparable to that of Venice. Although Cesti held an appointment only briefly in Vienna, he composed a number of works there, including Il pomo d'oro, written for the marriage of Leopold I – the most famous opera in 17th-century Vienna (fig.4). Gualdo Priorato, Aurelio Amalteo, Nicolò Minato, Donata Cupeda and Domenico Federici were the leading librettists. Jesuit drama involved a separate repertory, which developed increasingly in the direction of opera and whose music was written by Kerll (Pia et fortis mulier, 1677), F.T. Richter, J.M. Zächer and J.B. Staudt, among others, until well into the 18th century. Both opera and oratorio were occasionally written to German texts (including those of Emperor Leopold). There was also vocal chamber music in the vernacular, popular ever since the Gesellschaftslied of Maximilian's day and represented in the 17th century by the collections of Nikolaus Zangius (Vienna, 1611) and of the Lutheran organist Andreas Rauch (1627). The monodic settings of vernacular texts which followed are the work of J.J. Prinner and of Andreas Knechtl (although it is not clear whether he was the poet, composer or editor of the Ehrliche Gemueths-Erquickung of 1677–86), together with J.H. Schmelzer and the Emperor Leopold. All these works, however, were far exceeded by the amount of vocal chamber music in Italian, to which Vienna's earliest contribution is Valentini's collection of 1621; and a vast number of other printed editions and manuscripts attests to the genre's popularity throughout the Baroque period.

It was Italian musicians who introduced instrumental music to Vienna as an independent genre. Again the way was shown by Valentini, who was followed by Bertali, G.B. Buonamente (probably more important to Austrian musical history than is generally realized), Verdina, Ziani and, finally, by such dedicatory works as Legrenzi’s Cetra op.10 (1673). Schmelzer, who drew on both the Italian tradition and that of German-speaking countries, was the leading composer of the school of instrumental music which was developing in Vienna and its surroundings. He wrote polyphonic ensemble music as well as solo sonatas and trio sonatas, and his collection of solo sonatas was the first to be printed outside Italy (1664). During the last year of his life (1679–80), Schmelzer held the post of Hofkapellmeister between Sances and Draghi, and succeeded Wolfgang Ebner as ballet composer at the court theatre. Dance was of considerable importance in court life generally, whether performed on its own or within the context of independently organized celebrations such as Wirtschaften and Bauernhochzeiten. Equestrian ballets were as popular as they were in Italy; the first to be given in Vienna was probably Jacomo Paradis's Il sole, e dodici segni del zodiaco, for Ferdinand III's wedding in 1631. The wedding festivities of 1666–7 were accompanied by spectacular performances of the equestrian ballets La contesa dell'aria e dell'acqua by Bertali and Schmelzer (for illustration, see Tourney) and La Germania esultante by Cesti. French influence in dance and in ballet was important despite political differences and the emperor's obvious aversion (see Nettl, 1929–32). But the chief influence was that of Italian ballet, represented by Santo Ventura from 1626 and then, until 1694, by his son Domenico. Ebner and Schmelzer were followed as court ballet composers by the latter's son Andreas Anton, and by Nicola Matteis (ii) and J.J. Hoffer, who held the post well into the 18th century.

The foundations were also being laid for a long tradition of keyboard music; the establishment of a Viennese school can be traced to 1637, when both Wolfgang Ebner, who had been employed as organist at the Stephansdom since 1634, and Froberger were appointed to the Hofkapelle. The tradition was continued by F.T. Richter, F.M. Techelmann, Georg Reutter (i) and Alessandro Poglietti, and by Kerll and Pachelbel, both of whom were for a short time organists at the Stephansdom; and in the 18th century the same tradition led to Fux, Gottlieb Muffat and Wagenseil and eventually to the Viennese Classical period. Church music throughout the Baroque period was characterized by the coexistence of the old and the new. Masses ‘in the style of Palestrina’ were chiefly performed during Lent, but others called upon the entire musical apparatus of the Baroque, later becoming operatic in style, especially in their treatment of vocal and instrumental solos. Even as late as the reign of Charles VI, however, one finds in Matteo Palotta the appointment of a composer who was very much at home in the style of Palestrina.

Draghi's commanding position under Leopold I did not prevent the engaging of other leading composers, including the Bononcini brothers, C.A. Badia, for whom the post of Hofkomponist was revived, and Marc'Antonio Ziani, who was later promoted to Hofkapellmeister and who at the time of his Vienna engagement was one of the leading composers of the Venetian school of opera. Draghi's immediate successor, Antonio Pancotti, seems not to have distinguished himself as a composer.

It was the reign of Charles VI that formed the close and culmination of the age of courtly magnificence. After the Turks had been driven from the gates of Vienna in 1683, the Habsburgs' dominions had expanded to include greater Hungary and parts of Italy and the South Netherlands. Their capital, Vienna, had been sumptuously rebuilt, and the Hofburg was extended under Charles VI by the addition of the grand imperial library. The Hofkapelle was now larger than ever before and one of its members, J.J. Fux, was to leave his mark upon the whole age. Fux took over the post of Hofkapellmeister from Ziani in 1715 and found himself in the company of two musicians whose standing was equal to his own, Antonio Caldara, the vice-Kapellmeister, and F.B. Conti, the court composer. Opera soon came to be dominated by these three, although the works of Attilio Ariosti, Pier Francesco Tosi and Giuseppe Porsile were also performed. The librettists of the period were Silvio Stampiglia, Pietro Pariati, P.A. Bernardoni, Zeno and Metastasio. Thus the Italians and the Italian language were dominant, despite the appointment of Fux. The introduction of intermezzos in court opera dates from 1713; they were chiefly the work of Conti and performed in his own operas. Later they were taken up by the bourgeois theatre at the Kärntnertor.

Fux and Caldara also continued the tradition of instrumental music. Lute playing (Conti played the theorbo) and virtuoso performances on various other instruments were popular, and that in turn influenced the solo writing in operas and other vocal forms. The Hofkapelle was made up not only of musicians engaged on a permanent basis but also of other leading musicians, who spent shorter or longer periods in its service and who included Emanuele d'Astorga and Giuseppe Torelli, and also Antonio Vivaldi, who died in Vienna in 1741 and may have visited the city on previous occasions.

A consistent feature of the Baroque period in Vienna was a certain conservatism, in later years represented particularly by Fux, who, largely as a result of his Gradus ad Parnassum, became the custodian of tradition (although that work was to remain influential for many years to come). The instrumental works of Mathias Monn and Christoph Wagenseil, with their embryonic sonata forms, constitute a partial exception.

4. 1740–1806.

By 1740 most of the great aristocratic palaces that still dominate the centre of Vienna had been built, the city's central churches had been totally or partially rebuilt in Baroque style and, outside the walls, Charles VI's votive Karlskirche completed. In the small area within the vast fortifications resided over 50,000 people, but already some 100,000 lived in the surrounding suburbs. Vienna was the largest German-speaking city, and growing fast: by 1806 the suburbs had almost doubled in population. The essential reason for this expansion is that since the mid-17th century Vienna had been the Residenzstadt of the Habsburg dynasty, whose territories had enormously grown in the late 17th and early 18th centuries and, in addition to Austria, Bohemia and Moravia, now included modern Hungary, Transylvania, Croatia, most of Lombardy and Belgium. Maria Theresa ruled this immense complex, known as ‘the Austrian Monarchy’, from 1740 to 1780, followed by her sons Joseph II (1780–90) and Leopold II (1790–92) and by Leopold's son, Francis I (1792–1835, Austrian emperor from 1804). Except for the years 1740–45 the elected Holy Roman Emperor, the senior sovereign of Christendom whose shadowy authority extended over the whole of Germany, also resided in Vienna: from 1745 to 1765 the Holy Roman Emperor was Maria Theresa's husband, Francis I or Francis Stephen, formerly Duke of Lorraine, followed by Joseph II (1765–90), Leopold II (1790–92) and Francis, as Holy Roman Emperor Francis II (1792 until the abolition of the empire in 1806).

The emperor's court, in principle and to some extent in practice distinct from that of the head of the monarchy even when they were the same person, was a cynosure for German nobles and princelings, mainly but not entirely from Catholic areas, and for the higher Catholic clergy of southern Germany. The imperial administration and system of justice, notorious for its complexity and dilatoriness, employed many hundreds of officials in Vienna and required the attendance there of numerous petitioners and litigants. The monarchy's government, in contrast to that of the decaying empire, grew even more powerful and centralized throughout the period, with only a brief relaxation after Joseph II was forced on his deathbed to rescind much of his reforming legislation. It employed about 10,000 officials based in Vienna. In partnership with the court, it was these two bureaucracies, accustomed to conducting business mainly in German, and the thousands of resident or visiting nobles, cultivating the use of French, whose affluence and diverse origins made possible the rich and varied musical life of the city. Moreover, links with Italy remained close: the city contained a sizeable Italian community; and, as well as the Italian lands that formed part of the monarchy, Tuscany was ruled by Francis Stephen from 1737 to 1765 and by Leopold II from 1765 to 1790, and children of Maria Theresa married the rulers of Parma, Modena and Naples.

At her accession Maria Theresa faced a desperate international situation with virtually no financial resources, and she was forced to economize. But, after her position improved in the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48), the changes she made at court had at least as much to do with her and her husband's taste as with economy. She abandoned two of Charles VI's palaces: the Favorita in a suburb of Vienna and the monastery of Klosterneuburg, which he had begun to convert into a palace in 1730 but had come nowhere near completing. On the other hand, she refurbished the Hofburg and, on a truly lavish scale, Schönbrunn, 4 km out of the city, which she used as her main summer residence (fig.7).

Pious though she was, she did not fully share her father's love of elaborate religious ceremonies, though during the first half of her reign the court still formally attended grand services in various churches on 78 occasions each year. These visits commonly involved processions, notoriously frequent in Vienna, in which, as with the celebrations for dynastic landmarks like births and marriages of princes and princesses, all ranks could take pleasure and some part. Musical accompaniment (mainly wind and brass instruments) was normal. Maria Theresa, however, allowed the 100-strong imperial Hofkapelle to dwindle in numbers and standing. Even so, Fux's successors as Hofkapellmeister normally had charge of the court's theatre and concert music as well as of its church music. They were: L.A. Predieri (1741–67, but in retirement after 1751), Georg von Reutter (ii) (1751–72), F.L. Gassmann (1772–4), Giuseppe Bonno (1774–88) and Antonio Salieri (1788–1825, but effectively Hofkapellmeister from the late 1770s). These men were treated like civil servants and virtually guaranteed their positions for life at the top of the rigid musical hierarchy. Hence there was usually a period in their old age when the work was in fact done by a deputy, and hence too the long delay in finding any court employment for Gluck and Mozart, despite their acknowledged pre-eminence. The composition of new church music for the Hofkapelle remained important during Maria Theresa's reign, and the roughly 500 part-time musical employments as players and singers provided by the churches and religious brotherhoods of the city gave secure though usually inadequate incomes to nearly 300 musicians, which they could enhance by doubling up jobs, by teaching and by secular performance. The use of trumpets and drums in certain parts of the mass was forbidden by the archbishop's consistory in 1753, but these instruments and others continued to be widely used in church, and little if any attention was paid in Maria Theresa's reign to papal and other attempts to reduce the ‘theatrical’ character of much church music. Many musical performances associated with the liturgy were barely distinguishable from concerts and included instrumental sonatas and symphonies as well as elaborate choral settings.

Maria Theresa was herself a pupil of Wagenseil and a good and enthusiastic singer and dancer. Although she had the grandiose baroque Hoftheater (built by Galli-Bibiena and dating back to 1700), dismantled in 1747, she replaced it with the more intimate Rococo Burgtheater at the gates of the Hofburg, where operas of various kinds were more regularly performed than in the past (fig.9). She also built theatres at Schönbrunn and at the more distant summer palace of Laxenburg. During another time of financial difficulty, in the midst of the Seven Years War in 1759, she declared ‘Spectacles must continue; without them one cannot stay here in such a great Residence’. She did not, however, as her father had done and many rulers still did, bear the entire cost. Her nominees ran the theatres, but some of the seats were put on sale – a highly significant change, that first made it possible for ‘public taste’ to affect what was performed there. Previously, lucky representatives of the lower orders had sometimes been allowed into royal apartments to hear Tafelmusik, for example, but it was quite a different matter to allow anyone who was rich enough the chance to buy a ticket for the royal opera house. Metastasio remained the court poet until his death in 1782 and continued to produce new or revised librettos for opere serie, which were mounted on special occasions, though in less extravagant fashion than under her father. At the inauguration of the Burgtheater the opera performed was La Semiramide riconosciuta, Metastasio's libretto with music by Gluck, who was making a first visiting appearance in Vienna. Francis Stephen encouraged a more general aristocratic demand for French opera and ballet, and in the years 1752–65, 1767–72 and 1775–6 the Burgtheater was the seat of a French theatre company (though not all the works they performed were in French or of French origin). The Kärntnertortheater, built by the municipality in 1709, was the home of ‘German comedies’, which routinely involved music. It was taken over by the court and rebuilt after it had been burnt down in 1761.

From 1752 to 1764 the court's theatre director or Spielgraf (or Musikgraf), under the nominal control of the great chamberlain Count Khevenhüller, was the Genoese Count Durazzo. He was a protégé of Count (later Prince) Kaunitz, from 1753 Maria Theresa’s chief minister. Durazzo was a dedicated promoter of French opera and of the work of Gluck, whom he frequently brought to Vienna and finally had made ‘court composer’ in 1760. Durazzo had many contacts with Italian opera reformers, and it was important that, in order to please Austria's new ally, France, Isabella or Elizabeth of Parma, granddaughter of Louis XV, was selected as the future Joseph II's bride. The court of Parma was opera-mad, and the composers it favoured, especially Traetta, were experimenting with a less artificial and grandiose genre than opera seria, emulating the French opéra-comique. When Joseph married Isabella in 1760 the two wedding operas were Metastasio's Alcide al bivio, with music by Hasse, and Gluck's Tetide. For the princess's birthday early in 1761 a work by Traetta, Armida, was produced. It was against this background, and with the castrato Gaetano Guadagni at his disposal, that Durazzo was able to mount the most significant musical event of Maria Theresa's reign, the première of Gluck's reform opera Orfeo ed Euridice in the Burgtheater on 5 October 1762. It has sometimes been suggested that the initiative and the welcome for this innovation came from below and that the court did not appreciate it, but in fact the opposite is true. Most unusually, several royal comments on the opera and its emotional impact have come down to us.

Vienna had a less well developed public concert life than London. But recent research, especially on the lists made for Durazzo by Philipp Gumpenhuber of court musical performances between 1758 and 1763, has revealed that during that period many concerts (well over 50 a year) took place on a more or less regular basis in the theatres. Many more are known to have been held in the palaces of the nobility, such as Prince Hildburghausen's Palais Rofrano (later Prince Auersperg's palace). They became ever more frequent in later decades, and an important landmark was the foundation in 1771 of the Musicians' Benevolent Society, the Tonküstler-Societät, which from 1772 mounted an annual concert series.

Durazzo was forced to resign in 1764 and Francis I died in 1765. The new emperor, Joseph II, also named co-regent of the monarchy, was placed by his mother in charge of court functions. He abolished the old frigid Spanish etiquette, took to wearing plain uniform and encouraging others to do so, drastically reduced the number of religious ceremonies in the court calendar and opened the royal hunting reserves of the Prater and the Augarten to the public. As for the theatres, he tried to solve their financial difficulties by leasing them to entrepreneurs. He was a competent performer on several instruments and a passionate, opinionated follower of music. He loathed opera seria and ballet and disliked employing a French opera company. But it was only after bitter struggles with Kaunitz and others that in 1776 he himself took over the running of the theatres and appointed a close friend and ally, Count Rosenberg, to be Musikgraf. Joseph declared the Burgtheater a Nationaltheater where only German works would be performed by a German company and, to create a repertory for it, he offered prizes to writers of German plays and operas (known as Singspiele). The establishment of the national theatre, though perhaps chiefly intended as an economy measure and to spite the aristocracy, was taken as a symbol of literary nationalism and identified with the campaign by moralists such as Joseph von Sonnenfels to purify the crude German comedy. It was important in Mozart's career in encouraging the writing of Die Entführung aus dem Serail. However, although Joseph became sole ruler in 1780, he could not ensure the success of the German troupe, which proved unpopular and was disbanded in 1785. An Italian company had been brought back in 1783, and Lorenzo Da Ponte had been made its court poet. But the monarch's attitude kept opera seria and ballet out of the court theatres throughout the 1780s: Mozart's Idomeneo could be performed in Vienna only in Prince Auersperg's theatre. However, another aspect of Joseph's policy, ‘theatre freedom’, permitted the establishment of suburban theatres, in the Leopoldstadt (1781), in the Josefstadt (1788) and the Freihaus-Theater (1787, also known as the Theater auf der Wieden; see fig.10), for which Die Zauberflöte was to be written.

When Mozart decided to leave the service of the Archbishop of Salzburg, he wrote to his father on 4 April 1781 that Vienna was ‘the best place in the world for his profession’. In the first place, he had high hopes of winning the patronage of the emperor. Joseph obliged, though not at first with regular employment, but it was the emperor's predilection for Mozart and his music that made possible the scale of his success in Vienna, and in particular the production of the three operas composed in collaboration with Da Ponte (fig.11). Mozart told his father that by taking a few pupils and playing in concerts he could earn vastly more money than in his home town. Since he was to appear as a soloist in at least 71 public and private concerts in the years 1781 to 1786, he was surely right in his calculation that nowhere else could he have been given so many opportunities. The numerous wealthy patrons competed for the services of performers and composers of quality and originality, as for example with the Harmoniemusik, or wind bands, fashionable from 1782 onwards. Though there was no hall specially set aside for concerts, they took place more or less regularly in many aristocratic palaces, in the theatres, in certain other buildings such as the Trattner apartment block, in restaurants and in the public gardens. Nearly all Mozart's piano concertos were written for this milieu. As far as we know, he performed them most often in the Burgtheater, but also in the Augarten, the Kärntnertortheater, the Mehlgrube dance hall, Jahn's restaurant in the Himmelpfortgasse, and the Trattnerhof, as well as at private concerts in the houses of J.M. Auernhammer and G.I. Ployer. More specialized concerts were given in the masonic lodges, which flourished in the early 1780s, and by Baron van Swieten, head of the educational commission and director of the imperial library (where he broke new ground by putting on programmes of old music, especially works of J.S. Bach and Handel). With all these opportunities as a freelance composer and performer Mozart was able to earn (and spend) an income far above that of almost all salaried musicians. At the end of 1787, in order to prevent Mozart from leaving Vienna, the emperor created a post for him at a salary of £800 per annum. The composer turned this duty of writing dances for court balls into an opportunity to revivify the form.

There were other purely musical advantages to be gained from living in Vienna. The first Viennese collection of German-language songs had been published in 1778, and the genre became ever more popular. Artaria began to publish music in Vienna in 1778, and the steady growth of music printing expanded opportunities for the public to acquire music, though it by no means superseded the flourishing music-copying industry. As well as high-class production of pianofortes by such makers as Stein and Graf, there was much experimentation with new or unusual instruments like the jew's harp, glass harmonica, mechanical clock, baryton, basset horn, basset clarinet and arpeggione.

When Mozart wrote his enthusiastic letter about Vienna, the emperor had scarcely embarked on the hectic programme of wide-ranging reforms which he imposed during the 1780s. The suppression of the Jesuits, an important preliminary, had been carried through in 1773 by order of the pope. With the proceeds from their lands, a fairly successful attempt was being made to increase the number of primary schools and to reorganize secondary and higher education, which the Jesuits had largely controlled. In 1781–2 Joseph introduced measures of toleration for both Protestants and Jews, and greatly relaxed the censorship regulations. These changes had an almost revolutionary effect. A flood of pamphlets poured out during the 1780s, many of them anti-clerical and some critical of Joseph's regime. In the 1770s the average number of German-language periodicals being published in Vienna was 19; during Joseph II's reign it was 44; in the following 10 years it fell to only 15. The degree of intellectual freedom enjoyed in the 1780s was to be unknown again in Austria until the late 19th century. The emperor also forbade most religious processions and pilgrimages, and dissolved all religious brotherhoods and half the monasteries of the capital. Moreover, in the monasteries that remained, as in all churches, choral and instrumental music were severely restricted. The numerous new parish churches paid for by these suppressions needed for their music only organists of very modest attainments. These measures doubtless promoted Enlightenment, but they led to the halving of the total expenditure on church music in Vienna and to hardship for many musicians. No doubt they also account for Mozart's virtual abandonment of church music during Joseph's reign. Late in 1785 the emperor decided to restrict freemasonry; and by the end of his life, partly because of the financial crisis caused by the war against the Turks that began in 1788, his regime was looking distinctly less benevolent. The musical life of the city was certainly adversely affected, but to what extent is controversial.

Leopold II brought the Turkish War to an end and pursued a subtle policy of moderate conservatism at home. But after the accession of Francis and the outbreak of war with France in 1792, which continued with short breaks until 1815, reaction set in, a strict censorship was re-established, and it became dangerous to show sympathy with any attitude identifiable with the French Revolution.

Leopold was less hostile than his brother to opera seria and to traditional church music, but he did not reign long enough to bring his musical plans to fruition. Francis seems to have interfered little in musical matters. So, with the very important exception of opera performed in the royal theatres, the court was eclipsed as a source of patronage by a small number of noble connoisseurs, and it was they who maintained Vienna's pre-eminence, especially in instrumental music. Haydn, given extended leave of absence on full salary by Prince Anton Esterházy in 1790, made Vienna his home. But his last 12 symphonies were all composed for his London audiences on his two visits to England. His late masses, however, were written for the Esterházys. At one of the worst moments of the war, in 1797, when a citizens' patriotic army was being raised in Vienna, he and van Swieten worked with the government to provide Austria with a national anthem, which Haydn set to music. The two great oratorios, The Creation (1798) and The Seasons (1801), had complex origins: they were inspired by Haydn's English experience of the choral works of Handel, and the librettos were based on English originals; but the works were commissioned by van Swieten, who also translated the texts into German; and they were first performed in the palace of Prince Schwarzenberg. They were usually given in secular buildings and were sometimes thought unsuitable for churches, but they represent a remarkable transplantation of early 18th-century English natural theology into a formerly strict Catholic milieu, where the religious policies of Joseph II were still being pursued even after most of his other aims had been abandoned. Even more than Haydn's symphonies and his chamber music (which was now becoming a common feature of public concerts instead of just a private diversion), his oratorios became enormously popular.

Beethoven was equally confident in 1792 as Mozart had been in 1781 that Vienna was the place where his genius could best flourish. Coming from the court at Bonn where Max Franz, the brother of Joseph II and Leopold II, was elector-archbishop, it is not surprising that the composer was drawn to Vienna, but it would appear from the early, unperformed works that he wrote in 1790 to lament the death of Joseph and welcome the accession of Leopold that he was then a supporter of the former's radical policies. He found in Vienna similar performing opportunities to Mozart's, though it is significant that nearly all Beethoven's dedications were to aristocrats, whereas many of Mozart's had been to commoners. So far as the sources permit conclusions about the level of musical activity, it seems to have remained much the same as under Joseph II, so far as both operas and concerts are concerned. However, partly because of the careers of Mozart and especially Haydn, but also because of the growing acceptance of both the idea of artistic genius and the moral and aesthetic significance of purely instrumental music, the attitude of great aristocrats to great musicians changed. Almost from the start, Beethoven was able to assert for himself a social position which Mozart and Haydn barely achieved by the end of their lives. Emperor Francis's brother, Archduke Rudolph, was his adoring pupil. In 1804 the ‘Eroica’ Symphony was first performed, like many of his works, in the palace of Prince Lobkowitz. At the première of Leonore in 1805, the audience consisted mainly of an unenthusiastic group of Napoleon's officers, part of a French force occupying Vienna. But soon afterwards, in the house of the Russian ambassador, Prince Rasumovsky, the three string quartets dedicated to him were first performed. However disturbing and revolutionary Beethoven's music was, he now showed little sign of political radicalism; and it was the high aristocracy of Vienna who were his principal patrons.

During the period 1740–1806 and for the next century, more music of recognized greatness was composed in Vienna than in any other city in the world. Few of the composers concerned were Viennese by origin, though the greatest of those, Schubert, was born there in 1797. All the principal names came from the catchment areas of the empire and the monarchy. In no other political entity, or overlapping pair of entities, were there nearly so many serious musical institutions, religious and secular; and all of these had links, practical as well as symbolic, with Vienna as their ruler's capital. The city itself did not spawn many of the composers who resided there, but it offered them a uniquely rich range of opportunities to practise and mature their genius.

5. 1806–1945.

(i) 1806–48.

During the first years of the 19th century, Vienna’s self-image and international standing as a centre of musical culture, together with the prestige of Viennese Classicism, were bolstered by Haydn’s presence in the city and the growing reputation of Beethoven. After 1809, the year of Haydn’s death and the Napoleonic invasion, the social and economic underpinnings of the city’s musical life underwent considerable change. In the arena of instrumental music, the 18th-century pattern of individual aristocratic patronage supporting ensembles and composers (as in the cases of Auersperg, Lobkowitz and Esterházy) disappeared quickly. Although Beethoven continued to depend on aristocratic subvention for the rest of his life, Schubert did not. The institution that would play the most significant role in the city, the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, was officially founded in 1814. It signalled the beginning of an alliance between the old aristocracy and an urban middle class representing a growing public for music, which included élite Jewish banking families. The Gesellschaft sponsored concerts, an archive, the conservatory (beginning in 1817) and a choral programme, directed initially by Salieri.

By the end of the 1820s, Vienna boasted a significant infrastructure in music publishing and instrument manufacture (including over 32 violin makers, 25 brass instrument makers and 147 keyboard manufacturers) that met the needs of a more broadly based literate public of active amateurs from whose ranks Schubert’s friends and supporters came. Joseph Sonnleithner and Ignaz von Seyfried, both of whose lives intersected with Beethoven, were leaders in the creation of a new public musical culture; their interests extended to scholarship and journalism. From 1806 a series of periodicals flourished, from the short-lived Wiener Journal für Theater, Musik und Mode to the more durable Wiener Theater Zeitung (which covered music). In 1834 R.G. Kiesewetter (who headed the new conservatory) published the first popular music history connecting past and present. Kiesewetter also maintained one of the most prominent middle-class salons where large ensemble house concerts took place.

Despite the shift from aristocratic patronage to a broader civic base beginning in 1812, the Viennese tradition of aristocratic connoisseurship, active participation and financial support characteristic of the Classical era of Gluck, Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven would cast a considerable shadow on the evolution of musical culture in Vienna well into the 20th century. The prestige of music, particularly instrumental music, was associated with the aura of noble birth and cultivation. Maria Theresa and her direct descendants, as well as many prominent members of the high aristocracy living in Vienna during the winter season, were musically literate and discerning. Future generations of Viennese would link the cultivation of music with high social status and refinement long after the aristocracy abandoned, learning and the arts in the mid-19th century, for hunting and the high life in the spirit of the Jockey Club. The memory of a time when the highest segment of the social ladder could sing in oratorio performances, play sonatas and quartets and judge new music competently was invoked regularly from the mid-19th century onwards as subsequent generations of local critics lamented the debased skills and tastes displayed by the ever expanding middle- and working-class audience for music. Nonetheless, domestic music-making flourished throughout the city’s population. The enthusiasm shown by the Viennese for music in the 19th century reflected in part a middle-class agenda of social ambition for self-improvement against an image of aristocratic cultivation rooted in the myth and reality of Viennese musical life before 1809.

During the first decades of the century, public concert life took place in winter in the Mehlgrube and in summer in the Augarten; in inns (until 1822 the Gesellschaft had its headquarters in a section of an elegant restaurant, Zum roten Igel, and then renovated and expanded its space there on the Tuchlauben where in 1831 it opened a 500-seat hall), and in imperial theatres (the Kärntnertortheater and the Burgtheater) during Lent and Advent; in the Redoutensaal of the Hofburg (fig.15), the great hall of the university; and in the Spanish Riding School, the space in which, until 1848, the festive, large mixed amateur and professional oratorio performances, often organized on behalf of charitable causes, took place. In 1819 F.X. Gebauer and Eduard von Lannoy founded the concerts spirituels with an orchestra made up of amateurs; the series continued until 1848. The quality of these regularly scheduled public performances came under fire, particularly in the 1830s, an era that prized virtuosity. Their presentation of Classical works by Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven was substandard. In 1833 Franz Lachner organized professional orchestral concerts using opera house players, but with little success; only four performances, each including a Beethoven symphony, were given. In March 1842, with the support of Otto Nicolai, the chief conductor of the Opera, an association made up of opera musicians came into being (which later would evolve into the Vienna Philharmonic), even though between 1842 and 1860 there were no regular seasons; only 14 Philharmonic concerts were given between 1842 and 1848.

Most concerts until 1848 took place in generous noble and middle-class private spaces, much in the tradition of the Schubertiads, in part for political reasons; censorship and the repressive police state in place between 1815 and 1848 (especially after 1819) helped restrict the number of large public events. Among the notable private non-aristocratic venues were those of Pettenkopfer, Dollinger and Röhrich, all either men of commerce or civil servants. The policies of the Metternich era inadvertently helped to deepen the Viennese attachment to music, particularly chamber and vocal music. Instrumental music and vocal music celebrating nature and personal emotions served as a mode of expression and communication comparatively immune from political scrutiny and therefore one in which the widest range of sentiment could be expressed without fear. Franz Grillparzer, the great dramatist and himself an avid amateur musician, ironically expressed regret, after having been censored, that he was not a composer. Nonetheless, Schubert’s friend Johann Mayrhofer ended up as a police agent, and A.J. Becher, one of the city’s leading critics (who had helped organize the Vienna Philharmonic in 1842 with Nicolai, Beethoven’s friend Karl Holz, and the poet Nikolaus von Lenau) was executed for his role in the revolution of 1848. The reactionary authorities before 1848 understood the link between liberal ideas and the wider social acquisition of culture and learning. Yet music remained relatively privileged; in 1843 they permitted the founding of a new institution, the Wiener Männergesangverein (in large part the work of August Schmidt, the editor of the Wiener allgemeine Musikzeitung), at the inn Zum goldenen Löwen. By 1848 it had nearly 400 members and had held dozens of concerts in the Redoutensaal, at Schönbrunn and in dance halls, hospitals and private homes. This group, whose motto was ‘free and loyal in song and deed’, was both devoted to the monarchy and liberal; it was also the harbinger of a significant amateur choral movement that flourished after 1848. Among its leaders were Franz Egger, a lawyer, and Nikolaus Dumba, an industrialist who later spearheaded the campaign to build Vienna’s main concert hall, the Musikverein, in 1870.

Although Beethoven’s funeral in 1827 was among the largest public events in Vienna’s history, by the time of his death his music had fallen considerably out of fashion. A taste for Italian opera, particularly Rossini (whose Otello was a sensation in 1819), developed rapidly in the 1820s; the première of Weber’s Der Freischütz in 1821 also signalled a new direction in musical culture, as did the triumphant appearances of Paganini in 1828 and Chopin in 1829. Euryanthe was written in 1823 for Vienna. The 1820s also witnessed the spread of interest in dance music (the waltz, galop and quadrille) and the popularity of the comic theatre of Ferdinand Raimund (Das Mädchen aus der Feenwelt, 1826) and, later, J.N. Nestroy (whose farces such as Lumpazivagabundus, 1833, or Der Talisman, 1840, came with musical accompaniment). This distinctly local form of theatre took place at the Theater an der Wien (fig.16)and at smaller suburban houses in an annual repertory that featured light opera by such composers as Conradin Kreutzer, Joseph Drechsler, F.A. Kanne, Adolf Müller and Adrien Boieldieu. The evolution of Schubert’s music in the 1820s, particularly his efforts at opera and incidental dramatic music, can be understood as reflecting these contemporary Viennese theatrical tastes. By the 1840s there was considerable concern expressed about the relative neglect of classical traditions. The Gesellschaft, a self-governing association, positioned itself as a counterweight, continuing to present works of Handel, Mozart, Beethoven and Cherubini as well as more contemporary music, including Schubert’s. In 1839 it performed Mendelssohn’s Paulus with a chorus of 700 and an orchestra of 320. The repertory also included music by Joseph Eybler, Eduard von Lannoy, Ferdinando Paer, Simon Mayr, I.F. von Mosel, Adalbert Gyrowetz, Vàclav Tomášek, Louis Spohr, Maximilian Stadler, Rossini, Salieri and Hugo Worischek. Between 1812 and 1848 the Gesellschaft sponsored 131 regular concerts, 36 large-scale choral events, 8 operas and 240 salon-style evenings.

Opera (as part of a local affinity with theatre dating back to Baroque times) remained a crucial component of Vienna’s musical life. The use of incidental music in productions of tragic theatre was common. The Hofoper at the Kärntnertortheater and Burgtheater flourished. Performances were also held at the Schönbrunn Palace theatre. A system of leasing the opera house to impresarios who favoured Italian repertory existed; this offered a complement to German repertory, including works by Joseph Weigl and Mosel. The Hofoper remained directly under the administrative control of the crown and high aristocracy until 1918. The repertory at the Kärntnertortheater between the mid-1820s and 1848 included Spohr, Bellini, Meyerbeer, Auber, Halévy, Marschner, von Flotow and Donizetti. Fanny Elssler’s fame (and that of Marie Taglioni) in the 1830s and 40s helped spark wider interest in the ballet productions of the Hofoper. The Theater an der Wien (where Fidelio was first produced in 1805 and 1806 and Lortzing conducted in the late 1840s) was the location for the premières of Schubert’s Zauberharfe in 1820 and Rosamunde in 1823, as well as of works by Spontini, Auber, Grétry and J.P. Pixis. Concerts took place there as well. Other important sites of opera and musical theatre were the Theater in der Leopoldstadt and the Theater in der Josefstadt, where Die Zauberflöte was among the most popular works in a repertory that included Weber’s Oberon and Cherubini’s Les deux journées. Conradin Kreutzer directed the house between 1833 and 1835.

(ii) 1848–70.

The events of March 1848 forced the closing of the conservatory (which reopened in 1851) and interrupted concert life; the Gesellschaft resumed concerts in January of 1849. By the early 1850s it was clear that the public would no longer tolerate amateur participation in public performances of instrumental music. The Gesellschaft, after considerable internal debate, restructured itself in order to sponsor regular professional concerts. It also began a tradition of choosing a professional musician as a director of activities. Joseph Hellmesberger (whose father Georg was also a violinist and conducted the Philharmonic in the late 1840s), the leader of the Philharmonic, would spearhead the improvement of standards, including amateur choral preparation which led to the creation, in 1858, of the Singverein. In that same year a second civic choral group, the Singakademie, was founded; in 1863 Brahms would become its director. The enthusiasm for participation in choral music led to the establishment in late 1863 of a second male choral society, the Schubertbund, by the schoolteacher Franz Mair. It was dedicated to propagating the work and spirit of Schubert. Its initial membership of 86 was made up exclusively of schoolteachers. By the end of the century there were dozens of new amateur choruses in Vienna – male, female and mixed choirs – organized frequently by district or occupation and profession.

Hellmesberger (the most distinguished member of a multigenerational local dynasty of musicians, the last of whom were Joseph (ii), a violinist, conductor and operetta composer, and Ferdinand, the ballet conductor and cellist, both active at the end of the century) played a decisive role during these years in establishing a higher standard of public performance, as leader of the city’s finest quartet (with which Brahms made his début in 1862), director of the conservatory, leading violin teacher, and as a conductor. His quartet was founded in 1849 and he favoured, apart from Mozart and Haydn, the late Beethoven and Schubert quartets. He directed the Gesellschaft from 1851 to 1859. The hostility to amateur instrumental playing led to a public debate that itself highlighted the significance of Viennese music journalism after 1848. L.A. Zellner, later professor of harmony and acoustics at the conservatory, led the fight against dilettantism. Eventually a separate orchestral association of amateurs, the Orchesterverein, was created within the Gesellschaft. At the same time, Zellner was concerned with guiding the tastes of the untutored public and in 1859 began a series of ‘historical concerts’. This effort coincided with a growing interest in the history of music as an antidote to the temptations of modern fashion, understood as deriving from popular dance and theatre music on the one hand, and Liszt and Wagner on the other. Among the most influential figures in the musical life of the 1850s and 60s was the charismatic and handsome composer and conductor Johann Ritter von Herbeck. He ‘discovered’ Schubert’s ‘Unfinished’ symphony and gave it its first performance in 1865. An early supporter of Bruckner’s music, Herbeck was responsible for Bruckner’s appointment as successor to Simon Sechter as teacher of counterpoint at the conservatory in 1868. Herbeck led the Männergesangverein from 1856 to 1866 and became the first conductor of the Singverein in 1858. He took over the Gesellschaft concerts in 1859 from Hellmesberger and led them until 1870. He was responsible for bringing new music, including works by Liszt, Rubinstein, Brahms, Glinka, Robert Volkmann and Berlioz, to the public in programmes that also included Bach, Handel, Schumann and Mendelssohn. Other Gesellschaft concert directors later in the century included Anton Rubinstein, Brahms, Eduard Kremser (an important figure in the city’s choral life and long-time chorus master at the Männergesangverein), Wilhelm Gericke (the conductor who would later be lured to Boston) and, briefly, Hans Richter.

The raising of performance standards reflected the pressure of an ever-growing enthusiastic public for music. Operatic practice mirrored the same concern for quality. In 1854 the conductor Karl Eckert became the first musician to be placed in charge of the Hofoper. He was followed by the Italian Matteo Salvi. Eckert introduced Lohengrin in 1858 and Tannhäuser in 1859, and his colleague, the conductor Heinrich Esser, produced the first performances of Der fliegende Holländer in 1860. Between 1849 and 1870 several of Verdi’s operas were performed (La Traviata, Rigoletto, Un ballo in maschera), as were works by Meyerbeer and Marschner, Gounod’s Faust and Thomas’s Mignon. In the 1850s the Theater in der Josefstadt also produced Meyerbeer and the first Vienna Tannhäuser in 1857 at its summer venue, the Thaliatheater. It was in the 1860s that Vienna’s musical politics were formed for the remainder of the century. Wagner arrived in Vienna in 1861, Brahms one year later. Wagner had high hopes; the three operas produced in Vienna had met with great audience success. He had many friends, including the prominent amateur and physician Josef Standhartner, who was also a member of the Gesellschaft board. Wagner hoped that Tristan would be given its première in Vienna, but the critical opposition of Zellner, Hanslick and Selmar Bagge took its toll. Bagge, a brilliant teacher (who had begun teaching at the conservatory in 1852), critic and organist, was concerned, like Zellner, about declining standards of musical education and taste in the city and particularly at the conservatory. Wagner’s music was viewed as a corrupting force. Hanslick, who had come to Vienna in 1854 and began teaching music at the university in 1861, became the city’s most influential critic. He also served as an informal advisor to the Hofoper. The encounter between Hanslick and Wagner resulted in each being the other’s arch-enemy. Wagner left the city in disgust in the 1860s, only to return in 1875 in triumph, four years after the Vienna première of Die Meistersinger, a work in which Hanslick was parodied as Beckmesser. The comparative critical support for Brahms in the 1860s resulted in part from Brahms’s status as heir to a Classical and early Romantic formalist legacy of consummate craftsmanship and exacting standards in the writing of chamber music. Brahms had little respect for Herbeck (whose 1862 performance of Handel’s Messiah he found wanting in terms of historical performance practices and overall quality) and other local Wagner enthusiasts, despite his own deep admiration for Wagner’s genius and achievement.

The clash over musical aesthetics of the 1860s was a response to the striking explosion in the local marketplace for music-making, as reflected in the demand for sheet music and instruments. By mid-century, although the technological lead once held by early 19th-century Viennese piano makers had been ceded to French, English and American rivals, the city boasted many important manufacturers, including Konrad Graff (until 1841), Ludwig Bösendorfer, Friedrich Ehrbar (who took over the Seuffert firm), Carl Dörr and Schweighofer, as well as many builders of cheaper instruments. String instruments were made by Michael Stadlmann, Martin Stoss, Georg Stauffer and Franz Geissenhof. Despite the pre-eminence of Leipzig in music publishing, Vienna continued to possess local publishers, including the houses of C.A. Spina and Tobias Haslinger.

In the arena of popular music, the post-1815 traditions of dance and comic and farcical theatre flourished after 1848. In dance, Joseph Lanner and Johann Strauss, both father and son, dominated. They not only wrote for dance halls and balls, concentrating on the waltz, polka and traditional ländler, but also branched out into longer, elaborate waltz-based compositional forms (fig.17). In 1867 Johann Strauss (ii) composed the legendary An der schönen, blauen Donau waltz for male chorus and orchestra, commissioned by the Männergesangverein. The Strauss family also held open-air concerts. Strauss was the first to play Wagner’s music and became, at the same time, a close friend of Brahms who deeply respected Strauss’s achievement. The unique Viennese theatre of fantasy and farce, perfected by Nestroy (who had made his début as Sarastro in 1822) had traditionally included music. Franz von Suppé had been writing music for the Theater in der Josefstadt from 1845 onwards. His efforts at opera and incidental music for spoken drama led him to emulate and adapt the model of Offenbach using Viennese farce as alternative subject matter. The result, Viennese operetta, made its local appearance in 1860 in the Carltheater (in the Leopoldstadt) with Das Pensionat by Suppé which was an explicit mix of Offenbach and Viennese farce. Offenbach himself worked in Vienna in the 1860s; five of his operettas were produced in Vienna between 1859 and 1860. Suppé moved permanently to the Carltheater in 1865 and from that point on he, Johann Strauss (ii) and Carl Millöcker created a staggering output in this unique Viennese form of musical theatre. The pattern of camouflaging social and political satire beneath a surface of implausible farce and childlike fairy tales, characteristic of the 1815–48 era of censorship, flourished in a new era of radical economic and social change in Vienna. Parody, irony and bittersweet sentimentality laced with pessimism would characterize the music and texts of the great golden era of Viennese operetta which began in the mid-1860s and ended in 1900.

The background to the developments in musical culture of the post-1848 period was framed by the sweeping changes in the topography and demography of the city. In the 1860s, by an imperial decree of 1857, the old walls were torn down and the Ringstrasse created. With it came a massive development of public buildings and dwellings that linked the inner city to the outlying districts. In 1869 the first new public structure was finished, initially known as the Kaiserlich-königliches Hofoperntheater im neuen Hause (fig.19), designed by August von Sicardsburg and Eduard van der Nüll, with nearly twice as many seats as the Kärntnertortheater. It was inaugurated with a German-language production of Don Giovanni (fig.20). In 1870, with the assistance of private funds and a lottery, the Gesellschaft dedicated its new neo-classical home near the Ringstrasse, the Musikverein, designed by Theophilus Hansen, with over 1600 seats (fig.21), and a second smaller hall with nearly 700. The building also housed the conservatory and the archive and offices of the Gesellschaft and the Männergesangverein. In 1874 Bösendorfer opened a chamber music hall seating over 500 in the old Liechtenstein riding stables. It was to serve as a main venue for concerts until 1913 when it was torn down. Not to be outdone, Ehrbar opened his own concert hall in the fourth district in 1877; it was there that Brahms chose to introduce his new works to a close circle of friends.

The failure of the Habsburg monarchy to keep its Italian provinces after Solferino (1859) and its eventual defeat at the hands of the Prussians in 1866 led to a constitutional crisis. This resulted in the creation of the dual monarchy and the liberalization of laws, including those governing migration and residence in 1867. At the same time, the Gründerzeit era, the economic boom of the 1860s (that ended abruptly in the crash of 1873), sparked a sustained influx of people from all over the empire to Vienna between 1867 and 1914. The city grew rapidly, with the introduction of ethnic minorities from Czech, Polish and southern Slav regions. The Jewish population in Vienna grew to over 12%. The diversification and growth of the city created a widely shared mythology of and nostalgia for a pre-modern ‘old Vienna’, for pre-1848 mores and culture, during the late 19th century. Music, in the home and concert hall, both popular and classical, assumed increased significance as a mark of civic identity and acculturation, particularly for new immigrants. After 1870 music came to define a distinct Viennese sensibility (tied to local history, from Gluck to the Strauss family) that was at once reflective and critical of modernity. Love of music and its local traditions became an accessible emblem of authentic membership in a civic environment in which only a small minority was native by birth and few had access to power through voting rights and political participation.

The increased demand for music was mirrored by the fortunes of the Vienna Philharmonic. After more than a decade of only occasional concerts, from 1854 its appearances became annual; from 1860 onwards it gave as many as nine concerts a season. Eckert conducted the orchestra until 1860; from 1860 to 1875 Otto Dessoff led the orchestra. By the 1870s, when the concerts moved from the Kärntnertortheater to the new Musikverein, its concerts, like those of the Gesellschaft, were fully subscribed and seats were passed down in families from one generation to the next. The repertory under Dessoff included a good deal of Beethoven, some Haydn and Mozart and a considerable amount of new music, ranging from Brahms and Wagner to Karl Goldmark, Rubinstein, Joseph Rheinberger, Franz Lachner, Robert Volkmann, O.J. Grimm, Woldemar Bargiel, Herbeck and Friedrich Gernsheim. Mendelssohn and Schumann were also generously represented. It should be noted that throughout the 19th century the Hofkapelle continued, providing sacred music for the Sunday morning mass. The Vienna Boys’ Choir (Wiener Sängerknaben, an institution that would survive the fall of the monarchy in 1918) was used and the direction was given over to the leading conductors including Hellmesberger and Herbeck. Sechter and his successor Bruckner also served as Hofkapelle organists. The repertory extended to include Schubert’s sacred music. Gottfried von Preyer (1807–1901), a pupil of Sechter’s and director of conservatory from 1844–9, authored more than 200 sacred works and, from 1853 to the end of the century, served as director of music at the Stephansdom. Salomon Sulzer (1804–90) was the dominant figure in the reform of the musical aspect of Jewish liturgy; his role as singer, composer and teacher extended beyond the confines of the Jewish community and mirrored the growing importance of that community in Viennese musical culture.

(iii) 1870–1913.

Despite the severity of the economic crash of 1873, which followed the 1873 Vienna World Exposition, the 1870s witnessed a dramatic growth in the range and character of musical life. As a centre of learning, the conservatory attracted a cadre of students who would become legendary. They included Mahler and Hugo Wolf. The enrolment rose to nearly 700. During the late 19th century, over 25% of the students were Jews, and over 50% of all students took the piano as their primary field of study; violin was the next largest subject of study. Music education was not limited to the conservatory; other schools flourished. By the mid-1890s, Ludwig Bösendorfer would complain of a veritable ‘plague’ in the demand for piano instruction. Teachers and simplified instruction systems became ubiquitous. The most prominent private teacher was Theodor Leschetizky (to whom Mark Twain brought his daughter for lessons). Prominent pianists and piano teachers in the 19th century included Julius Epstein, Anton Dorr, Emil Sauer, Alfred Grünfeld and Ignaz Brüll.

The architecture of the Ringstrasse, Vienna’s grand new thoroughfare, was decidedly historicist, evoking the Classical, Baroque and Renaissance past. Likewise in the 1870s, the cult of classicism and historicist taste flourished in music, focusing particularly on the Viennese masters from Gluck to Schubert. The Musikverein opened with an extensive Beethoven centenary that would be a precursor of the evolution of Viennese taste. In the Gesellschaft concerts in the 1870s and 80s, works by Beethoven, Mozart and Haydn accounted for over 30% of the repertory. All in all, by 1878 less than a quarter of all works performed in Gesellschaft concerts were by living composers. In the early 1870s Brahms directed the Gesellschaft concerts and introduced music written before Bach and Handel, including works by Henricus Isaac, Johann Rudolf Ahle and Johannes Eccard. This signalled an increasing interest in the history of music and a greater frequency of so-called ‘historical’ concerts.

During the 1870s and 80s the repertory of the Vienna Philharmonic was somewhat less conservative, reflecting the absence of amateur governance, although more than a quarter of its offerings were devoted to Mozart and Beethoven. This more progressive stance was the result of the long tenure of Wagner’s close associate Hans Richter who conducted the orchestra 214 times between 1875 and 1898. In his tenure not only were all the Brahms symphonies performed, but also the second, third, fourth and eighth symphonies of Bruckner alongside the works of less well-known Viennese composers such as Robert Fuchs, Ignaz Brüll and Goldmark. The Gesellschaft, in continual financial difficulties, was supported less by the high aristocracy and more by the so-called ‘second society’, the newer élite of the city.

The leading patrons of music included a highly educated intellectual élite ranging from the industrialist family of Karl Wittgenstein (father of Ludwig and Paul), the Fellingers, Wertheimsteins and the Gomperz family of academics, to the great surgeon Theodor Billroth, himself an amateur instrumentalist. The enthusiasm for music involved a combination of a glorification of a canonic past with a partisan enthusiasm for either Brahms and his circle or Bruckner, who became, in the 1870s, the standard bearer for a new direction in music influenced by Wagner. The membership lists of the Männergesangverein in this period were over 50% men of commerce (including bankers and industrialists), 30% civil servants and professionals. In 1872 this organization triumphantly dedicated to the city a monument honouring Schubert, designed by Hansen and located in the Volksgarten. In the later 19th century, Schubert symbolized the uniquely Viennese synthesis of international classical greatness and distinctly Viennese traditions. In the contemporary local debate concerning Brahms and Bruckner, both sides claimed the spirit of Schubert for their cause.

The 1870s and 80s were also the highpoint of the golden era of operetta. The greatest works of Johann Strauss (ii) received their premières. C.M. Ziehrer and Carl Zeller were two important rivals in this field. Strauss composed 15 operettas, most of which were first performed at either the Theater an der Wien or the Carltheater. The local taste for Offenbach was undiminished in the 1870s. The number of local operetta composers increased and included the choral conductor of the Männergesangverein, Herbeck’s successor Eduard Kremser (who also edited the most popular compendium of folk music), as well as Josef Hellmesberger (ii). The works of Arthur Sullivan were also immensely popular. The authors of texts and librettos of operetta included famous critics (notably Max Kalbeck) and specialists such as Viktor Léon and Hugo Wittmann (who wrote for Strauss and Millöcker). Theodor Herzl also wrote operetta texts. In a single decade, between 1870 and 1880, 100 operettas received their premières in Vienna, and another 180 new operettas were presented in the city before the end of the century.

The popularity of musical theatre in Vienna led to the construction of the Komische Oper am Schottentor in 1874 (later renamed the Ringtheater) as a centre for comic opera, in imitation of the Paris Opéra Comique. The fire that broke out in December 1881 during a performance of Offenbach’s Les contes d’Hoffmann, with disastrous consequences, contributed (after a dramatic trial) to the permanent revision of standards for theatre construction. Although the Ringtheater was not rebuilt, in 1883 the increased demand for comic musical theatre was met by the opening of the Raimundtheater, designed in late historicist style. It opened with a performance of Raimund’s Die gefesselte Phantasie with music by Wenzel Müller. With the death of Johann Strauss in 1899, the golden era ended and the so-called silver age of Viennese operetta began. Well over 250 new operetta productions were given their premières in the city between 1900 and 1913. Prominent composers in this period include Emmerich Kálmán, Edmund Eysler, Ralph Benatzky, Oscar Straus, Oskar Nedbal, Leo Fall and Richard Heuberger.

In the early 20th century the new operettas came under fire as cheap, trivial and reflective of the commercial corruption of musical taste. Despite the admiration of young modernists such as Schoenberg and Zemlinsky for Johann Strauss (ii), the output of the silver age of operetta composers was largely found wanting. After all, a striking contrast between the public taste for operetta and domestic salon music (a mixture of operatic tunes and sentimental piano music) and the rejection of new concert music was clearly visible. Following the lead of the writer and journalist Karl Kraus and his close friend, the architect Adolf Loos, the manipulative sensationalism and superficiality in modern musical theatre, celebrated by a corrupt world of newspaper criticism, was condemned. The works of Nestroy, Offenbach and Johann Strauss were held up as examples of ethical and aesthetic greatness in popular art forms. A new dimension of popular music found its expression in the success of the Schrammel ensemble, a quartet of local players who specialized in dance and song music. The Schrammels, all trained musicians, began to perform their unique amalgam of Viennese music in 1878; by the 1890s their distinct style and sound began to rival the Strauss tradition as emblematic of Viennese culture (fig.23).

In order to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Franz Joseph’s reign in 1898, a second major state theatre, the Stadttheater, was opened (later renamed the Volksoper). It was designed initially to offer the growing Viennese public increased access to spoken theatre, but early in the 20th century it was turned into an opera house devoted to popular works, in contrast to the opera house on the Ringstrasse. However, operatic life, so central to the Viennese obsession with theatre and music, remained centred on the politics and policies of the Imperial opera. Herbeck led this from 1870 to 1875, during which time he mounted the première of Die Meistersinger. He was succeeded by the former manager of the Carltheater, Franz Jauner, who produced the first Carmen and brought Verdi to conduct the première of Aida. Verdi’s Requiem was performed at the opera house in 1876. Jauner hired Hans Richter as chief conductor. Richter put on the first complete Ring cycle in 1879.

Jauner was succeeded by Wilhelm Jahn who led the house from 1881 to 1897. Jahn worked well with Richter. By the mid-1880s the disastrous economic crisis of the late 1870s had receded somewhat, permitting the opera house to flourish. In response to the demographic changes in the city and the monarchical tolerance of ethnic self-expression by non-German Habsburg populations, two of Smetana’s operas were presented, The Bartered Bride and Dalibor. Goldmark’s Die Königin von Saba and Das Heimchen am Herd, Ignaz Brüll’s Das goldene Kreuz, Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana and Massenet’s Manon and Werther were also produced. Jahn placed Die Fledermaus on the imperial stage and gave the première of Strauss’s failed effort at serious opera, Ritter Pázmán. Jahn also sought to revive some of Schubert’s operas and maintained a commitment to the Romantic opera tradition of Weber, Marschner and Lortzing. Nonetheless, the centrepieces of the opera repertory in the 1890s were the operas of Wagner and Mozart. Also important were the works of Verdi and Meyerbeer. In any one season, however, Viennese operagoers could hear operas by Adolphe Adam, Auber, Cherubini, Gluck, Halévy, Wilhelm Kienzl, Viktor E. Nessler, Nicolai and Rossini. As a result of the extent and quality of local music journalism, leading opera singers became public personalities.

The self-confidence of the Viennese regarding the quality of local musical culture at the end of the century was best expressed by the international exhibition of music and theatre in 1892. Tchaikovsky was present (but was outraged by the juxtaposition of outdoor concerts and beer drinking). There were extensive presentations of opera and concert music. In the 1870s and 80s music journalism flourished not only in the daily press but through specialized journals. In addition to Hanslick, leading music critics of the last quarter of the century included Max Kalbeck (later Brahms’s biographer), Ludwig Karpath, Theodor Otto Helm (a Bruckner supporter who wrote one of the first guides to the Beethoven string quartets), Richard Heuberger (a choral conductor and the composer of Der Opernball), Robert Hirschfeld (a student of Hanslick), Gustav Schönaich, Richard Wallaschek, Richard von Kralik (who also directed the Singakademie) and the composer Wilhelm Kienzl. The Viennese link between music and theatre permitted many of these to function as theatre critics as well. It is not surprising, therefore, that Ludwig Speidel also wrote on music. Perhaps the most notorious episode in the history of Viennese criticism was Hugo Wolf’s tenure in the mid-1880s at the Salonblatt where he regularly pilloried the work of Brahms and called into question the standards of musical culture displayed by the Viennese audience. The most significant late 19th-century Viennese musical periodical was the Neue musikalische Presse, published from 1892 to 1909.

By the 1890s, however, new sources of discontent were visible in Vienna’s musical life. Hans von Bülow’s Meiningen orchestra made an appearance in the 1880s. The excellence of its performance standards put Richter’s Vienna Philharmonic to shame. The growth in demand for concerts in the 1890s had far outdistanced supply. In the 1890s the Budapest Concert Orchestra made regular trips to Vienna. A leading impresario, Albert Gutmann, tripled the number of concerts he presented between 1890 and 1900. As the success of Gutmann’s work suggests, the 1890s witnessed increased popularity not only of chamber music concerts, given by visiting artists and distinguished local musicians such as the Rosé Quartet (headed by Arnold Rosé, the long-serving leader of the Vienna Philharmonic and brother-in-law of Mahler), but also of orchestral concerts. In a quartet comprising Philharmonic colleagues, Rosé continued the tradition of the Hellmesberger Quartet. He introduced the work of Schoenberg in 1907 and 1908.

The 1892 exhibition sparked a sustained local debate about the need for a second orchestra and another major concert hall. Furthermore, in the 1890s, a younger generation of critics and scholars, trained at the university and conservatory, sought to challenge and expand the tastes of the Viennese public. Guido Adler, Mahler’s boyhood friend, founded the Musikhistorisches Institut in 1898 at the university when he succeeded Hanslick. Adler established Vienna as a centre of modern scholarship and initiated a series of new critical editions of early music and the classical masters (e.g. founding the Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich series), following in the tradition of the great 19th-century Bach, Handel, Mozart and Schubert editions. For Adler’s generation, however, contemporary musical composition and music history were inextricably linked, as he expressed in 1885 in the first issue of the Vierteljahrsschrift für Musikwissenschaft.

Adler’s polemical writings mirrored the growing concern for standards in music education and taste. He, along with Hirschfeld, encouraged the use of the city-wide celebrations of Mozart’s death (1891) and Schubert’s birth (1897) as occasions to deepen and broaden access to and civic identification with classical musical culture throughout the population in the rapidly growing metropolis. The enthusiasm for opera and operetta only heightened the lingering suspicion among some musicians (including Josef Labor, the first teacher of Alma Mahler and a friend of the Wittgenstein family) about debased tastes within the public first articulated in the 1860s. With Brahms’s explicit support, Mahler was brought to Vienna in 1897 as a conductor at the imperial opera in an effort to raise standards; he quickly took over the institution and later replaced Richter (who went to England) at the Vienna Philharmonic. The generational conflict was evident in the debate between Hirschfeld and Hanslick over the value of Renaissance music and its appropriateness as an object of public musical performance; Hirschfeld had initiated a series of Renaissance evenings beginning in 1884 that Hanslick derided. The changes of the 1890s were also signalled by the deaths of Bruckner in 1896 and of Brahms in 1897 (who, as the Board of Directors of the Gesellschaft, had exercised considerable influence in the city’s musical life). The shift in the aesthetic debate of the late 19th century – from a conflict between a Brahms axis and a Wagner and Bruckner circle – was evident in Adler’s 1904 university lectures on Wagner that cast Wagner as historical: a classic master in a tradition going back to Palestrina. The new battle was between a novel post-Wagnerian Viennese modernism and an allegiance to a neo-Wagnerian late Romantic idiom.

The stirrings of the late 1890s coincided with new movements in literature (Jung Wien) and visual arts (the Vienna Secession, founded in 1897). Even more relevant to new music were rival radical modernists in literature, art and architecture (Kraus, Loos, Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka). Mahler participated in the 1902 Secession exhibition, devoted to Max Klinger’s statute of Beethoven, to which Gustav Klimt also contributed. Mahler’s appointment at the Hofoper fuelled the debate about contemporary music that took place in a local context, in which taste had become increasingly tied to the past and the level of musical literacy was insufficient to ensure the capacity to follow new developments. Among the most controversial figures in fin-de-siècle Viennese musical life was Richard Strauss, whose orchestral music was first heard in the city in the late 1880s and throughout the 1890s, sparking both outrage and devoted partisanship. During his ten-year directorship of the opera, Mahler explicitly sought to spearhead a radical renaissance. He performed Wagner without cuts; he darkened the house during performance (to encourage concentration on the part of the audience and eliminate distracting socializing during performance); he deepened the orchestra pit; he collaborated with Alfred Roller, a painter and designer and a member of the Vienna Secession. They sought to realize the theories of Adolphe Appia, creating new productions of the works of Wagner and Mozart that used colour symbolism and departed from traditions of stage-set realism. Mahler expanded the repertory by presenting dozens of new works by Puccini, Pfitzner, Strauss, Wolf, Saint-Saëns, Tchaikovsky and Leoncavallo. Mahler attempted to improve performance standards by reining in the egos of star singers, creating an integrated musical ensemble. At the same time, despite constant newspaper criticism of his attitude towards opera stars, he introduced such luminaries as Anna Bahr-Mildenburg, Marie Gutheil-Schoder, Leo Slezak and Richard Mayr. He became a living legend and was idolized, particularly by a younger generation of musicians, notably the circle around Alexander von Zemlinsky. This included the young Arnold Schoenberg and his students, Alban Berg and Anton von Webern.

The 19th-century tension between a carefree surface attitude and reactionary historicist cultural taste within the Viennese public and a younger generation’s progressive engagement with music as the most noble of the arts (cast in the image of the era of Viennese Classicism) came to a head in the first decade of the 20th century. Mahler came under fire for his own music and the presumed arrogance evident in his reorchestrations of Beethoven and cuts in Bruckner. His effort to mount the première of Strauss’s Salome failed when censors declared the work unfit for the imperial stage. Much to Mahler’s embarrassment, the Vienna première took place in 1905 under the aegis of a travelling company from Breslau.

The opposition to Mahler in the popular press also mirrored the growing significance of the Jewish question. Although he had converted to Catholicism to assume the position at the Hofoper, he and Bruno Walter, his young assistant, remained Jews by the terms of contemporary anti-Semitic discourse. The economic difficulties of Vienna in the 1870s and 80s, the reactionary Viennese adherence to artisan and shopkeeper traditions (and therefore the city’s relative economic, commercial and industrial backwardness by comparison with Berlin and London) and the consequences of rapid migration to the city had, by the late 1880s, spawned radical reactionary political attitudes, skilfully exploited by the Christian socialism of Karl Lueger (who would become the powerful mayor of the city in 1897, despite monarchical reluctance). By 1900 anti-Semitism was a vivid and constant dimension of Viennese culture and politics; the 1891 Verein zur Abwehr des Antisemitismus boasted nearly 5000 members by 1895. In these numbers were many of Brahms’s closest friends (for example, Viktor Miller zu Aichholz). Wagner’s local popularity helped fuel anti-Semitism. An anti-Semitic Bruckner cult, supported by the reactionary right and its allies in the local press, was already in evidence long before the composer’s death. Brahms and his circle, because of the composer’s close friendship with leading Jews, were castigated as philo-Semitic. The influential Akademischer Wagnerverein, founded in 1873, boasted many Jewish founders and members; Bruckner allowed himself to become the honorary president of a rival Wagner society founded in 1890 that explicitly excluded Jews.

Anti-Semitism intersected with a distaste for the style and substance of modernism, even though, ironically, many of the leading figures in the world of operetta were Jews. Mahler came under fire not only for his innovations at the opera but also for his role as symbolic protector of new music. His own compositions experienced limited success in Vienna. But he was the honorary president of Zemlinsky’s 1904 Vereinigung schaffender Tonkünstler, a new organization devoted to young composers and their work that gave the first performances of Schoenberg’s Pelleas und Melisande and Bartók’s First Orchestral Suite. In 1907 and 1908 the premières of Schoenberg’s chamber music resulted in disruptions and open conflict. Mahler defended Schoenberg. Critics and outraged audience members had allies among professional and accomplished amateur musicians. The new seemed to challenge their taste and judgment. Even Brahms’s friend Theodor Billroth, in a posthumous collection of essays entitled Wer ist musikalisch and edited by Hanslick (1896), articulated the mix of social cultural criticism directed at modern musical practices and tastes characteristic of Viennese aesthetic conservatism. Mahler encountered opposition from conservative musicians in the orchestra of the Vienna Philharmonic, including the cellist, pianist and composer Franz Schmidt who resented his style and presumed favouritism. The controversy surrounding Mahler marked the beginning of a sustained 20th-century tension in Viennese music between progressive modernist cosmopolitanism and reactionary nativism. In the 1912 Wiener Musikfestwoche, for example, the Vienna Philharmonic did not play a single work by a living Viennese composer. Among the associations formed on behalf of the new were the 1903 Ansorge Verein and the older Hugo Wolf-Verein (1897–1905), as well as the 1908 student-based Akademischer Verband für Literatur und Musik that sponsored concerts. In 1907 Mahler resigned from the opera and accepted a position in New York. His departure became a public scandal and the widest range of Vienna’s élite expressed its dismay and support.

Mahler’s successor at the opera, Felix Weingartner suffered by comparison, despite his outstanding qualities as a conductor and composer who he brought Strauss’s Elektra and Johann Strauss’s Zigeunerbaron into the repertory. He was succeeded in 1911 by Hans Gregor who led the house until the end of World War I. Gregor was not a musician but a brilliant producer who brought Der Rosenkavalier, Ariadne and Salome into the repertory, alongside Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande and Puccini’s La fanciulla del West. During Gregor’s tenure, Lotte Lehmann and Maria Jeritza made their débuts. A retrospective account of the Hofoper repertory from 1869 to 1900 reveals that the most frequently performed works were Aida, L’Africaine, Carmen, Cavalleria rusticana, Der fliegende Holländer, Les Huguenots, Der Freischütz, Lohengrin, Faust, Le prophète and Tannhäuser. This indicates an important distinction between the Viennese audience for instrumental music (the public at the Gesellschaft concerts, the Philharmonic and for chamber music) and for opera. The latter was far less tied to a notion of classicism. But the audience-pleasing spectacle and dramatic accessibility of early Wagner, French grand opera and verismo during the last decades of the century only deepened the suspicion of conservative critics such as Brahms and Billroth that a decline in musical culture had taken place. Local operatic taste fuelled the ambitions of a younger generation, particularly Mahler, to rescue the music in opera by emphasizing the total ensemble and the works of Mozart (and even Haydn, one of whose operas Mahler attempted to revive) and the later works of Wagner.

The demand for more orchestral concerts, already a matter of public debate in the 1890s, led to the founding of the Wiener Konzertverein in 1900. In 1907 the composer and conductor Oskar Nedbal formed the Wiener Tonkünstlerorchester. Unlike the Vienna Philharmonic, these orchestras were not made up of members of the opera orchestra but were the first free-standing professional orchestras in the city. These two organizations were the first orchestras exclusively created for concert performance. Ferdinand Löwe, the protégé of Bruckner, directed the Konzertverein (he also served as director of the Gesellschaft concerts from 1900 to 1904). Löwe emerged as an important figure. He supported new music and brought all of Bruckner’s symphonies to the concert stage using the Konzertverein orchestra. In 1905, along with the Arbeiter-Zeitung music critic Josef David Bach, Schoenberg’s friend and a leading socialist, Löwe helped start the workers’ symphony orchestra concerts, part of an effort (which lasted until 1934) among less conservative musicians to extend concert music to the largest segment of the city, the working classes. A notable event in those concerts was an appearance in 1913 of Furtwängler with George Szell as soloist. Eventually the Wiener Konzerthausgesellschaft, a new music society, was founded in 1900. A year later, in 1901, Emil Hertzka, who started his career with the Weinberger publishing firm, founded the Universal Edition that was to become a pioneer in the publication of 20th-century music, including that of Schoenberg, Webern, Schreker, Marx and Mahler. The creation of new orchestras and the Konzerthausgesellschaft led to the construction of Vienna’s second major concert hall, the Konzerthaus, in 1913.

1913 marks the end of an era, not only on account of the creation of a new concert hall, but also because of two spectacular events which symbolized the divided character in Vienna’s musical life. Franz Schreker (using an expanded Tonkünstlerorchester and the Philharmonischer Chor, founded in 1907) conducted two enormously successful performances of Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder. Nonetheless, in March 1913 Schoenberg conducted a performance of music by himself, Berg, Webern, Zemlinsky and Mahler at which a riot took place requiring police intervention.

(iv) 1913–34.

The most important new factor in musical life in the immediate postwar years was the new Konzerthausgesellschaft. It was directed until the Anschluss by Hugo Botstiber. Nedbal remained active until 1917. Owing to the post-World War I political and financial crises, the two new orchestras created at the beginning of the century merged in 1921 into the Wiener Sinfonie Orchester and ultimately, in 1933, into the Wiener Symphoniker (the Vienna SO). Löwe led the combined orchestra until 1924. This orchestra provided the concerts at the new Konzerthaus; its repertory was less conservative than that of the Gesellschaft or Philharmonic. The new orchestras of Vienna that ultimately merged were responsible for the first performances of works by Dohnányi, Elgar, Franck, Pfitzner, Sibelius, Debussy, Bartók, Busoni, Reger, Szymanowski and Skryabin. The aesthetic agenda was not only progressive, it challenged a distinct local provincial prejudice on behalf of German and Austrian composers. The new society also sought to offer popular concerts at low prices (continuing in a more serious vein a tradition begun in the late 19th century by Eduard Strauss at the Musikverein and later by Löwe before the war with the Konzertverein orchestra), including Tuesday events in the Volksgarten. Eventually, beginning in 1933, the new orchestra also spun off a group to broadcast lighter music on the state radio and consented to have its regular concerts broadcast. In the absence of imperial patronage and with the creation of a republic with a city government controlled by socialists, the economic support for musical life was in disarray after 1918. The pre-war populist agenda of the Konzerthausgesellschaft and the new orchestras and the fact that some concert life continued uninterrupted through the war years gave some glimmer of optimism despite the evident difficulties. Furtwängler became a primary conductor in 1919; the orchestra gave a complete Mahler cycle under Oskar Fried in 1921. Between 1921 and 1933 conductors included Leopold Reichwein, Clemens Krauss, Paul von Klenau, Knappertsbusch and Walter. Oswald Kabasta took over as music director in 1933.

The Gesellschaft’s economic situation had become precarious before 1914. In 1909 the conservatory was turned into a state institution; the viability of private support had run its course. Löwe was the conservatory’s director after the war. However, the leading figures in conservatory education in the 1920s and early 1930s were the composers Joseph Marx and Franz Schmidt. The open conflicts surrounding Mahler and Schoenberg before 1914 had created a division between modernism and neo-romanticism; that division ran parallel with implicit and explicit anti-Semitism. The protagonists of the new, notably Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Wellesz and Eduard Steuermann, were either Jews or allied with Jews; the defenders of tradition, Marx and Schmidt, were Catholic and thoroughly Austrian. The postwar era heightened the old debate. Austrian identity, cultural and political, in a post-monarchical era was now at issue. The new republic was for the first time linguistically homogeneous; the Jews became the leading minority. Arguments for unification with Germany recurred between 1918 and 1938. At the same time, in the construction of a new Austrian cultural ideal, Marx and Schmidt served as foils against a seemingly rootless and lawless ‘foreign’ modernism. Ultimately, by 1926, Schoenberg and Schreker had abandoned Vienna, having taken up posts teaching in Berlin. Berlin replaced Vienna as the centre of modernism, even though Wellesz, Webern and Berg remained tied to Vienna.

However, immediately after the war the eventual victory of the conservative musical and critical community and audience was still uncertain. Modernists rallied to the socialist cause. In 1918 Schoenberg and Berg organized a utopian rival notion of concert life through the Verein für Musikalische Privataufführungen. This evoked the exclusive traditions of intimate connoisseurship and enthusiasm for new music characteristic of the era of Haydn and Beethoven. Initially its concerts were closed to all but members. No critics were permitted and no applause allowed. Ultimately the society gave some public concerts. It performed a staggering number of new works, many in reduced arrangements for small ensemble and multiple keyboards. Even music by J.M. Hauer was presented, who later developed his own 12-note system and, like Schoenberg, conceived of music as closely allied to painting (notably that of Johannes Itten). Transcriptions of music by Johann Strauss and Mahler (including a Zemlinsky arrangement of the Sixth Symphony for two pianos) were included. The society was unable to continue beyond 1921.

The brief enthusiasm for modernism in the immediate postwar years dissipated throughout the 1920s; as early as 1921 Paul Stefan observed, ‘new music in Vienna has beaten a long retreat’. It gradually gave way to the triumph of reactionary aesthetics and politics. This can be observed despite the quality and reach of key pro-modernist periodicals, Der Merker (1909–22; founded by Ludwig Hevesi, the advocate of the Secession whose music editor was Richard Specht, the author of monographs on Mahler and Strauss), the Musikblätter des Anbruchs (1919–37), and Pult und Taktstock (1924–30; edited by Erwin Stein, a Schoenberg pupil). In 1932 Willi Reich, who studied with Berg, founded 23 – Eine Wiener Musikzeitschrift, designed to combat the smug conservative journalistic critical discourse on music of the day. The modernist movement was given impetus by two chamber music ensembles, the Kolisch Quartet, led by Rudolf Kolisch, and the younger Galimir Quartet. The Kolisch Quartet gave premières of works by Berg, Webern, Bartók and Schoenberg (playing from memory), as did the Galimir ensemble (led by Felix Galimir with his sisters) which also championed the music of younger composers.

In the area of music history, Adler continued to dominate the scene, producing several generations of scholars and scholar composers, including Hans Gál. The fine archival and editorial standard set by Eusebius Mandyczewski, the long-time archivist of the Gesellschaft and friend of Brahms, remained intact even after Mandyczewski’s death in 1929. It was in the postwar era that Heinrich Schenker produced and published his seminal work in music theory. He had been a teacher, editor, critic and composer before the war. But his major contributions to analysis date from a postwar environment in which the defence of tonality and its formal consequences was at the centre of the debate over 20th-century music. Schoenberg and Schenker had both written harmony treatises before the war. They both celebrated the significance of Brahms and both were critical of contemporary habits of listening. But they diverged fundamentally with regard to the possibilities for the future. Schenker edited the periodical Der Tonwille between 1921 and 1924.

The role of the Gesellschaft as guardian of tradition in the postwar era was mirrored in its programmes which included a German Bach festival in 1914, a Schubert festival in 1923, a Johann Strauss centenary in 1925, the Beethoven centenary in 1927, a second Schubert festival in 1929 and a Brahms celebration in 1933. With respect to contemporary music, its tastes in the 1920s were limited to Reger and Richard Strauss. The pivotal figure in the first postwar years was Franz Schalk, who led the Gesellschaft concerts until 1921; he was succeeded by Furtwängler, who stayed until 1934. Other conductors included Robert Heger and Reichwein. Criticism in Vienna after 1918 sustained the more conservative direction of the pre-war era. Julius Korngold, Hanslick’s successor at the Neue Freie Presse, had little use for Schoenberg and focused on the fortunes of his son, the prodigy Erich Wolfgang, whose brilliant operatic music made him a rival to Richard Strauss in a new generation. Other notable critics of the era included Max Graf, Paul Stefan, Heinrich von Kralik and Elsa Bienefeld.

During the postwar era the Vienna PO worked under Weingartner until 1927; his long tenure was followed briefly by Furtwängler and then by Krauss. Richard Strauss toured with the orchestra and was a frequent guest. The orchestra, organized as a self-governing body, provided the appropriate patriotic service during the war and continued to give concerts. Despite its historicist leanings, in the 1920s works by Stravinsky and Ravel were programmed. Not surprisingly, however, most of the new music presented was of conservative or local character: works by Marx, Julius Bittner, Richard Strauss, Reger, Respighi, Gustav Holst, Korngold, Bloch and Pfitzner. During the postwar period the Vienna PO began to exploit an international aura as an authentic link to the Viennese classical past, through tours and its service at the Salzburg Festival from 1925 on. It cultivated a well-rehearsed conceit about its sound, instruments and interpretative traditions. This self-appointed role as guardian of an authentic Viennese sound world and legacy, which led to the rewriting of its actual historical relationship to Brahms, Bruckner and Mahler, would dovetail all too neatly in the 1930s with Austrian fascism and Nazism.

Of all Vienna’s musical institutions, the opera was the most directly affected by the fall of the monarchy in 1918. The Hofoper became a state institution, the Staatsoper. It now had a rival, the Volksoper, which Zemlinsky directed until 1911. In 1919 Weingartner, once director of the Hofoper, took charge at the Volksoper and Franz Schalk (who, together with his brother Josef and Ferdinand Löwe, had been a loyal advocate and disciple of Bruckner) assumed control with Richard Strauss (who signed a five-year contract) at the Staatsoper on the Ring. Schalk and Strauss brought new works to the stage. During the war, in 1917, Jenůfa had been produced. But from 1919 to 1924 the public encountered works that were either new or had never been performed in Vienna, by Pfitzner, Schreker, Weingartner, Puccini, Korngold, Bittner, Zemlinsky, Richard Strauss (including his ballet Schlagobers and his reworking of Beethoven’s Die Ruinen von Athen), Kienzl and Walter Braunfels. The arrangement with Strauss was inherently unstable and Schalk assumed sole control until 1929. Schalk continued his innovative policies, bringing several Strauss operas and works by Krenek, Hindemith, Ravel and Korngold to the stage. He also produced the first Viennese Boris Godunov, Andrea Chénier (in a translation by Kalbeck) and La forza del destino in a German version written by Franz Werfel. Alfred Roller continued to design productions and the standard of singing and sets remained extraordinarily high. Some productions took place in the Redoutensaal in the Hofburg. Clemens Krauss succeeded Schalk and remained until 1934. Krauss brought in more light opera, including works by Lehár, Suppé, Jaromír Weinberger and Heuberger. Wozzeck was first heard in 1930, and Mozart’s Idomeneo in 1931. Noted for his collaboration with Lothar Wallenstein, Krauss understood the forces of aesthetic and political reaction on the rise in German-speaking Europe after the financial crises of the later 1920s and readily catered to them. In 1927, when Krenek’s Jonny spielt auf was produced, a public protest was staged, organized by the Nazi movement, accusing the opera house, ‘the pride of all Viennese’ and ‘the pre-eminent cultural institution of the world’, of ‘succumbing’ to a ‘vulgar Jewish-Negro defilement’. With Schalk, the last great era of using the leading Viennese opera house to present new works passed.

The Vienna of the late 1920s and early 30s continued its romance with operetta and new forms of dance music. In response to this widespread local craze for the traditions of Viennese operetta, Korngold created, with Julius Bittner, a pastiche of music by Johann Strauss and turned it into the Singspiel Walzer aus Wien, which opened in 1930. Korngold added a tango and other contemporary touches in harmonizations evocative of the commercial popular music of the day. Korngold and Bittner offered an explicit sympathetic expression of the unique Viennese lightheartedness and, in its natural affinity with song and dance, musicality. Over 150 new operetta productions opened in Vienna between 1919 and 1934. During the war years alone nearly 100 new operetta productions opened. Yet beneath this alluring surface of carefree spirit and love of music and nature was a bitterness and resentment within Vienna concerning the direction of musical culture and the identity of its protagonists that would bring disastrous consequences between 1934 and 1945.

(v) 1934–45.

Since 1922 tension had existed between the Christian socialists and the Socialist party. A general strike took place in 1927, and in 1931, as a result of the failure of a customs union project with Germany, the leading bank of Austria collapsed. Christian socialism triumphed throughout the country, bolstered by nationalism and by a domestic fascist movement. Yet throughout the interwar period Vienna was the centre of Austrian socialism, despite the strength of local Christian socialism and pan-German sentiment. Dollfuss formed a new government in 1932, based on an anti-socialist coalition. In 1933 he dissolved parliament and curtailed civil liberties. The Austrian attempt to compete with the growing popularity of the Nazis failed as Hitler and the domestic Nazi party became openly defiant of what had clearly emerged as Austro-fascism. By the end of 1934, both the Nazi party and the socialist party were banned. The self-governing autonomy of Vienna (a legacy of its unique status as an imperial city during the monarchy), which had sustained cultural life during the interwar period, was taken away. A Nazi coup failed after Dollfuss’s assassination in July 1934. In its wake, from 1934 to 1938, a semi-fascist, single-party state existed, with both Nazis and socialists relegated to underground status. However, the Vienna PO, whose membership had become more rabidly nationalistic, quickly became heavily nazified, as did many other Austrian cultural institutions. Anti-Semitism, long a festering problem, exploded. As the late 19th century had made clear, despite the relative success of the socialist movement in Vienna, the lure of a non-internationalist mix of nativism and socialism was far more powerful. Between 1934 and 1938 the Gesellschaft concerts gave an inkling of what would dominate during the Nazi period: a thoroughly anti-modern repertory. During this period the leading composer of international stature in Vienna was undoubtedly Berg. Webern was the other major figure who represented the new traditions of Viennese modernism. Neither were Jews. Berg died in 1935. However, in the one performance of his Violin Concerto in Vienna, the entire Philharmonic staged a protest, not only against the Jewish soloist Krasner and conductor Klemperer, but against Berg’s music as representative of the sort of insidious Jewish cultural bolshevism derided by the Nazis. The only other work by Berg to be performed after 1934 were excerpts from Lulu in December 1935. Representative of modern music was Franz Schmidt, whose Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln was enthusiastically received at its première in June 1938, shortly after the Anschluss. No modernist music was heard at the opera. The conservative tradition was represented by the music of Richard Strauss, Wolf-Ferrari, Kienzl, Franz Salmhofer, Respighi and Weinberger. Certainly, Austria became a refuge for many musicians fleeing Nazi Germany after 1933, including Walter, who briefly worked at the opera between 1936 and 1938, and Klemperer. Walter also conducted during this period at the Vienna PO. But the longer term outlook was grim. The one modernist figure without connection to the Schoenberg circle, Hauer, worked in the 1930s in obscurity. Webern, was eventually cut off from all work, despite considerable acclaim as a conductor, and his music was left unperformed.

The Anschluss of March 1938, therefore, reflects not a radical change, but a logical conclusion to interwar politics. Jews were removed from musical life and fled if they could. Nothing symbolized the ironies inherent in the myth of Vienna’s musical culture and its relationship to modern politics better than the embarrassing necessity faced by the Nazis with respect to the music of Johann Strauss. The baptismal records in the Stephansdom had to be falsified in order to prevent the operettas and waltzes of Strauss, the epitome of local greatness, from being banned.

Among the émigrés were the aged orchestra leader Arnold Rosé; the operetta composer Benatzky; the pianists Serkin, Steuermann, and Paul Wittgenstein; the composers Marcel Rubin (to Mexico), Ernst Toch, Karl Weigl, Paul A. Pisk, Wellesz, Korngold, Zemlinsky and Emmerich Kálmán; the scholars and critics D.J. Bach, Hugo Botstiber, O.E. Deutsch, Karl Geiringer, Hans Gál, Paul Stefan, Eric Werner and Hans F. Redlich; and a staggering number of performers and writers, ranging from Mosco Carner to Rudolf Kolisch, the librettist Alfred Grünwald, Lotte Lehmann, Bernhard Paumgartner, Marcel Prawy, Josef Reitler, Robert Starer and Elisabeth Schumann.

The journalist Hugo Bettauer, who was assassinated in 1925, had published a satirical book in 1922 entitled Eine Stadt ohne Juden: ein Roman für übermorgen (‘A city without Jews: a novel for the day after tomorrow’). That ‘day after tomorrow’ became an immediate reality after 1938. The Gesellschaft was nazified and even the aged Guido Adler was informed that he had been stripped of his honorary membership. The Austrian association of composers was disbanded and replaced by a new organization of ‘German composers from Austria’. The opera house was also purged and nazified as was the Konzerthausgesellschaft. Furtwängler took over the Philharmonic and Kabasta the Gesellschaft concerts along with the Vienna SO concerts at the Konzerthaus. The breach was filled by an embarrassingly large number of distinguished non-Jews, including Karl Böhm, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Sena Jurinac, Rudolf Moralt, Wolfgang Schneiderhan, Wilhelm Backhaus, Clemens Krauss, Eugen Jochum, Franz Konwitschny, Josef Kleiberth, Leopold Reichwein, Joseph Marx and Hans Knappertsbusch. Krauss served during the Nazi era as the Hofmusikkapelldirektor. Böhm directed the opera from 1943 to 1945.

During the war years the opera produced music by composers sympathetic to the regime, including Carl Orff, Werner Egk and Franz Lehár. The wartime Gauleiter of Vienna, Baldur von Schirach, fancied himself a patron of the arts. Strauss moved to Vienna and participated in the massive 1941 Mozart festival which was designed as a propaganda event. He also celebrated his 80th birthday in the city. Despite his commitment to aesthetic modernism, Webern became an enthusiastic proponent of the Nazis. Webern was not the first or only modernist to attempt an accommodation. Krenek had been an enthusiastic supporter of Dollfuss and his successor Schuschnigg, openly declaring his allegiance to Austro-fascism. However, by 1936 Krenek, a non-Jew, was, unlike Webern, clearheaded enough to choose emigration.

The late 19th-century nostalgia for a pre-industrial Vienna, local ambivalence to modernity and virulent anti-Semitism all found expression in the Viennese enthusiasm for the Anschluss and the arrival of Nazism. The repertory favoured during the war years focused on Bruckner and Schubert; a special emphasis was placed on the music of Reger, Schmidt and Wolf. In the arena of musical scholarship, matters were no better. Nazification extended to musicology and criticism; key representatives were Max Morold, Erich Schenk (who took over the music section at the university), Alfred Orel, Robert Lach (who had joined the Nazi party illegally in 1933) and, above all, Robert Haas, the Nazi who was responsible for the now suspect critical edition of Bruckner. Vienna suffered severley in the final years of the war, during which the opera house was destroyed.

6. Since 1945.

(i) Opera.

(ii) Concert life.

(iii) Education.

Vienna, §6: Since 1945

(i) Opera.

The Staatsoper entered a period of great achievement after the war despite the fact that its building had been destroyed. Productions were staged in the Theater an der Wien and the Volksoper, with Egon Hilbert overseeing the combined administration and guiding the artistic development of both houses. The Viennese Mozart style became famous throughout the world, represented by the conductors Josef Krips and Karl Böhm, the director Oscar Fritz Schuh, and singers such as Sena Jurinac, Hilde Konetzni, Wilma Lipp, Emmy Loose, Irmgard Seefried, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Ljuba Welitsch, Anton Dermota, Hans Hotter, Erich Kunz, Julius Patzak, Paul Schöffler and Ludwig Weber. Mozart’s Italian operas, as well as most foreign works, were sung in German.

The rebuilding of the house on the Ring was undertaken by the architect Erich Boltenstern, the renovated auditorium having a balcony, gallery and three tiers of boxes, with seating for 1642 and standing room for 567. Böhm conducted Fidelio at the reopening on 5 November 1955 and became the new director. The following year Ernst Ansermet conducted one of the Staatsoper’s rare premières, of Frank Martin’s Der Sturm. He resigned the same year after being reproached for excessive absences, and Herbert von Karajan was appointed to replace him. In the six years of Karajan’s single-handed direction, an exceptional number of 20th-century operas (Egk’s Der Revisor, Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler, Orff’s Trionfi and Oedipus der Tyrann, Pizzetti’s Assassinio nella cattedrale, Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites, Stravinsky’s Oedipus rex) and ballets were performed. A feature of Karajan’s years as director was the exchange of productions with La Scala, whereby Italian casts performed some of the Verdi and Puccini operas in Vienna, and Viennese casts took Mozart and Wagner works, and Pelléas et Mélisande, to Milan. From 1962 Karajan was assisted by an associate director, which left him more time for purely artistic concerns: he directed more operas himself (Tristan und Isolde, Tannhäuser, Die Frau ohne Schatten), introduced the singing of works in their original language and conducted some remarkable performances, including the Ring, Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea and operas by Verdi and Puccini. In 1963 Hilbert was appointed his associate, but personal tensions led to Karajan’s resignation the following year. Until his retirement in 1967 Hilbert attempted to fill the gap by engaging leading directors: in the last years of his life Wieland Wagner staged memorable performances of Lohengrin, Salome and Elektra. Singers of worldwide reputation contributed to the Staatsoper’s success in the era of Karajan and Hilbert, among them Mimi Coertse, Leontyne Price, Birgit Nilsson, Leonie Rysanek, Gundula Janowitz, Lucia Popp, James King, Fritz Wunderlich, Walter Berry, Eberhard Wächter, Peter Schreier, Nicolai Ghiaurov and some of the most famous Italian singers of the time, including Mirella Freni, Giulietta Simionato, Renata Tebaldi and Giuseppe di Stefano.

In the years that followed, the Staatsoper was placed in the charge of administrative directors, Heinrich Reif-Gintl and Rudolf Gamsjäger, who were unable to prevent a gradual deterioration in artistic standards. This was reflected in the steadily falling number of premières, increasingly rare performances of modern operas (not forgetting, however, the revival of Berg’s Lulu and the successful première of Gottfried von Einem’s Der Besuch der alten Dame as well as the first inclusion of Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron in the repertory of the Staatsoper) and a growing number of productions of limited artistic value. After 1966 the occasional appearance of Leonard Bernstein conducting Falstaff, Rosenkavalier and Fidelio was an attraction. In autumn 1976 the directorship of the Staatsoper was taken over by Egon Seefehlner and in 1979 Lorin Maazel’s appointment as conductor was announced with effect from 1982.

Maazel resigned after only two years and Seefehlner continued the directorship temporarily until 1986. From then until 1991 the director was Claus Helmut Drese, who brought with him from Zürich Claudio Abbado as music director. During these years Abbado secured excellent performances of the Italian repertory, including Simon Boccanegra with Giorgio Strehler as stage director, followed by works such as Wozzeck, Pelléas et Mélisande and Khovanshchina. The repertory was extended with more unusual operas by Dvořák, Massenet, Bartók, Schreker (Der ferne Klang) and others. Some elaborate performances have been rehearsed in collaboration with the Salzburg Festival and presented in Vienna immediately after their summer premières in Salzburg. There thus appeared in the 1981 programme Cerha’s Baal, in 1984 Berio’s Un re in ascolto and in 1986 Penderecki’s Die schwarze Maske. After the success of Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s Monteverdi cycle in Zürich with Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducting, Drese engaged Harnoncourt for a Mozart cycle, but this was far less successful.

Beginning in the 1991–2 season a new team assumed the management of the Staatsoper: Eberhard Wächter, who also continued as director of the Volksoper, and Joan Holender. The new team declined for the time being to mount new productions, dropped repeated stagings of several recent productions and employed a number of young, less well-known singers. In October 1991 Claudio Abbado laid down his musical directorship of the Staatsoper, apparently in connection with this development; and Wächter died in 1992.

Joan Holender then became director of the Staatsoper and Volksoper, and after the appointment of Klaus Bachler as director of the Volksoper in 1996, he was appointed director of the Staatsoper until the turn of the century. Holender, previously a successful manager of opera singers, brought many well-qualified but hitherto unknown singers to the Staatsoper, in a change to the system of using mainly star casts. He was not so successful with his constant practice of engaging relatively inexperienced conductors. Performances with Riccardo Muti or Christoph von Dohnányi as guest conductors became rare, and even experienced house conductors such as Horst Stein, Peter Schneider and Leopold Hager appeared infrequently. Highlights of this period included the world première of Alfred Schnittke’s Gesualdo and the first performance in Vienna of Britten’s Peter Grimes.

The Volksoper, Vienna’s second resident opera company, like the Staatsoper is open ten months of the year. Although for the first ten years after the war the theatre was used by the Staatsoper for half its productions, from 1955, expensively redecorated, it housed a largely successful attempt to revive the Viennese operetta and, to a lesser extent, to re-create the American musical in spectacular style. When the great popularity of these subsided, the Volksoper concentrated on offering competition to the Staatsoper with standard repertory works in German and presenting musical comedy and operetta. The reforms of the mid-1970s entailed, for both the Volksoper and the Staatsoper, far-reaching autonomy and independence from the state, which, as the assign of the former court government, controlled the allotment of the budget.

The Theater an der Wien, used from 1945 to 1955 for Staatsoper productions, was closed as unsafe in 1955, but was rescued and reopened in 1962 by Hilbert, then director of the Vienna Festival. Since then it has been financed by the city and used for stage productions during the festival (May and June; begun in 1951) and for musicals and operetta during the rest of the year. The Raimundtheater remains true to its traditional fare of Viennese operetta. The Schönbrunn Schlosstheater is used as a rehearsal stage for chamber operas performed by students of the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst. The Etablissement Ronacher, opened in 1881 and restored in the 1990s, is a variety theatre which sometimes puts on musical events. Since its foundation in 1952 the Wiener Kammeroper, under the artistic direction of Hans Gabor, followed by Rudolf Berger (from 1995) and Josef Hussek (1997), has played an important part in reviving older works, especially Viennese operas and Singspiele of the 18th and 19th centuries, performing in its own attractive house in the Fleischmarkt, and also in the Schlosstheater at Schönbrunn. Since the 1990s the Kammeroper has performed a number of contemporary works. Contemporary works are also performed in the Jugendstiltheater by the Wiener Operntheater and in the Odeon by Neue Oper Wien and other smaller companies, while the Wiener Taschenoper mounts operas on a small scale in various venues.

The enormous budget of the Staatsoper, unequalled by any comparable institution in the world and borne by means of taxes levied on the whole Austrian nation, is justified by its reputation and international influence. The high standard of performances owes much to the employment of Vienna PO players for the orchestra. The repertory comprises some 45 to 50 standard operas, and except for July and August the company plays daily for the entire year. The number of new productions each season has varied between five and eight, of which one or two are first performances of ballets. Die lustige Witwe (Lehár) was the first operetta to be performed there, in August 1999.

Vienna, §6: Since 1945

(ii) Concert life.

The Vienna PO has remained a private institution into which only members of the orchestra of the Staatsoper are admitted; in the early 1970s it was enlarged to 140 members and in 1997 the orchestra finally voted to admit women. It produces its own concerts and hires the orchestra out for recordings, television and film performances. The orchestra, which has retained its reputation as one of the finest in the world, gives an annual series of concerts in the Grosser Musikvereinssaal normally comprising nine subscription concerts and the annual ‘Nicolai concert’, a benefit performance for the orchestra’s pension fund, in memory of the Philharmonic’s co-founder. Because of the players’ commitments at the Staatsoper in the evenings, the concerts are given on Saturday afternoons (the ‘general rehearsal’, since 1921 open to the public) and on Sunday Mornings. The popularity of the mainly conservative programmes and the excellent performances under prominent conductors have meant that a subscription must virtually be inherited and that other tickets are almost unobtainable. During the period 1945–80 the subscription concerts were directed by various guest conductors, including Walter, Furtwängler, Mitropoulos, Schuricht, Cluytens, Knappertsbusch, Böhm, Karajan, Bernstein and Abbado. The Vienna PO’s tradition of international tours has continued. Also traditional are the orchestra’s concert and opera performances at the Salzburg Festival, and the New Year’s Day concert of waltzes and other dances of the Strauss family, conducted from 1955 by Willi Boskovsky (for many years the orchestra’s leader) and later by such conductors as Karajan, Carlos Kleiber, Muti and Maazel. The concert is broadcast by radio and television throughout most of the world. Since the 1970s contemporary music has been given a higher profile in Vienna PO programmes. Conductors who worked frequently with the orchestra in the 1980s and 1990s included Karajan, Bernstein, Maazel, Muti, Ozawa, Kleiber, Boulez and Solti.

The Vienna SO (126 members), second only to the Philharmonic in reputation, devotes itself exclusively to concerts and is the city’s real concert orchestra. It is engaged by various promoters such as the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, the Austrian Broadcasting Company (ORF) and particularly the Konzerthausgesellschaft, who are also responsible for choosing the conductor, though they must bear in mind the chief conductor, a position which since 1960 has been held by Sawallisch, Krips, Giulini, Rozhdestvensky, Prêtre, Frühbeck de Burgos and Vladimir Fedosejev. The orchestra, now largely subsidized by the city, has earned distinction for its performances of a wide-ranging repertory, including many modern works.

The Niederösterreichisches Tonkünstlerorchester (94 members), founded in 1947, is committed to the cultural interests of the province of Lower Austria, but it appears in Vienna, giving 12 Sunday afternoon concerts in the Grosser Musikvereinssaal, and makes occasional foreign tours. The orchestra includes works primarily from the Classical and Romantic repertory in its programmes, which aim to reach as wide an audience as possible; the second performances of most of its Vienna concerts are subscribed by the Austrian Trade Union Congress. Fabio Luisi was appointed chief conductor in 1995, followed by Carlos Kalmar in 2000.

The ORF SO (the Austrian RSO, 100 members) was founded in 1969 and primarily serves the radio network. In recent years, however, it has gradually assumed the role of Vienna’s third concert orchestra, also performing in the Austrian provinces and abroad. It is the only Viennese orchestra to specialize intensively in contemporary music and was the first to admit women. Among its principal conductors have been Milan Horvat, Leif Segerstam, Pinchas Steinberg, Luthar Zagrosek and, from 1996, Dennis Russell Davies. The excellent ORF Chorus was dissolved for financial reasons in 1995. The Arnold Schönberg Choir (conductor Erwin Ortner) became a leading ensemble in the 1980s, particularly in Classical and contemporary repertory.

The choir of the Vienna Staatsoper chorus, also professional, has 100 members. The Konzertvereinigung Wiener Staatsopernchor, made up of members of the opera chorus, formerly arranged several concerts of its own each season, but in the 1970s this activity diminished. It appears at the Salzburg Festival as well as in Vienna with the Vienna PO.

The Singverein der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, active in the headquarters of that organization and used in the performance of oratorios, is an autonomous body of 250 amateur members. Karajan undertook extensive concert tours with the choir (and with the Vienna SO) in the years immediately after World War II. Recently its role in the city’s concert life, like that of other choral societies, has decreased, but it still performs with the Vienna PO at the Salzburg Festival and occasionally makes recordings and appears in concerts abroad.

The Wiener Singakademie, which comprises 160 amateur singers and until 1974 was affiliated with the Wiener Konzerthausgesellschaft, has since World War II been especially active in the performance of 20th-century music. The choir has several times sung at the Perugia festival. The Arnold Schönberg Choir and the Chor der Musikalischen Jugend have become prominent in recent years, while other smaller choirs active after the war, such as the Akademie-Kammerchor and the Wiener Kammerchor, have mostly disappeared.

The Wiener Sängerknaben (Vienna Boys’ Choir), although it has always been part of the Hofmusikkapelle, is run as a private institution. The choirboys are trained at a boarding-school, since 1948 in the 16th-century Augarten-Palais, formerly the Palais Leeb. Four choirs are formed from around 100 pupils aged between ten and 14; each choir goes on concert tours for about three months of the year, mostly in Germany and the USA, giving about 300 concerts in total each year. The boys pay for their upkeep out of the fees obtained from their work on tours, with the Staatsoper, from recordings, and from television and radio appearances. Their widely varied repertory is supplemented by comic operas (performed in costume) and folksongs. Norbert Balatsch was appointed musical director of the Vienna Boys’ Choir in 1999.

The Hofmusikkapelle remains the chief institution for sacred music in the city. It consists of the Vienna Boys’ Choir, the men of the Staatsoper chorus and the Vienna PO. The ensemble, which appears under this name only in the Hofburgkapelle (the chapel in the Hofburg) and on its rare tours abroad, is considered to be the legitimate successor of the historic Hofmusikkapelle and is thus the city’s oldest existing musical institution. It performs at High Mass each Sunday; the works of the Viennese Classics (Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven) and Romantics (Schubert and Bruckner) predominate. It falls under the jurisdiction of the Federal Ministry for Education and Art. Church music is regularly performed in several churches, particularly the Stephansdom and the Augustinerkirche.

Shortly after World War II a number of pianists who now enjoy international reputations began to appear from the Vienna Akademie für Musik; the earliest was Friedrich Gulda, who was followed by Alfred Brendel, Jörg Demus, Alexander Jenner, Paul Badura-Skoda, Rudolf Buchbinder, Stefan Vladar, Till Fellner and others. The long tradition of Viennese string quartets has been carried on since the war by the Schneiderhan, Vienna Konzerthaus, Barylli, Vienna Philharmonic and Weller quartets, most of whose players also belonged to the Vienna PO. Only the Alban Berg Quartet, founded in 1970 and supported by the Alban Berg Foundation, has been able to devote itself entirely to quartet playing. The members of the Küchl Quartet and the Wiener Streichquartett also belong to the Vienna PO. Outstanding among younger Viennese string quartets is the Artis Quartet, formed in 1988. The Wiener Streichtrio and the Wiener Streichsextett are also internationally renowned.

In the early 1950s Vienna became the centre of a movement for the authentic performance of early music on the proper instruments of its period and in a historically faithful style. The movement began at the Akademie für Musik, where Professor Josef Mertin worked as a specialist in the practical and theoretical aspects of performing early music. Some of his pupils have achieved international recognition: Nikolaus Harnoncourt, who in 1953 founded the Concentus Musicus, best known for their recordings of Bach and Monteverdi; Eduard Melkus, a distinguished violinist who in 1965 founded the Capella Academica, which he led in Classical and pre-Classical instrumental music; René Clemencic, a virtuoso recorder player, who performed early instrumental and vocal music with his Clemencic Consort, founded in 1968; and Bernhard Klebel, who was similarly active with Ensemble Musica Antiqua, founded (by Clemencic) in 1959 as Musica Antiqua. In 1985 Martin Haselböck founded a period-instrument chamber orchestra, the Wiener Akademie. Important soloists involved in early music have included the harpsichordists Isolde Ahlgrimm and Vera Schwarz and the organists Anton Heiller and Hans Haselböck.

Until the early 1960s there was also an enormous interest in contemporary music, which was met principally with concerts organized by the Konzerthausgesellschaft directed by Egon Seefehlner. Since then financial difficulties and diminishing demand have considerably reduced the opportunities for hearing the works of young Austrian and foreign composers. Still important, however, is the group die reihe, founded by the composer Friedrich Cerha in 1958, which has performed mainly abroad. This group, like Kontrapunkte founded by Peter Keuschnig in 1967, concentrates largely on 20th-century music. Klangforum Wien, founded in 1985, specializes in the performance of new works. The ensemble Wiener Collage, whose members are mostly members of the PO, performs contemporary music. The chief vehicle for contemporary music is the ORF, which sponsors contemporary music concerts, many of them public, without having to rely on a paying audience. Smaller associations, such as the Internationale Gesellschaft für Neue Musik and the Österreichische Gesellschaft für Zeitgenössische Musik also give valuable support to 20th-century music, as does the Österreichische Gesellschaft für Musik, with its lectures and congresses. MICA, a state subsidised documentation centre primarily for new music in Austria, who founded in 1995. Other music societies include the Gesellschaft der Autoren, Komponisten und Musikverleger (AKM), which looks after the payment of royalties, the Österreichischer Musikrat, a governmental advisory body, and societies that promote performances of works by specific composers (Mozart-Gemeinde, Beethoven-Gesellschaft, Bruckner-Gesellschaft etc.)

The Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (also known simply as the Musikverein, as is the building which houses its halls and offices) continues to organize several series of concerts each season; normally two of these series are performed twice, one of choral-orchestral works and one of symphonic works, and employ the Vienna SO or, less frequently, the Vienna PO, the ORF SO or visiting orchestras. In addition to a further cycle of orchestral works, the society organizes a series of concerts using the organ of the Grosser Saal, and several cycles of chamber music (including lieder recitals) in the Brahmssaal.

Like the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, the Konzerthausgesellschaft organizes concerts and gives some six or eight cycles each year; at least one of these is of orchestral works, most often involving the Vienna SO, and others include piano and lieder recitals, chamber music and organ recitals. Since 1945 the Konzerthausgesellschaft has effectively served the Viennese public’s desire to ‘catch up’ by its presentation of international contemporary music, by bringing about a Mahler renaissance and by its intensive support for the music of the Second Viennese School as well as for both the Austrian and the international avant garde. Correspondingly, the number of first performances sponsored by the society is far higher than that of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. The Musikalische Jugend Österreichs gives some 400 performances in Vienna every season, including many orchestral concerts.

Since the recent reorganization of its orchestra, the ORF has played an increasing role in the city’s musical life. Its concerts, which are open to the public, take place partly in the studio (250 seats) and partly in the halls of the Musikverein or the Konzerthaus. Because of its financial independence the ORF has the resources to support modern music and to promote the works of Austrian composers, and even its programmes aimed at a wider audience emphasize 20th-century music. The ORF is also valuable for its intensive collaboration with the other concert organizers, some of whose concerts it broadcasts and supports financially. Vienna puts on several hundred musical events each summer in palaces, museums, halls and in the park of Schönbrunn palace.

The Vienna Festival (Wiener Festwochen), which has taken place annually in May and June since 1951, was previously held between 1927 and 1937, when it was unable to compete with the better-established Salzburg Festival. The Vienna Festival of the postwar years, a registered association subsidized chiefly by the city, attempts at the end of each concert season (the peak time for tourism) to present a concentrated sampling of Vienna’s outstanding cultural activities. This involves, apart from theatre, music in particular and recently has included an increasing amount of ballet. Since 1963 the Theater an der Wien has been used for opera and ballet performances by visiting companies and occasionally for independent local productions of opera. The first postwar Viennese production of Berg’s Lulu was given during the directorship of Hilbert (1962–3). Generally the management largely relies for attractions on the city’s permanent concert organizers, like the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde and the Konzerthausgesellschaft, who in alternate years make their own music festivals coincide with the larger Vienna Festival. In 1998 a large-scale Arnold Schoenberg centre was set up in Vienna. The centre administers Schoenberg’s estate and contains a library, an archive and performance rooms. Its president is Nuria Schönberg-Nono. An autumn festival of contemporary music, Wien Modern, was established in 1988, with Abbado as music director. Each festival provides a comprehensive survey of the music of four or five composers. In 1995 a Herbert von Karajan centre was set up in the city; it provides an archival record of the conductor’s work and organizes informal conferences and events for young people.

Vienna, §6: Since 1945

(iii) Education.

The Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst (until 1998 the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst), now housed in several buildings in the city, was raised to the status of a Hochschule in 1970 and confers university-level degrees. There are approximately 3000 students and 320 instructors; apart from vocal, instrumental and conducting tuition, there are classes for drama (Max-Reinhardt-Seminar), film and television studies, the sociology of music and 12-note technique. The department of composition, music theory and conducting has been affiliated to the Institut für Elektroakustik und experimentelle Musik. The most prestigious Viennese competition is the Beethoven Piano Competition, held in the Hochschule every four years.

The Konservatorium der Stadt Wien, taken over by the city in 1938, offers professional training in all branches of music. It maintains 16 local music schools and a children’s singing school.

The Musikwissenschaftliches Institut of the university, which has a strong philological and historical bias, offers the PhD degree; in 1996 Gernot Gruber succeeded Ottmar Wessely as the institute’s director. A chair of ethnomusicology, founded at the institute in 1908, was re-established in 1963. The institute has a comprehensive library. Other exceptionally endowed music libraries in the city belong to the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (recent librarians have included Leopold Nowak and Franz Grasberger), the Wiener Stadtbibliothek, the Universität für Musik and the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. The Österreichische Nationalbibliothek houses the Photogramm-Archiv assembled by Antony van Hoboken, of whose extensive private collection the eminent scholar Otto Erich Deutsch was librarian. The music collection of the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, among the most important in the world, contains some 50,000 manuscripts, 115,000 items of printed music and 50,000 music books.

A grove of honour was created in Vienna’s central cemetery in the 19th century. It contains the graves of about 60 composers, including those of Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Wolf and Schoenberg.

c: opera and other musical theatre

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A General studies. B Hofkapelle. C Opera and other musical theatre. D Concert life. E Genres and styles. F Music education. G Publishers. H Instrument making. I Vienna and its composers. J Other studies.

a: general studies

b: hofkapelle

i: vienna and its composers

j: other studies

a: general studies

Wienerstadt: Lebensbilder aus der Gegenwart (Vienna, 1895)

J. Mantuani: Geschichte der Musik in Wien, i: Von den Römerzeiten bis zum Tode des Kaisers Max I. (Vienna, 1904) [no more pubd]

A. Schnerich: Geschichte der Musik in Wien und Niederösterreich (Vienna, 1921)

M. Graf: Legend of a Musical City (New York, 1945)

E. Schenk: Kleine Wiener Musikgeschichte (Vienna, 1946, 2/1947)

G. Gugitz: Bibliographie zur Geschichte und Stadtkunde von Wien (Vienna, 1946–58)

R. Valerian: Wiener Musik: ihr Wesen und Werden (Vienna, 1947)

H. Gál: The Golden Age of Vienna (New York, 1948)

A. Witeschnik: Musik aus Wien: die Geschichte einer Weltbezauberung (Vienna, 1949)

A. Orel: Musikstadt Wien (Vienna and Stuttgart, 1953)

E. Gartenberg: Vienna: its Musical Heritage (State College, PA, 1968)

J.-L. Mayer: Die politischen und sozialen Hintergründe von Musik und Musikpflege in Wien in den Jahren 1840 bis 1880 (diss., U. of Vienna, 1978)

E. Ostleitner: Musiksoziographie in Österreich (Vienna, 1980)

E. Neilsen, ed.: Focus on Vienna 1900: Change and Continuity in Literature, Music, Art and Intellectual History (Munich, 1982)

L. Botstein: Music and its Public: Habits of Listening and the Crisis of Musical Modernism in Vienna, 1870–1914 (diss., Harvard U., 1985)

F. Endler: Musik in Wien, Musik aus Wien: eine kleine Wiener Musikgeschichte (Vienna, 1985)

R. Gerlach: Musik und Jugendstil der Wiener Schule, 1900–1908 (Laaber, 1985)

A.M. Hanson: Musical Life in Biedermeier Vienna (Cambridge, 1985; rev. Ger. trans., Vienna, 1987)

R. Waissenberger: Die Wiener Sezession, 1897–1985 (Vienna, 1986)

D. Beales: Joseph II, i: In the Shadow of Maria Theresia, 1740–80 (Cambridge, 1987)

H. Kretschmer: Wiener Musikergedenkstätten (Vienna, 1988, /R1990)

F. Endler: Vienna: a Guide to its Music and Musicians (Portland, OR, 1989)

J.A. Rice: ‘Vienna under Joseph II and Leopold II’, Man & Music: the Classical Era, ed. N. Zaslaw (Englewood Cliffs, NJ and London, 1989), 126–65

R. Stephan, ed.: Die Wiener Schule (Darmstadt, 1989)

H.-L. de la Grange: Vienne: histoire musicale, i: 1100–1848 (Arles, 1990); ii: 1848 à nos jours (Arles, 1991)

A. Weikert: Musik-Spaziergang in Wien (Vienna, 1991)

S. Wollenberg: ‘Vienna under Joseph I and Charles VI’, Man & Music: the Late Baroque Era: from the 1680s to 1740, ed. G.J. Buelow (Englewood Cliffs, NJ and London, 1993), 324–54

R. Flotzinger and G. Gruber: Musikgeschichte Österreichs, ii: Vom Barock zum Vormärz, iii: Von der Revolution 1848 zur Gegenwart (Vienna, 1995)

D. Heartz: Haydn, Mozart and the Viennese School, 1740–1780 (New York, 1995)

D. Beales: ‘Court, Government and Society in Mozart’s Vienna’,Wolfgang Amadè Mozart: Essays on his Life and his Music, ed. S. Sadie (Oxford, 1996), 3–20

P. Ebner and others: Strukturen des Musiklebens in Wien: zum musikalischen Vereinsleben in der Ersten Republik (Frankfurt and New York, 1996)

Music imperialis: 500 Jahre Hofmusikkapelle in Wien 1498–1998, Die Musiksammlung der österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, 11 May–10 Nov 1998 (Tutzing, 1998) [exhibition catalogue]

b: hofkapelle

L. von Köchel: Die kaiserliche Hof-Musikkapelle in Wien von 1543 bis 1867 (Vienna, 1869)

C. Wolfsgruber: Die k.u.k. Hofburgkapelle und die k.u.k. geistliche Hofkapelle (Vienna, 1905)

A. Koczirz: ‘Excerpte aus den Hofmusikakten des Wiener Hofkammerarchivs’, SMw, i (1913), 278–303

A. Smijers: ‘Die kaiserliche Hofmusik-Kapelle von 1543 bis 1619’, SMw, vi (1919), 139–86; vii (1920), 102–42; viii (1921), 166–75; ix (1922), 43–81 [pubd separately (Vienna, 1922)]

P. Nettl: ‘Zur Geschichte der Kaiserlichen Hofmusik-Kapelle von 1636 bis 1680’, SMw, xvi (1929), 70–85; xvii (1930), 95–104; xviii (1931), 23–35; xix (1932), 33–40

A. Koczirz: ‘Die Auflösung der Hofmusikkapelle nach dem Tode Kaiser Maximilians I.’, ZMw, xiii (1930–31), 531–40

O. zur Nedden: ‘Zur Geschichte der Musik am Hofe Kaiser Maximilians I.’, ZMw, xv (1932–3), 24–32

F.J. Grobauer: Die Nachtigallen aus der Wiener Burgkapelle (Horn, 1954)

G. Reichert: ‘Die Preces primariae-Register Maximilians I. und seine Hofkapelle um 1508’, AMw, xi (1954), 103–19

O. Wessely: ‘Beiträge zur Geschichte der maximilianischen Hofkapelle’, AÖAW, xcii (1955), 370–88

H. Federhofer: ‘Die Niederländer an den Habsburgerhöfen in Österreich’,AÖAW, xciii (1956), 102–20

O. Wessely: ‘Archivalische Beiträge zur Musikgeschichte des maximilianischen Hofes’, SMw, xxiii (1956), 79–134

H. Knaus: ‘Wiener Hofquartierbücher als biographische Quelle für Musiker des 17. Jahrhunderts’, AÖAW, cii (1965), 178–206

F. Riedel: Die Musiker im Archivbestand des kaiserlichen Obersthofmeisteramtes (1637–1705) (Vienna, 1967–9)

F. Riedel: ‘Die Musiker in den geheimen kaiserlichen Kammerzahlamts-Rechnungsbüchern (1669, 1705–1711)’, AÖAW, cvi (1969), 15–38

F.W. Riedel: Kirchenmusik am Hof Karls VI. (1711–40): Untersuchungen zum Verhältnis von Zeremoniell und musikalischen Stil im Barockzeitalter (Habilitationsschrift, U. of Mainz, 1971)

W. Pass: Musik und Musiker am Hof Maximilians II. (Habilitationsschrift, U. of Vienna, 1972)

H. Herrmann-Schneider: Status und Funktion des Hofkapellmeisters in Wien, 1848–1918 (Innsbruck, 1981)

R. Steurer: Das Repertoire der Wiener Hofmusikkapelle im 19. Jahrhundert (Tutzing, 1998)

c: opera and other musical theatre

M. Kalbeck: Wiener Opernabende (Berlin and Vienna, 1884–5)

O. Teuber: Das k.k. Hofburgtheater seit seiner Begründung (Vienna,1896)

A. von Weilen: Geschichte des Wiener Theaterwesens von den ältesten Zeiten bis zu den Anfängen der Hoftheater (Vienna, 1899)

A. von Weilen: Zur Wiener Theatergeschichte (Vienna, 1901)

R. Wallaschek: Das k.k. Hofoperntheater (Vienna, 1909)

R. Smekal: Das alte Burgtheater 1776–1888 (Vienna, 1916)

R. Specht: Das Wiener Operntheater: von Dingelstedt bis Schalk und Strauss (Vienna, 1919)

E. Wellesz: Der Beginn des musikalischen Barock und die Anfänge der Oper in Wien (Vienna and Leipzig, 1922)

R. Haas: Gluck und Durazzo im Burgtheater (Zurich, Leipzig and Vienna, 1925)

R. Haas: Die Wiener Oper (Vienna and Budapest, 1926)

F. Hadamowsky: Das Theater in der Leopoldstadt 1781–1860 (Vienna, 1934)

O. Deleglise: Das Schönbrunner Schlosstheater (Vienna, 1947)

F. Farga: Die Wiener Oper (Vienna, 1947)

F. Hadamowsky and H. Otte: Die Wiener Operette (Vienna, 1947)

W. Beetz: Das Wiener Opernhaus: 1869 bis 1945 (Zurich, 1949, 2/1955 as Das Wiener Opernhaus: 1869 bis 1955)

A. Bauer: 150 Jahre Theater an der Wien (Zürich, Leipzig and Vienna,1952)

E. Pirchan, A. Witeschnik and O. Fritz: 300 Jahre Wiener Operntheater (Vienna, 1953)

A. Bauer: Opern und Operetten in Wien: Verzeichnis ihrer Erstaufführungen von 1629 bis zur Gegenwart (Graz and Cologne, 1955)

M. Graf: Die Wiener Oper (Vienna, 1955)

A. Bauer: Das Theater in der Josefstadt zu Wien (Vienna and Munich, 1957)

T. Jauner: Fünf Jahre Wiener Operntheater: 1875–1880, Franz Jauner und seine Zeit (Vienna, 1962)

H. Kralik: Die Wiener Oper (Vienna, 1963)

F. Hadamowsky: Die Wiener Hoftheater (Staatstheater), i: 1766–1810; ii: Die Wiener Hofoper (Staatsoper), 1811–1974 (Vienna, 1966–75)

O.E. Deutsch: ‘Das Repertoire der höfischen Oper, der Hof- und der Staatsoper’, ÖMz, xxiv (1969), 369, 379–421

M. Prawy: Die Wiener Oper (Vienna, 1969)

O. Michtner: Das alte Burgtheater als Opernbühne (Vienna, 1970)

G. Zechmeister: Die Wiener Theater nächst der Burg und dem Kärntnerthor von 1747–1776 (Vienna, 1971)

P. Branscombe: ‘Music in the Viennese Popular Theatre of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’, PRMA, xcviii (1971–2), 101–12

H.-C. Hoffmann, W. Krause and W. Kitlitschka: Das Wiener Opernhaus (Wiesbaden, 1972)

E. Badura-Skoda: ‘The Influence of the Viennese Popular Comedy on Haydn and Mozart’, PRMA, c (1973–4), 185–99

F. Willnauer: Gustav Mahler und die Wiener Oper (Vienna and Munich, 1979, 2/1993)

K. Blaukopf: ‘Music and Opera’, Vienna 1890–1920, ed. R. Waissenberger (New York, 1984), 215–46

N. Tschulik: Musiktheater in Österreich: die Oper im 20. Jahrhundert (Vienna, 1984)

I. Bontinck: Angebot, Repertoire und Publikum des Musiktheaters in Wien und Graz (Vienna, 1985)

H. Seifert: Die Oper am Wiener Kaiserhof im 17. Jahrhundert (Tutzing, 1985)

A. Seebohm, ed.: Die Wiener Oper: 350 Jahre Glanz und Tradition (Vienna, 1986)

J.A. Rice: Emperor and Impresario: Leopold II and the Transformation of Viennese Musical Theatre (diss., U. of California, Berkeley, 1987)

F. Hadamowsky: Wien, Theatergeschichte: von den Anfängen bis zum Ende des Ersten Weltkrieges (Vienna, 1988)

H. Seifert: Der Sig-prangende Hochzeit-Gott: Hochzeitsfeste am wiener Hof der Habsburger und ihre Allegorik 1622–1699 (Vienna, 1988)

M. Lichtfuss: Operette im Ausverkauf: Studien zum Libretto des musikalischen Unterhaltungstheaters im Österreich der Zwischenkriegszeit (Vienna and Cologne, 1989)

Die Wiener Staatsoper (Vienna, 1990)

R. Farkas, ed.: Das Musiktheater um die Jahrhundertwende: Wien-Budapest um 1900 (Vienna, 1990)

B.A. Brown: Gluck and the French Theatre in Vienna (Oxford, 1991)

C.H. Drese: Im Palast der Gefühle: Erfahrungen aus den Enthüllungen eines Wiener Operndirektors (Munich, 1993)

S. Rode-Breymann: Die Wiener Staatsoper in den Zwischenkriegsjahren: ihr Beitrag zum zeitgenössischen Musiktheater (Tutzing, 1994)

M. Czáky: ‘Der soziale und kulturelle Kontext der Wiener Operette’, Johann Strauss: zwischen Kunstanspruch und Volksvergnügen, ed. L. Finscher and A. Riethmüller (Darmstadt, 1995), 28–65

E. Grossegger: Gluck and d’Afflisio: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Verpachtung des Burgtheaters (1765/7–1770): Festgabe der Kommission für Theatergeschichte zum 75. Geburtstag von Margret Dietrich (Vienna, 1995)

H. Hoyer: Chronik der Wiener Staatsoper 1945–1995 (Vienna and Munich, 1995)

M. Czáky: Ideologie der Operette und Wiener Moderne: ein kulturhistorischer Essay zur österreichischen Identität (Vienna, 1996)

F. Pirani: ‘Operatic Links Between Rome and Vienna, 1776–1790’,Wolfgang Amadè Mozart: Essays on his Life and his Music, ed. S. Sadie (Oxford, 1996), 395–402

W. Sinkovicz: Das Haus am Ring: die Wiener Oper (Vienna, c1996)

L. Fall and others: Zur Geschichte der Wiener Operette: Autographen, Photographien und Dokumente aus den Nachlässen (Vienna, 1997)

K. Bachler: Die Volksoper: das Wiener Musiktheater (Vienna, 1998)

P. Hanák: ‘The Cultural Role of the Vienna-Budapest Operetta’, The Garden and the Workshop: Essays on the Cultural History of Vienna and Budapest (Princeton, NJ, 1998), 133–46

H. Helbing, ed.: Die Wiener Staatsoper (Vienna, 1999)

d: concert life

E. Hanslick: Geschichte des Concertwesens in Wien (Vienna, 1869)

C.F. Pohl: Denkschrift aus Anlass des hundertjährigen Bestehens der Tonkünstler-Societät (Vienna, 1871)

C.F. Pohl: Die Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde des österreichischen Kaiserstaates und ihr Conservatorium (Vienna, 1871)

K. Hofmann: Der Wiener Männergesangverein (Vienna, 1893)

A.J.G. Böhm: Geschichte des Singvereines (Vienna, 1908)

R. von Perger and R. Hirschfeld: Geschichte der k.k. Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien (Vienna, 1912)

A. Weiss: Fünfzig Jahre Schubertbund (Vienna, 1913)

H. Kralik: Die Wiener Philharmoniker (Vienna, 1938, enlarged 2/1951 as Das grosse Orchester, enlarged 4/1960 as Die Wiener Philharmoniker und ihre Dirigenten)

W. Jerger: Die Wiener Philharmoniker (Vienna, 1942)

H. Kralik: Das Buch der Musikfreunde (Vienna, 1951)

D. Schönfeldt: Die Wiener Philharmoniker (Vienna, 1956)

F. Grasberger: Die Wiener Philharmoniker bei Johann Strauss (Vienna, 1963)

A. Planyavsky: ‘Die vor-philharmonische Zeit’, ÖMz, xxii (1967), 74–111

H. Weigel: Das Buch der Wiener Philharmoniker (Salzburg, 1967)

Hundert Jahre goldener Saal (Vienna, 1970) [anniversary pubn on the Grosser Musikvereinssaal]

W. Weber: Music and the Middle Classes: the Social Structure of Concert Life in London, Paris, and Vienna (New York, 1975)

80 Jahre Wiener Symphoniker, 1900–1980 (Vienna, 1980)

F.C. Heller and P. Revers: Wiener Konzerthaus: Geschichte und Bedeutung, 1913–1983 (Vienna, 1983)

J.K. Meibach: Schoenberg’s ‘Society for Musical Private Performances’, Vienna 1918–1922: a Documentary Study (diss., U. of Pittsburgh, 1984)

H.-K. Metzger and R. Riehn: Schönbergs Verein für musikalische Privataufführungen (Munich, 1984)

H. and K. Blaukopf: Die Wiener Philharmoniker: Wesen, Werden, Wirken eines grossen Orchesters (Vienna, 1986)

N. Petrat: Hausmusik des Biedermeier im Blickpunkt der zeitgenössischen musikalischen Fachpresse, 1815–1848 (Hamburg, 1986)

E. Ramminger: Die Wiener Musiksgesangsvereine (diss., U. of Vienna, 1989)

Klang und Komponist: Vienna 1990

E. Kobau: Die Wiener Symphoniker: eine sozialgeschichtliche Studie (Vienna, 1991)

C. Hellsberg: Demokratie der Könige: die Geschichte der Wiener Philharmoniker (Zürich and Vienna, 1992)

M.S. Morrow: Concert Life in Haydn’s Vienna: Aspects of a Developing Musical and Social Institution (New York, 1992) [see also review by D. Edge in Haydn Yearbook, xvii (1992), 108–66]

G. Lechleitner and H. Kowar: ‘Musikleben im Verborgenen: Hausmusik und Hauskonzert in Wien’, ÖMz, xlvii (1993), 401–12

T. Angyan, O. Biba and M. Wagner, eds.: Goldene Klänge: Künstler im Musikverein (Vienna, 1995)

C. Pete: Geschichte der Wiener Tonkünstler-Societät (diss., U. of Vienna, 1996)

e: genres and styles

G. Adler: ‘Zur Geschichte der Wiener Messkomposition in der zweiten Hälfte des 17. Jahrhunderts’, SMw, iv (1916), 5–45

I. Pollak-Schlaffenberg: ‘Die Wiener Liedmusik von 1778–1789’, SMw, v (1918), 97–151

J. Torbé: Die weltliche Solokantate in Wien um die Wende des 17.–18. Jahrhunderts (diss., U. of Vienna, 1920)

P. Nettl: ‘Die Wiener Tanzkomposition in der zweiten Hälfte des 17. Jahrhunderts’, SMw, viii (1921), 45–165

P. Stefan: Neue Musik in Wien (Leipzig, 1921)

E. Alberti-Radanowicz: ‘Das Wiener Lied von 1789 bis 1815’, SMw, x (1923), 37–78

H. Vogl: ‘Zur Geschichte des Oratoriums in Wien von 1725 bis 1740’,SMw, xiv (1927), 241–64

P. Nettl: Das Wiener Lied im Zeitalter des Barock (Vienna and Leipzig,1934)

G. Reichert: Zur Geschichte der Wiener Messenkomposition in der ersten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts (diss., U. of Vienna, 1935)

R. Haas: ‘Der Wiener Bühnentanz von 1740–1767’, JbMP 1938, 77–93

H. Rupprich: ‘Das mittelalterliche Schauspiel in Wien’, Jb der Grillparzer-Gesellschaft, new ser., iii (Vienna, 1943), 27–73

A. Liess: Wiener Barockmusik (Vienna, 1946)

O. Rommel: Wiener Renaissance (Vienna and Zürich, 1947)

L. Schmidt: Das Volkslied im alten Wien (Vienna, 1947)

K. Schoenbaum: Beiträge zur solistischen katholischen Kirchenmusik des Hochbarocks (diss., U. of Vienna, 1951)

G. Gugitz: Lieder der Strasse: die Bänkelsänger im Josephinischen Wien (Vienna, 1954)

W. Kramer: Die Musik im Wiener Jesuitendrama von 1677–1711 (diss., U. of Vienna, 1961)

J.P. Larsen: ‘Some Observations on the Development and Characteristics of Vienna Classical Instrumental Music’, SM, ix (1967), 115–39

O. Biba: ‘Die Wiener Kirchenmusik um 1783’, Beiträge zur Musikgeschichte des 18. Jahrhunderts, ed. F. Heller [Jb für österreichische Kulturgeschichte, ii/1] (Eisenstadt, 1971), 7–79

G. Gruber: Das Wiener Sepolcro und Johann Joseph Fux (Graz, 1972)

R. Klein: ‘Musik 1945–1970’, Österreich: die zweite Republik, ed. E. Weinzierl and K. Skalnik (Graz, Vienna and Cologne, 1972), 477–90

V. Hofmann: Die Serenata am Hofe Kaiser Leopolds I. 1658–1705 (diss., U. of Vienna, 1975)

S. Lohr: Drum hab i Wean so gern: Wien und seine Lieder (Vienna and New York, 1980)

B.C. MacIntyre: The Viennese Concerted Mass of the Early Classical Period (Ann Arbor, 1986)

G. Cerha: ‘Neue Musik in Wien’, ÖMz, xlv (1990), 539–60, 611–25

E. West: ‘Masonic Song and the Development of the Kunstlied in Enlightenment Vienna’, The Austrian Enlightenment and its Aftermath, ed. R. Robertson and E. Timms (Edinburgh, 1991), 71–87

G. Bronner: Die goldene Zeit des Wiener Cabarets (St Andrä-Wördern, 1995)

f: music education

R. Lach: Geschichte der Staatsakademie und Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst (Vienna, Prague and Leipzig, 1927)

E. Tittel: Die Wiener Musikhochschule (Vienna, 1967)

E. Schenk: ‘Musikwissenschaft an der Universität Wien’,SPFFBU, H4 (1969), 7–16

H. Fleischmann: Das Musikschulwesen in der Stadt Wien in der ersten Hälfte des XIX. Jahrhunderts (diss., U. of Vienna, 1989)

G. Gruber: Franz Schmidt als Rektor der Fachhochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Wien, 1927–1931 (Vienna, 1990)

L. Heller: Geschichte der Wiener Musikhochschule 1909–1970 (Vienna,1994)

E. Möller: Die Musiklehranstalten der Stadt Wien und ihre Vorläufer in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts (diss., U. of Vienna, 1994)

I. Witasek: Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Wien (Vienna, 1995)

C. Benedikt: ‘Notizen zum Musikunterricht im Wien der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts’, … eine Festschrift für Eberhard Würzl, ed. W. Pass (Vienna, 1996), 31–51

E. Ortner: Universität für Musik un darstellende Kunst Wien: Anton von Webernplatz 1 (Dokumentation zur Eröffnung des neuen Hauptgebäudes, Vienna, 1999)

g: publishers

A. Weinmann, ed: Beiträge zur Geschichte des Alt-Wiener Musikverlages (Vienna, 1948–87)

A. Weinmann: Wiener Musikverleger und Musikalienhändler von Mozarts Zeit bis gegen 1860 (Vienna, 1956)

P. Riethus: ‘Der Wiener Musikdruck im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert’,Das Antiquariat, xiv (Vienna, 1958), 5–9

E. Hilmar, ed.: 75 Jahre Universal Edition (Vienna, 1976)

H. Vogg: Hundert Jahre Musikverlag Doblinger, 1876–1976 (Vienna,1976)

h: instrument making

A. Malecek: ‘Beiträge zur Geschichte der Wiener Lautenmacher im Mittelalter’, Jb des Vereins für Geschichte der Stadt Wien, v–vi (Vienna, 1946–7), 5–23

H. Haupt: ‘Wiener Instrumentenbauer von 1791 bis 1815’, SMw, xxiv (1960), 120–84

R. Schaal: ‘Biographische Quellen zu Wiener Musikern und Instrumentenmachern’, SMw, xxvi (1964), 194–212

K. Schütz: Der Wiener Orgelbau in der zweiten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts (Vienna, 1969)

H. Ottner: Der Wiener Instrumentenbau, 1815–1883 (Vienna, 1977)

i: vienna and its composers

R. Tenschert: Richard Strauss und Wien: eine Wahlverwandtschaft (Vienna, 1949)

P.-G. Langevin and others: Le siècle de Bruckner: A. Bruckner, H. Wolf, G. Mahler, A. Schoenberg, Franz Schmidt et ses contemporains: essais pour une nouvelle perspective sur les maîtres viennois du second âge d’or (Paris, 1975)

O. Brusatti: Schubert im Wiener Vormärz: Dokumente 1829–1848 (Graz, 1978)

R. Waissenberger, ed.: Wien zur Zeit Joseph Haydns, Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien, 13 May – 10 Oct 1982 (Vienna, 1982) [exhibition catalogue]

J. Kallir: Arnold Schoenberg’s Vienna (New York, 1984)

N. Vogel: Schönberg und die Folgen: die Irrwege einer neuen Musik (Bonn, 1984–97)

F. Heller: ‘Der Musiker in seiner gesellschaftlichen Stellung in Wien in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts: am Beispiel Brahms und Bruckner’,Johannes Brahms und Anton Bruckner: Linz 1983, 41–7

R. Iovino: Gli Strauss a Vienna: quando il valzer univa l’Europa (Padua, 1985)

I. Osborne: Schubert and his Vienna (New York, 1985)

O.A. Smith: Schoenberg and his Circle: a Viennese Portrait (New York, 1986)

L. Botstein: ‘Time and Memory: Concert Life, Science, and Music in Brahms’s Vienna’, Brahms and his World, ed. W. Frisch (Princeton, NJ, 1990), 3–22

V. Braunbehrens: Mozart in Wien (Munich, 1986; Eng. trans., 1990)

J. Korngold: Die Korngolds in Wien: die Musikkritiker und das Wunderkind, Aufzeichnungen (Zürich, 1991)

L. Botstein: ‘Strauss and the Viennese Critics (1896–1924)’, Richard Strauss and His World, ed. B. Gilliam (Princeton, NJ, 1992), 3–32

F.C. Heller, ed.: Biographische Beiträge zum Musikleben Wiens im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert, i: Leopoldine Blahetka, Eduard Hanslick, Robert Hirschfeld (Vienna, 1992)

O. Kolleritsch, ed.: Beethoven und die Zweite Wiener Schule (Vienna, 1992)

M. Notley: ‘Brahms as Liberal: Genre, Style, and Politics in Late Nineteenth-Century Vienna’, 19CM, xvii (1993–4), 107–23

A. Barker: ‘Battles of the Mind: Berg and the Cultural Politics of Vienna 1900’, The Cambridge Companion to Berg, ed. A. Pople (Cambridge, 1997), 24–37

L. Botstein: ‘Realism Transformed: Franz Schubert and Vienna’,The Cambridge Companion to Schubert, ed. C. Gibbs (Cambridge and New York, 1997), 15–35

R. Erickson: Schubert’s Vienna (New Haven and London, 1997)

M. Notley: ‘Bruckner and Viennese Wagnerism’, Bruckner Studies, ed. T. Jackson and P. Hawkshaw (Cambridge, 1997), 54–71

E. Krenek: Im Atem der Zeit: Erinnerungen an die Moderne (Hamburg, 1998)

W. Sinkovicz: Mehr als zwölf Töne: Arnold Schönberg (Vienna, 1998)

L. Botstein: ‘Gustav Mahlers Vienna’, The Mahler Companion, ed. D. Mitchell and A. Nicholson (New York and Oxford, 1999), 6–38

L. Botstein: ‘Brahms and his Audience: the Late Viennese Years, 1875–1897’,The Cambridge Companion to Brahms, ed. M. Musgrave (Cambridge, 1999), 51–75

I. Dürhammer: Schuberts literarische Heimat (Vienna, 1999)

M. Steiger: Richard Strauss-Karl Böhm: Briefwechsel (Wiesbaden, 1999)

C. Wagner-Trenkwitz: Durch die Hand der Schönheit: Richard Strauss und Wien (Vienna, 1999)

3. Instrumental ensembles.

j: other studies

G. Adler, ed.: Internationale Ausstellung für Musik- und Theaterwesen Wien 1892: Fach-Katalog der Musikhistorischen Abtheilung von Deutschland und Oesterreich-Ungarn (Vienna, 1892)

W. Reich, ed.: 23 – Eine Wiener Musikzeitschrift (1932–7, /R, 1971)

H. Brunner: Die Kantorei bei St. Stephan in Wien (Vienna, 1948)

E. Komorzynski: ‘Die Sankt-Nikolausbruderschaft in Wien (1288 bis 1782)’,Festschrift Wilhelm Fischer, ed. H. Zingerle (Innsbruck, 1956), 71–4

T. Helm: Fünfzig Jahre Wiener Musikleben (1866–1916): Erinnerungen eines Musikkritikers (Vienna, 1977)

M. Wagner: Geschichte der österreichischen Musikkritik in Beispielen(Tutzing, 1979)

W. Sauer: ‘Musikvereine an Wiener Kirchen im 19. und beginnenden 20. Jahrhundert: Untersuchungen zu einem Bereich künstlerischer Selbstdarstellung des katholischen Bürgertums’, KJb, lxiii–lxiv (1979–80), 81–114

R. Kannonier: Zwischen Beethoven und Eisler: zur Arbeitermusikbewegung in Österreich (Vienna, 1981)

E. Diettrich: ‘Jenseits von Gefühl und Anschauung: zum Musikbegriff des ausgehenden 19. Jahrhunderts in Wien’, Bruckner, Liszt, Mahler und die Moderne: Linz 1986, 105–8

Musik im mittelalterlichen Wien, Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien, 18 Dec 1986 – 8 March 1987 (Vienna, 1987) [exhibition catalogue]

St Michael, 1288–1988: Stadtpfarrkirche und Künstlerpfarre von Wien, Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien, 26 May – 2 Oct 1988 (Vienna, 1988) [exhibition catalogue]

N.W. Seidl: Musik und Austromarxismus: zur Musikrezeption der österreichischen Arbeiterbewegung im späten Kaiserreich und in der ersten Republik (Vienna, 1989)

S. Weissman: ‘Vienna: Bastion of Conservatism’, Man & Music: the Early Romantic Era: between Revolutions 1789 and 1848, ed. A. Ringer (Englewood Cliffs, NJ and London, 1990), 84–108

P. Banks: ‘Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Modernism’, Man & Music: the Late Romantic Era: from the Mid-Nineteenth Century to World War I, ed. J. Samson (Englewood Cliffs, NJ and London, 1991), 362–88

G.J. Eder: Wiener Musikfeste zwischen 1918 und 1938: ein Beitrag zur Vergangenheitsbewältigung (Vienna, 1991)

O. Rathkolb: Führertreu und Gottbegnadet: Künstlereliten im Dritten Reich (Vienna, 1991)

A. Schmidt: Der ethnische Aspekt der Musik: Nietzsches ‘Geburt der Tragödie’ und die Wiener klassische Musik (Wartburg, 1991)

H. Veigl, ed.: Luftmenschen spielen Theater: jüdisches Kabarett in Wien, 1890–1938(Himberg and Vienna, 1992)

H. Goertz: Musikhandbuch für Österreich: Struktur und Organisation des österreichischen Musikwesens: Name, Adressen, Information (Vienna, 3/1993)

L. Botstein: ‘Egon Schiele and Arnold Schoenberg: The Cultural Politics of Aesthetic Innovation in Vienna’, Egon Schiele: Art, Sexuality and Viennese Modernism, ed. P. Werkner (Palo Alto, 1994), 101–117

K. Painter: ‘The Sensuality of Timbre: Responses to Mahler and Modernity at the Fin de siècle’, 19CM, xviii (1994–5), 236–56

J. Harer: ‘Musical Venues in Vienna: Seventeenth Century to the Present’, Performance Practice Review, viii (1995), 84–92

S. McColl: Music Criticism in Vienna, 1896–1897: Critically Moving Forms (Oxford, 1996)

J. Gmeiner and T. Leibnitz, eds.: Musikjahrhundert Wien: 1797–1897, Austrian National Library, 13 May – 26 Oct (Vienna, 1997) [exhibition catalogue]

Vienna Boys’ Choir.

See Vienna, §6.

Vienna Capella Academica.

Austrian ensemble founded by Eduard melkus.

Vienna flute.

A type of wooden organ pipe used in the Flötenuhr type of Musical clock.

Vienna Konzerthaus Quartet.

Austrian string ensemble, founded in 1934 by members of the Vienna SO: Anton Kamper, Karl Maria Titze, Erich Weis and Franz Kvarda. It made its début in March that year as the Kamper-Kvarda Quartet and was immediately contracted to give the première and first broadcast of Franz Schmidt’s A major Quartet. From 1937 it was officially attached to the Konzerthaus and Kamper, Titze and Weis were taken into the Vienna PO, Kvarda following in 1938. The group became known internationally in the 1950s through European tours and its commercial discs and radio recordings, including an outstanding Schubert cycle and a large number of Haydn quartets. It played in a typical Viennese style, with a most cultured tone, leisurely tempos and graceful phrasing. Joseph Marx and Hans Pfitzner wrote works for it. In the 1960s the second violinist was Walter Weller (later Werner Hink), the viola player Fritz Händschke (later Ferdinand Stangler) and the cellist Ludwig Beinl (later Werner Resel). The quartet was dissolved in 1967.

TULLY POTTER

Viera, Julio (Martín)

(b Buenos Aires, 1943). Argentine composer. He studied at the Argentina Catholic University and with Francisco Kroepfl. He trained in electro-acoustic music at the Centre for Research into Mass Communication (now the Laboratory for Musical Research and Production) and later became the head of this organization. A professor at La Plata University, he is also secretary of the Argentine Federation of Electro-Acoustic Music and the Agrupación Nueva Música. His honours include commendations from both the National Fund for the Arts and the Bourges International Competition of Electro-Acoustic Music, the Buenos Aires Municipal Prize, a Guggenheim Foundation grant (1989) and the National Prize (1992). In 1997 he received commissions from the Groupe de Recherches Musicales and the Koussevitzky Foundation. He was awarded the chair of composition at the Argentina Catholic University in 1998.

WORKS

(selective list)

Orch: Musica nocturna, recorded orch, tape, 1990; In memoriam Marcos García del Solar, 1996; 2 piezas líricas, str, 1997

Chbr and solo inst: Str Qt, 1976; Música para pf y 5 perc, 1982, rev. 1983; Trio, fl, va, hp, 1982; Match, fl, cl, pf, perc, 1984; 3 piezas, fl, va, hp, vib, 1985; Divertimento I, pf, 5 perc, tape, 1986; Match III, fl, cl, pf, vib, 1988; Divertimento III, perc, tape, 1993; Ricercare, fl, 5 perc, 1994

Vocal: Relato, chorus, insts, 1984

Elec: Mutación, 1973–4; Skyolon, 1975; Divertimento II: El Reloj, 1988

VALDEMAR AXEL ROLDAN

Vierdanck [Virdanck, Fierdanck], Johann [Johannes, Hans]

(b c1605; d Stralsund, bur. 1 April 1646). German composer, organist and instrumentalist. He probably came of a musical family from Saxony or Thuringia. By 1616 he was a choirboy in the Dresden Hofkapelle, for in a letter of 23 September that year Heinrich Schütz, who was prominent there, described him as such and declared that he was ‘a fine, modest person and making a very good, solid beginning in composition’. He also studied the violin and cornett. In 1630–31 he was an instrumentalist in the Hofkapelle. He was a violinist at the Güstrow court from at least autumn 1631 to 24 June 1632, after which he travelled to Lübeck and Copenhagen. At this period he must have got to know Gabriel Voigtländer, whose song Als ich einmal Lust bekam he incorporated into no.31 of his Capricci (1641), and Johann Schop (i), Nicolaus Bleyer and Friedrich Hoyoul, to all three of whom he dedicated the same collection. From early in 1635 until his death he was organist of the Marienkirche, Stralsund.

The pieces in Vierdanck’s first publication, Erster Theil newer Pavanen (1637), are in effect suites for two violins and continuo arranged systematically by key; they are significant in the early history of the suite, not least for their trio-sonata textures. There was a second edition in 1641, which was also when his Ander Theil … Capricci appeared. The first 14 pieces in this collection are early examples of duets without continuo; they were conceived for violins. The last piece in the volume – the one based on Voigtländer’s song – is scored for two cornetts and three trombones and is interesting for its tutti–solo contrasts. The concerto-like textures are paralleled in other pieces here: no.28, for example, for one cornett and three trombones, has been called the earliest German solo concerto. No.25, ‘auff quotlibethische Art’, is the most striking of the capriccios; with its double stopping and tremolos, it was probably one of the first pieces to be inspired by Farina’s famous Capriccio stravagante (1627). The book also contains variations, not mentioned on the title-page, including a set of nine on the passamezzo.

Vierdanck’s two sets of Geistlicher Concerten (1641–3) contain 45 works for two to nine voices and continuo, many with two violins as well. He appears to have taken such pieces by his former teacher Schütz as his models, even to the extent in one piece of using material from Monteverdi’s duet Zefiro torna, as Schütz did in Es steh Gott auf (published in 1647 but no doubt written earlier). There are sinfonias to begin a work and sometimes in the course of one, and their motifs are often related to those in the following vocal section. There is a good deal of word-painting. Like Schütz, Vierdanck rarely used chorales. The first volume was popular enough to go into a second edition a year later and there was a third in 1656 when the second volume also reappeared.

WORKS

vocal

Erster Theil geistlicher Concerten, 2–4vv, bc, some with 2 vn (Greifswald, 1641); 2, ed. H. Engel, Denkmäler der Musik in Pommern, iii, iv (Kassel, 1932–3)

Ander Theil geistlicher Concerten, 3–9vv, bc, some with 2 vn (Rostock, 1643)

Der Herr hat seinen Engeln befohlen, 4vv, 2 vn, 3 trbn, bc, S-Uu

Ich freue mich im Herrn, S/T, 2 vn, bc (Greifswald, 1643)

Stehe auf, meine Freundin, 2vv, 2 vn, 3 trbn, bc, D-Kl, inc.

1 motet, 4vv, bc, 1641³

instrumental

Erster Theil newer Pavanen, Gagliarden, Balletten und Correnten, 2 vn, bc (Greifswald, 1637); 1, ed. M. Seiffert, Organum, iii/4 (Leipzig, 1924)

Ander Theil, darinnen begriffen etliche Capricci, Canzoni und Sonaten, a 2–5, with and without bc (Greifswald, 1641); 5 ed. H. Engel, Denkmäler der Musik in Pommern, i (Kassel, 1930)

Toccata primi toni, org, inc., S-Uu

BIBLIOGRAPHY

GerberNL

MeyerMS

NewmanSBE

WaltherML

G. Beckmann: Das Violinspiel in Deutschland vor 1700 (Leipzig, 1918, mus. suppl. 1921)

K. Nef: Geschichte der Sinfonie und Suite (Leipzig, 1921/R)

F. Blume: Studien zur Vorgeschichte der Orchester-Suite (Leipzig, 1925/R)

W. Stahl: Musikgeschichte Lübecks, ii (Kassel, 1952)

G. Weiss: Johann Vierdanck (ca. 1605–1646): sein Leben und sein Werk (diss., U. of Marburg, 1956)

F. Krummacher: Die Überlieferung der Choralbearbeitungen in der frühen evangelischen Kantate (Berlin, 1965)

H. Engel: Das Instrumentalkonzert (Wiesbaden, 2/1971–4)

E. Pikorová: ‘Zborník polyfónnych skladieb zo 17. storočia’ [An anthology of polyphonic compositions from the 17th century], Hudobné tradície Bratislavy a ich tvorcovia: Bratislava 1989, 53–7

HORACE FISHBACK/GREGORY S. JOHNSTON

Vierhebigkeit

(Ger.).

The property of musical and poetic rhythm, as seen by certain theorists since Koch (Versuch einer Einleitung zur Composition, i, 1782), that makes most phrases and verses divide naturally into four equal or equivalent parts, or, more precisely, contain ‘four stresses’. In music it is best illustrated by short pieces made up of two equal parts (see Antecedent and consequent), each of which can be further divided and subdivided until it is broken down into one-bar units; such pieces necessarily contain a number of bars equal to a power of 2 (i.e. 2, 4, 8, 16, etc.). Some writers have applied the theory of Vierhebigkeit to virtually all music, barred, measured but unbarred, and unmeasured alike. For barred music, they have viewed an eight-bar unit (often called a ‘period’) comprising either four two-bar segments or two four-bar segments as the normal metrical length; an irregular period of, say, seven or nine bars as a contraction or expansion of the normal length; and a longer unit as the sum of a number of eight-bar periods. Based on its verified applicability to traditional German verse, in particular to old poetic forms, Vierhebigkeit has been used as a basis for rhythmic interpretations of early monophonic German song. Its extension, by Riemann, to the interpretation of troubadour and trouvère melodies and even Gregorian chant is as yet without similar foundation, and this has been used by opponents of the theory of Vierhebigkeit to discredit it.

WILLIAM DRABKIN

Vierk, Lois V.

(b Lansing, IL, 4 Aug 1951). American composer. Originally interested in ethnomusicology, she attended UCLA (BA 1974), where she studied bugaku dance and fell in love with gagaku, the ancient Japanese music that accompanies it. She studied composition with Leonard Stein and Dean Drummond, and later with Mel Powell and Morton Subotnick at the California Institute of the Arts (MFA 1978). A member of UCLA’s gagaku ensemble until 1982, she accompanied the group to Japan in 1980. There she met ryuteki player Sukeyasu Shiba, whom she returned to study with from 1982 to 1984.

Partly through the influence of minimalism (particularly Niblock’s music) and partly through the heterophonic melody of gagaku, Vierk began to write music for multiples of the same instrument. Her first work to receive public attention, Go Guitars (1981, ‘Go’ meaning ‘five’ in Japanese), is structured around a continuum of small glissandos that gradually expand in length and tempo. She followed this with Manhattan Cascade for four accordians (1985), Simoom for eight cellos (1986) and Cirrus for six trumpets (1987), works usually performed by a single performer and tape. One of her recurring formal ideas is the gradual, almost imperceptible transformation from a still, quiescent texture to a rousingly active one, often following an exponential curve. Later works, such as Timberline (1991), are for multi-timbral ensembles. She has also collaborated with dancer Anita Feldman on a number of compositions for tap dancer and musicians.

WORKS

Orch: Devil’s Punchbowl, 1993; Event Horizon, 1996; Silversword, gagaku ens, 1996

Vocal: Kana, 6 male vv, 1977; Attack Cat Polka, 1v, accdn, chbr ens, 1988; Nkosi sikelel’i afrika, arr., 2 vv, synth, 1992; Swash, 2 vv, 2 tap dancers, 1994, collab. A. Feldman

Chbr: Desert Heat, 3 cl, 1978; Go Guitars, 5 elec gui, 1981; Tusk, 18 trbn, 1981; Hyaku man nu kyu [One Million Spheres], 8 rhuteki fl, 1983; Crane with 1000 Wings, 8 vn, 1984; Manhattan Cascade, 4 accdn, 1985; Simoom, 8 vc, 1986; Cirrus, 6 tpt, 1987; Red Shift, vc, perc, elec gui, synth, 1989; Shaded, vc, 3 tap dancers, perc, elec gui, synth, 1989; Flowers of Flame, elec vn, trbn, digital delay, 1990; Jagged Mesa (2 tpt, 2 trbn, 2 b trbn)/brass ens, 1990; Red Shift 2, 2 vc, perc, synth, 1990; Red Shift 3, tpt, vc, perc, elec gui, synth, 1991; Red Shift 4, tpt, perc, elec gui, pf/synth, 1991; Timberline, fl, cl, bn, va, db, perc, pf/synth, 1991; River beneath the River, str qt, 1993; Twister, vc, 2 tap dancers, mar, 1993, collab. A. Feldman; Into the Brightening Air, str qt, 1994; Dark Bourn, 4 bn, 2 vc, 1995; Spin 2, 2 pf, 1995; Cloud of Starts, tpt/vn, vc, perc, pf, 1996 [arr. pf]; Demon Star, vc, mar, 1996; Brass Qnt, 1997; Short Swash, 3 perc, 1997, collab. Feldman

Solo inst: Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, pf, 1990; To Stare Astonished at the Sea, pf, 1994; Blue Jets Red Sprites, accdn, 1996

El-ac (collab. A. Feldman): Pilot, 3 tap dancers, perc, elec, 1987; Hexa, 3 tap dancers, perc, elec, 1988

BIBLIOGRAPHY

M. Swed: ‘Lois V. Vierk’, Chamber Music, xii (1995)

R. Carl: ‘Three Points on the Spectrum: the Music of Louis Karchin, Lois V. Vierk and Paul Dresher’, CMR, x/1 (1994), 11–31

K. Gann: American Music in the Twentieth Century (New York, 1997)

KYLE GANN

Vierling, Johann Gottfried

(b Metzels, nr Meiningen, 25 Jan 1750; d Schmalkalden, 22 Nov 1813). German composer. After studying the keyboard with M. Sittig in Metzels he entered the Lutheran Gymnasium in Schmalkalden, where he studied with (and from 1768 deputized for) the organist of the Stadtkirche, J.N. Tischer. In 1770 he studied with Kirnberger in Berlin and is alleged to have met C.P.E. Bach in Hamburg; on his return to Schmalkalden he visited J.A. Hiller in Leipzig. In 1773 he succeeded to Tischer's post, which he held until his death, refusing appointments in Dresden and Mainz. He was succeeded in this post by his son Johann Vierling (1777–1822).

Vierling composed in a rigorous, somewhat outdated style, primarily to fill the demands of his church post. His 160 or so cantatas show a surprisingly late survival of the practice of composing these works to weekly or (as in Schmalkalden) twice-weekly assignment; these light, often songlike works were performed in many other Thuringian churches, and Goethe even recorded a performance in Frankfurt. Vierling's other works, frequently prefaced with didactic introductions, include a number of liturgical organ pieces which appeared in many anthologies of the next century, and a keyboard hymnbook of strict four-part settings following Kirnberger's precepts (the prefaces to this work give an important account of the status of sacred hymnody before 1800). The correspondence with his pupil Henkel records a number of concerts directed by him in Schmalkalden and his aversion to the theoretical complexities of Vogler.

WORKS

Sacred: 114 cants., 6 motets, listed in Paulke (1922); 35 cants., incl. Der Herr ist mein Hirt, D-F, at least 5 in MGs, 2 formerly in DS; ps, LEt; Mag, formerly Berlin, Sing-Akademie

Other vocal: Empfindung und Empfindelei oder Die Verwechslung der Geliebten (Spl), see Paulke (1922); Hessische Kadetten-Lieder (C.S. Wigand) (Kassel, 1788); 3 lieder in K.W. Justis: Gedichte (Marburg, 1808, enlarged 2/1810 with 5 lieder by Vierling); occasional music

Org: Choralbuch auf vier Stimmen … nebst einer Vorrede und kurzem Vorbericht (Kassel, 1789, enlarged 2/1795); 22 leichte Orgelstücke (Leipzig, 1790); Sammlung leichter Orgelstücke nebst einer Anleitung zu Zwischenspielen beym Choral (Leipzig, 1790); Sammlung dreistimmiger Orgelstücke (Fuldam n.d.); Sammlung vermischter Orgelstücke (Kassel, n.d.); 48 leichte Choralvorspiele (Leipzig, n.d., enlarged 2/n.d.); 48 leichte Orgelstücke (Bonn, n.d.); 100 Versetti (Offenbach, n.d.); chorale preludes, fugue, formerly Bsb

Other inst: 6 Sonaten, pf (Leipzig, 1781); 24 variations on F.W. Rust: Blühe liebes Veilchen, pf (Dessau, 1782); 2 Sonaten, pf (Leipzig, 1784); Qt, hpd/pf, 2 vn, b, op.4 (Frankfurt, n.d.); 2 Sonates, kbd acc. vn, b, op.1 (Mainz, n.d.); 2 syms., formerly Bsb

theoretical works

Versuch einer Anleitung zum Präludiren für Ungeübtere mit Beispielen (Leipzig, 1794)

Allgemeiner fasslicher Unterricht im Generalbass mit Rücksicht auf den jetzt herrschenden Geschmack in der Composition durch treffende Beispiele erläutert (Leipzig, 1805–7)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

MGG1 (W. Blankenburg)

K. Paulke: ‘Johann Gottfried Vierling, 1750–1813’, AMw, iv (1922), 439–55

K. Paulke: ‘Briefe von Johann Gottfried Vierling’, Heimatkalendar des Kreises Schmalkalden 1923, 25–30

RONALD DÜRRE

Vierne, Louis(-Victor-Jules)

(b Poitiers, 8 Oct 1870; d Paris, 2 June 1937). French organist and composer.

1. Life.

Born blind with a congenital cataract condition, Vierne's sight was partially restored at the age of six and he was able to recognize people, see objects at a short distance and read large type at close range. At the age of six he began the study of solfège and piano. In 1880 the family moved to Paris from Lille (where they had lived because of his father's work as a journalist) and the following year the young Vierne was enrolled as a boarding student in the Institution Nationale des Jeunes Aveugles. There he pursued a plan of general studies that also included solfège, harmony, piano and violin. César Franck, who often served on juries at the school, advised him to study the organ and in the autumn of 1886 Vierne began lessons with Louis Lebel. From 1888 Vierne studied harmony privately with Franck and attended his organ class at the Paris Conservatoire. He entered the organ class as a full-time student either in October 1890 (as Vierne states in his memoirs) or in January 1891 (according to Widor's class notes). Franck died in November of that year and was succeeded by Widor. Within a year Vierne was serving as Widor's assistant at the Conservatoire, teaching the auditors, and from 1892 was Widor's substitute at St Sulpice. After four years in the organ class he won a first prize in July 1894.

Vierne remained as Widor's assistant in the organ class, continuing from 1896 with Widor's successor, Guilmant. In that position he taught succeeding generations of France's leading organists, including Joseph Bonnet, Henri Mulet, Marcel Dupré and Nadia Boulanger. On 21 May 1900, in competition with four other organists, Vierne won the post of titular organist at Notre Dame, the first to be worthy of such a title since the death in 1772 of Louis-Claude Daquin.

Having worked unpaid for 19 years at the Conservatoire, and holding the most prestigious organ post in the French capital, Vierne expected to be named professor of organ there. But, on Guilmant's death in 1911, Eugène Gigout was appointed, partly because he was the senior organist in Paris and eminently qualified, and partly because he was one of the director Fauré's oldest friends. Vierne never overcame the bitterness of this disappointment which was repeated when he was passed over for the post yet again in 1926, in favour of his former student Dupré. From 1912 Vierne taught organ at the Schola Cantorum and, upon its reorganization after d'Indy's death in 1931, at the Ecole César Franck.

The professional frustrations he experienced, along with the problems in his personal relationships, which were fraught with betrayal, caused Vierne to suffer depression alongside his near-blindness, ill health, bereavement (he lost his son and brother in World War I) and perpetual financial difficulties. Nevertheless, he was not without benefactors, and numerous wealthy and titled patrons effectively subsidized his work for years at a time.

Vierne was a fine player, equipped with a brilliant technique (though susceptible to stagefright), and an ingenious improviser, but, by all accounts, his technical abilities were greatly diminished by the early 1920s under the weight of personal tragedies and illness. His recordings of Bach and of his own works (on rolls for the Aeolian Duo-Art organ and on records for the Odéon company made on the Notre Dame organ shortly before its rebuild and in an all-but-unplayable condition) evince little of the brilliance of his contemporaries, but provide the only glimpse of his art as an improviser. Reviews of his two brief visits to England in 1924 and 1925, and his three-month tour of North America in 1927 are kind rather than enthusiastic.

Vierne suffered a fatal heart attack at the organ in the middle of a recital at Notre Dame. Throughout his long tenure there he had brought worldwide acclaim to the cathedral and restored its reputation for great organ music. Unfortunately, as Vierne had foreseen, immediately upon his death, his suppléant, a titled amateur with no musical credentials, was appointed as his successor. A petition, signed by the leading organists of Paris, requesting that the post be open to competition was ignored, and for a time the musical eminence of Notre Dame fell into obscurity.

2. Works.

Vierne wrote his music in pencil in enlarged notation on sheets of paper set up on an artist's easel. The scores were then copied by his brother, René (1878–1918), and later by Madeleine Richepin (1898–1961), his constant companion after 1920. Although the organ works account for only 17 of 62 opus numbers, it is as Franck's and Widor's successor as the organ's great symphonist that he is principally remembered. More than that of any of his contemporaries, his music has remained in the repertory of organists throughout the world. His six symphonies stand at the pinnacle of the 20th-century literature for the instrument: the six-movement First Symphony with its fugue and justly celebrated Final (‘my Marseillaise’, as he referred to it); the Second, his masterpiece, with its scintillating scherzo; the Third, the shortest and most concise; the Fourth, whose tortured outer movements are in sharp contrast to the buoyant Menuet and sumptuous Romance; the Fifth, the longest, and in many respects the most elevated; his Sixth and last, the most harmonically advanced and psychologically complex, rising from the depths of despair to ebullience in its rampant Final.

In developing beyond Franck and Widor the genre of the symphony for solo organ, Vierne was inspired by the orchestrally conceived instruments of Aristide Cavaillé-Coll. He used both sonata-allegro form (in 14 of the six symphonies' 31 movements) and cyclic form (employed first in the Second Symphony and then, in varying degrees, in the last three). His highly chromatic style functions within a harmonic framework: tonal centres are sustained by pedal points, inverted pedal points and ostinatos. In Vierne's later works increased tonal ambiguity almost suggests bitonality. Themes usually contain modal elements and employ syncopated rhythmic patterns. Often derived from small melodic units, Vierne's themes became increasingly chromatic throughout his life, to the extent that one of the themes in each of the first two movements of his Sixth Symphony employed all 12 notes of the chromatic scale.

Second in importance to the symphonies for organ are Vierne's four volumes of Pièces de fantaisie published in 1926–7. Each book contains six major works, several of which can be counted among his most popular: Naïades and Impromptu, scherzos that deftly blend the fluidity of pianistic technique with an elegance perfectly suited to the organ; and two pieces dedicated to organ builders: Clair de lune (for Ernest M. Skinner) and what is perhaps Vierne's most popular work, Carillon de Westminster (for Henry Willis III).

Vierne was also a master of smaller forms. His 24 pièces en style libre (published for organ or harmonium, but probably never intended for the latter instrument), are songs without words in which simple themes are developed with a striking economy of means that makes them ideal teaching pieces. More than 60 songs attest to Vierne's understanding of the voice and his skill in painting brief, but highly-charged, emotional scenes. His music for piano solo, from the elementary Silhouettes d'enfants to the Préludes and the tortured Solitude, composed in memory of his brother René, who was killed in World War I, continues the impressionistic tone painting of Debussy.

During his last years, Vierne wrote Mes souvenirs, reminiscences of his early life as a student, his many pupils, his travels and his 37 years as organist of Notre Dame. Vierne's journal has also survived. However, owing to the sensitive nature of its contents, which detail his often volatile associations with prominent colleagues, only excerpts have been published.

WORKS

Org: Allegretto, b, op.1 (1894); Verset fugué sur ‘In exitu Israël’, 1894; Prélude funèbre, op.4 (1986); Communion, op.8, 1896–7; Sym. no.1, op.14, 1898–9; Sym. no.2, op.20, 1902–3; Sym. no.3, op.28, 1911; Messe basse, op.30, 1912; 24 pièces en style libre, op.31 (1914); Prélude, f (1914); Sym. no.4, op.32, 1914; Sym. no.5, op.47, 1923–4; 24 pièces de fantaisie, op.51, 1926, op.53, 1926, opp.54–5, 1927; 3 improvisations, rec. 1928 (1954) [reconstructed M. Duruflé]; Triptyque, op.58, 1929–31; Sym. no.6, op.59, 1930; Messe basse pour les défunts, op.62, 1934

Transcrs. (org): J.S. Bach: Sicilienne, bwv1031 (1894); C. Franck: 5 pièces pour harmonium (1901); S. Rachmaninoff: Prelude, c, op.3 no.2 (1932)

Choral: Tantum ergo, op.2, 1v, org, 1886; Ave Maria, op.3, 1v, org, 1886; Messe solennelle, op.16, 1900; Praxinoé (A. Colin), op.22, solo vv, chorus, orch, 1903–5; Cantique à Saint-Louis de Gonzague (1926)

Inst: 2 pièces, op.5, va, pf, 1894–5; Largo et canzonetta, op.6, ob, pf, 1896; Str Qt, op.12, 1894; Sonata, op.23, vn, pf, 1905–6; Sym., op.24, 1907–8; Rhapsodie, op.25, hp, 1909; Sonata, op.27, vc, pf, 1910; Adagio, op.28, org, orch, 1926 [from Sym. no.3]; Pf Qnt, op.42, 1917–18; Marche triomphal centenaire de Napoléon I, op.46, org, brass, timp, 1921; Poème, op.50, pf, orch, 1925; Ballade, op.52, vn, orch, 1926; Soirs étrangers, op.56, vc, pf, 1928

Solo vocal: Ave verum, op.15, 1899; Les Djinns (V. Hugo), op.35, S/T, orch, 1912; Psyché (Hugo), op.33, 1v, orch, 1914; Éros (A. de Noailles), op.37, S, orch, 1916; Dal vertice (G. d'Annunzio), op.41, T, orch, 1917; Les Angélus (Jehan la pauvre moyne), op.57, S, org, 1929; La ballade du désespéré (H. Murger), op.61, S, orch, 1931

Songs (1v, pf): 2 mélodies (P. Gobillard, M. Léna), op.10, 1895, 1896; 3 mélodies (T. Gautier, P. Verlaine), op.11, 1896; 3 mélodies (Verlaine, C. Timun, V. Hugo), op.13, 1899; 3 mélodies (Verlaine, L. de Lisle), op.18, 1897; Dors, chère Prunelle (C. Mendès), op.19, 1898; 3 mélodies (Verlaine, de Lisle, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam), op.26, 1903; Vocalise-étude (1907); Stances d'amour et de rêve (Sully-Prudhomme), op.29, 1912; Spleens et détresses (Verlaine), op.38, 1917; 5 poèmes de Baudelaire, op.45, 1919; Poèmes de l'amour (J. Richepin), op.48, 1924; Vocalise-étude, op.51 (1925–6); 4 poèmes grecs (A. de Noailles), op.60, 1930; Les roses blanches de la lune

Pf: 2 pièces, op.7; Feuillets d'album, op.9, 1893; Suite bourguignonne, op.17, 1899; 3 nocturnes, op.34, 1915–16; 12 préludes, op.36, 1914–15; Poème des cloches funèbres, op.39, 1916; Silhouettes d'enfants, op.43, 1918; Solitude, op.44, 1918; Ainsi parlait Zarathoustra, op.49, 1922

Principal publishers: Durand, Hamelle, Leduc, Lemoine, Salabert, Schirmer

WRITINGS

‘L'orgue chez les Anglais et chez nous’, L'orgue et les organistes (15 May 1924)

‘Musique en Amerique’, Courrier musical (1 June 1927), 311–13; (15 June), 355 only; (1 July), 378–9; Eng. trans. in The Tracker, xxxii/3 (1989), 24–31

‘Mes souvenirs’, In memoriam Louis Vierne (Paris, 1939); repr. in L'orgue, no.134 bis (1970), 1–121 [whole issue]; Eng. trans. in R. Smith: Louis Vierne: Organist of Notre-Dame Cathedral (Hillsdale, NY, 1999) [orig. pubd in instalments in Bulletin trimestriel des amis de l'orgue, nos.19–31 (1934–7)]

‘Journal (fragments)’, L'orgue, no.135 bis (1970), 128–86 [whole issue]

Méthode d'orgue, Cahiers et mémoires de l'Orgue, no.37 (Paris, 1987)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

In memoriam Louis Vierne (Paris, 1939)

B. Gavoty: Louis Vierne: la vie et l'oeuvre (Paris, 1943/R)

P.C. Long: Transformations of Harmony and Consistencies of Form in the Six Organ Symphonies of Louis Vierne (diss., U. of Arizona, 1963)

H. Doyen: Mes leçons d'orgue avec Louis Vierne (Paris, 1966)

B. Galard: Louis Vierne. Une biographie d'organiste: nouveaux documents et correspondance (diss., CNSM, Paris, 1977)

The American Organist (1980) [Vierne issue incl. articles by M. Duruflé, R. Smith and others]

O. Latry, trans. Pastór de Lasala and R.W. Lane: ‘ Vierne's Pièces de fantaisie: Textual Corrections’, Sydney Organ Journal, xxiii (1993), 41–6

R. Smith: Louis Vierne: Organist of Notre-Dame Cathedral (Hillsdale, NY, 1999)

ROLLIN SMITH

Viertel-Note

(Ger.).

See Crotchet (quarter-note). See also Note values.

Viertelton

(Ger.).

See Quarter-tone.

Vieru, Anatol

(b Iaşi, 8 June 1926; d Bucharest, 9 Oct 1998). Romanian composer and musicologist. After attending the Bucharest Conservatory (1946–51), where his teachers included Constantinescu, Rogalski, Silvestri and Klepper, he entered the Moscow Conservatory as a pupil of Khachaturian. While living in Moscow he developed a strong affinity for Russian music. Though he resumed his studies in 1958, it was not until 1978 that he took the doctorate from the Dima Conservatory, Cluj-Napoca, with the dissertation De la moduri, spre un model al gândirii muzicale intervalice (‘From modes to a model of musical intervallic thought’). This model, in effect a system of composition, was published in Cartea modurilor. It was later formulated mathematically by the theorist Dan Vuza.

Vieru was active in a number of capacities. He was conductor at the Bucharest National Theatre (1947–50) and then chief editor (until 51) of Muzica, the journal of the Romanian Composers' Union. In 1955 he was appointed to teach orchestration at the Bucharest Conservatory, teaching composition there intermittently until 1998. His activities as a lecturer, between 1970 and 1997, also took him to Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, the Juilliard School and the Moscow and Jerusalem conservatories. In 1973 he stayed in West Berlin under the aegis of the Deutscher akademischer Austauschdienst. As an adjudicator or examiner he worked in Canada, the United States and at various centres in Europe, including the Darmstadt summer course. In 1970, at the Bucharest Philharmonic hall, he inaugurated and conducted the concert series Parallel Musics, an exploration of the relationship between contemporary music and older styles, especially pre-Classical.

Vieru received a number of awards and distinctions. In Romania these included the State Prize (1949), the Enescu Prize (1967), four times the award of the Romanian Composers' Union, and the Grand Prize (1996) for a life-time achievement. He was also a recipient of the Queen Marie-José prize of Geneva (1962), the Koussevitzky prize of New York (1966) and the Herder prize of Vienna (1986). By the late 1990s Vieru was perhaps the best-known Romanian composer on the international stage.

His music underwent a remarkable course of development during his career: following the patriotic songs and large-scale mass choruses of the Stalinist years, 1950–55, he embraced avant-garde elements in the 1960s and 70s and displayed a tendency towards neo-classicism after about 1980. As early as Mioriţa (1957) he devised an individual method that involved working with modes – taking as his example the music of Enescu and Messiaen – and serial technique; with the influence also of Russian music, this gave rise to a polystylistic effect. An important place in Vieru's output is reserved for opera. Here, his feel for instrumental colour, the grotesque and, at times, parody finds a perfect form of expression, especially since there are strong parallels between Luca Caragiale's ironic representation of corrupt 19th-century Romania and Romanian society during the years 1975–90. Vieru's last works suggest a self-contented musical personality, one that is deliberately distanced from an avant-garde, confrontational form of expression.

WORKS

(selective list)

dramatic

Iona (op, 1, after M. Sorescu and sketches by M.C. Escher), 1972–5, concert perf. Bucharest, 31 Oct 1976; Praznicul calicilor [The Feast of the Beggars] (op, after M. Sorbul), 1978–80, Berlin, 1991; Telegrame (mini-op, after I.L. Caragiale), 1983; Temă cu variaţiuni [Theme and Variations] (mini-op, after Caragiale), 1983; Ultimele zile, ultimele ore [The Last Days, the Last Hours] (op, 3, after A.S. Pushkin: Motsart i Sal'yeri and M.A. Bulgakov: Poslednie dni [The Last Days]), 1990–95

Film scores (names of dirs. in parentheses): Când primăvara e fierbinte [When Spring is Hot] (M. Săucan), 1960; Ciucurencu (E. Nussbaum), 1964; Procesul alb [The White Trial] (I. Mihu), 1965; Brâncuşi la Târgu-Jiu [Brâncuşi at Târgu-Jiu] (Nussbaum), 1966; Soarele negru [Black Sun] (S. Popovici), 1968; O sută de lei [100 Lei] (M. Săucan), 1972; Felix şi Otilia [Felix and Otilia] (Mihu), 1974; Marele singuratic [The Great Lonesome] (Mihu), 1976; Intoarcera lui Vodă Lăpuşneanu [Lăpuşneanu's Return] (M. Ursianu), 1979

orchestral

Syms.: no.1 ‘Odă tăcerii’ [Ode to Silence], 1967; no.2, 1973; no.3 ‘La un cutremur’ [Earthquake Sym.], 1978; no.4, 1982; no.5 (M. Eminescu), chorus, orch, 1984–5; no.6 [Exodus], 1989; no.7 ‘Anul soarezlui calm’ [The Year of the Silent Sun], 1992–3

Other: Suită în stil vechi [Suite in an Olden Style], str, 1945; Dansuri simfonice, 1952; Conc. for Orch, 1954–5; Fl Conc., 1958; Simfonia de cameră, 1962; Vc Conc., 1962; Jocuri (Jeux), pf, orch, 1963; Vn Conc., 1964; Clepsidra I (Sonnenuhr), 1968–9; Muzeu muzical [Museum Music], hpd, 12 str, 1968; Screen (Ecran), 1969; Cl Conc., 1975; Sinfonietta, 1975; Conc., vn, vc, orch, 1979; Sinfonia concertante, vc, orch, 1987; Narration II, sax, orch, 1985; Memorial, 1990; Psalm, 1993; Pf Conc. ‘Caleidoscop’, 1993; Malincolia furiosa, va, orch, 1994; Hibernal, panpipes, str, 1995; Fl Conc. no.2, 1996; Gui Conc., 1996; Musik, org, str, 1996; Elegia II, vc, db, chbr orch, 1998

vocal

Choral: Mierla lui Ilie Pintilie [Ilie Pintilie's Blackbrid] (cant.), 1949; Mioriţa [The Ewe Lamb] (orat), 1957; Cantata anilor lumină [Light Years Cant.] (N. Cassian), 1960; Scene nocturne (F. García Lorca), 2 choruses, 1964; Vocale [Vowels] (G. Ungaretti), female chorus, 1963; Clepsidra II (folk texts), chorus, panpipes, cymbal, orch, 1971; Fratele cel sărac [The Poor Brother] (I. Neculce), 1993; Daniil, 1994; In marea apusului [In the Sea of Sunsets], chorus, tpt, timp, 1998

Solo: Muzică pentru Bacovia şi Labiş [Music for Bacovia and Labis], 1959–63: 1. The Struggle against Inertia, Mez, T, Fl, vn, pf; 2. Nocturnes and Resonances of Bacovia, S, fl, pf; 3. Truces, Mez, pf; Discul lui Newton [Newton's Disc], 12 solo vv, 1972; 4 unghiuri din care am văzut Florenţa [4 Angels to See Florence], S, pf/hpd, 1–2 perc, 1973; Cântec arhaic de dragoste [Ancient Love Songs] (Bible: Solomon): I, Sage mir an, Mez, fl, ob, cl, bn, 1985, II, O that you were a Brother to Me, 8vv, 1987, III, Siehe, du bist schön, Mez, a sax, 1985, IV, Fă-mă precum o pecete [Set Me as a Seal upon your Heart], 4vv, fl, ob, cl, bn, hn, 1989, V, Ja nartsis saronskij [I am a Rose of Sharon], chorus, 1987; Poveste [Marches], Sprechstimme, perc, 1993; Archipelagos, B, vib, 1994; Dechanson (T. Tzara), 4vv, 1995; Questions et responses (P. Celan, P. Solomon), 4vv, 1995; Iarba ochilor tăi [The Grass of your Eyes] (Celan), 4vv, 1997

chamber and solo instrumental

Str qts: no.1, 1955, no.2, 1956; no.3, S, str qt, 1973; no.4, 1980; no.5, 1982; no.6, 1986; no.7, 1987; no.8, 1991

Other chbr: Cl Qnt, 1957; Kammersymphonie, 1962; Trepte ale tăcerii [Steps of Silence], str qt, perc, 1966; Nautilos, pf, tape, 1969; Sita lui Eratostene [The Riddle of Eratosthanes], cl, vn, va, vc, pf, 1969; Naşterea unui limbaj [The Birth of a Language], pf 4 hands, 1971; Mozaicuri [Mosaics], 3 perc, 1972; Iosif şi fraţii săi [Joseph and his Brothers], 11 insts, tape, 1979; Scoica [Shell], 15 str, 1982; Double Duos, a sax/b cl, vib/mar, 1983; Ma–jo–r Music, fl, cl, hp, str qt, 1984; Soroc I, 6 studies, perc, 1984; Soroc II, 7 insts, 1984; Sonata, vn, vc, 1984–5; Diaphonie, vc, db, 1987; Trînta [Wrestling], sax, perc, 1987; Epistolaire, a fl, pf, 1988; Multigen, a fl, ob, a sax, perc, pf, 1988; Giusto, sax, 2 gui, synth, perc, 1989; Versete [Verses], 1989; Sax Qt, 1990; Sax-Vier, sax qt, 1991; Trio microtonic, bn, gui, db, 1992; Feuerwerk, fl, vn, vib, 1994; Crăciun [Christmas], vn, pf, 1994; Canto, ob, perc, 1995; Couple, cl, va, 1995; Duo leggiero, fl, perc, 1995; Rubato, ob, perc, 1995; Toccatina, 2 gui, 1995; Chanson de geste, gui, vc, 1996; Gruss, vn, vc, pf, org, 1996; Masca [Masks], fl, vc, db, 1996; Canon und Fuge, pf 4 hands, 1997; Elegia I, sax, org, 1997; Et in Arcadia ego, 3 rec, 1997; Posviascenie [Dedication], tpt, vc, timp, 1997; Trio, vn, vc, pf, 1997; Centaurus, sax, trbn, perc, 1998

Solo: Din lumea copiilor [From the Realm of Childhood], 8 miniatures, pf, 1958; Sonata, vc, 1963, arr. vc, perc (1977); Narration, org, 1973; Pf Sonata, 1976; Pelinarium, synth, 1986; Dar I [Gift], fl, 1988; Dar II, vc, 1989; Design-Dasein, fl+a fl+pic, 1993; Pf Sonata, 1994; Ritmuri [Rhythms], pf, 1994; Adio, pf, 1996; Eppur si muove, fl, 1996; Sandu, pf, 1996; Schöntok, pf, 1996; Capriccio, vn, 1997; Voeu, pf, 1997

Tape works

Principal publishers: ESPLA, Gerig, Muzicală, Muzgiz, Salabert, Schott

WRITINGS

‘Muzică şi “despre muzică”’ [Music and ‘on music’], Secolul XX, no.3 (1965), 109–29

‘Beethoven azi’ [Beethoven today], Muzica, xx/12 (1970), 8–11

‘Prezentarea lucrării Moduri … elemente ale unei teorii generale a modurilor’ [A presentation of the Modes … elements of a general theory of modes], CMz, ii (1970), 297–309

‘Tăcerea ca o sculptare a sunetului’ [Silence as a sculptor of sound], Muzica, xx/3 (1970), 12–20

‘In domeniul formei muzicale’ [In the field of musical form], SMH, viii (1972), 141–5

‘Des modes, vers un modèle de la pensée musicale intervalique’, Muzica, xxv/9 (1975), 45–9

‘Marii izolaţi’ [The great isolated ones], Béla Bartók şi muzica românească, ed. F. Lazslo (Bucharest, 1976), 83–6

‘Les nouvelles tendances musicales: vers la simplicité’, Cadmos, no.6 (1979), 35–40

‘Zur Entwicklung der Neuen Musik in Rumänien’, Studien zur Musik des XX. Jahrhunderts in Ost- und Ostmitteleuropa: Garmisch-Partenkirchen 1980 and Washington DC 1985, 67–78

‘Boucles de palindromes musicaux’, Muzica, new ser., i/2 (1990), 39–48

Cartea modurilor (Bucharest, 1980; Eng. trans., 1993)

‘Generating Modal Sequences: a Remote Approach to Minimal Music’, PNM, xxx/2 (1992), 178–200

‘Un proces muzical de creştere fractală. Câteva consideraţiuni asupra minimalismului repetitiv’, Muzica, new ser., iii/2 (1992), 58–72

Cuvinte despre sunete [Words about Sounds] (Bucharest, 1993)

‘Une théorie musicale pour la période postmoderne’, Muzica, new ser., v/2 (1994), 20–25

‘The Musical Signification of Multiplication by 7. Diatonicity and Chromaticity’, Muzica, new ser., vi/1 (1995), 64–7

‘Natura şi cultura în percepţia muzicală’ [Nature and culture in musical perception], Muzica, new ser., ix/2 (1998), 36–9

‘Privire retrospectivă asupra teoriei modurilor’ [A retrospective on the modal theory], Muzica, new ser., ix/3 (1998), 47–52

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L. Grigorovici: ‘Elf Fragen an Anatol Vieru’, Melos, xxxv (1968), 236–43

C. Dan Georgescu: ‘Clepsydra de Anatol Vieru’, Muzica, no.7 (1970)

C. Stoianov: ‘Mioriţa în creaţia a trei compozitori contemporani: Paul Constantinescu, Anatol Vieru, Sigismund Toduţă’, Studii de muzicologie, x (1974), 106–25

F. Popovici: ‘Anatol Vieru’, Muzica, no.4 (1981)

D. Vuza: ‘Aspects mathémathiques dans la théorie modale d'Anatol Vieru’, Revue romaine de mathématiques pures et appliquées, no.2 (1982); no.10 (1982); no.8 (1983)

O.L. Cosma: ‘Anatol Vieru: creaţia de operă’, Muzica, no.1 (1991), 57–82

L. Manolache: ‘Anatol Vieru’, Muzica, no.2 (1996), 4–26

CORNELIU DAN GEORGESCU

Vierundsechzigstel-Note

(Ger.).

See Hemidemisemiquaver (64th-note). See also Note values.

Vietnam, Socialist Republic of (Cong Hòa Xã Hoi Chủ Nghĩa Việt Nam).

Country on the east coast of the indo-Chinese peninsula.

1. Background.

2. Instruments.

4. Musical language.

5. Musical genres.

TRaN VĂN KHÊ/NGUYeN THUYET PHONG

1. Background.

Vietnam is the most culturally diverse country in mainland South-east Asia, comprising 54 ethnic groups. The largest of these is the Việt or Kinh, living in the lowland areas along the Pacific coast and in the deltas of the Sông Hồng (Red River) and the Cửu Long (Mekong). The rest of the ethnic groups live mainly in the highlands and mountains that separate Vietnam from China, Laos and Cambodia.

Over four millennia of legends and recorded history are in evidence at about 300 prehistoric sites, as well as in numerous historical folk tales (Phan, Hà and Hoàng, 35). All traditional folk tales preceding recorded history originated in the original land of the Việt, comprising the valley of the Sông Hồng where the Biển Đông (Eastern Sea) and the mountains meet. As the Việt moved from the mountains to the river areas, water joined mountains as the main topic of narratives and songs.

Traditional festivals honouring nature and the ancestors are believed to have been practised for over 2000 years of recorded history. Such festivals were made up of ritual ceremonies, music, songs and dance, often including a series of games and entertainments. In the first few centuries ce these prehistoric events and customs in the highlands of Phong Châu were gradually transmitted to the lowland areas of Bắc Ninh (now Hà Bắc province), where native beliefs became associated with Buddhism. Many of the traditional festivals are still celebrated in northern provinces, taking place at village temples called đình in accordance with the seasonal cycle of the agricultural year. These temples also served as common houses or town halls for public meetings in traditional society.

In contrast to the Việt, the ethnic minorities live in upland areas that include the mountains and highlands of the north and central regions. While a great number of the northern groups (mainly the Nùng, Yao, Hmông and Thái peoples) came from southern China and Laos, the larger central groups are related to the Mon-Khmer and Malayo-Polynesian cultures and date back about 4000 years. They live along the Trng Sn mountain range and in the highlands that stretch, at some points, from the Lao and Cambodian borders to the sea. Their music and dance are associated with traditional customs and beliefs and differ from culture to culture.

Because of this multicultural status, it is impossible to define a uniquely Vietnamese music. Even the music of the majority group, the Việt, shows strong regional differences, which also exist on linguistic and conceptual levels. While research on minority music is still in progress, the Việt musical traditions have been studied in depth and will be the focus of this entry.

The musical practice and theory of the Việt people are featured in the professional training schools in the four main regions: north, central, south-central and south. Although historically related to each other, each region has its own system of folk, chamber, theatrical and religious music. The uplanders seem to have remained in their own communities with little outside contact for about a 1000 years, until perhaps the time of the Lý dynasty (11th–13th centuries). The Việt in the lowland areas, however, have been in contact with foreign cultures for many centuries. A number of Central Asian, Chinese, Indian and Western instruments have been adopted and adapted to the performing traditions of the Việt. For centuries, Chinese literature was translated and used in Vietnamese songs. Indian Buddhism also brought with it a plethora of folk poetry, traditional songs and musical theatre; the land of Nirvana is featured in many chèo theatrical songs and folk performances. All foreign influences have, however, been adapted to the basic concepts of the Việt, the process of selection of instruments, stories and ideas taking several centuries.

Historical and archaeological evidence shows that the bronze drum, the mouth organ and various dances have existed since the period of the Hùng kings (3rd–1st centuries bce). Many existing songs and dances are associated with ancient agricultural customs and the praising of village protector-deities, heroes and heroines.

Buddhism was introduced in Vietnam in the 2nd century ce and may have mixed with other local beliefs in the development of one of the great chanting traditions in the East and South-east Asian Mahāyāna school of Buddhism. Some folksongs may be related to the period of the sisters Trng in the 1st century ce or King An Dng a century earlier. Many folkdances also found their way to the imperial court of the Đinh (10th century ce), while chamber and theatre music emerged strongly during the Lý dynasty (11th–13th centuries). Both the Đinh and Lý imperial courts favoured music and dance. Water puppetry was created in 985. In 1025, King Lý Thái Tổ created the position of music director (quẢn giáp), whose function was to oversee all music and dance activities at the court. The đàn đáy, a long lute with three strings and a trapezoidal soundbox, is believed to have been invented during this period along with dances. Its invention was related to the development of the northern chamber genre ca trù, which promoted the role of female singers, particularly in the Lê dynasty (15th–18th centuries). An impressive national art of sung poetry has survived from this singing tradition.

The chèo and tuồng (also called hát boi), two major forms of Vietnamese theatre, had their origins in the Lý dynasty. In this same period, after victories over the Chinese and the Chàm, performers and dancers were brought to the imperial palace for entertainment purposes. The dance music of the Chàm inspired King Lý Thánh Tông (1052–72) to compose his own music. Traditional music, folksong and folkdance were blended into Buddhist feasts and ceremonies. Buddhism became a leading national religion and expanded to every part of the country, leading to the absorption of, and favourable interactions with, other local beliefs. Hundreds of traditional musicians and dancers performed at the grand inauguration ceremony of the Diên Hu temple in the 11th century, as recorded in Đại Việt sử ký toàn th (Complete history of Đại Việt).

In the 15th century imperial court music was reorganized into đồng văn (choral music) and nhẢ nhạc (instrumental music). The court instruments were also remodelled on those of the Chinese Ming dynasty, regardless of the negative reaction of court dignitaries. New instrumental pieces and songs were composed for various court ceremonies and rituals that were maintained through the Nguyen dynasty (1802–1945). In the meantime, the non-court genres such as chèo, ca trù, religious chant and folksong persisted independently. A masking dance called xuân phẢ is believed to have been created in the 15th century, during the Lê period. This rare dance survives in Thanh Hóa Province, about 170 km south of Hanoi.

The form closest to today's tuồng musical theatre was created in the 16th century. Credit for its invention is given to Đào Duy T, who joined the southern lords Nguyen when the country was divided into north-south political divisions. He founded a school of theatre that was supported by the Nguyen dynasty as a national theatre. Đào Tấn, a court dignitary and instructor at this school, composed the most extensive tuồng plays. The chamber music and songs of Huế (called ca Huế) were developed in the southern part of the country; their influence later spread to the delta of the Mekong river. Here, in the early 20th century, a new form of chamber music was born, called đn ca tài tử or nhạc tài tử, which became the basic repertory of cẢi lung theatre.

Contacts with European cultures, beginning in the 16th century with missionaries and French colonialists, became particularly accelerated in the early 20th century. Western instruments were introduced, some adapted for traditional ensembles; others remained unchanged, with Western repertory that was learned by the Vietnamese. Western music was introduced into the national education system, designed by the French, in the first quarter of the 20th century.

2. Instruments.

Many archaic instruments are Chinese in origin and name. As in China they were classified into eight categories: stone, metal, silk, bamboo, wood, skin, gourd and clay. About 300 instruments are still in use, including those used by ethnic minority groups; the most important are mentioned here.

(i) Aerophones.

The sáo or địch (from the Chinese di) is a transverse bamboo flute with six finger-holes and an additional hole covered with a thin membrane, which acts as a mirliton. The cylindrical end-blown flute tiêu (from the Chinese xiao) is made of bamboo or bronze. It has five finger-holes at the front and one at the back.

The kèn (fig.1), a wooden oboe with seven finger-holes at the front and one at the back, is similar to the Chinese suona. The bell is made of brass or wood. There are several types of kèn, e.g. the kèn tiểu (small oboe), kèn trung (middle-sized oboe) and kèn đại (large oboe).

The khèn, a raft mouth organ featured in the engravings of the prehistoric bronze drums, is now only played by the Thái and the Triêng. The Êđê and Mnông living in the mountain areas have a similar instrument called đing năm or m'buốt, with bamboo tubes fixed in a windchest made of a dried gourd. The sinh, a mouth organ used for court music, was adapted from the Chinese sheng; this instrument is now obsolete.

There are a few side-blown horns used by ethnic minorities, such as the pí mo of the Thái and the ki pá of the Jarai. The tù và, an end-blown buffalo horn, and the hẢi loa, an end-blown conch shell, are now no longer in use.

(ii) Chordophones.

According to a Vietnamese legend, the Đàn bau or đàn đoc huyền (monochord) was given to man by an immortal. The instrument consists of a kind of box formed by three wooden boards from 80 cm to 1 m long and from 9 cm to 12 cm wide (fig.2). The soundboard is made of ngô đồng wood (firmiana plata nifolia) and the two side boards of trắc wood (tulip wood). A flexible stem made of wood or bent bamboo goes through the soundboard 5 cm from one end, serving as a neck. It carries a gourd-shaped wooden resonator or a small coconut shell. The single steel string is attached at one end to the flexible stem at the point where the resonator is attached, passes obliquely through a small hole pierced in the soundboard, and is then wound round a wooden peg which runs through the two sides of the body. In his right hand the musician holds a sharpened bamboo stem about 15 cm long, with the sharp point held at the base of the little finger. He touches the string with the edge of his right hand at precise points, dividing it in the ratios 1 : 1, 1 : 2, 1 : 3 or 1 : 4, and plucks the string with the bamboo stem. By exerting pressure on the flexible neck with his left hand, the musician changes the tension of the string and thus the fundamental pitch. Any note of the scale can be obtained on this instrument, which has a compass of more than two octaves. It differs from the Chinese monochord yixian qin, the Japanese ichigen-kin, the Indian gopī-yantra and the Cambodian saadiev, although it has sometimes been likened to these instruments.

Similar to the Chinese zheng, the Japanese koto and the Korean kayakeum, the Đàn tranh (a board zither; fig.3) has 16 steel strings stretched across movable bridges. The people of north Vietnam use a ground zither known as trống quân to accompany a folksong of the same name. A bamboo tube zither (roding, ding goong, ding put) is played by minority peoples of the central highlands. The strings, consisting of wire or strips of skin, vary in number from one to 13. The sound of the instrument imitates that of a gong ensemble.

The đàn nguyệt or đàn kìm, a moon-shaped, long-necked lute with two silk strings (see fig.4 below), differs from the Chinese yueqin, which has a very short neck. The yueqin is known in Vietnam under the name of đàn đoẢn (‘short-necked lute’) or đàn tau (‘Chinese lute’). The đàn nguyệt is similar to the Cambodian caapey, but its fingerboard is a little shorter than that of the caapey, with 8 frets instead of 12.

The đàn tam or tam huyền is a three-string lute with a round soundbox covered on both sides with snakeskin; it resembles the Chinese sanxian. The đàn đáy (singer's lute; see fig.4) is peculiar to north Vietnam and was used to accompany the ca trù singer. It has a very long neck, three silk strings and a trapeziform body. Like the đàn đoc huyền, it was, according to legend, a bewitching instrument given to man by the immortals.

The đàn tY bà, a four-string, pear-shaped, fretted lute, is similar to the Chinese pipa (tY bà being the phonetic transcription of pipa in Vietnamese pronunciation). It is played with a small plectrum or with the fingernails (fig.5).

The Thái and Nùng peoples of north Vietnam use a long-necked lute called tính tẩu or đàn tính, which has a soundbox made from a gourd and a round soundboard 15 cm in diameter; the fingerboard has no frets.

The more notable bowed stringed instruments are the đàn nhị (see figs.1 and 3 below) or đàn cò, a two-string fiddle similar to the Chinese erxian, and the đàn gáo, also with two strings. There are many kinds of đàn nhị, differing according to the size of the resonator and the length of the neck. The đàn gáo has a resonator made of an empty coconut shell, similar to the Cambodian tror u and the Laotian so u. In the early 20th century, the European guitar was introduced to Vietnam and later became a favourite instrument of the tài tử and cẢi lung ensembles. Known as lục huyền cam (‘six-string instrument’) or ghi-ta, it was modified by having the wood between the frets hollowed out to facilitate deep pressing on the metal strings, which were adapted to be softer and more flexible. At the same time the violin, called vĩ cam or viô-lông, was adopted into the same ensembles.

(iii) Membranophones.

There is a great variety of drums in Vietnam. The bồng is a single-headed drum shaped like an hourglass and beaten with the hands, while the trống cái, also with one skin, is beaten with one stick in the court music of Huế and in southern Vietnam.

Some drums with two heads are the đại cổ (‘big drum’), a barrel-shaped drum beaten with one or two sticks and similar to the Chinese dagu; tiểu cổ, the generic name for a small, double-headed drum; the trống chiến (‘battle drum’), a barrel-shaped drum used in the traditional theatre; the trống nhạc, a pair of shallow cylindrical drums used in ceremonial music, and the trống cm (‘rice-drum’; see fig.1 above), a barrel-shaped drum similar to the south Indian mrdangam. This drum may be Indian in origin, since it was introduced into Vietnam through the former kingdom of Champa.

The Chàm people use the baranng, a large, single-headed frame drum, to accompany their long songs. It can also be played in an ensemble for ceremonial music. The ganang, a pair of double-headed cylindrical drums, is also of Chàm origin; one skin is beaten with the hand, the other with a stick. The ngor, song gor, hogro or hogoi is a large, barrel-shaped drum used by the ethnic minority groups in the high plateaux of central Vietnam.

(iv) Idiophones.

Of the many idiophones to be found in Vietnam, the sinh tiền (clappers; see fig.1 above) is probably the most unusual. This instrument consists of three small planks: the longest (30 cm long, 3 cm wide and 1 cm thick) carries a head provided with two or three sapeke (Chinese coins); underneath it is serrated. A second plank, shorter than the first (20 cm long), carries two brass heads, each provided with two or three sapeke. The third plank (15 cm long) has teeth cut into it. The sinh tiền combines the characteristics of clappers, sistra and scrapers.

Other Vietnamese idiophones are the sanh, a pair of wooden clappers; the song lang, a small woodblock beaten with a small wooden ball connected to the block by a flexible curved slat made of horn; the mõ gia trì, similar to the Chinese muyu, a fish-shaped woodblock used in Buddhist religious ceremonies; the mõ, a slit-drum made of hollowed-out wood or pieces of bamboo and used in ceremonial music; the mõ sứng trâu, a part of a hollowed buffalo horn (see fig.1 above); the chung or chuông, bells used in Confucian or Buddhist music; the chiêng, a gong with a central boss; the la, a flat gong; the bạt, small cymbals; and the chap chõa, large cymbals of different sizes.

Sets of 7, 9 or 13 gongs are used by the Êđê, M’nông gar and M’nông ma of the high plateaux. They are struck in the same way as the gongs from Sagada in the Philippines.

3. Instrumental ensembles.

Vietnamese music is essentially vocal. Chamber music and theatre ensembles only play preludes and interludes in performances featuring songs and chanted poetry. Instrumental music is played for religious ceremonies in the lowlands; formerly it was also played at the imperial court. In the highlands, gong ensembles are widely used.

The court orchestra comprises three kinds of instrumental ensembles: the Đại nhạc (large ensemble), which uses drums, gongs and wind instruments (oboes and conches), the nhạc huyền (ensemble of bronze and stone chimes) and the tiểu nhạc or nhã nhạc (small ensemble), which features mainly strings (lutes, fiddles and flutes). A typical đại nhạc ensemble in the early 20th century consisted of 20 large drums, eight oboes, four large gongs, four medium gongs, four conches and four water-buffalo horns. This ensemble and the nhạc huyền only performed on important occasions. The nhã nhạc consisted of two transverse flutes, one two-string fiddle, a moon-shaped lute, a pear-shaped lute, a three-string lute, a small single-headed drum, sinh tiền, and a set of three small gongs. Today, visitors to the Huế Imperial City only see performances of the nhã nhạc ensemble.

The ceremonial music ensemble of south Vietnam, called nhạc le, is composed of instruments which can be grouped into văn (strings) and võ (percussion). A complete nhạc le ensemble includes four two-string fiddles, a lute, a pair of double-headed drums, a single-headed drum, a large gong, a small gong, a pair of large cymbals, a pair of small cymbals, a single-headed hourglass drum, a water-buffalo horn drum and an oboe.

There are various kinds of ensemble for the traditional theatre, folk theatre and modernized theatre. Entertainment (chamber) music is performed by an ensemble of three instruments: 16-string zither, two-string fiddle and moon-shaped lute (which can be replaced by the pear-shaped lute). A group of five instruments is called ngũ tuyệt (the five ‘perfect’ instruments; see fig.3 above): it consists of the four above-mentioned instruments and one three-string lute or the monochord. Sometimes a group of six, the latter group plus a transverse flute, is used to perform entertainment music.

In the central highlands of Vietnam, gong ensembles are prominent features of minority cultures. The number of gongs (flat and bossed) in an ensemble varies from two to 22 depending on the ethnic group or specific occasion. Three typical types of gong ensembles are those of the Brâu, the Êđê and the Jarai peoples. Brâu musicians play a set of two gongs, suspended from the ceiling inside their stilt houses, with a pair of short beaters and a pair of long beaters that rest on a musician's shoulders. Êđê musicians play complex, four-part polyphonic compositions sitting on a kpan (long bench made of a tree trunk).The gongs, which hang from the ceiling, rest on their laps. Unlike with most gong techniques, five players strike their flat gongs with beaters on the back, while three players beat their larger bossed gongs on the front. All use their left hands to regulate the sound of the gongs. Large-scale performances often take place at the water-buffalo feasts of the Jarai and Bahnar peoples, in which up to 23 gongs are used. Like the majority Việt people, many minority groups in the highlands use a drum as a leading instrument to signal the beginning and end of a performance. The highland Chàm, however, play a pair of gongs and a hand-beaten drum in a call-and-response manner while dancing.

4. Musical language.

(i) Scales.

Defining musical scales in Vietnamese music is a difficult task; a folksong may consist of only two pitches, while an instrumental piece of the art tradition could employ the entire available pitch range. The fretting of string instruments is based on either pentatonic (e.g. the đàn nguyệt moon lute) or heptatonic (e.g. the đàn đáy long lute) scales. Emphasis is given to a five-tone scale that is peculiar to the Vietnamese tradition.

Table 1 shows the type of pentatonic scale employed in Vietnam. As can be seen, the notes hò, xang, xê and líu are strong and relatively stable, while the notes x and cống are weak or mobile. The notes líu and ú, which are an octave higher than hò and x, do not have the same names because their musical function in many melodies is different. Most of the scales are anhemitonic except for the scale vọng cổ, which uses the semitone e'–f'.

Other types of scale are used by the various ethnic minorities, and two-, three-, and four-note scales occur in folk music.

(ii) Modes.

The điệu or giọng (modes) and the hi (modal nuances) are important in chamber (entertainment), theatre and Buddhist music. There are two principal modes or modal systems, the bac and nam. They are called either giọng, a rather vague term meaning voice or intonation, or điệu, a Sino-Vietnamese word which corresponds to the Chinese diao (chō in Japanese and jo in Korean). Despite this linguistic relationship, the Vietnamese concept of mode is distinct from that of other East Asian cultures.

The bắc is a regular pentatonic scale with two auxiliary notes as passing notes or ornaments (see Table 1, scale bắc). Any note of the pentatonic scale may serve as the opening, final or cadential note, but the hò (c') nevertheless remains the fundamental note. Next in importance are the notes xang (f') and xê (g'). Specific ornaments should be used. The tempo ranges from moderate to very fast; slow pace is exceptional. The điệu bắc expresses gaiety or solemnity but includes several hi (modal nuances): the bắc itself, expressing gaiety; the quẢng (fancy and in the Cantonese manner); the nhạc or hạ in the south and the thiền in central Vietnam (solemn, ceremonial music).

Scales belonging to the điệu nam have four main degrees, a tritonic structure or an irregular pentatonic structure. The xang (f') is a little higher in pitch than the xang of the bắc mode. X ranges from d' to d', sometimes even as high as an e'. The cống falls between a' and a'. Only the notes hò, xang or xê may serve as the opening, final or cadential note. As in bắc, the hò, xang and xê are the most important degrees of the scale. Specific ornaments for the điệu nam should be used. The tempo ranges from moderate to slow; quick pace is exceptional. The modal nuances of the điệu nam are the xuân (expressing serenity or tranquillity), the ai (melancholy or sadness) and the oán (deep sorrow); there is one exception, the đẢo in the south, which expresses solemnity.

The idea of mode is highly developed in Vietnamese music, the điệu bringing to the melody a characteristic colour. In the tuồng and hát chèo (traditional theatre music) and in hátẢ đào (the repertory of professional singers) the melody unfolds from a given mode; the điệu nonetheless differs from the Indian rāga.

(iii) Melody.

Vietnamese, like Chinese, is a tonal language. There may be six different tones for one syllable and the meaning of the word changes according to the particular tone. In folk music, the relation between music and speech is very close. In the declamation of poetry, prayers or songs of the Ả đào repertory, words are set to music, and the singers or the priest must take the particular tones of the words into consideration in order to find a proper melody.

In the chamber music of central and south Vietnam, the melodic line of a specific tune varies according to the school, region, the musical instruments, the musician and the period. A melodic line provides merely the theme from which a good musician can create a more elaborate melody with more ornamentation.

(iv) Metabole.

In this context, a metabole is an alternation or succession of two or more five-note scales (with or without a periodic and final return to the point of departure) in the course of a pentatonic melody. Derived from the Greek word meaning ‘change’, the term was used and defined by the musicologist Constantin Brăiloiu and characterizes a musical phenomenon that is often found in Vietnamese folk music, especially in north and central Vietnam, in folk theatre music and in the chau văn repertory (medium's songs). There are several types of metabole. If in the first part of a melody the pentatonic scale g, a, c', d', e' is used and in another part of the scale c', d', f', g', a', one cannot say that the scale used for that melody is therefore hexatonic, consisting of the notes g, a, c', d', e', f', g', because when the f' is present the e' is absent and vice versa. These are, on the contrary, two distinct pentatonic scales whose juxtaposition constitutes a metabole.

(v) Rhythm.

The term phách in Vietnamese designates a piece of wood or bamboo used to mark time units. Phách also refers to the time units (e.g. a tune of 60 phách) or the tempo (phách dồn meaning quick tempo). In south Vietnam, nhịp means ‘to beat time’ or refers to the strong beat of each time unit; a weak beat is called láy. In folk and art music duple time is used almost exclusively; triple time is scarce. There are many cyclic rhythmic patterns with 8 or 16 beats in ceremonial and theatre music. The last note of a piece is emphasized by a stroke of clappers, a woodblock or the mõ sng trâu; the manner of playing these instruments varies according to the region and the musical genre. Syncopation is often used, and free rhythm is found in the chanting of poetry, in theatrical declamation and in improvised vocal or instrumental preludes.

The rhythmic patterns in theatre and ceremonial music are numerous. They are determined by the placing and number of specific drumstrokes and are taught by onomatopoeic syllables, e.g. toong, táng, cắc, trắc, tà-rắc, rụp. Very few rhythmic patterns are fixed; most of them can or must be used with rhythmic variation. To perform the basic pattern is known as đánh chân phung (‘to strike in a true and square way’) when there is no variation and đánh hoa lá (‘to strike, adding flowers and leaves’) when there is. Polyrhythms can be found in traditional theatre music and ritual music. Formerly, all kinds of music were rhythmically accompanied, but entertainment music in central and south Vietnam now has no special rhythmic accompaniment.

(vi) Heterophony.

Vietnamese music is not exclusively monodic. The Thái and Hmông perform some folksongs in several parts, and Buddhist prayers are never chanted in unison. In instrumental music many different melodic lines, derived from the same melodic pattern, are performed simultaneously by several instruments, although the last note of a musical phrase and musical section must be played in unison or in octaves. On the main beats all the instruments play either a unison or a consonance. On the weak beats they are free to use any note of the modal scale. Heterophony can be found in the instrumental accompaniment of a song as well as in instrumental music performed by ensembles.

(vii) Ornamentation and improvisation.

An important feature of Vietnamese musical tradition, ornamentation is usually reserved for certain instruments or certain modes. For example, arpeggiation is used only on the tranh. On the same instrument vibrato is used for the notes x and cống in the điệu bắc and for the notes hò, xang and oán in the điệu nam, hi ai. The scale is the same for the hi xuân and the hi ai, but the ornaments for the note xang are different in the two cases. Besides these prescribed ornaments, there are improvised ones in both vocal and instrumental music. A singer or musician is appreciated much more for his ability to ornament than for the number of pieces in his repertory.

In the Vietnamese folk music tradition, improvisation can be either poetic or musical, especially in the trống quân and quan họ, sung by two groups in competition. In art music, before playing a melody, musicians used to improvise in the prelude called rao in south Vietnam and dạo in central or north Vietnam. Nowadays the dạo in the Huế tradition (central Vietnam) consists of a few stereotyped musical phrases. While the rao is still elaborate, improvisation is no longer as developed as it used to be in either the dạo or the rao.

(viii) Notation.

The notes of the scale, as in Chinese tradition, are represented by Chinese characters written from top to bottom and from right to left. For the notes of a lower octave a dot is put under each character. The notes of the upper octave are represented by the same characters with an additional symbol on the left side. Illustrations of the notation system can be found in Tran Văn Khê (1962) and Nguyen Thuyết Phong (1989).

Nowadays, however, the names of the notes are written in modern script with Roman letters, as in ex.1. A circle or a dot in red ink beside a character shows that the note is on a strong or a weak beat respectively. This system of notation has no indication for the manner of performance. There were tablatures for the đàn tranh and the ty bà, but they were not as accurate as the tablature for the Chinese qin. Many new systems of notation, invented by a few traditional masters, are being used concurrently with Western music notation.

(iv) Đn ca tài tử or tài tử (‘music of skilled amateurs’).

5. Musical genres.

Art music, with its definite rules and its varied repertory, is performed by professional or semi-professional musicians. In the time of the monarchy, this music was played to accompany court ceremonies or to enliven banquets. Nowadays it serves merely as entertainment or to accompany ceremonies or theatrical performances.

(i) Court music.

(ii) Chamber music.

(iii) Huế music.

(v) Ceremonial and religious music.

(vi) Folk music.

(vii) Theatre.

(viii) Dances.

(ix) Popular and Western music.

Vietnam, Socialist Republic of, §5: Musical genres.

(i) Court music.

In the 15th century, in the reign of King Lê Thái Tông (1434–42), a court high official was commissioned to study the music of the Ming dynasty, then reigning in China, in order to create a Đại Việt (Vietnam's former name) court music. He distinguished eight kinds of music; giao nhạc (‘music of heaven's terrace’) for the sacrifice to heaven and earth; miếu nhạc (‘music of the temples’) performed in the imperial and Confucian temples; ngũ tử nhạc (‘music of the five sacrifices’); đại triều nhạc (‘music of the great audiences’); thung triều nhạc (‘music of the simple audiences’); yến nhạc (‘banquet music’); cung trung chi nhạc (‘palace music’), and cứu nhat nguyệt giao trùng nhạc (‘music for assistance to the sun or the moon in case of an eclipse’).

Several instrumental ensembles were used to perform royal music: the đông văn and the nhã nhạc, which were replaced by the giao phng. In the 19th century and even in the 20th, shortly before the fall of the monarchy in 1945, court orchestras were as follows: the nhạc huyền, consisting of archaic instruments, mostly used as a parade orchestra, the nhã nhạc (‘elegant music’), and đại nhạc (‘great music’). The repertory included a series of nine hymns (cửu tấu) or six hymns (lục tấu) sung by a choir in unison.

Court dances were performed by two groups of dancers, the văn vũ (‘civil dance’) and võ vũ (‘military dance’). A great number of musical pieces for the đại nhạc and nhã nhạc ensembles are no longer performed except at national festivities, or in special circumstances such as the reception of foreign ambassadors or at international festivals.

Vietnam, Socialist Republic of, §5: Musical genres.

(ii) Chamber music.

Music for entertainment is not ‘light music’ but rather art music performed by a small number of instrumentalists for a limited audience, somewhat like chamber music in the West. There are three regional types.

In north Vietnam, hát Ả đào or ca trù chamber music is performed by professional or semi-professional singers accompanied by only one musician playing on the đàn đáy, or by an instrumental ensemble when the singers dance at the same time. From a historical point of view, it is very likely that the hát Ả đào was created in the 15th century, reached its peak of development in the 19th century and began to decline in the 20th. It is now disappearing, and singers who know the whole repertory can no longer be found.

The music of the hát Ả đào has altered considerably owing to the decreasing number of accompanying instruments, the scarcity and even suppression of the dances and the disappearance of the teaching centres of vocal music. The genre once displayed skilled vocal technique, instrumental accompaniment, the combination of melodic and rhythmic elements and audience participation. The singer had to have a refined vocal technique and a deep knowledge of rhythm. She would accompany herself rhythmically on the phách (clappers), a small bamboo plank or a piece of hard wood that she beat with two wooden sticks (see fig.4 above). As a rule, only one musician accompanied the song on the đàn đáy. One of the listeners would hold the trống chau (‘praising drum’), a small, double-headed drum that was beaten with a wooden stick and gave stereotyped rhythmic patterns. The old repertory included entertainment songs, songs in honour of tutelary genii and competition songs.

Vietnam, Socialist Republic of, §5: Musical genres.

(iii) Huế music.

The period from which the ca Huế (Huế songs) and the đàn Huế (Huế music) date is not known. This genre could have existed for a long time and may have had a different name in the past; its present name derives from Huế, the site chosen as the capital of the southern part of Đại Việt by Nguyen Phúc Tran in 1687. The Huế tradition is kept alive by musicians who continue to hand down their art to younger musicians.

Some of the best-known pieces in the Huế repertory are Lu thủy (‘Flowing water’), Cổ bổn (‘Old piece’), Long điệp (‘Butterflies courting’) and Mi bài ng (‘Ten royal pieces’), also called Mui bài tau (‘Ten Chinese pieces’), in the bắc mode; and Nam ai (‘Lament of the south’), Nam bình (‘Peace in the south’) and Tứ đại cẢnh (‘Landscape of four generations’) in the nam mode. Huế music can be played as a solo, a duet, a trio or a quintet (ngũ tuyệt, see §3 above). It can also be performed by the court nhã nhạc ensemble.

Vietnam, Socialist Republic of, §5: Musical genres.

(iv) Đn ca tài tử or tài tử (‘music of skilled amateurs’).

This music, found in the south, belongs to the same tradition as Huế music, though the repertory and the instrumental technique are slightly different. Pieces in the bắc mode such as Lu thủy (‘Flowing water’) or Kim tiền (‘golden coin’) recur here, but apart from the six bắc pieces, there are seven great pieces (bẢy bài ln) belonging to the nhạc type expressing solemnity, and several short tunes of the quẢng type expressing fancy.

Nam xuân (‘Spring in the south’) and Nam ai (‘Lament of the south’) differ from the pieces of the same name in the Huế tradition. The most popular piece in the southern tradition is Vọng cổ (‘Nostalgia for the past’), composed in 1917 by Cao Văn Lâu (also known as Sáu Lau), a native of Bạc Liêu in south Vietnam. Since then, this piece of 20 phrases of 2 bars has become a piece of 6 phrases of 32 bars. Its melodic line, with fixed notes on certain beats, can be infinitely varied according to the musicians and the instruments.

The instruments of tài tử music are basically the same as those of the Hue tradition. In addition, the modified European guitar (ghi-ta), violin (viô-lông) and steel guitar (ghi-ta ha-oai-en) are used in all tài tử and cai lung repertories. Recently, the đàn bau monochord has been reintroduced into southern music after a long period of absence. The most favoured tài tử piece is vọng cô (‘Remembering the past’).

Vietnam, Socialist Republic of, §5: Musical genres.

(v) Ceremonial and religious music.

In several regions funerals still proceed according to Confucian, Buddhist, Caodaist or Christian rites. In south Vietnam, funeral music is performed by a group of five instruments called quân nhạc (‘military music’), and the pagodas and temples still resound with Buddhist or Caodaist prayers.

There is nothing comparable to the Japanese shōmyō (Buddhist chant), but a great number of prayer texts are similar to those found in Chinese or Japanese Buddhism. There are two main genres: tụng, cantillation without instrumental accompaniment, and tán, Buddhist chanting with instrumental accompaniment in big ceremonies. Some of the tán are sung in the thien nuance of the bắc mode, others in the nam mode. The mediums' songs chau văn in north Vietnam, hau văn in central Vietnam and rôi bóng in south Vietnam are dying out.

Vietnam, Socialist Republic of, §5: Musical genres.

(vi) Folk music.

Vietnam has 54 different ethnic groups. Nearly all the peoples sing hát ru (lullabies), đong dao (children's songs) and hò (peasant work songs). The Thái have songs with dancing, whereas several ethnic groups of north Vietnam sing special funeral or ceremonial songs. In north Vietnam, antiphonal songs are sung by boys and girls, especially the trong quân (accompanied by the trong quân, a ground zither) and the quan họ, a song peculiar to the province of Bắc Ninh. These are both love songs with collective and competitive features. For the trõng quân only poetic improvisation is required, but musical improvisation is also part of quan họ. Blind musicians (xẩm xoan) go from one village to another singing historical, humorous, epic and sometimes erotic songs for the villagers. More than 6000 folksongs have been recorded for the archives of the various research institutes of Vietnam. It still remains for them to be studied and analysed in order to present a more accurate picture of Vietnamese folk music.

Vietnam, Socialist Republic of, §5: Musical genres.

(vii) Theatre.

All the traditional theatres of Vietnam are musical theatres, of which the script and the acting are the most important elements, though given coherence by singing, dancing and instrumental accompaniment. Tuong or hát boi, a court theatre, is considered the ‘classical’ theatre of Vietnam. It is very similar to Chinese theatre, with the same simplicity of stage setting and almost the same conventions concerning the characters, costumes, make-up and gesture. However, stories (tuong) are taken from the history and mythology of Vietnam and China. These are categorized according to their sources: the tuong thay (masters' plays) were composed by prominent Vietnamese playwrights; the tuong pho (long plays) were derived from long Chinese stories; and the tuong đo (varied plays) derived from Vietnamese folk stories. Although many stories are adapted from Chinese sources, vocal techniques and instrumentation are quite distinctive. Voices (giọng) are classified according to the style of the vocal production used by the singer: giọng óc (falsetto), giọng gan (‘liver’ voice), giọng ruot (‘intestine’ voice), giọng hm (‘jaw’ voice) etc. The kèn bóp (oboe) and the trong chien (‘battle’ drum) feature prominently in the accompanying instrumental ensemble.

Tuong requires specific training in the most substantial repertory of songs and music among traditional theatrical forms. The repertory consists of nói loi (declamations), xung, bạch and thán (recitatives), hát khách (songs of the ‘guest’ category), hát nam (songs of the ‘native’ category and in the nam mode), hát bài (songs for a particular character) and hát noi niêu (varied songs).

Hát chèo or chèo, which emerged from folk traditions, became an important form of theatre in northern Vietnam in the Lý dynasty (11th–13th centuries). Many older plays are anonymous, and the texts are in the common language of the people; texts and melodies are orally transmitted. Unlike the court theatre, there is no scenery, no gorgeous costumes and no sophisticated make-up. The repertory includes various types of nói sử (declamation of verse in a serious style): sử chúc for the prologue; sử xuân, of a happy nature; sử rau, of a sad nature, and sử vãn, of a mournful nature. Nói lửng is declamation of verse in a light style. There are also songs such as the sắp, which are for lively scenes, the ba than and hát vãn for sad scenes, the sa lệch for love scenes, the cam giá for courting scenes, the he moi for buffoonery and the chuon chuon for mad women to sing. The instrumental ensemble used to consist of a fiddle player, a flautist and a drummer. Nowadays more instruments are used.

Cai lung (reformed theatre) was created in 1918 and is popular in southern Vietnam. The plays are different in essence and in form from traditional theatre, the themes being chosen from Vietnamese history as well as from foreign sources (Chinese, Indian, Arabic, European), from novels, from the various religions or from everyday life. They are written in the language of the people. The stage is adorned with a curtain and scenery, and more theatrical properties are used than in the other types of theatre so far described. It attempts a more natural style of acting; conventional gestures and stylized attitudes are now to be found only in historical plays.

The music of Cai lung is based mainly on the repertory of tài tử chamber music. Compositions in the bắc mode are for light scenes and in the nam mode for sadder scenes. Chinese and European songs have been adapted for inclusion; new short songs have been added for particular roles.

Vietnam, Socialist Republic of, §5: Musical genres.

(viii) Dances.

For centuries, many folkdances have been integrated into ritual ceremonies, musical theatre and court music. One example is the stick dance, which had originally been a folkdance and was performed by King Đinh and King Tran from the 10th century to the 13th. Folk martial arts were adapted as the basic rules for hát boi tuong, which was once the court musical theatre. Village temple courtyards have long been performance sites for folk and traditional dances that depict historical stories of, and offerings to, local deities. Dances are rarely performed simply for entertainment purposes, with the exception of those performed for the former court banquets.

Folkdances are associated with local festivities and portray agricultural activities, local customs and stories of famous persons. Stories of the Hùng kings are enacted in the ancient site of the pre-historic kingdom of Văn Lang in Vĩnh Phù province on the annual commemoration day (giổ tổ Hùng Vng). The dances depict the life of this legendary time with bronze drum playing and scenes of tribute offerings from neighbouring countries. The cycle of the 12 agricultural months is elaborated in the 12 dance suites called mùa đèn (‘light dance’) in Đông Ankh district, Thanh Hóa province. Along the south-central coast, an annual ceremony in honour of the sacred whale features the bá trạo (oar dance) and other related dances, such as the ‘flower offering’ dance and the ‘long swords’ dance.

Dance is included in Buddhist ceremonies, chau văn possession rituals, ceremonies of the Cao Đài religious sect and the Catholic Mass. The most prominent of these are Buddhist dances: lục cúng (‘six offerings’), kinh đàn (sutra chanting ritual), du địa phu (‘salvation from hell’) and others which were probably created in the Lý dynasty.

Imperial court dances continued as a richly elaborate art for nearly 1000 years, from the time of the Lý dynasty. In the 17th century, Đào Duy T created the thanh hòa th (royal dance mansion), where three teams of 120 dancers, musicians and singers were trained for court performances of a repertory of 11 major dances, performed for specific occasions in the palace.

Among minority peoples, well-known dances are performed during harvest and other festivities. These include the Thai xoe, the Khmer lăm thôn, the Chàm cà choong and the Êđê xoang; other dances are performed for courtship, celebrations and rituals.

Vietnam, Socialist Republic of, §5: Musical genres.

(ix) Popular and Western music.

A new style of Vietnamese music has arisen as the result of contact with Western music. At first, songs were composed in a Western idiom to be taught in schools and universities, to boy scouts and to revolutionaries. Now, popular songs with romantic, folk and historical themes are widely sung on commercial recordings, radio, television and modern stages. Young musicians trained in the West have endeavoured to write compositions for the piano or violin before attempting other Western genres such as the symphonic poem, concerto, symphony or opera. Some use only Western techniques; others try to combine elements of traditional music with Western forms and idiom. Such composers are not yet well known outside Vietnam.

Traditional Vietnamese music, in spite of its originality and diversity of styles, no longer corresponds to the needs of the media or urban Vietnamese people. Many original folkdances have become obsolete or have changed extensively.

See also South-east Asia.

Vietnam, Socialist Republic of, §5: Musical genres.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

GEWM, [iv] (Nguyen Thuyet Phong)

HDM2 (Trân Văn Khê)

G. Dumoutier, ed. and trans.: Les chants et les traditions populaires des Annamites (Paris, 1890)

Hoàng Yen: ‘La musique à Hue: đàn nguyêt et đan tranh’, Bulletin des Amis du vieux Huê, vi (1919), July–Sept, 233–381

E. Le Bris: ‘Musique annamite: airs traditionnels’, Bulletin des Amis du vieux Huê, ix (1922), Oct–Dec, 255–310

G. Knosp: ‘Histoire de la musique dans l'Indochine’, EMDC, I/v (1922), 3100–46

Nguyen Văn Huyên: Les chants alternés des garçons et des filles en Annam (Paris, 1934), 27–53

G. de Gironcourt: ‘Recherches de géographie musicale en Indochine’, Bulletin de la Société des études indochinoises, new ser., xvii/4 (1942), 3–174

C. Brăiloiu: ‘Un problème de tonalité: la métabole pentatonique’, Mélanges d'histoire et d'esthétique musicales offerts à Paul-Marie Masson, i (Paris, 1955), 63–75

Nguyen Đình Lai: ‘Etude sur la musique sino-vietnamienne et les chants populaires du Vietnam’, Bulletin de la Societé des études indochinoises, new ser., xxx/1 (1956), 1–86 [see also Trân Văn Khê, ibid, new ser., xxxiv/1 (1959), 13]

Tran Văn Khê: ‘Le théâtre vietnamien’, Les théâtres d'Asie: Royaumont 1959, 203–19

Tran Văn Khê: ‘Place de la musique dans les classes populaires au Việt-Nam’, Bulletin de la Société des études indochinoises, new ser., xxxiv/4 (1959), 361–77

Tran Văn Khê: ‘La musique vietnamienne’, Histoire de la musique, i, ed. Roland-Manuel (Paris, 1960), 343–9

Tran Văn Khê: ‘Les instruments de la musique révélés par les fouilles archéologiques du Vietnam’, Arts asiatiques, vii/2 (1960), 141–52

Tran Văn Khê: ‘Note sur l’ornamentation du Vietnam’, IMSCR: New York 1961, 445–50

Tran Văn Khê: La musique vietnamienne traditionnelle (Paris, 1962)

Tran Văn Khê: Viêt-Nam: les traditions musicales (Paris, 1967)

Tran Văn Khê: ‘La musique bouddhique au Vietnam’, Encyclopédie des musiques sacrées, i (Paris, 1968), 222–40

Phạm-Duy: Musics of Vietnam (Carbondale, IL, and London, 1975)

Võ Phan Thanh Giao Trinh: Ca-dao: Vietnamese Popular Songs (Brussels, 1975)

Nguyen Thuyết Phong: Goi am thanh Viet Nam [The world of Vietnamese music] (San Jose, CA, 1989)

Phan Huy Lê, Hà Văn Tan and Hoàng Xuân Chinh: ‘Nhng bc đi của lịch sử Việt Nam’, Văn ha Viet Nam, ed. Ban van hoa van nghe trung uong Vietnam (Hanoi, 1989), 34–40

Nguyen Thuyết Phong and P.S. Campbell: From Rice Paddies and Temple Yards: Traditional Music of Vietnam (Danbury, CT, 1990)

Nguyen Thuyết Phong, ed.: New Perspectives on Vietnamese Music: Six Essays (New Haven, CT, 1991)

Vieu, Jane [Jeanne Elisabeth Marie; Valette, Pierre]

(b 1871; d Paris, 8 April 1955). French composer. Little is known about Vieu’s life. She composed about 100 works – orchestral, operatic, chamber, piano and vocal – some of which were published under the pseudonym Pierre Valette. Her musical idiom is decidedly 19th-century in its formal and harmonic character, despite the fact that she lived well into the 20th century. Her operetta Arlette received its première in Brussels, at the Théâtre Royal des Galeries St Hubert, on 28 October 1904.

From 1907 onwards, Vieu’s compositions were published by Maurice Vieu, presumably her husband, with whom she later formed a publishing house (Maurice Vieu and Jane Vieu) in Paris. She wrote a solfège manual, Dix leçons de solfège manuscrites à changement clès (Paris, 1913), designed for use at the Paris Conservatoire and dedicated to its director Gabriel Fauré.

WORKS

(selective list; complete list in SACEM)

dramatic

all published in Paris

Madame Tallien, ou Thérésa Cabarrus (pièce historique, 5 [8 tableaux], P. Berthelot and C. Roland), 1901; La belle au bois dormant (féerie illustrée, L. Métivet), 1902; Au bal de Flore (ballet-pantomime, 1, G. de Dubor), 1902; Aladin (féerie chantée, 15 tableaux, L. Métivet), 1904; Arlette (operetta, 3, Roland and L. Bouvot), Brussels, Théâtre Royal des Galeries St Hubert, 28 Oct 1904; Piège d’amour (fantaisie-lyrique, 1, de la Vaudère), 1905; Sur le pont d’Avignon (fantaisie-opérette, 1, L. de Lahitte), 1937

other works

Orch, chbr and solo inst: Amoroso, intermezzo, vn, pf/mand, pf; Au coin du feu, vn/vc, pf; Au pays parfumé, 1v/vn, pf; Castillane, waltz, pf/pf, mand; Chanson du soir, pf or vn/vc, pf/hp; Colombine, air de ballet, pf/pf, orch; Griserie de caresses, pf/pf, orch [also vocal arr.]; Lyresse et parfums, pf/pf, orch; Lever de l’aurore, vn, pf; Marche des alguazils, pf, mand; Marquise bergers (Chanson Louis XV), pf/pf, orch; Minuetto, str qt/pf qnt; Morceaux détachés, pf, orch; Nymphes et papillons, pf/pf, orch; Séduction, pf/vn, pf; Sérénade d’Aladin, pf/vn, pf; Tarantelle, pf, orch/pf/hp; Valse des merveilleuses, pf/orch; Valse des rousses, pf/vn, pf; pieces for solo pf

Vocal: Choeur du printemps, women’s chorus; Ave Maria, 1v, pf/hp, vc, org ad lib; Chant des faneurs, 1v, pf, mand/vn ad lib; Griserie de caresses, 1v [also inst arrs.]; O salutaris!, 1v, vc/vn, org/pf; Sous la brume, 1v, gui, mand; songs, 1v, pf

BIBLIOGRAPHY

PazdirekH; SchmidlD

A. Cohen: International Encyclopedia of Women Composers (New York, 2/1987), 725

JUDY TSOU

Vieux, Maurice (Edgard)

(b Savy-Berlette, 14 April 1884; d Paris, 28 April 1951). French viola player. He studied first with his father, a railwayman who was a violinist and a poet. Entering the Paris Conservatoire in 1899 as a pupil of Laforge and Leport, he took a unanimous premier prix in 1902 and was soon making an impact in Parisian musical life, for instance in the Double Quintet of the Société de Musique de Chambre. In 1907 he joined the Opéra orchestra, becoming solo viola player the next year and staying until 1949; he was concurrently solo viola player with the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire and played at various times in the Concerts Pasdeloup, Orchestre Colonne, Orchestre Walther Straram and French National Radio Orchestra. As a soloist he gave the premières of a number of works, including Bruch's Romance, Schmitt's Légende and Jongen's Suite pour orchestre et alto principal (all dedicated to him). Pieces for viola and piano were written for him by Bournonville, Gaubert, Grovlez, Hahn, Jongen and others. For years Vieux was a member of the Quatuor Firmin Touche, and he took part in the premières of chamber works by Saint-Saëns, Fauré (the C minor Piano Quintet and the String Quartet), Debussy, Milhaud, Samazeuilh, Golestan and Françaix. He played on equal terms with Ysaÿe, Sarasate, Kreisler, Enescu, Thibaud and Casals and fulfilled the same role in the advance of the viola in France that Tertis did in Britain. When Théophile Laforge died in 1918, Vieux took his place as professor of viola at the Conservatoire and over the next 30 years every French viola player of note studied with him. His best-known pedagogical works were 20 Etudes (dedicated to favourite students); ten Etudes sur des traits d'orchestre; ten Etudes sur les intervalles and six Etudes de concert for viola and piano (dedicated to other pupils). Vieux made few records but they are enough to show the pliant, supple quality of his tone, the delicacy of his vibrato and his exceptional musicianship; Fauré's G minor Piano Quartet (with Marguerite Long, Jacques Thibaud and Pierre Fournier) has rarely been out of the catalogue since it was recorded in 1940.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

M. Riley: The History of the Viola (Ann Arbor, 1980–91), i, 258–60; ii, 167–73

T. Potter: disc notes, The Recorded Viola, vol.i, Pearl GEMM CDS 9148

TULLY POTTER

Vieuxtemps.

Belgian family of musicians.

(1) Henry Vieuxtemps

(2) (Jean-Joseph-)Lucien Vieuxtemps

(3) (Jules-Joseph-)Ernest Vieuxtemps

BORIS SCHWARZ (with SARAH HIBBERD)

Vieuxtemps

(1) Henry Vieuxtemps

(b Verviers, 17 Feb 1820; d Mustapha, Algeria, 6 June 1881). Violinist and composer. The most celebrated member of the family, he studied the violin from the age of four with his father, an amateur musician, and later with M. Lecloux-Dejonc. He made his first public appearance at the age of six at a concert in his home town; this was followed by a successful performance on 29 November 1827 at the Société Grétry in Liège. Early in 1828 he performed several times in Brussels, where he attracted the attention of his next teacher, Bériot. In May 1829 Bériot took Vieuxtemps to Paris, where he made his début with Rode’s Seventh Concerto; reviewing the concert, Fétis proclaimed him ‘a born musician’. His lessons with Bériot came to an end in 1831 when Bériot departed for Italy, but he obtained a royal Belgian stipend for his pupil. In 1833 Henry went with his father, a rather strict taskmaster, on a concert tour through Germany to broaden his musical horizon. He met and heard several of his famous contemporaries, including Spohr, Molique and Mayseder, and finally settled for the winter of 1833–4 in Vienna, where he studied counterpoint with Sechter and entered a circle of musicians who had been close to Beethoven. He undertook to learn Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, at that time virtually forgotten, and after only two weeks of preparation performed it with immense success (16 March 1834). The conductor, Eduard von Lannoy, director of the Vienna Conservatory, praised his performance as ‘original, novel, and yet classical’. Travelling north, Vieuxtemps played in Leipzig, earning a review by Robert Schumann that compared him to Paganini. Although his début in London at the Philharmonic Society (2 June 1834) did not arouse much interest, he met Paganini, at that time the rage of London, whose playing impressed him deeply; it was reported that Paganini heard young Vieuxtemps and predicted a great future for him.

Vieuxtemps spent the winter of 1835–6 in Paris, studying composition with Reicha. He set himself the goal of ‘combining the grand form of the Viotti concerto with the technical demands of modern times’. The result of his efforts was his F minor Violin Concerto (later published as the Concerto no.2 op.19), which clearly shows the influence of Paganini. His apprentice years completed, Vieuxtemps resumed his travels throughout Europe in 1837 and was particularly successful in Russia. At a concert in St Petersburg on 16 March 1840, he gave the première of two recently composed works, the Fantaisie-caprice op.11 and the First Concerto. The success of the concerto was repeated in Brussels, where his old master Bériot embraced him in public, and in Paris on 12 January 1841, of which occasion Berlioz wrote: ‘To Vieuxtemps’ merits as an eminent virtuoso, he now adds no less a reputation as a composer’.

On 19 April 1841 Vieuxtemps again appeared in London and was received with enthusiasm. From then on his world career was assured. He became a frequent visitor to London and participated in the first season of the Beethoven Quartet Society in 1845; he undertook three American tours, with increasing success, in 1843–4, 1857–8 (with Thalberg) and 1870–71. He was idolized in Russia, where he spent five years (1846–51) as soloist to the tsar and professor of the violin, contributing significantly to the development of violin playing in Russia. There he also composed his Concerto no.4 in D minor, possibly his most original work, which he played in Paris in December 1851; Berlioz called it ‘a magnificent symphony for orchestra with principal violin’. His Fifth Concerto in A minor, completed in 1861 as a ‘pièce de concours’ for the Brussels Conservatory, became one of Wieniawski’s favourite pieces.

In 1855 Vieuxtemps and his wife, the Viennese pianist Josephine Eder, whom he had married in 1844, settled near Frankfurt, but they moved to Paris in 1866 because of the political tension. Following the unexpected death of his wife two years later, he resumed his international travels, enjoying undiminished success. After his return from America in 1871, he was urged to accept a professorship at the Brussels Conservatory; he devoted all his energies to this new task which he regarded as a ‘sacred mission’, and contributed decisively to the growing success of the Belgian violin school in which he took great pride; among his pupils was Ysaÿe. A paralytic stroke forced Vieuxtemps in 1873 to interrupt his activities, and Wieniawski was called to replace him temporarily. A slight improvement in 1877–8 enabled him to resume some limited teaching, but in 1879 he was forced to resign. Two years later he died in a sanatorium in Algeria.

The praise which Berlioz and other serious critics lavished on Vieuxtemps as a composer appears somewhat exaggerated today, yet it must be understood in the context of its time. When Vieuxtemps wrote his First Concerto in 1840 he filled a void. The concertos of Spohr, never popular in France, were fading fast, while those of Bériot were intended as no more than elegant entertainment. The repertory of Viotti, Rode and Kreutzer was too Classical, while Paganini’s concertos (then unpublished) overstressed virtuosity. Vieuxtemps rejuvenated the concept of the grand French violin concerto by enriching the solo part and setting it in a full, modern symphonic framework. He fused technical elements of Bériot and Paganini in his own inimitable way and created an original violinistic vocabulary that remained valid for the entire 19th century. There is none of Paganini’s ‘sorcery’ in Vieuxtemps’ technique, which is solidly based on musical concepts. His Fourth Concerto is pioneering in terms of form: a four-movement structure comprising an improvisational introduction (with cadenza), a slow movement, a scherzo and a finale. The Fifth Concerto uses an integrated one-movement form with a cadenza towards the end.

As a reformer of the concerto Vieuxtemps can be compared to Liszt. However, he did not always succeed in filling his novel forms with adequate musical content: at times his heroism is too theatrical, his passion too declamatory, his melodies too sugary. At his best, he has nobility, charm and elegance. His shorter compositions for the violin are more brilliant than profound, but the best among them are far above the shallow solo repertory of the day. As a performing virtuoso, Vieuxtemps was one of many great figures of the 19th century.

Vieuxtemps was also a fine violist and an accomplished quartet player. He was involved in the organization of recitals whose programmes included the works of Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven, together with Bach, Cherubini and more modern composers. His contemporaries saw him as the master of the quartet tradition following his performance in Vienna with two of Beethoven’s contemporaries, Hultz and Linke (see Fauquet). He contributed much to a broader appreciation of chamber music.

WORKS

all published

orchestral

Vn concs.: no.1, E, op.10, 1840; no.2, f, op.19, 1836; no.3, a, op.25, 1844; no.4, d, op.31, c1850; no.5 ‘Grétry’, a, op.37, 1861; no.6, G, op.47 (Paris, 1883); no.7, a, op.49 (Paris, 1883)

For vn, orch/pf: Hommage à Paganini, op.9 (Leipzig, ?1845); Fantaisie-caprice, op.11 (Mainz, 1845); Norma, fantasia on the G string, op.18 (Leipzig, c1845); Fantasia appassionata, op.35 (Leipzig, c1860); Ballade and Polonaise, op.38 (Leipzig, c1860)

Other orch: 2 vc concs., a, op.46 (Paris, 1877), b, op.50 (Paris, ?1883); Duo brillant, vn, vc, orch with pf, op.39 (Paris, ?1864); Ov., with Belgian national anthem, chorus, orch, op.41 (Mainz, 1863)

chamber

for violin, piano

Variations, on a theme from Bellini’s Il pirata, op.6 (Paris, c1845); 3 romances sans paroles, op.7 (Leipzig, c1845); 4 romances sans paroles, op.8 (Leipzig, c1845); Vn Sonata, D, op.12 (Mainz, c1845)

12 duos concertants: no.1, on themes from Auber’s Le duc d’Olonne, op.13 (Milan, c1845), collab. E. Wolff; no.2, on themes from Weber’s Oberon, op.14 (Milan, c1845), collab. Wolff; no.3, on themes from Mozart’s Don Giovanni, op.20 (Paris, c1845), collab. Wolff; no.4, on themes from Meyerbeer’s L’étoile du nord, op.23 (Paris, c1845), collab. T. Kullak; no.5, on themes from Meyerbeer’s Le prophète, op.26 (Mainz, c1850), collab. A. Rubinstein; 7 others, without op.nos., collab. Wolff, J. Grégoire, F. Servais, L. Erckel, D. Magnus

Les arpèges, caprice, op.15 (Vienna, c1845); Souvenir d’Amérique, on ‘Yankee Doodle’, op.17 (Leipzig and London, c1845); Souvenir de Russie, fantasia, op.21 (Leipzig, c1845); 6 morceaux de salon, op.22 (Berlin, ?1847); [6] Divertissements d’amateurs, on Russian themes, op.24 (Mainz, c1850); Fantaisie slave, op.27 (Leipzig, c1850); Introduction and Rondo, E, op.28 (Leipzig, c1850); 3 Fantasias, on themes from Verdi’s I lombardi, Ernani and Luisa Miller, op.29 (Mainz, ?1854); Chansons russes, without op. no. (Mainz, ?1854)

3 morceaux de salon, op.32 (Offenbach, c1855); Bouquet américain, 6 pieces, op.33 (Paris, c1855); 3 Mährchen, op.34 (Hamburg, 1859); Feuille d’album, 3 pieces, op.40 (Mainz, 1864); Old England, caprice on 16th- and 17th-century English airs, op.42 (Mainz, 1866); Fantasia, on themes from Gounod’s Faust, without op. no. (Paris, 1870); Suite, b, op.43 (Leipzig, 1871); Voix intimes, [6] pensées mélodiques, op.45 (Mainz, 1876)

Voies du coeur, 9 pièces, op.53 (Paris, 1883); 3 fantaisies brillantes, op.54 (Paris, 1883), orchd B. Godard (Paris, 1883); Greeting to America, op.56 (Paris, 1883); Impressions et réminiscences de Pologne, op.57 (Paris, 1883); Ma marche funèbre, op.58 (Paris, 1883); Allegro de concert, op.59 (Paris, 1884)

other instruments

3 str qts: e, op.44 (Leipzig, 1871), C, op.51 (Paris, 1884), B, op.52 (Paris, 1884); Pf Trio, on themes from Meyerbeer’s L’Africaine, without op. no. (Paris, n.d.); Elégie, va/vc, pf, op. 30 (Offenbach and London, ?1854); Va Sonata, B, op.36 (Leipzig, 1863); Allegro and Scherzo, B, va, pf, op.60 (Paris, 1884) [inc. va sonata]

violin solo

6 études de concert, op.16 (Leipzig, c1845); Cadenzas to Beethoven’s Vn Conc. (Offenbach, 1855); 36 études, ded. Paris Conservatoire, op.48 (Paris, 1882); 6 morceaux, suivis d’un capriccio, op.61 (Paris, 1883) [capriccio for va solo]

Opp.1–5 not known

Vieuxtemps

(2) (Jean-Joseph-)Lucien Vieuxtemps

(b Verviers, 5 July 1828; d Brussels, Jan 1901). Pianist and teacher, brother of (1) Henry Vieuxtemps. He studied in Paris with Edouard Wolff and made his début in Brussels on 19 March 1845 at a concert given by his elder brother. He lived in Brussels as a respected piano teacher and composed some short pieces for the piano. In 1855 he assisted his elder brother at a concert in London.

Vieuxtemps

(3) (Jules-Joseph-)Ernest Vieuxtemps

(b Brussels, 18 March 1832; d Belfast, 20 March 1896). Cellist, brother of (1) Henry Vieuxtemps. He played with his eldest brother in London in 1855; that same year the three brothers gave a joint concert in Liège. Ernest was solo cellist of the Royal Italian Opera in London, and subsequently became principal cellist of the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester (1858).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

M. Kufferath: Henry Vieuxtemps (Brussels, 1882) [incl. autobiography]

T. Radoux: Henry Vieuxtemps: sa vie, ses oeuvres (Liège, 1891); Eng. trans., 1983

P. Bergmans: Henry Vieuxtemps (Turnhout, 1920)

W.W. Cobbett, ed.: Cobbett’s Cyclopaedic Survey of Chamber Music (London, 1929–30, enlarged 2/1963/R by C. Mason)

J.-M. Fauquet: Les sociétés de musique de chambre à Paris de la Restauration à 1870 (Paris, 1986), esp. 236–7

Viéville, Jean Laurent le Cerf de la.

See Le cerf de la viéville, jean laurent.

Vif

(Fr.: ‘lively’).

See Vivace.

Viganò [Braglia], Onorato (Rinaldo Giuseppe Maria)

(b Milan, 6 Sept 1739; d ?Venice, 1811). Italian choreographer, dancer and impresario. From the 1750s he danced mostly in Rome, Vienna, Venice and Naples, becoming active as a choreographer from at least 1773 and as an impresario from at least 1783. Viganò was famous in his youth as a dancer in the comic (grottesco) style. Burney, who saw him in Naples in 1770, wrote that he ‘has great force and neatness, and seems to equal Slingsby in his à plomb, or neatness of keeping time’. Later he seems to have appeared only in serious parts, dancing regularly until 1792 and once thereafter, in 1797. He was one of the best-known choreographers in Italy, often working in collaboration with the composer Marescalchi, but he never approached the celebrity achieved by his son Salvatore. His career as an impresario, notably at the Teatro Argentina in Rome (1783–8), the Teatro S Benedetto in Venice (from 1786) and the Teatro Nuovo, Padua (1809), was chequered, being plagued by financial difficulties.

Many members of the Viganò family were dancers and musicians in the period between the mid-18th and mid-19th centuries, notably Salvatore Viganò. Onorato’s daughter Vincenza danced from at least 1782, mostly in serious parts, and married the tenor Domenico Mombelli. She is remembered for having written the libretto of Rossini’s first opera, Demetrio e Polibio, in which her husband and their two famous daughters, Ester and Anna, sang.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BurneyFI

C. Ritorni: Commentarii della vita e delle opere coreodrammatiche di Salvatore Viganò (Milan, 1838)

J.A. Rice: ‘Muzzarelli, Koželuh e La ritrovata figlia di Ottone II (1794): Il balletto viennese rinato nello spirito di Noverre’, NRMI, xxiv (1990), 1–46

Viganò, Salvatore

(b Naples, 25 March 1769; d Milan, 10 Aug 1821). Italian choreographer, dancer and composer. He was the son of Onorato Viganò and Maria Ester Viganò (née Boccherini), who were both dancers; as early as Carnival 1783 he was dancing female roles with great success at the Teatro Argentina, Rome, where his father was impresario and ballet-master. He also studied composition with Boccherini (his uncle) and provided music for some of his father’s ballets (the earliest known is Cefalo e Procri, Carnival 1786) and later for some of his own. In summer 1786 he had a farsetta, La credula vedova, performed in Rome. He had moved with his family to Venice by 1788 and danced with them at the S Samuele theatre. In 1789 he went to Spain with an uncle, Giovanni Viganò, to perform in the coronation festivities of Charles IV. There he met the dancer Maria Medina, whom he married, and the French dancer and choreographer Dauberval, who took him as a pupil to Bordeaux and, early in 1791, to London. By autumn 1791 he was back in Venice, where he and his wife achieved great success as a team, and where he choreographed his first ballet, Raoul de Créqui; in 1792 the family moved to the new theatre, La Fenice. On 13 May 1793 Viganò and his wife made a highly successful début in Vienna, where on 15 June Salvatore produced Raoul de Créqui and on 15 October a Semiramis ballet, Die Tochter der Luft, using a scenario by his father Onorato (after Carlo Gozzi). His work there was the subject of highly partisan support and condemnation. After extensive tours the couple returned to Vienna in 1795, and Salvatore produced, among other works, Richard Löwenherz, based on the famous opéra comique by Sedaine and Grétry, which caused more controversies. Critics such as Ayrenhoff and Richter accused Viganò of ignoring the rules of dramatic ballet pantomime and so destroying the new art of dancing established by Noverre and Angiolini. However, Viganò was part of a new movement espousing virtuosity and more formal composition in choreography. This new tendency, which was represented by dancer-choreographers like Viganò and Auguste Vestris, was to free ballet from the bounds of Aristotelian poetics, and from too close an imitation of nature, which reduced dance to mere pantomimical action.

Between 1795 and 1798 Viganò and his wife toured Germany and the Austrian territories. From spring 1798 to Carnival 1799 Salvatore appeared at his father’s theatre in Venice, S Benedetto, at first with his wife, but during this period they separated. He was ballet-master in Vienna from 1799 to 1803. His Die Geschöpfe des Prometheus (for which Beethoven wrote the music) was performed in early 1801 and seemed to represent the new autonomical dance. The ballet was not a great success because the critics and public were too irritated by the absence of dramatic situations and the obvious preference for pure dance. In 1804 he returned to Italy and produced ballets in many Italian cities, making a short visit to Vienna in 1806–7.

The most important period of Viganò’s career began in 1811 with his engagement at La Scala, Milan, where he mostly remained until his death. There he found the resources and the opportunity to bring his ideas to complete fruition. He was an intuitive artist and often worked out his grandiose conceptions during rehearsals which frequently stretched over many months. Even in Milan he experienced opposition and occasional artistic and popular failures, but Prometeo (1813) established his reputation as a choreographer of genius. Viganò’s dramatic ballets (or ‘choreodramas’, as they were called by Ritorni) were considered unique in style and in their overwhelming effect. According to Ritorni and other contemporary writers, they represented a departure both from the ballet pantomime, which was limited by an attempt to translate spoken dialogue too literally into gesture, and from the French ballet, which put greater emphasis on formal dance. Viganò attempted to create an immediately comprehensible gestural language that would exist in its own right rather than as a translation of spoken dialogue and that would require no programme. He was drawn to mythological and allegorical treatment of contemporary themes (Prometeo; I titani, 1819), partly because their message could be conveyed more effectively through the subtle language of movement than through the precision of speech. Although he took subjects from tragedies, both spoken (V. Alfieri’s Mirra, 1817; Shakespeare’s Othello, 1818) and operatic (La vestale, 1818), he largely reworked them to reflect his view of ballet as a genuine visual and theatrical art form. The dramaturgical disposition of Viganò’s ballets (as some years later in grand opéra) was based on tableaux instead of narrative structures; it was this imaginative synthesis of scene, music and choreography which caused Stendhal to describe Viganò’s ‘choreodramas’ as representing ‘the Romantic spirit’ in its highest degree.

For an illustration of Salvatore and Maria Viganò, see Ballet, §2(i), fig.12

BIBLIOGRAPHY

C. von Ayrenhoff: Über die theatralischen Tänze und die Ballettmeister Noverre, Muzzarelli und Viganò (Vienna, 1794; repr. in Sämmtliche Werke, v, Vienna, 1814)

C. von Ayrenhoff: Schreiben des Eipeldauers über Richard Löwenherz (Vienna, 1795; repr. in Sämmtliche Werke, v, Vienna, 1814)

J. Richter: Die Eipeldauer Briefe (Vienna, 1785–95); ed. E. von Paunel (Munich, 1917)

‘Über Herrn Viganò's neustes Ballett: Das gefundene Veilchen’, Wiener Theater Almanach auf das Jahr 1796 (Vienna, 1796), 52–76

C. Ritorni: Commentarii della vita e delle opere coreodrammatiche di Salvatore Viganò (Milan, 1838)

A. Saint-Léon: Portraits et biographies des plus célèbres maîtres de ballets et chorégraphes anciens et nouveaux de l’école française et italienne (Paris, 1852)

F. Rust: ‘Ueber Salvatore Viganò's Originalscenarium zu L. van Beethovens Ballett “Die Geschöpfe des Prometheus”’, Neue Berliner Muzikzeitung, xlv (1891), 124–5, 133–4, 143–4, 152–4

H. Prunières: ‘Salvatore Viganò’, ReM, iii/1 (1921), 167–90

A. Levinson: ‘Stendhal und Viganò: eine Seite aus der Geschichte der Romantik’, Meister des Balletts (Potsdam, 1923), 69–94

C. Floros: Beethovens Eroica und Prometheus-Musik (Wilhelmshaven, 1978)

E. Raimondi, ed.: Il sogno del coreodramma: Salvatore Viganò, poeta muto (Bologna, 1984)

K. Hansell: ‘Il ballo teatrale e l'opera italiana’, SOI, v (1988), 252–72

FRIDERICA DERRA DE MORODA/MONIKA WOITAS

Vigarani, Carlo

(b Reggio nell’Emilia, c1623; d ?Paris, 17 Feb 1713). Italian theatre architect and scene designer, son of Gaspare Vigarani. With his brother Lodovico, he accompanied his father to Paris in 1659, and in 1662 was invited back by Louis XIV to design court entertainments. As part of a triumvirate with Lully and Molière, he was responsible for a series of festivities mostly at Versailles in 1664, 1668 and 1674. These stand among the most exquisite and sumptuous entertainments of the period. Each consisted of several divertissements, comedy-ballets or operas commissioned for the occasion, including La Princesse d’Elide, George Dandin, Les fêtes de l’Amour et de Bacchus, Alceste (Quinault–Lully), and Le malade imaginaire (Molière-Charpentier). In 1673 he received French citizenship and in 1679 was appointed ‘inventor of machines for theatres, ballets and royal festivities’. With Lully, he directed the Académie Royale de Musique (the Paris Opéra) according to the ‘Act de Société’ of 1672. Although he broke with Lully in 1680, Vigarani continued to provide at court the sets and machinery for the composer’s operas until 1685. He also designed the first theatre used by the Opéra, the Salle Jeu de Paume de Béquet, and renovated the Théâtre du Palais Royal. His designs reveal the Italian tradition with models derived from the Florentine Giulio and Alfonso Parigi. His influence apparently waned after 1680.

See also France, fig.4, and Lully.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ES (W. Savini Nicci and others)

A.G. Messori Roncaglia: Documenti e notizie sulle opere di Carlo Vigarani, architetto insigne del XVII secolo (Modena, 1879)

H. Prunières: L’opéra italien en France avant Lulli (Paris, 1913/R)

G. Rouchés: Inventaire des lettres et papiers manuscrits de Gaspare, Carlo et Lodovico Vigarani, conservés aux Archives d’État de Modène, 1634–1684 (Paris, 1913)

E. Garbero Zorzi: ‘Classicismo e Barocco nella “Salle des comédies et ballets aux Tuileries” di Gaspare Vigarani’, Centri e Periferie del Barocco (1987), 802–13

J. de La Gorce: ‘Torelli et les Vigarini; initiateurs de la scénographie italienne en France’, Seicento, ed. J.-C. Boyer (Paris, 1990), 13–25

J. de la Gorce: Feéries d’opéra: Décors, machines et costumes en France, 1645–1765 (Paris, 1997)

PAUL SHEREN/JÉRÔME de LA GORCE

Vigarani, Gaspare

(b Reggio nell’Emilia, 20 Feb 1588; d Modena, 9 Sept 1663). Italian theatre architect and scene designer. He was active as a designer of machinery for festivities at Reggio nell’Emilia by 1618. From the 1630s, if not before, he was employed by the Duke of Modena, and in 1635 was promoted to ‘engineer and general superintendent of buildings’. In 1640 and 1651 he took part in the design of theatres at Capri Modena and Mantua. In 1659 Cardinal Mazarin invited him to Paris to supervise the entertainments planned for the marriage of Louis XIV; for this occasion he constructed the Salle des Machines in the Palais des Tuileries and designed the inaugural production there, Cavalli’s Ercole amante (with additional ballets by Lully), performed, after considerable delay, in 1662. This production, with its spectacular stage machinery and scenic effects, was a major factor in the prominence enjoyed by Italian theatrical art in France for the next century. The theatre itself marked the transition from the pre-Baroque amphitheatre auditorium, which then prevailed in Paris, to the Italian opera house with perspective wing-stage and horseshoe auditorium. G.L. Bernini criticized it (1665) as disproportionately long and inconvenient in its seating arrangement. It and the production were not widely acclaimed, and Vigarani returned disillusioned to Italy in 1662.

For bibliography see Vigarani, Carlo.

PAUL SHEREN

Vigel.

(Ger.)

See Fiddle.

Vigesimaseconda

(It.).

An Organ stop (Twenty-second).

Vigils

(Lat., from vigilia: ‘watch’). A service performed during the night within the monastic tradition of the early Church. See Matins.

Vignal, Marc

(b Nogent-sur-Marne, Val-de-Marne, 21 Dec 1933). French musicologist and critic. After studying the piano and music history (1941–59), he was a student in Paris at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques (1952–5) and at the Sorbonne (1952–7). In addition to the freelance work that he has pursued for much of his career, he has worked for Radio France, becoming a producer and editor for the French Musique channel in 1974. From 1979 to 1989 he was chairman of the Association Peuple et Culture and, after its foundation in 1987, was appointed the first chairman of the Association Proquartet, an organization that is playing an important part in the revival of the string quartet in France.

Vignal’s main field of study is the music of the Classical period, particularly the Viennese classicism of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and their contemporaries. He is regarded as the foremost modern French specialist on Haydn; his work Joseph Haydn (Paris, 1988) is a standard authority, giving the French reader access for the first time to a number of documents, particularly letters and contemporary accounts, concerning Haydn. He has also made a great contribution to knowledge of the classical period in France through his translation of Rosen’s The Classical Style (London and New York, 1971, enlarged 3/1997). His other research interests are Mahler and Viennese music from the 1880s, Sibelius and Finnish music, 20th-century music in general, music and society, and music and politics. He has contributed articles for a number of journals, including the Haydn Yearbook and L’avant-scène opéra and has provided translations for a variety of musicological texts.

WRITINGS

‘L’oeuvre pour piano seul de Joseph Haydn’, ReM, no.249 (1961), 7–20

Franz-Joseph Haydn: l’homme et son oeuvre (Paris, 1964)

Jean Sibelius: l’homme et son oeuvre (Paris, 1965)

Mahler (Paris, 1966)

‘L’interpretation de la musique de Haydn’, L’interprétation de la musique classique, de Haydn à Schubert: Evry 1977, 57–65

Dictionnaire de la musique (Paris, 1982, rev. 3/1996)

‘Die goldene Zahl in Werken Joseph Haydns’, Joseph Haydn: Vienna 1982, 146–53

Joseph Haydn (Paris, 1988)

‘Le mythe Mozart et Haydn’, Mozart: origines et transformations d’un mythe: Clermont-Ferrand 1991, 33–41

‘Voyages et sédentarité chez Haydn et Mozart: un chassé-croisé’, Mozart: les chemins de l’Europe: Strasbourg 1991, 99–104

‘Französische Orchestertradition’, Klang und Komponisten, ed. O. Biba and W. Schuster (Tutzing, 1992), 75–82

‘Frühe Blach-Pflege in Frankreich’, Johann Sebastien Bach: Beiträge zur Wirkungsgeschichte, ed. I. Fuchs and S. Antonicek (Vienna, 1992), 167–77

ed.: J. Haydn: Autobiographie, premières biographies (Paris, 1996)

Les fils Bach (Paris, 1997)

JEAN GRIBENSKI

Vignali, Francesco (i)

(b Rivarolo; fl 1640). Italian composer, probably a relation (perhaps father) of Francesco Vignali (ii). He may have lived for some time in Venice. The Rivarolo whence he came is probably the place of that name near Mantua. The name is given on the title-page of his only known volume of music, Madrigali: il primo libro a due, tre, e quattro, with continuo, op.1 (Venice, 1640). (J. Whenham: Duet and Dialogue in the Age of Monteverdi, Ann Arbor, 1982)

Vignali, Francesco (ii)

(b Venice; fl 1671). Italian composer, probably a relation (perhaps son) of Francesco Vignali (i). He may well have lived in south Germany. He published Sacri concentus … ad ecclesiae militantis statum stylo selectiore applicari (Überlingen, 1671) for two to four and eight voices, with continuo. The Sacri ribombi di pace e di guerra mentioned by Walther may be identical with this volume since the same vocal forces are cited and because the 1671 volume ends with a ‘battaglia spirituale’, the eight-part Venite, fideles, which is certainly a piece ‘di guerra’. Three manuscript mass movements by Vignali (Kyrie, Gloria and Credo) for four voices and instruments also survive (in D-MÜs).

Vignati, Giuseppe

(b ? Bologna, ? end of the 17th century; d Milan, 1768). Italian composer. Recent scholarship has not confirmed his Bolognese origin; it has been conjectured that he died shortly before G.B. Sammartini succeeded him as maestro of the ducal chapel on 8 November 1768. The earliest substantiated references to him date from 1713 when he was maestro di cappella of the Accademia dei Faticosi, Milan, and wrote a cantata for the canonization of Andrea Avellino. Between 1719 and 1727 he wrote a series of operas for the ducal theatre. The libretto for the first of these, Ambleto, names him as maestro di cappella of S Gottardo, the ducal chapel. Documents of the state archive disclose, however, that he was merely Paolo Magni’s assistant there from 1718 until 4 March 1737 (Magni died on 21 February 1737). Serving in the court chapel without pay until 12 July 1735, Vignati concurrently drew a salary as maestro di cappella of S Nazaro Maggiore (from 1726) and as harpsichordist at the ducal theatre. Although he played the second harpsichord in 1748 and 1749 to allow the composers of operas to direct from the first, he is listed as the maestro di cappella and first harpsichordist for the entire 1720, 1738, 1739 and 1743 seasons. His opera scores are lost but their quality is suggested by the renown of his singers: Faustina Bordoni, Francesca Cuzzoni, Antonio Bernacchi and others. The large size of his orchestra – 30 players in 1720, including many wind instrumentalists – implies rich orchestrations.

WORKS

operas

first performed in Milan, Regio Ducal, unless otherwise stated; all lost

Ambleto [Act 1] (3, A. Zeno and P. Pariati), 28 Aug 1719, [Act 2 by C. Baliani, Act 3 by G. Cozzi]

Porsena (3, A. Piovene), 26 Dec 1719

Aquilio in Siracusa (2), 28 Aug 1720

Nerone (3, Piovene), 26 Dec 1724

I rivali generosi (3, Zeno), Venice, S Samuele, Ascension Fair 1726

Girita (3, C.N. Stampa), Jan 1727

Doubtful: Amor per virtù (3, D. Cupeda), Turin, Regio, carn. 1702, cited in EitnerQ

other works

Cants.: Auguri di pace nella canonizzazione del B. Andrea Avellino, Milan, 1713; Da quest’amico, 1v, orch, I-Nc; Mirar dal lido la navicella, 1v, bc, Nc; Nel bel volto d’Eurilla, 1v, bc, Nc; Nelle guancie, 1v, orch, Nc; Sciolta dal lido, Milan, carn. 1720, US-Wcf M1500 S28 G5; Se m’affligge il tuo rigore, S, bc, D-Mbs; untitled cant., 1v, bc, SHsk

Serenata a 3 per il compleanno del principe Massimiliano, governatore di Milano, Milan, 1717

Arias: Affetti del mio sposo, S, 2 vn, va, vc, ROu; Si respira in calma, S, 2 vn, bc, GB-Lcm

Sacred vocal: Ave Maria, S, str, I-Bc; Flammae fulmina, S, 2 vn, bc, GB-Lbl, Lcm; Graduale per la BVM, S, orch, I-Bc; Graduale per S Giovanni Battista a 3, Bc; Maria gustum sentio, S, 2 vn, va, org, Státní Archív, Žitenice; Marian ant, S, ob, org, Státní Archív, Žitenice; Salve regina, S, ob, 2 vn, va, org, D-Dlb; Tantum ergo, S, A, A, T, B, 2 vn, 2 va, vc, db, 20 May 1729, Státní Archív, Žitenice

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Choron-FayolleD; EitnerQ; GerberL; La BordeE

G. Barblan: ‘Il teatro musicale in Milano nei secoli XVII e XVIII’, Storia di Milano, xii (Milan, 1958), 949–96, esp. 972, 976 [pubn of the Fondazione Treccani degli Alfieri per la storia di Milano]

G. Barblan: ‘La musica strumentale e cameristica a Milano nel ’700’, Storia di Milano, xvi (Milan, 1962), 619–60 [pubn of the Fondazione Treccani degli Alfieri per la storia di Milano]

G. Ciliberti: ‘Il “mito” di Amleto nei libretti d’opera italiani del Settecento’, Europäische Mythen der Neuzeit: Faust und Don Juan, ed. P. Crobádi and others (Anif-Strasbourg, 1993), 713–22

SVEN HANSELL

Vigne, Antonius de.

See De Vinea, Antonius.

Vigné, Louis

(b Angers, c1660; d Angers, 29 March 1731). French composer. He studied music at the choir school in Angers and in 1684, as a clerk in minor orders, he was appointed maître de musique by the cathedral chapter. In 1697 he became master of the choir school at Vannes Cathedral and remained there until Christmas Eve 1710, when he returned to Angers. In view of his advanced age, on 14 November 1724 the chapter appointed Louis Bachelier as his deputy (and eventually his successor).

Vigné's only extant works are four motets, Animae fideles, Laetatus sum, Quis rumpet catenas and Venite fideles, for two voices and continuo. They exist in a manuscript (F-Pn Rés 1474) copied in Vannes, which also contains, among other works, motets by Daniélis, Campra and Brossard.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

G. Bourligueux: ‘La psallette de la Cathédral Saint Pierre de Vannes’, RMFC, ix (1969), 115–31

J. Poirier: La maîtrise de la Cathédrale d'Angers: six cents ans d'histoire (Angers, 1983)

JEAN-CHARLES LÉON

Vigneault, Gilles

(b Natashquan, Quebec, 27 Oct 1928). Canadian songwriter, singer, poet and publisher. He wrote poems and songs while teaching French and mathematics in Quebec City. He first sang publicly in 1960 and his success led to a first recording in 1962. Two years later, his song Jack Monoloy won second prize at an international competition in Sopot, Poland. His best-known song is Mon pays, also sung at Sopot in 1965. He has toured extensively in Canada and French-speaking countries of Europe. He was awarded a Grand Prix du Disque by the Académie Charles Cros in 1970 and 1984. Vigneault’s songs are about the people of Quebec, specifically those who live on his native north shore of the St Lawrence. Some of his songs contain social protest, some are simple love stories, some are whimsical and humorous.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

EMC2 (C. Rioux)

M. Gagné: Gilles Vigneault (Quebec City, 1977)

N. Petrowski: ‘Gilles Vigneault, trente ans plus tard’, Le Devoir (9 June 1990)

GILLES POTVIN

Vigneron, Joseph Arthur

(b Mirecourt, 1851; d Paris, 1905). French bowmaker. He served his apprenticeship in Mirecourt with Charles Claude Husson and subsequently went to Paris to work for Gand & Bernardel. Around 1888 he opened his own shop. Vigneron developed a strongly individual style which remained constant throughout his career. While he cannot qualify as a consistently great maker, his best bows can be ranked with the finest of his day, showing elegant craftsmanship and made of superb quality pernambuco. However, a large part of his output, while solidly made, lacks grace. Most of the bows are silver mounted; gold mountings are much less frequent and gold and tortoiseshell very rare. The sticks are usually round and the heads have pronounced chamfers at the throat. Vuillaume-type frogs are occasionally seen but otherwise the frogs are regular with either rounded or square heels. His bows are branded a. vigneron à paris.

On J.A. Vigneron’s death, his shop was taken over by his son André Vigneron (1881–1924). Although a good and able maker he was not the equal of his father, of whom he had been a pupil. Nevertheless his early work, which bears his father’s brand, is difficult to identify. The style he developed was derived from his father’s, although differing particularly in the heads, where the slight widening at both top and bottom make the middle seem constricted. He was a prolific maker who supplied unstamped bows to various Parisian luthiers including Charles Enel and Marcel Vatelot. He used the brands vigneron paris and andre vigneron paris as well as his father’s.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

J. Roda: Bows for Musical Instruments of the Violin Family (Chicago, 1959)

E. Vatelot: Les archets français (Paris, 1976)

JAAK LIIVOJA-LORIUS

Vignola, Giuseppe

(b Naples, 5 Feb 1662; d Naples, Nov 1712). Italian composer. He received his musical training at the Conservatorio di S Maria della Pietà dei Turchini, Naples, when Francesco Provenzale was its maestro ordinario. In 1688 he married Antonia Falcone and established himself in Naples as a composer of church music and semi-dramatic sacred works, later also of operatic music. In 1706 he was engaged by Andrea del Pò, the impresario of the Teatro di S Bartolomeo, to compose substitute arias for the Naples performance of Giuseppe Aldrovandini's opera Mitridate. Between 1706 and 1712 Vignola played an important role by providing arias and buffo scenes in the Neapolitan manner for operas by other composers, especially Francesco Gasparini, and composing three opere serie of his own. His first opera, Tullo Ostilio, dates from 1707. In that year he was made a member as organist of the royal chapel in Naples, and proudly referred to his position as organist on the title-page of the libretto of his Teodora Augusta (1709); he remained in that post until his death. On 26 November 1712 he was succeeded by Pietro Filippo Scarlatti, the eldest son of the primo maestro of the chapel, Alessandro Scarlatti.

WORKS

all performed in Naples; music lost unless otherwise stated

stage

Il Tullo Ostilio (dramma per musica, C. de Petris, after A. Morselli), S Bartolomeo, carn. 1707, I-Mc, arias Nc

La Rosmene, ovvero L'infedeltà fedele (dramma, N. Pagano, ? after G.D. de Totis), Fiorentini, 26 Jan 1709

Teodora Augusta (dramma, Morselli), Fiorentini, 27 April 1709

Arias and scenes in: G. Aldrovandini: Mitridate, 1706; F. Gasparini: La fede tradita e vendicata, 1707; Gasparini: Le regine di Macedonia, 1708; A. Lotti: L'inganno vinto dalla ragione, Fiorentini, 1708; A. Scarlatti, L'humanità nelle fiere, 1708; Gasparini: Ambleto, 1711; Lotti: La forza del sangue, 1712

sacred

Orats, sacred melodramas: La Giuditta trionfante (scherzo drammatico, G. Badiale), 1690, lib I-Fc; La regina Ester (Badiale), 28 Oct 1691, lib Nn; La nave della Redenzione (S. Giacco), 1696, lib Fc, Nc, Nn; L'alba oscurata, 1696, lib Fc, Fm; Il Gedeone geroglifico (A. Peruccio), 1701, lib Nc; La fionda di David, Florence, 1707, lib Rv; Il giudizio universale, 1710, Nf; La Debbora profetessa guerriera, 1711; Dialogo, 2vv, Nf

Other sacred works in MS, according to LaMusicaD

BIBLIOGRAPHY

FlorimoN; MGG1 (U. Prota-Giurleo)

M. Scherillo: L'opera buffa napoletana durante il Settecento: storia letteraria (Naples, 1883, 2/1916/R), 60

R. Strohm: Italienische Opernarien des frühen Settecento, AnMc, no.16 (1976), ii, 288–96

R. Cafiero and M. Marino: ‘Materiali per una definizione di “Oratorio” a Napoli nel Seicento: prìmi accertamenti’, La musica a Napoli durante il Seicento: Naples 1985, 465–510

HANNS-BERTOLD DIETZ

Vignoles, Roger

(b Cheltenham, 12 July 1945). English pianist. He studied at Magdalene College, Cambridge, at the RCM (1966–8) and privately with Paul Hamburger. He made his début as an accompanist at the Purcell Room, London, in 1967 after which he became a coach at Covent Garden (1969–71). By the mid-1970s he had established himself as a partner for many of the leading singers of the day, working in particular with Sarah Walker and Thomas Allen (the three of them performed and recorded a noted recital programme called The Sea). Vignoles has since organized and taken part in various series of recitals at both the Queen Elizabeth Hall and Wigmore Hall, and he has appeared at most of the major festivals. He is a versatile artist, equally at home in lieder, mélodies and English songs, especially those of Britten. His style, while carefully adapted to the artist with whom he is performing, benefits from his own individual insights into the repertory in hand, as confirmed by his many recordings, notably Winterreise with Allen and Britten’s five canticles with Michael Chance and Anthony Rolfe Johnson. He was professor of accompaniment at the RCM from 1974 to 1981.

ALAN BLYTH

Vignon, Jérôme

(b ?1590s; d after 1653). French lutenist and composer. He is presumably the ‘Mr. Vignon’ listed as first among the lutenists of Duke Charles IV of Lorraine in 1631. In 1636 Mersenne included ‘le Vignon’ among the best lutenists then living. He is mentioned in documents of 1640 and 1646 as master lutenist, living in Paris. Two contracts dated 31 December 1653 associate Jérôme and his son Nicolas-François to teach the angélique to pupils in Paris, using instruments by the Parisian lute maker Guillaume Jacquesson. The terms of the contract imply that Jérôme was elderly by that stage; it is nonetheless unlikely that he was responsible for the very popular type of courante known as La Vignonne which appears in many lute and other sources from 1614. One courante by him is in the manuscript D-DS Mus 1655. A courante and two sarabandes for angélique, probably by Nicolas, are in F-Pn Cons. Rés.169 (MS Béthune, c1661; facs. Geneva, 1978).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A. Jacquot: La musique en Lorraine (Paris, 1882), 92, 115

L. de La Laurencie: ‘Quelques luthistes français du XVIIe siècle’, RdM, iv (1923), 145–55, esp. 146–8

F. Lesure: ‘The Angélique in 1653’, GSJ, vi (1953), 111–12

F. Lesure: ‘Recherches sur les luthistes parisiens à l'époque de Louis XIII’, Le luth et sa musique [Neuilly-sur-Seine], ed. J. Jacquot (Paris, 1958, 2/1976), 209–33

Y. de Brossard: Musiciens de Paris 1535–1792 (Paris, 1965)

DAVID LEDBETTER

Vigoni [Vigone].

Italian firm of publishers. Francesco Vigoni (b Milan, c1624; d Milan, 1699) founded the firm in Milan in 1660. He lived first at San Sebastiano and from 1682 in Pescheria Vecchia; he printed books of various kinds (many on religious subjects) including the Ateneo dei letterati milanesi by Abbé Filippo Picinelli (1670), an important biographical source book for Milanese writers and artists. His music publications include sacred vocal and instrumental chamber music by such composers as C.G. San Romano, M.S. Perucona, Giacinto Pestalozza, Tomaso Motta, Bartolomeo Trabattone, G.M. Angeleri and Gerolamo Zanetti. He also published many oratorio and opera librettos. Of Francesco’s five sons, Carlo Federico Vigoni (1658–c1693) shared the management of the firm with his father. He was a musician and the editor of Nuova Raccolta de Motetti Sacri a voce sola (1679, 1681) and Sacre Armonie a voce sola de diversi celebri autori (1692), published by Francesco Vigone. Their successors, including Carlo Federico’s son Giuseppe (until 1730), published many librettos but apparently no music. The firm continued until c1750.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

SartoriD

M. Donà: La stampa musicale a Milano fino all’anno 1700 (Florence, 1961)

A. Schnoebelen: Introduction to ‘Sacre armonie a voce sola’, SMSC, iii: Northern Italy II (New York, 1987)

F. Passadore: ‘Le antologie lombarde a voce sola di Carlo Federico Vigoni’, Tradizione e stile (La musica sacra in area lombardo-padana nella seconda metà del 600 II) [Como 1987], ed. A. Colzani, A. Luppi, M. Padoan (Como, 1989), 221–53

MARIANGELA DONÀ

Vigri, Girolamo di [de].

1. Structure and history.

Viguerie, Bernard

(b Carcassonne, c1761; d Paris, March 1819). French teacher, composer and music dealer. According to Gerber, he was a pupil of Laguna at the age of 18. When he was 22 he went to Paris with a letter to Jean-Jacques Beauvarlet-Charpentier, with whom he completed his studies. In 1795 he opened a music shop. He was known for many years as the author of a piano method (c1795), which was revised and reissued again and again by such lights as Adolphe Adam and Louise Farrenc, and translated into Spanish, continuing to appear as late as 1875. Fétis said of it: ‘There are few works that are more mediocre or of more questionable utility than this so-called method; there are few, however, which have been more successful or run to so many editions’.

After the piano method, Viguerie’s most famous works were his battle pieces, Marengo, which was imitated as late as 1867, and Prague. Similarly, some movements of his sonatines (op.12) found their way into anthologies in the same period. Both his serious works and those for young pupils make considerable use of pianistic effects, such as the sustaining pedal and sforzandi. His Caprices are long, multi-sectional, modulating fantasias in the ‘brilliant style’.

WORKS

published in Paris

op.

1	3 sonates, pf (1795)
1[bis]	6 Sonates, pf 4 hands (c1800)
2	3 sonates aux jeunes élèves, pf, vn (1794)
3	2 Caprices, pf (1795)
4	3 sonates ‘suite à l’oeuvre 2’, pf, vn (1795)
5	1er concerto ‘facile’, pf, orch (1795), lost
6	L’art de toucher le piano-forte, ou méthode facile (1795)
7	2e concerto, pf, orch (1798), lost
8	Bataille de Marengo, pf, vn, b (1800)
9	4 Sonates d’une difficulté progressive, pf, vn (1798) [= op.33 attrib. Steibelt]
10	3 sonates, pf, vn, vc (c1800), lost
11	Ouverture et chasse, pf, vn (c1803)
12	6 sonatines, pf, vn (c1803)
13	12 préludes, pf (1804)
Tambourin negre, pf (c1798), lost; 3 books of duos ‘pour les élèves’ (vns, cls, fls, c1798), lost; 3 collections and 24 individual airs and romances (c1798–1804, most lost); Bataille de Prague, hpd/pf, vn (c1800); airs, pf (c1800), lost; 2 potpourris (c1800); sonates and sonatines, hp (c1800), lost

BIBLIOGRAPHY

FétisB

GerberNL

G. Favre: La musique française de piano avant 1830 (Paris, 1953/R)

DAVID FULLER/BRUCE GUSTAFSON

Vihuela

(Sp.).

A plucked chordophone of the viol family on which the strings, made of gut, were generally arranged in six or seven courses, each probably paired in unison. Closely related to the lute, it flourished mainly in Spain and in areas under Spanish influence in the 15th and 16th centuries. It was also known in Italy and Portugal under the name viola. Originally the word was applied to various string instruments distinguished according to the method of playing them: medieval sources mention the vihuela de pendola (or peñola: played with a quill) and vihuela de arco (played with a bow); vihuela de pendola also appears in Renaissance sources, which also mention the vihuela de mano (plucked with the fingers). By the 16th century, however, the unqualified term ‘vihuela’ usually referred to the finger-plucked instrument.

2. Technique and performing practice.

3. Repertory.

DIANA POULTON/ANTONIO CORONA ALCALDE

Vihuela

1. Structure and history.

The structure and early history of the vihuela are very closely linked with those of the guitar and viol. Woodfield (1984) has shown that the vihuela was probably developed in the 15th century as a plucked alternative to the viola de arco. Outside the Spanish sphere of influence, vihuelas were designated with guitar-related terms during the 16th century (see Corona-Alcalde, 1990). Only two vihuelas are known to have survived: one in the Musée Jacquemart-André of the Institut de France, Paris, and the other in the church of the Compañía de Jésus in Quito, Ecuador. The former (fig.1) is a large instrument with a body length of 58·4 cm. There is comparatively little inward curve at the waist and the body is shallow in relation to the surface area. The neck is long and narrow and the head is flat and set back at a slight angle. Multiple roses set into the soundboard and the unique construction of the body and neck, which is made up of a large number of small pieces of contrasting woods (more than 200 for the back alone), add to the distinctive appearance of the instrument. Its size and long string-length (about 80 cm) suggest that it was tuned at a fairly low pitch (see Prynne, 1963), although it is also possible that it may have been made as an apprentice's examination piece, an hypothesis that is consistent with its elaborate construction. The Quito vihuela, probably dating from the early 17th century, is slightly smaller, with a body length of about 55 cm, a deeper body and more pronounced curves at the waist. This instrument was the property of Santa Mariana de Jesús who, according to contemporary witnesses, used to accompany herself singing the praises of the Christ the Bridegroom (d 1645; see Bermudez, 1991 and 1993). Nassarre (1723–4) gave a set of proportions to which a vihuela should be constructed, though his interest may have been mainly antiquarian. His proportions would give a body of greater depth than the Jacquemart-André or the Quito examples (see Ward, 1953, and Corona-Alcalde, ‘The Viola da Mano’, 1984). The many pictorial representations of vihuelas show three basic outlines: in the late 15th and early 16th centuries vihuelas are depicted with C-shaped bouts similar to those of a modern violin; later in the 16th century two basic shapes are common, one narrow in relation to its length, the other broader and rounder (fig.2). There is usually a single elaborately carved rose, and in some instances surface decorations are set into the soundboard.

Bermudo gave diagrams of vihuelas nominally tuned at Gamma ut, C fa ut, D sol re, A re, D sol re, B mi and E la mi; but these, he made clear, were only to facilitate the transposition of compositions in staff notation into tablature for the vihuela (see Ward, 1982, and Corona-Alcalde, ‘Fray Juan Bermudo’, 1984). Nevertheless he mentioned instruments of different sizes, and it is clear that they were tuned at several different pitches, since a number of 16th-century duos demand tunings a minor 3rd, a 4th and a 5th apart. Milán, by the placing of modal finals on certain frets, implied a variety of nominal tunings for his instrument, including E, G, F and A (see Corona Alcalde, 1991), but in practice he suggested that the pitch should be taken from the first (highest) course, which should be tuned as high as it would go without breaking. Among other writers, opinion was divided as to whether the first or fourth course was the better one from which to begin.

The intervals of tuning for which almost all surviving music was written are identical with those of the lute, that is (from the sixth – i.e. lowest – course upwards): 4th–4th–major 3rd–4th–4th. Bermudo, however, proposed several other schemes. For a certain ‘small new vihuela’ he named the notes as G–B–d–g–b–d'. Music given by Fuenllana for a vihuela of five courses requires the same intervals of tuning as the six-course instrument but with the top course removed. For vihuelas of seven courses Bermudo gave three tunings. The first of these, 5th–4th–5th–4th–5th–4th, provides a range of 22 notes on the open strings. The second, G'–C–F–G–c–f–g, he described as new and perfect (he also gave an accompaniment in this tuning for the romance Mira Nero de Tarpeya). His third tuning, 5th–4th–major 3rd–5th–4th–minor 3rd, could, he stated, be distributed ‘by a clever musician’ between a guitar and a bandurria by tuning the four courses of the guitar the same as the four lower courses of the vihuela, and the three of the bandurria the same as the three highest.

The usual number of gut frets on the neck of the vihuela was ten, and considerable attention was given by Bermudo to devising methods of placing these to obtain an exact intonation. He expressed great concern about the difference in pitch of certain notes according to whether they have to serve as mi or fa (i.e. sharp or flat) in the mode of a particular composition. Suggestions for overcoming this difficulty include the use of a double fret composed of two thicknesses, either of which could be selected at will; the control of pitch by the amount of pressure exerted by the finger in stopping the note; and the actual moving of the fret to suit the mode. The last method was advocated by Milán, who prefaced a fantasia and a romance with this instruction: ‘raise the fourth fret a little [towards the fret nut] so that the note of the said fret will be strong [mi] and not feeble [fa]’; and by Valderrábano, who said: ‘lower the fourth fret a little towards the rose’, which meant tuning it to a fa fret. Seeking the required note on another course and fret was also mentioned by Bermudo.

Literary references indicate that the word ‘vihuela’ was used in Spain from the 13th century onwards. It appears in the Libro de Apolonio (c1250), the Poema de Oncero (14th-century), and the famous Libro de buen amor of the Arcipreste de Hita (c1283–c1350), who distinguished between the vihuela de arco and the vihuela de peñola. Tinctoris described the vihuela as an instrument invented by the Spaniards and called by them and the Italians viola (or viola sine arculo). It was, he said, smaller than the lute and flat-backed, and in most cases had incurved sides. During the 15th century the guitar – which during that period was sometimes lute-shaped (see Wright, 1977, and Corona-Alcalde, 1990; see also Gittern) – and the vihuela appear to have evolved side by side; in the following century the guitar with its four courses was generally known as a popular instrument, largely used for accompanying songs, while the vihuela was favoured by virtuoso players. Some virtuosos were employed in households of the nobility, but the finest achieved great fame as royal musicians at the Spanish court, where music was highly esteemed. The children of Ferdinand and Isabella were trained in music, especially the young prince Juan who possessed, among other chamber instruments, vihuelas and viols which it is said he could play. Although there is abundant evidence for the use of the vihuela in royal and noble establishments at this period, the first printed music appeared in Milán’s book (1536; see Tablature, fig.6).

During the reign of Emperor Charles V the vihuela reached the height of its development as the instrument of the musical élite. The emperor boasted of two chapels, one Flemish and one Spanish. Although he employed mostly Flemish musicians and singers for the performance of sacred polyphony, he entrusted the secular musical activities to native players, and in private music-making the vihuela had a prominent role. It continued to be held in high regard at the court of Philip II, where in 1566 the celebrated blind composer and player Miguel de Fuenllana was listed as musico de camera to Isabel de Valois, the king's third wife. Towards the end of the century its position seems to have been undermined by the increasing popularity of the guitar, and a few years later Sebastián de Covarrubias Horozco wrote (in his Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid, 1611) that

This instrument [the vihuela] has been held in great esteem until our own times, and there have been excellent players; but since the invention of the guitars there are very few who apply themselves to the study of the vihuela. This is a great loss, because every kind of notated music can be put on to it, and now the guitar is nothing but a cow-bell, so easy to play, especially when strummed, that there is not a stable-boy who is not a musician of the guitar.

Apart from the composer-players whose names have survived through their books, a few other famous players are mentioned in publications of the time. Bermudo named not only Narváez but also Luis de Guzmán, Martin de Jaén and Hernando de Jaén (‘citizens of Granada’), and López (‘musician to the Duke of Arcos’). Francisco Pacheco in his Libro de descripción de verdarderos retratos (1599) included a portrait of the blind player Pedro de Madrid with a seven-course vihuela and commented, ‘Seville is honoured by such a son’, and also one of Manuel Rodríguez, ‘player of the harp and viguela’. Vicente Espinel, in his Relaciones de la vida del escudero Marcos de Obregón (Madrid, 1618), described how he heard Lucas de Matos play on a seven-course instrument together with Bernardo Clavijo on the keyboard and the latter's daughter on the harp, adding that their music ‘is the best I have heard in my life’.

The preference for the vihuela over the lute in Spain has been explained (Chase) by a theory that the lute was repudiated because of its Moorish origin. This theory, however, overlooks the fact that many aspects of Islamic culture remained firmly established in the Spanish way of life long after the final expulsion in 1492, and still remain so. Among musical instruments, the rebec continued in use into the 16th century; and many Moorish themes frequently appear in the words of 16th-century songs. Moreover, a growing body of evidence suggests that the lute was more commonly used than has been generally supposed (Poulton, 1977).

Tinctoris stated that an instrument identical with the vihuela was played in Italy, and indeed pictures and a few musical sources and literary references confirm its presence there in the 16th century. Francesco da Milano is known to have performed on the vihuela as well as on the lute, and the title of his two-volume book of 1536, Intavolatura di viola o vero lauto, indicates that the pieces there contained are intended for either of the two instruments with the words. Other known Italian players of the vihuela, including the composer Giulio Severino, are mentioned by Scipione Cerreto in his Della prattica musica vocale et strumentale (Naples, 1601). Some documentary and pictorial evidence of the use of the viola in Portugal can be traced, and the names of a few famous players, such as Peixoto da Peña, Domingos Madeira and Alexandre de Aguiar are known.

Although the evidence is at present scanty, there can be little doubt that the vihuela, together with other European instruments, was taken to Latin America during its colonization. For example, in his Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva-España (written c1568) the chronicler Bernal Díaz de Castillo described a certain Ortiz, a soldier in the company of Hernán Cortés during the conquest of Mexico, as a ‘great player of the vihuela’. Renato Almeida, in his História da música brasileira (1926), quoted from a letter of about 1583 from the Jesuit priest Fernão Cardim in which he said that schools of singing and playing were early established in the Christianized villages and the natives taught to play the viola, among other instruments.

Four instruments in the Museo Nacional de Antropología and the Museo Nacional de Historia (Castillo de Chapultepec), Mexico, are claimed by Cook (1976) to be descendants of the vihuela, constructed by native craftsmen. These are less well authenticated than the Quito instrument, but, together with other members of the plucked-string family, such as the cuatro in Venezuela, they strongly suggest a common ancestry in the 16th-century vihuela and guitar.

Vihuela

2. Technique and performing practice.

Though there is little written evidence about the technique of the left hand in vihuela playing, this can hardly have differed in any significant way from that used on the lute. There is a brief mention by Venegas de Henestrosa, and Fuenllana explained how a finger of the left hand may divide a course in two by stopping only one string, thus obtaining an additional voice in the counterpoint.

Right-hand technique was dealt with in some detail, especially for the playing of rapid passages known as redobles. Three methods are given. Dedillo (marked dedi in some sources) consists of a rapid movement inwards and outwards with the index finger; it was considered unsatisfactory by Fuenllana since the string is touched by the flesh of the finger on the inward stroke but by the nail on the outward. Dos dedos (marked dosde in some sources) consists of the alternating movement of the thumb and the first finger, as used in the rest of Europe at this time. According to Venegas de Henestrosa, dos dedos had two variants: figueta castellana (‘Castilian’), with the thumb held outside the fingers, and figueta estranjera (‘foreign’), with the thumb held inside the fingers, as in 16th-century lute technique. The third method involves alternating the index and second fingers; Fuenllana and Venegas de Henestrosa praised this as being the most perfect way of playing, and Fuenllana added, ‘as I have said to you, to strike with a stroke without the intrusion of the nail or any other kind of contrivance has great excellence, because only in the finger, as a living thing, the spirit lies’.

Several vihuelists' books contain valuable directions concerning tempo. It is clear that the tactus, or compás, had no absolute speed, but in several cases, both verbally and by the use of signs, relative speeds are indicated. Both Milán and Valderrábano stressed that the intention of the composer should be followed in this respect or the composition would not sound well. At the beginning of almost every fantasia Milán gave directions for playing it: very fast, rather fast, slowly, or with a well-marked beat. In certain other cases he said that the chordal passages must be played slowly and the redobles fast, with a pause on the cadence points (coronada). ‘This music’, he said, ‘in order to give it its natural beauty … must not have much respect for the compás’. For the accompaniment of romances he repeated his instruction to play chordal passages slowly and redobles fast. Certain other composers specified that in their music particular mensural signs implied particular tempos, as shown in Table 1.

Santa María gave valuable information about good style in performance, including three suggestions for the rhythmic alteration of passages notated in equal quavers: to pause on the first of each pair and hurry the second; to hurry the first and pause on the second; or to hurry the first three notes and pause on the fourth. The first method was also appropriate, he said, for playing crotchets. Among the graces described by Santa María, some are more appropriate to the keyboard, but the trill, mordent and appoggiatura suit the vihuela. Venegas de Henestrosa also described a mordent and upper appoggiatura.

Vihuela

3. Repertory.

The music of the vihuelists, both sacred and secular, has survived mainly in printed sources, except for two important manuscripts (E-Mn 6001, dated 1593, and PL-Kj Mus.ms.40032, formerly held in D-Bsb; see Rey, 1975, and Griffiths, 1985), as well as some fragmentary sources (see Corona-Alcalde, ‘A Vihuela Manuscript in the Archivo de Simancas’, 1986, and 1992). Four types of tablature were used: Italian (used by most of the vihuelists); a six-line tablature with figures in which the highest line represents the string highest in pitch (used by Milán, see Tablature, fig.6); another six-line tablature with figures (used in the second volume of the 1536 publication of Francesco da Milano), similar in disposition to that of Milán, but representing the open course with the number 1, the first fret with the number 2, and so on; and Spanish keyboard tablature, the cifra nueva (used by Venegas de Henestrosa and Cabezón, see Tablature, fig.3). In some books the vocal line is shown in red numbers in the tablature, in others the numbers indicating the vocal line are followed by a small tick or comma, or else staff notation is used.

Charles V's predilection for music by Flemish composers in his private chapel is reflected in some of the books where intabulations of Mass parts by Josquin and other Flemish composers, as well as of motets by Josquin and Gombert form a large portion of the contents; native composers (Cristóbal de Morales and Francisco Guerrero) are also represented by intabulations of their sacred works. In secular vihuela music the fantasia, ranging from simple pieces for beginners to elaborate contrapuntal structures, outnumber all other forms. Little dance music appears in the works of the vihuelists, except for the pavana, which Milán, however, likens to the fantasia. Differencias (variations) were most commonly based on romance tunes or, more frequently, on their associated repeating harmonic patterns, which were rarely more than a few bars long. In some the melody appears in the cantus line, in others in the tenor. Sometimes its treatment is very free, with ingenious and elaborate breaking of the chords or rapid redobles over the bass. The style suggests that the form may have originated in improvised accompaniments to the singing of romances, long narrative poems some of which have as many as 160 verses. Tientos, sonetos, fabordones and intabulations of a few chansons form most of the rest of the solo repertory.

The main forms in secular vocal music with vihuela accompaniment were the romance and the villancico. The romances, in which the first stanza only is generally given, were in many cases of ancient origin, often based on incidents in the war against the Moors or the exploits of the knights of the court of Charlemagne. (Subsequent stanzas of these romances viejos are to be found in the great 16th- and 17th-century collections known as romanceros, and in 19th-century collections edited by Agustín Durán and others.) Since no more than the melody line and the associated harmonic pattern existed, the accompaniments were composed by the vihuelists themselves.

The villancico, often a love poem of great intensity, was derived from a precise poetic form consisting of a single stanza; its two sections were known as the estribillo and the vuelta, performed in the order ABBA. Milán appears to have composed the melody as well as the accompaniment (and probably some of the stanzas) in his villancicos. Many other villancicos existed in a polyphonic form by well-known composers such as Guerrero or Juan Vasquez; the vihuelists' arrangements for solo voice and vihuela consisted of intabulations for vihuela of one of the vocal lines.

Among the many other forms that make up the rich and varied repertory of solo song with vihuela accompaniment are arrangements of madrigales, Italian sonetos, chansons (by Verdelot and others), settings of coplas by Boscán and Garcilaso and of poems by Petrarch, and ensaladas (long compositions made up of small musical sections taken from popular songs).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

early theorists

for modern edns. see articles on individual theorists

J. Tinctoris: De inventione et usu musicae (Naples, c1487)

F. Canova da Milano: Intavolatura de viola o vero lauto (Naples, 1536/R) [2 vols.]

L. de Milán: Libro de música de vihuela de mano … intitulado El maestro (Valencia, 1536/R); ed. C. Jacobs (University Park, PA, 1971)

L. de Narváez: Los seys libros del delphín (Valladolid, 1538/R; ed. in MME, iii, 1945/R)

A. Mudarra: Tres libros de música en cifras para vihuela (Seville, 1546/R; ed. in MME, vii, 1949)

E. de Valderrábano: Libro de música de vihuela, intitulado Silva de sirenas (Valladolid, 1547/R; ed. in MME, xxii, 1965)

D. Pisador: Libro de música de vihuela (Salamanca, 1552/R)

M. de Fuenllana: Libro de música para vihuela, intitulado Orphénica lyra (Seville, 1554/R); ed. C. Jacobs (Oxford, 1978)

J. Bermudo: Declaración de instrumentos musicales (Osuna, 1555/R)

L. Venegas de Henestrosa: Libro de cifra nueva para tecla, harpa, y vihuela (Alcalá, 1557); ed. in MME, ii (1944, 2/1965)

B. Lieto: Dialogo quarto de musica … con viola a mano o ver liuto (Naples, 1559/R)

L. de Milán: Libro intitulado El cortesano (Valencia, 1561/R)

T. de Santa María: Libro llamado Arte de tañer fantasia, assi para tecla como para vihuela (Valladolid, 1565/R)

E. Daza: Libro de música en cifras para vihuela intitulado: El Parnasso (Valladolid, 1576/R)

A. de Cabezón: Obras de música para tecla, arpa y vihuela (Madrid, 1578; ed. in MME, xxvii–xxix 1966, 2/1982)

S. Cerreto: Della prattica musica vocale et strumentale (Naples, 1601, 2/1611)

A. de Santa Cruz: Música de vihuela: libro donde se veran pazacalles de los ocho tonos y de los trasportados (MS, c1700, E-Mn M.2209)

P. Nassarre: Esquela música (Zaragoza, 1724/R)

other studies

G. Morphy: Les luthistes espagnols du XVIe siècle (Leipzig, 1902/R)

J.B. Trend: Luis Milán and the Vihuelistas (Oxford, 1925)

E. Pujol: ‘La guitare’, EMDC, II/iii (1927), 1997–2035

W. Apel: ‘Early Spanish Music for Lute and Keyboard’, MQ, xx (1934), 289–301

H. Anglès: La música en la corte de los reyes católicos: polifonía religiosa, MME, i (1941)

G. Chase: The Music of Spain (New York, 1941, 2/1959)

J. Ward: The Vihuela de mano and its Music (1536–1576) (diss., New York U., 1953)

J. Ward: ‘Le problème des hauteurs dans la musique pour luth et vihuela au XVIe siècle’, Le luth et sa musique: Neuilly-sur-Seine 1957, 171–8

D. Poulton: ‘Notes on some Differences between the Lute and the Vihuela and their Music’, The Consort, no.16 (1959), 22–6

I. Pope: ‘La vihuela y su música en el ambiente humanístico’, Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica, xv (1961), 365–76

M. Prynne: ‘A Surviving Vihuela de mano’, GSJ, xvi (1963), 22–7

J. Roberts: ‘Some Notes on the Music of the Vihuelistas’, LSJ, vii (1965), 24–31

J. Myers: ‘Vihuela Technique’, JLSA, i (1968), 15–18

D. Poulton: ‘How to Play with Good Style by Thomas de Sancta María’, LSJ, xii (1970), 23–30

J. Roberts: ‘Remarks on the Vihuela’, Guitar, i (1973), no.7, p.29; no.8, p.33; no.9, p.33

J.J. Rey, ed.: El manuscrito “Remilette de Flores” 1593 (Madrid, 1975)

F. Cook: ‘The Vihuela in South America’, Guitar, iv/9 (1976), 9–11

D. Poulton: ‘Notes on the Guitarra, Laud and Vihuela’, LSJ, xviii (1976), 46–8

D. Poulton: ‘The Lute in Christian Spain’, LSJ, xix (1977), 34–49

L. Wright: ‘The Medieval Gittern and Citole: a Case of Mistaken Identity’, GSJ, xxx (1977), 8–42

D. Gill: ‘A Vihuela in Ecuador’, LSJ, xx (1978), 53–5

P. Abondance: ‘La vihuela du Musée Jacquemart-André: restauration d'un document unique’, RdM, lxvi (1980), 57–69

P. Beier: ‘The Quito Vihuela Revisited’, Newsletter of the Lute Society of America, xvi/1 (1981), 12

D. Gill: ‘Vihuelas, Violas and the Spanish Guitar’, EMc, ix (1981), 455–62

O. Ohlsen: ‘The Vihuela in Latin America’, Newsletter of the Lute Society of America, xvi/1 (1981), 12–13

W. Moser: ‘Vihuela, Gitarre und Laute in Spanien während des 16. Jahrhunderts, 1: die Quellen – die Vihuela’, Gitarre und Laute, iii/2 (1981), 18–27

J. Ward: ‘Changing the Instrument for the Music’, JLSA, xv (1982), 27–39

M. Weisman: ‘The Paris Vihuela Reconstructed’, GSJ, xxxv (1982), 68–77

J. Griffiths: The Vihuela Fantasia: a Comparative Study of Forms and Styles (diss., Monash U., 1983)

B. Montanaro: Guitares hispano-américaines (Aix-en-Provence, 1983)

A. Corona-Alcalde: ‘The Viola da Mano and the Vihuela: Evidence and Suggestions about their Construction’, The Lute, xxiv (1984), 3–32

A. Corona-Alcalde: ‘Fray Juan Bermudo and his Seven Vihuelas’, The Lute, xxiv (1984), 77–86

I. Woodfield: The Early History of the Viol (Cambridge, 1984)

A. Corona-Alcalde: ‘La vihuela et la guitare’, Instruments de musique espagnols du XVIe au XIXe siècle (Brussels, 1985), 73–91

J. Griffiths: ‘Berlin Mus.ms.40032 y otros nuevos hallazgos en el repertorio para vihuela’, España en la música de occidente: Salamanca 1985, 323–4

A. Corona-Alcalde: ‘A Vihuela Manuscript in the Archivo de Simancas’, The Lute, xxvi (1986), 3–20

J. Griffiths: ‘La música renacentista para instrumentos solistas y el gusto musical español’, Nassarre, iv (1988), 59–78

J. Griffiths: ‘At Court and at Home with the Vihuela de Mano: Current Perspectives on the Instrument, its Music and its World’, JLSA, xxii (1989), 1–27

A. Corona-Alcalde: ‘The Vihuela and the Guitar in Sixteenth-Century Spain: a Critical Appraisal of some of the Existing Evidence’, The Lute, xxx (1990), 3–24

E. Bermudez: ‘The Vihuela: the Paris and Quito Instruments’, The Spanish Guitar/La guitarra española, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1 Oct 1991 – 5 Jan 1992 and Museo Municipal, 20 Feb – 12 April 1992 (New York and Madrid, 1991), 24–47 [exhibition catalogue]

A. Corona-Alcalde: ‘“You Will Raise a Little your 4th Fret”: an Equivocal Instruction by Luis Milán?’, GSJ, xliv (1991), 2–45

A. Corona-Alcalde: ‘The Earliest Vihuela Tablature: a Recent Discovery’, EMc, xx (1992), 594–600

E. Bermudez: ‘La vihuela de la iglesia de la Compañía de Jesús en Quito’, RMC, no.179 (1993), 69–77

A. Corona-Alcalde: ‘La vihuela, el laúd y la guitarra en el Neuvo Mundo’, RdMc, xvi (1993), 1360–72

Vihuela de arco

(Sp.).

See Fiddle.

Vikár, Béla

(b Hetes, nr Kaposvár, 1 April 1859; d Dunavecse, nr Dunaújváros, 22 Sept 1945). Hungarian folklorist. After graduating in literature and linguistics from Budapest University (1877–84), he worked as employee and subsequently director of the stenography department of the Hungarian parliament, 1889–1921. He was a founding member and the first secretary of the Hungarian Ethnographic Society (1896). In the course of his extensive fieldwork he used his shorthand skills to transcribe and fit the folksong texts to the melodies which at that time were recorded on an Edison phonograph. His new method, which he demonstrated at the international music congress held at the Paris World Exposition in 1900 (Congrès international de musique: Paris 1900), gained him wider recognition. Most of the melodies from his phonograph cylinders were transcribed by Bartók who, along with Kodály, greatly appreciated his work.

WRITINGS

‘Élő nyelvemlékek’ [Living linguistic monuments], A Magyar nemzeti múzeum Néprajzi osztályának értesúője, ii (1901), 131–42

Somogymegye népköltése [The folk poetry of Somogy county] (Budapest, 1904)

‘A “Szűcs Marcsa” balladáról’ [About the ballad of Szűcs Marcsa], Ethnographia, xvi (1905), 273–90

A regös ének [The regös song] (Budapest, 1907)

‘Erdélyi út a fonográffal’ [Voyage in Transylvania with the phonograph], Emlékkönyv Kodály Zoltán hatvanadik születésnapjára, ed. B. Gunda (Budapest, 1943), 88–96

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Z. Kodály: ‘Emlékezés Vikár Bélára’ [Remembering Béla Vikár], Visszatekintés, ed. F. Bónis (Budapest, 1964, enlarged 3/1982; Eng. trans., 1974), 403–4

L. Vikár: ‘Vikár Béla erdélyi népdalgyűjtéséről’ [About the Transylvanian folk music collection of Béla Vikár], Zenetudományi dolgozatok (Budapest, 1984), 192–8

Á. Együd: ‘Vikár Béla nyomában’ [Following Béla Vikár’s footsteps], Somogy megyei Múzeumok Közleményei, vii (1985), 123–56

F. Sebő: ‘Vikár Béla népzenei gyűjteménye’ [The folk music collection of Béla Vikár], Magyar zene, xxxvi (1996), 297–392

MARIA DOMOKOS

Vikár, László

(b Szombathely, Hungary, 8 June 1929). Hungarian ethnomusicologist. He studied music education and choral conducting (1947–51) and musicology and ethnomusicology (1952–6) at the Liszt Academy of Music, Budapest, where his teachers included Kodály, Bárdos, Bartha and Szabolcsi. After further study with Kodály (1956–9) he became a research collaborator of the folk music research group (from 1974 the musicological institute) of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In 1961 he took the CSc degree with a dissertation on Cheremis folk music in the Volga region, and in 1970 he was appointed to a lectureship at the Liszt Academy of Music, later becoming professor of ethnomusicology. His research chiefly concerns traditional music of the Finno-Ugrian and Turkic peoples. Between 1952 and 1979 he collected more than 8000 folksongs in Hungarian-speaking areas of Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Romania, in the central Volga region of the USSR and in Bulgaria, Turkey, Finland, China, Mongolia and North Korea. He has been the secretary of the Hungarian national committee of the ICTM (1975–9), vice-president of the International Kodály Society (1985–93) and has lectured extensively in America, Canada and Australia. He was awarded the Erkel prize in 1977, and the Széchényi prize in 1995.

His wife, Katalin Forrai (b Debrecen, 25 Sept 1926), studied music education and choral conducting at the Liszt Academy (1947–51) and under Kodály evolved a system of music education from birth to school age. Her publications include books on the methodology of music teaching in kindergartens and on European children’s songs.

WRITINGS

‘Népdalgyűjtés Nyitrában’ [Collecting folksongs in Nitra], MTA I: osztályának közleményei, xii/1–4 (1956), 415–27

‘Népzenei kutatóúton Koreában és Kínában’ [On a folk music research tour of Korea and China], MTA I: osztályának közleményei, xiii/1–4 (1958), 247–65

‘Recherches folkloriques en Extrême-Orient et sur les bords de la Volga’, JIFMC, xiii (1961), 54–8

Volgavidéki mari népzene [Cheremis folk music in the Volga region] (diss., Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 1961)

‘La systématisation musicale des chansons populaires tchérémisses’, SMH, iv (1963), 71–99

‘La petite forme tchérémisse’, SMH, vi (1964), 119–30

‘Kelet-nógrádi bányászdalok’ [Mining songs from East Nógrád], A parasztdaltól a munkásdalig, ed. I. Katona, J. Márothy and A. Szatmári (Budapest, 1968), 449–67

‘Cseremisz és csuvas népdalgyűjtés 1966-ban’ [Collecting Cheremis and Chuvash folksongs in 1966], Nyelvtudományi közlemények, lxxi (1969), 3–20

‘Archaic Types of Finno-Ugrian Melody’, SMH, xiv (1972), 53–91

‘Népzene a zenepedagógiában: külföldi kísérletek’ [Folk music teaching: experiments abroad], TIT néprajzi tájékoztató (1972), 36–48

‘A finnugor népek zenéje’ [Music of the Finno-Ugric peoples], Az uráli népek, ed. P. Hajdú (Budapest, 1975), 305–21 [also in Eng., Finnish, Fr.]

‘Improvisation dans la musique des peuples de la Moyenne Volga’, YIFMC, vii (1975), 107–15

ed. A.A. Saygun: Béla Bartók’s Folk Music Research in Turkey (Budapest, 1976)

‘A magyar népzene volgai török és finnugor kapcsolatai’ [Volga-Turkic and Finno-Ugric connections in Hungarian folk music], Magyar őstörténeti tanulmányok, ed. A. Bartha, K. Czeglédy and A. Róna-Tas (Budapest, 1977), 291–303

‘Old and New Layers in the Cheremis Musical Tradition’, Historia Fenno-Ugrica, i (1977), 599–605

‘Interetnikus dallamtïpusok Baskíriában’ [Interethnic melody types in Bashkiriya], Zenetudományi dolgozatok (1979), 253–61

‘Mordvin siratódallamok’ [Mordvin mourning songs], Zenetudományi dolgozatok (1980), 159–73

‘Két osztják ének’ [Two Ostyak songs], Zenetudományi dolgozatok (1981), 287–305

ed., with F. Bónis and E. Szőnyi: Kodály Conference: Budapest 1982

‘Régi rétegek a Volga-Káma-i finnugor és török népek zenéjében’ [Ancient layers in the music of the Finno-Ugric and Turkic peoples of the Volga-Kama region], Zenetudományi dolgozatok (1982), 327–47

‘Zenei jegyzetek Mongóliáról’ [Musical notes on Mongolia], Zenetudományi dolgozatok (1983), 209–18

ed.: Reflections on Kodály (Budapest, 1985)

‘Tonális és egyéb részleges kvintváltás a magyar népdalokban’ [Tonal and other partial quintal-shift structures in Hungarian folksongs], Zenetudományi dolgozatok (1985), 139–55

Volga-Káma-Bjelaja vidéki finnugor és török népzenegyűjtés 1958–1979 [Collecting Finno-Ugric and Turkic folk music in the Volga-Kama-Belaya region 1958–1979] (Budapest, 1986)

‘Collection of Finno-Ugrian and Turkic Folk Music in the Volga-Kama-Belya Region 1958–1979’, SMH, xxix (1987), 355–422 [also in Hung.]

‘On the Folk Music Arrangements of Bartók and Kodály’, Bartók and Kodály Revisited, ed. G. Ránki (Budapest, 1987), 991–1005

‘Tatar Folksongs’, SMH, xxxix (1998), 1–34

FOLKSONG EDITIONS

Cseremisz népdalok [Folksongs from the Cheremis region] (Budapest, 1967)

with G. Bereczki: Cheremis Folksongs (Budapest, 1971)

with G. Bereczki: Chuvash Folksongs (Budapest, 1977)

with G. Bereczki: Chuvash Folksongs (Budapest, 1979)

with E. Szij: Erdök éneke: Finnugor népek 100 népdala [Songs of the forest: 100 Finno-Ugric folksongs] (Budapest, 1985) [also in Eng., Finnish, Hung., Russ.]

with G. Bereczki: Votyak Folksongs (Budapest, 1989)

Volga-kámai finnugoruk és törökök dallmai [The melodies of the Finno-Ugrians and Turks in the Volga-Kama area] (Budapest, 1996) [incl. CD]

with G. Bereczki and M. Szekeres-Farkas: Tatar Folksongs (Budapest, 1999)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Vikár László gyűjteménye a csuvas népzenéről [Vikár’s collection of Chuvash folk music], ed. J. Varga (Eger, 1972) [also in Russ.]

‘Beszélgetés Vikár Lászlóval’ [Conversation with Vikár], Az ének-zene tanítása (1986), 32–4

J. Rák, dir.: A tanítvány: portréfilm Vikár Lászlóról [The pupil: a film portrait of Vikár] (Budapest, 1993)

IMRE OLSVAI/R

Vila.

Extended family of Catalan organists from Vich, active from the late 15th century to the early 17th in the cathedrals of Barcelona, Lleida, Vich and Valencia. The most famous member of the family was Pere Alberch i Ferrament alias Vila.

Vilanova (y Barrera), Ramón

(b Barcelona, 21 Jan 1801; d Barcelona, 14 May 1870). Spanish composer. He began his musical studies with José Ferres in Barcelona and Jaime Domenech in Berga, where his family had fled after the French invasion in 1808. After returning to Barcelona in 1814 he studied composition with Francisco Queralt, maestro de capilla of the cathedral, and Mateo Ferrer. The performance of his Misa pastoril on Christmas Day 1828 in Barcelona Cathedral established his reputation as a composer of sacred music; besides performances in other Spanish churches and as far away as Rome, the mass was repeated annually at Barcelona Cathedral for 76 years.

Attracted to Italian opera, Vilanova went to Milan in 1829, studying with Piantanida at the Milan Conservatory and conducting in several opera houses. He returned to Barcelona the following year and was made maestro de capilla of Barcelona Cathedral. He inaugurated his position with the Misa del arpa, for chorus and orchestra, and during the three years of his stay there composed much music for use in the services, including another orchestral mass, litanies and responsories. In 1833 he resigned to become director of the Teatro Cómico, Valencia, but his stay was short-lived, as the theatre was closed after the death of Fernando VII on 29 September 1833. On his return to Barcelona he devoted himself to teaching and composition, writing three misas de gloria, two requiems (‘de Bilbao’, 1838, performed in Barcelona Cathedral for victims of the civil war of 1833–9; 1845), and later a Tantum ergo, Salutaris, mass and motets dedicated to the Brotherhood of the Poor. He also composed a Capricho for orchestra, two sinfonias in the style of Rossini, and many songs and piano pieces which were published in New York, Paris and Leipzig. At his death his will directed that his modest fortune be used to establish a fund for the children and widows of needy musicians and provide annual subsidies to the Brotherhood of the Poor.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

B. Saldoni: Diccionario biográfico-bibliográfico de efemérides de músicos españoles (Madrid, 1868–81/R), i, 177; ii, 416

‘Vilanova y Barrera (Ramón)’, Enciclopedia universal ilustrada europeo-americana (Barcelona, 1907–30)

R. Mitjana y Gordón: ‘La musique en Espagne’, EMDC, I/iv (1920), 1913–2351, esp. 2267

SHIRLEY WARREN

Vilar, Francisco

(d Barcelona, 1770). Spanish organist and composer. A priest, he was organist from 1726 at S Pedro de las Doncellas in Barcelona. On 24 July 1742 he was given a temporary appointment as organist at SS Justo y Pastor, which was made permanent on 29 July 1745; he remained there until his death. His numerous organ pieces are widely scattered in Spanish musical archives; nine manuscripts are at Montserrat, five at Barcelona (E-Bc, Boc) and one at Astorga Cathedral. The collections at Montserrat and Astorga include a few larger pieces (tientos, toccatas, pastorellas, an obra, a sonata), but the majority of his works are short versets for the Ordinary of the Mass or on the psalm tones, as well as a few Pange lingua settings. J.M. Alvarez published a tiento, obra and five sets of versets by Vilar in a Colección de obras de órgano de organistas españoles del siglo XVII: manuscrito encontrado en la catedral de Astorga (Madrid, 1970; the composer is referred to as ‘Vila’ in this collection). Vilar’s style is primitive, alternating between simple chordal progressions, running passages against sustained notes and brief points of imitation. It is sometimes difficult to separate his compositions from those of his slightly earlier contemporary Joan Vila, organist at Nuestra Señora del Pilar in Barcelona from 1738.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

J.M. Llorens: ‘La obra orgánica de José Elías, discipulo de Juan B. Cabanilles’, AnM, xvii (1962), 125–40, esp. 129

B. Nelson: ‘Juego de pangelinguas: a Source of Organ Music by José Elías at Montserrat’, AnM, l (1995), 75–85

ALMONTE HOWELL

Vilar, José Teodor

(b Barcelona, 10 Aug 1836; d Barcelona, 21 Oct 1905). Spanish pianist, conductor and composer of Catalan descent. He studied with the organist and composer Vilanova at Barcelona, then continued his education in Paris with Herz (piano), and Bazin and Halévy (composition). After returning to Barcelona he gave concerts and wrote a history of music, Apuntes de historia musical, o Resumen de historia de la música (Barcelona, 1863). He was a pioneer in composing Catalan zarzuelas, and his first such work to be staged, L'ultim rey de Magnolia, to a libretto by Frederic Soler (pseud. Serafí Pitarra), was performed in Barcelona in December 1868. It was followed in June 1869 by another Catalan zarzuela to a libretto by Soler, Els pescadors de San Pol. Both were well received. He continued to compose for the stage and served as assistant conductor at a secondary theatre in Barcelona. He later became chorus master and finally conductor at the Teatro Principal. Eventually he confined himself to teaching and composition. Despite their settings, dialogue and costumes, his Catalan zarzuelas evince the influence of Italian opera so pervasive in Spain during that epoch. He was a gifted orchestrator and made effective use of colour to project dramatic situations.

WORKS

all zarzuelas; first performed in Barcelona unless otherwise stated

La romería de Recasens (2), 1867; L’ultim rey de Magnolia (1, S. Pitarra), Romeo, Dec 1868; Els pescadors de San Pol (2, Pitarra), Tivoli, June 1869; Una prometensa, 1870; La Rambla de las Flores (J. Feliú y Codina), 1870; Pot més que pinta, 1870; La lluna en un cove, 1870/71; L’esca del pecat, 1871; La torre del amor, Santa Cruz, 1871; Un joes de cartas, Madrid, Oct 1881; La jupa blanca (Riera and Bertran), Dec 1881

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A. Peña y Gõni: La ópera española y música dramática en España en el siglo XIX (Madrid, 1881, abridged 2/1967 by E. Rincón as España desde la opéra a la zarzuela)

C. Gómez Amat: Historia de la música española en el siglo XIX (Madrid, 1984)

WALTER AARON CLARK

Vilback, (Alfonse Charles) Renaud de

(b Montpelier, Hérault, 3 June 1829; d Paris, 19 March 1884). French organist and composer. A pupil of Lemoine (piano), Benoist (organ) and Halévy (composition) at the Paris Conservatoire from 1842, he won the Prix de Rome two years later with the cantata Le renégat de Tanger. His period of study and travel in Europe over, he settled in Paris as a piano and composition teacher. His large-scale works, the operas Au clair de la lune (Paris, Bouffes-Parisiens, 4 September 1857) and Don Almanzor (Paris, Théâtre Lyrique, 16 April 1858), and a Messe solennelle (1847) were less successful than his smaller orchestral works (Chanson cypriote, Marche serbe etc.), a piano method, and the many well-written but ephemeral salon pieces (e.g. Deux morceaux characteristiques op.8, Grande valse brillante op.10) and transcriptions of opera (Fantaisie brillante sur La sonnambula op.6, etc.) for piano solo and duet. As organist of St Eugène-Ste Cécile, Paris (1856–71), he was famous for his improvisations and technically the equal of Saint-Säens and Lefébure-Wély, sharing many of the latter’s points of style. He died blind and in poverty.

ROBIN LANGLEY

Vilers [Villa], Antoine de.

See Villers, Antoine de.

Vilins'ky, Mykola Mykolayovych

(b Holta, Mykolaivs'ka region, 2/14 May 1888; d Kiev, 7 Sept 1956). Ukrainian composer and teacher. In 1912 he graduated in law from Odessa University and in 1919 from the conservatory there in Maliszewski's class. He began to teach at the Odessa Conservatory in 1920 (as professor from 1926), then in Tashkent (1941–4), and from 1944 at the Kiev Conservatory, where he headed the composition faculty from 1948. Among his many students were Bilash, Dan'kevych and Femilidi. In 1951 he became an Honoured Artist of the Ukrainian SSR and received the Order of Lenin in 1953. In addition to writing articles on Ukrainian and Moldovan music, he worked as reviewer, music critic, and editor (he supervised the publication of the complete works of Lysenko). Vilinsky belongs to the first generation of Ukrainian professional composers who, in the period between 1910 and 1932, participated in the rebirth of Ukrainian political and cultural identity. Written with great skill and formal clarity, his music was essentially post-Romantic in style with a few modernist characteristics; much of it is deeply influenced by folk culture. He discovered a method by which he translated the essentially vocal tradition of Ukrainian music into an instrumental fabric. He was particularly partial to variation form, which he employed in heterogeneous ways.

WORKS

(selective list)

Kharakterystychni tantsi [Characteristic Dances], sym.-cant., 1910; Rosiys'ki variatsii v ėpichnomu styliu na orhinal'nu temu [Russ. Variations in Epic Style on an Original Theme], op.3, pf, 1913–14; Elehichna Suita [Elegiac Suite], op.8, pf, 1914–25; Ballad, op.4, pf, 1917–25 [variations on a Ukr. folk theme]; Dytyachyi al'bom [Children's Album], op.11, pf 4 hands, 1925; 2 Pieces, op.7, pf, 1925: Mrii [Dreams], Rosdumy [Thoughts]; Sonata, vn, pf, 1925; Suite on Moldovan Themes [no.1], sym.-cant., 1932; Suite on Moldovan Themes [no.2], sym.-cant., 1933; Moldavia (cant., A. Kornyanu), 1939; Suite on Moldovan Themes [no.3], sym.-cant., 1944; Variations no.1 and no.2, op.33, pf, 1949; 4 Miniatures in Memory of A. Lyadov, op.40, pf, 1956

Film scores, romances (A.S. Pushkin and others), 1v, pf; folksong arrs. (Moldovan, Russ., Ukr. and Uzbek)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

M. Mykhailov: M.M. Vilins'ky (Kiev, 1962)

M. Hordiychuk: Ukrains'ka radyans'ka symfonichna muzyka [Soviet Ukrainian symphonic music] (Kiev, 1969)

VIRKO BALEY

Villa, Petro.

See Alberch i Ferrament alias Vila, Pere.

Villabella, Miguel

(b Bilbao, 20 Dec 1892; d Paris, 28 June 1954). Spanish tenor. His voice was discovered by the French bass-baritone Lucien Fugère, who encouraged him to study in Paris. After making his concert début in 1917 in San Sebastián and his operatic début in 1918 as Cavaradossi in Poitiers, he was engaged by the Opéra-Comique in Paris, in 1920, beginning with minor roles, then graduating to Massenet’s Des Grieux, Gérald (Lakmé), Don José, Hoffmann, Nadir, Wilhelm Meister (Mignon), George Brown (Boieldieu’s La dame blanche) and Alfredo (La traviata) among others. His successful début at the Paris Opéra, as Pinkerton, came in 1928, and in a career there that lasted until 1935 his roles included the Duke of Mantua, Faust, Roméo, Rossini’s Count Almaviva and Don Ottavio. Apart from appearances in Brussels and Monte Carlo, Villabella’s career was confined to France, mainly because he was so much in demand there on account of the shining clarity and power of his voice. His numerous recordings, testimony to his popularity, include examples of many of his successful roles. His readings compensate in sheer fervour for what they lack in subtlety. He retired in 1940 and taught in Paris.

ALAN BLYTH

Villaflor, Manuel de

(b Valencia; d Madrid, before 12 Sept 1707). Spanish composer. He worked as a musician and composer for the Madrid theatres in the last decade of the 17th century and the early years of the 18th. He married the actress Sabina Pascual. Of their two sons and one daughter, Ramón and Rita became professional actors, and Ramón was in addition a singer and violinist.

In 1690 Manuel de Villaflor was working in Madrid. In 1699 he was listed principal musician in the company of Carlos Vallejo, and composed music for that year’s revival of Calderón’s auto sacramental for Corpus Christi, El laberinto del mundo. His music included several solo songs, a chorus, a duet, and a recitado for the figure Mentira. In 1699 he also performed in the ‘fiesta de zarzuela’ Júpiter y Yoo, o Los cielos premian desdenes (text by M. de Lanuza), produced for carnival at court. In 1700 he worked with the company of Juan de Cárdenas, and composed for revivals of two autos by Calderón. In 1701–2 he and his wife formed their own company, and he performed in this troupe during the 1705 and 1706 seasons. The fact that he formed his own troupe testifies to his administrative and practical abilities and to the esteem in which he was held by his colleagues, as does the fact that he was chief administrator of the Cofradía de Nuestra Señora de la Novena, the actors’ guild, in 1692, 1701, 1702, 1704 and 1705. In all, it is likely that Villaflor composed for and performed in numerous zarzuelas and comedias for both the court and the public stages during his more than 15 years as a theatre musician in Madrid.

Theatre songs by Villaflor are extant in several manuscripts (in E-Bc, Mn, PAc, Mexico City, Biblioteca Nacional, and US-SFs).

LOUISE K. STEIN

Villafranca, Luis de

(fl 1545–79). Spanish theorist. He served for most of his career at Seville Cathedral as instructor in plainchant and master of the mozos de coro (i.e. the altar boys, who studied only plainchant, in contrast to the seises or choirboys, who studied polyphony). He retired on 26 October 1579. His concise manual of plainchant – Breve instrucción de canto llano, asi para aprender brevemente el artificio del canto, como para cantar epístolas, lecciones, profecías y evangelios, y otras cosas que se cantan conforme al estilo de la sancta iglesia de Sevilla (Seville, 1565) – consists of 51 folios in black and red Gothic letters. It is his only known work, although in it he promised a larger volume to include also discussion of mensural music, counterpoint and proportions. He shows familiarity with both Spanish and foreign authorities, citing (among others) Despuig, Bizcargui, Espinosa, Ornithoparchus and Gaffurius; Bermudo is also cited, but, perhaps surprisingly, his work did not have a major influence on Villafranca’s writing. Topics covered in the book’s ten chapters include the gamut, solmization, mutations, rhythm, the modes, intervals, semitonal alterations (apparently liberally used in the chants at Seville, according to his examples) and the Sevillian method of intoning particular chants. He was of the school of thought which held that the ‘singable’ or diatonic semitone was smaller than the ‘unsingable’ or chromatic. The work contains approbations by two of his more famous colleagues at Seville, Pedro Fernández and Francisco Guerrero. It seems to have been little known to later theorists, though Cerone (El melopeo y maestro, 1613) included it in his list of authorities.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

StevensonSCM

H. Anglès and J. Subirá: Catálogo musical de la Biblioteca nacional de Madrid, ii (Barcelona, 1949), 124

F.J. León Tello: Estudios de historia de la teoría musical (Madrid, 1962, 2/1991)

ALMONTE HOWELL/F.J. LEÓN TELLO

Villafranchi, Giovanni Cosimo.

See Villifranchi, Giovanni Cosimo.

Villalar (de Herrero), Andrés de

(b Zamora, c1530; d after 1593). Spanish composer. In a competition held on 5 July 1563 he won the post of maestro de capilla at Córdoba Cathedral over Diego Ximénez, provisional maestro de capilla since 15 October 1561, and Gerónimo de Barrionuevo. On 30 October 1566 he left Córdoba and, after visiting his sick mother at Zamora, went to Burgos, where he was maestro de capilla until 1572. From 1576 he worked at Valladolid. By 1579 he had married, and from 23 June of that year until 1582–3 he served as maestro de capilla at Santiago de Compostela, where the chapter complained that he was lazy. He resigned or was dismissed at the end of 1580, and returned to Zamora. Other establishments continued to seek his advice until at least 1593.

WORKS

Regina coeli, 4vv, E-V; ed. J. de Elústiza and G. Castrillo Hernández, Antologia musical: siglo de oro de la música litúrgica de España (Barcelona, 1933), 133–7 [faulty transcription]

Benedictus, 4vv, Vp; Gloria 8vv, Vp; Sumens illud ave (Ave maris stella), 4vv, LEDsm

Villanesca, attrib. Villalar in 1576⁸, actually by F. Guerrero

BIBLIOGRAPHY

R. Mitjana y Gordón: Don Fernando de las Infantas (Madrid, 1918), 121–2

S. Tafall Abad: ‘La capilla de música de la catedral de Santiago: notas históricas’, Boletín de la Real academia gallega, xxvi (1931), 73–87

P. Aizpurúa: ‘El códice musical de la parroquia de Santiago de Valladolid’, RdMc, iv (1981), 51–9

A. Luis Iglesias: ‘El códice de la parroquia de Santa María de Ledesma’, RdMc, xii (1989), 175–97

R. Stevenson: ‘Spanish Polyphonists in the Age of the Armada’, Inter-American Music Review, xii/2 (1991–2), 17–114, esp. 62–3

ROBERT STEVENSON

Villalba Muñoz, Luis

(b Valladolid, 22 Sept 1872; d Madrid, 8 Jan 1921). Spanish musicologist and composer. He learnt music at home (he came from a musical family), but was largely self-taught. At the age of 14 he joined the Augustinians at the Escorial, making his profession in 1899, and served there as maestro de capilla (1898–1916); he also edited the journals La Ciudad de Dios (1908–16) and Biblioteca sacro musical, founding the latter in 1911. He then moved to Madrid, where he was organist of S Sebastian and edited the journal Ilustración española y americana. At the time of his death he was engaged in the public competition for the chair of aesthetics and music history at the Madrid Conservatory. As a musicologist Villalba greatly influenced the revival of sacred music in Spain, with many articles in the journals he edited and elsewhere (Música sacro-hispana). An erudite scholar, he produced important biographies of Spanish musicians, in the form of books and as obituaries in La Ciudad de Dios. His editions of early music display a critical acumen notable for the period; his Antología de organistas clásicos españoles in particular has not been superseded. His historical writings have also remained valuable.

WRITINGS

‘Un tratado de música inédito del siglo XV’, Ciudad de Dios, no.70 (1906), 118–23, 531–43

‘El estilo polifónico y la obra de órgano de Cabezón’, Música sacro-hispana, iii (1910), 143–7 [incl. transcr. of Fantasía no.3 for vihuela from M. de Fuenllana: Orphenica lyra]

Ultimos músicos españoles del siglo XIX (Madrid, 1914)

Felipe Pedrell, semblanza y biografía (Madrid, 1922)

EDITIONS

Antología de organistas clásicos españoles (Madrid, 1914, rev. 2/1971 by S. Rubio)

Diez canciones españolas de los siglas XV y XVI, traducidos y transcritas para piano y canto (Madrid, 1914,)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

R. Villar: Músicos españoles, i (Madrid, 1918), 63–70

L. Villalba Muñoz: Felipe Pedrell, semblanza y biografía (Madrid, 1922) [incl. list of writings of Luis Villalba Muñoz and his brother Alberto]

A. Llordén: Bibliografía agustiniana escurialense (El Escorial, 1964), 667–8 [incl. list of writings]

M.A. Virgili Blanquet: ‘Felipe Pedrell y el músico vallisoletano Luis Villalba: correspondencia inédita’, Recerca musicológica, i (1981), 151–92

M.A. Virgili Blanquet: La música en Valladolid en el siglo XX (Valladolid, 1985), 43–79 [incl. complete list of all writings, editions and compositions of Luis Villalba Muñoz]

M.A. Virgili: ‘Luis Villalba y Eustoquio Uriarte: las contribuciones al estudio de la música lírica y al nacionalismo musical español’, La música en el monasterio del Escorial: San Lorenzo de El Escorial 1992, 487–512

J.B. Varela de Vega: ‘Semblanza de Enrique Villalba’, Real Academia de Bellas Artes de la Purísma Concepción de Valladolid: Bolétin, no.30 (1995), 91–101

JOSÉ LÓPEZ-CALO

Villa-Lobos, Heitor

(b Rio de Janeiro, 5 March 1887; d Rio de Janeiro, 17 Nov 1959). Brazilian composer. Heitor Villa-Lobos stands as the single most significant creative figure in 20^th-century Brazilian art music. This significance stems not only from his international recognition, but from his achievement in creating unique compositional styles in which contemporary European techniques and reinterpreted elements of national music are combined. His highly successful career stood as a model for subsequent generations of Brazilian composers.

1. Youth and early career.

2. The ‘Week of Modern Art’ and Paris.

3. The Estado Novo and the campaign for music education.

4. International acclaim.

5. Works.

6. Personality and style.

GERARD BÉHAGUE

1. Youth and early career.

He was raised in a middle-class family; his father, Raúl Villa-Lobos, was an employee of the National Library and an amateur musician. Although he rejected early on many values and conventions of the period, particularly formal schooling, he later recognized the severe discipline imposed by his father on his music education as beneficial. Villa-Lobos recalled in a 1957 interview

With him I always attended rehearsals, concerts and operas … I also learned how to play the clarinet, and I was required to identify the genre, style, character and origin of compositions, in addition to recognizing quickly the name of a note, of sounds or noises… Watch out, when I didn't get it right.

He also learnt the cello from his father and it became a favourite instrument. However, despite being exposed to classical music, it was his native city's popular idioms of the turn of the century that captivated him and exerted a lasting influence on his work. Indeed, he learnt to play the guitar – the epitome of popular culture and subject to disapproval by polite society – on his own and away from home.

Only after the premature death of his father in 1899 was Villa-Lobos able to immerse himself fully, at first as a guitarist, in the life of Rio's street musicians. The music of the chorões especially fascinated him, and the impressions of this vigorous experience were of such importance that he later gave the generic designation of choros to his portrayal, in the 1920s, of a variety of Brazilian musical styles. Villa-Lobos completed his schooling at the monastery of S Bento in Rio, following which, to please his mother, he enrolled in a preparatory course for the entrance examination to the School of Medicine. However, in 1903, unable to maintain any interest in the classes, he left his mother's house and went to live with his aunt Zizinha (Leopoldina do Amaral). In his later teenage years he earned a living mainly by playing the cello in the Teatro Recreio, in hotels, and in the Odeon cinema, where he met some of the most celebrated personalities of popular music of the time, including Ernesto Nazareth, Eduardo das Neves and Anacleto de Medeiros.

Villa-Lobos's early years remain poorly documented and contemporary reports are not always reliable. In particular, his various trips between 1905 and 1913 to the northern and north-eastern states, the Amazon, and central and southern Brazil have been subject to varying theories as to whether or not they constituted field research into Brazil's folk and traditional music. He himself never discussed the specific motivation behind these travels, though he did later emphasize his yearning for freedom, his fondness for new discoveries, and a search for his own musical identity as a Brazilian. The music itself, perhaps, provides the best clues to this period, once Villa-Lobos's reworking of his sources is taken into account. He undoubtedly learnt dozens of popular tunes and songs, which he brought into play in many of his works; but if he truly collected more than 1000 themes ‘of value’, as suggested by Mariz (1949), nowhere did he record this collection systematically or publish it. This further corresponds to his dislike of formality or method. Villa-Lobos certainly assembled, arranged and adapted 137 folksong melodies in his didactic Guia prático of 1932, but most are commonly known and not of the regional, ‘exotic’ variety that his accounts suggest he heard.

Back in Rio, he met the pianist Lucília Guimarães whom he married in 1913. Throughout the 1910s and 20s she gave the premières of several of his piano pieces, playing a significant role in the first public concerts of his music in 1915 and during the ‘Week of Modern Art’ in 1922. They separated in 1936 but she remained loyal to him throughout her life. Compositionally, the period 1912–17 was one of intense activity and marked the maturation of Villa-Lobos's creative personality. By 1917 he had produced some 100 works, including his first guitar pieces (e.g. the Suite popular brasileira), four string quartets and other chamber music, two symphonies, and the ballets Amazonas and Uirapuru. The first official concert fully dedicated to his work took place on 13 November 1915 and established him at once as an enfant terrible of new Brazilian art music, thanks to the strongly negative reactions from the critics, in particular Vicenzo Cernicchiaro and the fearful Oscar Guanabarino, who was a ferocious detractor of Villa-Lobos and modern music in general. The works performed at the concert (such as the First Piano Trio, op.25, and the Sonata fantasia no.2, op.29) while still far from the truly modern idiom of his music of the late 1910s and 20s, challenged in no uncertain terms the then current state of composition in Brazil. Between 1917 and 1919 additional major concerts of his music were organized, presenting some of his main orchestral works of the period. These concerts helped to establish Villa-Lobos in a very short time as the controversial, anti-establishment figure par excellence. Such recognition probably gained him an invitation to participate in the ‘Week of Modern Art.’

Essentially a self-taught composer and an eager and curious listener, Villa-Lobos assimilated spontaneously, if at times reluctantly, a number of important influences, especially at first some of the techniques of Impressionism concerning harmonic practices and orchestration. His friendship with Milhaud (who lived in Rio from 1917 to 1918) and Artur Rubinstein (whom he met in 1918) probably also resulted in his acquaintance with the latest French music and Stravinsky. However, by 1918 Villa-Lobos was already well advanced in his own innovative experiments in rhythm and harmony. During the next few years Rubinstein promoted Villa-Lobos and his music throughout the world.

2. The ‘Week of Modern Art’ and Paris.

The development of Modernism in Brazil took place in the 1920s, and to mark the centenary of independence a number of literary figures, artists and intellectuals organized the ‘Week of Modern Art’ in São Paulo during 11–18 February 1922. Villa-Lobos was invited as the representative of modern music in Brazil, and several of his chamber works were performed, most notably the Danças características africanas in a special version for five strings, flute, clarinet and piano. For Villa-Lobos the Modernist aesthetic called for a break with European Romantic tonality and a strong determination to renew and legitimize a distinctly Brazilian musical vocabulary. The event aroused polemic and discussion and brought further attention to Villa-Lobos. The progressive literary figures of the time in their praise of the composer's creativity contributed to the construction of Villa-Lobos as a quasi-mythical character, whose music appeared as a potential source of synthesis in a newly confident country. Most reactions were subsequently summed up in Ensaio sôbre a música brasileira (1928), a manifesto of musical nationalism by Mário de Andrade.

Subsidized by several wealthy friends and a government stipend, Villa-Lobos left for Europe in 1923, where he travelled to a number of cities and settled in Paris. His main reason for going was self-publicity, not study, and in Paris he met with enormous success with concerts of major works in 1924, 1927 and 1930, and won the support of such figures as Rubinstein, Florent Schmitt and the music critics Prunières, Le Flem and Klingsor. He met, too, many other composers, including Ravel, d'Indy, de Falla, Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Varèse, and his music began to be published by Max Eschig. By 1930, when he returned home for good (he had been back to conduct several concerts in Brazil and Argentina), he had attained recognition in Paris unequalled by any other Latin American composer. His European experience also contributed to furthering his belief in the freedom to innovate.

3. The Estado Novo and the campaign for music education.

In 1930 Villa-Lobos was in São Paulo for concert engagements. While there he presented to the State Secretariat for Education a plan to address the precarious condition of musical education in schools. In the same year a new government under Gétulio Vargas came to power, and its strong backing of Villa-Lobos's project led him to dedicate many of his following years to a nationwide campaign, as well as, from 1931, to taking specific charge of the Superintendency of Musical and Artistic Education for Rio. He was subsequently extolled as the patriach of musical learning, but also, after the inception of the ‘Estado Novo’ (1937–45), decried as the supporter of a dictatorship whose nationalist ideology was often connected to the contemporaneous fascist regimes in Europe. Villa-Lobos's programme included not only initial music instruction in primary and technical schools but also education on a mass popular scale through choral, or ‘Orpheonic’ (originally a cappella) singing, of Brazilian music in particular. Such ‘civic exhortations’ involved on one occasion in 1935 some 30,000 voices and 1000 band musicians, and in 1940, and again in 1943, nearer 40,000 singers. The regime's patriotism undoubtedly boosted Villa-Lobos's own, but whether he truly shared its far-right leanings has been a matter of considerable debate. That he was initially concerned more with his individual career is undisputed. But at the same time his music and education policy was intentionally taken up as instruments of ideology, and he himself saw the mass gatherings as a powerful tool for inculcating a nationalist fervour. In 1942 the government founded a National Conservatory of Orpheonic Singing, with Villa-Lobos its director. By the time of his retirement in 1957, the impact of the institition had been extensive.

Politics notwithstanding, Villa-Lobos's work in music education only enhanced his reputation as a composer in Brazil, where his own compositions had not had as much exposure as in Europe. He became an ‘official’ composer, and though this change in status in no way affected his prolific creativity, nor an essentially free approach, his manner became less experimental than in the 1920s. During this period he also began to conduct in earnest, not only in Brazil but also in Argentina, Uruguay and Chile. On the occasion of his participation in the 1936 Music Education Congress in Prague, he conducted several of his own pieces for a Berlin radio station. In the same year he separated from his wife and began his life with Arminda Neves d'Almeida, who not only devoted herself to him for the next 23 years, but continued to work assiduously until her death in 1985 to promote his works in her capacity as director of the Villa-Lobos Museum, founded in 1960.

4. International acclaim.

From the time of his first visit to the USA, Villa-Lobos's career took an upward turn internationally. During 1944–5 he conducted his works with the Janssen SO in Los Angeles, the Boston SO and, at the request of Stokowski, the New York SO. He also organized a concert of his chamber music in New York, in which city he met, among others, Toscanini, Copland, Ormandy, Menuhin, Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman. His music came to be held in very high regard. Back in Brazil in 1945, he had time to help found the Brazilian Academy of Music, which was to be so important in the development of musical professionalism in the country. Two years later he was away again, this time conducting in Rome, Lisbon and Paris, and then going on to New York, where he gave the première of his Bachianas brasileiras no.3 with the pianist José Viera Brandão and the Columbia SO; it was broadcast across the CBS network. In mid-1948 he returned once more to New York, but this time for treatment of cancer of the bladder at Memorial Hospital.

Although the last decade of Villa-Lobos's life was marked by a gradual deterioration in health, he remained for the most part remarkably active: in 1949 he made a series of tours in Europe, the USA and Japan; concerts in Paris in 1951 and 1955 were especially well received; in 1952 at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées with the Orchestre National de France he gave first performances of his early Symphony no.4 (‘A vitória’) of 1919 and the four suites Descobrimento do Brasil of 1937. During his final seven years, Paris became his home once again, from where he responded to numerous engagements and commissions, particularly from the USA, including works for the Boston SO and the Philadelphia Orchestra. On the eve of his 70th birthday a New York Times editorial (4 March 1957) praised his distinguished service, while in Brazil, 1957 was declared ‘Villa-Lobos year’ by the Ministry of Education and Culture.

The following year Villa-Lobos was still active, working on the film score of Green Mansions, whose concert version he retitled as Floresta do Amazonas, and conducting in Europe and New York. In December 1958 his sacred work Bendita sabedoria for mixed chorus was first performed at New York University, on the occasion of his award of an honorary doctorate. However, by the time he returned to Rio de Janeiro in July 1959 his health had worsened considerably. Although he continued to preside over the Brazilian Academy of Music, he died a few months later. His funeral was attended by many dignitaries, including the country's president.

5. Works.

Villa-Lobos was unquestionably a strongly nationalist composer, though over six decades of extraordinarily prolific work his nationalism took on many faces. His identification with folk and popular music was of the utmost significance to him, but it would be simplistic to classify his works merely in terms of its presence or absence; or indeed to try to view such references as separate from his numerous and varied experiments in style and language, even within a single work.

The period 1901–22 covers Villa-Lobos's initial search for stylistic definition. The 50 or so works written during these years include some of his famous early piano pieces – such as the Danças características africanas (1914–15), the Prole do bebê nos.1 and 2 (1918, 1921) and the Carnaval das crianças brasileiras (1919–20) – but also chamber music such as the Sexteto místico (1917), the woodwind Trio (1921), the first four string quartets the song cycle Epigramas irônicos e sentimentais (1921–3), the first five symphonies and the ballets Uirapuru (1917) and Amazonas (1917). Despite the strongly post-Romantic, French Impressionist character of several of these works, particularly in the harmonies and tone-colouring, the home-grown is evident too, for example in the ‘Chorinho’ from the Suite popular brasileira.

The substantial and attractive Uirapuru is a particularly revealing example of Villa-Lobos's struggle to establish the elements which contributed to his own identity as an original national composer, while still dependent on the French models of the time. Both a ballet and tone poem, it is based on a legend involving an enchanted bird from the Amazon, considered by Indian worshippers to be the king of love. As a ballet it displays many of the ingredients of similar works of the 1910s (such as Stravinsky's The Firebird), in its mixture of the romantic, fantastic and primitivist. As a tone poem it exemplifies the ideal genre for Villa-Lobos, who revealed throughout his career a frequent use of extra-musical associations or programmatic concepts as a means of designing the formal structure of his works.

Although Villa-Lobos was not himself a very accomplished pianist, his contribution to 20th-century piano literature is remarkable for its range of expression, the techniques used and the sheer quantity of different works. Of the earlier works the Prole do bebê no.2 stands out: the nine movements which comprise the piece portray toy animals, but are in essence a set of ‘transcendental studies’ (Souza Lima, 1969). ‘O boisinho de chumbo’ (‘The Little Lead Ox’), for example, calls for fast scale passages in different intervals, diatonic and chromatic glissando figurations, large intervallic skips and the use of extreme ranges of the keyboard, rhythmic layering and accentuation of some complexity and up to three simultaneous dynamic planes. The final grandiose section (ex.1), with its massive chordal blocks across the registers, clearly depicts the eponymous ox. However, despite an at times violent and atonal harmonic vocabulary, the melodic invention, associated with Brazilian children's tunes, is quite tonal. Some original folksongs are quoted with few alterations, for instance Fui no tororó in the second part of ‘A baratinha de papel’ (‘The Paper Bug’) (ex.2), which at the start also exhibits a typical habanera ostinato pattern and a theme whose flexible contour and rhythm underlines the Brazilian spirit. The ostinato reveals an ingenious treatment in the alternation of black and white keys: in the first group of semiquavers the first, third and fourth notes are on white keys, with the second note on a black key; in the second group, the second and third notes are now white, and the first and fourth black.

In 1923 Villa-Lobos wrote one of his most characteristic works, the Noneto, given its première in Paris in 1924. Subtitled ‘Impressão rápida de todo o Brasil’, the piece represented a new synthesis of national musical expression. Closer to choro than many other works of the 1920s which bear the title, the Noneto comprises a comprehensive anthology of the most common but also most original and appealing rhythms of urban popular music (ex.3). The atmosphere is added to by the rhapsodic and improvisational manner of the melodies, whose richly contrapuntal working is reminiscent of other choro composers such as Pixunguinha, Donga and Benedito. The employment of the saxophone, flute, harp (in place of guitar) and cavanquinho in the ensemble also points to choro, as well as to Impressionist sources. The Chôros themselves are still generally considered the compositions with which Villa-Lobos most clearly established his aesthetic – a daring balance of the vernacular and the Modernist – becoming in the process Brazil's foremost nationalist musical voice. For a variety of instrumentations, from solo guitar, solo piano and chamber ensembles to orchestra and chorus, including one work for two orchestras and band (no.13), the Chôros represent Villa-Lobos's most extensive vehicle in his crusade to communicate the tropically fertile, exotic nature of the music of his country.

Although the model of the choro is closely followed in Chôros no.1 for guitar, it is in Chôros no.5 (‘Alma brasileira’) for piano that Villa-Lobos best portrays the serenade-like aspect of the style; the strongly expressive lyricism in the piece may also be related to the love song genre of modinha. In sharp contrast Chôros no.8 conveys a carnival celebration in Rio de Janeiro, by means of highly infectious rhythmic and timbral play and a large number of thematic ideas drawn from choro, children's songs and other popular types. The work also contains aspects of Villa-Lobos's earlier interest in evoking the dances of South American Indians. It was well-received at its Paris première and performed frequently subsequently. Of all the pieces in the series, Chôros no.10 (‘Rasga o coração’) is generally considered his masterpiece. The subtitle comes from a modinha by the poet Catulo da Paixão Cearense, which had previously been adapted by Anacleto de Medeiros to his piano schottische Yara; passages of this piece are quoted in the second part of the Villa-Lobos, which describes a tremendous crescendo of primitive energy. The work's two main themes take on the form of bewitching, vigorous ostinatos; powerful onomatopoeic effects are produced by the complex counterpoint of nonsense syllables, echoing the phonetic sounds of aboriginal languages; polytonal and tone cluster features become more prominent, and, in combination with cross-rhythmic groupings, multiple syncopations and polyrhythm, create textures of quite a high complexity. The virtuoso orchestration also reveals a sophistication unknown until then in Brazil.

Of the major piano works composed in the 1920s, Rudepoema and the series of Cirandas occupy a special place. Rudepoema was dedicated to Rubinstein and is a portrait of the pianist, who gave its first performance in Paris in 1927. The technical and aesthetic complexity of the work arises from its great diversity of moods, probably the result of Villa Lobos's interpretation of Rubinstein's personality. The overall character is still decidedly experimental, especially in the treatment of rhythm and tone colour. By contrast, each piece of the Cirandas (1926), children's round-dances, is built on a traditional folk tune.

During the period of the Vargas regime Villa-Lobos composed the nine Bachianas brasileiras, described by him as a ‘homage the great genius of Johann Sebastian Bach … [who I] consider a kind of universal folkloric source, rich and profound … [a source] linking all peoples’. These works were not intended, however, as stylized renditions of the music of Bach but as an attempt to adapt freely to Brazilian music a number of Baroque harmonic and contrapuntal procedures. The Bachianas are formally conceived as suites, in the Baroque sense of a sequence of two, three or four dance movements. With the exceptions of the second movement of no.6, the outer movements of no.8 and those of no.9, each movement has two titles – one formal à la Bach, such as prelude, introduction, aria, fantasia, toccata, fugue, the other nationalistic, such as embolada, modinha, ponteio, desafioand choro. These national elements tend to be conveyed primarily by rhythmic structures, but also at times by melodic type and treatment, and by timbral associations.

Bachianas brasileiras no.1 (1930) for a minimum of eight solo cellos typifies the unique stylistic blend of European Baroque and Brazilian folk; while in no.2 (‘O trenzinho do Caipira’) a toccata-like last movement graphically depicts the gradual increase and subsequent decrease in speed of a locomotive in the Caipira region of the state of São Paulo. No.4, originally for piano solo, is perhaps the most Bachian of the set in its techniques; it includes a chorale prelude as its second movement. Nevertheless, a Brazilian tropicalism still prevails, mainly through free improvisation-like passages. A further important trait of the Bachianas, solo songs, guitar pieces and chamber music of the 1940s and 50s is the increase in a Puccini-like lyricism, in opposition to a melodic invention based upon short, rhythmic motifs. Cantabile outpourings of the modinha type abound, but none as emotionally expressive and powerfully engaging as the soprano line of the ‘Aria-Cantilena’ from the Bachianas brasileiras no.5, Villa-Lobos's deservedly best-known work (ex.4).

Besides the improvisatory character of the soprano's long, arching phrases, which suggests something unending and are reminiscent of the serenading chorão, the specifically Brazilian quality is also underlined by the treatment of the cello ensemble accompaniment, a kind of amplified version of a guitar technique known as ponteio (picked). The doubling of the soprano line an octave below by the first cellos not only adds volume, but also creates a unique blend of colouristic depth.

Among his numerous chamber works, the 17 string quartets preoccupied Villa-Lobos throughout his career; they are broadly representative of his changes in style and technique, though often remain overlooked. His principal pieces for guitar have achieved a much wider appeal. The virtuoso 12 études, completed in 1929, are especially challenging for performers, while also evoking Brazilian popular culture; the five preludes (completed in 1940) and a concerto (first performed by Segovia in 1956) reveal, on the other hand, a more Romantic character, while remaining highly sophisticated and idiomatic additions to the repertory.

6. Personality and style.

Villa-Lobos is often reported to have said that music creation constituted for him a biological necessity. While this may explain in part his enormous output – ‘the fruits of an extensive, generous and warm land’, as he described it – it also reveals the instinctive bent of his own personality which felt and understood the many facets of the landscape and people of so large and diversified country as Brazil. It also accounts for the composer's aversion to preconceived compositional plans and the resulting natural, if uneven, flow of his music as well as his seemingly spontaneous, improvisation-like language. Although matching the basic premises of the nationalist aesthetic agenda of his era, his own nationalism was kaleidoscopic to correspond to his numerous creative sources, many of which sublimated the simple incorporation of indigenous musics. In effect, he created his own individual symbols of identity and made them acceptable as uniquely national. As widely different in sound structure or style as many of his works may be, his express intent was directed towards the best representation of what he perceived as powerfully suggestive of the wide continuum of the multiple and varied Brailian cultural traditions. Although his music is not a comprehensive synthesis of the plurality of Brazilian oral music traditions, more than any other composer of his generation he defined the exuberant stylistic eclecticism that has continued to characterize Brazilian art music.

WORKS

dramatic

Femina (op), c1908

Aglai (op, 2), 1909

Elisa (op, 1), 1910

Untitled ‘comédia lírica’ (3, O.F. Machado), 1911

Izath (op, 4, A. Júnior, Villa-Lobos), 1912–14, concert perf., Rio de Janeiro, Municipal, 6 April 1940; staged Rio de Janeiro, Municipal, 13 Dec 1958

Amazonas (ballet), 1917, Paris, 30 May 1929

Uirapuru (ballet), 1917, Buenos Aires, Colón, 25 May 1935

Jesus (op, 3, G. de Andrade), 1918, MS frag.

Zoé (op, 3, R. Viana), 1920, MS frag. [perc part]

3 Malazarte (op, 3, G. Aranha), 1921

Possessão (ballet), 1929, Oslo, 1929

Caixinha de boas festas (children's ballet), 1932, Rio de Janeiro, 23 Nov 1932

Pedra Bonita (ballet), 1933, Rio de Janeiro, Municipal, 1933

Descobrimento do Brasil (film score, dir. H. Mauro), 1937

Rudá (ballet), 1951, Paris, 30 Aug 1954

A menina das nuvens (aventura musical, 3, L. Benedetti), 1952–8, Rio de Janeiro, Municipal, 29 Nov 1960

Gênesis (ballet), 1954, Rio de Janeiro, 21 Nov 1969

Yerma (op, 4, after F.G. Lorca), 1955–6, Santa Fe, 12 Aug 1971

Emperor Jones (ballet, after E. O'Neill), 1956, Ellenville, 12 July 1956

Green Mansions (film score, after W.H. Hudson), 1958

Perpetual (op, 1, E. Terry), inc.

Amerindia (op, after D. Vasconellos), inc.

vocal-orchestral

Vidapura (Missa oratória), chorus, orch, 1919; Chôros no.10, chorus, orch, 1926; Chôros no.14, chorus, band, orch, 1928; Suite sugestiva (O. de Andrade, R. Chalput, M. Bandeira), 1v, orch, 1929; Mandu-çarará, chorus incl. children's vv, orch, 1940; Invocação em defesa da pátria (M. Bandeira, Villa-Lobos), 1v, chorus, orch, 1943; Sym. no.10 ‘Sumé pater patrium’, T, Bar, B, chorus, orch, 1952; Mag alleluia, 1v, chorus, orch, 1958; see also orchestral [Descobrimento do Brasil, 1937] and solo vocal [orchd songs]

choral

Qt (Impressões da vida mundana), female vv, fl, sax, hp, cel, 1921; Noneto (Impressão rápida de todo o Brasil), chorus, fl, ob, cl, sax, bn, hp, perc, 1923; Chôros no.3 (Picapau), male vv, cl, sax, bn, 3 hn, 1925; Missa São Sebastião, 3vv, 1937; Bachianas brasileiras no.9, chorus/str orch, 1945; Bendita sabedoria (Lat. Bible), 6vv, 1958; other works incl. 35 sacred a cappella pieces, 1905–52

Educational: Guia prático, 137 children's songs, 1932; Distribuição de flores, girl's vv, ﬂ, vn/gui, 1937; Solfejos, 2 vols., 1939, 1945; Canto orfeônico, 2 vols., 1940, 1950; a few other pieces

orchestral

with soloists: Vc Conc. no.1, 1913; Suite, pf, orch, 1913; Chôros no.8, 2 pf, orch, 1925; Chôros no.11, pf, orch, 1928; introduction to the Chôros, gui, orch, 1929; Momoprecoce fantasy, pf, orch, 1929; Ciranda das sete notas, fantasy, bn, orch, 1933; Bachianas brasileiras no.3, pf, orch, 1938; Pf Conc. no.1, 1945; Fantasia, vc, orch, 1945; Pf Conc. no.2, 1948; Fantasia, sax, chbr orch, 1948; Gui Conc., 1951; Pf Conc. no.3, 1952–7; Pf Conc. no.4, 1952; Vc Conc. no.2, 1953; Hp Conc., 1953; Pf Conc. no.5, 1954; Harmonica Conc., 1955–6

Other: Elégie, 1915; Myremis, sym. poem, 1916; Naufrágio de Kleônicos, sym. poem, 1916; Sinfonietta no.1, 1916; Sym. no.1 ‘O imprevisto’, 1916; Tédio de Alvorada, sym. poem, 1916; Amazonas, sym. poem, 1917 [from ballet]; Sym. no.2 ‘Ascenção’, 1917; Uirapuru, tone poem, 1917; Dança frenética, 1919; Sym. no.3 ‘A guerra’, 1919; Sym. no.4 ‘A vitória’, 1919; Sym. no.5 ‘A Paz’, 1920, lost; Dança dos mosquitos, 1922; Fantasia de movimentos mistos, 1922; Verde Velhice, divertimento, 1922; Chôros no.6, 1926

Chôros no.9, 1929; Chôros no.12, 1929; Chôros no.13, 2 orchs, band, 1929; Bachianas brasileiras no.2 (O trenzinho do Caipira), 1930; Bachianas brasileiras no.4, pf/orch, 1930–36; Caixinha de boas festas, 1932 [from ballet]; O papagaio do Moleque, episódio sinfônico, 1932; Descobrimento do Brasil, 4 suites, no.4 with chorus, 1937 [from film score]; Saudade da juventude, suite, 1940

Bachianas brasileiras no.7, 1942; Bachianas brasileiras no.8, 1944; Sym. no.6, 1944; Bachianas brasileiras no.9, chorus/str orch, 1945; Madona, sym. poem, 1945; Sym. no.7, 1945; Sinfonietta no.2, 1947; Erosão (Origem do rio Amazonas), 1950; Sym. no.8, 1950; Sym. no.9, 1952; Dawn in a Tropical Forest, ov., 1953; Odisséia de uma raça, 1953; Sym. no.11, 1955; Sym. no.12, 1957; Fantasia, wind, 1958; Fantasia concertante, at least 32 vc, 1958; Conc. grosso, wind, 1959; 2 suites, chbr orch, 1959

8 religious/solemn marches, 1905–52

chamber

Str qts: no.1, 1915; no.2, 1915; no.3, 1916; no.4, 1917; no.5, 1931; no.6, 1938; no.7, 1941; no.8, 1944; no.9, 1945; no.10, 1946; no.11, 1947; no.12, 1950; no.13, 1951; no.14, 1953; no.15, 1954; no.16, 1955; no.17, 1957

Other works for 3 or more insts: Pf Trio no.1, 1911; Trio, fl, vc, pf, 1913; Pf Trio no.2, 1915; Sexteto místico, fl, ob, sax, hp, cel, gui, 1917; Pf Trio no.3, 1918; Trio, ob, cl, bn, 1921; Chôros no.7 (Settiminio), fl, ob, cl, sax, bn, gong, vn, vc, 1924; Chôros no.4, 3 hn, trbn, 1926; Qt, fl, ob, cl, bn, 1928; Quinteto em forma de chôros, fl, ob, cl, eng hn/hn, bn, 1928; Bachianas brasileiras no.1, at least 8 vc, 1930; Corrupio, bn, str qnt, 1933; Pf Trio no.4, 1945; Divagação, vc, pf, drum ad lib, 1946; Fantasia concertante, cl, bn, pf, 1953; Qnt, fl, vn, va, vc, hp, 1957

Works for 2 insts: Pequena suite, vc, pf, 1913; Prelude, vc, pf, 1913; Sonhar, vn/vc, pf, 1914; Berceuse, vn/vc, pf, 1915; Capriccio, vn/vc, pf, 1915; Improviso, vn, pf, 1915; Sonata no.1 (Fantasia), vn, pf, 1915; Sonata no.2 (Fantasia), vn, pf, 1915; Sonata no.1, vc, pf, 1915; Elégie, vn/vc, pf, 1916; Sonata no.2, vc, pf, 1916; Sonata no.3, vn, pf, 1920; Sonata no.4, vn, pf, 1923; Chôros no.2, fl, cl, 1924, Martírio dos insetos, vn, pf, 1925; 2 choros bis, vn, vc, 1928; Bachianas brasileiras no.6, fl, bn, 1938; Duo, vn, vc, 1946; Assobio a Jato, fl, vc, 1950; Duo, ob, bn, 1957

Gui: Suite popular brasileira, 1908–12; Chôros no.1, 1920; 12 Etudes, 1929; 5 Preludes, 1940

solo vocal

for 1v, pf unless otherwise stated

Miniaturas (B. Lopes, S. Romero, A. Barreto, A. Guimarães, L. Guimarães Filho, A.M.C. de Oliveira), 6 songs, 1912–17; 3 canções indígenas (M. de Andrade, Brazilian Indian), 1930; Canções típicas brasileiras, 13 folksong arrs., 1919–35; Historietas (Ribeiro Couto, R. de Carvalho, M. Bandeira, A. Samain), 6 songs, 1920; Epigramas irônicos e sentimentais (Carvalho), 8 songs, 1921–3, orchd; Poème de l’enfant et de sa mère (Villa-Lobos), 1v, fl, cl, vc, 1923; Suite, 1v, vn, 1923; Serestas (A. Moreyra, Bandeira, O. Mariano, D. Milano, Carvalho, C. Drummond de Andrade, A. Renault, D. Nasser, Ribeiro Couto, P. Vasconcellos), 14 songs, 1923–43, 12 orchd

3 poemas indígenas (Brazilian Indian, M. de Andrade), 1926, orchd; 2 vocalises-études, 1929; Modinhas e canções, series 1 (Gil Vicente, V. Corrêa, S. Salema, trad.), 7 songs, 1933–43; Modinhas e canções, series 2, 6 children's songs, 1943, orchd; Poema do Itabira (Drummond de Andrade), 1943, orchd; Canções de cordialidade (Bandeira), 5 songs, 1945, orchd, arr. chorus; Bachianas brasileiras no.5, S, at least 8 vc, 1938–45; Samba clássico (Villa-Lobos), ode, 1950, orchd

60 other songs, 1899–1958; sacred songs

piano

Brinquedo de Roda, 6 pieces, 1912; Petizada, 6 pieces, 1912; Suite infantil no.1, 1912; Suite infantil no.2, 1913; Danças características africanas, 1914–15; Suite floral, 3 pieces, 1917–18; Simples coletânea, 3 pieces, 1917–19; Prole do bebê no.1, 8 pieces, 1918; Histórias da Carochinha, 4 pieces, 1919; Carnaval das crianças brasileiras, 8 pieces, 1919–20; 2 dances, 1920 [from op Zoé]; Lenda do Caboclo, 1920; A Fiandeira, 1921

Prole do bebê no.2, 10 pieces, 1921; Rudepoema, 1921–6; Chôros no.5 (Alma brasileira), 1925; Cirandinhas, 12 pieces, 1925; Cirandas, 16 pieces, 1926; Saudades das selvas brasileiras, 1927; Francette et Piá, 10 pieces, no.10 duet, 1929; Bachianas brasileiras no.4, pf/orch, 1930–36; Caixinha de música quebrada, 1931; Ciclo brasileiro, 4 pieces, 1936; Poema singelo, 1938; New York Sky Line Melody, 1939; As tres Marias, 1939; Hommage à Chopin, 1949

MSS in Museu Villa-Lobos, Rio de Janeiro

Principal publishers: Associated, Consolidated, Eschig, Napoleão, Peters, Ricordi, Robbins, Southern, Tonos, Vitale

BIBLIOGRAPHY

general studies

D. Milhaud: ‘Brésil’, ReM, i (1920), 60–61

S. Demarquez: ‘Villas-Lobos’, ReM, x/10–11 (1928–9), 1–22

M. Pedroza: ‘Villa-Lobos et son peuple: le point de vue brésilien’, ReM, x/10–11 (1928–9), 23–8

F.C. Lange: ‘Villa-Lobos, un pedagogo creador’, Boletín latino-americano de música, i (1935), 189–96

Música viva, i (1940–41) [Villa-Lobos issue]

J.C. de Andrade Muricy: ‘Villa-Lobos’, Bulletin of the Pan American Union, lxxix (1945), 1–10

O. Lorenzo Fernândez: ‘A contribuição harmônica de Villa-Lobos para a música brasileira’, Boletín latino-americano de música, vi (1946), 283–300

L.M. Peppercorn: ‘The History of Villa-Lobos' Birth Date’, MMR, lxxviii (1948), 153–5

V. Mariz: Heitor Villa-Lobos, compositor brasileiro (Rio de Janeiro, 1949, 11/1989)

D. Milhaud: Notes sans musique (Paris, 1949; enlarged 3/1973 as Ma vie heureuse; Eng. trans., 1952/R)

C. Paula Barros: O romance de Villa-Lobos (Rio de Janeiro, 1951)

A. Segovia: ‘I Meet Villa-Lobos’, Guitar Review, no.22 (1958), 22–3

A.M. de Giacomo: Villa-Lobos, alma sonora do Brasil (São Paulo, 1959, 6/1972)

C. Maul: A glória escandalosa de Heitor Vila Lóbos (Rio de Janeiro, 1960)

M. Romero: ‘Heitor Villa-Lobos’, Inter-American Music Bulletin, no.15 (1960), 4–5

C.S. Smith: ‘Heitor Villa-Lobos (1889–1959)’, Inter-American Music Bulletin, no.15 (1960), 1–4

J.C. de Andrade Muricy: Villa-Lobos: uma interpretação (Rio de Janeiro, 1961)

J.A. Orrego-Salas: ‘Heitor Villa-Lobos: figura, obra y estilo’, RMC, no.93 (1965), 25–62; Eng. trans. in Inter-American Music Bulletin, no.52 (1996) [whole issue]

Presença de Villa-Lobos (Rio de Janeiro,1965–81)

M. Beaufils: Villa-Lobos, musicien et poète du Brésil (Paris, 1967, 2/1988)

R.T. de Lima: ‘Villa-Lobos: refrações e prospecção’, Revista do Arquivo municipal [São Paulo], no.176 (1969), 221–36

H. Menegale: Villa-Lobos e a educação (Rio de Janeiro, 1969)

E.N. França: Villa-Lobos: síntese crítica e biográfica (Rio de Janeiro, 1970, 2/1973)

Villa-Lobos: visto da platéia e na intimidade, 1912–1935 (Rio de Janeiro, 1972)

L.M. Peppercorn: Heitor Villa-Lobos: Leben und Werk des brasilianischen Komponisten (Zürich,1972)

D.E. Vassberg: ‘Villa-Lobos as Pedagogue: Music in the Service of the State’, Journal of Research in Music Education, xxiii/3 (1975), 163–71

B. Kiefer: Villa-Lobos e o modernismo na música brasileira (Porto Alegre, 1981)

J.M. Wisnik: ‘Getúlio da Paixão Cearense (Villa-Lobos e a Estado Novo)’, O nacional e o popular na cultura brasileira: música (São Paulo, 1982)

A. Chechim Filho: Excursão artística Villa-Lobos (São Paulo, c1987)

L.P. Horta: Villa-Lobos: uma introdução (Rio de Janeiro, 1987)

C. Jacobs: ‘Villa-Lobos in his Centennial: a Preliminary Research Report’, Latin American Music Review, viii (1987), 254–61

C. Kater: ‘Villa-Lobos de Rubinstein’, Latin American Music Review, viii (1987), 246–53

M.C. Machado: Heitor Villa-Lobos: tradição e renovação na música brasileira (Rio de Janeiro, 1987)

E. Tarasti: Heitor Villa-Lobos: ja Brasilian sielu (Helsinki, 1987; Eng. trans., 1995)

F.C. Toni: Mário de Andrade e Villa-Lobos (São Paulo, 1987)

D.P. Appleby: Heitor Villa-Lobos: a Bio-Bibliography (Westport, CT, 1988) [incl. discography]

E. Storni: Villa-Lobos (Madrid, 1988)

L.M. Peppercorn: Villa-Lobos (London, 1989)

A.S. Schic: Villa-Lobos: o índio branco (Rio de Janeiro, 1989)

R. Giro: Heitor Villa-Lobos: una sensibilidad americana (Havana, 1990)

R. Gustafson: ‘Villa-Lobos and the Man-Eating Flower’, MQ, lxxv (1991), 1–11

L.M. Peppercorn: Villa Lobos: Collected Studies (Aldershot, 1992)

S. Wright: Villa Lobos (Oxford, 1992)

G. Béhague: Heitor Villa-Lobos: the Search for Brazil's Musical Soul (Austin, 1994) [incl. discography]

L.M. Peppercorn: The Villa-Lobos Letters (Kingston upon Thames, 1994)

L.M. Peppercorn: The World of Villa-Lobos in Pictures and Documents (Aldershot, 1996)

works

R. de Carvalho: ‘A música de Villa-Lobos’, O Estado de São Paulo (17 Feb 1922)

L.M. Peppercorn: ‘Some Aspects of Villa-Lobos' Principles of Composition’, MR, iv (1943), 28–34

J. de Souza Lima: ‘Impressões sobre a música pianística de Villa-Lobos’, Boletín latino-americano de música, vi (1946), 149–55

O. Downes: ‘Villa-Lobos as a Nationalist Composer’, Olin Downes on Music, ed. I. Downes (New York, 1957/R), 276–80

J. de Souza Lima: Comentários sobre a obra pianística de Villa-Lobos (Rio de Janeiro, 1969)

D.E. Vassberg: ‘Villa-Lobos: Music as a Tool for Nationalism’, Luso-Brazilian Review, vi/2 (1969), 55–65

A. Estrella: Os quartetos de cordas de Villa-Lobos (Rio de Janeiro, 1970)

A. Nóbrega: As Bachianas brasileiras de Villa-Lobos (Rio de Janeiro, 1971)

E. da Costa Palma and E.de Brito Chaves: As Bachianas brasileiras de Villa-Lobos (Rio de Janeiro, 1971)

Villa-Lobos: sua obra (Rio de Janeiro, 2/1972, 3/1989) [pubn of Museo Villa-Lobos]

A. Nóbrega: Os choros de Villa-Lobos (Rio de Janeiro, 1975)

T. Santos: Villa-Lobos e o violão (Rio de Janeiro, 1975; Eng. trans., 1985)

E.N. França: A evolução de Villa-Lobos na música de câmera (Rio de Janeiro, 1976)

J.M. Neves: Villa-Lobos: o choro e os choros (São Paulo, 1977)

W.R. Riedel: Trois grades ad Parnassum: les derniers quatuors à cordes … de Heitor Villa-Lobos (The Hague, 1977)

S. Wright: ‘Villa-Lobos: the Formation of his Style’, Soundings [Cardiff], vii (1979–80), 55–70

C. Kater: ‘Villa-Lobos e a “melodia das montanhas”’, Latin American Music Review, v (1984), 102–5

J. Oliveira: ‘Black Key versus White Key: a Villa-Lobos Device’, Latin American Music Review, v (1984), 33–47

M. Pereira: Heitor Villa-Lobos: sua obra para violão (Brasilia, 1984)

R. Duarte: Revisão das obras orquestrais de Villa-Lobos (Niterói, 1989–94)

L.M. Peppercorn: Villa-Lobos, the Music: an Analysis of his Style (London, 1991)

Villalpando, Alberto

(b La Paz, 21 Nov 1940). Bolivian composer. He studied composition at the National Conservatory in Buenos Aires (1958–62) under Ginastera and García Morillo. Later he enrolled, at Ginastera’s suggestion, in the newly-established music department of the Instituto Torcuato di Tella, where he was able to absorb a range of contemporary techniques from a series of visiting teachers including Malipiero, Dallapiccola and Messiaen. He has served in Bolivian public office, including a spell as director of music at the ministry of culture (1967–73) and a diplomatic posting in Paris in the late 1970s. His educational work began in the 1960s at the helm of the National Conservatory in La Paz. The following decade he initiated, alongside the conductor Carlos Rosso, the Taller de Música, an experimental music course at La Paz’s Catholic University, loosely modelled on Ginastera’s di Tella Institute; out of its ranks have sprung some of the leading figures of the younger generation. He is now professor of composition at the conservatory and at the Universidad Evangélica. He is married to the Bolivian poet Blanca Wiethüchter.

Villalpando’s leading position among Bolivian composers has made him the natural recipient of state commissions for patriotic occasions, such as Cantata de homenaje (1975) for the sesquicentennial of independence and Al mar (1978–9) to mark one hundred years since the loss to Chile of Bolivia’s Pacific coastline. The Concertino semplice for flute and orchestra (1966) is an early example of a youthful ability for combining the aleatory and post-serial currencies of the time with textures, colours and melodic formulae taken from the vernacular. Generally, his folkloristic vein has found a more comfortable outlet in the soundtracks for Jorge Sanjinés’s films. Elsewhere, the accomplishment of each work often hinges on the balance between recognisably separate styles. A striking equilibrium is achieved in Música para orquesta I, a distant soundscape of La Paz where random superimpositions of diverse materials portray the urban bustle. Less cohesively, in Mística no.7 the momentum generated by a forceful opening in G minor dissolves into a mock-atonality produced by unsynchronized overlays of tonal folk-like fragments. His stark, economic, mature style displays none of the earlier sylistic dichotomy. In such works as Mística no.8 (1994–5), syncopation and chromaticism act to subvert a new order ruled by slow-moving diatonic sequences on a, for the most part, regular rhythmic grid.

WORKS

(selective list)

Stage: Yamar y Armor (ballet), 1977, La Paz, Municipal, 10 June 1977; Manchaypuytu (op, N. Taboada), 1995–9, La Paz, Municipal, 6 Dec 1996

Orch: Concertino semplice, fl, orch, 1966; Concertino, pf, chbr orch, 1968; Música para orquesta nos.1–4: 1974, 1975, 1976, 1984–5

Vocal: Cant. solar, S, Bar, SATB, chbr orch, 1964; Cant. de homenaje, A, Bar, SATB, orch, 1975; TeD, SATB, orch, 1978; Al mar, S, TB, orch, 1978–9

Chbr and solo inst: 5 preludios, pf, 1960; 4 juegos fantásticos, cl, perc, pf, vc, 1962; Mística no.3, pf, 2 str qt, tape, 1963; Preludio, passacaglia y postludio, str qt, 1963; 3 piezas, pf, 1971; Mística no.5, cl, bn, hn, vn, va, vc, db, 1976; Memorias, 2 pf, 1977; Mística no.6, pf trio, 1993; Mística no.8, gui, vn, vc, 1994–5; Mística no.7

Principal publisher: Ediciones del Hombrecito Sentado (La Paz)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Grove6 (C. Seoane)

R. Becerra: Música y músicos bolivianos (Trinidad, 1988)

T.R. de Stahlie: Música y músicos bolivianos (La Paz, 1995)

AGUSTÍN FERNÁNDEZ

Villancico

(Sp., diminutive of villano: ‘peasant’).

A term first applied in the late 15th century to a Spanish vernacular musical and poetic form consisting of several stanzas (coplas) framed by a refrain (estribillo) at the beginning and end, giving an overall ABA structure. The number of stanzas varied, as did the number of times the estribillo was repeated between stanzas in performance. Originally derived from a medieval dance lyric of the virelai or ballata type and associated with rustic or popular themes, the villancico was extensively cultivated in secular polyphonic music of the late 15th century and the 16th. In the second half of the 16th century devotional and religious themes gained in importance and the form became used increasingly for sacred compositions in the vernacular which were introduced into the liturgy on feast days. In the 17th century it became more important than the Latin motet, and although its artistic quality rapidly declined in the 18th and 19th centuries it remained popular in both Spain and Latin America. Since then ‘villancico’ has come to mean simply ‘Christmas carol’.

ISABEL POPE (1), PAUL R. LAIRD (2–3)

1. Origins to 1600.

The term ‘villancico’ was first applied by Renaissance writers to a refrain taken from or modelled on a rustic or popular song, and then to a number of ‘closed’ poetic and musical forms based on such a refrain. The earliest evidence of the use of the term in connection with the poetic form is in the Chansonnier Espagnol d’Herberay des Essarts (c1463; ed. C. Aubrun, Bordeaux, 1951), where a little poem entitled ‘Villancillo’ has the form aabbba etc. (see Table 1(a)). At about the same time another poem with an analogous genre designation, a ‘Villançete’ ascribed to Carvajales, appeared in the Cancionero de Estúñiga (ed. N. Salvador Miguel, Madrid, 1977), but it is less closely related to the textual history of the villancico than the poem in the Chansonnier Espagnol is. The earliest known song (complete with music) designated ‘villancico’ is Andad, pasiones, andad by Pedro de Lagarto in the 15th-century Cancionero Musical de la Biblioteca Colombina (ed. in MME, xxxiii, 1971); the poem is a refined exercise in courtly love but the three-part music has the simplicity of a popular tune. Lagarto’s song also appears in the Cancionero Musical de Palacio (see below), in which most of the villancicos show a similar simplicity. The form is that of a typical villancico with introductory refrain of three lines and one stanza (Table 1(b)). The first description of the villancico is in Juan del Encina’s ‘Arte de poesia castellana’ from his Cancionero of 1496. His comments suggest that the villancico had no specific poetic form and was not necessarily based on traditional verse, though he might have taken for granted the use of a traditional melody:

If the refrain has two lines we may call it a mote [motto] or a villancico or a letra usually of the poet’s invention. … If it has three complete lines and one half-line, it will likewise be called a villancico or letra of the poet’s invention. … And if it has four lines, it may be called a canción and sometimes a copla [stanza].

The texts of the villancicos in his cancionero have up to 12 stanzas of six or seven lines each.

Such flexibility was indeed characteristic of the villancico (as of popular song in general), even as late as 1592 when Díaz Rengifo, in his Arte poética, attempted a precise definition, emphasizing that it was a song, not just a poem, that it was comparable to the Italian ballata, and that it had a ‘head’ (refrain) joined in a variety of ways to the ‘feet’ (the mudanzas with their vuelta forming the strophe). The tendency from the 15th century to the 17th was for the term ‘villancico’ to be applied to a refrain song of up to four lines that was popular in flavour, as well as to the refrain itself, while ‘canción’ was more apt to be used for a courtly song of more than four lines; but as the terms were used inconsistently during the period it is impossible to draw rigid distinctions.

From Encina’s definition and the examples of the villancico in the musical and literary cancioneros of his day two basic types emerge, shown in Table 1; the schemes shown in Table 2 are less common. The following characteristics should be noted: a lack of symmetry, though not invariable (see Table 2), occurs between the metrical and melodic repetitions of the estribillo in the vuelta; the rhyme of the first verse of the vuelta links it with the mudanzas, but its music ‘returns’ directly to that of the estribillo; the last or last two verses of the vuelta often repeat wholly or in part those of the estribillo; frequently the mudanza melody incorporates by repetition or variation a phrase of the estribillo melody.

This form, in its various patterns, already existed in medieval monophonic songs such as the French virelai, Provençal dansa, Italian lauda, ballata and Hispanic cantiga. All display with some consistency the curious ‘asymmetry’ between verse and music of the vuelta. The villancico’s direct prototypes appear in the great collection of semi-popular devotional songs, the Cantigas de Santa María, compiled by Alfonso el Sabio in the late 13th century. A usual though not invariable repetition of the estribillo between the coplas recalls responsorial dance forms from which all these ‘closed’ forms probably derived. A notably large proportion of the Cantigas present the apparently basic pattern shown in Table 1(a). Consequently the striking formal and metrical similarity of the 12th-century Andalusian–Arabic zajal (aa, bbba), although no music survives, raises problems of relationship still to be elucidated. The zajal often ended with a refrain in street language (a jarcha), another apparent link with the villancico, which early in its history was related to popular refrains. Spanish poetry of the 14th and 15th centuries exhibits numerous examples of the cantiga–zajal type, always in a popular context. However, the earliest polyphonic songs from the second half of the 15th century are settings, strongly influenced by the Franco-Flemish chanson, of the canción, an aristocratic lyric form with a four- or five-verse estribillo and symmetrical vuelta. Reacting against its musical and metrical complexities, Encina’s generation revived the simpler patterns of popular tradition in the villancico. Stylistically the villancico of this latter period is almost identical to the frottola, and its form very similar to the barzelletta, a type of frottola. Frottolas are found in the Cancionero Musical de Palacio, and villancicos by Encina appear in the second and fourth books of frottolas printed by Andrea Antico (RISM 1516², 1517²). Considering the close relations between Spanish and Italian courts of the period, this association is not surprising.

More than 300 villancicos appear in the famous Cancionero Musical de Palacio (c1490–c1520; ed. in MME, v, 1947; x, 1951; xiv, 1965). Two collections from the decades around 1500, Cancionero Musical de la Colombina (c1490; ed. in MME, xxxiii, 1971) and Cancionero Musical de Segovia [ed. V. Lama de la Cruz, 1994), contain numerous villancicos, although the older canción still predominates. However, of the 65 three-part courtly love songs in the Portuguese Cancionero Musical de Elvas (c1500; also known as the Cancionero Musical de la Hortênsia, ed. M. Morais, PM, ser. A. xxxi, 1977) the majority are villancicos; important composers represented are Juan del Encina, Juan de Anchieta, Millán, Pedro de Escobar, Juan Ponce and Francisco de Peñalosa. The villancicos of this period, in three or four parts, are usually texted only in the superius, which carries the melody, and are predominantly homophonic in texture. The generally syllabic melody, of narrow range and set in simple contrapuntal style and often conjunct motion, matches the rhythm of the verse and frequently cadences at its close with brief ornamentation. Duple mensuration prevails, but triple metre is also common, often with jaunty use of hemiola. The normal octosyllabic verses are sometimes combined with a half-verse; shorter lines tend to occur in popular, lively pieces. These villancicos were composed for an aristocratic environment. Courtly love songs mix with pieces, often setting satirical texts, that reflect the lives of peasants. The freshness of the music complements the rustic poems, and brings genuine expression to the more artificial courtly love songs. Feasting songs and satirical and bawdy pieces were skilfully set for witty, realistic or dramatic effect. Devotional and particularly Christmas villancicos form a characteristic group, though most pieces in the Cancionero Musical de Palacio and in Encina’s Cancionero of 1496 are secular rather than sacred.

In the 16th century a new generation of composers developed a new polyphonic style; all voices now share equally in the text and melody. The polyphony develops primarily through imitation, but homophonic style is not uncommon. The text, frequently reduced to an estribillo and one copla, often with a symmetrical vuelta, is treated expressively through repetitions distributed among the voices. Triple metre becomes more common, and irregular metres and simple tunes, though artfully treated, betray the continuity of a popular tradition; yet many imitative villancicos from the mid-16th century are in fact sophisticated compositions. Two collections illustrate this period: the manuscript Cancionero Musical de Barcelona with some 20 villancicos (c1520–c1534; ed. E. Ros-Fabregas, 1992); and the print Villancicos de diversos autores (RISM 1556³⁰), now known as the Cancionero de Upsala (ed. R. Mitjana and L. Querol Rosso, Madrid, 1980) or Cancionero del Duque de Calabria, which represents the period 1530–50 and contains 55 villancicos, most anonymous, but one is attributed to Gombert and others have been attributed through concordances to Cristóbal de Morales, Matheo Flecha (i), P.J. Aldomar and Bartolomé Cárceres. The first 36 and the last three texts are concerned with secular love, while the remainder are dedicated to the Virgin. The collection includes 12 Christmas villancicos, among them Ríu, ríu, chíu, perhaps the most famous Renaissance villancico.

The villancico reached a notable plateau in the Villancicos y canciones (1551; ed. E.A. Russell, 1970) and Recopilación de sonetos y villancicos (Seville, 1560; ed. in MME, iv, 1946) of Juan Vasquez. Vasquez relaxed the form by expanding the estribillo, often leading from it without pause into the copla, now through-composed, and ‘returned’ to the estribillo music with variations. None of the 48 villancicos in his Recopilación sets a religious text. Far from the simple part-writing with plentiful homophony characteristic of most of the villancicos in the Cancionero Musical de Palacio and Cancionero de Upsala, Vasquez’s inhabit a more sophisticated contrapuntal world, with supple imitations and different rhythmic flow in individual voices, and show a strong preference for the sonorities of the major modes on C and F and the minor modes (one-flat signature) on D and G. Exceptional examples of more a passionate and despairing mood are Cavallero queraysme dexar, a lover’s complaint that inhabits mode 4 and uses abundant low bass Es, and Qué razón podeis tener, which uses A minor sonorities with repeated cries in the top voice.

Arrangements of polyphonic villancicos appear in numerous collections of vihuela and keyboard music throughout the century, and settings for voice and vihuela provide early examples of accompanied solo song. These and settings for solo vihuela kept alive the traditional villancico repertory to the end of the century. Luys Milán published 12 original villancicos in his El maestro (Valencia, 1536). He printed ten of these works in two verions: one basically homorhythmic with the singer encouraged to ornament, and the second with a more elaborate vihuela part and the singer instructed not to ornament. Later vihuelists (Narváez, Mudarra, Valderrábano) also published their own settings of traditional tunes. Fuenllana often made instrumental transcriptions of polyphonic villancicos, notably those by Vasquez, including his famous ¿Con qué la lavaré?, intabulated by Fuenllana almost identically to the way it appears in Vasquez’s Recopilación. Monophonic villancicos are found in poetic cancioneros of the period, including, for example, the Cancionero sevillano (c1575; ed. M. Frenk, J.J. Labrador Herraiz and R.A. Di Franco, Seville, 1996).

In the later 16th century ‘villancico’ referred increasingly to a devotional or religious composition that reflected the widespread popular devotion inspired by the Counter-Reformation. Sometimes devotional villancicos were borrowed secular pieces with the text appropriately modified. Villancicos were introduced into the liturgy of festival days, and the traditional Christmas villancicos were especially cultivated in addition to those celebrating Corpus Christi or written in honour of the Virgin and other saints. Francisco Guerrero published a distinguished series in his Canciones y villanescas espirituales (Venice, 1589; ed. in MME, xvi, xix, 1949–57). The 31 villancicos offer novel effects in contrasting sonorities, with a four- or five-part estribillo against a copla for solo, duo or trio. They are rhythmically lively, usually in triple metre, with frequent syncopation, hemiolas and changes of metre, and syllabic declamation that follows the accents of the text. The dance-like rhythms and accessibility of some of Guerrero’s melodies in these villancicos would seem to indicate popular influences. Guerrero made much use of word-painting and of expressive effects such as chromatic inflections and sudden contrasts of bold homophony with freely imitative passages, and of solo and duo textures with tutti passages. The part-writing is always sophisticated, even in the light-hearted Christmas and Epiphany villancicos (nos.13–24 and 25–8 for five voices, and nos.52–3 for four). Unlike these villancicos (the villanescas of the title), the canciones have no opening refrain and are in duple time; they also reveal Guerrero’s flair for the general pause.

No villancicos are known by Victoria, but Philip II's court composers Philippe Rogier and Géry Ghersem wrote many. Rogier was among the first to write a lively negro (Hu, hu, hu, a duo, cantaremo la Nacimento, for five voices), and Ghersem’s output includes several Christmas villancicos with antiphonal exchanges between a solo voice and instruments.

In 1596 Philip II ordered performances of the villancico in the vernacular to be banned from the Capilla Real, a prohibition that was clearly not very effective: chapel records show receipts from copyists for 24 villancicos in 1596, 15 in 1597 and 16 (by Mateo Romero, copied by Claudio de la Sablonara) in 1615 (R.M. Stevenson: ‘Pedro Cerone (1566–1625): Impostor or Defender of the Faith’, Inter-American Music Review, xvi/1, 1997, pp.1–27, esp. 16, note 31). Cerone (El melopeo, 1613, pp.196–7) wrote that villancicos were used in all churches in Spain, but they were a distraction from devotion, especially the light-hearted ones setting dialect texts. Vernacular villancicos were reinstated early in the 17th century by Philip IV.

For further information about sources see Cancionero.

2. After 1600.

The villancico after 1600 was essentially a religious genre sung in cathedrals, monasteries and other religious institutions as a substitute for Latin responsories in Matins at Christmas and Epiphany, in services for the Immaculate Conception and other Marian feasts, in Corpus Christi processions and on saints’ days. In addition to being one of the most pervasive musical genres in the Western world during the 17th and 18th centuries, the villancico was a significant social phenomenon. While projecting the appropriate religious devotion for their purpose, villancicos were nonetheless often populated with characters of the popular theatre, from cowardly peasants and foolish mayors to stereotypical representations of minority groups, creating a complex tapestry that says much about contemporary culture. Lines spoken by these characters, often written by anonymous poets of modest ability, include references to theatrical themes and are found in every metre and poetic form of the day. The musical style of the villancico, especially in the 17th century, was also infused with popular culture. The dominant traits – triple metre with extensive hemiola and syncopation, syllabic declamation, homorhythmic textures and conjunct melodies – were found in most settings of Spanish and Portuguese texts of the day, including theatre music and popular songs. Meanwhile, secular song in Spain during the 17th century saw a blurring of formal lines between the villancico and the Romance, and secular pieces in villancico form, such as those in the Cancionero de la Sablonara (ed. J. Etzion, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1995), were called tonos humanos, a genre associated with theatre music later in the century.

The villancico’s major sources today include music manuscripts found in archives throughout the Iberian peninsula and Latin America and pliegos sueltos of text, printed primarily for villancicos performed on feast days. Both types of source were routinely exchanged by composers at religious institutions who were expected to write dozens of villancicos each year.

During the 17th century and the first half of the 18th, Spanish and Portuguese composers produced sets of villancicos (often eight, sometimes followed by a setting of the Te Deum) in great profusion. The enormous popularity of the genre is reflected in the Catálogo de villancicos y oratorios of the Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid (1990): among the 1361 printed villancico books catalogued, 305 were published in Seville between 1701 and 1821, 200 in Madrid between 1701 and 1844, 112 in Zaragoza and 108 in Barcelona. The many villancicos by Miguel de Irízar in the library of Segovia Cathedral include 184 for Christmas (1657–83), 202 for the Sacrament (1656–78) and 87 for the Blessed Virgin (see López-Calo, 1963, 1965, 1989).

Important villancicos from the early 17th century include the 12 in Pedro Rimonte’s El Parnaso espanõl de madrigales y villancicos (Antwerp, 1614; ed. P. Calahorra, Zaragoza, 1980) and the more than 80 works by J.B. Comes extant in manuscript (mostly in E-VAc; 56 ed. J. Climent Barber, Valencia, 1977–8). Rimonte’s pieces are for five or six voices, while those by Comes range from solo pieces to polychoral ones for 16 voice parts. Comes’s villancicos generally begin with a tonada for soloist or small vocal ensemble, followed by a parody of the same musical setting of that text, labelled ‘responsión’, for large choir (six to 12 voices), then the coplas (strophes) for soloists or small vocal ensembles. A similar structure is seen in the 20 surviving examples by Urbán de Vargas. Rimonte and Comes, like Guerrero, usually wrote in triple metre and made extensive use of syncopation and hemiola. Textures varied from homophony to overlapping points of imitation, the latter less frequent. Basso seguente parts, usually identified as ‘acompañamiento’, appear in Comes’s works and were common later in the century, played on the organ or harp.

Thousands of villancicos from the second half of the century are extant in Iberian archives, but only a small percentage exist in modern editions. Most works are composed for voices with basso continuo; other instruments seldom appear. Typical performing groups are four voices (SSAT), eight voices in two choirs (SSAT SATB) and 12 voices in three choirs (SSAT SATB SATB). Polychoral pieces often included continuo parts for each choir. After Rimonte and Comes the form of the villancico changed: some works start with an introducción, often a strophic setting for a few voices; then follows the often lengthy and through-composed estribillo for full forces, sometimes subdivided by changes in texture and metre; and the coplas are usually for reduced forces and are often strophic. There may be as many as 18 coplas, usually sung by soloists from the first choir. Instead of constant alternation between estribillo and coplas, the estribillo may be repeated after a group of coplas or each copla may end with a respuesta based on the estribillo. Musically the most interesting section is the estribillo. Each line of text is set to a different phrase that is repeated when the line of text returns. Textures tend towards the homophonic, but imitation is a frequent addition, and alternation occurs between smaller and larger groups, qualities that, along with many other stylistic features, are shared with settings of Spanish texts for other venues such as the theatre.

In the second half of the 17th century villancicos were composed in large numbers by the maestro de capilla at most important religious institutions in Spain, Portugal and Latin America; at León Cathedral in 1663, for example, the maestro was expected to compose about 75 villancicos. Custom dictated that villancicos be performed once, but many were re-used. In constant need of new texts, maestros exchanged prints of texts sung in a particular Matins service; manuscripts of music were also exchanged. These are important sources for understanding the genre. Dissemination patterns of texts and manuscripts in Spain demonstrate that the most influential composers were those at the royal institutions in Madrid and in the major cathedrals, including, for example, Mateo Romero, Juan Hidalgo, Cristóbal Galán, Pedro Ardanaz, Sebastián Durón, A.T. Ortells and Benito Bello de Torices.

17th-century villancico texts were written in most popular verse types of the period, including romances, seguidillas, quintillas and others. Most texts are anonymous, but important authors included Manuel de León Marchante. In Christmas texts the traditional characters often appear alongside contemporary Spanish characters, including members of various professions portrayed as fools and stereotypical figures from the Spanish stage (such as negros, gitanos, gallegos and jácaros), many speaking distinctive dialects. Texts for Corpus Christi, Immaculate Conception and saints’ days were more serious in tone. Dances by choirboys (seises) were an important part of these villancicos, especially those performed on Corpus Christi.

Italianate recitatives and arias were common in Spanish dramatic music from the 1690s, especially in the works of Durón. An indication for ‘recitado’ is found as early as 1678 in a villancico text from Toledo Cathedral. In the decades around 1700 villancicos also tended to include elaborate and demanding solo arias and duos (sometimes in da capo form), a small orchestra of violins, wind instruments and continuo, and forms and textures that resemble those of the Italian concerto. In fast movements, the violins and wind (often oboes) played extremely active passages in support of the singers. Villancicos with recitatives and arias were called cantadas, and in these the traditional villancico sections were broken into subsections (see also Cantata, §V). The third villancico sung at the Capilla Real, Madrid, for Christmas 1703, for example, opens with an introducción followed by an estribillo divided into arieta italiana, coro, recitativo italiano and other sections. Villancicos with traditional sections still appeared, but as the century passed, the older forms began to disappear.

There are even more extant villancicos from the 18th century, but again few have been studied or published. J.F. de Iribarren was particularly prolific: more than 500 of his villancicos survive at Málaga Cathedral. Influential composers include Antonio Rodríguez de Hita, Antonio Ripa and Antonio Soler. Soler’s 125 extant villancicos (ed. P. Capdepón Verdú, Madrid, 1992–) demonstrate his melodic gift, original manipulation of formal conventions, somewhat daring harmonic sense, and effective use of varied textures, including polychoral forces.

Accompaniments limited to wind, harp and organ in the 17th century gave way in the 18th to ensembles including strings, oboes and brass. These delighted the public, but incurred the wrath of theorists such as Pablo Nassarre, J.F. de Sayas (Música canónica, motética, y sacrada, Pamplona, [1761]) and Benito Jerónimo Feijóo y Montenegro, who criticized the italianate theatricality of contemporary church music (Theatro critico universal, i, 1726, no.14, ‘Música de los templos’). Pope Benedict XIV’s encyclical Annus qui of 1751 led to an episcopal edict against the use of villancicos in the diocese of Pamplona, but they were not actually banned there until 1777. In 1765 an attempt was made to ban works with vernacular texts from Spanish churches (eventually the oratorio remained the only sacred genre to use vernacular texts). The demise of the villancico as a religious genre gained further impetus towards the end of the 18th century: García Fajer, the maestro de capilla at the cathedral of La Seo, Zaragoza, from 1756 to 1809, offered to use his Latin responsories in place of villancicos in Matins, and in 1798 the chapter of Málaga Cathedral voted to expel villancicos from all church services. This reform was then adopted at the cathedrals of Santiago de Compostela, Granada, Pamplona, Santander, Cádiz and Jaén. Villancicos did remain in use in some places into the 19th century, however, being sung at Avila, Córdoba, Toledo, Valladolid and Valencia until about 1820, for example; and villancico texts were printed in Madrid and Palma de Mallorca in the 1840s, but these are devotional Christmas poetry rather than texts for use in specific services. These texts, called gozos (goigs in Catalan), are still popular in Spain, but the term ‘villancico’ now means simply ‘Christmas carol’, the genre’s decline the result not just of the banning of all vernacular music from Spanish churches in the 19th century, but also of the concurrent fall in church revenues and the consequent loss of opportunities for good composers and performers of sacred music.

3. Latin America.

From the earliest mention of the villancico in Latin America in 1539 until about 1800, the genre was used for the same feasts as it was in Spain. Religious institutions in Latin America went to great expense for the performance of villancicos, the cathedrals at Mexico City, Puebla, Lima, La Plata and Bogotá being particularly important centres. A manuscript now at Oaxaca Cathedral includes more than 250 villancicos (and other pieces with vernacular texts) by Gaspar Fernandes, who wrote them between 1609 and 1620. Many of these include popular regional or dance elements. Perhaps the most celebrated of the hundreds of extant villancicos are eight cycles of Christmas villancicos by Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla, composed for use at Puebla Cathedral in the 1650s and including jácaras, gallegos and negrillas (survival of complete cycles is unusual in both Spanish and Latin-American archives). The villancico texts of the late 17th-century Mexican poet Sor Juana Inés de la cruz, written for use at the cathedrals of Mexico City and Puebla, are especially fine examples. Like many authors of villancico texts, Sor Juana borrowed from earlier poems, and several texts in her villancico cycles appeared in earlier Iberian sources from Madrid and elsewhere. Her texts were set by Mexican composers including Antonio de Salazar, M.M. de Dallo y Lana and Joseph de Loaysa y Agurto.

One of the characteristics of the Latin American villancico, the use of texts and music associated with the many ethnic groups that occupied Spanish-speaking areas in the Americas, is seen in Sor Juana’s work, which includes texts sung to popular dances, and texts based on negros, Aztec tocotines (some in a mixture of Náhuatl and Spanish) and other dances including the canario, folías, cuatro, gaita, puerto rico and pandero. Other Latin American villancicos from the 17th century, like those from Spain, incorporated the Gallego, irlandés, portugués and Jácaras (the latter a type of theatrical piece sung by lower-class characters). A number of these villancico types make greater use of syncopation and hemiola than do those in the Iberian vernacular style. The only native dance permitted in Mexican churches was the Tocotín, danced in two facing rows, the accompaniment perhaps provided by Aztec instruments such as the huehuetl and teponaztli. Although 17th-century villancicos usually have continuo parts for harp or organ alone, other instruments may well have been included in performances: one of Sor Juana’s texts, for example, lists trumpet, sackbut, cornett, bassoon, organ, shawm, violin, tromba marina, double bass, zither, vihuela, small rebec, bandore and harp. Like its Iberian counterpart, in the 18th century the villancico in Latin America was accompanied by a small orchestra.

Except for additional syncopation in Latin American negros and other ethnic types, the history of the Latin American villancico is not materially different from that of the Iberian villancico. Connections between Spain and Latin America were constant: many colonial maestros de capilla came from Spain, and there was continuous flow of villancico manuscripts and texts between the Iberian peninsula and the Americas. The broad range of styles of the Latin American villancico is illustrated by the works of two composers in particular: the lively jácaras among the 142 that survive by Juan de Araujo, maestro at La Plata (now Sucre) Cathedral in Bolivia from 1680 to 1712, and those by Manuel de Zumaya, maestro de capilla at the cathedrals of Mexico City (1715–39) and Oaxaca (1745–56), that are cantatas in all but name, combining the traditional estribillo and coplas structure with italianate arias and unsurpassed orchestral writing. In many Latin American villancicos after 1700, as in Iberian works, the estribillo was divided into recitatives, arias and choruses. Important composers of villancicos in this italianate or theatrical style include Ignacio Jerusalem, José de Orejón y Aparicio and Tomás de Torrejón y Velasco.

The genre survived in Latin America until the end of the 18th century, and in some places into the 19th. The folk traditions found in the villancico of the colonial period may be seen today in devotional genres such as the adoración, alabanza (see Alabado), Aguinaldo and esquinazo.

1. Terminology and content.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Editions and Catalogues

E.A. Russell: Villancicos and Other Secular Polyphonic Music of Juan Vásquez: a Courtly Tradition in Spain’s Siglo de Oro (diss., U. of Southern California, 1970)

S. Claro: Antología de la música colonial en America del Sur (Santiago, 1974)

R.M. Stevenson: Christmas Music from Baroque Mexico (Berkeley, 1974)

R.O. Jones and C.R. Lee, eds.: Juan del Encina: Poesía lírica y cancionero musical (Madrid, 1975)

R. Stevenson, ed.: Latin American Colonial Music Anthology (Washington DC, 1975)

J.I. Perdomo Escobar: El archivo musical de la Catedral de Bogotá (Bogotá, 1976), 72–117

R. Stevenson, ed.: Vilancicos portugueses, PM, ser.A, xxix (1976)

M. Morais, ed.: Cancionero musical d’Elvas, PM, ser.A, xxxi (1977)

C. Bravo-Villasante, ed.: Villancicos del siglo XVII y XVIII (Madrid, 1978)

M. Querol Gavaldá, ed.: Música barroca española, iv: Villancicos, MME, xxxii (1982)

M.C. de Brito, ed.: Villancicos do século XVII do Mohasteiro de Santa Cruz de Coimbra, PM, ser. A, xxxiii (1983)

L. Siemens Hernández, ed.: Joaquín García: Tonadas, villancicos y cantadas (Cuenca, 1984)

J.C. Griffith, ed.: Villancicos by Luigi Boccherini (thesis, U. of Missouri, 1985)

A. Marques Lésbio, ed.: Villancicos e tonos, PM, xxxxvi (1985)

J. Paez, ed.: Villancicos (Madrid, 1985)

M. Morais, ed.: Villancetes, cantigas e romances do secolo XVI, PM, ser.A, xlvii (1986)

G. Tejerizo Robles, ed.: Villancicos barrocos en la Capilla Real de Granada: 500 letrillas cantadas la noche de Navidad (1673–1830) (Seville, 1989)

Catálogo de villancicos y oratorios en la Biblioteca Nacional: siglos XVIII–XIX (Madrid, 1990)

Catálogo de villancicos de la Biblioteca Nacional: siglo XVII (Madrid, 1992)

C. Villanueva, ed.: Los villancicos gallegos (La Coruña, 1994)

J. Etzion, ed.: El Cancionero de la Sablonara (Woodbridge, 1995)

J. González Cuenca, ed.: Cancionero musical de Palacio (Madrid, 1996)

International Inventory of Villancico Texts website (P.R. Laird and A. Torrente) 〈http://www.sun.rhbnc.ac.uk/Music/ILM/IIVT〉

Iberia

StevensonSCM

StevensonSM

J. Díaz Rengifo: Arte poética española (Salamanca, 1592)

P. Cerone: El melopeo y el maestro (Naples, 1613)

M. de León Marchante: Obras poéticas posthumas (Madrid, 1722–33)

B.J. Feijóo y Montenegro: Theatro critico universal: discursos varios en todo género de materias, para desengaño de errores comunes (Madrid, 1726–40)

J.F. de Sayas: Música canónica, motética, y sagrada (Pamplona [1761])

S. de la Rosa y López: Los seises de la catedral de Sevilla (Seville, 1904)

E. Cotarelo y Morí: Colección de entremeses, loas, bailes, jácaras y mojigangas desde fines del siglo XVI a mediados del XVIII (Madrid, 1911)

J. García Catalina: ‘Don Manuel de León Marchante’, Revista de la biblioteca, archivo, y museo, vi (1929), 477–82

R. Lapa: Os vilancicos (o vilancico galego nos séculos XVII e XVIII) (Lisbon, 1930)

V. Ripollès: El villancico i la cantata del segle XVIII a València (Barcelona, 1935)

H. Anglès, ed.: La música en la corte de los reyes católicos, i: Polifonia religiosa, MME, i (1941), 2/1960/R

N. Alonso Cortés: ‘Pliegos de villancicos’, Revista de bibliografía nacional, iv (1943), 175–246

G.M. Bertini, ed.: Poesie spagnole del Seicento (Turin, 1946)

P. Le Gentil: La poésie lyrique espagnole et portugaise à la fin du Moyen-Âge (Rennes, 1949–52)

M. Querol Gavaldá: ‘La música religiosa española en el siglo XVII’, I° congresso internazionale di musica sacra: Rome 1950, 323–6

P. Le Gentil: Le virelai et le villancico: le problème des origines arabes (Paris, 1954)

I. Pope: ‘Musical and Metrical Form of the Villancico’, AnnM, ii (1954), 189–214

F. Delgado León: Los villancicos sevillanos del siglo XVII (diss., U. of Barcelona, 1958)

J. Romeu Figueras: ‘Mateo Flecha el Viejo, la corte literariomusical del duque de Calabria y el Cancionero llamado de Upsala’, AnM, xiii (1958), 25–101

M. Querol Gavaldá: ‘Corresponsales de Miguel Gómez Camargo’, AnM, xiv (1959), 165–78

J.M. Alvarez Pérez: ‘La polifonía sagrada y sus maestros en la Catedral de León durante el siglo XVII’, AnM, xv (1960), 141–63

J. Subirá: ‘El villancico literario-musical: bosquejo histórico’, Revista de literatura, xxii/43–4 (1962), 5–27

J. López-Calo: ‘Corresponsales de Miguel de Irízar’, AnM, xviii (1963), 197–222

J. López-Calo: La música en la catedral de Granada en el siglo XVI (Granada, 1963)

M. Querol Gavaldá: ‘El cancionero musical de Olot’, AnM, xviii (1963), 57–65

J. Romeu Figueras: ‘Las poesías catalanas del manuscrito musical de Olot’, AnM, xviii (1963), 45–55

J. López-Calo: ‘Corresponsales de Miguel de Irízar (II)’, AnM, xx (1965), 209–33

P. Becquart: Musiciens néerlandais à la cour de Madrid; Philippe Rogier et son école (1560–1647) (Brussels, 1967)

G. Haberkamp: Die weltliche Vokalmusik in Spanien um 1500 (Tutzing, 1968)

A. Sánchez Romeralo: El villancico (estudios sobra la lírica popular en los siglos XV y XVI) (Madrid, 1969)

J. Moll: ‘Los villancicos cantados en la Capilla Real a fines del siglo XVI y principios del siglo XVII’, AnM, xxv (1970), 81–96

C. Acutis: ‘Cancioneros’ musicali spagnoli; Italia (1585–1635) (Pisa, 1971)

G. Martínez: El villancico y la navidad en la catedral de Cuenca (Cuenca, 1971)

R.A. Pelinski: Die weltliche Vokalmusik Spaniens am Anfang des 17. Jahrhunderts: der Cancionero Claudio de la Sablonara (Tutzing, 1971)

B. Ridler: Form and Idiom in Spanish Secular Song of the 16th Century (diss., U. of Bristol, 1972)

M. Alvar López: Villancicos dieciochescos: la colección malagueña de 1734 a 1790 (Málaga, 1973)

M. Frenk Alatorre: ‘El zéjel: ¿forma popular castellana?’, Studia iberica: Festschrift für Hans Flasche, ed. K.-H. Körner and K. Rühl (Berne, 1973), 145–58

P. Calahorra: ‘El maestro Pedro Ruimonte (1565–1627)’, AnM, xxviii–xix (1973–4), 155–80

E. Russell: ‘The Villancicos in Pedro Rimonte's “Parnaso Español” (1614)’, Festival Essays for Pauline Alderman, ed. B.L. Karson (Provo, UT, 1976), 61–81

D. Becker: ‘Deux aspects de la chanson polyphonique en Espagne: le Chansonnier d'Upsala et la Recopilación de sonetos y villancicos de Juan Vásquez (1554–1561)’, La chanson à la Renaissance: Tours 1977, 275–93

M. Frenk Alatorre, ed.: Lírica española de tipo popular: Edad Media y Renacimiento (Madrid, 1977)

M.C. de Brito: ‘A Little Known Collection of Portuguese Baroque Villancicos and Romances’, RMARC, xv (1979), 17–37

S. Rubio: Forma del villancico polifónico desde el siglo XV hasta el XVIII (Cuenca, 1979)

R.T. Johnson: Analysis, Guitar Transcription and Performance Practices of the Twelve Songs from Miguel de Fuenllana’s Orphénica Lyra Derived from Polyphonic Villancicos by Juan Vasquez (diss., U. of Southern Mississippi, 1981)

G. Miranda: O cancionero de Elvas: um problema de estilo musical (Lisbon, 1982)

J. López-Calo: Historia de la música española, iii: Siglo XVIII (Madrid, 1983)

S. Rubio: Historia de la música española, ii: Desde el ‘ars nova’ hasta 1600 (Madrid, 1983)

A. Martín Moreno: Historia de la música española, iv: Siglo XVIII (Madrid, 1985)

T.F. Taylor: ‘The Spanish High Baroque Motet and Villancico, Style and Performance’, EMc, xii (1984), 64–73

R. Rasch: ‘Spanish villancicos de Navidad and Flemish cantiones natalitiae’, Musique des Pays-Bas anciens – musique espagnole ancienne: Brussels 1985, 177–91

P. Calahorra: ‘Suban los vozes al Cielo, villancico polifónico de Miguel Ambiela parodia del homónimo de su maestro Pablo Bruna’, Nassarre, ii (1986), 9–42

P.R. Laird: The Villancico Repertory at San Lorenzo El Real del Escorial, ca.1630–ca.1715 (diss., U. of North Carolina, 1986)

J. Sarno: ‘El villancico en España y su trasplante en el nuevo mundo’, Brussels Museum of Musical Instruments Bulletin, xvi (1986), 120–30

L. Siemens Hernández: ‘Villancicos representados en el siglo XVII: él de los ángeles y pastores de Diego Durón’, RdMc, x (1987), 125–30

E. Sohn: ‘Seis versiones del villancico “Con qué la lavaré” en los cancioneros españoles del siglo XVI’, RdMc, x (1987), 173–220

M. Sánchez: XVIII Century Spanish Music: Villancicos of Juan Francés de Iribarren (Pittsburgh, 1988)

C. Rusiñol: ‘Mira piadosa Thecla, de Melcior Juncà (1757–1809?): contribució a l’estudi del villancet catala de les darreries del segle XVIII’, Recerca musicològica, viii (1988), 143–92

J.E. Krogstad: Cancionero Poetry and its Musical Sources (diss., U. of Illinois, 1989)

P.R. Laird: ‘Diego de Torrijos and the Villancico at San Lorenzo del Escorial, 1669–1691’, RdMc, xii (1989), 451–68

P.R. Laird: ‘The Villancicos of Matías Juan de Veana as a Model for the Study of the Dissemination of the Baroque Villancico’, AnM, xliv (1989), 115–36

J. López-Calo: ‘Los villancicos policorales de Miguel de Irízar (1635–1684): una aportación al estudio de la policoralidad en España’, Inter-American Music Review, x (1989), 27–48

E. Casares and C. Villanueva, eds.: De musica hispana et aliis: miscelánea en honor al Prof. Dr. Jose Lopez Calo (Santiago de Compostela, 1990) [incl. J.H. Baron: ‘Spanish Solo Art Song in the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century’, i, 451–76; C. Villanueva: ‘Los villancicos en gallego de Miguel de Irízar’, i, 697–725; M. Pilar Alén: ‘La crisis del villancico en las catedrales españolas en la transción del s. XVIII al s. XIX’, ii, 7–26]

C.C. Fernández-Rufete: ‘Miguel Gómez Camargo: correspondencia inedita’, AnM, xlv (1990), 67–102

M. Sánchez: ‘El villancico en la teoría literaria y musical del siglo XVIII’, Nassarre, vi/2 (1990), 165–8

C. Villanueva Abelairas: Los villancicos gallegos de la catedral de Mondonedo (diss., U. of Santiago de Compostela, 1990)

P. Capdepón: ‘El villancico escurialense del siglo XVIII’, La música en el monasterio del Escorial: San Lorenzo de El Escorial 1992, 235–65

H. Daschner: ‘Spanische Weihnachtsmusik: der Villancico’, Musica, xlv (1991), 368–74

P.R. Laird: ‘Los villancicos del siglo XVII en el Monasterio del Escorial’, La música en el monasterio del Escorial: San Lorenzo de El Escorial 1992, 169–234

J.V. González Valle: ‘Relación música/texto en la composición musical en castellano del s. XVII: nueva estructura rítmica de la música española’, AnM, xlvii (1992), 103–32

P.R. Laird: ‘The Coming of the Sacred Villancico: a Musical Consideration’, RdMc, xv (1992), 139–60

E. Ros-Fábregas, ed.: The Manuscript Barcelona, Biblioteca de Catalunya, M. 454: Study and Edition in the Context of the Iberian and Continental Manuscript Traditions (diss., City U. of New York, 1992)

M. del C. Rusiñol i Pautas: Els villancets de Melcior Junca: contribució al seu estudi a la música catalana del segle XVIII (diss., U. Autónoma de Barcelona, 1992)

R. Stevenson: La música en las catedrales españolas del Siglo de Oro (Madrid, 1992)

G. Braun: Das spanische Vihuela-Lied im 16. Jahrhunderts (Heidelberg, 1993)

D. Lawrence: ‘Romance and Villancico Pairs in the Cancionero Musical de Palacio’, Ars Musica Denver, v (1993), 3–18

L.K. Stein: Songs of Mortals, Dialogues of the Gods: Music and Theatre in Seventeenth-Century Spain (Oxford, 1993)

C. Caballero Fernández-Rufete: Miguel Gómez Camargo: biografía, legado testamentario y estudio de los procedimientos paradójicos en sus villancicos (Valladolid, 1994)

P. Capdepón: El Padre Antonio Soler y el cultivo del villancico en El Escorial (1729–1783) (El Escorial, 1994)

L.A. González Marín: ‘El teatro y lo teatral en los villancicos de Joseph Ruiz Samaniego’, Nassarre, x/1 (1994), 97–140

P.R. Laird and D. Martínez: ‘The Villancico in Spain and Latin America: a Collage of Peoples and Influences’, Ars Musica Denver, vii (1994), 65–81

V. Lama de la Cruz: Cancionero musical de la catedral de Segovia (Valladolid, 1994)

J.I. Palacios Sanz: ‘Música y tradición en la Fiesta del Corpus, en la Catedral de El Burgo de Osma’, AnM, xlix (1994), 199–210

L. Jambou: ‘Cantatas solísticas de Valls y compositores anómimos – Identidad y ruptura estilística’, RdMc, xviii (1995), 291–325

J.L. Palacios Garoz: El último villancico barroco valenciano (Castellón de la Plana, 1995)

J. Rifé i Santaló: ‘Les àries dels villancets d'Emmanuel Gònima (1712–1792): notes entorn l'evolució de l'ària en la música religiosa a la Catalunya del segle XVIII’, AnM, l (1995), 177–84

S. Schmitt: ‘Die Proportio Quintupla in einegen Villancicos des Cancionero Musical de Palacio’, AnM, l (1995), 3–22

J.V. González Valle: ‘Relación entre el verso castellano y la técnica de composición musical en los villancicos de Fr. Manuel Correa (s. XVII)’, AnM, li (1996), 39–69

P.R. Laird: Towards a History of the Spanish Villancico (Warren, MI, 1997)

A. Torrente: The Sacred Villancico in Early Eighteenth-Century Spain: the Repertory of Salamanca Cathedral (diss., U. of Cambridge, 1997)

Latin America

C. Vega: La música de un códice colonial del siglo XVII (Buenos Aires, 1931)

A. Méndez Plancarte, ed.: Obras completas de Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, ii (Mexico City, 1952)

R. Stevenson: Music in Mexico (New York, 1952/R)

R. Stevenson: The Music of Peru (Washington DC, 1960)

M.E. Grebe: ‘Introducción al estudio del villancico en Latinoamerica’, RMC, no.107 (1969), 7–31

D. Damesceno, ed.: Villancicos seiscentistas (Rio de Janeiro, 1970)

L.F. Ramón y Rivera: ‘Del villancico al corrido mexicano’, Heterofonía, vii (1974), 10–13

E.T. Stanford: El villancico y el corrido mexicano (Mexico City, 1974)

R. Stevenson: ‘Puebla Chapelmasters and Organists: Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, II’, Inter-American Music Review, vi/1 (1983–4), 29–139

A. Cacua Prada: ‘Villancicos colombianos’, Correo de los Andes, nos.41–2 (1986–7), 113–15

C. García Muñoz: Juan de Araujo, un compositor del periodo colonial hispano-americano (diss., U. Católica Argentina, 1989)

J. González-Quiñones: The Orchestrally Accompanied Villancico in Mexico in the Eighteenth Century (diss., City U. of New York, 1990)

J. González-Quiñones, ed.: Villancicos y cantatas mexicanos del siglo XVIII (Mexico City, 1990)

D. Lehnhoff: The Villancicos of the Guatemalan Composer Rafael Antonio Castellanos (d. 1791): a Selective Edition and Critical Commentary (diss., Catholic U. of America, 1991)

L. Manzino: The Montevideo Collection of South American Baroque Villancicos: 1650–1750 (diss., Catholic U. of America, 1993)

A. Melis: Poesia e musica nell’America Coloniale: il caso si sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (Florence, 1994)

R. Stevenson: ‘Ethnological Impulses in the Baroque Villancico’, Inter-American Music Review, xiv (1994), 67–106

R.M. Stevenson: ‘Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz's Musical Rapports: a Tercentenary Remembrance’, Inter-American Music Review, xv/1 (1996), 1–21

Villan di Spagna

(It.).

See Villano.

Villanella [villanesca, canzone villanesca alla napolitana, aria napolitana, canzone napolitana, villanella alla napolitana]

(It.).

A generic term applied at various times to popular songs that originated in Naples and flourished from about 1537 to about 1650.

2. Theatrical contexts.

3. Genesis.

4. Metrical and musical forms.

5. Settings for three voices.

6. Arrangements for four or more voices.

DONNA G. CARDAMONE

1. Terminology and content.

The generic designation canzone villanesca alla napolitana (‘rustic song in the Neapolitan style’) was coined in Naples to mark the début in print of a local genre (RISM 1537⁵). It was used consistently until 1565 to describe strophic songs for three or four voices in Neapolitan dialect that consciously imitated (or borrowed from) lyric traditions of the street and countryside. Venetian printers sometimes used the local equivalent, villotte alla napolitana, as a title or subtitle for their editions of villanesche. The term ‘villanella’ first appeared in the title of a Roman anthology (1555³⁰), but it was not applied regularly until the villanesca had been transformed by north Italian composers, who preferred the topos of pastoral life and a more refined diction. The terms ‘villanesca’, ‘villanella’ and ‘villotta’ were often used synonymously because of their similar etymological derivation from the Latin villanus (peasant, or person of humble birth), but distinctions can be drawn between them and related genres such as the bergamasca, giustiniana, greghesca, moresca and todesca. During the 1560s Neapolitan idioms were gradually replaced by stereotyped conceits in the Petrarchan or Arcadian vein, giving rise to the gentler designations ‘villanella’ and ‘napolitana’. After 1580 the term ‘canzonetta’ became standard for non-Neapolitan songs descended from the villanella. The villanella, in turn, was affected by the lively declamation, short imitative motifs and high tessitura of the canzonetta and gradually came to be called ‘canzonetta’ as often as ‘villanella’. During the 17th century solo songs as well as partsongs were sometimes described as villanellas. All the terms appear in the titles of Italian chapbooks to describe texts intended to be sung to familiar or improvised tunes (‘canzoni da cantare’).

Rustic and pastoral songs were both classified by Einstein as ‘lighter forms’ because they are comic reversals of the madrigal's serious discourse. Villanesche, for example, may be narrated by awkward lovers who aim to seduce stubborn, ill-bred women or complain about amorous deception. Some villanesche are ironic serenades, others are humorous anecdotes; virtually all explore the relationship between masculine frustration and feminine deceit, parodying character-types of both sexes – impudent maidens, over-protective guardians, scheming courtesans, cuckolded husbands, lovesick old men and jealous suitors. The actions of the characters are conveyed realistically in crude euphemisms and rustic metaphors, which serve as pretexts for harsh criticism of female vices and imperfections. Although some villanesche are set in a garden or village, urban locations are more common. The object of love might be a peasant girl or shepherdess in an idyllic pastoral setting, or a city woman or noblewoman: both are normally addressed in polite but casual terms.

2. Theatrical contexts.

Farces and rustic comedies that record the characteristic actions, songs and dialects of peasants flourished throughout Italy during the early 16th century, especially in aristocratic circles. By reasserting the legitimacy of natural instincts and the dignity of the supposedly vulgar, these plays provided a favourable climate for the introduction of the canzone villanesca and its construction of an alternative, more spontaneous world.

In the area around Naples, the rustic fool was a stock character in improvised farse cavaiole. These were presented annually at Carnival, which was traditionally celebrated in Naples with theatrical activities that encouraged the performance of songs rich in farcical invention and ethnic folklore, such as the villanesca and its offspring the mascherata alla napolitana. Masked musicians strolled through the streets improvising ribald songs, and famous court singers such as Luigi Dentice, G.C. Brancaccio and Scipione delle Palle doubled as actors in comedies staged at the Prince of Salerno's palace. Many villanesche are derisive in tone and were well suited to function as realistic insertions in the main action of these comedies. When Emperor Charles V visited Naples during Carnival 1536, he witnessed a broad range of comic entertainment and heard groups of musicians compete in singing villanesche and madrigals. Pirrotta has suggested that the first edition of villanesche (1537) was close enough in time to the imperial visit to be considered an expression of Neapolitan pride in a local genre that stood full comparison with the madrigal. When these newly developing genres spread simultaneously into the same social circles, the villanesca became the madrigal's comical companion, complementing rather than mocking its lofty Petrarchan discourse. Stylistic exchanges between the genres during the 1570s came about as composers explored ways in which elements from opposite worlds could subtly be combined. Intentional parody of madrigalian conventions was rare. The exceptions, which arose in theatrical contexts, are travesties of famous madrigals such as Rore's Anchor che col partire by the actor and writer of comedies Andrea Calmo, and Palestrina's Vestiva i colli by Banchieri (in his La pazzia senile).

Although it is difficult to tell whether comedy suggested characters and situations to the songs, or songs to the comedy, interactions were generated by musicians familiar with the stage. Among the most notable were Lassus and Troiano, both gifted performers trained in Naples. At the Munich court in 1568 they collaborated on an improvised comedy with music, Troiano playing the role of the country bumpkin from La Cava and Lassus the Venetian ‘magnifico’, a character already endowed with attributes of the commedia dell'arte character Pantaloon. Lassus's rendition of the Neapolitan serenade Chi passa per questa strada to his own lute accompaniment reveals a keen awareness of the traditional relationship between comedy and a song that sketches a character-type.

3. Genesis.

The key to understanding the genesis of the villanesca lies in the social structure of Naples, where nobles, artisans and servants had a long history of familiarity with one another's musical customs and languages. Peasants from the rural provinces were drawn to Naples by flourishing trades in wool and silk and by domestic employment in noble households. From the overlapping of social and linguistic boundaries there emerged a city vernacular which villanesca composers appropriated in creating their own poetry for music. In the earliest villanesche, dialectal and literary idioms converge in unmistakable patterns, confirming their origin in urban popular culture (and putting to rest romantic theories of ‘folk’ origin). The title-page of the Canzone villanesche alla napolitana (RISM 1537⁵) features a woodcut of three female peasants tilling the soil, plainly labelled ‘bas. can. ten.’. Poised in this way, they signify the mingling of oral and written traditions; in the one, music is created instinctively according to nature; in the other, it is composed artistically according to rules. Moreover, the peasants represent the three ages of woman, their features corresponding to vocal ranges; they symbolize the characteristic high-pitched sound of the villanesca, the cantus singing in a medium range and the tenor and bass in a range about a 5th higher than usual.

4. Metrical and musical forms.

Villanesca poems normally consist of four isometric strophes of between three and eight lines. Einstein developed the theory that the villanesca was initially a strambotto (a poem of four hendecasyllabic couplets) expanded by the insertion of a refrain: (1) AB + R, (2) AB + R, (3) AB + R, (4) CC (or AB) + R. Dialectal strambotti with the rhyme schemes ABABABCC (strambotto toscano) and ABABABAB (ottava siciliana) were the most common models for villanesca poets, who deliberately preserved their assonance and colloquialisms. The strambotto models consist largely of clichés and proverbial sayings strung loosely together, making a witty point in the final couplet. These features characterize villanesca poems too, confirming the main line of evolution and the continuing assimilation of oral traditions. Villanesca refrains typically consist of one hendecasyllabic line or a series of brief polymetric lines with short-range, jingling rhymes that evoke the humorous tone of popular singers.

Three types of rhyme scheme prevail in villanesca poems up to 1560. The predominant type has an unchanging refrain, and in most cases the last line of the couplet and the first line of the refrain share the same rhyme as far as the final strophe, for example ABb ABb ABb CCb or ABbb ABbb ABbb CCbb (upper-case denotes couplets that change in content, and lower-case the unchanging refrain). In the second type there is no linking rhyme between the couplet and refrain (e.g. ABc ABc ABc DDc). In the third type the refrain of the fourth strophe is modified to rhyme with the final couplet (e.g.ABb ABb ABb CCC). Between 1560 and 1570 the villanesca evolved into a non-refrain poem, coinciding with a change in generic designation to villanella. Short strophes predominate, often consisting of a free mixture of seven- and eleven-syllable lines and changing rhymed couplets (e.g. AABB CCDD EEFF GGHH).

Each line of the villanesca or villanella strophe is set to a different musical phrase, but phrases are repeated in many different patterns that resist classification. There was however a strong tendency to repeat the first and final phrases, so that a consistently popular form for a three-line strophe was 1–1 2 3–3 (with the central phrase commensurate in length with the outer ones), and for a four-line strophe 1–1 2 3–4 3–4. Bipartite forms such as 1–1 2–3 2–3 entered the repertory during the 1560s.

5. Settings for three voices.

The musical formulae of oral culture are deeply ingrained in the villanesche tunes that emanated from Naples, which include a set of ‘arie napoletane’ published in Rome (c1537⁸). Composers invariably put the tune in the top voice, which unfolds with a coherent sense of direction (a phenomenon Pirrotta designated ‘aria’). Characteristic Neapolitan devices include phrase-endings where a sequential passage of 3rds descends in conjunct motion to the final note, syllabic declamation reflecting accentual patterns in the poetry, and the truncation of single words or the fragmentation of phrases, which are then repeated afresh. The result is a comical stuttering that was a significant factor in the success of the villanesche sent to Venice for publication during the 1540s by Nola (2 books, 1541, reprinted 1545), Vincenzo Fontana (1545), Cimello (1545), Maio (1546) and Burno (1546¹⁸). Neapolitan tunes are always supported by a discreet triadic background. When the tune moves by step the lower parts often follow in parallel motion, producing consecutive 5ths. Nola used 5ths discreetly, reserving them for the beginnings and ends of phrases, in contrast to the long chains preferred by Maio. Einstein claimed that ‘forbidden’ 5ths served to caricature contrapuntal mastery and to enhance elements of parody in the poems, but Pirrotta has proposed that 5ths reflect the habits of a popular singer moving his hand in a fixed position along the fingerboard of a rudimentary stringed instrument to harmonize tunes. Indeed, Zacconi (Prattica di musica, 1592/R) argued that villanella composers could disregard the rules of counterpoint when the tune moved by step because they were imitating untrained musicians who, ‘when singing, blend together by means of natural consonances’ and ‘do not know any other way of moving to neighbouring notes’.

The homophonic textures of villanesche were often enlivened by declamation on short note values and by short points of imitation with sequential expansion. Cimello (De perfettione) insisted that the minim could be the unit of measure as well as the semibreve. He complained that villanesche were not correctly performed in Rome, where they were published anonymously in 1557 in anthologies compiled by the printers Dorico (1557¹⁹) and Barrè (1557²⁰). Lassus, who moved to Rome from Naples, played an important role in transmitting and encouraging the composition of Neapolitan songs, as can be seen in the anthology Villanelle d'Orlando di Lassus e d'altri eccellenti musici libro secondo (Rome, 1555³⁰), which acknowledges his leadership in the title. Anthology publishing shifted to Venice during the 1560s: Gardano published six books of anonymous Neapolitan songs (Villotte alla napolitana), drawing in part on a repertory that had circulated in Rome; Scotto introduced a new circle of composers from the Kingdom of Naples dominated by Primavera and Dell'Arpa, whose arioso tunes use short compact phrases that contrast sharply with the earlier sequential elaborations.

The first anthologies to contain napolitane by north Italians were edited and partly composed by Bonagiunta (1565¹², 1566⁷). In modifying napolitane for the northern public, composers such as Dattari and Trombetti studiously avoided southern mannerisms such as parallel 5ths and truncation in favour of more spacious imitation and decorative melismas. At this time the texts of the ‘lighter forms’ circulated in manuscript copies independently of the music, which resulted in the variable ordering of strophes and the transfer of strophes between poems. The treatment of these poems as ‘open forms’ proved to be a significant factor in stylistic exchanges between villanella and madrigal. Scotto, for example, filled the second and third books of the series Corona delle napolitane (Venice, 1571) with his own settings of poems devised by reassembling texts from the first book, and he set an influential example by consolidating selected lines from a multi-strophic poem into one strophe, as in a madrigal.

Villanellas thrived in southern Italy, particularly in Bari under the aegis of Giovanni Giacomo de Antiquis, who compiled two books of pieces composed by himself and 20 colleagues (1574^5-6). In Rome Pompilio Venturi and Gasparo Fiorino explored a new social role for the villanella by setting reams of poems in praise of prominent local noblewomen (La nobiltà di Roma, 1571⁸, 2/1573¹⁹). Between 1584 and 1587 Marenzio, at the insistence of Roman friends, published 115 villanellas which typify the prevailing stylistic variety: pastoral idylls, short droll songs and longer ones with expressive devices borrowed from the madrigal. 50 of them were later copied into the Tregian Manuscript (GB-Lbl Eg.3665; facs. in RMF, vii, 1988), prompting Morley's enthusiasm: ‘If you think [villanellas] worthy of your pains to compose them, you have a pattern of them in Luca Marenzio and John Ferretti’. Marenzio's trademark is a polarized texture, with the bass moving independently of the upper parts, which are closely linked by imitation or motion in parallel 3rds. Between 1602 and 1618 villanellas were once again composed and published in Naples, with notable contributions by Montella, Francesco Lambardi and d'India.

The most successful villanella composer in Germany was Jacob Regnart, whose Kurtzweilige teutsche Lieder, nach Art der Neapolítanen oder welschen Villanellen filled three volumes (1576, 1577 and 1579) and were repeatedly reprinted up to 1611. In England the villanella (now known as ‘canzonet’) underwent an easy naturalization through conventions established almost singlehandedly by Morley. An interest in light Italian music had been established much earlier, however, in English royal circles. The Earl of Arundel, after a trip to Italy in 1566–7, ordered a set of 47 villanellas for his library at Nonesuch (GB-Lbl Roy. App.59–62), and about the same time someone connected with Elizabeth I, perhaps a suitor, commissioned the Winchester Partbooks (GB-WCc 153), which contain 55 villanellas.

6. Arrangements for four or more voices.

From 1537 to 1565 the villanesca evolved along parallel lines: as high-pitched settings for three voices by Neapolitan composers; and as arrangements for the fuller sonority of the madrigalian quartet. The first arranger was Willaert, who established influential techniques for reworking Neapolitan models for four voices in his Canzone villanesche alla napolitana (Venice, 1545). In his literal arrangements the cantus and tenor exchange positions, the original bass is retained with small modifications, and the alto fills out the harmony. In his free arrangements the tune is in the tenor or migrates from voice to voice, imitative passages are converted to homophony (or vice versa), and new material is liberally inserted. Willaert and his followers (Barges, Perissone Cambio, Nasco, Baldassare Donato) were attracted to the villanesche of Nola and Vincenzo Fontana, whose brisk irregular rhythms also appealed to Lassus. His Quatoirsiesme livre a quatre parties (Antwerp, 1555) contains six arrangements and marks the début in print of the villanesca outside Italy; 12 more arrangements, dating from his youth, were published in Paris in 1581. These 18 arrangements are contained in RRMR, lxxxii–lxxxiii (1991). Lassus's arrangements range from literal transcriptions to free elaborations that allude to the model only at the beginning. His preference for placing the tune in the tenor freed the cantus part, inspiring effective changes of register, contour and speed to accommodate every flicker of meaning in the text. Others such as Waelrant, Severin Cornet, Scandello and Le Jeune, while not endowed with Lassus's keen sense of humour, contributed to the villanella's enthusiastic reception in northern Europe. Regnart and Leonhard Lechner followed Giovanni Ferretti's highly influential example in arranging villanellas for five voices, making sophisticated use of spritely rhythmic declamation and varied vocal groupings. Villanellas for four voices that were free compositions rather than arrangements of pre-existing models, were published first by Nola (1567) and then by Mazzone (1570). The five-voice villanella (called ‘canzone’) enjoyed a brief vogue during the 1570s with Conversi, Lodovico Agostini and Caimo (among many others), who took as texts the initial stanzas of villanellas and infused them with features typical of the madrigal.

Eye-witness accounts of the performance of ‘lighter forms’ indicate a preference for solo voice with instrumental accompaniment, even though all the parts are texted in the published editions. This performing practice is confirmed by the existence of numerous arrangements of villanellas for solo voice and lute and by a vogue for monodic villanellas accompanied by the Spanish guitar. Giulio Caccini clearly thought of villanellas as models for his strophic arias: their emphasis on a well-defined melody and bass moving in the same rhythm makes them well suited to solo performance. Moreover, Vincenzo Galilei cited villanellas, and the popular airs that inspired them, as models for the sort of monody he envisaged in his Dialogo della musica (1581/R).

3. Stick zithers in local traditions.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

M. Meneghini: ‘Villanelle alla napolitana’, Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, xvi (1892), 476–503; xvii (1893), 411–89

A. Einstein: ‘Die Parodie in der Villanella’, ZMw, ii (1919–20), 212–24

G.M. Monti: Le villanelle alla napoletana e l’antica lirica dialettale a Napoli(Naples, 1925)

C. Calcaterra: ‘Canzoni villanesche e villanelle’, Archivum romanicum, x (1926), 262–90

E. Hertzmann: Adrian Willaert in der weltlichen Vokalmusik seiner Zeit (Leipzig, 1931/R)

H. Engel: ‘Madrigal und Villanelle’, Neuphilologische Monatsschrift, iii (1932), 257–74

W. Scheer: Die Frühgeschichte der italienischen Villanella (Nördlingen, 1936)

E. Gerson-Kiwi: Studien zur Geschichte des italienischen Liedmadrigals im XVI. Jahrhundert (Würzburg,1937)

A. Einstein: ‘The Greghesca and the Giustiniana of the 16th Century’, JRBM, i (1946–7), 19–32

A. Obertello: ‘Villanelle e madrigali inediti in Inghilterra’, Italian Studies, iii (1947–8), 97–145

A. Einstein: The Italian Madrigal (Princeton, NJ, 1949/R)

F. Nicolini: ‘La villanella napoletana’, RMI, liv (1952), 21–36

B.M. Galanti: Le villanelle alla napoletana (Florence, 1954)

N. Pirrotta: ‘Commedia dell'arte and Opera’, MQ, xli (1955), 305–24

E. Ferrari Barassi: ‘La villanella napoletana nella testimonianza di un letterato’, NRMI, ii (1968), 1064–87

N. Pirrotta: Li due Orfei: da Poliziano a Monteverdi (Turin, 1969, enlarged 2/1975; Eng. trans., 1982), 91–142

F. Fabry: ‘Sidney's Poetry and Italian Song-Form’, English Literary Renaissance, iii (1973), 232–48

D.G. Cardamone: ‘The Debut of the canzone villanesca alla napolitana’, Studi musicali, iv (1975), 65–130

D.G. Cardamone: ‘Forme metriche e musicali della canzone villanesca e della villanella alla napolitana’, RIM, xii (1977), 25–72

H.M. Brown: ‘The Geography of Florentine Monody: Caccini at Home and Abroad’, EMc, ix (1981), 147–68

D.G. Cardamone: The Canzone villanesca alla napolitana and Related Forms, 1537–1570 (Ann Arbor, 1981)

D.G. Cardamone: ‘Madrigali a tre et arie napoletane: a Typographical and Repertorial Study’, JAMS, xxxv (1982), 436–81

K. Larson: ‘Condizione sociale dei musicisti e dei loro committenti nella Napoli del Cinque e Seicento’, Musica e cultura a Napoli: Naples 1982, 61–77

N. Pirrotta: ‘Willaert and the Canzone Villanesca’, Music and Culture in Italy from the Middle Ages to the Baroque: a Collection of Essays (Cambridge, MA,1984), 175–97

R.I. DeFord: ‘Musical Relationships between the Italian Madrigal and Light Genres in the Sixteenth Century’, MD, xxxix (1985), 107–68

K. Forney: ‘Antwerp's Role in the Reception and Dissemination of the Madrigal in the North’, IMSCR XIV: Bologna 1987, 239–52

H. Leuchtmann: ‘Tu traditora: Orlando di Lasso bearbeitet eine Villanesca’,Quaestiones in musica: Festschrift für Franz Krautwurst zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. F. Brusniak and H. Leuchtmann (Tutzing, 1989), 337–50

M. Farahat: ‘Villanescas of the Virtuosi: Lasso and the Commedia dell'arte’,Performance Practice Review, iii (1990), 121–37

J. Stevens: ‘Sir Philip Sidney and “Versified Music”: Melodies for Courtly Songs’,The Well Enchanting Skill: Music, Poetry, and Drama in the Culture of the Renaissance Essays in Honour of F.W. Sternfeld, ed. J.A. Caldwell, E.D. Olleson and S. Wollenberg (Oxford, 1990), 153–69

C. Assenza: ‘La trasmissione dei testi poetici per canzonetta negli ultimi decenni del secolo XVI’, RIM, xxvi (1991), 204–40

I. His: ‘Les modèles italiens de Claude Le Jeune’, RdM, lxxvii (1991), 25–28

Villanelle

(Fr., from It. villanella).

Rustic song. Cotgrave’s Dictionarie (1611) defines the word as ‘a country dance, round or song’. Like ‘villanesque’ it was transliterated from the Italian during the literary invasion of France around the middle of the 16th century to describe stanzaic verses in a pastoral vein, using simple language and refrains. An important link was provided by Ferrante Sanseverino, Princo of Salerno, who in 1544 captivated the ladies at the court of François I at Fontainebleau by singing canzoni napolitani with the guitar. On his return to Naples Sanseverino sponsored the falsettist Luigi Dentice and the poet-composers Vincenzo Fontana and G.B. da Nola who, along with Lassus, followed him to Rome. Exiled in France, Sanseverino served Henri II in various military adventures between 1552 and 1554, during which time the villanella became more fashionable in France. The first examples to appear in Parisian musical publications were Arcadelt’s three-voice La pastorella mia (1554), Clereau’s chansons tant françoises qu’italiennes (1559) and a set of anonymous Villanelle alla napolitana (1565).

A French ‘villanelle’ printed in Joachim Du Bellay’s Jeux rustiques (1558), En ce mois delicieux, was set for four voices by Nicolas (1559) and Arcadelt (1565) and for six voices by Certon (1570); the poem comprises four stanzas of eight lines, with the last couplet of each as a common refrain. Desportes’ Rozette pour un peu d’absence, set by Caietain (1576), Chardavoine (1576) and Besard (1603), has the same form, but his M’ostant le fruit de ma fidelle attente, set by Caietain (1576) and Didier le Blanc (1579), has six stanzas, with a single-line refrain. Other examples in similar form are found in the chansons, airs and canzonets of Utendal (1574), Caietain (1576), Lassus (1581), Guillaume Tessier (1582), Charles Tessier (1597, 1604), Claude Le Jeune (1585, 1612) and others, but unlike Jacob Regnart’s German collection (1576) these follow the current French musical style and do not adopt the three-part texture and parallel chordal writing of the popular Neapolitan genre. Some of Baïf’s chansonettes mesurées translate or imitate Italian villanellas, notably Une puce, which was set by Lassus, Caietain and Le Jeune. A more standardized verse form comprising an odd number of tercets and final quatrain with two rhymes was introduced by Jean Passerat (1534–1602): his J’ai perdu ma tourterelle (Oeuvres, 1606) has the typical rhyme scheme A¹BA² ABA¹ ABA² ABA¹ ABA² ABA¹A². This type was revived in the 19th century by Théodore de Banville and by British poets such as William Henley and Andrew Lang.

The term is also found as the title of both instrumental and vocal pieces by Telemann, Berlioz, Chabrier and Dukas.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

F. Dobbins: ‘Les madrigalists français et la Pléiade’, La chanson à la Renaissance: Tours 1977, 157–71

D.G. Cardamone: ‘Orlando di Lasso and Pro-French Factions in Rome’, Orlandus Lassus and his Time: Antwerp 1994 [Yearbook of the Alamire Foundation, i (1995)], 23–47

FRANK DOBBINS

Villanesca

(It.: ‘rustic’).

A term for Villanella, used particularly before about 1570.

Villani, Filippo

(b Florence, 1325; d ?1405).Italian chronicler. He completed his law studies in Florence in 1360, was chancellor of the city of Perugia 1376–81, and was lecturer on Dante in the University of Florence 1391–1404. His writings include a continuation of the Nuova cronica (ed. G.C. Galletti, Florence, 1847), begun by his uncle Giovanni and continued by his father Matteo, a commentary (surviving incomplete) on Dante's Commedia, and the two-volume Liber de origine civitatis Florentiae et eiusdem famosis civibus (ed. G.C. Galletti, Florence, 1847; ed. G. Tanturli, Padua, 1997). The second volume mentions several 14th-century musicians, including Bartolo, Lorenzo da Firenze, Giovanni da Cascia and Jacopo da Bologna; it also includes a biography of Francesco Landini. For the latter this is the most detailed account to survive (although some of it is now thought to be spurious) and was used as a source of information for references to the composer throughout the 15th century.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

E. Li Gotti: ‘Una pretesa incoronazione di Francesco Landini’, Atti della R. Accademia di scienze, lettere e arti di Palermo, 2nd ser., v (1946), 41–6

E. Li Gotti: ‘Il più antico polifonista italiano del secolo XIV’, Italica, xxiv (1947), 196–200

G. Tanturli: ‘Il “De' viri inlustri di Firenze” e il “De origine civitatis Florentiae et de eiusdem famosis civibus” di Filippo Villani’, Studi medievali, 3rd ser., xiv (1973), 833–81

B.L. Ullman: ‘Filippo Villani's Copy of his History of Florence’, Studies in the Italian Renaissance (Rome, 2/1973), 239–45

A. Lanza: Polemiche e berte letterarie nella Firenze del primo Rinascimento (1375–1449) (Rome, 1989)

F. ALBERTO GALLO/GIANLUCA D'AGOSTINO

Villani [Villano], Gabriele [Gabriello, Gabrielle]

(b Piacenza, 1555; d Piacenza, 1625). Italian composer. Like his brother Gasparo, he worked in the orbit of the Farnese, dukes of Parma and Piacenza, and was a participant in the prestigious musical ridotto of Count Giambattista Barattieri in Piacenza. He was organist and maestro di cappella at S Maria di Campagna, Piacenza, from 1588 to 1624. Villani called his two books of four-voice works ‘toscanelle’, drawing attention to the influence of Tuscan literary culture in Farnese circles. In style they resemble contemporary villanellas and canzonettas of composers such as Marenzio and Ferretti.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

O. Mischiati: L’organo di Santa Maria di Campagna a Piacenza (Piacenza, 1980), 60, 65, 95

F. Bussi: ‘Un “unicum” della musica: le “Toscanelle” di Gabriele Villani, compositore e cantore farnesiano’, Bollettino storico piacentino, lxxvii (1983), 34–79

F. Bussi: ‘Il compositore farnesiano Gabriele Villani e le sue “Toscanelle”’, Studi musicali, xiii (1984), 107–38

F. Bussi: ‘Sacro e profano in musica alla corte di Ranuccio I Farnese’, NRMI, xxix (1995), 221–34

DAVID BRYANT, FRANCESCO BUSSI

Villani [Villano], Gasparo

(b Piacenza, after 1546; d Piacenza, after 1619). Italian composer and organist, brother of Gabriele Villani. His uninterrupted residence in his native city makes him one of the most genuinely Piacentine musicians. According to the contract with the chapter of Piacenza Cathedral, dated 15 December 1595, he was appointed to the post of organist there for life at an annual salary of 300 librae with the additional sum of 100 librae paid to him every four months. In the contract Villani is referred to as the probable son of ‘Iseppo Villano’, mentioned by the madrigalist and organist Girolamo Parabosco, who goes on to say, ‘he was my employer and executor in this town of Piacenza’. This identification seems to fit on historical and geographical grounds. Giuseppe Villani, Gasparo's father, was also mentioned by A.F. Doni: he wrote in a letter dated 3 June 1543 to the sculptor Giovanni Angelo: ‘At present I am in Piacenza, where in addition to violinists, flautists and lute-players, there are those excellent instrumentalists Claudio Veggio, Brambiglia and Giuseppe Villano’. Most biographical information on Gasparo Villani comes from the indications contained in his printed works. The dedication of the volume Missa, psalmi … et motecta, besides praising the generous patronage of Claudio Rangoni, the Bishop of Piacenza, who had summoned artists from other towns to enrich the cathedral with statues, pictures and music, states that the composer had been organist in the cathedral for some time. The dedication of the Gratiarum actiones to the powerful Duke of Piacenza and Parma Ranuccio I Farnese proclaims the ruler a long-standing patron of the musical art. The title-page of the Psalmi (1619) indicates that Villani was then still active in his post as organist. The maestri di cappella at the time of Villani's tenure include Luigi Roince, G.C. Quintiani and Tiburzio Massaino.

Villani's output, which consists entirely of church music and resembles more that of a maestro di cappella than an organist, shows him to have been responsive to the new concertante tendencies to alternate tuttis with various solo combinations (which are mostly optional), that set off the melody in an expressive fashion. Nevertheless he did not neglect traditional composition for two or more choirs, following the fashion set by Andrea Gabrieli and other Venetian composers. He made up for a certain lack of originality of invention with his mastery of counterpoint and with a pleasing facility in alternating the different choirs, supported by a basso continuo on the organ. His masterpiece is the Gratiarum actiones, written to extol, with Venetian polychoral splendour, the pride and majesty of the Farnese family, and to celebrate the birth of a son, Alessandro II, to the duke. The family is symbolized by the lily mentioned in the hymn Ave Virgo gratiosa, the motivic material of which is the source of the cyclical mass included in the collection.

WORKS

Letanie della BVM … libro primo, 8vv, bc (Venice, 1610)

Missa, psalmi ad Vesperas et motecta … libro secondo, 16vv (Venice, 1610)

Psalmi omnes qui per annum ad Vesperas decantari consueverunt, libro terzo, 12vv (Venice, 1610)

Gratiarum actiones, libro quarto, 20vv (Venice, 1611); contains 1 mass, 1 hymn, 1 vesper ps, 1 Mag, 1 Te Deum; ed. in Monumenti musicali Piacentini e Farnesiani, ii (Florence, 1992)

Psalmi omnes qui per annum ad Vesperas decantari consueverunt, libro quinto, 8vv (Venice, 1611)

Missae quinque, libro sesto, 4–8vv (Venice, 1613)

Psalmi omnes qui per annum ad Vesperas decantari consueverunt, 5vv, bc, op.7 (Venice, 1619)

O sacrum convivium, motet, 5vv, 1612³; ed. in Monumenti musicali Piacentini e Farnesiani, ii (Florence, 1992)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

GaspariC

MGG1(F. Bussi)

H.A. Sander: ‘ Beiträge zur Geschichte der Barockmesse’, KJb, xxviii (1933), 77–129, esp. 125

F. Bussi: Panorama musicale piacentino (Piacenza, 1955)

F. Bussi: Alcuni maestri di cappella e organisti della cattedrale di Piacenza (Piacenza, 1956)

F. Bussi: Umanità e arte di Gerolamo Parabosco, madrigalista, organista e poligrafo (Piacenza, 1524 c.-Venezia, 1557) (Piacenza, 1961)

H.C. Slim: ‘ Keyboard Music at Castell'Arquato by an Early Madrigalist’, JAMS, xv (1962), 35–47, esp. 37

F. Bussi: Piacenza, Archivio del Duomo: catalogo del fondo musicale (Milan, 1967)

F. Bussi: ‘Un monumento di ufficialità musicale farnesiana: le “Gratiarum actiones” del piacentino Gasparo Villani’, RIMS, xi ( 1990), 229–52

FRANCESCO BUSSI

Villanis, Angelo

(b Turin, 1821; d Asti, 7 Sept 1865). Italian composer and conductor. He received his musical education in Turin, studying with Luigi Rossi. He suffered from the frustration that although his operas were generally received with favour, none of them enjoyed many productions. The superficial attractiveness of his music could not long conceal his lack of real originality. Like a number of other Italian opera composers of his generation who found success elusive, he supported himself by conducting opera orchestras. In 1856 he became director of the Orchestra Ducale of Parma. He wrote many songs and vocal chamber works. Villanis’s nephew, Luigi Alberto Villanis (b San Mauro, nr Turin, 20 June 1863; d Pesaro, 27 Sept 1906), was a writer and music historian who wrote about 19th-century Italian piano music, and also contributed to La stampa of Turin and edited La cronaca musicale in Pesaro.

WORKS

operas

I saltimbanchi di Spagna (ob, 2), Turin, Gerbino, spr. 1849; La spia, ossia Il merciaiuolo americano (F. Romani, after J.F. Cooper: The Spy), Turin, Sutera, 5 March 1850; La regina di Leone, ovvero Una legge spagnola (op semiseria, 3, G. Giachetti), Venice, Apollo, 22 Feb 1851; La figlia del proscritto (melodramma, 4, A. Codebò), Turin, Carignano, 22 Nov 1851; Alina, o Il matrimonio di una cantante (op semiseria, 2, Giachetti), Turin, Nazionale, 19 Oct 1853; La vergine di Kent (dramma, 4, G. Prati), Turin, Regio, 1 March 1856, rev. as Giuditta di Kent, Senigallia, Fenice, Aug 1857; Vasconcello (os, 3, T. Solera), Venice, Fenice, 18 March 1858; Una notte di festa (os, 3, Solera), Venice, Fenice, 15 Feb 1859; rev. as Emmanuele Filiberto, 1863; Bianca degli Albizzi (tragedia, 3, Marcello), Milan, Scala, 18 March 1865

WILLIAM ASHBROOK/HELEN GREENWALD

Villano

(Sp.: ‘villain’, ‘peasant’; It. villan di Spagna).

A sung dance popular in Spain and Italy during the 16th and 17th centuries. Diego Sánchez de Badajoz mentioned it with the canary in the Farsa de Sancta Bárbara (in his Recopilación en metro, Seville, 1554), and Francisco de Salinas gave its melody in De musica libri septem (1577/R, p.296). There are numerous literary references from the 17th century, in works of Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Calderón and others. Its choreography was described by Esquivel in Discursos sobre el arte del dançado (1642/R); Briçeño, in his Método mui facilissimo (1626), provided guitar music and text for two examples, each with a two-line refrain and two four-line strophes. A manuscript in the Biblioteca Riccardiana (I-Fr 2973 [III]) gives guitar chords for what appears to be a four-line refrain, but most refrain texts are similar to Briçeño’s first example:

Al villano que le dan
La çebolla con el pan

The music of the villano is built on the recurring harmonic pattern I–IV–I–V–I (a progression used also in the canary, sarabande and passamezzo moderno) with various discant melodies added. The lower staff of ex.1 shows a typical guitar accompaniment, which spans four lines of text (the melody on the top staff actually continues for four more phrases in the manuscript). For comparison, ex.2 presents an Italian keyboard version, with sufficient music to fit six lines of poetry (corresponding chords have half the note value of those in ex.1). Chordal villanos for the five-course Spanish guitar appear in at least 25 Italian tablatures between 1606 (Montesardo) and 1677 (Ricci). Giamberti included a Villan de Spagna among his instrumental duos of 1657 (repr. 1664, 1677 and 1689). The Bentivoglio manuscript (US-SFsc) contains an example for lute, and the third edition of Matteo Coferati’s Corona di sacre canzoni (1710) gives a discant melody (repr. in AcM, xliv, 1972, p.213). Spanish sources include guitar villanos by Sanz (1674), Ruiz de Ribayaz (1677) and Guerau (1694), a set of keyboard variations in Martín y Coll’s collection (E-Mn 1360) and a choral setting with text (E-Mn 1370). The villano may still be found in the folk music of Spain (see Spain, §II, 4).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

F. Pedrell: ‘Folk-lore musical castillan du XVIe siècle’, SIMG, i (1899–1900), 372–400

E. Cotarelo y Mori: Colección de entremeses (Madrid, 1911), pp.cclxiii–cclxv

M. Querol Gavaldá: La música en las obras de Cervantes (Barcelona, 1948), 125–7

M. Querol Gavaldá: ‘El villano de la época de Cervantes y Lope de Vega y su supervivencia en el folklore contemporáneo’, AnM, xi (1956), 25–6

M. García Matos: ‘Viejas canciones y melodías en la música instrumental popular de las danzas procesionales practicadas aún en España’, Miscelánea en homenaje a Monseñor Higinio Anglés (Barcelona, 1958–61), i, 290–1

J.C. Escudero: ‘La méthode pour la guitare de Luis Briçeño’, RdM, li (1965), 142–3

R. Hudson: ‘The Music in Italian Tablatures for the Five-Course Spanish Guitar’, JLSA, iv (1971), 21–42

RICHARD HUDSON

Villanueva (Conroy), Mariana

(b Mexico City, 8 April 1964). Mexican composer. She began studying music in Mexico with Lavista (1982–4) and in the composition workshop of the National Music Research, Documentation and Information Centre, where she had classes with Daniel Catán, Julio Estrada and Federico Ibarra. Later, she studied at the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh with Lukas Foss, Leonardo Balada and Robert Page. There she won the first prizes for composition (1989) and orchestral composition (1985). She has also had scholarships from the Rockefeller Foundation (1995) and from the Mexican government (1993, 1996).

Her output, still quite small, represents a synthesis of various elements which converge to form a style both eclectic and personal. Starting from a careful use of intervallic developments and of complex rhythmic configurations which link her to Mexican composers such as Revueltas, Villanueva's works tend, in her own words, to reflect ‘that gigantic force, magnificent and supreme, which nourishes all living creatures’, an image which has inspired works such as Anabacoa, Ritual, Prometeo and Anamnésis, and which situates Villanueva alongside other Mexican composers wishing to convey in their music the existential dilemmas of the fin de siècle.

WORKS

Incid. music: La casa de Bernarda Alba (F. García Lorca), 1990; Antígona (Sophocles), 1991

Orch: Anabacoa, 1992; Ritual, 1995

Other inst: Cantar de un alma ausente, cl, 1986; Canto nocturno, a fl, 1986; Otoñal, pf, 1987; Serpere, str qt, 1987; Windows, pf, 1988; Canto fúnebre, ob, perc, 1991; Birds' Songs, fl, tape, 1992; Canto obscuro, vn, 1992; Lamentaciones, pf trio, 1993; Prometeo encadenado, ob, chbr ens, 1995; Tocata tropical, pf, 1995; Anamnésis, cl, str qt, 1996

RICARDO MIRANDA-PÉREZ

Villanueva, Martín de

(d Valladolid, 2 June 1605). Spanish composer and organist. In 1586 he was among the first Hieronymite monks to be brought to the monastery of El Escorial specifically because of their musical skills. He sang the polyphonic passions in Holy Week 1587 together with Gaspar de León, Pedro Marín, Bartholomé de Santiago and Pedro de Alcalá. On 29 October 1589 he was professed a second time at El Escorial where he served the community as corrector mayor del canto, organist, archivist and keeper of the relics. He became a confidant of El Escorial's founder Philip II, even attending to the monarch on his deathbed, and was the only musician to be named in the king's last will. On the composer's death in the Hieronymite monastery of Nuestra Señora del Prado in Valladolid, he was mourned by Philip III, Queen Doña Margarita and their courtiers and ministers.

Villanueva's masses are written for alternatim performance, and are scored for four voices of which the tenor quotes a plainsong cantus firmus in notes of equal duration at about the tempo plainsong was performed at El Escorial. The pieces employ an unusual notational device in which the cantus firmus is written in black neumes which, despite their arrangement in ligatures, must all be read as semibreves. The voice ranges rarely exceed an octave and imitation is cast in a subservient and decorative role. It seems that Villanueva developed this rather uninspired and thoroughly orthodox style in response to the wishes of Philip II.

WORKS

Edition: Obras completas, ed. J. Sierra (San Lorenzo de Escorial, 1997) [S]

Misa de nuestra Señora, 4vv, S; Misa de los dobles maiores, 4vv, ed. Noone; Kyrie, 4vv, S; Christus factus est, 4vv, S; Teth: Cogitavit Dominus, 4vv, S; Jesum Nazarenum, 4vv, S; Non in die festo, 4vv, S; Miserere mei, 4vv, S; Positus Jesus, 4vv, S

BIBLIOGRAPHY

StevensonSCM

E. Casares, ed.: Francisco Asenjo Barbieri: Biografías y documentos sobre música y músicos españoles, Legado Barbieri, i (Madrid, 1986)

R. Stevenson: ‘Spanish Polyphonists in the Age of the Armada’, Inter-American Music Review, xii/2 (1991–2), 17–114, esp. 63–4

M. Noone: Music and Musicians in the Escorial Liturgy under the Habsburgs (1563 to 1700) (Rochester, NY, 1998)

J. Sierra: ‘La supuesta intervención de Felipe II en la polifonia contrarreformista’, Felipe II y su época: actas del Simposium, i (Madrid, 1998), 169–240

MICHAEL NOONE

Villar, Rogelio del

(b León, 13 Nov 1875; d Madrid, 4 Nov 1937). Spanish composer, teacher and musicologist. A follower of nationalism in its most direct phase, he investigated the folk music of his native region and at once used popular rhythms and melodies in orchestral, vocal, chamber and piano works; however, in some of his songs, settings of classical and Romantic Spanish poets, he cultivated an elegant and refined salon style. Two of his three quartets are based on Leónese folk music, whose characteristics brought out Villar's innate lyricism, melancholy and nostalgia, qualities for which he became known as ‘the Spanish Grieg’. From 1919 until the beginning of the Civil War (1936–9) he was a professor at the Madrid Conservatory, where he defended the Spanish music of his generation. In 1928 he founded the magazine Ritmo, in which, as in his books and essays, he inveighed against the most recent musical trends, supporting tonality, melody as the basis of all music, and the essentiality of a functional modal harmony derived from national folk music. Nevertheless, he was an ardent defender of Falla and of his most daring work, the Concerto for harpsichord and five instruments.

WORKS

(selective list)

Orch: Suite romántica, 1907; Las hilanderas, 1915; Escenas populares, 1917; Egloga, 1919

Other works: 3 str qts; Canciones leonesas, 5 sets; many other songs; pf pieces

Principal publishers: Dotesio, Fuentes, Unión Musical Española, Vidal, Llimona & Boceta

WRITINGS

‘El anillo de los Nibelungos’ de Wagner (Madrid, 1914)

El sentimiento nacional en la música española (Madrid, 1917)

Músicos españoles (Madrid, 1918)

Teóricos y músicos (Madrid, 1920)

Soliloquios de un músico español (Madrid, 1923)

La armonia en la música contemporánea (Madrid, 1927)

Falla y su concierto de cámara (Madrid, 1932)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

V. Blanquet and M. Antonia: ‘Algunos aspectos del nacionalismo y regionalismo musical en Castilla’, España en la música de occidente: Salamanca 1985, ii, 231–9

E. Franco: ‘Regelio del Villar, íntimo y lejano: notas en su centenario’, Cuadernos de música y teatro, ii (1988), 23–48 [incl. list of works]

ENRIQUE FRANCO

Villa Rojo, Jesús

(b Brihuega, Guadalajara, 24 Feb 1940). Spanish composer and clarinettist. He studied at the Madrid Conservatory, where his teachers included Cristóbal Halffter for composition; in 1965 he received a grant to study with Jesús Bal y Gay. After graduating in 1967 he spent a year teaching the clarinet, then studied further with Boris Porena at the Accademia Chigiana, Siena (1969), and with Franco Evangelisti and Petrassi at the Accademia di S Cecilia, Rome (1970–72).

Villa Rojo performed with ensembles including Nuova Consonanza, the Forum Players and Nuove Forme Sonore from the early 1970s, and in 1975 founded the ensemble Laboratorio de Interpretación Musical (LIM). Iconoclastic to an exceptional degree, on becoming director of the last-named he gained immediate attention by breaking decisively with the static aesthetic that had dominated performance in Spanish musical life. In his dual role of performer and director he has always been at pains to facilitate communication between a work and its audience.

His earliest works – Cuatro movimientos for wind quintet (1967), Música sobre un tema for instrumental ensemble and Sonata for clarinet and piano (both 1968) – reveal a predilection for eliminating the superfluous and a tendency towards the abstract and experimentation with sound as the organizing principles of his work. While not rejecting his traditional training, he quickly found his own direction. To the years spent in Siena and Rome belong Musica para obtener equis resultados (1969), for a single performer on clarinet and piano, and Variations (1970), for an ensemble of unspecified instruments, in which there are early indications of the path he took later with the series of Juegos gráfico-musicales. Among his compositions of the 1980s are a number of multi-media works, such as En el centro del ciclón, RND Draw and Sombras y luces para una improvisación; later outstanding electro-acoustic works include the tape composition Caminando por el sonido (1991).

In 1994 Villa Rojo's work was recognized by the award of the National Music Prize for Composition. As director of the Centro para la Difusión de la Música Contemporánea (1995–7) he has played an important role as an organizer, performer, and disseminator of experimental music by many Spanish and foreign composers. The importance of his work, above all in matters involving new techniques and sound possibilities realized in different media, lies in its application of theoretical and conceptual principles to practical execution.

Among Villa Rojo's writings, El clarinete y sus posibilidades (1975) examines new techniques designed to broaden the performing capabilities of the clarinet. Juegos gráfico-musicales (1982), a study encapsulating some years of work and research on new approaches to composition, contains analyses (from a graphic and interpretative viewpoint) and editions of the works with the same title composed between 1972 and 1975.

WORKS

orchestral

Formas y fases, cl, chbr orch, 1971; Formas planas, str, 1972; Diálogos posibles, chbr orch, 1973; Derivaciones espaciales y temporales, 1974; Conc. grosso no.1, ob, cl, bn, str, 1975; Rupturas, 1975–6; Conc. grosso no.2, pf, vib, clvd, chbr orch, 1976; Vn Conc., 1977; Conc. grosso no.3, hn, tpt, trbn, chbr orch, 1978; Continuo, 1979; Antilogía, 1979–80; Vc Conc., 1982–3; Cl Conc. (Quasi un solo), 1989–91; Concierto plateresco, ob, str, 1995–7

vocal

Choral: 2 piezas sacras (liturgical texts), chorus, 1969; Girando sobre diversos centros, chorus, insts, 1972; Juegos gráfico-musicales V, chorus, 1974; Cant., S, B, spkr, chorus, fl, ob, vn, vc, org, 1995

Solo vocal: Juegos gráfico-musicales II, 1v, 1972 [also version for trbn]; Juegos gráfico-musicales IV, 1v, cl, trbn, db, 1972 [also version for str qt]; Apuntes para una realización abierta, 1v, cl, perc, pf, 1975; Ellos, 1v, fl, trbn, vc, perc, 1976; Cantar con Federico (F. García Lorca), 1v, fl, 1986; Cantar con Federico, Mez, orch, 1996–8 [also version for 1v, fl]; Passacaglia y cante, tape/2 flamenco cantaores, orch, 1997–8

chamber

Chbr: 4 movimientos, wind qnt, 1967; Música sobre un tema, fl, ob, tpt, bn, 1968; Sonata, cl, pf, 1968; Música para obtener equis resultados, cl + pf, 1969; Música sobre unos módulos, 2 fl, va, 1969; 4 +, 4 cl, 1970; Tiempos, str qt, 1970; Variations (1970); Juegos gráfico-musicales III: Estructuras no.1, 4 wind/4 brass, 1972; Juegos gráfico-musicales III: Estructuras no.2, 1972; Juegos gráfico-musicales IV, str qt, 1972; Planificaciones, cl, bn, tpt, trbn, vn, vc, 1972; Espaciado rítmico, pf qt, 1975; Lineal-secco, str qt, 1975; Nosotros, vn, cl, perc, pf, 1976’

Vosotros y … , cl, fl, bn, hn, trbn, vib, vn, vc, db, 1977; Acordar, trbn, perc, 1978; Klim, 5 cl, 1978; Y también, vn, cl, vc, pf, 1978–9; Eglogas, 3 tpts, 3 hns, 3 trbns, 1979; Divertimento no.1, vn, vc, 1981; Espirales, fl, cl, bn, hn, trbn, vn, va, vc, 1983; Lineas convergentes, 5 sax, 1984; Recordando a Bártok, vn, cl, pf, 1986; A modo de tiento, cl, vn, vc, perc, pf, 1988; Recordando a Falla, fl, ob, cl, vn, vc, clvd, 1989; Glosas a Sebastián Durón, fl, ob, cl, vn, vc, 1990; Tango-Vals-Ragtime, fl, cl, vn, vc, pf, 1995; Septeto, cl, bn, tpt, trbn, vn, vc, db, 1997–8

Solo inst: 9 piezas breves, pf, 1968–9; Juegos gráfico-musicales II, trbn, 1972; Juegos gráfico-musicales VI, str inst, 1974; Juegos gráfico-musicales VII, kbd, 1976; Dimensiones, fl, 1981; Temples, gui, 1981; Eclipse, sax, 1982; 6 pinceladas, gui, 1984; Invenciones, gui, 1988; Pieza de estudio, pf, 1995

other works

Indeterminate works: Obtener variantes, 1971; Juegos gráfico-musicales I, 4 groups insts, 1972; Material sonoro I–IV, 1979; Variaciones sin tema, V, insts, 1988

Tape: Hoyada, db, tape, 1981; Cartas a Génica V, tape, 1983; La flor de California, cl, tape, 1987; Historias en el aire, vn, cl, vc, pf, tape, 1987–8; Vocabulario en LA, 4 S/(S, tape), 1988; Lamento, t sax, tape, 1989

Multi-media: Hombre aterrorizado-dor (M. Bayo), actor, cl, light; Latidos urbanos, insts, video, 1984; Sugerencias plástico-sonoras I, insts, video, 1984, Caminando por el sonido, tape (1991)

WRITINGS

‘El indefinido mundo del intérprete’, Sonda, no.7 (1974)

El clarinete y sus posibilidades (Madrid, 1975, 2/1984)

‘Autoanálisis’, 14 compositores españoles de hoy, ed. E. Casares (Oviedo, 1982)

Juegos gráfico-musicales (Madrid, 1982)

‘La grafía: problemática de la composición actual’, A tempo, xvii (1984), 11–19

‘La nueva grafía musical’, Colóquio-artes, lxvi/Sept (1985)

ed.: LIM 75–85: síntesis de una década (Madrid, 1985)

‘¿Precisión o imprecisión en mi labor compositiva?’, La musica, no.14 (1986)

Lectura musical, i: Nuevos sistemas de grafía musical (Madrid, 1988)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

T. Marco: ‘Antología de la música española actual’, Bellas artes, vii–viii (1972)

M.C. de Celis: ‘El paraíso abierto de Jésus Villa-Rojo’, Estafeta literaria (15 March 1974)

T. Marco: Historia general de la música, iv: El siglo XX (Madrid, 1978)

X.M. Carreira: ‘Juegos gráfico-musicales’, Músicos, xviii (1983)

T. Marco: Historia de la música española: siglo XX (Madrid, 1983)

X.M. Carreira: ‘Aspectos perlocucionarios en la obra de Jésus Villa-Rojo’, España en la música de occidente: Salamanca 1985, 479–97

D. Tortora: Nuova consonanza: trent'anni di musíca contemporánea in Italia, 1959–1998 (Lucca, 1990)

X.M. Carreira: Jésus Villa-Rojo (Madrid, 1995)

M. Cureses: LIM 85–95: una síntesis de la música contemporánea en España (Madrid, 1996)

MARTA CURESES

Villarosa, Marquis of.

See Rosa, carlantonio de.

Villarroel, Verónica

(b Santiago, 2 Oct 1965). Chilean soprano. After studying at the Juilliard School, New York, with Ellen Faull and privately with Renata Scotto, her mentor, she made her stage début as Musetta (to Scotto’s Mimì) at the Teatro Municipale, Santiago, in 1986. In 1988 she was winner of the Pavarotti Prize and in 1989 of the Metropolitan Auditions. Villarroel made her European début, as Fiordiligi, in Barcelona in 1990 and her Metropolitan début, as Mimì, in 1991; she has since appeared successfully at the Metropolitan as Violetta, which she has also performed at Covent Garden and elsewhere in the USA and Europe, her sympathetic personality and warm, expressive voice suiting her well for the role. She has performed zarzuelas in various centres with Domingo, taking the role of Cecilia alongside him in Carlos Gomes’s Il Guarany at Bonn in 1994 and subsequently recording the work. Villarroel’s repertory also includes Luisa Miller, Gounod’s Marguerite and Butterfly.

ALAN BLYTH

Villate, (Montes) Gaspar

(b Havana, 27 Jan 1851; d Paris, 9 Oct 1891). Cuban composer. After early music studies in Havana, he emigrated with his family to the USA in 1868. He returned to Cuba in 1871 and two years later went to Paris, where he continued his musical studies with Bazin, Victorien Joncières and Dannhauser. During the next few years, back in Havana, he composed his elegant piano Contradanzas (1873) and several habaneras and romanzas, which constitute his brief encounter with truly Cuban music. Otherwise almost totally divorced from Cuban musical nationalism, his style, particularly in his operas, which are based on French, Venetian, Roman and Russian subjects, is strongly Romantic, influenced by Meyerbeer and early Verdi. He stayed for long periods in Europe, mainly in Paris, and his operas had European premières.

WORKS

most MSS in Havana, Museo Nacional de la Música

I primi armi di Richelieu (4), unperf.; Doña Inés de Castro (4, d’Ormeville), Madrid, Jovellanos, 1868; Zilia, ossia Odio ed amore (4, T. Solera), Paris, Italien, 1 Dec 1877; La czarine (4, A. Sylvestre), The Hague, Royal, 2 Feb 1880; Baldassare (4, C. d’Ormeville, after G. Gómez de Avellaneda), Madrid, Real, 28 Feb 1885; Cristoforo Colombo, 1884–6 (prol., 3, epilogue, A. Lauzières-Themines), lost; Lucifer, 1887–9 (5), inc., frags. C-HABn

Other works: Marche des petits pompiers, orch, 1878; Contradanzas, pf, 1873; 8 waltzes, pf; Soirées cubaines, pf; Adiós a Cuba, S, pf, 1876; Sérénade havanaise, S, pf, 1876; Misa nupcial, S, T, B, chorus, org, 1878

BIBLIOGRAPHY

S. Ramírez: La Habana artística (Havana, 1891)

A. Carpentier: La música en Cuba (Mexico City, 1946, 3/1988)

E. Pérez Sanjurjo: Historia de la música cubana (Miami, 1986), 573–7

AURELIO DE LA VEGA

Villaverde Redondo, Enrique Manuel

(b Cañizar, Guadalajara, 16 July 1702; d Oviedo, 4 May 1774). Spanish composer. From 1714 to 1724 he was at Toledo Cathedral, where he performed with a small group of boy singers (the ‘seise’) and was a pupil of Miguel de Ambiela and probably also of the organists Jacinto del Río, Matías Solana and Joaquín Martínez de la Roca. On 24 May 1724 he was appointed maestro de capilla of Oviedo Cathedral. He held the post for almost half a century, during which time the cathedral experienced a golden period, in terms of both religious activity and musical composition. In April 1735 he was ordained priest. Villaverde Redondo may have harboured anti-Italian sentiments for he refused to adapt two masses and some vespers which the precentor of Oviedo Cathedral had brought from Italy. Similar behaviour was recorded in the chapter records of 1751, 1755 and 1757.

Of the 179 works attributed to Villaverde Redondo in various inventories, only 14 survive, in the cathedrals of Oviedo, Astorga and Zamora, and in Piedrahita, Avila. The surviving works, all sacred, represent a number of compositional styles: a cappella (Salve regina and Magnificat), music for voices with basso continuo (Pange lingua) and music for one or two choirs with instrumental accompaniment (Homo natus de muliere and Parce mihi). The works for solo voice, for example the lamentations, are technically more advanced, with ornamented melodies and some elements of gallantry. Some of the works setting Spanish texts use four sopranos in unison.

WORKS

Edition: Enrique Villaverde: obra musical, ed. I. Quintanal, Servicio de Publicaciones del Principado de Asturias (Oviedo, 1986)

latin sacred

Parce mihi, 6vv, 2 vn, vle, clvds, ?1725, Archivo de la iglesia parroquial de Piedrahita, Avila

Homo natus de muliere (motete de difuntos), 4vv, ob, vns, bn, bc (vle and clvd), 1733, Archivo de la iglesia parroquial de Piedrahita, Avila

Miserere, S, A, T, 4vv, ob, 2 vn, bn, bc (vle and clvd), 1737, Archivo de la iglesia parroquial de Piedrahita, Avila

Quomodo obscuratum est (lamentación segunda del Viernes Santo), S, acc., 1745, E-OV

Incipit oratio Jeremiae prophetae (lamentación tercera del Viernes Santo), S, acc., 1745, OV

Pange lingua, 8vv in two choirs, bc (vle and org), 1758, ZAc

Misa breve ad libitum para festividades de Nuestra Señora por término de chirimías, 4vv, 1764, OV

Magnificat, 4vv, acc., ed. in Monumentos Históricos de la Música Española, i (Madrid, 1977), OV

Salve Regina, 4vv, OV

vernacular sacred

Que hoy Belén se abrasa (pastoral de Nochebuena, cantada al Nacimiento), T, 4vv, 2 ob, 2 vn, bc (vle and other inst), 1741, Archivo de la iglesia parroquial de Piedrahita, Avila

Ese mar de finura soberana (cantada sola al Santísimo), S, 4vv (all S), 2 vn, acc., 1762, E-AS

Puerto y guía, Señor (cantada al Santísimo), S, 4vv (all S), 2 vn, acc., 1762, AS

Alto Señor (cantada sola al Santísimo), S, 4vv (all S), 2 vn, acc., 1763, AS

Corazón, pues tu quisiste (coplas al desengaño de la vida humana), 4vv, bc (vle and other inst), 1769, AS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Quintanal: ‘Enrique Villaverde’, RdMc, i (1978), 124–90

I. Quintanal: Textos y estudios del siglo XVIII, xi: La música en la Catedral de Oviedo en el siglo XVIII (Oviedo, 1983)

BEATRIZ MARTÍNEZ DEL FRESNO

Villeneuve, Alexandre de

(b Hyères, 24 May 1677; d ?Paris, after 1756). French composer. He was a chorister at the primatal church of St Trophime in Arles from 10 April 1697, and was maître de chapelle there from 15 November 1701. In December 1706 he became maître de musique in Paris with the Jesuits in the rue St Jacques. His cantata Thétis was performed on 4 January 1712 by the chapel of the Count of Toulouse to celebrate the count's recovery of health. In 1726 Villeneuve applied without success to succeed Lalande as sous-maître de chapelle of the royal chapel at Versailles. However, his Premier concert spirituel was performed before the queen in 1727, and his Epithalame for the marriage of the infante of Spain to the infanta of Portugal was performed on 18 April 1728. His opéra-ballet, La Princesse d'Elide (1728), was only moderately successful. Villeneuve's sole writing on music was the Nouvelle méthode which is particularly useful for the study of ornamentation in Rameau's cantatas.

The man responsible for the manuscript of M. Marais' Pièces de viole ajustées pour le pardessus de viole à cinq cordes par Mr de Villeneuve, 1759 (F-Pn) is probably Jean-Pierre de Villeneuve, an 18th-century dilettante. The André-Jacques Villeneuve cited by Fétis is undoubtedly the same person as Alexandre de Villeneuve.

WORKS

printed works published in Paris

sacred vocal

Livre de musique d'église qui contient les 9 leçons de Ténèbres, le Miserere, 6 motets pour le saint-sacrement (1719)

Premier concert spirituel, 1–4vv, insts (1727) [Ps xcvi, trans. S.-J. Pellegrin]

Numerous lost sacred works, see Bonfils and Durand

secular vocal

Thétis (cant, A. de La Motte), Paris, 4 Jan 1712, lost

Le voyage de Cythère (cant), 1v, insts (1727)

Epithalame [Hymen, Amour, allumez vos flambeaux] (A. Nadal), Paris, 18 April 1728, lost

La Princesse d'Elide (ballet-héroïque, prol, 3, Pellegrin), Paris, Opéra, 20 July 1728 (1728)

Les quatre saisons, 1734, lost

Divertissement pour l'Ambassadeur de Turquie, S, B, 4vv, fl, ob, tpt, str, bc (1742)

Airs in Recueil d'airs sérieux et à boire (1709, 1709, 1710, 1718); Mercure galant (March 1710); and Mercure de France (Dec 1733)

instrumental

Conversations en manière de sonates, fl/vn, bc, op.1 (1733/R)

Conversations en manière de sonates, 2 fl/vn/viol, op.2 (1733/R)

theoretical works

Nouvelle méthode … pour aprendre la musique et les agréments du chant (Paris, 1733)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

EitnerQ

FétisB

MGG1 (J. Bonfils and H.-A. Durand)

F. Raugel: ‘La maîtrise et les orgues de la primatiale Saint-Trophime d’Arles’, RMFC, ii (1961–2), 99–116

M. Benoit: Versailles et les musiciens du Roi, 1661–1733 (Paris, 1971)

M. Cyr: ‘Performing Rameau's Cantatas’, EMc, xi (1983), 480–89

Villeneuve, Louise [Luisa, Luigia]

(fl1786–99). Soprano, active in Italy. According to Zinzendorf’s diary (11 July 1789), she was a pupil of Noverre’s, in which case she was probably the Mlle Villeneuve who was a member of Noverre’s ballet company in Vienna from 1771 to 1774. Her first known appearance as a singer was in 1786 in Milan. In 1788 she appeared in Venice and Milan, singing, among other roles, Amore in Martín y Soler’s L’arbore di Diana. She sang the same role for her début in Vienna on 27 June 1789, successfully replacing Luisa Laschi, the acclaimed original Amore, on account of ‘her charming appearance, her sensitive and expressive acting and her artful, beautiful singing’ (Wiener Zeitung, lii, 1789, p.1673). Mozart supplied arias for her in Cimarosa’s I due baroni (k578) and Martín’s Il burbero di buon cuore (k582–3), and wrote for her Dorabella in Così fan tutte (26 January 1790), alluding in her Act 2 aria to her role as Amore. There is no evidence that, as is often stated, she was the sister of Adriana Ferrarese, who sang Fiordiligi. After leaving Vienna in spring 1791, she resumed her peripatetic singing career in Italy, performing at least until 1799, when she appeared in Venice.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

SartoriL

O. Michtner: Das alte Burgtheater als Opernbühne (Vienna, 1970)

G. Zechmeister: Die Wiener Theater nächst der Burg und nächst dem Kärntnerthor von 1747 bis 1776 (Vienna, 1971)

D. Link: ‘Così fan tutte: Dorabella and Amore’, MJb 1991, 888–94

D. Link: The National Court Theatre in Mozart’s Vienna: Sources and Documents 1783–1792 (Oxford, 1998)

DOROTHEA LINK

Villers [Vilers, Villa], Antoine de

(fl 1547–56). French composer. 18 chansons are attributed to him in anthologies printed by Le Roy & Ballard between 1553 and 1556. Another chanson (Au feu d’amour), published by Attaingnant in 1547 with attribution to ‘De Villa’ may also be by him. One further piece, the sacred contrafactum Le pelican de la forest, appeared in Haultin’s anthology of sacred chansons (RISM 1578⁴). The four-voice chansons in Le Roy & Ballard’s fifth book (1556¹⁴) all set folklike poems (one is designated ‘chanson poitevine’) in a predominantly syllabic manner; they abound in short note values, including groups of semifusae which were still rare in the contemporary chanson. The 13 two-voice chansons published with attribution to ‘Villers’ are arrangements of four-voice models, mostly published during the 1540s by composers of the previous generation – Certon, Crecquillon, Gentian, Jacotin, Janequin, Maillard, Maille and Sandrin – but they include reductions of Villers’ own chansons Au feu d’amour and Que gaignez-vous. Ten of these songs (excluding the arrangements of Villers’ own works) were reprinted in 1578.

Le Roy & Ballard and Haultin distinguished Antoine de Villers from P. de Villiers, but it is not known whether Antoine was related to a François de Villers, maître des enfants at Amiens and chantre ordinaire to the brotherhood of Notre Dame du Puy in 1543–4.

WORKS

6 chansons, 4vv, 1547⁹ (attrib. De Villa), 1553²³ (attrib. De Vilers), 1556¹⁴ (attrib. Ant. de Villers)

13 chansons, 2vv, c1555²⁴; 9 ed. B. Thomas, Adrian Le Roy & Robert Ballard: Premier livre de chansons à deux parties, 1578 (London, 1977), with incorrect attribution to [Pierre] de Villiers

Chanson spirituelle, 4vv, 1578⁴ (contrafactum)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

MGG1 (F. Lesure)

F. Lesure and G. Thibault: Bibliographie des éditions d’Adrian le Roy & Robert Ballard (1551–1598) (Paris, 1955); suppl., RdM, xl (1957), 166–72

FRANK DOBBINS

Villesavoye, Paul [de]

(b Paris, 1683; d Strasbourg, 28 May 1760). French teacher and composer. He worked at Lyons from 1703 as a music teacher, and it seems likely that when the Académie des Beaux-Arts was founded there in 1713 Villesavoye was associated with it. He may have become maître de musique for the academy in 1718, on the resignation of N.-A. Bergiron de Briou from that post; he was certainly appointed director of its concerts in 1726. In their early years these were given only by academicians, taught and rehearsed by the maître de musique, but this amateur music-making gradually gave way to more professional performances. Among the few professional singers at the academy during Villesavoye's time was his second wife, Suzanne Palais, whom he married in 1707. About 1731 he left Lyons for Strasbourg where he became maître de musique at the cathedral. While holding that appointment he directed the festival music for a visit of Louis XV to Strasbourg on 8 October 1744.

His output was small. The Idylle héroïque, ou le Retour de Pyrrhus Néoptolème en Epire après le siège de Troye was presented at the Académie des Beaux-Arts at Lyons in 1718, with a libretto by Nicolas Barbier (who may have written the text of Rameau's cantata Les amants trahis). There is a copy of the Idylle héroïque at Lyons, but a Kyrie and a Gloria once held by the academy's library there are now lost. Ballard published a cantatille (Enfin la nature) and an air (Forcé d'aimer une inhumaine) by Villesavoye in the collections of 1716 and 1717. (L. Vallas: Un siècle de musique et de théâtre à Lyon, 1688–1789, Lyons, 1932/R)

DAVID TUNLEY

Villiers, P. [?Pierre] de

(fl 1532–c1550). French composer. According to Lesure, a Pierre de Villiers was canon at Cambrai Cathedral in 1516. But the name is a common one and there is no proof that he was identical with the ‘P. de Villiers’ most of whose music (52 chansons, six motets, two madrigals and one mass) was published by Jacques Moderne at Lyons between 1532 and 1543. 14 of the four-voice chansons were reprinted in Paris by Attaingnant, who also introduced 17 unica between 1536 and 1548. Du Chemin published three new chansons (1549–50) and Le Roy & Ballard a further two for two and three voices (1553–5). After that, however, there arises some confusion with Antoine de Villers. Although Moderne specified ‘P. de Villiers’, Attaingnant and Du Chemin generally gave only ‘Villiers’ or ‘de Villiers’. Le Roy & Ballard used the same forms, but ‘Antoine de Villers’ appears in their fifth book (1556) as well as ‘Villers’, ‘De Villers’ and ‘De Viliers’ in their other publications of about the same date.

P. de Villiers was probably resident at Lyons in the late 1530s; one chanson, Lo meissony sur lo sey, is in a local dialect, and others are settings of poets resident in the city (Du Guillet, Scève and Sainte-Marthe). In a mystery play printed at Lyons in 1538, the humanist, writer and director of the Collège de la Trinité, Barthélemy Aneau suggested Villiers' Le dueil issu as a timbre for a noël mystic whose second stanza introduces the pun on his name, ‘Le Rossignol vy lier par accords’. His friendship with Aneau and also with Charles de Sainte-Marthe suggests that Villiers might have taught music at the Collège de la Trinité; the symbolism of his canonic three-voice Missa de Beata Virgine, subtitled ‘Trinitas in unitates’, might have more than the usual religious significance. The composer may have visited Augsburg (a city closely associated with the Lyons book trade) in the early 1540s, since his seven-voice motet Sancte Stephane praises a prominent prelate ‘civibus Auguste gloria’, and his four-voice lament Tundite vos musae was published there by Philipp Ulhard.

Villiers' interest in contrapuntal devices is demonstrated by the canonic chanson Elle est m'amye, as well as the Missa de Beata Virgine. All his motets adhere to the principle of pervading imitation and even his courtly chansons are generally more akin to those in the contrapuntal style of Flemish masters than to the more homophonic style of the Parisians. These chansons, however, show a typically French sensitivity to declamation and balanced prosody (using one musical phrase for a line of text and frequently reflecting the poetic form).

WORKS

sacred

Missa de Beata Virgine (‘Trinitas in unitate’), 3vv, 1540¹; ed. in Dobbins (1992)

Motets: Ante portam Jherusalem, 4vv, 1532¹¹, ed. in Pogue, 375; Benedicat nos, 4vv, 1539⁴; Ecce vere Israelita, 4vv, 1539⁴, ed. in Pogue, 382; Regina coeli, 6vv, 1542⁵; Sancte Stephane, 7vv, 1542⁵, p. ed. in Pogue, 393; Tundite vos musae, 4vv, 1545² (attrib. Piere Vuilliers)

chansons

for 4 voices unless otherwise stated

Edition: Thirty-Six Chansons by French Provincial Composers (1529–1550), ed. L. Miller, RRMR, xxxviii (1981) [M]

Amour et mort, 1550⁷ (attrib. ‘Villiers’); Apres avoir longuement attendu, 1547¹¹; Autant que moy heureuse, 1540¹², M; Celles coulleurs, 1543¹⁴; Ce n'est pas moy, 1538¹⁵, ed. in Dobbins (1972); Craignant amour, 1547¹¹; Cueur sans mercy, 1538¹⁶, M; Dame qui as, 1541⁸; D'une dame je suys saisy, 1538¹⁰; Elle est m'amye, 5vv, 1538¹⁶, M, and ed. in Dobbins (1972); En grant douleur, 1538¹⁵; Est-il heureux, 1547¹¹; Est-il ung [nul] mal, 1540¹²; Fault-il pour ung verre cassé, 1547¹¹; Force d'amour souvent (C. de Sainte-Marthe), 1541⁸, M and ed. in Dobbins (1972); Je n’entendz pas, 1548³; Je n'oserois le penser (P. Du Guillet), ed. in Dobbins (1992)

La grant doulceur, 1549²⁷; Languissant suis, 1540¹²; Las je ne sçay, 1538¹⁶; Las plus je viz, 1541⁸; Le cler soleil, D-Mbs Mus.ms.1508; Le dueil issu, 1538¹⁷; Le temps me vengera, 1538¹⁶; Le veoir, l'ouyr (M. Scève), 1540¹³, ed. in Dobbins (1972); L'heur et malheur (C. Marot or M. de Saint-Gelais), ed. in Pogue, 379; L'heureux soucy, 1547¹²; Lo meissony sur lo sey, 1541⁷, ed. in Pogue, 387; L'yver sera, 2vv, c1555²⁴; Monsieur l'abbé (C. Marot), 1549²⁷; Mort ou mercy (J. Marot), 1538¹⁶; Nenny desplaist (C. Marot), 1547¹¹; Ne te plains tant, 1536⁴; Plus loin j'en suis, 1538¹⁵; Pour avoir heu de ma dame refus, 1547¹¹; Pourtant si je suis brunette (C. Marot), 3vv, 1553²²

Preste-moy l'ung de tes yeulx biens aprins (François I), 1540¹⁶; Que gaignez vous, 1553²³ (attrib. ‘De Vilers’); Qui de tout bien, 1538¹⁵; Rien n'est plus cher (Sainte-Marthe), 1543¹², M; Si d'ung seul mal, 1541⁸; Si envieulx et faulx raportz, 1543¹⁴; Si le service, 1538¹⁰; Si ton plus grand desir, 1548³; Si tu voulloys, 1541⁷; Si vous avez, 1547¹²; Si vous voulez (C. d'Orléans), 1538¹⁶, ed. in Dobbins (1972); Tristesse, ennuy, 1539²⁰, M; Trop plus que (la) mort, 1539²⁰; Ung compaignon, 1538¹⁵; Venus avoit son filz Amour perdu, 1559¹⁴; Veu le grief mal, 1538¹⁷

madrigals

Chi l'eta sua, 4vv; ed. in Pogue, 390

Priegi qui muoia, 4vv, 1538¹⁵; ed. in Dobbins (1972)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

MGG1 (F. Lesure)

S. Pogue: Jacques Moderne, Lyons Music Printer of the Sixteenth Century (Geneva, 1969), 41, 64ff, 375ff

F. Dobbins: The Chanson at Lyons in the Sixteenth Century (diss., U. of Oxford, 1972), i, 64–77, 143; ii, nos.1–7 [transcrs.]

F. Dobbins: Music in Renaissance Lyons (Oxford, 1992)

FRANK DOBBINS

Villiers, Ubert [Hubert] Philippe de

(fl1553–69). French writer and composer. He was secretary to the leading Huguenot Louis de Bourbon, Prince of Condé, from 1557 to the prince’s death in 1569. He published a number of translations from Italian (including Girolamo Parabosco’s Lettere amorose) and original writings, chiefly in Lyons, beginning in 1553. Charles Fontaine (1555) praised his practical and theoretical mastery of the two celestial sciences, ‘Muses’ and ‘Musique’, in a poem that echoes the paen of Charles de Sainte-Marthe (1541) to ‘Villiers, Musicien tresparfaict’. The latter may, however, refer to the elder P. de Villiers. His last known work and only surviving musical composition is Aer funèbre sur la mort de … Loys de Bourbon, Prince de Condé (n.p., 1569). The lament, an early example of the air de cour, begins with a single treble voice representing France addressing Heaven, which replies with a homophonic three-voice chorus for men’s voices with a flexible declamatory rhythm. (F. Dobbins: Music in Renaissance Lyons (Oxford, 1992), 85–6, 186–8)

FRANK DOBBINS

Villifranchi [Villafranchi], Giovanni Cosimo

(b Volterra, 1646; d Florence, 12 March 1699). Italian librettist. His first dramatic work, Amore e politica (1677), which exists only in manuscript (in I-Sc), was a forerunner of the melodrama, a spoken play with incidental music organized in introductory and final scenes. His first published libretto, Amore è veleno e medicina degl’intelletti (Bologna, 1679), was a poetic version of G.B. Ricciardi’s prose comedy Il Trespolo tutore (Bologna, 1669). Villifranchi’s publication of his libretto was intended to counter a gross plagiarism that had been set by Bernardo Pasquini and performed at the Palazzo Colonna in Rome in 1677. Stradella composed a score for the authentic version (retaining Il Trespolo tutore as the title) for a performance in Genoa in 1678 or 1679 and probably for Modena in 1686.

Villifranchi wrote most of the comic librettos staged in the Villa di Pratolino by Prince Ferdinando de’ Medici, whom he also served as personal physician, altogether writing five such works beginning with Lo speziale di villa (1683) and concluding with L’ipocondriaco (1695). He wrote only one serious opera, Filippo Macedone, which has not survived. His comic librettos enjoyed revivals in Florence and Bologna as late as 1743 in settings by G.M. Buini, Chinzer, Lirone and other, unknown, composers.

His importance as a comic-opera librettist has been obscured by the lack of any surviving scores except those of Pasquini and Stradella for Il Trespolo tutore. He was nevertheless the most productive and creative Italian comic librettist in the second half of the 17th century, and also deserves attention as an advocate of simple and natural language. As he wrote in his introduction to L’ipocondriaco, he wished to make ‘verse appear to be prose and music a natural discourse’.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

G.C. Villifranchi: Raccolta di opuscoli del Dr. G. C. V. (Florence, 1737) [incl. at least 8 prols for music]

R. Maffei: Tre vuolterrani: Enrico Ormanni, Giovanni Cosimo Villifranchi, e Mario Guarnacci (Pisa, 1881)

C. Gianturco: ‘Il Trespolo tutore di Stradella e di Pasquini’, Venezia e il melodramma nel settecento: Venice 1973–5, i, 185–98

R.L. and N.W. Weaver: A Chronology of Music in the Florentine Theater, i: 1590–1750 (Detroit, 1978); ii: 1751–1800 (Warren, MI, 1993)

ROBERT LAMAR WEAVER

Villot, Jean.

See Veillot, Jean.

Villoteau, Guillaume André

(b Bellême, 6 Sept 1759; d Tours, 27 April 1839). French writer on music. He attended the maîtrise of Le Mans Cathedral, where he met Le Sueur, and studied oriental languages at the Sorbonne. He was ordained a priest and, as a tenor, joined the maîtrise of Notre Dame on the eve of the Revolution. During the Revolution, however, the maîtrise was suppressed, and he joined the Opéra chorus, soon gaining the post of chorus leader.

In 1798 he went to Egypt as a member of a large scientific group accompanying Napoleon on his Egyptian expedition; this journey determined much of Villoteau’s future career. During two years in Egypt he amassed numerous documents, mainly on music, which he later studied with the aid of the principal Paris libraries. He then published several works, the first of which was Recherches sur l’analogie de la musique avec les arts qui ont pour objet l’imitation du langage (1807): a two-volume work of uneven interest, it combines a vast compilation from ancient writers on Greek, Egyptian and Hebrew music, with some of Villoteau’s more personal theories. He attempted to establish an analogy between music and language: ‘The only difference … between the effects of the two arts is that song makes its appeal directly to the soul, whereas the word … appeals first to the mind’. Because of his moralistic view that music should serve a civilizing (as opposed to a pleasurable) function, he believed that music which portrays nothing has no value, and therefore condemned fugue and symphonic music while praising operatic music. He thus showed himself the true successor of the 18th-century French aestheticians, for whom music was, above all, an imitative art. In explaining his ideas, already conservative when they appeared at the dawn of the Romantic period, he frequently opposed the perspicacious views of Chabanon, whom he refuted in the preface to the first volume of Recherches sur l’analogie. A tightly reasoned argument against Rousseau’s Essai sur l’origine des langues is in the same volume.

Villoteau also wrote the sections on music in the collection Description de l’Egypte. They provide descriptions of music in various Middle Eastern countries, Greece and Egypt (including that of the Arabs and Jews), the music of ancient Egypt, and musical instruments depicted on the sculpture of Egypt’s ancient monuments. Villoteau’s research was in many areas the first of its kind; but his writings, though of remarkable erudition and still useful in some ways, are badly outdated and reveal both his reliance on conjecture and his lack of critical sense. With the exception of Fabre d’Olivet, Villoteau’s contemporaries paid his theories scant attention.

After a notary brought him near to financial ruin, he left Paris for his small house in Tours, where he spent the rest of his life. There he prepared both a Traité de phonétésie, in which he undertook to demonstrate ‘the expressive property of sounds and of the inflections of the human voice’, and a French translation (from the Latin text of Meibom, 1652, rather than the original Greek) of Antiquae musicae auctores septem. He planned but abandoned a dictionary of terms relevant to Egyptian and oriental music.

WRITINGS

Mémoire sur la possibilité et l’utilité d’une théorie exacte des principes naturels de la musique (Paris, 1807)

Recherches sur l’analogie de la musique avec les arts qui ont pour objet l’imitation du langage (Paris, 1807/R)

‘De l’état actuel de l’art musical en Egypte’, ‘Description historique, technique et littéraire des instrumens de musique des orientaux’, ‘Mémoire sur la musique de l’antique Egypte’, ‘Dissertation sur les diverses espèces d’instrumens de musique que l’on remarque parmi les sculptures qui décorent les antiques monumens de l’Egypte’, Description de l’Egypte, ed. E.F. Jomard (Paris, 1809–22, 2/1820–30); pubd separately (Paris, 1812–?16), and in Recueil de tous les mémoires sur la musique des égyptiens et des orientaux (Paris, 1846); Eng. trans., 1994

Musique de l’antique Egypte dans ses rapports avec la poésie et l’éloquence (Brussels, 1830) [extracts from Description de l’Egypte with commentary]

Traité de phonétésie, unpubd, ?lost

2 MSS, F-Pn Rés.2001 (1–2), incl. memoirs and notes on reading

Antiquae musicae auctores septem, Pn [trans. of M. Meibom: Antiquae musicae auctores septem, Amsterdam, 1652/R]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

FétisB

J.L.M. Lecomte: Obituary, Revue et gazette musicale de Paris, vi (1839), suppl. 26, 205

R. Martineau: ‘Un ami de Le Sueur’, Entretiens idéalistes, xiv (1913), 353–7

J. Godwin: L’esotérisme musical en France, 1750–1950 (Paris, 1991; Eng. trans., 1995, as Music and the Occult: French Musical Philosophies, 1750–1950)

JEAN MONGRÉDIEN/KATHARINE ELLIS

Villotta

(It.).

A type of polyphonic song based on a popular tune (or tunes) that originated in the Veneto in about 1520. A substantial repertory spread quickly to Lombardy, Tuscany and Rome, flourishing for about ten years in manuscript and in print. Thereafter villottas were usually published in small quantities within collections. The term is derived from the north Italian dialect word vilòte (‘peasant’), (see Italy, §II, 3). Printers sometimes used the terms ‘villotta’, ‘villanesca’ and ‘villanella’ interchangeably, although linguistic and musical distinctions can be drawn between them (see Villanella).

The earliest four-part arrangements of Italian tunes (‘proto-villottas’) were produced by Franco-Netherlanders active in Italy during the late 15th century (e.g. Obrecht's La tortorella and Compère's Che fa la ramacina). These composers and some Italians of the next generation developed styles of text-setting that have strong affinities with the ‘new’ chanson and chanson rustique, such as points of imitation on declamatory themes, rapid alternation of voice pairs and homorhythmic, chordal textures. Michele Pesenti established a model for the contrapuntal villotta in which fragments of the tune, normally placed intact in the tenor, permeate the other voices (e.g. in Dal lecto me levava, RISM 1504⁴). These textually conceived forerunners are related to the villottas ‘in contrappunto arioso’ of the 1520s, which Torrefranca mistakenly dated some 40 years earlier and called the ‘ramo tardivo’ of the Ars Nova caccia. Important sources of the fully fledged villotta include the Venetian manuscript I-Vnm It.Cl. IV 1795–8, which contains the first pieces called ‘villotta’, and I-Fc Basevi 2440; some villottas are also found in Tuscan sources of the early madrigal (e.g. I-Fn, Magl.XIX.164–7; facs. in RMF, v, 1988).

Villotta texts are consciously rustic in diction and vocabulary, with occasional traces of northern dialects. According to Prizer, this ‘popularizing’ manner was adopted to provide a context for citations of popular material. Villottas typically have free rhyme schemes and shifting line lengths; they may open with alternating rhymes and may have internal rhyming lines. Some villottas conclude with a refrain (nio) set in contrasting metre. Sexually explicit references contribute to a crude and elemental tone, along with curses, threats of cuckolding and imitations of animal sounds; the amorous encounters of low-bred characters in the village or countryside are routine occurrences. Prizer described this as ‘a kind of play of the elite with the popular culture through a distancing from the notions of amour courtois’.

Textual categories within the repertory include quodlibet-villottas (notable examples are found in I-Bc Q21, c1526, in Werrecore's La bataglia taliana, 1549, and in Villotte mantovane, 1583), ingenious treatments of solmization syllables, spirited dance scenes, and satirical attacks on old people. This last type frequently opens with the tenor announcing the tune alone; narrative sections are declaimed in full chordal textures and rhyming lines are set off in dialogue between paired voices (ex.1).

During the 1520s villottas were sung at Ferrarese banquets to enhance comic skits presented by itinerant theatrical troupes: ‘First came the buffoons, Zuan Polo and others, likewise Ruzzante the Paduan, in peasant costumes who did acrobatics and danced very well, and six dressed as vilani putati who sang villotte’ (Marin Sanudo, I diarii, 1524). The ‘beautiful canzoni and madrigals in Paduan style’ that Ruzzante's troupe sang at Ferrara in 1529 probably typify the homophonic and imitative villotta types in circulation at the time. (Lorenzo Zacchia's painting Musical Group with Four Figures inscribes a villotta with refrains popularized in Ruzzante's comedies, and has been interpreted as a tribute to the popular singer and poet.)

In the 1540s a preference arose in Venetian academies for villottas that represented comic characters or situations. Willaert's Un giorno mi pregò una vedovella compares a love affair to navigating through stormy seas, for example, and his Sospiri miei d'oimè dogliorirosi re-creates the stammering of a lovesick suitor. Amusing vocal imitations of cackling and chirping in Barges's Canzon della gallina suggest the antics of Pulcinella. Similar works are found in the first printed collection of villottas, Il primo libro delle villotte (1541), dedicated to Duke Ercole II of Ferrara by the actor Alvise Castellino.

Willaert and his colleagues Perissone Cambio and Nasco who worked in Venetian territories often incorporated elements of the mid-century villotta into their villanesca arrangements (ed. in RRMR, xxx, 1978). The two genres co-exist and overlap stylistically in Azzaiolo's three books of Villotte del fiore (1557¹⁸, 1559¹⁹, 1569²⁴), which contain many familiar tunes and the harmonic patterns traditionally associated with them. His dance-song arrangements gained fame in intabulations (e.g. Ti parti cuor mio caro) and were held up as models by Vincenzo Galilei.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

EinsteinIM

MGG1 (W. Rubsamen)

MGG2 (‘Villanella, villotta’, D.G. Cardamone)

F. Vatielli: Arte e vita musicale a Bologna (Bologna, 1927)

F. Torrefranca: Il segreto del Quattrocento (Milan, 1939)

W.H. Rubsamen: ‘From Frottola to Madrigal: the Changing Pattern of Secular Italian Vocal Music’, Chanson and Madrigal, 1480–1530, ed. J. Haar (Cambridge, MA, 1954), 51–87

N. Pirrotta: ‘Commedia dell'Arte and Opera’, MQ, xli (1955), 305–24

C. Palisca: ‘Vincenzo Galilei and some Links between Pseudo-Monody and Monody’, MQ, xlvi (1960), 344–60

C. Gallico: Un canzoniere musicale italiano del cinquecento (Florence, 1961)

K. Jeppesen: La frottola (Copenhagen, 1968–70)

H.M. Brown: ‘A Cook's Tour of Ferrara in 1529’, RIM, x (1975), 216–41

C. Cunningham: ‘Ensemble Dances in Early Sixteenth-Century Italy: Relationships with Villotte and Franco-Flemish Danceries’, MD, xxxiv (1980), 159–203

C. Gallico: Damon pastor gentil: idilli cortesi e voci popolari nelle ‘Villotte mantovane’ (1583) (Mantua, 1980)

I. Fenlon and J. Haar: The Italian Madrigal in the Early Sixteenth Century: Sources and Interpretation (Cambridge, 1988)

C. Slim: ‘Two Paintings of “Concert Scenes” fron the Veneto and the Morgan Library's Unique Music Print of 1520’, In cantu et in sermone: for Nino Pirrotta, ed. F. Della Seta and F. Piperno (Florence, 1989), 155–74

M. Feldman: ‘The Academy of Domenico Venier, Music's Literary Muse in Mid-Cinquecento Venice’, Renaissance Quarterly, xliv (1991), 476–512

W. Prizer: ‘Games of Venus: Secular Vocal Music in the Late Quattrocento and Early Cinquecento’, JM, ix (1991), 3–56

C. Gallico: Rimeria musicale popolare italiana nel rinascimento (Lucca, 1994)

DONNA G. CARDAMONE

Vilnius

(Pol. Wilno; Russ. Vilna).

Capital city of Lithuania. It has at various times been under Polish and Russian dominion. From the 14th century there was a ducal court there and a singing school at Vilnius Cathedral. The granting of a city charter in 1387 led to the formation of musicians' guilds; around 1400 Grand Duke Vytautas had players of the flute, clavichord and organ in his retinue. The church of St John had a choir and music school by 1515, and the cathedral had an organ by 1551; Vilnius became a centre of organ building, the first mention of workshops dating from 1585. After Lithuania's union with Poland in the mid-16th century, Vilnius became an important musical centre. The Academia et Universitas Vilnensis was founded by the Jesuits in 1579. Polyphonic and choral singing were taught there and at the seminary. The court musical ensemble of Wladislaw IV Wasa (1632–48), with Italian soloists, gained wide renown; in 1634 the court heard the first opera given in Vilnius, Il ratto di Helena (probably by Marco Scacchi). In 1667 Žygimantas Liauksminas (c1596–1670), a professor at the Academy, published a manual on musical notation and choral singing, Ars et praxis musica.

By the late 18th century the Lithuanian aristocracy was in decline and cultural life was becoming democratized. Recitals were organized by Joseph Frank (1771–1842) and his wife, the singer Christine Gerhardi. Haydn's Creation was performed in February 1809 with Gerhardi in the soprano part, which she had sung at the work's première in Vienna. Subsequently other oratorios and masses by Haydn and Schubert were given, as well as Mozart's Requiem in 1840. Touring opera companies visited the city from the late 18th century; a permanent opera company was established in 1827, giving mostly Italian opera. A German company was active from 1835 to 1844. J.D. Holland taught theory, counterpoint and composition at the university from 1802 to 1826, and established the chair of musicology in 1803; instrumental performance was also taught there. After the nationalist revolt of 1832 was put down, the Tsarist government closed the university and introduced press and stage censorship, with dramatic works to be performed only in Russian. The Polish composer Moniuszko was active in Vilnius from 1840 to 1858 as organist, conductor and teacher; his opera Halka had its concert première there in 1848, and its stage première in 1854. In the 1850s and 60s concerts were given by Vieuxtemps, Henryk and Józef Wieniawski, Schulhoff, Antoni and Apolinary Kątski and Anton Rubinstein, among others. A private music college was opened in 1867, and the college of the Russian Music Association in 1874. In 1869 a Russian theatre was opened; there were visits from Italian, French and Ukrainian companies and from singers en route to Moscow or St Petersburg.

In 1904 the ban on the Lithuanian language was lifted. The composer M.K. Čiurlionis moved to Vilnius in 1907 and was active in musical life, directing the Vilnius Kanklės Society Choir. In 1906 this society gave the première of Birutė, with music by Mikas Petrauskas (1873–1937); a play with incidental music, it is often counted as the first Lithuanian opera. From 1919 Poland occupied the Vilnius area for two decades; Kaunas became the Lithuanian capital, and much musical activity shifted there. Vilnius University reopened in 1919. Among music schools active in this period were the Vilnius Conservatory (1921–35), the M. Karowicz Conservatory (1935–40) and the Jewish Institute of Music (1924–40); teachers included Tadeusz Szeligowski, W. Rudzyński and Stanisław Szpinalski (1901–57). In 1939 the main national cultural institutions were restored to Vilnius. In 1940, following Soviet annexation, Vilnius was made capital of the Lithuanian SSR. During the German occupation (1941–4) an opera company functioned there in difficult conditions. In the Soviet period some new institutions appeared, including the City SO (later the PO; founded by Balys Dvarionas), a professional choir and ensembles for traditional song and dance, but concert and theatrical repertory reflected Soviet ideology and were supervised from Moscow. The Vilnius Conservatory resumed activity in 1945; it merged with the Kaunas Conservatory in 1949 to form the Lithuanian State Conservatory.

Outstanding postwar ensembles include the internationally renowned Chamber Orchestra, founded in 1960. The Čiurlionis competition for pianists and organists was founded in 1965, and a chamber music festival in 1967. The national opera company gives a season from September to June each year, mostly from the standard (especially Russian) repertory, but also including Lithuanian works by Račiūnas, Klova, Barkauskas, Juzeliūnas and Balsys. The company performed at the Vilniaus Miesto Teatras (Vilnius Town Theatre) up to 1974, and then in the newly opened Operos ir Baleto Teatras. The Vilnius Museum of Theatre and Music was founded in 1964. Since 1946 the Lithuanian Song and Dance Festival has been held every five years in Vilnius, with between 30,000 and 40,000 participants.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

GroveO (A. Tauragis and M. Morris)

MGG2 (‘Litauen’; J. Antanavičius)

J. Būtėnas: Lietuvių teatras Vilniuje [Lithuanian theatre in Vilnius] (Kaunas, 1940)

J. Banaitis: Tarybinė lietviu muzika 1940–1950 [Soviet Lithuanin music] (Vilnius, 1950)

Yu. Gaudrimas: Muzïkal'naya Kul'tura Sovetskoy Litvï (Leningrad, 1961)

V. Mažeika: Opera (Vilnius, 1967)

V. Nakas: ‘Gražina: the First Lithuanian National Opera’, Lituanus, xxi/1 (1975), 45–62

J. Bruveris: ‘Operos ir baleto teatras mūsų kultūroje’ [Opera and ballet theatre in our culture], Kultūros barai, xxvi/12 (1990), 7–11

J. Trilupaitiene: ‘Zygmunt Lauksmin w zyciu muzycznym Akademii Wilenskiej’ [Liauksminas and the musical life of the Vilnius Academy], Muzyka, xxxvi (1991), 101–16

V. Bakutite: ‘Formirovaniye muzïkal'no-teatral'noy kriticheskoy mïsli v Vilniuse (konets XVIII-nac. XIX v.)’ [The beginnings of music-theoretical criticism in Vilnius (late 18th century to early 19th century)], Pribalticheskiy muzïkovedicheskiy sbornik, iv (1992), 113–32

S. Hanheide: ‘Lieder im Angesicht des Völkermords: zu den Funktionen der Musik im Ghetto von Wilna’, Krieg und Literatur/War and Literature, vi/11–12 (1994), 69–85

E.A. Arias: ‘A Report: the 1995 Gaida Festival of Contemporary Music in Vilnius, Lithuania’, Litanus, xlii (1996), 47–54

based on MGG2 (v, 1376–81) by permission of Bärenreiter

JUOZAS ANTANAVIČIUS

Vimercati, Antonio.

See Archilei, Antonio.

Vimercati, Pietro (Maria Giovanni)

(b Milan, 20 Sept 1779; d Genoa, 26 July 1850). Italian mandolin player and composer. He was born and raised in the well-known instrument workshop of his father, Gaspare Vimercati, in the Dogana district near Milan Cathedral. He was probably introduced to music by his father, and by 1802 was a violinist at La Scala with his brother Carlo (1766–1829). In about 1808 he embarked on a solo career as a mandolinist, and immediately won acclaim in the most prestigious Italian theatres. He appeared regularly in Milan, and in April 1814 performed a mandolin concerto by Simone Mayr at the Teatro Carcano. On his tours of Italy and Europe he often performed with his wife, the contralto Maria Rossetti (1788–1830), whom he married in 1814. On his first European tour in 1820 he appeared with great success in Munich, at the theatres of the Kärtnertor and Hofoper in Vienna, in Prague, where he met the violinist Charles Lafont, and in Berlin, Breslau, Stockholm, Paris (with Hummel at the piano), London and Weimar. He returned to Italy in 1822.

On the death of his first wife in 1831 Vimercati married the contralto Caterina Bianchi. Between 1831 and 1834 he undertook another Italian tour, and subsequently appeared in Darmstadt (1835) and Berlin (1836), where he played the mandolin part in Don Giovanni at the Hofoper. The following year he was in Helsinki and St Petersburg, and in 1838 he was in Riga. In 1843 he returned to Italy but, disappointed by the musical situation in Milan, announced in an interview in the Gazzetta Musicale di Milano his intention to travel to London. In 1844 he was again in Vienna, and the following year in Olmütz (now Olomouc). He gave his final concert at the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa on 5 July 1850.

All of Vimercati’s compositions, except for a short autograph of a Sovenir, have been lost. Concert programmes reveal that he wrote variations and potpourris for mandolin on themes from operas by Paisiello and Rossini, as well as original works including a concerto which he performed in Parma in 1834.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

FétisB

P.J. Bone: The Guitar and Mandolin: Biographies of Celebrated Players and Composers (London, 1914, enlarged 2/1954/R), 363–4

M. Pedemonte: ‘I Grandi Maestri del Mandolino’, Il Plettro Italiano, no.3 (1950), 1

C. Aonzo: ‘Pietro Vimercati’, Plectrum, v/3 (1994), 6–7; v/4 (1994), 6–7; vi/1 (1995), 6–7

O. Huck: ‘Pietro Vimercati’, Zupfmusik, xlviii/2 (1995), 67–9; xlviii/3 (1995), 111–14

CARLO AONZO

Vin.

Sassanian horizontal angular harp. See Iran, §I, 5.

Vīnā.

The principal indigenous term for chordophones in India and other countries of South Asia. The name (and its derivatives: Tamil vīnai; New Indo-Aryan bīnā, bīn, etc.) has been used for almost three millennia to denote the main type of the age: the musical bow; the early harps; the short lute; the medieval stick or tube zithers; bowed chordophones; and various descendants of the above in the contexts of both traditional music and Hindustani and Karnatak traditions, including the modern South Indian vīnā, a lute.

1. Early history.

2. Medieval instruments.

4. The Hindustani bīn.

5. Sarasvatī vīnā.

6. Fretless vīnā.

ALISTAIR DICK (1, 3, 4, 5(i), 6), RICHARD WIDDESS (2), GORDON GEEKIE (5(ii))

1. Early history.

The name vīnā is first documented in the Yajurveda (c1000 bce). A possible chordophone, however, referred to in the earlier Rgveda and Atharvaveda is the gárgara or karkarí, which may have been a musical bow resonated on a skin-covered pot or gourd. Some ideograms of the pre-Aryan Indus culture (3rd–2nd millennia bce) may show a curved stick with three or four strings which could have evolved into the later harps or bow harps. From the Rgveda on, there are frequent references to the ‘song’ of the archer’s bow which points to this as the possible origin of later chordophones. The medieval Sanskrit pinākī and later northern pināk are bowed bows, while the southern vil or villu are struck bows.

The Yajurveda contrasts the vīnā, said to be associated with animals (paśu), with the kāndavīnā, associated with plants (osadhi). The meaning of the latter (kānda: ‘internode of cane’) makes it likely to have been a tube or a stick zither, possibly idiochord; it is not known if it had an extra resonator. The later stick zithers probably go back to these early forms. At the same time, it is clear that vīnā, unqualified, at this period denoted the harps or bow harps, whose animal components are referred to. The name may derive from a pre-Aryan root meaning ‘bamboo’ (possibly Dravidian, as in the Tamil veram: ‘cane’), giving also venu (‘bamboo’, ‘flute’), and vena (‘caneworker’). In this case the name would have originated with early tube or stick zithers.

Arched harps are assumed to have reached South Asia from the ancient Middle East. Various types of vīnā (not all necessarily harps) are mentioned in the Vedas (1st millennium bce) as instruments of ritual, and in classical literature (c500 bce onwards) as instruments of court entertainment music. The latter role is confirmed for the harp by the earliest (mainly Buddhist) art from the 2nd century bce until about the 6th century ce. The harp continues to appear sporadically in iconography to the end of the 1st millennium, but seems then to have died out in South Asia, with the possible exceptions of the waji of Nuristan and the bīn bājā of Madhya Pradesh.

Apart from angular harps known in Gandhāra (North-West India), all South Asian harps were horizontal arched (or bow) harps: the curved wooden neck merged at the lower end with a wooden boat-shaped resonator. The gut or vegetable-fibre strings typically numbered seven (citrā vīnā). The ‘bow-harp’ type, in which the resonator is attached beneath one end of the arch, and in which the strings are attached to the arch at both ends in the manner of a polychord musical bow, can occasionally be identified in iconography, and is represented today by the waji and the bīn bājā. This type is distinct from harps elsewhere in Asia, most of which have a separate string-bar, and perhaps derives from indigenous musical bows under the influence of harps from West Africa.

In South Asia, short-necked lutes first appear in the Graeco-Buddhist art of the 1st to 3rd centuries ce of Gandhāra. They appear in Buddhist art from the 2nd to 6th centuries ce, and thereafter sporadically in Hindu art to the end of the millennium. They generally occur in the same contexts as harps.

In Gandhāran art a wide variety of types are found. The resonator may be ovoid or barbed, with or without soundholes. The strings, generally three or four, may be attached to a straight, lute-type bridge, or pass over a flat rectangular bridge, similar to that later characteristic of various Indian instruments. In South Indian art larger, generally five-string, uniformly pear-shaped lutes appear.

Of various unidentified instrument names in Sanskrit literature, kacchapī (‘tortoise’) vīnā is thought to denote a lute type.

2. Medieval instruments.

In the second half of the 1st millennium ce various types of single-string stick zither with gourd resonators supplanted the harp- and lute-vīnā as instruments of court music and assumed an important role in religious iconography. They may have been indigenous traditional instruments before their adoption into art music. The type survives in the modern north Indian bīn, and in various traditional instruments including the tuila, kullutan rājan, jantar and kinnarī vīnā. There are very detailed descriptions by the 13th-century musicologist Śārngadeva who distinguishes three principal types: ālāpinī, ekatantrī (‘one-string’) and kinnarī vīnā.

All the stick zithers comprised a hollow bamboo or wooden tube, along which a single string (of gut, sinew, silk, cotton or metal) was stretched. At the lower end the string passed over a rectangular bridge with a convex upper surface, which caused a buzzing effect when the string vibrated; at the other end the string was attached to the body either directly or (on the metal-stringed kinnarī vīnā) with the aid of a tuning-peg. Additional resonators could be attached. On the ālāpinī, a hemispherical cup made from half a hollowed dried gourd was fastened behind the upper end of the tube; the opening of this cup was pressed against the player’s chest to form a closed resonance-chamber. A similar gourd on the ekatantrī and kinnarī vīnā was held higher, resting on the player’s shoulder; on the latter a second and even third gourd could be attached lower down the instrument.

Bowed chordophones are also mentioned in or described by medieval Sanskrit texts. The Sangīta-ratnākara (early 13th century) gives a detailed description of the bow and of two instruments played with it. The pinākī (‘bow’) vīnā was a musical bow, with a tapering staff about 80 cm long. Two small terracotta khetaka (‘inverted cups’) are fixed to each end at the back, and the string is threaded and tied through holes near each end. The lower end of the bow was placed on a gourd resonator held on the ground by the feet, and the upper end leant against the shoulder. The string was stopped by the stem of a small gourd held in the player’s left hand.

The playing bow (cāpa, dhanu, both, like pināka, meaning ‘bow’) was about 40 cm long, but reduced (by curvature) to a hair length of ‘two fists’ (not a standard measurement, but perhaps about 30 cm). To the whittled-down ends would be attached the hair (‘of horse’s tail’), with resin (rālā) from the sāl tree.

Another bowed instrument is described by Śārngadeva is the nihśankā vīnā. The description of the instrument indicates a string four hands long tied at its upper end to a piece of wood and at its lower end to another piece (measuring one-and-a-half hands), whose last two ‘inches’ are whittled to a spike one ‘inch’ thick. A gourd is attached near the bottom. A thimble of dried-out leather (peśī), stiffened with an inside rod (kona), or the rod alone, may be used to stop the string. The manner of stopping the strings of these vīnā is probably the origin of the similar method found on the modern sārangī.

3. Stick zithers in local traditions.

Many of the aspects of the medieval stick zithers described above survive in traditional instruments throughout the subcontinent, though the name vīnā/bīn is rare. The ālāpinī type appears to survive in India only in the Orissan tuila. The instrument which has contributed most to the concert vīnā, and which is most widespread in various shapes and sizes, is the kinnarī vīnā. Of this type are the small stick zithers of the eastern Ādivāsī peoples, such as the kullutan rājan of the Saora; others include the large kinnarī vīnā of Karnataka and the jantar of Rajasthan, the smaller jantar of Madhya Pradesh (now bowed) and the king of the Punjab and Jammu.

4. The Hindustani bīn.

The vīnā in the North Indian form bīn is found in the early Muslim court and early Mughal period records, along with other forms of vīnā such as the jantar, kinnarī vīnā and the sirbīn. It had evolved from the medieval kinnarī vīnā into what is substantially its modern form by the 16th century.

The body of the bīn is a long, hollow, wooden ‘stick’ (dandi etc.), or tube, sometimes carved outside with nodes to resemble bamboo and capped at both ends with brass tubing, to which two large bottle-gourds (tumbā; alābu, lāū) are attached some way below the ends near each end of the fret area. It is around 122 cm long with 24 frets and seven strings. The strings are of metal (brass and steel). The gourds are almost whole and are attached by plaited leather thongs passing up from an interior supporting wooden disc through an intermediate wooden bobbin and holes in the stick; a round hole (about 12 cm wide) is excised in their base. Modern bīn may have their gourds attached by a heavy brass screw-tube. Both frets (about 2 cm high) and nut (about 2·5 cm) are thin (4 mm) upright brass-capped wooden plates; they are straight on top but carved below in an arch which fits on the neck and is held by a cement of wax and soot. The peg area has a typical bilateral arrangement of five main pegs (two on one side and three on the other), and a clockwise disposition of strings 1 to 5 from above the nut on the right side (player’s view) to the same position on the left; strings 1 to 4 pass over the nut from right to left (i.e. with the main string nearest to the player’s right hand, an arrangement similar to that of the southern vīnā). String 5 runs down the left side of the neck, and strings 6 and 7 pass from pegs below the nut down the right. A complex bridge-piece is fitted into the lower opening of the tube, often carved as the front of a peacock, with deep, curving bone or ivory surfaces on its back and wings for the three sets of strings tied around projecting pin string holders below each section.

The tuning of the four melody strings ma-sa-PA-SA has become standard, giving a range of three and a half octaves on the 23 or 24 frets. This, with the two cikārī on the right (tuned to the upper and middle tonics) and the drone string on the left (usually tuned to the middle tonic), provided a model for the developing Hindustani lutes (sitār, sūrbahār) in the 19th century.

The main strings of the bīn are played with downward strokes of the right index and middle fingers, and the side-strings with upward strokes of the little fingers (on the left side the thumb is also used). The instrument is held across the body, with the left gourd on the shoulder and the right on the hip.

The bīn is sometimes known as the rudra vīnā (the vīnā of the ascetic god, Śiva, the great yogi). Since it has no soundtable, the forward projection of the sound is weak, but it vibrates powerfully into the body of the player. The stick with its nodes is regarded as the merudanda (both the human spine and the cosmic axis) and the gourds as the breasts either of Śiva’s wife Parvati or of Sarasvatī, goddess of arts and learning.

5. Sarasvatī vīnā.

This is a large, long-necked, plucked lute, the principal chordophone of Karnatak music (often simply called ‘vīnā’). It is played mainly by members of the brahman caste in the four southern states of India (Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Karnataka) and in Sri Lanka.

The name refers to the icon of the Hindu goddess Sarasvatī playing this vīnā. Sarasvatī is the goddess of vidyā: the understanding of the nature of life which releases the individual from the cycle of reincarnation. It is thought that the pursuit of music leads to this understanding.

(i) Structure.

The Sarasvatī vīnā is a long-necked lute, a later development than the stick zithers described above, which are found equally in southern medieval sculpture. Tamil tradition ascribes changes in the vīnā to the reign of Raghunatha Nayaka of Thanjavur (1614–32). In terms of historical organology, the instrument’s origins are hybrid. The main body derives from the long-necked barbed rabāb of the pre-Mughal Deccan Muslim courts. As on the latter, the neck and shell are sometimes in one piece; hence also the flange where they meet, a vestige of the barb, and the open, bent-back animal-motif pegbox. The wooden soundtable, the bridge and the stylised shoulder-and-ribs pattern on the shell derive from the long-necked lutes which were originally carvel-built. A final layer of features (the embedded chromatic frets, the mock-gourd upper resonator, the stringing and tuning and the playing technique) originate in the stick zither tradition. This vīnā is thus a unique blend of South Asian types, perhaps around three centuries old.

There are two types of modern instrument: the Thanjavur and the Mysore. The latter is made of blackwood and the former of lighter jakwood. Other differences lie mainly in the decoration of the instruments (the Thanjavur vīnā is much more elaborately carved and brightly painted) and in the position of the soundholes on the table.

The body has three main parts. The shell (kayi, kudam) is hemispherical and hollowed from a single piece of wood, often with mock ‘shoulder-and-ribs’ carving on the back. The heavy hollow neck (dandi) has straight sides rounded at the back and tapering lightly towards the top; a second resonator (burra), of gourd, metal or papier-maché, is screwed into a small metal cup fixed to the back of the neck below the nut. The pegbox is bent back, and open at the front, with a bilateral peg arrangement (two on the right, two on the left); it terminates in a dragon (yāli) head design (sometimes there is also an opening compartment for accessories). These three parts are often separate, but for tone quality the ekadandi vīnā, with shell and neck of one piece, and above all the ehānda or ekavada vīnā, with all three parts solid, are specially prized. A projecting ivory ledge (gvantu) round the sides and back of the neck and shell joint is found on some types. The shell is covered by a round, thin, flat wooden soundtable (yeddapalaka), which has two decorated soundholes about 5 cm in diameter in the upper quadrants. The bridge (gurram or kudirai: ‘horse’) is in the centre of the soundtable; it is similar to that of the sitar, with a wooden, bench-shaped trestle about 6·5 cm wide and 3 cm deep, but covered with a metal plate. The four main strings pass over the top, and the three tāla, or side strings, over a buttress-like metal arc which extends from the right side of the bridge down to the soundtable.

The neck is covered by a thin board (dandipalaka). Along each side is a raised ledge (maruvapalaka) to which is applied a cement of wax and lamp-black which holds the frets (metlu) in place. The frets are straight brass bars, rounded on top and about 5 mm thick; there are 24, giving two full chromatic octaves on the first of the four main strings. The strings (two of steel, two of brass) are fitted in right-to-left descending order. The three side strings pass from their pegs in the side of the neck, below the nut and over three small knobs.

All seven strings are secured below the bridge to thick wires (langar) with fine-tuning devices in the form of sliding metal rings attached to an inferior string holder, a unique development on Indian lutes.

(ii) Technique.

The player sits cross-legged on a mat, with the left foot tucked behind the right knee and the left leg resting on the right foot. The secondary resonator, attached below the neck of the instrument, rests on the left knee and the main resonator rests on a mat, touching the right knee. The instrument is played tilted forwards. The left arm encircles the neck to fret the melody strings. The left forearm, moving up and down the smooth surface of the neck, also supports the vīnā (it is considered sacrilegious to play the vīnā left-handed).

The melody strings are struck (downwards only) with the nails of the middle and forefingers of the right hand and muted with the fingertips. The melody string nearest the tāla strings is called sāranī and is tuned to the system-tonic (shadja). The next string (paÃcama) is tuned a 4th below, and the next (mandra) an octave below the sāranī; the fourth string (anumandra) is tuned an octave below the paÃcama.

The melody strings are fretted with the forefinger and middle finger of the left hand. The player develops a groove from the corner of the nail across the tip of each finger within which the string slides, the method of playing being up and down single strings. The low string tension permits pitch movements of up to four semitones by deflection of the string downwards and along the fret. The player deflects, or ‘pulls’, the sāranī under the paÃcama (and the paÃcama under the mandra), while simultaneously muting the paÃcama etc. with the underside of the tips of both fingers.

The large frets and absence of a fingerboard permit the player to sound notes without using the right hand by gliding up to a fret from a pitch below and/or by deflecting the string behind a fret. Both types of melodic movement are called gamaka (see India, §III, 3(i)).

In the Mysore tradition, facility in executing gamaka is highly regarded; in deflected gamaka the timing is often deliberately complex and asymmetrical. The Mysore vīnā masters teach the skill of alternating struck notes, which mark rhythmic accents, and gamaka, which through their relative dynamics and complex timing mask (or conceal) rhythmic accents.

The three tāla (metre) strings are tuned to the system tonic, the octave above and the perfect 5th between. They are struck (upwards only) with the nail of the little finger on the right hand. (For repertory see India, §III, 6(i).)

3. Continental Europe c1500 to c1600.

6. Fretless vīnā.

The vicitrā vīnā and gottuvādyam are unfretted lutes of Hindustani and Karnatak music respectively. They are played, Hawaiian-guitar style, by a smooth sliding-block in the left hand and plucking by the right. Both appear to be modern instruments dating from the 19th century. The gottuvādyam (‘block instrument’) is structurally a sarasvatī vīnā without frets, but, uniquely for a southern classical instrument, it has from 7 to 13 sympathetic strings, which run from their pegs (set in the distal side of the neck) through and along the fingerboard under the main strings. The instrument rests on the floor before the player, with the resonator to his right. The sliding-block is of hardwood. The first melody string, nearest to the player, is a double course tuned to an octave. The instrument is plucked with the fingers. The gottuvādyam is also called the mahānātaka vīnā, suggesting an origin in dramatic music.

The northern vicitrā (‘colourful’) vīnā is structurally a hybrid of the bīn-sitār type: it has a wide neck (about 10 cm) which is flat on top and rounded in section beneath (about 3 cm deep), and pegs for the sympathetic strings set in the proximal side (the playing position is as for the gottuvādyam). The neck terminates on the right in an integrated, wood-covered resonator, which in some cases is smaller and pear-shaped, in others larger and similar to that of the sitar. The instrument rests on two large bottle-gourds which are screwed into the back of the neck. The main strings are tuned in descending 4ths and 5ths; the slider (battā) is a glass egg.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bharata: Nātyaśāstra (4th–5th centuries), ed. M. Ghosh, ii (Calcutta, 1956; Eng. trans. 1961); ed. M. Ramakrishna Kavi and J.S. Pade, iv (Baroda, 1964)

Śārngadeva: Sangītaratnākara (13th century), ed. S. Subrahmanya Sastri, ii (Madras, 1951)

Rāmāmātya: Swaramelakalānidhi (c1550), ed. M.S. Ramaswami Aiyar (Annamalai, 1932)

Abu’l Fazl: Ā’īn-ī-akbarī (c1590), trans. F. Gladwin (1783); trans. H.S. Jarrett, rev. J. Sarkar in Sangīt, Bibliotheca Indica, cclxx (Calcutta, 1948), 260ff

F. Fowke: ‘On the Vina or Indian Lyre’, Asiatick Researches, i (1788), 295; repr. in Tagore: Hindu Music (1875)

N.A. Willard: A Treatise on the Music of Hindustan [1834]; repr. in S.M. Tagore (1875)

S.M. Tagore: Hindu Music from Various Authors (Calcutta, 1875, 2/1882/R1965)

S.M. Tagore: Yantra-koś (Calcutta, 1875/R1977) [in Bengali]

C.R. Day: The Music and Musical Instruments of Southern India and the Deccan (Delhi, 1892/R1974)

L. Schroeder, ed.: Yajurveda (Leipzig, 1900)

C. Sachs: Die Musikinstrumente Indiens und Indonesiens (Berlin and Leipzig, 1914, 2/1923)

A.K. Coormaraswamy: ‘The Parts of a Vīnā’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, l (1930), li (1931), lvii (1937)

A.K. Coormaraswamy: ‘The Old Indian Vina’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, li (1931), 47

C. Marcel-Dubois: Les instruments de musique de l’Inde ancienne (Paris, 1941)

C. Sachs: The History of Musical Instruments (New York, 1941)

L.E.R. Picken: ‘The Origins of Short Lute’, GSJ, viii (1955), 32

V. Sankar: ‘The Process of Vīnā Fretting’, Journal of the Music Academy Madras, xxx (1959)

J. Becker: ‘The Migration of the Arched Harp from India to Burma’, GSJ, xx (1967), 17

J. Kunst: Hindu-Javanese Musical Instruments (The Hague, 2/1968)

E.W. te Jihenhuis: Dattilam: a Compendium of Ancient Indian Music (Leiden, 1970)

G.H. and N. Tarlekar: Musical Instruments in Indian Sculpture (Pune, 1972)

F.J. de Hen: ‘A Case of Gesunkenes Kulturgut: the Toila’, GSJ, xxix (1976), 84

E.W. te Nijenhuis: The Ragas of Somanātha (Leiden, 1976)

B.C. Deva: Musical Instruments of India: their History and Development (Calcutta, 1978)

R.V. Ayyangar: Gamaka and Vādanabheda: a Study of Somanātha’s Rāga Vibodha in a Historical and Practical Context (diss., U. of Pennsylvania, 1980)

W. Kaufmann: Altindien, Musikgeschichte in Bildern, ii/8 (Leipzig, 1982)

Vinaccesi [Vinacesi, Vinacese], Benedetto

(b Brescia, c1666; d Venice, 25 Dec 1719). Italian composer. He came from a family of merchants and civic functionaries who moved to Venice from Tuscany in the 14th century and emigrated to Brescia in the 16th. The famous ‘universal savant’ Fortunato Vinaccesi (1631–1713) was his cousin. Benedetto’s intellectual curiosity and love of experimentation must have been stimulated by visits to Fortunato’s salon in his youth. He learnt the organ and possibly other instruments from Pietro Pelli, a former capo musico at Brescia Cathedral.

Vinaccesi’s initial interest as a composer was in secular music. In 1687 a collection of chamber sonatas ‘a tre’ was published in Venice as his op.1. The title-page identifies him as maestro di cappella to Ferdinando Gonzaga, ruler of the neighbouring statelet of Castiglione delle Stiviere. This post was probably non-residential, and the composer’s duties are unlikely to have continued beyond 1691, when a local uprising drove Ferdinando into exile. In 1688 Vinaccesi dedicated a volume of cantatas to Prince Ferdinando of Tuscany, who passed through Brescia on his way to Venice. This publication was given the out-of-sequence opus number 3 in allusion to the fact that, on succeeding his father Cosimo, the prince would become Ferdinando III. In 1692 a set of church sonatas appeared as Vinaccesi’s op.2; this was followed by another set of chamber sonatas, op.4. At some point before 1692 he received the title of cavaliere, but it is not known who conferred it on him.

In 1690 Vinaccesi applied unsuccessfully for the post of organist at Brescia Cathedral. In the next few years he concentrated on sacred music. His oratorios Gioseffo che interpreta i sogni (1692) and Susanna (1694) were performed at the court of Modena. In 1698 he was appointed maestro di coro at the Ospedaletto, one of Venice’s four ospedali grandi, at an annual salary of 200 ducats. During his tenure of this post, which lasted until 1715 (his application in 1713 for retirement on a pension was refused), he wrote, by his own estimate, over 450 works. For a few years around 1700 he composed operas, but he found the experience unrewarding and soon gave up.

Unsuccessful in his application for the post of primo maestro at S Marco in 1702, Vinaccesi had better luck when, on 5 February 1704, he won the competition for the post of principal organist at the basilica’s second organ, which added another 200 ducats to his annual income. He kept this post until his death in 1719. A high point in his career came in 1714, when he dedicated to the procurators of S Marco a published collection of 14 motets for two and three voices with organ, which earned him a gratuity of 100 ducats. Contemporary reports suggest that Vinaccesi was held in the highest esteem in Venice. He was often selected to write the music for serenatas and to direct and compose music for the festivals of churches without a resident maestro. The German composer Friederich Georg Dieterich and Nicolò Domenico Turri, maestro di canto at S Marco, were his pupils.

The small quantity of Vinaccesi’s music that survives is distinguished by its originality and carefully designed structure. The op.1 works are early examples of multi-movement chamber sonatas; they all contain 11 or 12 movements (with a central group placed in a secondary key centre) and admit such rare dance-types as the taiheg, the pira and the arcicorrente. Vinaccesi’s writing for solo voice in cantatas and dramatic music is characterized by effective bursts of coloratura. The overture of his oratorio Susanna anticipates later practice by referring quasi-programmatically to the subject of the drama. His setting of compline psalms for eight voices demonstrates his mastery of polychoral writing and complex counterpoint. However, the core of his work lies in the motets styled as sacred chamber duets and terzets, in which, unusually, da capo form is combined with elaborate polyphonic treatment. He cultivated opera only as a sideline, but his pastoral Chi è causa del suo mal pianga sé stesso, performed in Rome at the court of Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, reveals a talent for dramatic music. Many numbers betray his (and Ottoboni’s) attachment to the French style.

WORKS

presumed lost unless otherwise stated; more details in Talbot, ‘Benedetto Vinaccesi’ (1994)

operas, serenatas

Chi è causa del suo mal pianga sé stesso (pastoral, G.B. Neri), Rome, 1697, F-Pn

L’innocenza giustificata (dramma per musica, 3, F. Silvani), Venice, S Salvatore, carn. 1699, 1 aria GB-Lbl

Gli amanti generosi (dramma per musica, 3, G.P. Candi), Venice, S Angelo, carn. 1703

Sfoghi di giubilo per la nascita del Serenissimo Duca di Bretagna (serenata, P. Robert), Venice, 21 June 1704

oratorios

Gioseffo che interpreta i sogni (Neri), Modena, 1692

Susanna (G.B. Bottalino), Modena, 1694, I-MOe

Il cuor nello scrigno (F. Arisi), Cremona, 13 June 1696

Li diecimila martiri crocefissi (A. Paolini), Brescia, 22 June 1698

sacred vocal

Messa concertata, a, 8vv, ob, tpt, str, inc. I-Rli; Compline music, 8vv, 2 vn, bc, Vnm

[14] Motetti, 2–3vv, org (Venice, 1714); some movts survive separately, Pca, Assisi, Sacro Convento di S Francesco

Motets: Alme Jesu, sponse care, A, bc, Vc; Astra campi, belli flores, A, 2 vn, va, bc, D-Bsb

cantatas

Il consiglio degl’amanti, o vero Cantate amorose a voce sola, op.3 pt 1 (Venice, 1688)

Belve, se mai provaste, S, bc, F-Pc; Dal tuono il lampo aspetta (A. Ottoboni), S, bc, D-Bsb; Filli, un sol tuo sguardo, A, bc, Bsb; Hor fia mai vero, o lontananza infida, S, bc, Bsb; Ingratissima Clori, S, bc, Bsb; Là nelle verdi spiagge, B, bc, F-Pn; Quanto mi vien da ridere, B, bc, Pn; Su le sponde d’un rio, S, bc, D-Bsb

sonatas

[6] Suonate da camera a tre, 2 vn, vc, hpd, op.1 (Venice, 1687)

Sfere armoniche o vero [12] Sonate da chiesa, 2 vn, vc, org, op.2 (Venice, 1692)

Suonate da camera a tre, 2 vn, vc, hpd, op.4 pt 1, lost

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L. Cozzando: Libraria bresciana (Brescia, 1694/R, repr. 1931); ed. E. Surian (Florence, 1987)

A. Valentini: I musicisti bresciani ed il Teatro Grande (Brescia, 1894)

G. Tebaldini: L’archivio musicale della Cappella Antoniana in Padova (Padua, 1895)

V. Zaccaria: ‘Benedetto Vinaccesi (Brescia 1670c. – Venezia 1719): profilo bio-bibliografico’ Musica sacra, 2nd ser., vii (Milan, 1962), 12–15, 86–9, 119–25

J. Scarpa, ed.: Arte e musica all’Ospedaletto (Venice, 1978)

E. Selfridge-Field: Pallade veneta: Writings on Music in Venetian Society 1650–1750 (Venice, 1985)

A. Romagnoli: ‘La componente strumentale ne “La Susanna” di Benedetto Vinaccesi’, Liuteria e musica strumentale a Brescia tra Cinque e Seicento: Salò 1990, 333–53

M. Talbot: ‘The Marcian Motets of Benedetto Vinaccesi’, Giovanni Legrenzi e la Cappella ducale di San Marco: Venice and Clusone 1990, 227–68

V. Crowther: The Oratorio in Modena (Oxford, 1992)

M. Talbot: Benedetto Vinaccesi: a Musician in Brescia and Venice in the Age of Corelli (Oxford, 1994)

M. Talbot: ‘The Taiheg, the Pira, and Other Curiosities of Benedetto Vinaccesi’s Suonate da camera a tre, op.1’, ML, lxxv (1994), 344–64

MICHAEL TALBOT

Vinandi, Johannes.

See Johannes de Lymburgia.

Viñao, Alejandro (Raul)

(b Buenos Aires, 4 Sept 1951). Argentine composer. He studied the guitar and conducting in Buenos Aires before moving to London in 1975 to continue his studies at the RCM; in 1988 he took the PhD in composition at City University, London, and thereafter worked in London as a freelance composer. Most of his works make use of electronics, and his skilful integration of acoustic instruments with computer or tape has frequently resulted in prizes at international electro-acoustic music competitions, including those at Bourges and Linz. In 1994 he was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship. The influence of his Latin American background permeates his music especially rhythmically; for example, he sees his melodic writing as developing through rhythmic rather than harmonic structures. His harmonic vocabulary is often consonant without necessarily being tonal, though in a work such as Son entero much of the attraction is its play on functional harmony. His expressed purpose in using technology is to create an illusion of acoustic instruments transforming into something new; something outside the physical world’s experience. He is interested, also, in exploring the ‘ambiguous area where harmony and timbre can no longer be distinguished as separate musical functions’.

WORKS

Una orquesta imaginaria, 4 channel tape, 1979; Go, 8 channel tape, 1981; Hendrix Haze, 4 channel tape, 1983; Triple Con., fl, vc, pf, cptr/tape, 1984; Son entero, S, A, T, B, cptr/tape, 1985–8; Toccata del Mago, 4 vn, 2 va, vc, db, cptr/tape, 1986–7; Algebra on Fire, chbr ens (19 players), cptr, 1988–91; Tumblers, vn, mar, cptr/tape, 1989; Chant d’ailleurs, S, cptr/tape, 1991; Borges y el espejo, S, cptr/tape, 1992; Mar Conc., mar, chbr orch, 1993; Hildegard’s Dream, S, cptr/tape, 1994; Phrase & Fiction, str qt, cptr/tape, 1994–5; Rashomon: the Opera (chbr op, C. Raine), 5 singers, cptr, 1995–7; Masago’s Confession, S, cptr, 1996; Apocryphal Dances, orch, cptr, 1996–7

Materials in GB-Lmic; F-Pd; Sonic Arts Network (UK)

Principal recording companies: Musidisc (Paris), Radio Oberösterreich, Wergo

STEPHEN MONTAGUE

Viñas, Francisco (i)

(fl early 18th century). Spanish composer. He was a Franciscan and served from 1716 to 1730 as maestro de capilla at Jaca Cathedral, where almost 100 sacred works by him survive, most of them for five to eight voices with continuo. They include five masses, four Magnificat settings, Lamentations, psalms, motets and villancicos. Other sacred works are extant in the cathedrals of Calahorra, Pamplona and Albarracín.

JESUS M. MUNETA MARTÍNEZ

Viñas, Francisco [Viñas, Francesc; Vignas, Francesco] (ii)

(b Moya, nr Barcelona, 27 March 1863; d Moya, 14 July 1933). Spanish tenor. He studied in Barcelona and made an outstanding début as Lohengrin at the Gran Teatro del Liceo (1888), after which he was presented by Julián Gayarre with his own Lohengrin costume. The following year he sang the role at La Scala, where he was last heard, in Franchetti’s Germania, in 1904. He sang Turiddu in the first London performance of Cavalleria rusticana, at the Shaftesbury Theatre (1891), and in 1893 made his Covent Garden début as Lohengrin, returning for the seasons of 1895, 1904 and 1907 as Edgardo, Radames, Tannhäuser, Cavaradossi and Mascagni’s Fritz. At the Metropolitan in 1893 he sang with Calvé in Cavalleria rusticana and with Melba in Lucia di Lammermoor. For many years he appeared regularly in Spain and Italy, and in 1910 at the Colón, Buenos Aires. In that year, too, he added Tristan to his repertory and in 1913 Parsifal, achievements which marked the summit of the latter part of his career. He retired in 1918, publishing a book on the art of singing in 1932. Recordings, made between 1903 and 1912, are not faultless but reveal a compact and ringing voice, expressively used.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L. Gregori: Francesc Viñas (Barcelona, 1935)

L. Lustig and C. Williams: ‘Francisco Viñas’, Record Collector, xxxiv (1989), 106–38

J.B. STEANE

Vinay, Ramón

(b Chillán, 31 Aug 1912; d Puebla, Mexico, 4 Jan 1996). Chilean baritone, later tenor. He studied with José Pierson in Mexico City, where he made his début as Alphonse (La favorite) in 1931. For several years he sang baritone roles, including Rigoletto, Luna and Scarpia, and then, after further study, he made his tenor début in Mexico City in 1943 as Don José, following it in 1944 with Otello. In 1945 Vinay made his New York début at the City Center as Don José and then sang at the Metropolitan (1946–61). He inaugurated the 1947–8 season at La Scala as Otello, a part he also sang at Salzburg (under Furtwängler, 1951) and Covent Garden (in 1950 with La Scala, and, even more memorably, under Kubelík in 1955). From 1952 to 1957 he sang at Bayreuth, as Tristan, Parsifal, Tannhäuser and Siegmund. In 1962 he resumed baritone roles, singing Telramund at Bayreuth, and also Iago, Falstaff, Scarpia, Dr Bartolo and Dr Schön (Lulu).

In his prime Vinay sang with ease and expressive, dark-grained tone. His artistry, intelligence and musicianship were always in evidence, and his acting was distinguished by pathos and nobility. His Otello was recorded live under Toscanini (1947) and Furtwängler (1951), and is a remarkable portrayal of a heroic general undone by jealous vulnerability. Equally eloquent are his recordings from Bayreuth, notably his Siegmund and Parsifal under Krauss and his Tristan under Karajan.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

GV (R. Celletti; S. Smolian)

H. Rosenthal: ‘Ramón Vinay’, Opera, ix (1958), 335–9

HAROLD ROSENTHAL/R

Vincenci, Giacomo.

See Vincenti, Giacomo.

Vincençio da Imola [Vincenço].

See Vincenzo da Rimini.

Vincenet [Vincentius du Bruecquet]

(b Hainaut, Belgium; d ?Naples, before 1480). South Netherlandish composer and singer. Though long known only as ‘Vincenet’ (which was thought to be a surname), and often conflated with the singer and priest Johannes Vincenet (Vincenetti, Vicenot) of Toul, who served in the papal chapel from 1425 to 1429 and is now known to have died in 1447, the Vincenet of the later 15th century is a quite different person, whose full name is now known to have been Vincenet du Bruecquet.

The earliest information about Vincenet places him at the court of Savoy, where he was a singer and organist between about 1450 and 1464. By August 1469 he was at the Aragonese court of Naples, where a payroll notice dated 14 August reads: ‘To Vinxenet de Enaut, singer of the chapel of His Majesty the King [Ferrante I] viii ducats, for writing and notating viii polyphonic offices for the said chapel, which offices he has delivered to Mossen Pere Brusca [the king's maestro di cappella]’. Thus Vincenet was a singer and at least a part-time scribe at the Neapolitan court. He is mentioned in a letter of 21 March 1469 from the singer Jachetto da Marvilla to Lorenzo de' Medici, from which it seems clear that Vincenet had recently passed through Florence, had turned down an offer to recruit singers for that city, and knew Jachetto well. Since Jachetto himself had been a singer at Naples during the period 1458–66, it may have been there that the two became acquainted; Vincenet may therefore have been at Naples before 1469. In 1470 Vincenet lodged a petition (dated 22 June) to resign all his benefices in order that he might marry (the petition refers to him as a cleric of Cambrai). He is last mentioned in a Neapolitan account book of 1479, which records the presence at court of ‘Vanella, widow of the late Vincenet, singer to His Majesty the King’; thus Vincenet had indeed married, and left a widow when he died. Finally, he can probably be identified with the Vincenet mentioned in the list of musicians in the sixth stanza of Jean Molinet's Lettres missives.

Eight works are attributed to Vincenet, four masses and four secular songs, all stylistically typical of his time. Of the former, only one is built on a plainchant cantus firmus: the Missa ‘Eterne rex altissime’, which draws on the Matins hymn for the Feast of the Ascension; the other three are based on central European models (perhaps suggesting that he spent some time in that area).

The masses on Bartolomeo Brollo's rondeau Entrepris suis and Johannes Touront's well-travelled song-motet O gloriosa regina illustrate the tendency, prevalent in the third quarter of the 15th century, to draw simultaneously on all voices of the polyphonic model. The model for the three-voice mass published as a Missa sine nomine is not Johannes Pullois' De madame (as claimed by Burkholder and by Ward in Grove6) but the German song Zersundert ist das junge herze mein, which appears in the Glogauer Liederbuch (PL-Kj 40098).

All four secular works appear in the Mellon chansonnier (US-NH 91), compiled at Naples in the mid-1470s when Vincenet was presumably there. Fortune, par ta cruaulte and Ou doy je secours querir are French rondeaux; the former was Vincenet's most widely disseminated work, and was included in Petrucci's Odhecaton (1501). La pena sin ser sabida is a Spanish canción, a genre perfectly at home at Aragonese Naples. Triste que sperò morendo is problematic: although its musical form is rondeau-like (half-cadence at the mid-point, full cadence at the end), its Italian text has eight octosyllabic lines rhyming ABBACDDC, and thus resembles a barzelletta in which the volta (which would have consisted of four further lines rhyming DEEA) is missing. A barzelletta, though, reverses the positions of the half and full cadences, so the Italian poem is probably a contrafactum.

WORKS

Edition: The Collected Works of Vincenet, ed. B.E. Davis, RRMMA, ix–x (1978) [complete edn]

Missa ‘Entrepris suis’, 4vv (based on Brollo, ‘Entrepris suis’)

Missa ‘Eterne Rex altissime’, 4vv (hymn melody c.f.)

Missa ‘O gloriosa regina’, 4vv (based on Touront, ‘O gloriosa regina’)

Missa ‘Zersundert ist das junge herze mein’, 3vv (pubd as Missa sine nomine)

Fortune, par ta cruaulte (rondeau), 3vv

La pena sin ser sabida (canción), 4vv

Ou doy je secours querir (rondeau), 3vv

Triste qui sperò morendo, 4vv (?rondeau with barzelletta contrafact text)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

StrohmR

Vander StraetenMPB, iv

F. D'Accone: ‘The Singers of San Giovanni in Florence during the 15th Century’, JAMS, xiv (1961), 307–58

M.-T. Bouquet: ‘La cappella musicale dei duchi di Savoia dal 1450 al 1500’, RIM, iii (1968), 233–85

M. Schuler: ‘Zur Geschichte der Kapelle Papst Martins V.’, AMw, xxv (1968), 30–45

A. Atlas: Music at the Aragonese Court of Naples (Cambridge, 1985)

J.P. Burkholder: ‘Johannes Martini and the Imitation Mass of the Late Fifteenth Century’, JAMS, xxxviii (1985), 471–523

G. Thibault and D. Fallows, eds.: Chansonnier de Jean de Montchenu, PSFM, 1st ser., xxiii (1991)

C. Reynolds: ‘The Counterpoint of Allusion in Fifteenth-Century Masses’, JAMS, xlv (1992), 228–60

P. Starr: ‘Strange Obituaries: the Historical Uses of the per obitum Supplication’, Papal Music and Musicians in Late Medieval and Renaissance Rome, ed. R. Sherr (Oxford, 1998), 177–86

D. Fallows: A Catalogue of Polyphonic Songs, 1415–1480 (Oxford, 1999)

ALLAN W. ATLAS

Vincent.

The name of several French musicians documented in early 17th-century Paris, two of whom can be identified as lutenists and composers.

One (b c1580s; d ? after c1643) was a composer of airs de cour, of which around 50 survive, most of them for solo voice and lute (1608¹⁰, 1609¹³, 1610¹³, 1611¹⁰, 1613⁸, 1613⁹, 1614¹⁰, 1615¹¹, 1617⁸, 1619¹⁰; 2 ed. A. Verchaly, Airs de cour pour voix et luth, 1961). His first publication of an air was in 1608 and, although he published no book of his own, he contributed several pieces to almost all air collections from 1613 to 1619. They range from the lyrical, ‘romantic’ style notable also in the airs of Pierre Guédron and Etienne Moulinié, to bawdy drinking-songs. He also contributed to several ballets de cour (three airs in the Ballet des trois âges, 1613). It is probably to him that Gantez refers along with two other air composers, Denis Macé and Nicolas Métru, as ‘the three most famous and famished composers in Paris’ (‘fameux et affamez Maîtres’), and who was master of the music of the Duke of Angoulême.

The other identifiable Vincent (b c1610; d after 1661) wrote around 30 dances for solo lute (Ch-Bu, D-Bsb, DS, Ngm, ROu, F-AIXm, B, Pn, GB-En) as well as a Pavane for keyboard (F-Pn), which is probably an arrangement of a lute piece. The lute works are in the D major and D minor tunings used after about 1640. Ennemond Gaultier's remark, reported by Mary Burwell's teacher, that he, Germain Pinel and Dubut ‘le père' ‘would have made good fidlers because there Lessons were aiery and might be turned into singing or dansing’ probably refers to this Vincent. He also appeared in court ballets, with Pinel and others, between 1657 and 1661. He reportedly mixed in political intrigue and espionage. The memoirist Guy Joly (fl 1648–65) thought him and his singer wife ‘vraye canaille’, and Tallemant des Réaux (1619–97) talks of the influence ‘Mlle Vincent’ is supposed to have had with Abel Servien, Marquess of Sablé, superintendent of finances in the 1650s.

The careers of these two composers evidently overlapped in the 1630s and 40s. It is not clear to which of them Mersenne refers in one place as among those in Paris who teach singing and composition, and in another as a composer of solo lute music, if both references are to the same person. Either Vincent may have been the one who gave Constantijn Huygens a lute in 1636, or took part in sacred concerts in the house of (1) Pierre de la Barre (iii) in the 1640s.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

LabordeMP

MersenneHU

A. Gantez: L’entretien des musiciens (Auxerre, 1643); ed. with commentary by E. Thoinan (Paris, 1878/R)

W.J.A. Jonckbloet and J.P.N. Land, eds.: Correspondance et oeuvres musicales de Constantin Huygens (Leiden, 1882)

A. Pirro: ‘Louis Couperin à Paris’, ReM, ii/4 (1921), 129–50

T. Dart: ‘Miss Mary Burwell’s Instruction Book for the Lute’, GSJ, xi (1958), 3–62, esp. 14, 54–5, 60

Y. de Brossard: ‘La vie musicale en France d'après Loret et ses continuateurs 1650–1688’, RMFC, x (1970), 117–93

W.J. Rave: Some Manuscripts of French Lute Music 1630–1700 (diss., U. of Illinois, 1972), 425–6

D. Ledbetter: Harpsichord and Lute Music in Seventeenth-Century France (diss., U. of Oxford, 1985)

G. Durosoir: L'air de cour en France 1571–1655 (Liège, 1991)

F.-P. Goy, C. Meyer and M. Rollin, eds.: Sources manuscrites en tablature (Baden-Baden, 1991–) [catalogue]

DAVID LEDBETTER

Vincent, Caspar.

See Vincentius, Caspar.

Vincent, Gene [Craddock, Eugene Vincent]

(b Norfolk, VA, 11 Feb 1935; d Los Angeles, 12 Oct 1971). American rock and roll singer and songwriter. He was responsible for one of the greatest rock and roll anthems of the 1950s, Be Bop A Lula, co-written with Sheriff Tex Davis. It was recorded in a sparse, intense style with over-emphatic echo on Vincent’s hoarse but expressive voice and a slashing and highly influential guitar solo from Cliff Gallup, a member of Vincent’s group the Blue Caps. Vincent and the group performed the song in the film The Girl Can't Help It (1956) and recorded further hits including Blue Jean Bop, Pistol Packin' Mama and Crazy Times. Vincent toured Europe and was involved in the 1960 car accident in England in which fellow singer Eddie Cochran died. He was especially popular in Europe and Japan where diehard rock and roll audiences appreciated the black leather clothing and menacing presence of his stage act. However, his career tailed off towards the end of the 1960s and he died of a ruptured stomach ulcer. Ian Dury later composed a tribute, Sweet Gene Vincent.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

B. Hagerty: The Day the World Turned Blue (Poole, 1984) [incl. bibliograpy and discography]

D. Henderson: Gene Vincent: a Discography (Southampton, 1992)

DAVE LAING

Vincent [van Ijzer-Vincent], Jo(hanna Maria)

(b Amsterdam, 6 March 1898). Dutch soprano. She was the daughter of Jacobus Vincent, carillonneur of the Amsterdam Royal Palace. She studied with Catherina van Rennes and Cornélie van Zanten, and made her début in 1921. She became the leading concert soprano of the Netherlands; her only operatic appearance was in 1939 at Scheveningen as Countess Almaviva. She appeared regularly in concert with Mengelberg in Beethoven, Bach and Mahler. Outside the Netherlands she was particularly popular in England during the 1930s. She sang in the first performance of Britten's Spring Symphony (Amsterdam, 1949), which was recorded. Her other recordings, which include Schubert lieder, oratorio and Mahler's Second Symphony (under Klemperer), show the pure, ethereal quality of her voice.

LEO RIEMENS

Vincent, John

(b Birmingham, AL, 17 May 1902; d Santa Monica, CA, 21 Jan 1977). American composer and teacher. He studied at the New England Conservatory under Converse and Chadwick (diploma 1927), at George Peabody College (BS, MA), and under Piston at Harvard University (1933–5), where he won the John Knowles Paine Traveling Fellowship for two years of study with Boulanger; in 1942 he gained the PhD at Cornell University. He was head of the music department at Western Kentucky State University (1937–45) and Schoenberg’s successor as professor of composition at UCLA (1946–69). In addition, he conducted orchestras throughout the USA and South America, and he was a director of the Huntington Hartford Foundation (1952–65). His music is rhythmically vital and lyrical, essentially Classical in form and distinctly individual. The free tonality of his work makes use of what he calls ‘paratonality’: the predominance of a diatonic element in a polytonal or atonal passage. He published The Diatonic Modes in Modern Music (Berkeley, 1951, rev. 2/1974).

WORKS

(selective lsit)

Dramatic: 3 Jacks (ballet), 1942, rev. 1954, arr. 2 pf, rev. as Jack Spratt, pf, str, rev. as Suite from 3 Jacks, orch, 1954, rev. as The House that Jack Built (H. Reese), nar, orch, 1957; Red Cross (film score), 1948, arr. pf 4 hands; The Hallow’d Time (incid music, R. Hubler), S, chorus, pic, 1954; Primeval Void (op buffa, Reese, Vincent), 1969

Orch: Suite, 1929; A Folk Song Sym., 1931, lost; Sym., D, 1954, rev. 1956; Sym. Poem, after R. Descartes, 1958; La Jolla Conc., chbr orch, 1959, rev. 1966, 1973; Ov. to Lord Arling, 1959; Rondo Rhapsody, 1965; Nude Descending the Staircase, str, 1966, arr. (xyl, pf)/(xyl, str), 1974; The Phoenix (Fabulous Bird), 1966; orch arrs. of works by Baroque composers

Vocal: 3 Grecian Songs, 8vv, unacc., 1935; How shall we Sing (Ps cxxxvii), SAB, pf, 1944, rev. 1951; Sing Hollyloo (B.H. Reece), Mez/Bar, pf, 1951, arr. male vv, pf; A Christmas Psalm, 1v, pf, 1969, arr. chorus, pf, arr. unacc. male vv, rev. as Prayer for Peace, S, A, chorus, org/pf, 1971; Stabat mater, S, male vv, pf/org, 1969, arr. S, male vv, orch, 1970

Chb and solo instr: Nacre (Mother of Pearl), fl, pf, 1925, rev. 1973, arr. band, 1973; Str Qt, G, 1936, rev. as Recitative and Dance, vc obbl, str, 1948; Suite (Prelude, Canon and Fugue), fl, ob, bn, 1936; Consort, pf, str qt/str orch, 1960, arr. as Sym. no.2, pf, str, 1976; Str Qt no.2, 1967, rev. 1969; Victory Salute, 12 brass, 1968; Suite, 6 perc, 1973; several pf pieces incl. Chaconne, 1935

Principal publishers: Belwin-Mills, Curlew, Mercury

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Compositores de América/Composers of the Americas, ed. Pan American Union, viii (Washington, DC, 1962)

C.B. Parker: John Vincent (1902–1977): an Alabama Composer’s Odyssey (diss., UCLA, 1981)

W. THOMAS MARROCCO

Vincent, Ruth

(b Yarmouth, 22 March 1878; d London, 8 July 1955). English soprano. She studied singing with Hermann Klein and was educated for the stage by Jacques Brohy in Paris. Her début was in London as Gretchen in the original production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Grand Duke (1896). Within a year she became principal soprano at the Savoy Theatre, where she appeared in several Gilbert and Sullivan revivals and in the original productions of Mackenzie’s His Majesty (1897) and Caryll’s The Lucky Star (1899). She made a particularly strong impression as the blind heroine Laine in Sullivan’s The Beauty Stone (1898), but left the company abruptly during the run.

From about 1900 Vincent was in demand in both comic and grand opera, as much for her extraordinary beauty as for her notable lyric soprano voice. She appeared regularly at Covent Garden, her repertory including principal roles in Hänsel und Gretel, Carmen, Les contes d’Hoffmann and Don Giovanni, and was Vreli in the London production of Delius’s A Village Romeo and Juliet (1910). In May 1904 she sang the title role in Messager’s Véronique at the Apollo Theatre, returning there in 1907 in German’s Tom Jones. From about 1912 until her retirement in 1930 she sang with increasing frequency at the Palladium and variety theatres.

FREDRIC WOODBRIDGE WILSON

Vincent, Thomas

(b London, c1720; d ?10 May 1783). English oboist and composer. A pupil of Giuseppe Sammartini, his playing was praised by Hawkins. He is known to have played at the Foundling Hospital (1754, 1758) and was a member of the King’s Band in the 1760s. He was a founder-member of the Royal Society of Musicians (1739) and performed at many of its annual benefit concerts, 1743–68. In 1764–5 he became joint manager (with Gordon and Crawford) of the King’s Theatre while still playing in the orchestra, but the venture bankrupted him. A ‘Mr Vincent’, possibly Thomas, performed at the Rotunda in Dublin in 1770. In 1775 Vincent performed concertos at Drury Lane during the spring oratorio season; he had ‘not appeared in public for several years’ and was perhaps driven by financial necessity. He published Six Solos for a Hautboy, German Flute, Violin, or Harpsichord, with a Thorough Bass op.1 (London, 1748), A Sett of Familiar Lessons for the Harpsicord op.2 (London, 1755) and several songs (some published separately and others in anthologies).

Vincent was a member of a family of musicians active in London in the mid- to late-18th century; they are often difficult to identify because all are referred to simply as ‘Mr Vincent’. Thomas was a son of a Thomas Vincent (d 1751), a bassoonist in the Guards, and had a brother James (d London, 6 Oct 1749), who composed songs and was ‘joint organist of the Temple with Stanley, and a brilliant performer’ (Burney). Richard Vincent (1701–83), a brother of the elder Thomas, was an oboist at Vauxhall and Covent Garden and a composer of songs. His wife was an actress at Covent Garden. His son Richard Vincent (d London, 28 Aug 1766), a violinist and drummer, was married in 1755 to the soprano Isabella Vincent, née Burchall (b c1735; d London, 9 June 1802), who made her début at Vauxhall Gardens in 1751 and sang at Drury Lane (1760–67), Marylebone Gardens (1764–7) and the Haymarket Little Theatre (1764); she married Captain John Mills in 1767. A ‘Mr Vincent’ is listed among the oboes for the Handel Commemoration (1784) and someone with that name was a member of the King’s Music in 1793 and 1795.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BDA

BurneyH

HawkinsH

P.R. Broemel: Biographical sketches of Isabella Mills and Captain John Mills (MS, 1924, GB–Lmp)

O.E. Deutsch: Handel: a Documentary Biography (London, 1955/R)

CHRISTOPHER HOGWOOD/JANET K. PAGE

Vincent de Beauvais [Vincentius Bellovacensis]

(b ?Beauvais, c1190; d Paris,1264). French scholar and theorist. His Speculum maius makes him the greatest encyclopedist before the 18th century. Very little is known of his life; he entered a Dominican order in Paris about 1220, was later assigned to the priory in Beauvais (established 1228) and was one time lector, from about 1250, at the monastery of Royaumont (Mons regalis) on the Oise near Paris; at about the same time he was appointed lector and chaplain to the royal court of Louis IX. During this time, 1260–61, he wrote a treatise on the education of noblewomen for the royal tutors, De eruditione filiorum nobilium. The Speculum maius, compiled between about 1220 and 1254, is a vast compendium of all the accumulated knowledge of the Middle Ages; it is in three books, the Speculum naturale (33 books on natural history), the Speculum doctrinale (18 books on scholastic knowledge) and the Speculum historiale (32 books on world history from the Creation to the crusade of St Louis). A spurious fourth book Speculum morale was added in the early 14th century.

The Speculum doctrinale is a vast summary of all the learned arts: mechanical, practical and liberal. Book 17 deals with the Quadrivium, chapters 10–35 being devoted to music. Vincent's account of music is not practical, nor may he lay any claim to originality; his is an academic definition, scholastic, and suitable for a general educated public. He drew definitions of music from Richard of St Victor: ‘Music is the concord of many voices reduced to one’, a possible reference to polyphony; from al-Fārābī through to Gundissalinus: ‘Music is that which demonstrates an understanding of the species of melody (armonia)’; and from Isidore of Seville: ‘Music is the skill of modulation of sound and of voice’. However, most of the discussion is drawn direct from Boethius: musica mundana, humana et instrumentalis, the theory of consonances and dissonances, and Pythagorean proportions of the monochord. Vincent's greatest influence was on other academic writers on music, such as Roger Bacon, and on the teaching of ars musica in the schools, where theoretical rather than practical issues still prevailed.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

U. Chevalier: Répertoire des sources historiques du Moyen Age (Montbéliard, 1894–1903/R, 2/1905–7/R), 4683

B.L. Ullman: ‘A Project for a New Edition of Vincent of Beauvais’, Speculum, viii (1933), 312–26

L. Ellinwood: ‘Ars musica’, Speculum, xx (1945), 290–99

J.A. Weisheipl: ‘Vincent of Beauvais’, New Catholic Encyclopedia (New York, 1967)

R.B. Tobin: Vincent of Beauvais' De eruditione filiorum nobilium: the Education of Women (New York, 1984)

G.G. Guzman: ‘Vincent of Beauvais’, Dictionary of the Middle Ages, ed. J. Strayer (New York, 1982–9)

W.J. Aerts, E.R.Smits and J.B. Voorbij, eds.: Vincent of Beauvais and Alexander the Great: Studies in the Speculum maius and its Translation into Medieval Vernaculars (Gröningen, 1986)

Vincent de Beauvais: Intentions et réceptions d'une oeuvre encyclopédique au Moyen Age (Colloque de l'Institut d'études médiévales XIV): Montreal 1988, ed. M. Paulmier-Foucart, S. Lusignan and A. Nadeau (Paris, 1990)

G.G. Guzman: ‘Additional Manuscripts of the Speculum historiale of Vincent of Beauvais in the Vatican Library’, Manuscripta, xxxv (1991), 35–8

See also Theory, theorists.

GORDON A. ANDERSON

Vincenti, Alessandro.

Italian bookseller and music printer, son of Giacomo Vincenti.

Vincenti [Vincenci, Vincenzi], Giacomo

(d Venice, 1619). Italian bookseller and music printer. He may have been of Spanish origin, since he signed some books ‘Vincenci’ when he started publishing in 1583 and for the next few years, and signed his edition of Guerrero’s Canciones y villanescas espirituales (1589) ‘en la emprenta de Iago Vincentio’; but in 1583 he also used the spelling ‘Vincenzi’, which was his usual form until 1588. Thereafter he used ‘Vincenti’.

Between 1583 and 1586 Vincenti printed, in partnership with Ricciardo Amadino, about 20 books a year, almost all musical editions. Vincenti seems to have been the more assertive partner; he signed several dedications of joint publications while Amadino signed none, and when they began to print separately in 1586, Vincenti kept the joint printer’s mark, a pine-cone. The separation was probably amicable, for they continued to use the same typefaces, type ornaments and decorative initials, and printed jointly a number of books on religion and philosophy (1600–09). The copyrights acquired together probably continued to be shared. In 1587 Vincenti issued Marenzio’s fourth book of madrigals for six voices, with Marenzio’s dedication of 10 December 1586. Amadino’s edition followed shortly with the same dedication, but ‘newly reprinted and purged of many errors’ and with slightly changed contents (for details of their joint productions see Amadino, Ricciardo).

Working separately Vincenti remained as prolific as before, printing music by most of the principal north Italian composers: Croce (55 or more editions), Viadana (53), Marenzio, Asola, Banchieri (music and theory), Cifra, Alessandro Grandi (i), Felice Anerio, Girolamo Diruta, Ignazio Donati, Giovannelli and many others. He reprinted Caccini’s Le nuove musiche (1615; abridged as Nove arie, 1608), and also printed numerous anthologies; theatre music, including the Intermedii et concerti of 1591 (music for the 1589 wedding of Ferdinando de’ Medici and Christine of Lorraine); and a reprint of Caccini’s L’Euridice (1615); and much instrumental music as well as tutors and passaggi. These include works by Bassano (1591), Riccardo Rognoni (1592), Diruta (1593), Bovicelli (1594), Spadi (1609) and Bottazzi (1614). With Amadino he printed Artusi’s L’arte del contraponto ridotta in tavole (1586), and alone he printed a Seconda parte (1589; repr. 1598). In 1600 he printed L’Artusi, overo Delle imperfettioni della moderna musica, attacking Monteverdi, with a Seconda parte (1603), and in 1608 Artusi’s Discorso secondo … di Antonio Braccino da Todi, answering the reply in Monteverdi’s Scherzi musicali (1607). He also printed Banchieri’s Cartella musicale (1601) and Romano Micheli’s letter Alli molt’illustri … musici della cappella di N.S. (1618), concerning the composition of canons.

Vincenti’s main competition was with the firms of Gardano, Scotto and Amadino, but his musical production, including music theory and criticism as well as non-musical books, was more wide-ranging. He was among the first music publishers to issue a trade list, in 1591. It was followed by at least five more, published from 1621 to 1662, usually with prices. His non-musical production was small: three Tasso editions, a few plays (including one by Banchieri) and books on history, medicine, geography and philosophy.

Vincenti, like many other Venetian publishers, had connections with booksellers in other parts of Italy. He printed, together with Amadino, three books with music by Caimo in 1583–6 for Pietro Tini of Milan; and in 1593 he hired a Neapolitan bookseller to pursue debtors in Rome and Naples. The occasional use of Vincenti's device and motto by the Neapolitan printer-booksellers O. Salviani and F. Stigliola may indicate connections with his firm.

Two sons, Vincenzo and Alessandro, together published 12 volumes of Villanelle, et arie napolitane (Venice, n.d.). Vincenzo seems to have taken no further part in the firm, and it was Alessandro Vincenti (fl 1619–67) who faced vigorous Venetian competition from Gardano’s successors, Bartolomeo and Francesco Magni, and growing competition from printers outside Venice. Energetic and enthusiastic, he printed copiously the music of Cazzati, Donati, Grandi, Merula, Martino Pesenti and Galeazzo Sabbatini, and in lesser quantity the music of Banchieri, Gasparo and Girolamo Casati, Cozzolani, Crivelli, Ghizzolo, Salamone Rossi, Giovanni Valentini and many others. He took a solicitous interest in the blind Pesenti, whose third book of Correnti alla francese op.12 (1641) was dedicated to ‘the most illustrious and excellent Signore Domenico Vincenti’ by his ‘most devoted and obliged relative Alessandro Vincenti’, though with no indication of how they were related.

Among Alessandro Vincenti’s notable editions were Monteverdi’s eighth and ninth books of madrigals (1638, 1651) and Messa … et salmi (1650); reprints of Frescobaldi’s Capricci (1626, 1628), and first editions of his Canzoni (1635), Fiori musicali (1635) and Canzoni alla francese (1645); and Cavalli’s Musiche sacre (1656). His last known work is Rosenmüller’s Sonate da camera (1667). He also printed music theory and criticism, including Zacconi’s Prattica di musica seconda parte (1622) and Scacchi’s polemical Cribrum musicum (1643); and reprints of Banchieri’s L’organo suonarino (1622, 1627, 1638) and Cartella musicale (as La Banchierina, 1623), the second part of Diruta’s Il Transilvano (1622), Scaletta’s Scala di musica (1622, 1626, 1656, 1664) and Sabbatini’s Regola facile (1644).

The Vincenti music editions, printed from movable type, met the needs of their times but typify a period of technical stagnation and artistic decline in Italian music printing generally (except in music engraving, which Vincenti did not practise). Most are mediocre in appearance, and some are marred by ugly decoration, worn type, poor inking and errors in text and pagination. The best, however, are accurate and well-executed, and a few have excellent engraved title-pages.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

SartoriB

SartoriD

VogelB

A. Segarizzi: Bibliografia delle stampe popolari italiane della R. Biblioteca nazionale di S. Marco di Venezia (Bergamo, 1913), 223

G. Thibault: ‘Deux catalogues de libraires musicaux: Vincenti et Gardane (Venise 1591)’, RdM, x (1929), 177–83

P. Manzi: Annali della stamperia Stigliola a Porta Reale in Napoli (1593–1606) (Florence, 1968)

C. Marciani: ‘Editori, tipografi, librai veneti nel Regno di Napoli nel Cinquecento’, Studi veneziani, x (1968), 457–517

H.W. Hitchcock: ‘Depriving Caccini of a Musical Pastime’, JAMS, xxv (1972), 58–78

P. Manzi: La tipografia napoletana nel ’500: annali di Orazio Salviani (1566–1594) (Florence, 1974)

T.W. Bridges: The Publishing of Arcadelt’s First Book of Madrigals (diss., Harvard U., 1982)

A. Pompilio: ‘Editoria musicale a Napoli e in Italia nel Cinque-Seicento’, Musica e cultura a Napoli dal XV al XIX secolo, ed. L. Bianconi and R. Bossa, Quaderni della RIM, ix (Florence, 1983), 79–102

E. Vaccaro: Le marche dei tipografi ed editori italiani del secolo XVI nella Biblioteca Angelica di Roma (Florence, 1983), 367, fig.506

O. Mischiati: Indici, cataloghi e avvisi degli editori e librai musicali italiani dal 1591 al 1798 (Florence, 1984) [incl. facs.]

G. Zappella: Le marche dei tipografi e degli editori italiani del Cinquecento (Milan, 1986)

A. Pompilio: ‘Strategie editoriali delle stamperie veneziane tra il 1570 e il 1630’, IMSCR XIV: Bologna 1987, i, 254–87

F. Ascarelli and M. Menato: La tipografia del ’500 in Italia (Florence, 1989), 432

THOMAS W. BRIDGES

Vincentius [Vincenti]

(fl 1515). Italian instrument maker from Livigmeno (possibly Livignano, Tuscany). His harpsichord constructed in 1515–16 is the oldest known to survive (see Harpsichord, §2(i)); that made in 1521 by Hieronymus Bononiensis long held this distinction). An inscription on the harpsichord indicates that it was made for Pope Leo X in 1516, and a signature on the underside of the soundboard reveals that the instrument was started on 18 September 1515. Although the harpsichord was made in a style consistent with other early harpsichords, and probably with a single register, its compass cannot be definitely established. It may have been C/E–f''', although FGA–g'''a''' is also possible.

Another harpsichord maker called Vincentius (fl 1610–12), of Prato, made harpsichords that are now at Leipzig University, at Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York, and at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BoalchM

D. Wraight: ‘Vincentius and the Earliest Harpsichords’, EMc, xiv (1986), 534–8

D. Wraight: The Stringing of Italian Keyboard Instruments c1500–c1650 (diss., Queen’s U. of Belfast, 1997), ii, 311–14

DENZIL WRAIGHT

Vincentius [Vincent], Caspar

(b Saint Omer, c1580; d Würzburg, 1624). Flemish composer and organist, active in Germany. He was a chorister first at Saint Omer Cathedral and later in the court chapel of Archduke Ernst of Austria in Brussels. On the archduke’s death in 1595 he was transferred to the imperial chapel in Vienna, where his abilities came to the favourable notice of the Kapellmeister, Philippe de Monte. Having completed his education in Vienna, he was appointed civic organist of Speyer about 1602 and became acquainted with Abraham Schadaeus, rector of the town school, with whom he collaborated in compiling three volumes of the Promptuarium musicum, a mammoth collection of motets for church use. In 1615 he resigned his post in troubled circumstances and, after officiating for a time at the organ of the Andreaskirche, Worms, became organist of Würzburg Cathedral on 3 August 1618, remaining there until his death.

Vincentius’s importance lies primarily in his role in the production of the Promptuarium. This consisted of adding a continuo part (which he issued himself) to the first three volumes (1611–13), as well as directions for performance to the second volume, the production and printing of the third after Schadaeus had left Speyer, and the compiling of the whole of the fourth. This final volume contains 132 Latin motets for five to eight voices, the majority for double choir. Italian composers predominate, but less so than in the first three volumes, for 17 German composers are included, as is the Englishman Peter Philips. The directions for continuo performance are based largely on Viadana’s rules: it seems clear that Vincentius did not add the continuo part with a view to ‘improving’ the compositions but rather to promote their wider circulation by replacing the old method of making keyboard tablatures with the ‘nova methodus’ of the figured bass. In the preface to his edition of Lassus’s Magnum opus musicum, for which he published a continuo part in 1625, he implied that the practice of adding such parts to the compositions of others was common in both Italy and Germany. Vincentius’s own motets in the Promptuarium show strong 16th-century influence, with the continuo functioning more as a basso seguente; however, the homophonic writing and the use of refrain forms show that he was not entirely unaffected by the new ideas from Italy.

WORKS

Canticum gratulatorium (Speyer, 1611)

ed., with A. Schadaeus: Promptuarii musici …, i, ii, iii (Strasbourg, 1611¹, 1612³, 1613²) [incl. 15 motets, 5–8vv, bc, by Vincentius]

ed.: Promptuarii musici …, iv (Strasbourg, 1617¹) [incl. 10 motets, 6–8vv, bc, by Vincentius]

In magni illius magni boiariae ducis symphoniarchae Orlandi de Lasso Magnum Opus Musicum [Munich, 1604] bassus ad organum nova methodo dispositus (Würzburg, 1625)

6 motets, 5–8vv, bc, in c1610¹⁸, 1618¹, 1621²

Missa super ‘Cecilia gaude’ (Ky, Gl only), 8vv; Wo der Herr nicht das Haus bauet, 8vv: D-Bsb

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BoetticherOL

GerberNL

WaltherML

O. Kinkeldey: Orgel und Klavier in der Musik des 16. Jahrhunderts (Leipzig, 1910/R), 214

A. Werner: ‘Die alte Musikbibliothek und die Instrumentensammlung an St. Wenzel in Naumburg an der Saale’, AMw, viii (1926), 390–415

F.T. Arnold: The Art of Accompaniment from a Thorough-Bass (London, 1931/R), 91f

J. Roche: ‘Anthologies and the Dissemination of Early Baroque Italian Sacred Music’, Soundings, iv (1974), 6–12

A. LINDSEY KIRWAN

Vincentius Bellovacensis.

See Vincent de Beauvais.

Vincenzi, Giacomo.

See Vincenti, Giacomo.

Vincenzo da Rimini [Magister Dominus Abbas de Arimino, L’abate Vincençio da Imola, Frate Vincenço]

(fl mid-14th century). Italian composer. The presence of his works in I-Fl 87 (where he is depicted in Benedictine garb; see illustration) and their style indicate that he was perhaps a somewhat older contemporary of Lorenzo da Firenze. The designations ‘da Rimini’ and ‘da Imola’, both cities not far from Bologna, indicate his place of birth or place of employment. It has been suggested that he may be identifiable with an abbot of the Benedictine monastery of S Maria in Regola, near Imola, from about 1362 to 1364 (see Long). However, from the sources Vincenzo was also associated with Florence. Support for this theory is found in the madrigal Ita se n’era, which perhaps originated as a rival piece to Lorenzo’s with the same text: in addition, it contains a possible allusion to the Florentine villa of the Alberti family (Il Paradiso). Pirrotta did not exclude the possibility that Vincenzo was associated with Pandolfo Malatesta (Rimini) who, before 1357, was closely linked with the Milanese court and later with Florence.

Four madrigals and two cacce by Vincenzo have survived, all transmitted in Tuscan manuscripts (though not in I-Fn 26). Stylistically Vincenzo’s work stands between that of Jacopo da Bologna on the one hand and that of Lorenzo and Donato da Cascia on the other. From Jacopo he adopted the monophonic linking passages between the madrigal lines, and yet in contrast to Jacopo his works contain an increasing amount of imitation. The two important cacce, which show linguistic traits of northern Italy, are market scenes and are metrically very free. These stand stylistically between the earlier works of Piero and Zacharias’s late caccia A poste messe.

WORKS

Editions:Der Squarcialupi-Codex, Pal.87 der Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana zu Florenz, ed. J. Wolf (Lippstadt, 1955) [W]; see K. von Fischer: ‘Zu Johannes Wolfs Übertragung des Squarcialupi-Codex’, Mf, ix (1956), 77–89The Music of Fourteenth-Century Italy, ed. N. Pirrotta, CMM, viii/4 (1963) [P]Italian Secular Music, ed. W.T. Marrocco, PMFC, vii (1971) [M]

madrigals

Ay, sconsolato ed amoroso, 2vv, W 71, P 43, M 1

Già era ’l sol, 2vv (text inc.), W 73, P 45, M 4

Gridavan li pastor, 2vv, W 72, P 46, M 7

Ita se n’era a star, 2vv, W 65, P 47, M 12, 14 (text also set by Lorenzo da Firenze)

cacce

In forma quasi tra ’l veghiar, 3vv, W 66, P 48, M 9

Nell’acqua chiara, 3vv, W 67, P 50, M 16, 21

BIBLIOGRAPHY

K. von Fischer: Studien zur italienischen Musik des Trecento und frühen Quattrocento (Berne, 1956)

G. Corsi, ed.: Poesie musicali del Trecento (Bologna, 1970), 81–7

M.T. Brasolin: ‘Proposta per una classificazione metrica della cacce trecentesche’, La musica al tempo del Boccaccio e i suoi rapporti con la letturatura: Siena and Certaldo 1975 [L’Ars Nova italiana del Trecento, iv (Certaldo, 1978)], 83–105

M.P. Long: ‘ Ita se n’era a star nel Paradiso: the Metamorphoses of an Ovidian Madrigal in Trecento Italy’, L’Europa e la musica del Trecento: Congresso IV: Certaldo 1984 [L’Ars Nova italiana del Trecento, vi (Certaldo, 1992)], 257–67

V. Newes: ‘Chace, Caccia, Fuga: The Convergence of French and Italian Traditions’, MD, xli (1987), 27–57

F.A. Gallo, ed.: Il codice Squarcialupi (Florence, 1992) [incl. K. von Fischer: ‘ Le biografie’, i, 127–44, esp. 133–4; N. Pirrotta: ‘Le musiche del codice Squarcialupi’, i, 193–222, esp. 202–3]

KURT VON FISCHER/GIANLUCA D’AGOSTINO

Vincenzo di Pasquino.

See Bastini, Vincentio.

Vinci, Leonardo

(b Strongoli, Calabria, ?1696; d Naples, 27/28 May 1730). Italian composer. His music exerted a direct influence on many composers of the next generation, notably Pergolesi and Hasse, and also made an impact on older composers such as Vivaldi and Handel, whose later works incorporate elements of the style of Vinci and his colleagues.

KURT MARKSTROM

1. Life.

The year of birth usually given, 1690, is based on the death register of S Maria della Neve, Naples, which describes Vinci as 40 years old in 1730. Another death register, however, that of S Giovanni Maggiore, describes him as ‘about 34’, placing the year of his birth at about 1696. This supports Dent’s speculation about the composer’s age and would seem to tally more closely with subsequent events in his life. Vinci entered the Conservatorio dei Poveri di Gesù Cristo, Naples, on 14 November 1708 as a ‘convittore’, paying 36 ducats a year, but after three years this fee was waived; apparently he was by then earning his keep as a ‘mastricello’ or student teacher. At the conservatory he studied composition with Gaetano Greco. After ten years of study he left and for a short time served as maestro di cappella to Prince Sansevero.

Vinci made his operatic début on 19 April 1719 at the Teatro dei Fiorentini in Naples with the commedia per musica Lo cecato fauzo, enthusiastically reviewed in the Avvisi di Napoli. His second opera followed immediately in July, and for the next three years he was virtual house composer at the Fiorentini; not until Piccinni in the 1760s would another composer dominate the comic stage in Naples to the same extent. Vinci’s first operas were of the commedia per musica type, full-length comic operas with texts primarily in Neapolitan dialect. His Li zite’ngalera, from carnival 1722, is the earliest surviving score of a Neapolitan commedia. Vinci produced his first serious opera, Publio Cornelio Scipione, at the Teatro S Bartolomeo in Naples on 4 November 1722; it was so successful that after the production of Lo labborinto during Carnival he turned primarily to the dramma per musica. This was not only the more prestigious but also the more cosmopolitan genre, dialect restricting the commedie to Naples. Only on one subsequent occasion, the inauguration of the Teatro della Pace in Naples in May 1724, did he return to the comic genre (though most of his drammi per musica for Naples contain comic intermezzos).

In 1724 Vinci secured his first commission outside Naples, setting Lucchini’s Farnace for the Teatro delle Dame in Rome. According to Burney, ‘so great was the success of this drama, that [Vinci] was called upon to furnish at least one opera every year till 1730, when he composed two’. Roman theatres were closed for the Holy Year in 1725, but Vinci wrote two new operas for the Teatro S Giovanni Grisostomo in Venice that year; their success probably led to a commission for a new opera at Parma in the spring involving the same composer and principals. Vinci’s activity reached a peak during winter 1725–6 when three new operas were produced: Astianatte in Naples in December, Didone abbandonata in Rome in January and Siroe re di Persia in Venice in February. The last two were the first of a series of successful collaborations between Vinci and Metastasio. Vinci set all but one of Metastasio’s early librettos, and except in the case of Didone these were first settings. This collaboration was cited as the ideal by Algarotti, who urged composers to ‘keep up such a dependence and friendly intercourse as subsisted between Lully and Quinault, Vinci and Metastasio’. Vinci’s success seems to have been challenged by his older colleague Porpora. Productions of operas by the two men in Venice and Rome fuelled a rivalry which, according to Burney, dated back to their youth.

Following the death of Alessandro Scarlatti in October 1725, Vinci was appointed pro-vice-maestro at the royal chapel in Naples. His activity was now virtually restricted to Naples and Rome, but in 1728 he took on further commitments: in spring he collaborated with C.I. Frugoni on the opera Medo and the equestrian ballet Le nozze di Nettuno for the wedding of the Duke of Parma; he served during the summer as maestro at his former conservatory, where Pergolesi was among his pupils; and in autumn he became a lay brother with the Congregation of the Rosary at the monastery of S Caterina a Formiello, where he also served as maestro di cappella. Most of Vinci’s few sacred works were written and performed at S Caterina a Formiello.

During the 1729–30 season Vinci was one of the impresarios at the Teatro delle Dame, as well as its principal composer. In the latter capacity he collaborated with Metastasio on three major works: the serenata La contesa de’ numi, performed at the palace of the French ambassador in Rome on 26 November in celebration of the birth of the dauphin, and the operas Alessandro nell’Indie and Artaserse at the Teatro delle Dame the following January and February. During the same season Porpora presented two operas at the Teatro Capranica in Rome; according to Marpurg, Vinci, fearful of Porpora’s challenge, resorted to sabotage in an attempt to crush his rival. Vinci’s machinations were hardly necessary, as both his operas became celebrated examples of the dramma per musica. According to De Brosses, the Italians did not ‘want to see again any piece … that they have already seen another year, unless it is some excellent opera by Vinci’. Vinci did not live to enjoy his success. He died in Naples amid rumours that he had been poisoned because of an illicit love affair.

Vinci, Leonardo

2. Works.

Almost all of Vinci’s surviving music is in opera or opera-related genres and consists of an alternation of recitative and da capo aria. It was principally in his arias that Vinci forged the new style which can be regarded as the beginnings of Classicism. His early works derive their style from his immediate predecessors in Naples, notably Sarro and Porpora. The origins of the new style can be detected first in the surviving arias of his final commedie of 1722–3, in the additional arias of his first drammi (1723–4) and, on a somewhat broader scale, in his settings of Stampiglia from 1724–5. This suggests that the new style was developed first in comic opera and gradually introduced into heroic opera, with the comic elements in Stampiglia allowing for a more consistent development. The foundations of the new style were already established by the time Vinci began collaborating with Metastasio, whose drammi were ideal for the development of the new style. Vinci’s rivalry with Porpora undoubtedly served as a catalyst, with each composer trying to outdo the other in writing à la mode. Because Porpora and Vinci were Metastasio’s original collaborators, the new style became an important ingredient of Metastasian opera as it began its conquest of the theatres of Europe.

The new style was characterized by the periodic treatment of melody. Marmontel in his Essai sur les révolutions de la musique en France considered Vinci to be the originator of this new periodicity:

But the true moment of its glory was when Vinci first traced the circle of periodic song which in the pure elegant and polished design presented to the ear, as a period to the wit, the development of a thought completely rendered. Therefore this was when the great mystery of melody was revealed.

Whether or not Vinci was the first to trace ‘the circle of periodic song’, he was the first composer of international repute to cultivate the style consistently, to such an extent that it became associated with him and those who continued in this vein were regarded as his disciples.

Vinci’s periodic melody had its origins in the dance, and many of the arias in his early works are based on dances such as the minuet, passepied, bourée and gavotte. However, as F.-J. Chastellux pointed out, this new periodicity was not the static, dance-based periodicity of contemporary French music, but a new dynamic one that incorporated thematic development, almost like a fusion of traditional dance periodicity and Baroque Fortspinnung. This dynamic periodicity includes a third element, declamation. Not only is the theme generated from the opening line or couplet of the aria text, but each subsequent phrase is devoted to a line or couplet and delimited by a caesura or cadence. This poetically sensitive periodic melody is what Burney had in mind when he singled out Vinci for his ‘considerable revolution in the musical drama’:

Vinci seems to have been the first opera composer who … without degrading his art, rendered it the friend, though not the slave to poetry, by simplifying and polishing melody, and calling the attention of the audience chiefly to the voice-part, by disintangling it from fugue, complication, and laboured contrivance.

Burney’s reference to disentangling melody ‘from fugue, complication, and laboured contrivance’ refers to Vinci’s simple homophonic accompaniments, the other important element of the new style. The contrapuntal obbligato-style accompaniments of the late Baroque aria give way to accompaniments for four-part string orchestra which can be reinforced by oboes, horns or trumpets. The transparency of the accompaniment is further enhanced by doublings; during the ritornellos the violins play in unison, while in the vocal sections the violas double the basses at the octave and the first violins frequently double the voice. The most important aspect of this simplification is the increasing use of Trommelbass (steady repeated notes in the bass during periods of harmonic stasis). While this occurs sporadically in Vinci’s early operas, in his later ones it is used to a greater or lesser extent in almost all the arias. The device, a standard feature of the mid-century aria, undoubtedly contributed to the slowing of harmonic rhythm during the second half of the 18th century.

The simplified accompaniments also allowed for a greater rhythmic diversification of the melody, heightening its polished elegance through the use of dotted and lombardic rhythms, triplets and sextuplets, appoggiaturas and ornaments, and various types of syncopation. This rhythmic flexibility is responsible for breaking down the motoric rhythms of late Baroque music. Although the Trommelbass gives the singer greater flexibility, and may be exploited for the sake of virtuosity, vocal pyrotechnics are not an important element in Vinci’s music. Coloratura is almost completely absent from the surviving comic arias, and in the heroic arias it is often relegated to a single passage at the end of each vocal period as a means of extending and intensifying the final phrase.

From a modern dramatic viewpoint Vinci is inconsistent in matching music to drama, particularly in the arias. This was noticed even in the late 18th century by Grétry, who in Artaserse praised Arbace’s ‘Vò solcando’ because ‘the melody, and above all the accompaniments, absolutely match the words’, but dismissed Semira’s ‘Torna innocente’ as ‘a gay dance air to express fury … like the anger of Pulcinella’. This inconsistency, found to a greater or lesser extent in all Vinci’s operas, was not considered problematic by contemporaries. Martello’s Della tragedia antica e moderna (1715) contains advice on aria construction that, although intended for librettists, could also be applied by composers:

Keep in mind that in the aria, the more general the propositions, the more they will please the people. … Avoid generalities [only] in the arie di azione … that are in spirit adapted to one action and no other. … [Therefore] do yourself honour in the recitative, and in one or two arias in each act.

Vinci followed this principle: apart from one or two arias in each act, usually the arie di azione, the arias tend to be tuneful and dance-like or simple and declamatory. On the other hand Vinci indeed did himself ‘honour in the recitative’; his accompanied recitative in particular attracted considerable attention during the 18th century. His mastery is apparent as early as his first setting of Farnace, and culminates in the recitative finales of Didone abbandonata and Catone in Utica. Moreover, some of the simple recitative, though it tends to be in long stretches, contains passages as fine as the more celebrated accompanied recitatives.

There are two fine caricatures of Vinci by the Roman artist Pier Leone Ghezzi, the first drawn in 1724, the second probably originating from the production of La contesa de’ numi in November 1729. In the latter Vinci is depicted conducting (presumably a rehearsal) according to the modern fashion, before a lectern with a piece of manuscript paper (see illustration). To the earlier caricature Ghezzi appended a description of Vinci’s death: ‘he died in Naples on 28 May 1730 on Sunday at the 17th hour, from a colic pain in an instant without even being able to confess’ – a description that gives the rumours of poisoning greater substance. Ghezzi also provided a fleeting glimpse of Vinci’s personality: ‘he was a man who would have gambled his eyes [away]; he was a “valentuomo” in music who composed with much spirit, but his behaviour was diverse from the talent that he had. May God give him paradise for his talent’.

Vinci, Leonardo

WORKS

music lost unless otherwise stated

operas

NB	Naples, Teatro di S Bartolomeo
NFI	Naples, Teatro dei Fiorentini
RD	Rome, Teatro delle Dame
VGG	Venice, Teatro S Giovanni Grisostomo
cm	commedia per musica
dm	dramma per musica
int	intermezzo

Lo cecato fauzo (cm, 3, A. Piscopo), NFI, 19 April 1719, 11 arias I-Nc

Le ddoie lettere (invenzione per musica, 3, A. Birini), NFI, 9 July 1719

Lo scassone (capriccio per musica, 3), NFI, ?carn. 1720, 1 aria Nc

Lo scagno (fantasia marenaresca, 3), NFI, mid-1720

Lo castiello saccheato (cm, 3, F. Oliva), NFI, 26 Oct 1720, collab. Falco

Lo barone de Trocchia (cm, 3), NFI, 25 Jan 1721

Don Ciccio (cm, 3, B. Saddumene), NFI, 6 Sept 1721

Li zite ’ngalera (cm, 3, Saddumene), NFI, 3 Jan 1722, Nc*

La festa di Bacco (cm, 3, F.A. Tullio), NFI, 29 Aug 1722, 10 arias D-MÜs

Publio Cornelio Scipione (dm, 3, Saddumene, after A. Piovene), NB, 4 Nov 1722, 3 arias F-Pc; with Bacocco e Ermosilla (int)

Lo labborinto (cm, 3, Saddumene), NFI, carn. 1723, 3 arias D-MÜs

Silla dittatore [Il tiranno eroe] (dm, 3, V. Cassani), Naples, Palazzo Reale, 1 Oct 1723, I-Nc; with Albino e Plautilla (int), Nc

Farnace [1st version] (dm, 3, A.M. Lucchini), RD, 8 Jan 1724, D-MÜs

La mogliere fedele (cm, 3, Saddumene), Naples, Pace, 14 May 1724

Eraclea (dm, 3, S. Stampiglia), NB, 1 Oct 1724, I-MC

Ifigenia in Tauride (tragedia, 5, B. Pasqualigo), VGG, carn. 1725, arias in GB-Lbl and I-Vnm

La Rosmira fedele [Partenope] (dm, 3, Stampiglia), VGG, carn. 1725, GB-Lbl*

Il trionfo di Camilla (dm, 3, C.I. Frugoni, after Stampiglia), Parma, Ducale, spr. 1725, 4 arias F-Pc, 2 arias US-BE

Astianatte (dm, 3, A. Salvi), NB, 2 Dec 1725, I-Nc, Acts 2 and 3 B-Bc (from a pasticcio, 1728, Florence); with Urania e Clito (int)

Didone abbandonata (dm, 3, P. Metastasio), RD, 14 Jan 1726, D-MÜs, US-Cn (facs. in IOB, xxix, 1977), Acts 1 and 2 A-Wn; arr. Handel, 1737, GB-Lbl

Siroe re di Persia (dm, 3, Metastasio), VGG, Feb 1726, D-MÜs; GB-Cfm, Lam, Lcm

L’Ernelinda [La fede tradita] (dm, 3, F. Silvani), NB, 4 Nov 1726, Lcm, I-MC, Act 2 B-Bc (from a pasticcio, 1728, Florence); with Erighetta e Don Chilone (int, after Salvi: L’ammalato immaginario), MC

Gismondo re di Polonia [Il vincitor generoso] (dm, 3, F. Briani), RD, 11 Jan 1727, D-MÜs, Acts 2 and 3 B-Bc, Act 1 D-Hs

La caduta de’ Decemviri (dm, 3, Stampiglia), NB, 1 Oct 1727, I-MC, Act 3 GB-Lbl; with Flacco e Servilia (int, after Stampiglia)

Catone in Utica (tragedia per musica, 3, Metastasio), RD, 19 Jan 1728, D-Bsb, MÜs, I-Mc (pasticcio, 1732), Nc, US-Wc, Acts 1 and 2 GB-Lcm

Medo (dm, 3, Frugoni), Parma, Ducale, May 1728, A-Wn (as Medea risconosciuta, pasticcio, 1735), B-Bc, F-Pc

Flavio Anicio Olibrio (dm, 3, P. Pariati and A. Zeno), NB, 11 Dec 1728, 5 arias D-MÜs, trio GB-Lbl; with Il corteggiano affettato (int), aria I-Nc

Semiramide riconosciuta (dm, 3, Metastasio), RD, 6 Feb 1729, D-MÜs, I-MC, Nc, Acts 2 and 3 D-Hs; arr. Handel, 1733, Hs

[Il] Farnace [2nd version] (dm, 3, Lucchini), NB, 28 Aug 1729, arias in I-MC and Nc; with L’amante geloso (int)

Alessandro nell’Indie (dm, 3, Metastasio), RD, 2 Jan 1730, GB-Lbl, I-MC, Nc, US-Wc, Acts 2 and 3 B-Bc; arr. G.B. Ferrandini, 1735, D-Mbs (facs in IOB, lxxii, 1984)

Artaserse (dm, 3, Metastasio), RD, 4 Feb 1730, A-Wn, B-Bc, D-Bsb, GB-Lbl, Lcm, Lgc, I-MC, Nc, Vnm, US-Wc; Fano, 1731, I-FAN (pasticcio); Rome, 1731, GB-Lcm; as Arbace, arr. Handel, 1734, D-Hs

Pasticcios arr. Vinci: Turno Aricino (1725); Stratonica (1727), 2 arias I-Mc, Rc

other stage

Le nozze di Nettuno l’equestre con Anfitrite (introduzione per musica alla danza da rappresentarsi à cavallo, C.I. Frugoni), Parma, Farnese, 22 July 1728

Cantata à 6 (serenata), ?Rome, aut. 1728, D-Bsb

Arias in Massimiano (tragedia cristiana, A. Marchese), Naples, 1729

La contesa de’ numi (componimento drammatico, P. Metastasio), Rome, Palazzo Altemps, 25 Nov 1729, A-Wgm, D-MÜs, F-Pn, GB-Lcm, I-MC, Nc

cantatas

for soprano and continuo unless otherwise stated

All’error d’un alma infida (per la Passione), S, str, bc, I-Ac; Amor di Citerea gentilissimo figlio, D-MEIr; Dove sei che non ti sento (Olympia abbandonata), GB-Lbl; Finché in ciel saran le stelle, S, vn, bc, Cfm; Mesta, oh Dio, fra queste selve, S/A, str, bc, A-Wgm, B-Br, D-Bsb, MÜs, WD, F-Pc, GB-Lbl, Lcm, I-Ac, Bc, MC, Nc, US-FAlewis (I-Ac as Dove, oh Dio, trovar conforto); Mi costa tante lagrime, I-Nc; Nice son io pur quello, Ac; Parto, ma con qual core (La partenza del Faustina), 1723, B-Bc, I-MC, Fc, Nc; Peccatore, che fai? (Cantata morale), S, A, str, bc, Ac; Pendeva in dura croce (Cantata di Passione), S, str, bc, Ac; Per soggiogar la libertà di Roma (Orazio al ponte), B, bc, D-Bsb; Silvan dimmi Silvano (Filli a Silvano che parte), A, bc, 9 June 1727, I-MC*; Tu partisti o del core, MC, Nc

Doubtful: Del bel Tamigi in riva, Nc, Rsc, US-AAu [? B. Marcello]; Dite vedeste forse, S, str, bc, I-Nc [? L. Leo]; È pure un gran portento, Nc; Fille tu parti oh Dio, Nc [? A. Scarlatti]; Pietosa l’aurora in cielo, Nc; Veggo la selva e’l monte (P. Metastasio), Nc

sacred

Orats: Le glorie del SS Rosario, Naples, S Caterina a Formiello, 6 Oct 1722; Maria dolorata, Naples, S Caterina a Formiello, ?6 Oct 1725, I-Nc; orat, 4vv (Maria, Angelo, Alba, Selim), Naples, S Caterina a Formiello, 6 Oct ?1727, Nc

Liturgical: Ky, Gl, SSAATTBB, tpt, ob, str, org, D-MÜs

Motets, D-Bsb: Agitata cum procella; De valle acquosa; Fera mumurat procella; In timida procella; Sum in medio tempestatum

Doubtful: Mass in A, 5vv, orch, I-Nc [? N. Porpora]; Te Deum, 4vv, orch, Bsb; Laudate Dominum, Bsb; Litanie della Beatissima Virgine, Bsb; Miserere, 4vv, orch, Bsb [formerly attrib. G.B. Pergolesi, probably by Vinci]

instrumental

9 minuets in Menuets italiens des célèbres Léonardo Vinci, Scarlatti, Bononcini (Paris, 1737)

Works in 12 Solos, fl/vn, bc (hpd/vc) … by … Vinci and other Italian authors (London, c1746)

Toccata, org, I-Nc

Vinci, Leonardo

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BurneyH

CroceN

FlorimoN

RosaM

C. Burney: Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Abate Metastasio (London, 1796)

N. d’Arienzo: ‘Origini dell’opera comica’, RMI, vi (1899), 473–95 [pt 3 of 4]

E.J. Dent: ‘Notes on Leonardo Vinci’, MA, iv (1912–13), 193–201

A. Cametti: ‘Leonardo Vinci e i suoi drammi in musica al Teatro delle Dame 1724–30’, Musica d’oggi, vi (1924), 297–9

K. Geiringer: ‘Eine Geburtstagskantate von Pietro Metastasio und Leonardo Vinci’, ZMw, ix (1926-7), 27–83

H. Benedikt: Das Königreich Neapel unter Kaiser Karl VI (Vienna, 1927)

A. de Angelis: Il Teatro Alibert o Delle Dame (1717–1863) (Tivoli, 1951)

H. Hucke: ‘Die neapolitanische Tradition in der Oper’, IMSCR VIII: New York 1961, 253–76

U. Prota-Giurleo: ‘Leonardo Vinci’, Convegno musicale, ii (1965), 3–11

R.B. Meikle: Leonardo Vinci’s ‘Artaserse’: an Edition, with an Editorial and Critical Commentary (diss., Cornell U., 1970)

H. Hell: Die neapolitanische Opernsinfonie in der ersten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts (Tutzing, 1971)

R. Strohm: Italienische Opernarien des frühen Settecento (1720–1730), AnMc, no.16 (1976)

R. Strohm: Die italienische Oper im 18. Jahrhundert (Wilhelmshaven, 1979)

R. Strohm: ‘Leonardo Vinci’s Didone abbandonata (Rome 1726)’, Essays on Handel and Italian Opera (Cambridge, 1985), 213–24

R. Strohm: ‘Metastasio’s Alessandro nell’Indie and its Earliest Settings’, ibid., 232–48

P. Weiss: ‘Ancora sulle origini dell’opera comica: il linguaggio’, Studi pergolesiani, i (1986), 124–48

J.H. Roberts: ‘Handel and Vinci’s Didone abbandonata: Revisions and Borrowings’, ML, lxvii (1987), 141–50

T.M. Gialdroni: ‘Vinci “operista” autore di cantate’, Studi in onore di Giulio Cattin, ed. F. Luisi (Rome, 1990), 307–29

T.M. Gialdroni: ‘Leonardo Vinci e la cantata spirituale a Napoli nell prima metà del Settecento’, Musica senza aggetivi: studi per Fedele d’Amico, ed. A. Ziino (Florence, 1991), 123–43

K.S. Markstrom: The Operas of Leonardo Vinci (diss., U. of Toronto, 1993)

K.S. Markstrom: ‘Burney's Assessment of Leonardo Vinci’, AcM, lxvii (1995), 142–63

R. Strohm: ‘The Neapolitans in Venice’, Con che soavità: Studies in Italian Opera, Song, and Dance, 1580–1740 (Oxford, 1995), 249–74

K.S. Markstrom: ‘Metastasio's Delay in Reaching Vienna’, SMC, xvi (1997), 1–25

Vinci, Leonardo da.

See Leonardo da Vinci.

Vinci, Pietro

(b Nicosia, Sicily, c1525; d Nicosia or Piazza Armerina, after 14 June 1584). Italian composer and teacher. He was the founder of the school of Sicilian polyphonists and was highly rated in his own day, particularly as a madrigalist.

1. Life.

Vinci probably grew up in Sicily and maintained contacts there when he left the island. His first four works were dedicated to Sicilian noblemen, and the titles of the ricercares for two voices (1560) are proverbs and names in Sicilian dialect. He probably lived in Naples around 1560 since his first two pupils, Giulio Severino and Ambrosio Marien, were both connected with the city. After some years in different parts of Italy, including Tuscany and Lombardy, he was appointed maestro di cappella at S Maria Maggiore in Bergamo on 15 May 1568; he held this post until 28 July 1580. He married in Bergamo, and his pupils there included his compatriot Paolo Caracciolo and the Englishman John Cowden (Giovanni Coudenno). During this period he became associated with the Milanese patron Antonio Londonio, to whom he dedicated no fewer than four books of madrigals; it is clear from the dedication that the works in the second book of six-voice madrigals (1579) were written while Vinci was living in Londonio’s house in Milan. Several of Vinci’s madrigals (and two each by Caracciolo and Cowden) are in praise of Londonio or of his family, especially his wife Isabella, who was a celebrated singer. After relinquishing his post at S Maria Maggiore, Vinci made preparations to return to Sicily. He made ready a large number of his works for printing, including two collections of sacred music (published in 1581 and 1582) in which he referred to himself as maestro di cappella of Nicosia Cathedral; it was probably to take up this appointment that he finally left Lombardy for Sicily on 11 October 1581, but he seems to have held it for less than a year, if at all, since his publications of 1583 and 1584 make no mention of it.

After returning to Sicily, Vinci sent only two works to his publisher: the Lamentations (1583), the dedication of which shows that he was then employed by the viceroy Marc’Antonio Colonna, and the seventh book of madrigals for five voices, which was dated from Piazza Armerina on 15 June 1584 and the dedication of which may imply that Vinci was near death or that it was dated posthumously. Vinci’s most important pupil of his last years, Antonio Il Verso, lived at Piazza and probably acted as his executor; he was responsible after Vinci’s death for the publication of Vinci’s remaining works in collections of his own music. Antonio Falcone’s statement that Vinci was a maestro di cappella at Caltagirone is supported by documentary evidence, but Mongitore’s claim that Vinci worked in Rome is probably based on a confusion of S Maria Maggiore, Bergamo, with the church of the same name in Rome.

2. Works.

According to Cerone, Vinci and Ingegneri were the first composers whose music was distinguished by a variety of contrapuntal techniques including ‘double and inverted counterpoint at the 10th and 12th’. In spite of his prodigious contrapuntal skill, Vinci’s use of strict contrapuntal devices is rarely ostentatious; polyphonic complexity is always subordinate to the smooth flow of the part-writing and the orderly succession of harmonies. On the whole his style is reserved and his harmony essentially neutral without a well-defined tonal bearing. Mompellio called this ‘diatonic atonality’; the harmonic experimentalism of the previous generation is absorbed into an expressive homophony in which chromaticism acts as a medium for changes of timbre. The leading note is often replaced by the flattened supertonic, or they may appear in succession or even together. It is perhaps for this reason that Vinci’s music was reported to be difficult: according to Francesco Patrizi the singers at the Ferrarese court struggled with some of his madrigals until they were joined by Tarquinia Molza, taking the top line. The restraint of Vinci’s musical style matches his choice of more academic musical forms and his preference for texts of high literary merit; his serious-minded approach to composition is borne out in many of the dedications of his works.

Vinci’s 11 surviving books of madrigals cover a period of over 20 years during which fashions in the choice of madrigal texts changed from Bembo’s Petrarchism to Guarini’s eroticism. Of Vinci’s 263 madrigals, 117 are settings of texts by Petrarch; other poets represented include Ariosto, Dante, Tarquinia Molza, Girolamo Casone, Giuliano Goselini, Gabriele Fiamma and Tasso, whose words he was among the first to set (from 1573). His spiritual madrigals, the Quattordeci sonetti spirituali della illustrissima … Vittoria Colonna (1580), represent a political rather than a literary choice, aimed at securing the patronage of Marc’Antonio Colonna, the Sicilian viceroy, in preparation for Vinci’s return to Sicily. In the first two madrigal books (1561, 1567) the texts are almost exclusively by Petrarch, but in the two books of 1571 the forms of the sonnet, sestina and canzone are joined by the madrigal, and erotic epigrams make their first appearance. The next two books (1573, 1579) contain no texts by Petrarch, but 18 sacred poems by Fiamma, a champion of the Counter-Reformation, are in strict Petrarchan forms. In the 1582 book Petrarch’s texts are again favoured, probably because such classic poetry was felt to match the didactic aim that had been associated with three-part polyphony since the time of Willaert and Rore. The last three books contain almost equal numbers of madrigals and fixed forms, with Petrarch’s texts making up a third of the total.

As a madrigalist Vinci is an important successor to Rore, whose compositional innovations he inherited and developed to suit his own needs. His stylistic range is even greater than Rore’s. In setting the weightier Petrarchan texts, such as Passa la nave mia (in the second book for six voices), Vinci adopted a somewhat ponderous style with dense and compact textures reminiscent of Willaert’s works in the prima pratica; the erotic madrigals, however, are in a lighter vein, and, although the number of voices may be up to six, the textures are more transparent and the counterpoint freer.

Vinci’s sacred music oscillates between a simplification of his madrigal style and a more developed application of contrapuntal techniques. The masses include both parody and cantus firmus types. Several sections of the masses, and some of the motets (e.g. Sacerdos et pontifex), contain canons and other systematically applied structural devices. Other motets, such as Mandatum novum do vobis and O crux benedicta, are examples of pseudo-monody. Some motets, for example Lucia virgo, were written for the Sicilian liturgy. Others commemorate important state or political occasions; one of these is Intret super eos formido, which celebrated the victory over the Turks at the Battle of Lepanto. The ricercares are similar in style to the texted works; one is based on Sicilian folk songs.

3. Reputation and influence.

Vinci was the founder of the Sicilian polyphonic school, whose focal figure was his pupil Il Verso. Among his other disciples were the Neapolitans Severino and Marien and the Sicilians Caracciolo and Riccardo La Monica, as well as the Englishman John Cowden. Vinci’s own second book of six-voice madrigals (1579) contains a madrigal in his honour set by Giovanni Monino, and another appeared in Giuliano Goselini’s Rime (1581). In 1587 Vincenzo Galilei published a commemorative madrigal depicting Vinci in the company of Orpheus and surrounded by the Muses. He also rescored the madrigals of Vinci’s third and fourth books and some from the first book for five voices (manuscript in I-Fn); two of these he published in lute transcriptions in his Fronimo (1584¹⁵). Pietro Pontio, Vinci’s predecessor as maestro di cappella at Bergamo, quoted some of Vinci’s transitional cadences in his Ragionamento di musica (1588); Cerone, who grew up in Bergamo while Vinci was there, mentioned him in his treatise as an outstanding musician and one of the best madrigal composers.

WORKS

published in Venice unless otherwise stated

masses

Missarum, liber primus, 5, 6, 8vv (1575); 1 Ky, 6vv, ed. in AMI, i (1897/R)

Il primo libro delle messe, 4vv (1581)

other sacred vocal

Il primo libro di [23] motetti, 5vv (1558), inc.

Il secondo libro dei motetti, 5vv (1572); ed. in Paruta, 1 ed. in Bellermann, 2 ed. in AMI, i (1897/R), 2 ed. in Killing, 1 ed. in WE, viii (1965) [arr. 1v, lute]

Motettorum, liber primus, 4vv (1578)

Il primo libro de motetti, 8vv (1582)

Il primo libro delle lamentationi con altre compositioni convenienti alla quadragesima, 4vv (1583)

Il terzo libro de’ mottetti con alcuni altri di Antonio Il Verso, 5, 6vv (Palermo, 1588), lost (cited in Mongitore)

Il secondo libro de’ motetti e ricercari, con alcuni ricercari di Antonio Il Verso, 3vv (1591^2a) [incl. 7 ricercares, see ricercares]; ed. in MRS, iii (1972)

4 motets, 3vv, in Il primo libro de madrigali, 3vv (1582) [see madrigals]

Motet, 5vv, in A. Il Verso: Brevi concerti … libro secondo (Palermo, 1606), inc.

madrigals

Il primo libro di madrigali, 5vv (1561); ed. in MRS, v (1985)

Il secondo libro de madrigali, 5vv (1567²⁴); ed. in Milici, 1 ed. in Mompellio

Il terzo libro de madrigali, 5vv (1571); ed. in Milazzo, 1 ed. in Mompellio, 2 ed. in AMI, i (1897/R)

Il primo libro de madrigali, 6vv (1571¹³); 1 ed. in Mompellio

Il quarto libro de madrigali, 5vv (1573); ed. in Sòllima, 1 ed. in Mompellio, 1 in AMI, i (1897/R)

Il secondo libro de madrigali, 6vv, con uno dialogo, 12vv (1579⁶); 1 ed. in Carapezza (1974); dialogue partly ed. in Mompellio

14 sonetti spirituali della illustrissima … Vittoria Colonna, 5vv (1580)

Il primo libro de madrigali, 3vv (1582) [incl. 4 motets, see other sacred vocal, also incl. 2 ricercares, see ricercares]; 2 ed. in Mompellio

Il primo libro de madrigali, 4vv (1583), inc.

Il quinto libro de madrigali, 5vv (1584), lost (cited in Mongitore and in 1604 Giunta catalogue; Mischiati no.V: 442; perhaps = 14 sonetti spirituali

Il sesto libro de madrigali, 5vv (1584¹¹); ed. in Schirò, 1 ed. in Mompellio

Il settimo libro de madrigali, 5vv (1584)

6 other madrigals, 4–6vv, 1579², 1583¹², 1586⁷, 1592¹⁷, 1601¹⁴

Il secondo libro de madrigali, 4vv (1583), lost (cited in Mongitore, perhaps erroneously)

ricercares

Il primo libro della musica, a 2 (1560); ed. in MRS, ii (1971)

7 ricercares, a 3, in Il secondo libro de’ motetti e ricercari, con alcuni ricercari di Antonio Il Verso, a 3 (1591^2a); ed. in MRS, iii (1972) [see other sacred vocal]

2 ricercares, a 3, in Il primo libro de madrigali, 3 vv (1582) [see madrigals]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

EinsteinIM

PitoniN

F. Patrizi: L’amorosa filosofia (MS, 1577); ed. J.C. Nelson (Florence, 1963)

P. Pontio: Ragionamento di musica (Parma, 1588/R), 114

Antonio Falcone: ‘Relatione del successo seguito in Palermo tra Achille Falcone musico cosentino e Sebastian Ravalle musico spagnolo’, in Achille Falcone: Madrigali a cinque voci (Venice, 1603¹¹), 1

P. Cerone: El melopeo y maestro (Naples, 1613/R), 2, 89, 688

N. Tagliaferro: L’esercitio (MS, I-Nf SM.XXVIII.166), 80r

B. de Passaflumine: De origine ecclesiae cephaleditanae (Venice, 1645), 81

S. Bonini: Discorsi e regole sopra la musica (MS, 1640s, I-Fr 2218), 93; ed. L. Galleni Luisi, IMa, ii/5 (1975), 116; Eng. trans., M. Bonino (Provo, UT, 1979)

A. Mongitore: Bibliotheca Sicula, ii (Palermo, 1714/R), 162

H. Bellermann: Der Contrapunct (Berlin, 1862, 4/1901)

E. Frigerio: Memorie nicosiensi, i (Nicosia, 1889), 10

C. Scotti: ‘Elenco delle terminazioni del consorzio della misericordia maggiore’, Il pio istituto musicale Donizetti in Bergamo (Bergamo, 1901), 155–93

J. Killing: Kirchenmusikalische Schätze der Bibliothek des Abbate Fortunato Santini (Düsseldorf, 1910)

P. Wagner: Geschichte der Messe (Leipzig, 1913/R), 404–7

N. Pelicelli: ‘Musicisti in Parma nei secoli XV–XVI’, NA, ix (1932), 41–52, 112–29, esp. 45

F. Mompellio: Pietro Vinci, madrigalista siciliano (Milan, 1937)

K. Jeppesen: Palestrinashl med saer ligt henblik paa dissonans behand lingen (Copenhagen, 1923; Eng. trans., 1927, 2/1946/R1970 as The Style of Palestrina and the Dissonance), 43 [p. no. refers to 1970]

A. Einstein: The Italian Madrigal (Princeton, NJ, 1949/R), 203, 671 687, 731, 733

O. Tiby: ‘The Polyphonic School in Sicily of the 16th–17th Century’, MD, v (1951), 203–11

F. Degrada: ‘Dante e la musica del Cinquecento’, Chigiana, xxii, new ser. ii (1965), 257–75, esp. 270

O. Tiby: I polifonisti siciliani del XVI e XVII secolo (Palermo, 1969)

D. Kämper: Studien zur instrumentalen Ensemblemusik des 16. Jahrhunderts in Italien, AnMc, no.10 (1970), 76, 88, 107–8, 203, 231, 247

P.E. Carapezza: ‘I duo della scuola siciliana’: introduction to Scuola polifonica siciliana: musiche strumentali didattiche, MRS, ii (1971), pp.ix–li [with Eng. trans.]

P.E. Carapezza: Introduction to Pietro Vinci: Mottetti e Ricercare a tre voci, MRS, iii (1972) [with Eng. trans.]

L. Bianconi: ‘Sussidi bibliografici per i musicisti siciliani del Cinque e Seicento’, RIM, vii (1972), 3–38

P.E. Carapezza: Le costituzioni della musica (Palermo, 1974), 38, 80

P.E. Carapezza: ‘“O soave armonia” classicità, maniera e barocco nella scuola polifonica siciliana’, Studi musicali, iii (1974), 347–90

A. Schirò: Il sesto libro dei madrigali a cinque voci (1584) di Pietro Vinci (diss., U. of Palermo, 1979)

M. La Motta: Il primo libro dei mottetti a quattro voci (1578) di Pietro Vinci (diss., U. of Palermo, 1981)

A. Milici: Il secondo libro dei madrigali a cinque voci di Pietro Vinci (diss., U. of Palermo, 1982)

P.E. Carapezza: ‘Perennità del folklore: tre esempi nella tradizione musicale siciliana’, Culture musicali, no.3 (Rome, 1983), 41–6

P.E. Carapezza: ‘Le opere e i giorni’: introduction to Pietro Vinci: Il primo libro di madrigali a cinque voci, MRS, v (Florence, 1985)

N. Maccavino: ‘Musica a Caltagirone nel tardo rinascimento: 1569–1619’, Musica sacra in Sicilia tra Rinascimento e Barocco: Caltagirone 1985, 91–110, esp. 97

M.G. Milazzo: Il terzo libro di madrigali a cinque voci di Pietro Vinci (diss., U. of Bologna, 1988)

P.E. Carapezza: ‘Madrigalisti Siciliani’, Nuove Effemeridi, no.11 (Palermo, 1990), 97–106

G. Sòllima: Il quarto libro di madrigali a cinque voci di Pietro Vinci (diss., U. of Bologna, 1991)

M.G. Paruta: Il secondo libro di mottetti a cinque voci (1572) di Pietro Vinci (diss., U. of Bologna, 1991)

L. Buono: ‘La musica nelle città feudali nella Sicilia del Seicento’, Ceciliana per Nino Pirrotta, ed. M.A. Balsano and G. Collisani (Palermo, 1994), 125–32

PAOLO EMILIO CARAPEZZA, GIUSEPPE COLLISANI

Vincze, Imre

(b Kocs, 26 Sept 1926; d Budapest, 3 May 1969). Hungarian composer. He studied composition with Szabó at the Liszt Academy of Music, where he was appointed to the staff after graduating in 1951. His earliest pieces, two three-movement symphonies, were influenced by Szabó; they are marked by well-balanced orchestration, slightly stiff form and a resolutely melodic conception. The Second Quartet (1958) signalled an important point in Vincze’s development: he began to use 12-note serial technique and to build his pieces from sequences of linked short movements. This formal method reached maturity in the Cantata senza parole and the Symphony no.3, freely atonal works which draw a great deal from Bartók. The symphony also contains some elements of Webernian pointillism, while the Rapsodia concertante has a richly ornamented, Lisztian piano part. Vincze won the Erkel Prize in 1952 and 1956.

WORKS

(selective list)

Orch: Sym. no.1, 1951; Sym. no.2, 1953; Köszöntő [Congratulation], ov., 1954; Movimento sinfonico, 1957; Aforismo, 1959; Cant. senza parole, 1960; Concertino, 1961; Rapsodia concertante, pf, orch, 1966; Sym. no.3, 1967; film music

Chbr and solo inst: Str Qt no.1, 1954; Sonata, vn, pf, 1956; Str Qt no.2, 1958; Fantasy and Fugue, org, 1960; Str Qt no.3, 1961; Divertimento, wind qnt, 1962; Sonata, bn, pf, 1964; Str Qt no.4, 1965; Chorale and Fugue, org, 1968

Vocal: Szerelem, szerelem [Love, Love], chorus, 1955; Perzsa dalok [Persian Songs], 1v, pf, 1967

Principal publisher: Editio Musica Budapest

BIBLIOGRAPHY

G. Czigany, ed.: Contemporary Hungarian Composers (Budapest, 1970, rev. 5/1989 by B.A. Varga), 425–6

G. Kroó: Ungarische Musikgeschichte – gerstern und heute (Budapest, 1980), 280–84

JÁNOS KÁRPÁTI/PÉTER HALÁSZ

Vinders [Vender, Venders], Jheronimus

(fl 1525–6). South Netherlandish composer. From 16 June 1525 to January 1526 he was zangmeester of the guild of Onze-Lieve-Vrouwe-op-de-rade at the Janskerk (now St Baaf Cathedral), Ghent. Two compositions demonstrate Vinders’s respect for Josquin: the Missa ‘Stabat mater’ is a parody mass on Josquin’s motet, and the lament O mors inevitabilis was composed on his death. Vinders’s works show a predilection for both modern and outmoded compositional procedures. Pervading imitation and voice-pairing are the primary techniques in compositions such as the Missa ‘Fit porta Christi pervia’ and the four-voice Flemish songs. The five-voice Salve regina and Assumpta est Maria, on the other hand, testify to a strong reliance on the older cantus-firmus technique. The Missa ‘Fors seulement’, however, uses both cantus-firmus and parody technique in different sections. Vinders’s works occasionally have unusual features, such as the trope at the end of the Magnificat, which makes this composition unsuitable for performance during Vespers and turns it into a motet-like setting of Luke i.46–56.

The Missa ‘Myns liefkens bruyn ooghen’ is transmitted anonymously in its only source; it may well be by Vinders (see Jas, 1994). The music of its second Agnus Dei was published with the words of the original song and attributed to Vinders. The mass is based on a song by Benedictus Appenzeller and also quotes from Appenzeller’s Salve regina, which uses the same secular tune. The psalm-motet Laudate pueri Dominum gives further evidence of Appenzeller’s influence; it seems to have been written in response to his motet Corde et animo.

WORKS

masses

Missa ‘Fit porta Christi pervia’, 5vv, NL-SH Cod.74 (on plainchant)

Missa ‘Fors seulement’, 5vv, SH Cod.74 (on chansons by Févin and Pipelare; attrib. Gombert in D-ROu Mus. XVI-49, ed. in CMM, vi/2, 1954)

Missa ‘Myns liefkens bruyn ooghen’, 5vv, NL-SH Cod.75 (on Appenzeller’s song)

Missa ‘Stabat mater’, 5vv, SH Cod.74 (on Josquin’s motet); ed. in EMN, vii (1972)

motets

Assumpta est Maria, 5vv, 1545³; Domini est terra, 4vv, 1542⁷, F-CA 125–8 (attrib. Benedictus in D-GRu BW 640–41; attrib. Josquin in Kl 4° Mus. 24); Dominus regit me, 4vv, 1553⁴; Laudate pueri Dominum, 5vv, 1557³ (attrib. Hellinck in 1544²⁰), ed. in SCMot, xviii (1997); Magnificat, 4vv, NL-Lml 1440; O mors inevitabilis, 7vv, 1545¹⁵, ed. in Klaagliederen op den dood van Josquin, ed. A. Smijers, Josquin Desprez: Werken, i (1921); 2 Salve regina, 4vv, D-Mbs 34; Salve regina, 5vv, Mbs 34 (on plainchant and Sup of Ghiselin's Ghy syt die wertste boven al)

secular

Myns liefkens bruyn ooghen, 6vv, 1540⁷, contrafactum of Ag II from Missa ‘Myns liefkens bruyn ooghen’, ed. R. Lenaerts, Het Nederlands polifonies lied in de zestiende eeuw (Mechelen, 1933); Och rat van aventueren, 4vv, 1551¹⁸, ed. in RRMR, cviii (1997); O wrede fortune, 4vv, 1551¹⁸, ed. in RRMR, cviii (1997)

doubtful works

Missa ‘La plus gorgiase du monde’ (Missa ‘per Alamyr’), 4vv, E-MO 771 (anon.); A-Wn 11883 (attrib. Hieronimus Winters) (on anon. chanson in D-Mbs 1516)

In illo tempore accesserunt ad Jesum, 4vv, NL-L 1441 (listed in index but removed from MS); I-Bc Q19 (attrib. Moulu); A-Wn 15941 (attrib. Mouton), ed. in SCMot, vii (1989)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

C. van den Borren: Geschiedenis van de muziek in de Nederlanden, i (Antwerp, 1948)

E. Jas: ‘Nicolas Gombert’s Missa Fors seulement: a Conflicting Attribution’, RBM, xlvi (1992), 163–77

W. Elders: Symbolic Scores: Studies in the Music of the Renaissance (Leiden, 1994)

E. Jas: ‘A Rediscovered Mass of Jheronimus Vinders?’, From Ciconia to Sweelinck: Donum natalicium Willem Elders, ed. A. Clement and E. Jas (Amsterdam, 1994), 221–43

ERIC JAS

Vine, Carl (Edward)

(b Perth, 8 Oct 1954). Australian composer. Playing cornet, then piano and organ as a child, at the age of 16 he won a youth composition competition with an electronic work Unwritten Divertimento (1970), and while still at school completed an electronic commission for the West Australian Ballet. After studying science at the University of Western Australia, as well as taking piano with Stephen Dornan and composition with John Exton, he had a brief period at the BBC Tape Transcription Unit, London, in 1973, then he won the Perth Music Festival instrumental prize (1972) and the ABC Instrumental and Vocal Competition (1973). From 1975 worked as a pianist in Sydney with A–Z Music, the Australia Ensemble, the Seymour Group and other contemporary ensembles. With the trombonist Simon de Haan he was co-founder of the contemporary group Flederman (1979–89), which commissioned a large body of new Australian work and performed it widely in Australia and abroad. During the same years he was pianist and composer-in-residence with the Sydney Dance Company (1978), the London Contemporary Dance Theatre (1979), the NSW State Conservatorium (1985), the Australian Chamber Orchestra (1987) and the Western Australia Conservatorium (1989). He taught at the Queensland Conservatorium,1980–82, but works chiefly freelance. He was deputy chairman of the Australia Council, 1992–5.

His earliest works were mainly electronic, such as Tip (1977), for amplified string quartet, orchestra and electronics (later withdrawn), but he came to prominence as a composer of vibrant, imaginative music for dance, and of incidental music for plays, television and films. His work with Sydney Dance Company led to Poppy (1978), the first full-length Australian dance work, and he has since composed a large number of commissions for dance companies including The Tempest (1988). These are works of great vitality and wit, written with deep understanding of the dancers’ needs. His years with Flederman produced a number of chamber works, including Café Concertino (1984), increasingly an Australian classic; these are virtuosic works, with complex manipulations of the rhythmic pulse, yet their texture is never opaque and is always superbly crafted with a player’s understanding of technique.

More recently, he has produced orchestral works for the ABC, including four concertos and six symphonies, works which suggest he is becoming increasingly tonal, without losing the individual eloquence of his earlier voice. These have been particularly successful: his Symphony no.2 was performed by the Sydney SO on tour across the USA, and with the Symphony no.1 was choreographed for the Canadian National Ballet; his Symphony no.3 was featured at the 1990 Adelaide Festival. One of the most widely performed and commissioned composers in Australia, he is both a first-rate performer and one of the most articulate and gifted composers Australia has produced. His numerous awards include a Sounds Australian Award (1989) and three Australian Guild of Screen Composers Awards (1993, 1994).

WORKS

(selective list)

Orch: Curios, 1980; Canzona, str, 1985; MicroSymphony, 1986; Perc Conc., 1987; Sym. no.2, 1988; Sym. no.3, 1990; Celebrare celeberrime, 1993; Sym. no.4, 1993; Esperance, chbr orch, 1994; Perc Sym (Sym. no.5), 4 perc, orch, 1995; Choral Sym. (Sym. no.6), SATB, org, orch, 1995–6; Descent, 1996; Ob Conc., 1996; Pf Conc., 1997

Chbr: Miniature II, 2 va, 1974; Occasional Poetry, trbn, pf, 1979; Images, fl, vc, trbn, perc, pf, hpd, 1981; Miniature III, fl, trbn, pf, perc, 1982; Sinfonia, fl, cl, vn, vc, pf, perc, 1982; Aria, S, fl, vc, pf, cel, perc, 1984; Café Concertino, fl, cl, vn, va, vc, pf, 1984; Str Qt no.2, 1984; Elegy, fl, vc, trbn, pf 4 hands, perc, 1985; Suite from Hate, trbn, hn, 2 pf, perc, 1985; Defying Gravity, 4 perc, 1987; Miniature IV, fl, cl, vn, va, vc, pf, 1988; Conc. grosso, vn, fl + pic, ob + eng hn, hn, str, 1989; Sonata, fl, pf, 1992; Harmony in Concord, trbn, mar/vibes, perc, tape, 1992; The Battlers Suite, ob, hn, hp, str, c1993; Gaijin, koto, str, tape, 1994; Str Qt no.3, 1994

Solo inst: Miniature I, va, 1973; Tape Pf Piece, 1976; Tergiversative Blues, lute, 1977; Free Game, tuba, elec, 1979; Missing Film, pf, 1980; Occasional Poetry, pf, 1984; Love Song, trbn, tape, 1986; Perc Conc., perc, tape, 1987; Pf Sonata, 1987; Pf Sonata, 1990; 5 Bagatelles, pf, 1994; Inner World, vc, tape, 1994

Dance: Incident at Bull Creek, tape, 1977; 961 Ways to Nirvana, str qt, orch, tape, 1977; Everyman’s Troth, va, vc, clvd, 1978; Poppy, S, fl, cl, 2 hn, bn, trbn, perc, pf, tape, 1978; Kisses Remembered, fl, pf, 1979; Knips Suite, 2 vn, va, vc, 1979; Scene Shift, trbn, db, 2 pf, 1979; Donna Maria Blues, tape, 1980; Return, tape, 1980; Colonial Sketches, tape, 1981; Daisy Bates, chbr ens, 1982; Hate, trbn, hn, 2 pf, perc, 1982; A Christmas Carol, orch, 1983; Prologue + Canzona, str, 1986; Legend, orch, 1988; On the Edge, tape, 1989; The Tempest, orch, tape, 1991

Choral and solo vocal: Aria, S, fl, vc, pf, cel, perc, 1984; After Campion, S, A, T, SSAATTBB, 2 pf, 1989; Beauty and the Beast, elec montage, 1993

Tape: Unwritten Divertimento, 1970; BBC Exercises, 1974; Heavy Metal, improvisation, 1980; Kondalilia Mix, improvisation, 1980; Imitations of Mortality, tape, 1985

Music for plays: The Dreamers (A. Simon), 1975; The Tempest (W. Shakespeare), 1975; New Sky (J. Anderson: mime), 1981; Signal Driver (P. White), 1982; Shepherd on the Rocks (P. White), 1987; Ham Funeral (P. White, 1989; Master Builder (H. Ibsen), 1991; Night on Bald Mountain (P. White), 1996

Music for films: You Can’t Push the River, 1992; Bedevil, 1993

Principal publishers: Faber Music, Chester Music

Principal recoirding companies: ABC Classics/Polygram (Australia); Canberra School of Music Recordings; Tall Poppies Records

BIBLIOGRAPHY

C. Vine: ‘Art For Whose Sake’, 24 Hours (Aug 1993), 44–50

B. Broadstock: Sound Ideas: Australian Composers Since 1950 (Sydney, 1995), 239–42

WARREN BEBBINGTON

Vinea, Antonius de.

See De Vinea, Antonius.

Viner, William

(d ?Dublin, 1716). English violinist and composer. He was active in Dublin in the early 18th century, holding the position of Master of the State Music from 1703 until his death. His will was proved on 30 November 1716. In the present stage of research into this meagrely documented period of Dublin musical activity, little is known of the details of Viner's contribution. It is not clear, for instance, why the annual birthday ode was composed each year from 1709 by J.S. Kusser (known in Dublin as Cousser), who succeeded Viner as Master of the State Music in 1717. For the celebration of the Peace of Utrecht on 20 June 1713, Viner collaborated with Kusser in the preparation of special music for the Play House. Walsh published a set of solos for violin and bass which are described as ‘composed by the late Mr Viner of Dublin’, and Thomas Cross engraved a song by him, No Coelia … I'll no longer mourn. He was the arranger of a piece in Arie di camera (c1727) and is lauded in a poem by Pilkington, The Progress of Musick in Ireland (Dublin, 1730).

BRIAN BOYDELL

Viner, William Litton

(b Bath, 14 May 1790; d Westfield, MA, 24 July 1867). English organist and composer. He studied the organ with Charles Wesley, and in about 1810 became organist of St Michael's Church in Bath, where he also built a reputation as a composer and teacher of the organ, harp and piano. In 1835, on the recommendation of S.S. Wesley, he became organist of St Mary's, Penzance; he also ran a music shop, Viner's Musical Repository. Viner emigrated to the USA in 1859 and settled in Westfield as a teacher; few of his extant sacred compositions date from this period, suggesting that he was not employed as a church musician during this decade. Viner's compositions, which include anthems and service music as well as a set of 12 preludes for the harp, are conservative in idiom. He is best known for his collections of hymns and psalm tunes, 100 Psalm and Hymn Tunes, in Score (London, 1838), A Useful Selection from the most Approved Psalms and Hymns (London, 1846) and The Chanter's Companion (Penzance, 1857).

STANLEY C. PELKEY

Viñes, Ricardo

(b Lérida, 5 Feb 1875; d Barcelona, 29 April 1943). Spanish pianist. After early study with J.B. Pujol in Barcelona, he went to the Paris Conservatoire in 1887 and studied the piano with C.-W. Bériot, chamber music with Godard and harmony with Lavignac, receiving a premier prix in 1894; he made his début at the Salle Pleyel the following year. His international career began in 1900, when he toured Russia, and tours throughout Europe followed. He played in South America in 1920 and 1924 and from 1930 to 1936 lived in Argentina, playing frequently in that country as well as in Chile and Uruguay. He returned to Paris in 1936 and continued performing until his last year.

Viñes had an exceptional technique and a prodigious repertory, and was the foremost champion of new music by French, Spanish, Russian and Latin American composers. He became close friends with Ravel, Debussy, Satie, Séverac, Falla and Granados, and he introduced many of their works, including Ravel’s Jeux d’eau, Miroirs and Gaspard de la nuit and Debussy’s Pour le piano and Images (book 1); he also gave the first performances in France of Musorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, Balakirev’s Islamey and Prokofiev’s Sarcasmes. Among the dozens of works dedicated to him are Ravel’s Oiseaux tristes, Debussy’s Poissons d’or and Falla’s Noches en los jardines de España. He recorded Poissons d’or as well as Debussy’s La soirée dans Grenade and a number of pieces by Spanish composers; the playing reveals an unforced virtuosity, charming rhythmic pointing and shimmering pedal effects.

As a composer, Viñes left a few songs and piano pieces. He also wrote several articles on music and kept a journal that is a valuable source of information about his contacts with important musicians. His piano students included Marcelle Meyer, Joaquín Nin-Culmell and Francis Poulenc.

WRITINGS

‘Réponses à un questionnaire’, Le courrier musical (15 Nov 1927), 552

‘Trois aristocrats du son’, Le monde musical (31 Dec 1935), 356–8

‘Cours d’interprétation: Albéniz, Granados, Falla, Turina’, Le monde musical (30 Sept 1936), 239–40

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L.-P. Fargue: ‘Un héros de la musique: Ricardo Viñes’, Portraits de famille (Paris, 1947)

E. Brody: ‘Viñes in Paris: New Light on Twentieth-Century Performance Practice’, A Musical Offering: Essays in Honor Of Martin Bernstein, ed. E.H. Clinkscale and C. Brook (New York, 1977), 45–62

N. Gubisch-Viñes: ‘Le journal inédit de Ricardo Viñes’, Revue internationale de musique française, no.2 (1980) 154–248

E. Brody: Paris: the Musical Kaleidoscope, 1870–1925 (New York, 1987)

M. Bergadà, M. Bernodó and N. Gubisch-Viñes: Ricard Viñes i Roda (1875–1943): testimoni d’un temps (Lleida, 1994)

CHARLES TIMBRELL (with ESPERANZA BERROCAL)

Vineux [Vineus].

Rubric, indicating the title, identification, or possibly composer, of a monophonic mensural Sanctus setting associated with the trope Qui januas mortis confregisti (Chevalier 16434). Four monophonic sources are recorded. In F-Pa 204 it is linked with a matching Agnus troped Patris filius eterni, and these are the only two mensurally notated pieces in the manuscript; in I-AO A 1°D19 it is the only monophonic piece in the entire polyphonic manuscript; and in Tournai, Trésor du chapitre, 471 (destroyed in 1940), it had the trope Qui vertice Thabor affuisti. Only in the Aosta manuscript is it headed ‘Vineux’.

Six related polyphonic compositions are known. The four-voice Sanctus vineus secundum Loqueville in I-Bc Q15 (ed. Reaney, CMM, xi/3, 1966) is flanked by a three-voice Sanctus and Agnus on the same tenor ascribed to Du Fay (ed. Besseler, CMM, i/4, 1962 and CMM, i/5, 1966) and linked in I-Bc Q15 with a Du Fay Kyrie on a similar tenor (also present in I-AO). A Sanctus-Agnus pair (the latter troped, unlike the Du Fay Agnus) appears in F-Dm 2837, a fragment discovered and described by Wright. Both Agnus settings are musically almost identical with their related Sanctus, though with their sections in a different order. The Du Fay Kyrie, on the other hand, is rather different musically; the linkage may be a scribal initiative.

The origin of the Vineux melody is unknown, though a possible geographical explanation was offered by Fallows. Only the lack of a known polyphonic origin precludes a complete analogy with the mensural storage and subsequent use found in the apparently English phenomenon of squares (see Square).

The Missa ‘Vinnus vina’ (I-Rvat C.S.51), now considered to be by Faugues, is not related to the melody.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

C.U.J. Chevalier: Repertorium hymnologicum (Leuven and Brussels, 1892–1921)

C. Wright: ‘A Fragmentary Manuscript of Early 15th-Century Music in Dijon’, JAMS, xxvii (1974), 306–15

D. Fallows: ‘Dufay and Nouvion-le-Vineux: some Details and a Thought’, AcM, xlviii (1976), 44–50 [with further bibliography]

MARGARET BENT

Vinholes, Luís Carlos (Lessa)

(b Pelotas, 10 April 1933). Brazilian composer and music critic. After initial studies at the conservatory of his native city, he studied flute and composition in São Paulo with Hans Joachim Koellreutter and singing with Celina Sampaio (1953–7). He wrote music criticism for the newspapers Opinião pública, Diário popular (Pelotas) and Diário de São Paulo. At the end of 1957 he went to Japan for further study and lived there from 1961 to 1977. In Tokyo he worked for the cultural department of the Brazilian Embassy, studied Japanese music and played the flute in several chamber groups. He became associated with the Japanese avant garde of the 1960s. Since 1977 he has worked at the Brazilian Embassy in Ottawa.

Although not a prolific composer, Vinholes’s works reveal an interest in experiment: his Instrução 61 (1961), for any four instruments, is considered the first aleatory piece in Brazil. An example of his use of serialism, with restrained lyricism, great economy of means and concern for an overall stylistic coherence, can be seen in his series Tempo-Espaço.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

M. Marcondes, ed.: Enciclopédia da música brasileira, erudita, folclórica, popular (São Paulo, 1977)

J.M. Neves: Música contemporânea brasileira (São Paulo, 1981)

V. Mariz: História da música no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro, 1983)

GERARD BÉHAGUE

Vinier, Gilles le.

See Le vinier.

Viniziana.

See Giustiniana.

Vintz [Vintzius, Wintz], Georg

(b Halle, c1580; d Naumburg, c1635). German organist and composer. After serving two churches in Eisleben he was appointed organist of Naumburg Cathedral. His 20 short parody masses are skilful adaptations of motets by 13 prominent composers of his time, some involving reduction from eight to five voices. Several masses borrow little from their models and may be mostly the work of Vintz or (particularly in the case of the Marenzio mass) of the motet composers themselves. Questions of authorship remain to be resolved.

Vintz’s instrumental dances are grouped according to type rather than into suites. More progressive are the elaborate figuration in the highest two parts, the presence of a figured continuo part and some sharp key signatures suggesting performance by violins; occasionally the lower voices imitate the figuration in the treble parts. The prevailing homophonic texture is matched by predictable phraseology and, except for the intradas, the brevity of the dances invites repetition with improvised variations.

WORKS

Missae [Ky, Gl] ad praecipuos dies festos accommodatae (Erfurt, 1630) [composer of parodied motet in parentheses]: 1 Lobe den Herren meine Seele, 5vv (H. Hartmann); 2 Jerusalem, gaude gaudio magno, 5vv (N. Zangius); 3 Ist nicht Ephraim mein thewer Sohn, 5vv (Hartmann); 4 Pater noster, qui es in coelis, 5vv (M. Vulpius); 5 Deus meus, quare me dereliquisti, 5vv (C. Erbach); 6 Surrexit Christus spes mea, 5vv (Zangius); 7 Cantate Domino canticum novum, 5vv (H.L. Hassler); 8 Dum complerentur dies Pentecostes, 5vv (Erbach); 9 Benedicta sit Santa Trinitas, 5vv (A. Gumpelzhaimer); 10 Dic nobis Maria quid vidisti, 6vv (G. Bassano); 11 Ascendo ad Patrem meum, 6vv (H. Praetorius); 12 Hodie completi sunt, 6vv (Valcampi); 13 Nun dancket alle Gott, 8vv (S. Scheidt); 14 Hodie nobis coelorum rex, 8vv (L. Viadana); 15 Iniquos odio habui, 8vv (L. Marenzio); 16 Domine Dominus noster, 8vv (Erbach); 17 Exultat cor meum, 8vv (anon.); 18 Misericordias Domini, 8vv (G. Gabrieli); 19 Jubilate Deo omnis terra, 8vv (anon.); 20 Laudate Dominum omnes gentes, 8vv (Hassler)

Intraden, Couranten, Galliarden, Balletten, Alamanden, und etliche Täntze auff Polnische Arth, 4–5 insts, bc (Erfurt, 1630); 3 ed in NM, lxxx (1932)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

EitnerQ

GerberL

GöhlerV

MeyerMS

WaltherML

A. Werner: ‘Die alte Musikbibliothek und die Instrumentensammlung von St Wenzel in Naumburg an der Saale’, AMw, viii (1926), 390–415

B. Delli: Pavane und Galliarde: zur Geschichte der Instrumentalmusik im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (diss., Free U. of Berlin, 1957)

R. Jackson: Introduction to Luca Marenzio: Opera omnia, i (Neuhausen-Stuttgart, 1978), p.xvii

FREDERICK K. GABLE

Vio, Gastone

(b Venice, 11 April 1921). Italian musicologist. He joined the priesthood in 1946 and in 1954 was named rector of the church of Spirito Santo, Venice. He became a notary for the Ecclesiastical Tribune of the region (1955–71), during which time he developed his archival skills. In 1971 he began studying the history of Venetian ecclesiastical life with a focus on the role of music. His knowledge of Venetian history and geography and his command of Venetian dialect enabled him to interpret and have a greater understanding than others of primary sources. Among his most important studies are those of Venetian organs, Venetian confraternities and the life of Vivaldi. He has actively advocated the restoration of organs and religious paintings and has been a mentor to scholars engaged in archival studies of Venetian music and music institutions, fine arts and ecclesiastical and social history.

WRITINGS

‘Documenti di storia organaria veneziana’, L'organo, xiv (1976), 33–131; xv (1977), 41–95; xvi (1978), 169–200; xvii (1979), 181–207

‘Antonio Vivaldi prete’, Informazioni e studi vivaldiani, i (1980), 32–57

‘Antonio Vivaldi violinista in S. Marco’, ISV, ii (1981), 51–60

‘Un maestro di musica a Venezia: Lodovico Fuga (1643–1722)’, Antonio Vivaldi: Venice 1981, ii, 547–71

‘Una nuova abitazione de Vivaldi a Venezia’, ISV, iii (1982), 61–6

‘Antonio Vivaldi e i Vivaldi’, ISV, iv (1983), 82–97

‘I maestri di coro dei Mendicanti e la Cappella Marciana’, Galluppiana 1985: studi e ricerche: Venice 1985, 95–111

‘La vecchia chiesa dell'Ospedale della Pietà’, ISV, vii (1986), 72–86

‘Note biografiche su Girolamo Ascanio Giustinian’, Benedetto Marcello: Venice 1986, 61–74

‘Ultimi ragguagli monteverdiani’, Rassegna veneta di studi musicali, ii–iii (1986–7), 347–64

‘Musici veneziani nella cerchia di Giovanni Battista Vivaldi’, Nuovi studi vivaldiani: Venice 1987, 689–702

with S. Toffolo: ‘La diffusione degli strumenti musicali nelle case dei nobili, cittadini e popolani nei XVI secolo a Venezia’, Il flauto dolce, xvii–xviii (1987–8), 33–40

‘Per una migliore conoscenza di Anna Girò (da documenti d'archivio)’, ISV, ix (1988), 26–45

‘Per una migliore conoscenza di Tomaso Albinoni: documenti d'archivio’, Recercare, i (1989), 111–21

‘Una satira sul teatro veneziano di Sant'Angelo datata “febbraio 1717”’, ISV, x (1989), 103–30

‘Musici veneziani dei primi decenni del Seicento: discordie e busterelle’, Rassegna veneta di studi musicale, v–vi (1989–90), 375–85

‘Alla ricerca della data dell'ultimo addio di Vivaldi a Venezia’, ISV, xi (1990), 89–97

‘Appunti vivaldiani’, ISV, xii (1991), 77–86

‘Ancora sull'ultima residenza vivaldiana’, ISV, xv (1994), 75–81

‘Antonio Vivaldi chierico veneziano’, ISV, xvi (1995), 123–31

ELEANOR SELFRIDGE-FIELD

Viol [viola da gamba, gamba]

(Fr. viole; Ger. Gambe; It. viola, viola da gamba).

A bowed string instrument with frets; in the Hornbostel-Sachs system it is classified as a bowed lute (or fiddle). It is usually played held downwards on the lap or between the legs (hence the name ‘viola da gamba’, literally ‘leg viol’). It appeared in Europe towards the end of the 15th century and subsequently became one of the most popular of all Renaissance and Baroque instruments and was much used in ensemble music (see Consort and Continuo). As a solo instrument it continued to flourish until the middle of the 18th century. In 18th- and 19th-century American usage the term Bass viol was applied to a four-string instrument of the violin family.

1. Structure.

2. 15th-century origins.

4. England.

5. Italy from c1580.

6. France from c1600.

7. Germany and the Low Countries from c1600.

8. The modern revival.

IAN WOODFIELD (1–3), IAN WOODFIELD (with LUCY ROBINSON) (4), LUCY ROBINSON (5–8)

1. Structure.

During its history the viol was made in many different sizes: pardessus (high treble), treble, alto, small tenor, tenor, bass and violone (contrabass). Only the treble, tenor and bass viols, however, were regular members of the viol consort. The pardessus de viole did not emerge until the late 17th century, and the violone – despite its appearance in the 16th century – was rarely used in viol consorts. The alto viol was rarely mentioned by theorists and there is some doubt as to how often it was used. Two small bass instruments called ‘lyra’ and ‘division’ viols were used in the performance of solo music in England (see Lyra viol and Division viol). A full-sized bass viol, however, was played by soloists on the Continent in the Baroque era.

According to Mace (A1676) a consort or ‘chest’ of viols should be ‘all truly and proportionably suited’ in shape, wood and colour, but especially in size. The string length from nut to bridge on the treble viol, for instance, should ideally be exactly half that on the bass viol, the treble being tuned an octave higher than the bass. Application of this principle to the tenor viol is aided by the downward a gamba playing position; if it were applied to the tenor member of the modern string quartet, the result would be a viola too large for comfort (see Tenor violin).

The shape of the viol was extremely variable during much of its early history. Some 16th-century instruments show the influence of the guitar family (fig.1a) or the violin family (fig.1d). A few have a festooned outline in the manner of an orpharion or bandora (fig.1c). By the 1540s a distinctive shape had evolved in Venice, which is characterized by steeply down-sloping shoulders and a narrow upper body (fig.1e). A significant number of examples by Francesco Linarol and Antonio and Battista Ciciliano have been preserved in collections in Vienna and Brussels, and the shape is also recorded in paintings by Titian, for example Venus and Cupid with a Lute player, c1565 (GB-CFm). The most characteristic form of viol, however, with its deep ribs, sloping shoulders and middle bouts appeared early in the 16th century (fig.1g) and became fairly standard during the 17th and 18th centuries. The viol is very lightly constructed, both the belly and the back being made of very fine wood. The belly is gently arched, whereas the back is flat, except at the top, where it slopes in towards the neck (fig.2). A few crossbars are usually fixed to the back to reinforce it. The ribs of the viol are quite deep (often reinforced with linings of parchment or linen), and since neither the belly nor the back projects beyond them there are no ‘edges’. The neck of the Renaissance viol and early 17th-century English viol was thick and rounded like that of the contemporary cello. In the course of the 17th century the neck became flatter, and on the later French instruments, it was sometimes very thin, resembling that of a lute. Jean Rousseau (A1687) described how the late French makers gave the viol its ‘final perfection’ by setting the neck at a greater angle, and also by reducing the overall thickness of the wood. Frets, made from pieces of stretched gut, are tied round the neck in a special fret knot. Normally, double frets are used (see Fret, fig.1b). There are usually seven frets placed at intervals of a semitone, but, according to Simpson (A1659), an eighth might be added at the octave. All frets can be finely adjusted to improve the tuning. Simpson said that the strings should lie close to the fingerboard ‘for ease and convenience of Stopping’.

Most viols have six strings, but the solo bass viol played on the Continent during the Baroque era often had seven and the pardessus five. The standard tuning of the six-string viol was a sequence of 4th, 4th, major 3rd, 4th, 4th. Thus the three principal types of viol in a consort are tuned as follows: d–g–c'–e'–a'–d'' (treble); G–c–f–a–d'–g' (tenor); and D–G–c–e–a–d' (bass). Players of the alto viol sometimes prefer a tuning in which the position of the major 3rd is altered: c–f–a–d'–g'–c''; English (and possibly some continental) bass viol players occasionally tuned their lowest string down to C. French bass viols of the Baroque era often had a seventh string (A'), an innovation attributed by Jean Rousseau in 1687 to Sainte-Colombe. This string, like the D and G strings, would be overspun with silver or another metal (see Overspun string), all three preferably having the ‘same covering’, according to Jean-Baptiste Forqueray (who experimented also with half-covering on the c string). The 18th-century French Pardessus was usually tuned g–c'–e'–a'–d''–g''; from the 1730s the five-string pardessus was tuned g–d'–a'–d''–g''.

Like other fretted instruments such as the lute, the viol was usually tuned and played in equal temperament. According to Lindley (B1984), some 16th-century theorists such as Ganassi advocated a form of meantone temperament. This would have meant tuning the central third purer and enlarging slightly the four 4ths between remaining open strings. The frets would then have been adjusted to achieve at least some of the unequal tones and semitones that this temperament requires. The fact that any single fret determines the intonation for all six strings, however, must have imposed severe limitations on its use. Modern experiments suggest that meantone intonation on the viol is best reserved for pieces with a very limited range of key (seeTemperaments, §8).

All viols, whether supported on the calves (like the tenor and bass, see fig.10 below) or on the knees, are played in an upright, almost vertical, position. The bow is held in an underhand grip, the palm facing upwards. Simpson (A1659) wrote:

Hold the Bow betwixt the ends of your Thumb and two foremost fingers, near to the Nut. The Thumb and first finger fastned on the Stalk; and the second fingers end turned in shorter, against the Hairs thereof; by which you may poize and keep up the point of the Bow.

The wrist should be relaxed, since quick notes ‘must be express’d by moving some Joint nearer the hand; which is generally agreed upon to be the Wrist’. Heavy accents are not possible on the viol because the essence of both the up- (‘forward-’ or ‘push-’) and the down-bow (‘back-bow’ or ‘pull-bow’) is a movement across the string and not a movement downwards with the weight of the arm above the bow, as it is in violin bowing. Light accents, however, may be obtained by means of a small increase in pressure at the beginning of a stroke. This small pushing accent is more easily and naturally achieved with an up-bow. Thus viol bowing is the exact reverse of violin bowing and, as Simpson wrote, ‘When you see an even Number of Quavers or Semiquavers, as 2, 4, 6, 8. You must begin with your Bow forward’ (i.e. with an up-bow).

The early viol bow is characteristically convex (like an unstretched archer’s bow) rather than concave like a violin bow. A concave design is found in some 18th-century French bows: this gives the advantage of a more sensitive response to nuance. The player governs tension by pressure with the middle finger directly on the hair (see figs.10 and 12 below); pressure on the stick itself would merely cause the hair to bend towards the arc of the stick. According to Danoville (A1687) a viol bow ‘must be of Chinese wood, and should not be too heavy, because it makes the [bowing] hand clumsy, nor too light, because then it cannot play chords [easily] enough; but a weight proportioned to the hand, which is why I leave that to the choice of the one who plays the Viol’. Rousseau, however, wrote: ‘But it seems to me that one finds many other sorts of woods used to make Bows, which are no less good than Chinese wood’. Chinese wood is almost certainly snakewood, but Trichet (see Lesure, E1955–6) pointed out that Brazilwood (of which Pernambuco is a superior variety) was also known in France.

Because of the lightness of its body construction and the relatively low tension of its strings, the viol is an extremely resonant instrument and readily responds to the lightest stroke of the bow (see Acoustics, §II). Its tone is quiet but has a reedy, rather nasal quality which is quite distinctive and makes it an ideal instrument for playing polyphony, in which clarity of texture is of the greatest importance. On the other hand the viol is less successful in music to be danced to, partly because its sound is rather restrained, but also because it cannot accent heavily enough.

The viol’s capacity for resonance is enhanced by the way the left hand takes advantage of the frets. The finger presses the string down hard directly behind the fret and thereby produces an effect akin to that of an open string. A vital technique for achieving resonance – as well as for facility in fast passage-work – is the use of ‘holds’, whereby each finger, once placed behind a fret, remains there even after the note has been played, until it has to be moved to another position. This technique enables the instrument, in Simpson’s words, ‘to continue the Sound of a Note when the Bow hath left it’. For this, as for multiple stops, the fact that the placing of the frets guarantees stability of intonation enables the left hand to assume a greater variety of postures than would be possible on an unfretted instrument such as a violin or cello.

During the 16th and 17th centuries there were many highly skilled viol makers, particularly English craftsmen like John Rose, Henry Jaye and Richard Meares. Outstanding makers of the late 17th and 18th centuries included Barak Norman in England, Michel Colichon, Nicolas Bertrand and Guillaume Barbet in France, Jacob Stainer in the Tyrol and Joachim Tielke in Hamburg. Makers of the pardessus included Jean-Baptiste Dehay (‘Saloman’) and Louis Guersan.

2. 15th-century origins.

The characteristic playing position of the viol seems to have been known in Europe as early as the 11th century, when waisted fiddles were played like viols, resting on the lap or between the knees with the bow held above the palm. A 12th-century miniature (fig.3) depicts an unusually large instrument of this type, which is sometimes referred to as the medieval viol (see Fiddle, §1). Rebecs were also played in this way, as is shown in the famous 13th-century Cantigas de Santa María (see Rebec, fig.2). By the early 14th century, however, this method of playing bowed instruments had almost completely disappeared from Europe. But in Aragon rebecs were played a gamba throughout the 14th and 15th centuries, as shown for example in a mid-15th-century Aragonese miniature of King David (GB-Lbl Add.28962, f.82; see Rebec, fig.5) and in a painting of St Anthony Abbot by the Almudévar Master (Juan de la Abadía) (in GB-Cfm). The Aragonese rebec thus provides a link between the general disappearance of the a gamba playing posture at the end of the 13th century and its re-emergence two centuries later with the Renaissance viol.

Viols appear in late 15th-century paintings from the Aragonese province of Valencia. Fig.4 shows a painting of the Virgin and Child, by a follower of Valentín Montolíu, which comes from the Maestrazgo, a mountainous region to the north of the Valencian district of Castellón de la Plana. It is one of the earliest known representations of the Renaissance viol, dating from about 1475. By 1500 the viol was regularly depicted in angelic consorts by Valencian, Majorcan and Sardinian painters. In the Cagliari Museo Nazionale is a fine full-length picture of an angel viol player, painted in about 1500 by the Sardinian Master of Castelsardo (fig.5). This shows a fairly typical early Spanish viol with an extremely long narrow neck, frets, lateral pegs, central rose, very thin ribs and tenor-sized body with the characteristic viol shape, waisted but with marked corners. Like most other Valencian viols of this period it does not have a raised fingerboard, and instead of an arched bridge the strings pass over a low uncurved bar attached to the belly. In other paintings the strings are actually fixed to the bar as on a plucked instrument. The Castelsardo Master’s viol with its long neck, thin ribs and generally slim outline appears to have been a tall instrument, quite distinct from the shorter, deeper-bodied viol that became standard in Italy during the 16th century. Later Valencian viols of the type pictured by the St Lazarus Master (fig.6) do, in fact, have shorter necks and wider, deeper waists, but still retain the thin ribs. On the belly of this particular instrument is a pattern of ornaments characteristic of the vihuela de mano. Iconographic evidence suggests that the viol was the result of applying the traditional Aragonese technique of rebec playing to a new bowed instrument whose size and body construction were essentially those of the plucked vihuela de mano. For such instruments, the term vihuela de arco seems appropriate.

The viol quickly spread across the Mediterranean through the Balearic Islands and Sardinia to Italy. Its advance was probably assisted by the Borgia family from Valencia, from whose ranks came two popes, Calixtus III and Alexander VI. It was during the pontificate of Alexander VI (1492–1503) that viols began to appear in Rome and in cities to the north, such as Urbino and Ferrara, that were dominated by the Borgias. Some of the earliest representations of viols in Italian art are by painters working in those areas: Costa in Ferrara, Francia in Bologna and Raphael (as well as Timoteo Viti) in Urbino and Rome.

The court of Isabella d’Este at Mantua seems to have been particularly receptive to new Spanish instruments of all kinds, which included the vihuela de mano and possibly a Spanish form of lute, as well as the viol. In the last decade of the 15th century Lorenzo de Pavia, Isabella’s agent, was frequently involved in the purchase or repair of a range of instruments made ‘in the Spanish manner’: the ‘viola spagnola’, the ‘viola a la spagnola’, the ‘liutto a la spagnola’ and the plain ‘spagnola’. It is probable that one of the earliest viol consorts ever made was the one provided for Isabella by Lorenzo from a workshop in Brescia.

In 1493 the chronicler Bernardo Prospero reported that some Spanish musicians had come from Rome to Mantua playing viols ‘as tall as I am’ (‘viole grande quasi come me’). These Spanish players had probably come from Valencia to Rome with Rodrigo Borgia (Alexander VI). Their ‘viole grande’ may have been long-necked Spanish viols of the type pictured in fig.5. Tall, slim viols with long necks appear also in Italian paintings of this period, notably in Lorenzo Costa’s Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints, on an altarpiece dated 1497 (in S Giovanni in Monte, Bologna), and Timoteo Viti’s painting of the same subject (Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan). In other early 16th-century Italian paintings the viol appears as a more fully developed instrument. Raphael in his Allegory of St Cecilia (c1513–16; Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna) depicted a tenor viol with a carved lion’s head scroll and nearly all the characteristics of a typical 17th-century instrument: deep ribs, sloping shoulders, flat back bending in at the upper end towards the neck, two c-holes, frets, six pegs and a slightly arched belly (fig.7). This picture illustrates the most important single change that the viol underwent in Italy: the older flat-bridged Valencian type gave way to the instrument with an arched bridge and a fingerboard. In effect, Italian makers enabled the viol, which had hitherto probably had a melodic and a drone-playing capability only, to develop into an instrument fully equipped to play an individual line in a polyphonic ensemble. As a direct result of this fundamental change of identity, there was now the need to make viols of different sizes. At first, only two sizes, tenor and bass, were required. Ensemble music for which these sets of large viols were well suited included textless polyphony, and frottolas which could be performed by solo voice and instruments.

Although there is no iconographic evidence of any viol-like instrument in 15th-century German art, numerous references to groups of ‘Geigen’ players in archival sources led Polk (F1989) to propose that a tradition of string consort playing began to take root north of the Alps, and that German instrumentalists employed in the Italian courts played a significant role in the early development of the viol as an ensemble instrument. However, Woodfield (B1991) has argued that the term ‘Geige’ itself was a generic one, which could with equal reason be taken to refer to other bowed or plucked instruments or to mixed ensembles. The first iconographic evidence that the viol had entered the domains of Maximilian I comes in the early years of the 16th century.

A bass viol is pictured in Grünewald’s famous Isenheim altarpiece (1512/13–15), although the bowing technique of the player is obviously unrealistic. Martin Agricola in his Musica instrumentalis deudsch (A1529) hinted at the southern origins of viols by describing them as ‘grosse welschen Geygen’ (‘large Italian fiddles’). The curious woodcuts of ‘grosse Geygen’ printed by Agricola, like some Valencian depictions of viols, show instruments without fingerboard, bridge or tailpiece; the strings pass over a rose and are attached to a bar on the belly. Woodfield noted that the large majority of extant depictions of this instrument come from Basle – Agricola’s woodcut, for example, derives directly from that in Virdung’s Musica getutscht (Basle, 1511). He suggested that the origins of its characteristic shape may lie in the flamboyant lira da braccio outlines the kind depicted by Cima da Conegliano, woodcuts of which were readily available in Basle.

Early German theorists point to the closeness of the relationship between the viol and lute. Judenkünig, for example, equated the viol with the lute. Both instruments are pictured together on the title-page woodcut of his 1523 treatise, and in the introduction he stated that his instructions were for both. Yet the viol is scarcely mentioned in the text and all the musical examples are for lute, so it is not clear how the viol player was expected to use the treatise. Some early Renaissance writers classified bowed and plucked instruments together. Tinctoris (De inventione et usu musicae, c1487) wrote of two types of ‘viola’, ‘sine arculo’ (‘without a bow’) and ‘cum arculo’ (‘with a bow’), as though they were members of the same family.

3. Continental Europe c1500 to c1600.

The terminology of the viol family during the 16th century was varied and at times extremely confusing. The generic word ‘viola’ (viol) included two quite different instruments, the viola ‘da braccio’ (i.e. ‘arm’ viol) and the viola ‘da gamba’ (i.e. ‘leg’ viol). Few writers before the middle of the century, however, used either modifying phrase. While some Italian and Spanish writers used the phrase viola ‘da arco’ or vihuela ‘de arco’ (i.e. bowed viol) in order to distinguish the viol from plucked instruments, the clarifying phrase ‘de arco’ was often omitted. Further confusion was caused by the widespread use of the word ‘viola’ to refer to the Lira da braccio. Some theorists, therefore, referred to the ‘fretted’ viol, the lira being unfretted. The title-page of Ganassi’s viol tutor (A1542) is unusually specific in its reference to the ‘violone d’arco da tasti’ (‘bowed fretted viol’). The terminology of viol consorts was at times equally inconsistent. Italian writers, for example, often described consorts in terms of the bass instrument, the violone. Thus, references to ‘violoni’ or ‘violoni da gamba’ do not necessarily imply a consort consisting entirely of bass viols. The term ‘violoni’, however, can easily be confused with ‘violini’ or ‘violons’, meaning violins. In fact, isolated references to viols in literary works, inventories and account books are often ambiguous.

Despite the confusing terminology, there is ample evidence that the viol was popular at many 16th-century courts. Baldassare Castiglione wrote enthusiastically of the viol consort (‘quattro viole da arco’) in his Il libro del cortegiano (Venice, 1528; Eng. trans. by T. Hoby, 1561), a vivid description of life in an early 16th-century court: ‘The musicke with a sette of violes doth no lesse delite a man: for it is verrie sweet and artificiall’. Theorists too commented on the upper-class status of the viol. Jambe de Fer (A1556), for example, wrote that the viol was played by ‘gentlemen, merchants and other men of virtue’ as a pastime, whereas the violin was usually considered a ‘professional’ instrument of the lower classes, often played in the streets to accompany dances or to lead wedding processions. Shakespeare attests to the viol's noble status; and Moll in Dekker and Middleton's The Roaring Girl (1611) is deeply indignant when her porter refers to her viol as a ‘fiddle’, although another character suggests that the viol is considered by many as ‘an unmannerly instrument for a woman’. By the later 18th century the viol was seldom found outside the court music room.

It would be wrong, however, to suggest that the viol was played only by amateurs for their private enjoyment. Many courts employed professional viol players – sometimes complete consorts – to perform in the musical intermedi given at royal weddings or other special occasions. In 1502, at the wedding of Alfonso d’Este and Lucrezia Borgia at Ferrara, one of the intermedi included music played by six viols. Throughout the century, the viol consort remained an essential part of the Renaissance intermedio ‘orchestra’. It was most frequently used with other consorts of instruments, such as flutes or trombones, and sometimes in even larger ensembles. Some of the viol players hired for these special occasions were doubtless skilled professionals able to perform elaborate ornamentation. The names of several celebrated violists have survived; Ganassi mentioned two in his treatise – Giuliano Tibertino and Lodovico Lasagnino. The popularity of the viol with amateur players resulted in the publication of several viol tutors. Many general treatises on music, too, included sections devoted to viol playing or viol music (the most significant are listed in the bibliography). These treatises, together with iconographic evidence, present a surprisingly complete picture of the viol and the way it was played.

Ganassi was the first writer to describe in detail the standard method of holding the viol – firmly between the knees, but with the knees not impeding the bowstroke. His method is illustrated on the title-page woodcut of Regola rubertina (fig.8). Yet iconographic evidence shows that viols were often played in positions other than those recommended in textbooks. Two of the famous viol players pictured by Paolo Veronese in his Marriage at Cana (1562–3) in the Louvre are holding their viols in an almost horizontal position. This posture was condemned by Ganassi. Bass viol players are sometimes pictured standing, with their viols either resting on the ground or supported on a small stool (as described by Jambe de Fer; fig.9), or even held against the body with no visible means of support at all. This last method, illustrated by the woodcut in Judenkünig (A1523), looks highly improbable since the player has to support the weight of the instrument while playing it. Jambe de Fer, however, described a device used by players of the bass viola da braccio to help take the weight of their instrument. This consisted of a small hook worn by the player which could be attached to an iron ring fixed to the back of his instrument – an arrangement which may on occasion have been adopted by bass viol players. But despite these and other unusual playing positions, the standard posture as described by Ganassi remained almost unchanged and was firmly advocated by later 17th-century English theorists.

In the second volume of his viol tutor (A1543) Ganassi described fingering techniques in some detail. He gave five different fingerings for a scale (shown in ex.1). It is clear from his fourth and fifth alternatives that he intended the viol player to make full use of high positions. Indeed, his ricercares for solo viol contain some quite extended high passages, up to a 9th above the open top string. Alternative fingerings avoid unnecessary string crossing (ex.2). The ricercares for solo viol and the madrigal arrangement for voice and viol contain many chords, some of which are facilitated by Ganassi’s use of the barré (one finger laid flat across two or more strings).

The characteristic ‘underhand’ viol bowing was described by Ganassi. He started with the basic techniques, such as the grip with the thumb and middle finger holding the bow and the index finger applying the required amount of pressure; the different types of bowstroke; the use of arm in sustaining long notes, and the wrist in playing fast passage-work; and the need to keep the bowing arm firm but flexible. The correct use of up- and down-bows is explained at great length. Moreover, some of the musical examples have bowing marks, a dot beneath a note or letter indicating a down-bow, and the absence of a dot an up-bow. There are no slur marks as such, but there are occasionally two consecutive up- or down-bows, both articulated. Ortiz’s Trattado suggests that groups of two or three fast notes (‘semiminimas’) should be played in one bow. But the quick passage-work in Ganassi’s ricercares for solo viol is fully bowed out, usually with up-bows on the strong beats.

Ganassi’s most interesting comments concern the style of good viol playing and the variety of tone which a good viol can produce. In the section on bowing, for example, he wrote that the best place to bow is at a distance of four fingers’ width from the bridge. But he also described the rougher sound of the strings near the bridge and their more restrained sound near the fingerboard. The viol player, it would seem, was completely at liberty to use these different sound qualities if he so desired. Ganassi also referred to a ‘tremar’ (shaking) of the bowing arm and the left hand, possibly an indication of tremolando and vibrato. These and similar passages all serve to emphasize Ganassi’s view that viol playing should be above all else expressive, and that the best way to play expressively is to imitate the human voice. To illustrate this, one of his most important points, he compared the viol player to the orator, who expresses his meaning to his listeners by gestures of the hand and changes in the tone of his voice. In the same way, he wrote, the good viol player should aim at variety and be sensitive to the music that is being played; and should not, for example, bow with vigour in ‘sad and afflicted’ music.

The earliest printed source of viol tunings is Agricola’s Musica instrumentalis deudsch (A1529), which gives the following tunings: f–a–d'–g'–c'' (discantus); c–f–a–d'–g' (altus, tenor); G–c–f–a–d'–g' (bassus). These tunings are clearly based on a single sequence of intervals for the whole consort, and consequently the position of the third varies within the consort. Most later theorists gave tunings in which all viols have the same sequence of intervals.

Ganassi devoted a large section of his tutor to explaining four ‘regole’ (rules) for consort tuning. The first three are given in Table 1. The fourth rule, which according to Ganassi was used by most players, is rather different. Entitled ‘Modo de sonar una quarta piu alta’ (‘how to play a 4th higher’), it consists of a tuning for five-string viols (Table 2). It seems that the purpose of this tuning was to enable the performer to play in a higher position on a viol tuned to a lower pitch. The tenor viol, for example, is tuned just like the bass viol of the first three tunings without its lowest string: [D–]G–c–e–a–d'. The note g', therefore, which in the first tuning is the open top string, has to be played on the fifth fret above the top string. In other words, the fourth rule involves a change of position, not pitch. Gerle gave an identical tuning for viols with five strings. Unlike Ganassi, however, he implied that a sixth string could be added, a 4th below the other five. A six-string bass, therefore, would presumably be tuned [A'–]D–G–B–e–a, although Gerle did not actually give the low notes in any of his charts.

table 2

Theorists of the late 16th and early 17th centuries gave one of two tunings. Cerreto and Mersenne gave the normal ‘d tuning’ as in Ganassi’s first and second rules. Zacconi, Banchieri, Cerone and Praetorius gave a ‘G tuning’, a 5th lower. Banchieri, for example, gave the tunings in Table 3. The problem of these two quite different tunings is partly one of confusing terminology. The ‘tenor’ viol of the low-pitched consort was the exact equivalent of the ‘bass’ viol of the high-pitched consort. Thus the name given to a viol depended more on its relative position in the consort than on its absolute size or pitch. Very little music appears to have been composed for the low G-tuned consort; almost all 16th- and 17th-century viol music is for the higher d-tuned instruments. It has therefore been suggested that the low-pitched viols were used in concerted music, doubling other instruments and voices. The origins of the low G-tuned viol consort remain something of a mystery. The relationship between the low-pitched viols of the late 16th century and the earlier five-string viols described by Gerle and by Ganassi in his fourth rule may be significant (Table 4).

An interesting regional variant in viol tunings was given by Jambe de Fer, who contrasted the tunings of Italy and France. His ‘Italian’ tuning follows the standard sequence of intervals (4th–4th–3rd–4th–4th). In France, however, it was apparently the custom to play on five-string viols tuned to a sequence of 4ths without the 3rd. This ‘French’ tuning is confirmed by Mareschall’s Porta musices (Table 5).

The earliest printed collections of music for viol consort are the two editions of Gerle’s Musica teusch (A1532, A1546), which contain transcriptions of vocal music – German Tenorlieder and Parisian chansons. These pieces are short and often quite chordal. There is a similar collection of German secular music transcribed for viols in an earlier manuscript dated 1524 (D-Mu 4^o cod.718). But such collections are exceptional, since most 16th-century consort music was neither composed nor arranged for specific instruments. Instead composers usually gave a general direction such as ‘da sonar’ (‘to be played’). There can be little doubt, however, that viol consorts regularly performed both vocal music – masses, motets, madrigals and chansons – and instrumental ricercares and fantasias. Several printed collections of ricercares by composers such as Willaert and Tiburtino (a violone player) were published during the mid-16th century. These would almost certainly have been used by viol players.

The first printed source of solo viol music is Ganassi’s Regola rubertina, which includes several ricercares for viol and one madrigal arrangement for viol and voice. The ricercares are short ‘improvisations’ consisting of running scales, cadential flourishes and some double stopping. In the arrangement of the madrigal Io vorei dio d’amor the viol accompanies the voice with a series of chords. This most interesting piece was probably intended as an imitation of the chordal style of playing associated with the lira da braccio. Regola rubertina also includes three exercises for practising various intervals. Some similar exercises are given in Mareschall’s Porta musices; like Ganassi’s they are intended to help the student practise difficult intervals and awkward leaps. The art of playing divisions (i.e. improvising ornaments) was an essential part of the musical education of all 16th-century musicians, and Ortiz devoted the whole of his treatise on viol playing to this subject. His musical examples include ornamented cadential patterns for viol consort, freely ornamented versions of vocal pieces for solo viol and keyboard, and ‘improvisations’ over well-known bass patterns like the folia and the romanesca. Ortiz’s arrangements of Sandrin’s chanson Doulce memoire and Arcadelt’s madrigal O felici occhi miei are among the most beautiful 16th-century pieces for solo viol. The ornamentation is restrained but by no means confined to standard cadential patterns. Towards the end of the century a small bass viol, the Viola bastarda, was developed specifically to perform divisions.

4. England.

The viol was introduced into England some time early in the reign of Henry VIII, perhaps, as suggested by Holman (C1993), by members of the van Wilder family. In 1526 two viol players, Hans Hossenet and Hans Highorne, entered regular employment at a monthly salary of 33s. 4d. In contrast with Italy and Germany, where its impact was immediate, there is little evidence to suggest that the viol spread rapidly into English society, and not until the 1530s is there any significant evidence of ownership of viols outside the royal court. In 1540 the appointment of Henry VIII’s ‘newe vialles’, who comprised a complete consort of string players from Venice, Milan and Cremona, provided a strong impetus to the growth of the viol’s popularity in England. Despite their official Italian identities, Prior (C1983) has shown that Henry’s viol players were in fact Jews from northern Italian sephardic communities. The rapidly increasing popularity of the viol at the Tudor court is reflected in the inventory of Henry VIII’s great collection of instruments (GB-Lbl Harl.1419), compiled at the end of his reign in 1547. It includes an item ‘xix Vialles greate and small with iii cases of woodde covered with blacke leather to the same’. A few years later, English viol players were employed: in 1549 Thomas Kentt was ‘admitted to the Vialles in place of greate Hans deceased’, and from 1554 Thomas Browne appeared regularly in the lists of players.

The introduction of the viol into the curriculum of London choir schools during the reign of Henry VIII marked a new era of growth in England. By the mid-century, selected choirboys at the Chapel Royal, St Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey were receiving regular tuition. In 1582 Sebastian Westcote, the Master of the Children at St Paul’s, bequeathed to the Almonry his ‘cheste of vyalyns and vialles’ for the use of the pupils. For a while in the 1560s the children viol players of St Paul’s occupied an especially prominent place in the ceremonial and theatrical activities undertaken by their school. At the Goldsmiths’ Annual Feast on 17 June 1560, for example, company members were regaled with musical entertainment during their meal: ‘And all the dynner tyme the syngyng chyldren of Paules played upon their vialles & songe verye pleasaunt songes to the delectacion & rejoysynge of the whole companie’. Incidental music and song accompaniments were also provided for plays. The interlude ‘Wyt and Science’ (c1545) by John Redford, organist of St Paul’s, calls for a viol consort on stage: ‘Heere cumth in fowre wyth violes and syng’. The long-term influence of the choirboy viol players was considerable. Generations of trained musicians entered the wider musical community in young adulthood with their viol playing skills. Furthermore, musical genres which had some early association with the choir schools (the In Nomine, the consort song and the consort anthem) retained a prominent place in the English repertory for the instrument.

The extent to which viol playing was taken up by amateur players in 16th-century England has been the subject of some controversy. Doe (C1977) argued that the spread of the viol outside the immediate environs of the Tudor court was very limited indeed. It is clear from Woodfill’s documentary evidence, however, that there was a steady increase in the ownership of sets of viols in large Elizabethan households. In 1537, to take an early example, the accounts of the Earl of Rutland show that 53s. 4d. was paid for ‘four viols bought at London’. Neither this, nor the activities of the choirboy consorts, however, prove the existence of a strong tradition of amateur playing; not until the beginning of the 17th century did the viol consort achieve widespread currency. Even then, pictorial evidence of its popularity remains surprisingly scarce. The painting of Sir Henry Unton from shortly after 1596 (in the National Portrait Gallery, London; see Masque, fig.1) is exceptional. It depicts a domestic Consort of five viol players seated round a table. A typical 17th-century ‘chest’ of viols as described by North (see Wilson, C1959) included two trebles, two tenors and two basses.

With the instruments of the younger John Rose (d 1611), the English viol found its classic outline (although not all Rose's surviving instruments are to this pattern). His father, also named John (fl 1552–61), was well established as a viol maker by the mid-16th century and successfully exported his instruments to Italy. John Stow rated the son's gifts ‘as a maker of Bandoras, the Voyall de Gamboes and other instruments’ as ‘far exceeding’ those of his father (Annales, 1631). John Rose's viols in the elegant classical shape (fig.11) share the same basic features of the Venetian instruments of Ventura Linarol (b 1539/40): both are lightly built with sloping shoulders, deep ribs and a flat back with the bend and slope towards the neck, and the table and back meeting the ribs flush at right angles. A distinctive feature of English viol design, perhaps developed by Rose himself, was the use of five pieces of wood for the belly. A further characteristic of some of Rose's surviving instruments, which was used by the later English makers, is extravagant decoration using geometrical designs in purfling and cross-hatching etched out with a hot needle. The viols of Henry Jaye (fl c 1610–67) of Southwark were the most prized in the mid-17th century (fig.12). Two other makers of particular importance were Richard Meares and Barak Norman; the latter's surviving bass viols are generally of the smaller division size, which seems to have been preferred in the late 17th and early 18th century.

Instruction books on viol playing appeared during the 17th century. Robinson’s The Schoole of Musicke (A1603) and Playford’s A Breefe Introduction (A1654) were intended primarily for consort players. For viol players wishing to learn the solo techniques of the lyra and division viols there were Playford’s Musick’s Recreation on the Lyra Viol (A1652), Simpson’s remarkably comprehensive The Division-Violist (A1659) and Hely’s The Compleat Violist (A1699). The existence of a flourishing school of solo viol playing led to some refinements of technique including the slur, the ‘thump’ or pizzicato (on the lyra viol), and the hold (see §1 above and Table 6). Hume even made use of the col legno, instructing the player to ‘Drum this with the back of your bow’. On the more basic matters of posture, bowing and fingering, 17th-century writers mainly followed their 16th-century predecessors. The importance of a correct or ‘decent’ posture, however, was given particular emphasis. Simpson, for example, criticized the playing of fast notes with the whole arm, on the grounds that ‘it will cause the whole body to shake, which (by all means) must be avoyded; as also any other indecent Gesture’. There was also controversy about how best to use the elbow joint in bowing. Some, like Simpson, preferred it rigid; others, like Mace, ‘Something Plying or Yielding to an Agile Bending’.

Consorts of viols continued to be popular in England longer than on the Continent. As North observed, ‘the use of chests of violls, which supplyed all instrumental consorts, kept back the English from falling soon into the modes of forrein countrys, where the violin and not the treble viol was in use’. In fact it was the bass viol that lasted the longest, for despite North’s comments the ‘extraordinary jolly’ violin had begun to rival the treble viol quite early in the 17th century. The popularity of the violin was finally established during the Restoration period. Charles II detested the contrapuntal fancies of viol consorts, preferring instead the ‘brisk and arie’ sound of violins. Yet the bass viol lingered on as an amateur instrument, particularly for playing basso continuo lines, because of its subtle tone and ease in executing fast passages. Samuel Pepys enjoyed evenings devoted to ‘the vyall and singing’; the practice of singing to an improvised chordal accompaniment on the bass viol (as an alternative to the lute or theorbo) persisted throughout the 17th century.

The earliest source of English consort music is Henry VIII’s songbook (GB-Lbl Add.31922; ed. in MB, xviii, 1962, 2/1969), which dates from the early 16th century. The short, textless ‘consorts’ contained in that manuscript were probably not composed with any particular instrument in mind. In the mid-16th century English composers began to write textless polyphony, some of which may well have been intended for performance on viols. The most characteristic form was the plainsong In Nomine, a cantus-firmus composition based on a short section of plainsong from the Benedictus of Taverner’s Mass ‘Gloria tibi trinitas’ (see Dart and Donington, C1949). The earliest settings by Tallis are very vocal in style with smoothly flowing melodic lines. Tye, the first prolific composer of In Nomines, gave many of his compositions titles like Rachells Weepinge, Weepe no more Rachell and My death. The In Nomine came to be regarded as a kind of test piece in which the composer tried to display contrapuntal skill or experimental ingenuity. Tye’s In Nomine Trust, for example, is in 5/4.

Although few in number, William Byrd's works for viol consort are diverse and of uniformly high quality. They range from the exquisitely crafted and intensely polyphonic three-part fantasias to the large-scale six-part, multi-sectional works, which include popular tunes and dance-like sections (in one case a complete galliard). Some of the finest are sui generis: the famous ‘Browning’ with its astonishing ending exploring exquisitely controlled false relations, and the very fine five-part canonic fantasia. Not least remarkable of Byrd's qualities as a composer for viols is the transparency of texture he achieves, even in the most complex polyphony.

With a new generation of composers led by Alfonso Ferrabosco (ii), the polyphonic fantasia became the favoured form of composition for viol consort. In some ways the early English fantasia resembled its continental model, but North’s opinion was that English composers improved on their Italian predecessors by ‘working more elaborately’. Of the many 16th-century dances the stately pavan was most popular with composers of viol consort music. Ferrabosco and Tomkins, in particular, wrote some remarkably sonorous five-part pavans. The influence of the fantasia on the pavan was sometimes marked. By the mid-17th century some pavans, such as those by Jenkins, had developed into quite extended contrapuntal compositions.

The most significant development in late 16th-century consort music was undoubtedly the growth of idiomatic writing for the viol. On the Continent ricercares, fantasias and canzonas were still being described as ‘da sonar’ (‘to be played’). But in England instrumentation was often specified in more detail. Thus English composers were able to distinguish between the comparatively restricted range of the voice and the wider compass of the viol. Tomkins, for example, commenting on a series of fantasias by Ferrabosco (GB-Lbl Add.29996), wrote ‘made only for the vyolls and organ which is the Reason that he takes such liberty of compass which he would have Restrayned; if it had bin made for voyces only’. Playing above the frets, therefore, became quite common as the viol’s upper register was increasingly exploited. The solo viol repertory was also influential in the development of idiomatic consort music. Although the technique of playing divisions was well known, some early 17th-century composers wrote out the divisions they wanted rather than leaving them to be improvised by the performer. Two examples of this, from an In Nomine by Gibbons and a fantasia by Ravenscroft, are given in ex.3. Simpson (A1659) printed a table of ornaments or ‘graces’ for the solo viol player including ‘beats’, ‘elevations’, ‘backfalls’ and ‘relishes’. Ornament signs, however, varied greatly at this period. Some ornaments could be performed ‘by the bow’. Simpson mentioned ‘a Shake or Tremble with the Bow, like the Shaking-Stop of an Organ’ (?tremolo), but he did not recommend ‘the frequent use thereof’.

The development of idiomatic writing is perhaps best seen in the ‘broken’ consorts of the early 17th century in which bowed, plucked, keyboard and wind instruments were combined. A typical instrumentation is found in Morley’s First Booke of Consort Lessons (1599), which contains original compositions and arrangements for treble and bass viols, ‘flute’ (recorder), cittern, lute and bandora, each instrument with its own idiomatic part. During the 17th century many different instrumentations were tried, including both consort viols and solo lyra and division viols, as for example in the consorts for treble, bass and lyra viols by Ferrabosco and Hume, the consorts for violin, division viol, theorbo and harp by William Lawes, the duets for keyboard and bass viol published in Parthenia In-Violata (RISM c1614²³) and the fantasia-suites for one or two violins, bass viol and organ by Ferrabosco and Coprario.

There can be little doubt that viols were often used in the performance of vocal music. Directions such as ‘Apt for Viols and Voyces’ or ‘to be played on Musicall Instruments’ are frequently found on the title-pages of late 16th- and early 17th-century publications. Moreover, printed vocal music was sometimes copied out without text and (in the words of Roger North) ‘for variety used as instrumentall consorts, with the first words of the song for a title’. A large selection of Italian madrigals by Marenzio, Monteverdi, Ferrabosco and others was copied out in this way (GB-Lbl Add.37402–6). Unlike the madrigal, the English consort song, which dates from the mid-16th century, was written specifically for viols and solo voice or voices. The greatest composer of consort songs was undoubtedly Byrd, whose lament for his friend Tallis, Ye sacred muses, is a magnificent example of the genre. During the early 17th century the consort song continued to flourish and even influenced other forms: composers such as Orlando Gibbons used the viol consort in the verse anthem.

By the mid-17th century newer forms such as the suite or ‘sett’, a flexible combination of fantasias and dances, were becoming increasingly popular. There were also some important changes in instrumentation. The ‘whole’ consort of three to six viols was often replaced by the ‘broken’ consort of violins, bass viols and organ. The organ, in fact, became a regular member of the viol consort. Parts for the organ varied from simple score reductions of the viol parts (as in the magnificent set of five-part fantasias by Jenkins) to completely independent parts, sometimes with quite extended solo sections (as in Jenkins’s airs for two trebles, two basses and organ). The treble-bass polarity of these airs is indicative of the move towards trio sonata texture. In later trio sonatas (e.g. by Purcell) the viol continued to be given phrases independent of the keyboard; during the 18th century, however, the cello superseded the viol in this genre. Locke and other Restoration composers wrote much music for the new instrumentation of one or two trebles (viols or violins), bass viol and organ. Tempo and dynamic indications such as ‘long tyme’, ‘away’, ‘drag’, ‘lowde’ and ‘verrie softe’ became more common during this period. By the time of Purcell polyphonic fantasias and In Nomines were old-fashioned. Much of this kind of viol music was used, in the words of North, ‘in the fire for singeing pullets’. Yet Purcell’s compositions in these forms are among the finest ever composed, a fitting conclusion to the long tradition of consort music in England.

The post-Restoration repertory is small. It includes, besides the Purcell fantasias, several works by Simpson, among them 12 fantasias (‘The Monthes’) and four fantasia-suites (‘The Seasons’), as well as the seven examples of divisions at the back of his influential tutor, The Division-Violist, which was highly admired by North and republished as late as 1712. Other late uses of the viol are by Gottfried Finger (for one or two bass viols with and without continuo – some of which use scordatura – and trios for violin, bass viol and continuo), Benjamin Hely (for unaccompanied bass viol, and duos with and without continuo) and William Gorton (Never Publish'd Before a Choice Collection of New Ayres Compos'd and Contriv'd for Two Bass-Viols, 1701). Virtuosic transcriptions for bass viol exist of Corelli's op.5 violin sonatas and also of vocal works in Walsh and Hare's publication Aires and Symphonies for the Bass Viol (c1710). As late as 1724 Handel supplied a bass viol part, making idiomatic use of chords and arpeggio patterns, in an aria from Giulio Cesare.

The bass viol remained popular with amateur musicians well into the 18th century, as both a solo and a continuo instrument, and the arrival in England during the 1758–9 season of Carl Friedrich Abel, the instrument’s last famous virtuoso, stimulated a short-lived but significant revival of interest. Abel’s playing, according to Burney ‘was in every way complete and perfect’ and his compositions ‘easy and elegantly simple’. His works for viol include a large number of easy sonatas with continuo, an aria with viol obbligato and several virtuoso and highly idiomatic sonatas for unaccompanied bass viol. After his death in 1787 Burney remarked that Abel’s ‘favourite instrument was not in general use and will probably die with him’.

Gainsborough, an enthusiastic amateur, and a friend of Abel, wrote to a friend on 4 June 1772: ‘I’m sick of Portraits and wish very much to take my Viol da Gamba and walk off to some sweet Village when I can paint Landskips and enjoy the fag End of Life in quietness and ease’. Another artist who studied ‘viol di gamba’ in his youth (c1766) was Thomas Jones. One of the aristocratic enthusiasts for the viol at this period was Lady Spencer. The Althorpe accounts in 1773 and 1774 (GB-Lbl Althorpe F 184) contain references to the purchase of two complete sets of viol strings, to the ‘Puting a Viol da Gamba in order’, and to the supply of a ‘Bow for the Viola da Gamba’. Mrs Howe wrote to Lady Spencer on 29 December 1779 (GB-Lbl Althorpe F 45) that she was looking forward to ‘hearing one of y^r new pieces of musick upon y^r Viol de gambo’. New and fashionable repertory was provided not only by Abel but apparently also by J.C. Bach, who in 1773 took legal action against Longman, Lukey & Co. for publishing an unauthorized edition of ‘a new sonata’ for keyboard and viola da gamba. A manuscript of three sonatas for viola da gamba and keyboard by Bach was auctioned at Sotheby’s at the sale of 28–9 May 1992. The only 18th-century public performance with piano and viola da gamba so far recorded took place at Coopers’ Hall in King Street, Bristol, on 17 January 1771. The programme included: ‘a song by Miss Marshall, accompanied by the Piano Forte and Viol de Gambo’ and ‘a favourite Lesson on the Harpischord by Miss Marshall, accompanied by the Viol de Gambo’. It is likely that easy sonatas for other instruments were played by this last generation of English amateur viol players, as indeed was viol music by other string players. Sir William Hamilton (having taken up the viola) wrote to Lord Herbert from Naples: ‘I should think some of Abel’s Musick for Viol di Gamba wou’d do well on the Tenor if you cou’d get any old solos or pieces of his Musick copied for me out of Lady Pembroke’s books’. The last work with a part for ‘Viola di Gamba’ to be published in England was perhaps no.7 of William Jackson’s Twelve Songs, op.16 (c1790).

5. Italy from c1580.

Virtuosity on the bass viol first reached spectacular heights with the Italian school of Viola bastarda playing, the seeds of which are found in the madrigal improvisations of Ortiz (1553). The fully-fledged bastarda style flourished from about 1580 to 1630; the first published compositions were by Girolamo Dalla Casa (Il vero modo di diminuir, 1584) and the last by Vincenzo Bonizzi (Alcune opere di diverse auttori a diverse voci, passaggiate principalmente per la viola bastarda, 1626). In addition to its solo role, the viol continued to be used in ensembles. Pietro de' Bardi, in a letter to G.B. Doni (1634), recalled Vincenzo Galilei's stile rappresentativo setting of Dante's lament of Count Ugolino (performed with the Florentine Camerata in 1582) as being ‘intelligibly sung by a good tenor and precisely accompanied by a consort of viols’. Monteverdi's scoring of Orfeo (1607) includes three bassi da gamba. In this work, as in the intermedi of the previous century, the contrasting instrumental timbres have an important symbolic significance: the viol family was associated with the gods, the supernatural and the nobility, and the bass members were thus suitable for depicting the underworld (with trombones). Monteverdi later specified a contrabasso da Gamba in his Combattimento di Tancredi et Clorinda of 1624 (published 1638).

As the 17th century progressed the viols were gradually ousted by the violin family: already by the time of Monteverdi's Orfeo the treble had fallen to the brilliant and fashionable violin (though it continued to be used in Germany until the middle of the century and in England and France for even longer). By the second quarter of the century Italian string continuo parts increasingly demanded the new cello. Writing from Rome in 1639, the French virtuoso André Maugars lamented

as for the viol, there is no one in Italy now who excels at it; and indeed it is very little played in Rome, at which I was greatly astonished, since formerly they had Horatio [Bassani] of Parma, who did marvellous things with it and left to posterity some very fine pieces.

Nevertheless the viol family did not die out. There is evidence that consorts of viols still persisted in cultural isolation, e.g. in Sicily and in convents, and the bass viol is specified in two Venetian operas of the 1670s, Petronio Franceschini's Arsinoe (1676) and Carlo Pallavicino's Nerone (1679). Ten patterns survive by Stradivari for a ‘Viola da Gamba of the French Form’ from 1701, and a number of fine Italian six- and seven-string instruments from the first two decades of the 18th century also exist. And despite its unpopularity at the time of Maugars' visit, it appears to have been particularly in Rome that an interest in the viol was rekindled in the early 18th century, notably by the patrons Benedetto Pamphili and F.M. Ruspoli. Pamphili employed a viol player named ‘Monsieur Sciarli’ and Ruspoli retained Bartolomeo Cimapane to play at his Sunday afternoon conversazione; and in 1708 the celebrated German virtuoso E.C. Hesse visited Italy, performing in Rome, Naples and Venice. The Roman lutenist Lelio Colista (1629–80) left a duet sonata for violin, bass viol and continuo and a further four (incomplete) sonatas which included the viol. Alessandro Scarlatti scored his cantata Già sepolto è fra l'onda for soprano, 2 violins, violetta, bass viol and continuo; the work was probably intended for a Roman patron. But the most significant compositions with bass viol are Handel's cantata Tra le fiamme (1707) for soprano, 2 recorders, 2 violins, bass viol and continuo and his sumptuous Oratorio per la Resurrezione (1708), composed for Pamphili and Ruspoli respectively. In the opening sonata of La Resurrezione the bass viol makes an arresting entrance as a member of the concertino group paired with the solo violin (played in the first performance by Corelli). Handel assigned to the viol melodic lines (commonly as the second part in a trio texture), Italianate arpeggiated figurations and figured bass; the choice of the viol for a Resurrection oratorio is in keeping with the German association of the viol representing the solace of the Resurrection.

6. France from c1600.

There was a strong late Renaissance tradition of viol playing in France, encouraged by the Académie de Poésie et de Musique which, under the direction of Jacques Mauduit, included viol consorts in its concerts. At first, as in Italy, viols were used to accompany voices, but soon purely instrumental genres became popular. The fantasias by Du Caurroy and Le Jeune and later Métru, Roberday, Du Mont and Louis Couperin are evidence of this. These fantasias do not, however, exploit the resources of the viol as distinctively as their English counterparts. Indeed, many were played by viol consort, organ or other instruments according to the choice of the performers. Idiomatic English consort music was also known in France, and Mersenne chose a fantasia by Alfonso Ferrabosco (ii) as an illustration of viol music in his Harmonie universelle (1636–7). The viol was not only used in consort; Trichet recommended it as ‘highly suitable for all musical ensembles’. Herouard recalled a group comprising ‘a lutenist, a harpsichordist and violist named Pradel, an excellent player if ever there was’ playing for Louis XIII in 1609.

Both Mersenne and Jean Rousseau (A1687) paid tribute to the skills of André Maugars (c1580–c1645) as the first great French virtuoso. Maugars worked in London as a musician to James I in the 1620s and acknowledged his debt to the English players, particularly Ferrabosco, regarding their use of chords. Mersenne marvelled at Maugars' ability to execute alone ‘two, three or many parts on the bass viol, full of ornaments and with a rapidity of fingers which seemed to preoccupy him little’. Furthermore, Mersenne considered the viol to be the instrument which most perfectly imitated the human voice. He described the standard French viol as having six strings (tuned in 4ths with a 3rd in the middle) and his illustration of the modern viol portrays the classical English model. Rousseau named Nicolas Hotman (d 1663) as the next early player of distinction. On Louis Couperin's death in 1661, the position of viol player to the king was divided between Hotman and Sébastien Le Camus, ‘the two best players of the viol and theorbo that the King had ever heard’. In the 17th century it was normal for players to double on the viol and theorbo; Robert de Visée is another example. Hotman was celebrated for his pièces d'harmonie with beautiful melodies imitating the voice, in the style of the air de cour. Hotman taught De Machy, Rousseau and the celebrated Sainte-Colombe, teacher of Marin Marais. Rousseau credited Sainte-Colombe with introducing silver-covered strings, adding the seventh, low A string and developing a left-hand position in which the thumb fell behind the second finger instead of the first, as was common practice on the theorbo. This gave the left hand greater flexibility, and Rousseau especially commended Sainte-Colombe for his ability to imitate all the vocal graces. Sainte-Colombe's new hand position was the one that survived into the 18th century but for a while it caused deep division between the old-fashioned players led by De Machy, who remained faithful to the theorbo hand position, and the progressives of Sainte-Colombe's school. 67 Concerts a deux violes esgales (F-Pn) and 180 pieces for solo bass viol survive by Sainte-Colombe; they reveal a highly idiomatic and mature style, rich with chords and ornamentation. He was unique among viol player-composers in his use of unmeasured passages.

From about 1675 to 1760 the French virtuoso bass viol school led the rest of Europe in viol playing. Foreign virtuosos such as Ernst Christian Hesse were sent to Paris by their employers to study with viol players like Marin Marais and Antoine Forqueray, and it was to Jean-Baptiste Forqueray that Prince Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia looked for advice on viol playing. A large and important corpus of French viol music was also circulated in England, Germany and the Low Countries; Marais' pièces de violes were particularly widely known. The viol was often played in private concerts in the salons of the nobility, and professional players began to arrange recitals themselves; according to Titon du Tillet, Sainte-Colombe was known for ‘concerts chez lui, where two of his daughters played, one on the treble viol and the other on the bass, thus forming a concert for three viols with their father, which was a great pleasure to listen to’.

Both Louis XIV and Louis XV employed a viol player among their Musiciens ordinaires de la chambre du roy, and a demand for teachers arose as the instrument came to be considered a fashionable one for the nobility themselves to play. Amateur players at court included the Regent, the Duke of Orleans and Louis XV's daughter Princess Henriette Anne (fig.13). Continuo playing constituted an important role for the viol in chamber music, and it was as a continuo instrument that it appeared in the petit choeur of the Académie Royale de Musique from the time of Lully until at least 1726, when Quantz heard Roland Marais and Jean-Baptiste Forqueray perform. But only rarely, as for example in the air ‘Beaux lieux’ added to the second version (1708) of Destouches' opera Issé, was the viol given an obbligato part.

Four important sources of information on viol playing were printed between 1685 and 1687: collections of pièces de viole (prefaced by long avertissements) by De Machy and Marais, and treatises by Danoville and Jean Rousseau containing comprehensive instruction on playing technique, the instrument and bow, tuning and ornamentation. 18th-century information is found in avertissements (particularly to the later collections by Marais), in Hubert Le Blanc's Défense de la basse de viole (A1740) and in a series of letters from Jean-Baptiste Forqueray to Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia which discuss the construction and stringing of the instrument as well as its playing technique. In the late 17th century, taste dictated playing in the 1st or half-position whenever possible, but by the 18th century viol players began using the upper positions on the three top strings to avoid changing position unnecessarily. From 1717 Marais frequently used positions from the seventh fret upwards, known as the petit manche. Jean-Baptiste Forqueray developed this technique still further when, inspired by the mid-18th-century virtuoso violinists such as Leclair, he aimed to achieve a smooth and unified line by extensive use of the petit manche, on both high and low strings. This produced new and unusual tone colours and enabled him to obtain an exotic new range of chords (not only in the petit manche but also combined with open strings). The pièces de viole were often, when composed by a viol player, carefully marked with fingering, bowing and ornament signs. Ornaments played an essential rhetorical role in pièces de viole, just as in the airs de cour on which they were modelled. Rousseau described them as a ‘melodic salt which seasons the melody and gives it taste’. Viol ornaments included the rare semitone glissando (called by Marais the coulé de doigt) and a form of vibrato in which a finger is placed on the string, touching the one on the fret, beating lightly on the string ‘with an even shaking movement’. This kind of vibrato, which Marais indicated by a horizontal wavy line, was often preferred to a one-finger vibrato (used on the modern cello and indicated by Marais with a vertical wavy line), except of course when the note itself was played by the little finger. Vibrato is regularly marked only in tombeaux, plaintes and suchlike pieces; the coulé de doigt was regarded as suitable for ‘languishing melodies’ (fig.14 and Table 7), generally on the second finger and ascending, though according to Rousseau it could be used descending as well.

Jean-Baptiste Forqueray drew special attention to the bowing hand: ‘it should express all the passions … [the middle] finger presses on the hair to make more or less sound, and by pressing and relaxing imperceptibly this makes the expression both soft and loud’. By 1725 a variety of different bowstrokes had been developed, including enormous slurs of 24 notes and more, portato bowing on both single notes and chords, and the tremolo. Le Blanc (p.83) described the rich yet airy and resonant sound that the great French viol players made:

Père Marais and Forcroi le Père … strove to make a sonorous sound, like the Great Bell of St Germain, which they achieved by playing on air just as they recommended, that is to say that having bowed a stroke they allowed time for the string to vibrate.

He went on, however, to distinguish between the ‘old’ style of Marais which resembled ‘so much the plucking of the lute and guitar’ and the ‘new’ mid-18th-century technique characterized by the imperceptible bow change ‘which reproduces and multiplies the expression like the Sun's rays’.

The term ‘pièce de viole’ generally implies music for one viol and continuo, which was likely to consist of a second viol with harpsichord or theorbo (the latter was strongly recommended by Marais). There are also pièces de viole for two unaccompanied viols (notably Sainte-Colombe's Concerts à deux violes esgales) and for two viols and continuo (including pieces by Marais in his first and fourth books of pièces de violes); furthermore there are solo pièces d'harmonie for viol, among them four suites by Du Buisson of 1666 and pieces by De Machy. The latter's collection of 1685 is the first published set of pièces de viole; four suites are written in staff notation and four in tablature. From 1685 to 1748 a constant stream of pièces de viole, usually by viol players, were published; Marais, the outstanding and most prolific composer of this school, published five books (596 pieces) between 1686 and 1725; his works are remarkable for their exceptional craftsmanship and variety. Other important composers were De Machy, Caix d'Hervelois, Morel, François Couperin, Cappus, Roland Marais, Dollé and Jean-Baptiste Forqueray – all professional viol players except Couperin. Pièces de viole were normally arranged in suites; those of the late 17th century usually comprised a prelude and a conventional selection of dances, but 18th-century suites contained an increasing number of pièces de caractère (such as Marais' Le tableau de l'opération de la taille). The French style of virtuoso writing for the viol is characterized by an extensive use of chords (see fig.14), which are particularly idiomatic to the viol because of its frets. De Machy likened writing for the viol without chords to playing the harpsichord or organ with only one hand.

Independent parts for the viol in chamber music appeared before the end of the 17th century in works such as Charpentier's Sonate à 8 (c1686) and the sonades of François Couperin (early 1690s); and in scattered movements in works for violin (or flute) and continuo by Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre (1707), La Ferté (1707), Dornel (1711), Jean-Féry Rebel (1713) and Montéclair (1724–5) the viol is often freed from the bass. Violin, viol and continuo was a medium used by several composers including Marais, in his 1723 book La gamme et autres morceaux (where the Sonnerie de Sainte-Geneviève du Mont de Paris is found), Leclair (op.2 no.8, c1728) and Boismortier (1732, 1734); and Louis-Gabriel Guillemain included the viol in his Sonates en quatuors (1743, 1748). Several solo and trio collections were issued with a part for viol, cello or bassoon. Rameau's Pièces de clavecin en concerts (1741) for violin (or flute), viol and harpsichord contains some of the finest French Baroque chamber music; here the viol plays an independent part which generally lies above the bass line, sometimes even in the same register as the violin.

In the early decades of the 18th century, the secular cantate came into vogue and some composers, including Bourgeois, Bousset, Clérambault, Montéclair, Rameau and Stuck, used the viol there as a concertante instrument as well as for continuo. They did not attempt to write for the viol in the style of their player-composer contemporaries, but rather exploited the viol's tone quality, weaving a melodic line around that of the voice and often using the same motivic material for both parts. Occasionally the viol was offered as an alternative for a concertante flute part, for example in collections by Clérambault and Collin de Blamont.

The French bass viol was a large, lightly built instrument, which generally had seven strings though some survive with six. Le Blanc described its tone as like ‘the voice of an Ambassador, delicate and even a little nasal, always being highly proper’. The internal workmanship was extremely delicate: the linings were of linen or parchment and occasionally a series of little cubes of wood was used between the table and ribs to increase the adhesive area. Michel Collichon (fl 1666–93) was highly regarded as a maker in the latter half of the 17th century. Nicolas Bertrand and Guillaume Barbey were the most celebrated of the next generation, their finest viols being valued at around 100 livres. Both Marin Marais and Antoine Forqueray possessed instruments by Barbey; nonetheless the outstanding viol in the inventory taken at Marais' death was ‘une viole Anglaise fait par Robert Grille en mil six cens seize’ valued at 600 livres. Jean-Baptiste Forqueray believed Barbey to be ‘the best maker we have had for the shape, thickness, quality and dimensions’ and explained that his father had two of Barbey's viols ‘l'une pour les pièces, l'autre pour l'accompagnement’. He also wrote on the importance of setting up the viol correctly so as to obtain a free sound and promote ease of playing, and the necessity of the strings being in true proportion to one another. He advocated that the lowest four strings be covered with the same covering (the C string half covered) and warned that too much rosin on the bow would make it liable to squeak and dull the tone. By the 1740s the ‘pardessus de viole’ was valued more highly than the bass; André Castagnery's bass viols were priced at 6 livres whereas his pardessus were estimated at between 10 and 12 livres in the inventory taken at his death in 1747. The finest pardessus of Jean-Baptiste Salomon (1713–48) and Louis Guersan were the most expensive instruments of their genre at up to 38 livres; some of Guersan's pardessus and quintons were still valued at between 30 and 36 livres in 1770.

Between the late 17th and mid-18th centuries the bass viol was gradually superseded throughout Europe by the cello as the string continuo instrument. In the early Baroque period, the bass member of the violin family had been less refined in tone than an 18th-century cello, so the viol was preferred for its beautiful sound and ease in playing fast passages. But as the cello and its stringing were improved, and instrument making in general was developed, the cello was favoured because it was better suited to supporting the louder 18th-century ensemble. It overtook the viol first in Italy, where fine cellos were made from the middle of the 17th century, and later in France as well as in England and Germany as the Italian innovations in cello making and playing spread to the rest of Europe. Le Blanc and Jean-Baptiste Forqueray fought a fierce rearguard action on behalf of the bass viol, but though Forqueray's talents were highly respected, Ancelet remarked in his Observations sur la musique, les musiciens et les instrumens (Amsterdam, 1757) that ‘the Violoncello, which is without doubt one of the most beautiful instruments … is generally used everywhere … Only the Basse de Viole declared war on the Violoncello, which won the victory’.

In France, unlike the rest of Europe, treble viols remained popular long after the demise of the viol consort. Louis Couperin and Sébastien Le Camus were renowned treble players in the mid-17th century. Rousseau emphasized the vocal character of the instrument and the need to adopt ‘la delicatesse du Chant’ and ‘to imitate all a beautiful Voice might do with all the charms of the Art’. He proceeded by stressing that ‘one must not abandon the spirit of the instrument, which does not wish to be treated like a violin, with which it is correct to animate, in place of which it is correct for the Dessus de Viole to flatter’. Initially the treble viol largely played instrumental renditions of the fashionable airs de cour, although there are fine 17th-century obbligati for it, notably in sacred works by Du Mont and Charpentier, particularly the latter's 1ère leçon du vendredi (‘De lamentatione Jeremiae’). The first published music for the dessus de viole was Louis Heudelinne's Trois suites de pièces à deux violles (Paris, 1701). By this time the dessus had become popular among noble ladies; it was believed to be more appropriate for women to play a small viol on their lap rather than a violin on their shoulder.

As the vogue for the new Italian violin sonata grew, the six-stringed pardessus de viole was developed on which the low d of the treble viol was exchanged for a high g'', enabling players to reach top d''', necessary for playing violin music, in 1st position. By the time Michel Corrette published his Méthode pour apprendre facilement à jouer du pardessus de viole a 5 et à 6 cordes (A1748) a new variant, the quinton, had been ‘invented’, strung with the bottom three strings like the lowest three on the violin and the top two in the manner of the pardessus: g–d'–a'–d''–g'' (fig.15b). Corette described this ‘new instrument’ as having the refined ‘flute-like treble of the pardessus de viole and the sonorous bass of the violin’ adding that ‘it sounds much better than the ordinary Pardessus’; he recommended it unreservedly for ‘violin sonatas and concertos’. Corette, Ancelet and Brijon praised the playing of Mlle Levi, who rendered ‘her instrument equal to a violin by the beauty of her playing’. By the 1760s a third type of pardessus, with four strings tuned like a violin, had emerged. The celebrated violinist L'abbé le fils mentioned it on the title page of his Principes (1761): ‘Those people who play the four-string Pardessus can use these Principes, they only have to remember to give the opposite significance to the bowing signs’. And Brijon remarked in his Méthode nouvelle et facile pour apprendre à jouer du par-dessus de viole (A1766) that ‘in Paris lots of people play the pardessus with four strings’. Interestingly Brijon, who was a violinist, suggested using an overhand bowing on the pardessus. About 20 volumes of pièces and sonates were published specifically for the dessus and pardessus. Some of the finest music is by Dollé and Barthélemy de Caix; other composers include Thomas Marc, Jean Barrière, C.H. de Blainville, and Louis de Caix d'Hervelois. Villeneuve transcribed over 200 of Marais' pièces and published them under the title Pièces de viole ajustées pour le pardessus de viole à cinq cordes (Paris, 1759). There is also a wealth of duos for two pardessus, flutes, violins or vielles. The pardessus' popularity outlived that of the bass viol; as late as 1783 the Almanach musical advertised ‘trois Maistres du pardessus de viole’.

7. Germany and the Low Countries from c1600.

During the late 16th century and the first half of the 17th a number of English musicians took up employment in Germany, Denmark, Austria, the Low Countries and Spain. Among them were six virtuoso violists: William Brade, Thomas Simpson, Walter Rowe, Daniel Norcombe, Henry Butler and William Young. They had a major effect on the development of continental viol playing, Rousseau declaring that it was the ‘English who were the first to compose and play chordal pieces on the viol, and who exported their knowledge to other Kingdoms’. Brade and Simpson both published collections of consort music; Simpson's volumes include many dances by his English contemporaries, e.g. Robert Bateman, John Dowland, John Farmer (i), Alfonso Ferrabosco (ii), Robert Johnson (ii), Peter Philips and Thomas Tomkins, as well as works by German composers. The pavan was the form that particularly attracted Anglo-German composers to display their most sustained and complex musical ideas, corresponding to the role held by the fantasia in England. German composers such as Valentin Haussman and Melchior Franck published instrumental music which began to show idiomatic string characteristics. Other volumes of dance music, such as Schein's Banchetto musicale (Leipzig, 1617), group the dances into suites (Padouana, Gagliarda, Courente, Allemande and Tripla). The viol is designated in some of the progressive three- and four-part Canzoni e concerti (1627) by the Polish violinist Adam Jarzebski. In 1649 Johann Hentzschel published a canzona for eight bass viols and continuo in a solemn, contrapuntal Venetian style using double choir writing. David Funck's Stricturae viola di gambicae, ex sonatis, ariis, intradis, allemandis (Leipzig, 1677) for four bass viols exploits the viol's full three-octave range. The divisions composed by Daniel Norcombe and Henry Butler, who worked in Brussels and Spain respectively, were warmly commended by Christopher Simpson as models ‘worthy to be imitated’. Butler's 13 surviving sets are of grand proportions, exploring the range of the instrument with taxing virtuosity and developing up to 49 variations. The first published sonatas by an Englishman were William Young's Sonatae à 3, 4, e 5 for two to four violins, obbligato bass viol and continuo (Innsbruck, 1653). The virtuosity displayed by the British expatriates was taken up by their continental pupils, most notably Johann Schop (i), Nicolaus Bleyer and Gabriel Schütz.

An indication of the viol's high profile in 17th-century Germany is its frequent appearance in the scoring of the new Lutheran church music. The German predilection for consorts of low instruments is clearly evident in the many sacred works scored for multiple bass viols, both alongside other instruments and as a consort of their own. Ensembles consisting of three viols with two violins superimposed were common, as was a consort of four viols. Often the inner parts of 17th-century cantatas are simply marked ‘viola’ and it is uncertain whether they were intended for violas da gamba or da braccia; in the middle of the century it seems that whichever instrument was more readily available took the part, but later the violas da braccia increasingly ousted the violas da gamba. An early use of a consort of viols in German sacred music is Heinrich Schütz's Historia der … Auferstehung … Jesu Christi (1623), in which Schütz used four bass viols to accompany the Evangelist. Thomas Selle wrote for two obbligato bass viols in his St John Passion (1641–3), Johann Sebastiani used four in his St Matthew Passion (1663), and Johann Thiele used two for the inner parts of his St Matthew Passion (1673), employing dramatic tremoli to depict an earthquake. Idiomatic bass viol parts appear in eight of Buxtehude's cantatas; his Jubilate Domino for alto, viol and continuo demands a range of three and a half octaves (D to a'') and begins with a ‘sonata’ for viol and continuo; both Laudate pueri and Ad cor: vulnerasti cor meum are scored for five bass viols. This last cantata is an eloquent and deeply felt Lutheran lamento and a fine example of the 17th-century German use of viols to express that affect. The final section incorporates tremolo quavers for the viols (embellishing the return of the opening material), a device which Buxtehude reserved for particularly expressive phrases. Many other sacred German works are scored for viols, including Franz Tunder's wonderful chorale prelude for five viols and soprano, An Wasserflüssen Babylon, whose disturbed chromaticism anticipates Bach. In central and southern Germany the viol continued to be used in sacred compositions until the 1680s, after it had fallen from favour in the north. Viols were not, however, the exclusive preserve of Protestant music. Roman Catholic Austria maintained a tradition of viol playing, despite the prevailing taste for Italian music, from the time of John Price (i) and William Young until the 1730s. Here as in north Germany viols were associated with the affect of lamento, and were used in the uniquely Viennese Passiontide genre, the sepolcro. A.M. Bononcini, Antonio Draghi and G.B. Pederzuoli all wrote for the viol as did Emperor Leopold I.

With the universal acceptance of the Italian four-part string quartet as the core of the 18th-century orchestra, the viol lost its position in the instrumental ensemble of Protestant church music. However, 18th-century composers occasionally chose to employ its unusual timbre for special effect, particularly in Passions and funeral compositions. Telemann used two in his funeral cantata Du aber, Daniel, gehe hin and C.P.E. Bach also employed two in his St Mark Passion. The outstanding composer of 18th-century sacred music for viol was J.S. Bach, who scored for it in three sacred cantatas (bwv76, 106 and 152), the Trauer Ode (bwv198) and three Passions. His most famous arias with obbligato viol are ‘Es ist vollbracht’ in the St John Passion and ‘Komm süsses Kreuz’ in the St Matthew Passion; the latter is preceded by an arpeggiated recitative and features a virtuoso chordal obbligato (originally conceived for lute) – Bach's only truly idiomatic writing for the viol in the French virtuoso style. In these arias Bach, following the 17th-century tradition, used the viol to symbolize the lament for and the kingship of the person of Christ. Parallel with its role in sacred vocal music, the viol was also used in secular continuo lieder by Heinrich Albert, Georg Neumark and Thiele. Viol obbligatos are found in Viennese operas by Antonio Cesti, Fux and Ziani, and the instrument features in secular cantatas by Christian Geist, J.G. Graun and J.A. Hasse. Bach also used it in his cantata Äolus.

The German-Netherlandish virtuoso viol school had its roots in the English division style, as exemplified by Nicolaus a Kempis's divisions on Philips's Pavana dolorosa (Antwerp, 1642), but towards the end of the 17th century it came under the influence of the latest virtuoso techniques of the thriving Italian-inspired Austro-German violin school. The marriage of ideas was facilitated by the fact that many 17th-century German string players, such as Schop, Nicolaus Bleyer and Biber, played both the violin and the viol. Thus bold passages of showy scales and arpeggios are increasingly found alongside the more rhythmically intricate English figurations, which in turn virtually disappear after August Kühnel (1645–c1700). German viol player-composers also assimilated ideas from the improvisatory stylo phantastico of the north German organists; this is manifest in a taste for abrupt tempo changes, exciting chordal passages (often marked arpeggio) and dramatic pause marks, the latter occurring not only in preludes but also in the middle of dance movements. Finally some of these virtuosos, notably Johannes Schenck, introduced elements of the French dance suite and the delicate style brisé technique. German and Netherlandish viol players and composers generally did not finger their music (unlike the French), although Kühnel gave some guidance in this respect, and as regards ornamentation they did no more than mark the occasional trill with a cross (+). The Netherlands school included Carolus Hacquart and Jacob Riehman, who were both employed by the nobility. Schenck was the most prolific composer of the school producing ten collections of music between 1685 and 1710; his four surviving viol publications are the most important legacy of the German and Netherlandish tradition. Schenck's first publication of viol music, Tyd en konst-oeffeningen (Amsterdam, 1688), comprises 15 sonatas for viol and continuo of a breathtakingly virtuosic nature. In marked contrast to his outstanding French contemporary Marais, Schenck relished virtuosity as an end in itself. Multiple stopping, polyphonic writing and the use of high positions are hallmarks of his style. This cultivation of virtuosity finds a parallel in the brilliant violin sonatas of J.J. Walther. Schenck sometimes required the continuo viol to depart from its normal role and become an obbligato instrument (ex.4). Kühnel's Sonate ô partite (Kassel, 1698) consist of six works for two viols and continuo followed by eight for a single viol and continuo; the final four may be played unaccompanied. Some movements take the form of virtuosic divisions on Lutheran chorale melodies. The virtuosic obbligatos in the sacred works of J.P. Krieger were presumably written for the viol player Konrad Höffler, with whom Krieger had a lifelong association. Gottfried Finger was unique among the later viol players in using scordatura tunings, a technique that he probably acquired from Biber. Telemann wrote one work in the German virtuosic tradition, his unaccompanied sonata in D. Carl Friedrich Abel was the last member of the German school; his 27 brilliantly virtuosic unaccompanied pieces employ the gamut of virtuoso string techniques such as resonant arpeggiated passage work and large slurs of up to 30 notes, some of which are marked staccato.

The viol was also incorporated in Austro-German chamber music, although the parts were generally less idiomatic. In the second half of the 17th century, there was a vogue for writing trio (and occasionally four-part) sonatas for one (or two) violins, obbligato bass viol and continuo. This seems to have originated in Austria with Young and J.H. Schmelzer, and swiftly reached the southern German states where such compositions were published by Matthias Kelz (ii), J.M. Nicolai, Johann Rosenmüller, J.P. Krieger and others. The Hamburg musicians Dietrich Becker and J.A. Reincken also published works of this type but the crowning achievements of this fashionable genre were Buxtehude's two collections (Hamburg, ?1694 and 1696), which, with the funeral music for his father, were the only major compositions published during his lifetime. In the 18th century, diversity of scoring became a feature of north German composers and the viol was frequently paired with the flute or recorder. The most prolific composer of trios and quartets incorporating viols was Telemann, but there are also works by J.C. Schickhardt, Antonio Lotti, J.C. Pepusch, J.M. Molter and Theodor Schwartzkopff; these last two composers both include a treble as well as a bass viol. When Telemann visited Paris in 1737, he played his celebrated Paris Quartets (for flute, violin, viol and cello with continuo) with J.-B. Forqueray among others; Telemann recalled how the exquisite playing of the artists ‘made the ears of the court unusually attentive, and won me, in a short time, an almost universal honour, which was accompanied with increasing politeness’. Telemann also wrote three sonatas for viol and continuo, which, though sensitively written for the instrument, do not exploit it idiomatically. Abel's tuneful sonatas for viol and keyboard make few technical demands (unlike his unaccompanied works) and seem intended for amateurs. A distinctive north German genre was the sonata for solo instrument with obbligato keyboard; early works for the viol survive by J.M. Leffloth and Johann Pfeiffer but the most penetrating and expressive examples are the three sonatas by J.S. Bach. Surviving evidence suggests that they were written late in his career at Leipzig, possibly for C.F. Abel. Bach arranged the G major sonata from a trio sonata for two flutes; the D major sonata concludes with a lively cadenza-like episode and like the St Matthew Passion calls for a seven-string viol; the G minor sonata is conceived in three movements in a grand concerted manner. Bach also used a pair of viols in the ripieno group in his Sixth Brandenburg Concerto, where they support and contrast with the two solo violas.

There were three distinct German schools of viol making, emanating from Austria and south Germany, Saxony and central Germany, and north Germany and the Baltic. Of the Tyrolean school, viols survive by Busch, Hiltz and Kögel from the first half of the 17th century, some of which use a festoon outline. The most celebrated maker was Jacob Stainer, who modelled his viols on those of William Young. He generally built a traditional flat back and shoulders, although the influence of the Italian violin is equally apparent in his characteristically strongly contoured, carved table and, latterly, his use of f-holes. Hawkins praised Stainer's instruments for their ‘full and piercing tone’. In the Saxon area of central Germany, Hoffman was a leading maker, working in Leipzig. Viols of the north German and Baltic tradition demonstrate a strong influence from English makers and used bent fronts in two, three, four, five or seven pieces until about 1710. Joachim Tielke was Germany's most renowned viol maker, securing commissions for his highly prized instruments from the nobility and royalty. About 50 of his viols survive; all of them are basses. As a gifted and creative craftsman, Tielke developed the Anglo-German model he inherited. In about 1683 he largely forsook the traditional flat back and began to carve a solid gently arched back without bent shoulders; his viols from that date thus became heavier than their English and French counterparts, and he also favoured a thicker two-piece front. Until 1685 he maintained the north German tradition of carving rosettes in the belly of his viols but after that date they only occur on his most extravagantly ornamented instruments. By 1696 he had settled for a neck of 30·5 cm although three sizes of bass viol are found. Tielke is particularly renowned for his consummate powers of decoration. All his extant viols have carved heads (most commonly women's or lions' heads). Vine leaves and blossoms are his favoured form of motif; they appear in relief on the sides and back of the pegbox and in white (ivory) and black (ebony) inlay on the fingerboard and tailpiece. Tielke also worked with tortoiseshell and, in his most elaborate designs, silver and gold.

At the same time as the bass viol was losing popularity in France, it enjoyed a final flowering at the court of Frederick the Great in Berlin, where there had been a strong tradition of viol playing since the time of Brade and Rowe. The court viol player Ludwig Christian Hesse (1716–72), described by Hiller as ‘incontestably the greatest viol player in our time in Europe’, inspired sonatas, trios and concertos in the remarkably virtuosic ‘Berlin’ style from composers such as J.G. Graun, C.P.E. Bach, Christoph Schaffrath and J.G. Janitsch. Many of the sonatas (a number of which have obbligato keyboard) are technically highly demanding. The most unusual form was the concerto, of which at least eight were written by J.G. Graun (two of which are for more than one instrument). In these works the viol comments on the orchestral tuttis using rich double stops and chains of 3rds, a notable feature of this late style. Concertos by Johann Pfeiffer, Telemann (both for solo viol and multiple instruments) and Tartini also survive. Hesse arranged 72 French operas (including works by Rameau) for performance by Prince Friedrich Wilhelm and himself on two viols (sometimes with other instruments) and at least a further three by C.H. Graun. Interest in the viol in Berlin finally faded when Friedrich Wilhelm switched his allegiance to the cello in the early 1770s.

Further south, viol playing lingered on. Burney reported that Elector Maximilian Joseph III of Bavaria played the viol until his death in 1777 adding that ‘next to Abel, [he] was the best performer on the viol da gamba I have ever heard’. The Austrian baryton virtuoso Andreas Lidl also played the viol; Burney commended his playing for its ‘exquisite taste and expression’. Both Lidl and Franz Xaver Hammer wrote some highly virtuosic duos in an early Classical style for bass viol accompanied by the cello. Lidl also left six sonatas for violin, bass viol and cello. Joseph Fiala served the Archbishop of Salzburg as a viol player and oboist between 1778 and 1785; on his return to Germany in 1790 he performed on the viol before King Friedrich Wilhelm II in Prague, Breslau and Berlin. His extant compositions include a trio for viol, violin and cello. Simon Truska (1743–1809), who played, composed music for and built viols, is listed in 1796 among the important musicians in Prague. Dictionary articles around the turn of the century affirm the viol's demise; Gerber declared that ‘if you wanted a viola da gamba, you would have to dig up a stringless, worm-eaten example from some court music room’ (GerberNL).

8. The modern revival.

Not long after the viol finally died out in Austria and Bohemia, the French, notably Fétis, considered it ripe for revival and included it in a series of ‘concerts historiques’ in the 1832–3 season. A reviewer in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik pointed out that Fétis's viol was tuned like a cello, but added that it sounded a little more ‘tender’. In 1859 the viol featured prominently in Julius Rietz's opera Georg Neumark und die Gamba. Rietz, a cellist, conductor and musicologist, was a close friend of Mendelssohn and deeply involved in the revival of 18th-century music. For the performances of the opera the court library loaned an instrument by Tielke, which was played by the virtuoso cellist Bernhard Cossmann.

From the mid-1870s the pursuit of resurrecting the viol was taken up predominantly by cellists curious about the ancestry of their instrument (the viol was then considered to be the precursor of the cello). The distinguished cellists Auguste Tolbecque and Paul de Wit acquired bass viols and stimulated interest by playing them in public. At first they played Tartini, Boccherini and Mendelssohn but they soon focussed their attention on the riches of the bass viol literature. Tolbeque performed one of Rameau's Pièces de claveçin en concerts in April 1880 with Saint-Saëns and the flautist Paul Taffanel; the reviewer in Le ménestrel observed that the performance would have been improved had Saint-Saëns played a harpsichord instead of the piano. In 1889 the Musical Times reported that a Société des Instruments Anciens had been formed in Brussels by Louis van Waefelghem, Louis Diémer, Jules Delsart (bass viol) and Laurent Grillet ‘for the study and practice of instruments once in general favour but now almost unknown to our concert rooms, such as the clavicembalo, the viola da gamba, the viol d'amore … members of this body have already given historical concerts with much success’. This society disbanded within a decade, but was followed in 1901 by the Société des Instruments Anciens Casadesus, formed by Henri Casadesus with encouragement from Saint-Saëns, in which Henri's sister-in-law Lucette played the viol (see Casadesus (2)).

Most performers on the bass viol in the late 19th century and first half of the 20th played the viol like a cello, with an endpin, a cello-like thin and rounded neck and fingerboard, a cello bow and no frets. In addition the viol was fitted with a thick, cello-like bass bar and soundpost, and heavily reinforced with thick linings to support its unnatural set-up. Arnold Dolmetsch was intuitively aware that the viol was being misunderstood, despite his initial scanty knowledge of the instrument and its music. In the 1890s, after considerable research into music and instruments of the 16th to 18th centuries, he began to give concerts on original instruments including viols. The Times reported in 1892 how ‘Mr Dolmetsch brought forth several interesting concerted works for the viols – among them a beautiful “Dovehouse Pavan” by Alfonso Ferrabosco … Miss Dolmetsch displayed her remarkable skill on a viola da gamba in a long chaconne by Marin Marais, a composer whose revival is entirely due to Mr Dolmetsch’. These concerts won the recognition of the Bloomsbury circle, and Bernard Shaw speculated prophetically:

If we went back to old viols … I suppose we should have to begin to make them again; and I wonder what would be the result of that … if our fiddle-makers were to attempt to revive them, they would probably aim at the sort of ‘power’ of tone produced by those violins which ingenious street-players make out of empty Australian mutton tins and odd legs of stools.

In 1938, the year before Dolmetsch's death, Percy Scholes wrote that the viol was played by ‘a small (but growing) body of devoted students’. Many of these were in fact pupils of Dolmetsch, but Paul Grümmer's Viola da Gamba-Schule (Leipzig, 1928) shows that a parallel revival was taking place in Germany, pioneered by the scholar Max Seiffert and the instrument maker Peter Harlan. Grümmer encouraged his pupil, the young Swiss cellist August Wenzinger, to nurture his interest in the bass viol, and in 1933 Wenzinger was one of the founders of the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis (the first institution for the research, performance and teaching of early music), where he taught the viol. Viol playing was uncommon in America until after World War II. However, in 1929 the American Society of Ancient Musicians was founded in Philadelphia by Ben and Flora Stad, who were inspired by the playing of Casadesus with whom they had both studied in Paris in the early 1920s. The Stads' group included three sizes of viol, and by the time Ben Stad died in 1946 his ensemble's concerts, recordings and festivals had brought the viol's sound to many East Coast Americans. The viol made slow but sure progress in the 1950s. It was not without provocation that Vaughan Williams wrote to Michael Kennedy on 9 May 1957:

With regard to that aria in the Matthew P. about bearing the Cross. I was told that at the first performance under Mendelssohn this was the hit of the evening – apparently they used to encore things they liked at those early performances. I have an idea that I will put it in my next performance. But it will have to be rearranged for three cellos. I will not have a viola da gamba inside the building.

The viol's postwar renaissance is marked by three distinctive styles of playing: English, German and Netherlandish. The English school stems from Dolmetsch and has been closely associated with the performance of English consort music. In 1962 Francis and June Baines founded the Jaye Consort of Viols (named after the 17th-century English maker Henry Jaye, whose instruments they primarily used). Their distinctive playing style, which exploits the viol's natural resonance to the full, has similarities with the use that English choirs (particularly that of King's College, Cambridge) make of their highly resonant chapels. Furthermore both groups of musicians present their musical points in a sweet, relaxed and undriven manner, which gives the feeling of floating. The viol consort Fretwork, founded in 1985 (perhaps the most vibrant group of their time) has adopted a more rhythmically defined, rhetorical and conversational style. Besides recording most of the classic English consort music from Byrd to Purcell, Fretwork has broadened the viol's repertory by commissioning works from a wide range of contemporary composers, including George Benjamin (Upon Silence, 1990), Tan Dun (A Sinking Love, 1995), Barry Guy (Buzz, 1994), Thea Musgrave (Wild Winter, 1993) and Peter Sculthorpe (Djlile, 1995). Laurence Dreyfus's consort Phantasm and the Rose Consort have also received critical acclaim. The German school of playing was originally centred on the work of Wenzinger in Basle. Although his style was derived from the same primary sources as the English school, his manner of playing might be seen as its antithesis. It is true that Wenzinger's repertory focussed more on 18th-century French and German solo music, but his performance was characterized by an intense, rhythmically animated manner, driving forward to the cadence in long sustained melodic lines. Wenzinger's playing style has been disseminated all over the world by his many pupils. His influence on American playing is particularly significant; as early as 1953 he spent a term lecturing and teaching at Harvard and in the 1970s he made frequent visits to the Oberlin summer school. The Netherlands school of viol playing is the youngest of the three and has its origins in the playing of the Belgian Wieland Kuijken. His intense, yet restrained style with exquisite sensitivity to the smallest nuance lends itself to the performance of Marais, yet he is a player of catholic tastes whose performances of Ortiz, Simpson, Bach and Abel are no less satisfying. Many of the leading viol players of the late 20th century studied with Kuijken – Jordi Savall, Christophe Coin, Laurence Dreyfus, Sarah Cunningham and Susanne Heinrich – and his approach has greatly influenced European playing. Jordi Savall has recorded much of the solo viol repertory and has been a highly influential teacher at Basle; his Italian pupil Paolo Pandolfo has delighted audiences with his fresh, wildly inventive, improvisatory approach, not least as regards viola bastarda music.

The American John Hsu is a player of distinction who has developed his own independent style. Hsu is particularly solicitous to the influence that Baroque gesture had on contemporary performing practice; this has led him to develop an intensely subtle bowing technique which moulds the melodic line into a series of gestures, which he expounds in his Handbook of French Baroque Viol Technique (E1981). Alison Crum's Play the Viol (B1989) primarily addresses the amateur market. In 1998 Paolo Biordi and Vittorio Ghielmi published a more advanced and comprehensive tutor entitled Methodo completo e progressivo per viola da gamba. Since World War II interest in the viol has also been fostered in England by the Viola da Gamba Society (founded in 1948) and in the USA by the Viola da Gamba Society of America (1963), both of which publish journals with scholarly articles as well as notices of current activities. German-speaking countries are served by the Viola da Gamba Mitteilungen of Switzerland, which keeps players informed of concerts and has short features concerning the viol. By the late 1970s interest in viol playing had spread throughout the English-speaking world, Europe and Japan. Universities and music colleges purchased consorts of viols; adults took up the instrument as amateurs; and children were introduced to it without first having developed a modern violin or cello technique. In 1991 Marais became a household name in France after the success of the film Tous les Matins du Monde, loosely based on the lives of Sainte-Colombe and his pupil.

In the late 20th century many excellent instruments have been built based on classical models by makers such as Jane Julier, Dietrich Kessler and David Rubio in Britain, François Bodart in Belgium, Pierre Jacquier and Guy de Ra in France, Pilman Muthesius and Ossenbrunner in Germany, and Paul Reichlin in Switzerland. Fine copies of Baroque bows are made by Boumann (Netherlands), Landwehr (Germany), Fausto Cangelosi (Italy), Patigny (Belgium), Hans Reiners (Germany) and Luis Emilio Rodriguez (Netherlands). The viol's unusual sound has inspired works from many contemporary composers, including Peter Maxwell Davies, Peter Dickinson and David Loeb, in addition to those mentioned above.

a: 16th- to 18th-century studies

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A 16th- to 18th-century studies. B General. C England. D Italy. E France. F Germany.

a: 16th- to 18th-century studies

MersenneHU

PraetoriusSM

PraetoriusTI

VirdungMG

H. Judenkünig: Utilis et compendiaria introductio (Vienna, c1515–19)

H. Judenkünig: Ain schone kunstliche Underweisung (Vienna, 1523); ed. H. Mönkemeyer as Die Tablatur, x (Hofheim am Taunus, 1970)

M. Agricola: Musica instrumentalis deudsch (Wittenberg, 1529/R, enlarged 5/1545; Eng. trans., ed. W. Hettrick, 1994)

H. Gerle: Musica teusch (Nuremberg, 1532, enlarged 3/1546/R as Musica und Tablatur)

G.M. Lanfranco: Scintille di musica (Brescia, 1533/R; Eng. trans. in B. Lee: Giovanni Maria Lanfranco's ‘Scintille di musica’ and its Relation to 16th-Century Music Theory (diss., Cornell U., 1961)

S. di Ganassi dal Fontego: Regola rubertina (Venice, 1542/R); ed. W. Eggers (Kassel, 1974); Eng. trans. in JVdGSA, xviii (1981), 13–66

S. di Ganassi dal Fontego: Lettione seconda (Venice, 1543/R); ed. W. Eggers (Kassel, 1974)

D. Ortiz: Trattado de glosas (Rome, 1553); ed. M. Schneider (Berlin, 1913, 3/1961)

P. Jambe de Fer: Epitome musical (Lyons, 1556); repr. in F. Lesure: AnnM, vi (1958–63), 341–86

V. Galilei: Dialogo della musica antica et della moderna (Florence, 1581/R)

G. Dalla Casa: Il vero modo di diminuir (Venice, 1584/R)

S. Mareschall: Porta musices (Basle, 1589)

R. Rognoni: Passaggi per potersi essercitare (Venice, 1592) [lost, MS copy by F. Chrysander, US-SFsc]

L. Zacconi: Prattica di musica (Venice, 1592/R, 2/1596)

S. Cerreto: Della prattica musica vocale et strumentale (Naples, 1601/R)

T. Robinson: The Schoole of Musicke (London, 1603); ed. D. Lumsden (Paris, 1973)

A. Banchieri: Conclusioni nel suono dell'organo, op.20 (Bologna, 1609/R, 2/1626 as Armoniche conclusioni nel suono dell'organo; Eng. trans., 1982)

P. Cerone: El melopeo y maestro (Naples, 1613/R)

F. Rognoni: Selva de varii passaggi (Milan, 1620/R)

J. Playford: Musick's Recreation on the Lyra Viol (London, 1652, 4/1682/R)

J. Playford: A Breefe Introduction to the Skill of Musick (London, 1654) [many later edns]

C. Simpson: The Division-violist (London, 1659, 2/1667/R as Chelys: minuritionum artificio exornata/The Division-Viol, 3/1712)

T. Mace: Musick's Monument (London, 1676/R)

De Machy: ‘Avertissement’ to Pièces de violle (Paris, 1685/R)

M. Marais: ‘Avertissement’ to Pièces à une et à deux violes (Paris, 1686/R)

Danoville: L'art de toucher le dessus et basse de viole (Paris, 1687/R)

J. Rousseau: Traité de la viole (Paris, 1687/R)

B. Hely: The Compleat Violist (London, 1699)

E. Loulié: Méthode pour apprendre à jouer la violle (MS, F-Pn, c1700) [transcr. in Cohen (1966)]

E. Titon du Tillet: Le Parnasse françois (Paris, 1732/R)

H. Le Blanc: Défense de la basse de viole contre les entreprises du violon et les prétentions du violoncel (Amsterdam, 1740/R)

M. Corrette: Méthode pour apprendre facilement à jouer du pardessus de viole à 5 et à 6 cordes (Paris, 1748; Eng. trans., 1990)

P.-L. d'Aquin de Château-Lyon: Lettres sur les hommes célèbres sous le règne de Louis XV (Paris, 1752, 2/1753/R as Siècle littéraire de Louis XV)

C.R. Brijon: Méthode nouvelle et facile pour apprendre à jouer du par-dessus de viole(Lyons, 1766)

J.A. Hillar, ed.: Wöchentliche Nachrichten, xi (1766)

b: general

BrownI

BurneyH

E. van der Straeten: The History of the Violoncello, the Viol da Gamba, their Precursors and Collateral Instruments (London, 1915/R)

G.R. Hayes: Musical Instruments and their Music, 1500–1750, ii (London, 1930/R)

N. Bessaraboff: Ancient European Musical Instruments (Boston, 1941, 2/1964)

V. Denis: De muziekinstrumenten in de Nederlanden en in Italië, naar hun afbeelding in de 15e eeuwsche kunst (Antwerp, 1944); partial Eng. trans. in GSJ, ii (1949), 32–46

A. Baines: ‘Fifteenth-Century Instruments in Tinctoris's De inventione et usu musicae’, GSJ, iii (1950), 19–25

T. Dart: ‘The Fretted Instruments, III: the Viols’, Musical Instruments Through the Ages, ed. A. Baines (Harmondsworth, 1961, 2/1966/R), 184

N. Dolmetsch: The Viola da Gamba: its Origin and History, its Technique and Musical Resources (London, 1962, 2/1968)

W. Bachmann: Die Anfänge des Streichinstrumentenspiels (Leipzig, 1964, 2/1966; Eng. trans., 1969)

D.D. Boyden: The History of Violin Playing from its Origins to 1761 (London, 1965/R)

C. Dolmetsch: ‘The Pardessus de Viol or Chanterelle’, The Strad, lxxvi (1965), 99–103; repr. in JVdGSA, iii (1966), 56–9

A. Baines: Victoria and Albert Museum: Catalogue of Musical Instruments, ii: Non-Keyboard Instruments (London, 1968)

M. Remnant: ‘The Use of Frets on Rebecs and Mediaeval Fiddles’, GSJ, xxi (1968), 146–51

D.D. Boyden: Catalogue of the Hill Collection of Musical Instruments in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (London, 1969)

D. Kämper: Studien zur instrumentalen Ensemblemusik des 16. Jahrhunderts in Italien, AnMc, no.10 (1970) [whole vol.]

J.A. Griffin: ‘Diego Ortiz's Principles of Ornamentation for the Viol’, JVdGSA, x (1973), 88–95

D. Abbot and E. Segerman: ‘Strings in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, GSJ, xxvii (1974), 48–73

J. Caldwell: ‘Antique Viols and Related Instruments from the Caldwell Collection’, JVdGSA, xi (1974), 60–89

M. Cyr: ‘The Viol in Baroque Paintings and Drawings’, JVdGSA, xi (1974), 5–16

G.J. Kinney: ‘Fray Juan Bermudo's Methods of Measuring Frets’, JVdGSA, xi (1974), 90–101

M. Bram: ‘An Interview with August Wenzinger’, JVdGSA, xii (1975), 78–83

M. Campbell: Dolmetsch: the Man and his Work (London, 1975)

M. Cyr: ‘Solo Music for the Treble Viol’, JVdGSA, xii (1975), 5–13

S. Marcuse: A Survey of Musical Instruments (Newton Abbot and New York, 1975)

R. Donington: ‘James Talbot's Manuscript: Bowed Strings’, Chelys, vi (1975–6), 43

D. Abbot and E. Segerman: ‘Gut Strings’, EMc, iv (1976), 430–37

EMc, vi/1, vi/4 (1978) [special viol issues]

R.D. Leppert: ‘Viols in Seventeenth-Century Flemish Paintings: the Iconography of Music Indoors and Out’, JVdGSA, xv (1978), 5–40

T. Pratt: ‘The Playing Technique of the dessus and pardessus de viole’, Chelys, viii (1978–9), 51–8

P. Tourin: Viol List: a Comprehensive Catalogue of Historical Viole da Gamba in Public and Private Collections (Duxbury, MA, 1979)

G. Dodd: Thematic Index of Music for Viols, i (London, 1980)

H.M. Brown: ‘Notes (and Transposing Notes) on the Viol in the Early Sixteenth Century’, Music in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. I. Fenlon (Cambridge, 1981), 61–78

M. Lindley: Lutes, Viols and Temperaments (Cambridge, 1984)

J. Rutledge: ‘Towards a History of the Viol in the 19th Century’, EMc, xii (1984), 328–36

I. Woodfield: The Early History of the Viol (Cambridge, 1984)

K. Coates: Geometry, Proportion and the Art of Lutherie: a Study of the Use and Aesthetic Significance of Geometry and Numerical Proportion in the Design of European Bowed and Plucked String Instruments in the Sixteenth, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Oxford, 1985, 3/1991)

A.H. König: Die Viola da Gamba (Frankfurt, 1985)

I. Woodfield: ‘The First Earl of Sandwich, a Performance of William Lawes in Spain and the Origins of the Pardessus de Viole’, Chelys, xiv (1985), 40–44

K. Moens: ‘Authenticiteitsproblemen bij oude strijkinstrumenten’, Musica antiqua, iii (1986), 80–87, 105–11

J. Paras: The Music for Viola Bastarda (Bloomington, IN, 1986)

S. Bonta: ‘Catline Strings Revisited’, JAMIS, xiv (1988), 38–60

J.R. Catch: ‘James Talbot's Viols’, Chelys, xvii (1988), 33–9

J.M. Meixell: ‘The American Society of Instruments’, JVdGSA, xxv (1988), 6–28

T. Crawford: ‘Constantijn Huygens and the “Engelsche Viool”’, Chelys, xviii (1989), 41–60

A. Crum: Play the Viol (Oxford, 1989, 2/1992)

C.H. Ågren: ‘The Use of Higher Positions on the Treble Viol’, Chelys, xix (1990), 44–54

A. Viles: ‘New Grove Index for Viol Players’, JVdGSA, xxvii (1990), 55–75

A Viola da Gamba Miscellany: Utrecht 1991 [incl. T. Stronks: ‘A Viola da Gamba Bibliography’, 141–62, and I. Woodfield: ‘The Basel gross Geigen: an Early German Viol?’, 1–14]

P. Holman: ‘“An Addicion of Wyer Stringes Beside the Ordenary Stringes”: the Origin of the Baryton’, Companion to Contemporary Musical Thought, ed. J. Paynter and others (London, 1992), 1098–115

F.-P. Goy: ‘Seventeenth-Century Viol Pieces in Settings for Plucked Strings (c1625–c1700)’, Chelys, xxii (1993), 30–43

A. Ashbee: ‘The Society's Indexes: a Way Forward’, Chelys, xxiii (1994), 73–9

F.-P. Goy: ‘The Norwegian Viol Tablatures’, Chelys, xxiii (1994), 55–72

A. Otterstedt: Die Gambe: Kulturgeschichte und praktischer Ratgeber (Kassel, 1994)

M. Smith: ‘The Cello Bow Held the Viol-Way: once Common, but now almost Forgotten’, Chelys, xxiv (1995), 47–61

E. Segerman: ‘Viol-Bodied Fiddles’, GSJ, xlix (1996), 204–6

J. Davidoff: Twentieth-Century Compositions for the Viol with and without Instruments or Voice, Published and Unpublished (Albany, CA, 2000)

Megaviol: a Bibliography of the Viols (J.B. Rutledge) 〈sunsite.unc.edu/reference/gopher/ulr/uncdbs/viol/Megaviol〉

c: england

MeyerECM

T. Dart and R. Donington: ‘The Origin of the In Nomine’, ML, xxx (1949), 101–06

W. Coates: ‘English Two-Part Viol Music, 1590–1640’, ML, xxxiii (1952), 141–50

W.L. Woodfill: Musicians in English Society from Elizabeth to Charles I (Princeton, NJ, 1953/R)

P. Evans: ‘Seventeenth-Century Chamber Music Manuscripts at Durham’, ML, xxxvi (1955), 205–23

J. Wilson, ed.: Roger North on Music (London, 1959)

T. Dart: ‘Ornament Signs in Jacobean Music for Lute and Viol’, GSJ, xiv (1961), 30–33

P. Brett: ‘The English Consort Song, 1570–1625’, PRMA, lxxxviii (1961–2), 73–88

M. Pallis: ‘The Instrumentation of English Viol Consort Music’, Chelys, i (1969), 27–35

M. Caudle: ‘The English Repertory for Violin, Bass Viol and Continuo’, Chelys, vi (1975–6), 69–75

P. Doe: ‘The Emergence of the In Nomine: Some Notes and Queries on the Work of Tudor Musicians’, Modern Musical Scholarship: Oxford 1977, 79–92

J.T. Johnson: ‘Violin versus Viol in English Fantasia-Suites’, JVdGSA, xv (1978), 88–101

P. Olds: ‘The Decline of the Viol in Seventeenth-Century England: some Observations’, JVdGSA, xvii (1980), 60–69

D. and J. Baker: ‘The Browning’, Chelys, x (1981), 4–10

I. Harwood: ‘A Case of Double Standards? Instrumental Pitch in England c1600’,EMc, ix (1981), 470–81

D. Pinto: ‘The Fantasy Manner: the Seventeenth-Century Context’, Chelys, x (1981), 17–28

A. Ashbee: ‘A Not Unapt Scholar: Bullstrode Whitelocke (1605–1675)’, Chelys, xi (1982), 24–31

B. Bellingham: ‘The Musical Circle of Anthony Wood in Oxford during the Commonwealth and Restoration’, JVdGSA, xix (1982), 6–70

I. Graham-Jones: ‘Some Random Thoughts on Pitch in English Viol Consort Music in the Seventeenth-Century’, Chelys, xi (1982), 20–23

G. Dodd: ‘Grounds for Putting Simpson into Practice’, JVdGSA, xx (1983), 60–67

D. Kessler: ‘Viol Construction in 17th-Century England: an Alternative Way of Making Fronts’, EMc, x (1982), 340–45; xi (1983), 145–6

C. Monson: Voices and Viols in England, 1600–1650 (Ann Arbor, 1982)

R. Prior: ‘Jewish Musicians at the Tudor Court’, MQ, lxix (1983), 253–65

J. Irving: ‘Consort Playing in Mid-17th-Century Worcester’, EMc, xii (1984), 337–44

J.R. Catch: ‘Praetorius and English Viol Pitches’, Chelys, xv (1986), 26–32

R. Charteris: ‘English Music in the Library of Moritz Landgrave of Hessen-Kassel in 1613’, Chelys, xv (1986), 33–7

M. Remnant: English Bowed Instruments from Anglo-Saxon to Tudor Times (Oxford, 1986)

J. Wess: ‘Musica Transalpina, Parody, and the Emerging Jacobean Viol Fantasia’, Chelys, xv (1986), 3–25

R. Charteris: ‘New Information About Some of the Consort Music Manuscripts in Archbishop Marsh's Library, Dublin’, The Consort, no.43 (1987), 38–9

I. Payne: ‘Instrumental Music at Trinity College, Cambridge, c.1594–c.1615: Archival and Biographical Evidence’, ML, lxviii (1987), 128–40

I. Payne: ‘British Library Add. MSS 30826–8: a Set of Part-Books from Trinity College, Cambridge?’, Chelys, xvii (1988), 3–15

E. Segerman: ‘On Praetorius and English Viol Pitches’, Chelys, xvii (1988), 24–7

A. Otterstedt: Die englische Lyra-Viol: Instrument und Technik (Kassel, 1989)

I. Payne: ‘The Provision of Teaching on Viols at Some English Cathedral Churches, c.1594–c.1645’, Chelys, xix (1990), 3–15

P. Willetts: ‘John Barnard's Collections of Viol and Vocal Music’, Chelys, xx (1991), 28–42

D. Bertenshaw: The Influence of the Late 16th-Century Italian Polyphonic Madrigal on the English Viol Consort c1600–45 (diss., U. of Leicester, 1992)

R. Charteris: ‘A Rediscovered Manuscript Source with some Previously Unknown Works by John Jenkins, William Lawes and Benjamin Rogers’, Chelys, xxii (1993), 3–29

P. Holman: Four and Twenty Fiddlers: the Violin at the English Court 1540–1690 (Oxford, 1993, 2/1995)

R. Thompson: ‘A Further Look at the Consort Music Manuscripts in Archbishop Marsh's Library, Dublin’, Chelys, xxiv (1995), 3–18

R. Thompson: ‘Manuscript Music in Purcell's London’, EMc, xxiii (1995), 605–20

I. Woodfield: English Musicians in the Age of Exploration (Stuyvesant, NY, 1995)

A. Ashbee and P. Holman, ed.: John Jenkins and his Time: Studies in English Consort Music (Oxford, 1996)

I. Payne: The Almain and Other Measures in England 1549–1675: their History and Choreography (Aldershot, 1997)

J. Wainwright: Musical Patronage in Seventeenth-Century England: Christopher, First Baron Hatton (Aldershot, 1997)

A. Ashbee and others: A Biographical Dictionary of English Court Musicians, 1485–1714 (Aldershot, 1998)

A. Ashbee and L. Hulse: William Lawes (1602–1645): Essays on his Life, Times and Work (Aldershot, 1998)

d: italy

H.M. Brown: Sixteenth-Century Instrumentation: the Music for the Florentine Intermedii, MSD, xxx (1973)

H.M. Brown and E.E. Lowinsky, eds.: Eustachio Romano: Musica duorum, Rome, 1521, MRM, vi (1975)

P. Allsop: ‘The Role of the Stringed Bass as a Continuo Instrument in Italian Seventeenth-Century Instrumental Music’, Chelys, viii (1978–9), 31–7

M. Edwards: ‘Venetian Viols of the 16th Century’, GSJ, xxxiii (1980), 74–91

W.F. Prizer: ‘Isabella d'Este and Lorenzo da Pavia, Master Instrument-Maker’, EMH, ii (1982), 87–127

M.D. Banks: ‘North Italian Viols at the Shrine to Music Museum’, JVdGSA, xxi (1984), 7–27

H.M. Brown and K.M. Spencer: ‘How Alfonso della Viola Tuned his Viols and How he Transposed’, EMc, xiv (1986), 520–33

P. Ferrari: ‘La liuteria veneziana del Cinquecento e la viola da gamba di Antonio Ciciliano del Museo Civico di Bologna’, Flauto dolce, xvii – xviii (1987–8), 49–53

H.M. Brown: ‘The Trecento Fiddle and its Bridges’, EMc, xvii (1989), 307–29

G.M. Ongaro: ‘New Documents on a Sixteenth-Century Venetian Viol Maker’, JVdGSA, xxvii (1990), 22–8

e: france

BenoitMC

F. Lesure: ‘La facture instrumentale à Paris au seizième siècle’,GSJ, vii (1954), 11–52

F. Lesure: ‘Le traité des instruments de musique de Pierre Trichet’, AnnM, iii (1955), 283–387; iv (1956), 175–248; also pubd separately (Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1957; Eng. trans., 1973)

F. Lesure: ‘Un querelle sur le jeu de viole en 1688: Jean Rousseau contre Demachy’, RdM, xlv–xlvi (1960), 181–99

Y. Gérard: ‘Notes sur la fabrication de la viole de gambe et la manière d'en jouer, d'après une correspondance inédite de J.B. Forqueray au Prince Frédéric-Guillaume de Prusse’, RMFC, ii (1961–2), 165–71

A. Cohen: ‘A Study of Instrumental Ensemble Practice in 17th-Century France’, GSJ, xv (1962), 3–17

A. Cohen: ‘An Eighteenth-Century Treatise on the Viol by Etienne Loulié’, JVdGSA, iii (1966), 17–23

G.J. Kinney: ‘Problems of Melodic Ornamentation in French Viol Music’, JVdGSA, v (1968), 34–50

S. Milliot: Documents inédits sur les luthiers parisiens du XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1970)

M. Benoit: Versailles et les musiciens du roi, 1661–1733 (Paris, 1971)

H. Bol: La basse de viole du temps de Marin Marais et d'Antoine Forqueray (Bilthoven, 1973)

M. Cyr: ‘Traditions of Solo Viol Playing in France and the Music of Morel’, JVdGSA, x (1973), 81–7

L. Robinson: Preface to François Couperin: Pièces de violes (Paris, 1973)

G.J. Kinney: ‘Writings on the Viol by DuBuisson, DeMachy, Roland Marais, and Etienne Loulié’, JVdGSA, xiii (1976), 17–55

R.A. Green: ‘Jean Rousseau and Ornamentation in French Viol Music’, JVdGSA, xiv (1977), 4–41

W. Hancock: ‘The Frequency and Positioning of Ornaments in French Viol Music (1685–9)’,Chelys, viii (1978–9), 38–50

A. Rose: ‘Music for the dessus and pardessus de violes, Published in France, ca.1650–1770’, JVdGSA, xvi (1979), 40–46

J.A. Sadie: The Bass Viol in French Baroque Chamber Music (Ann Arbor, 1980)

J. Hsu: A Handbook of French Baroque Viol Technique (New York, 1981)

L. Robinson: The Forquerays and the French Viol Tradition (diss., U. of Cambridge, 1981)

M. Sicard: ‘The French Viol School Before 1650’, JVdGSA, xviii (1981), 76–93

1. The modern instrument.

f: germany

A. Einstein: Zur deutschen Literatur für Viola da Gamba im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (Leipzig, 1905/R); Eng. trans. in JVdGSA, xxix (1992), 27–64

G. Hellwig: Joachim Tielke: ein Hamburger Lauten- und Violenmacher der Barockzeit (Frankfurt,1980)

G.J. Kinney: ‘Telemann's Use of the Viol as a Solo or Concertante Instrument’, JVdGSA, xvii (1980), 5–27

L. Dreyfuss: ‘Concluding Remarks’, Bach Drei Sonaten für Viola da Gamba und Cembalo (London, 1985)

J.A. Sadie: ‘Handel: in Pursuit of the Viol’, Chelys, xiv (1985), 3–24

K. Polk: ‘Instrumental Music in Urban Centres of Renaissance Germany’, EMH, vii (1988), 159–86

K. Polk: ‘Vedel und Geige/Fiddle and Viol: German String Traditions in the 15th Century’,JAMS, xlii (1989), 504–46

K. Polk: German Instrumental Music of the Late Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1992)

M. O'Loghlin: ‘Ludwig Christian Hesse and the Berlin Virtuoso Style’, JVdGSA, xxxv (1998), 35–73

Viola

(Fr. alto; Ger. Bratsche).

The term ‘viola’ now refers to the alto (or, more properly, to the alto-tenor) member of the violin family (for earlier meanings, see §2 below). The viola came into being in northern Italy at about the same time (not later than 1535) as the other members of the new violin family.

2. Earlier meanings of the term ‘viola’.

3. Violas as ‘instruments of the middle’.

4. Viola construction in the 19th and 20th centuries.

5. Repertory.

DAVID D. BOYDEN/ANN M. WOODWARD

1. The modern instrument.

The viola, in general, has the darker, warmer, richer tone qualities of the alto voice as opposed to the lighter, more brilliant soprano of the violin. The strings are tuned to c–g–d'–a', a 5th below the violin. Its highest string (a') may produce something of a contrast in timbre to the other strings: on some violas more piercing and nasal. The lowest string (c) of a fine viola is capable of a clear, beautiful, resonant and powerful tone eagerly sought by both makers and players. Viola tone, however, can be less assertive, more mellow, even subdued at times. To produce optimum strength of tone and, especially, beauty and depth on its lower strings, the ideal size for a viola would make it too long for the player’s arm.

Viola size has never been standardized as to length of body, depth of ribs or width of bouts. To replicate the acoustical results of the violin (whose length is standardized at an average of 35·5 cm), the viola would require a body half as long again as the violin’s (approximately 53 cm). Full-sized violas can range in size from 38 to more than 48 cm. However, while the smallest viola can rarely produce a truly powerful and resonant C-string sound, the largest are virtually impossible for most players to handle. Differing sizes of violas are best explained by a maker’s intention to produce an instrument basically alto or tenor in tone quality (see fig.3) although the differing lengths of players’ arms and the demands of the repertory are certainly still considered pertinent factors. For practical reasons the most utilized violas probably have body lengths in the 41 to 43 cm range.

Just as the length of the viola varies from instrument to instrument, so, naturally, does the sounding length of the strings (i.e. the open string measured from inside the nut to the inside of the top of the bridge). On the modern violin this length is standardized at about 33 cm. On a typical modern viola with a fairly substantial body length (for instance, 42·5 cm, as on the ‘Tertis’ viola; see §4 below), the corresponding open-string length is about 38·5 cm (see fig.1b). An extant specimen of a large viola of the late 16th century (made by Gasparo da Salò and now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; fig.1a) has a 44·5 cm body, but the open-string length is only 36·2 cm because the instrument still has its original short neck.

The strings of the viola were originally gut, but a wound C string must have been used in the 18th century and probably also a wound G string in the 19th. In modern practice, wound strings (i.e. with metal wound over gut, synthetic or metal cores) are often used for all four strings to aid their capacity to ‘speak’, to improve their evenness of tone and response from string to string, to stabilize intonation and to reduce breakage. The fingering and bowing techniques of the viola are similar in principle to the violin’s, and many technical studies (e.g. Kreutzer, Ševčík) are simply transposed down a 5th for the viola. Differences in technique are related to the viola’s larger size. For one thing, its weight and size suggest that it be held with its scroll slightly lower than is common on the violin. Viola fingering, while similar to that of the violin, utilizes more half-position playing and demands greater left-hand expansion. The vibrato is generally somewhat wider and less intense on the viola than on the violin. While viola bowing is in principle similar to that of the violin, the viola player uses somewhat greater energy on the viola’s thicker strings to make them ‘speak’ properly, while the bow itself is generally heavier and slightly shorter.

2. Earlier meanings of the term ‘viola’.

By 1535 the alto-tenor violin (the modern viola) was established as one of the three principal members of the new violin family (see Violin), but it was not called ‘viola’ because at that time the term had a variety of meanings both general and specific. Around 1500 ‘viola’, in the most general sense, might mean any bowed string instrument. From this general sense, the Italian term viola (Fr. vielle; Ger. Fidel) was modified in various ways to describe a specific family or a specific instrument. Examples from the 16th and 17th centuries are the viola da braccio (‘arm viola’; a member of the violin family), soprano di viola da braccio (violin), viola da gamba (‘leg viola’; a member of the viol family) and basso di viola da gamba (bass viol). Later instances are the Viola d’amore and Viola pomposa.

When used before approximately 1550, ‘viola’ may also have the specific meaning of a Renaissance Fiddle or a lira da braccio (but not generally a rebec). Frequent statements to the contrary notwithstanding, the unqualified term ‘viola’, used alone, rarely if ever means violin. However, the converse is sometimes true: in Venetian usage around 1600, ‘violino’ may mean viola (alto violin) as well as violin proper (for example in Zacconi, Prattica di musica, 1592; G. Gabrieli, Sonata pian e forte, 1597).

In the 17th and 18th centuries ‘viola’ is often used with adjectives to denote different registers (but not change of tuning, which, whatever register was involved, moved invariably upwards in 5ths from c). In Albinoni’s Sinfonie e concerti a cinque op.2 (1700), for example, two of the partbooks are labelled ‘Alto Viola’ and ‘Tenor Viola’ for what are respectively viola I and viola II parts, one playing in the alto register and the other in the tenor; Handel’s op.3 no.1 concerto has one part marked ‘Alto Viola’ and another ‘Tenor’ in the Walsh edition of 1734 (see also Tenor violin). Similarly, in the five-part French ensembles described by Mersenne (1636–7) the three ‘parts of the middle’ are all violas (all with the customary c tuning), but of differing sizes and playing in different registers. Hence the 24 Violons du Roi included haute-contre or haute-contre taille (contralto or contralto-tenor: viola I), taille (tenor: viola II) and quinte or cinquiesme (fifth: viola III).

By the 18th century ‘viola’ (alto violin) was equated with viola da brazzo (braz.), from viola da braccio (see above); hence Bratsche, the modern German term for viola (alto violin). Brossard’s Dictionaire (Paris, 1703) ties the two sets of meanings together, equating braz. I with haute-contre (alto viola or viola I), braz. II with taille (tenor viola or viola II) and braz. III with viola III. Brossard also mentioned ‘viola IV’, but said it was not used in France. The term ‘violetta’, used in the 16th century to mean ‘violin’ or even ‘viol’ in certain contexts, often refers in the 18th century to the viola (alto violin). Adjectives may also alter the meaning: violetta marina, for instance, is a species of viola d’amore.

3. Violas as ‘instruments of the middle’.

Historically, the viola was ‘the instrument of the middle’, being used for both the alto and tenor registers: in the 16th and 17th centuries, a four-part ensemble might use two violas; and a five-part ensemble, three violas (see references to Mersenne, §2). This distribution accounts for the relatively large number of violas produced in these two centuries by makers of the time, including such famous ones as the various members of the Amati family in Cremona and, in Brescia, Gasparo da Salò and Maggini. The distribution of parts explains also why the sizes of violas varied from very large models, needed to play in the deep tenor register, to small models for playing in the higher alto register.

Some of the tenor violas are so large as to be barely playable on the arm. The huge Andrea Amati tenor viola of 1574 (fig.2), now in Oxford, has a body length of 47 cm. That of the Stradivari ‘Medici’ tenor viola of 1690 (now in Florence) is 48 cm. With regard to such very large violas, the late viola virtuoso William Primrose once remarked: ‘The viola is difficult enough without having to indulge in a wrestling match with it’. Few of these large tenors still exist. Besides expected attrition over the years, a number were later altered and shortened to make them easier to manage for viola players of a later period.

This was one reason why few violas were made in the first part of the 18th century; instruments were already in plentiful supply in varying sizes from the past, and, in addition, the large tenors were cut down to the prevailing requirements of a smaller model that became favoured after 1700. Also, violas were in less demand for musical reasons. The typical ensemble texture of the early 18th century was four parts, the usual orchestral distribution becoming two violin parts, one viola part and one cello-bass part, as opposed to as many as three viola parts in certain five-part ensembles in the 17th century. Moreover, two of the prevailing forms of chamber music, the solo violin sonata and the trio sonata, rarely used a viola part at all. (For usage of the viola in concertos of the early 18th century, see §5 below.) It is therefore not surprising that, although 600 or so Stradivari violins, violas and cellos survive, Beare cites only ten Stradivari violas in existence, and some of them were made in the 17th century.

4. Viola construction in the 19th and 20th centuries.

With the perfecting of the modern (Tourte) bow around 1785, a new era in string playing began. Around 1800, the viola, like the violin, went through various alterations to increase string tension and carrying power and to facilitate technique, especially left-hand fingering and shifting (see Violin, §I, 5). Such changes involved a lengthened and thrown-back neck and fingerboard, a longer and heavier bass-bar, somewhat heavier strings (the lowest being wound; see §1), and a somewhat higher bridge. New violas made in the 19th and 20th centuries conformed to these specifications, and earlier instruments were altered as needed to fit the new conditions. The new-model (Tourte) bow was ideally suited to drawing out the increased power and fuller tone inherent in the new-model viola.

Some 19th-century makers were possessed with the notion of improving the viola acoustically by lengthening or enlarging the body. In the middle of the century, Villaume experimented making a viola with extremely wide bouts and Charles Henri of Paris built a viola with the entire left side larger than the right. In 1876, Hermann Ritter introduced a viola alta (built by K.A. Hörlein); Wagner was interested enough to use this instrument in the orchestra at Bayreuth. However, while Ritter’s viola, which was about 48 cm in body length, was acoustically desirable, it was effective only in proportion to the length of the player’s arms.

Beginning in 1937, the English viola virtuoso Lionel Tertis (1876–1975), after long experience and experiment, began collaborating with the violin maker Arthur Richardson to create a model viola intended to combine fullness, depth and beauty of tone in a full-size viola still manageable by the player. This ‘Tertis’ model (see fig.1b), first heard in concert in 1939, has since been produced by a number of craftsmen around the world, and is illustrated and described in Tertis’s autobiography (1953).

Other novel approaches to viola construction, inspired by musical and acoustic considerations, have continued to the present time. In the 1960s, Carleen Hutchins, after earlier research by Frederick Saunders (see Acoustics, II), designed and built a whole new violin family of eight instruments, acoustically scaled to the violin as the ideal. Of the eight instruments of this new family (including two pitched above the present violin and one below the present double bass), four are new and three are re-scaled instruments. Among the latter is the ‘viola’, re-scaled to a body measurement of over 53 cm, and played like a cello, using an endpin, although some viola players have chosen to play this instrument in the traditional way. In the 1990s, David Rivinus developed his ergonomic Pellegrina viola (fig.3) with expanded upper left and lower right bouts, tilted fingerboard, and off-centre neck. This viola, with a standard body-length measurement of 40 cm but an acoustic length of 50·8 cm, has attracted considerable attention and favour particularly from orchestral viola players.

This turn-of-the-century discussion of the viola is not complete without mentioning the electric (fig.4) and MIDI violas, including five- and six-string ‘violins’ (c–g–d'–a'–e'' and F–c–g–d'–a'–e'', respectively), produced in a variety of shapes and sizes by an increasing number of makers around the world. Although an acoustic viola may achieve amplification with a microphone pick-up attached near the bridge or the f-hole, a dedicated electric viola will use built-in piezo or magnetic pickups located in or under the bridge. Some of these built-in pickups (the best known are made by Barbera Transducer Systems and Zeta Music Systems), with appropriate pre-amplification systems, produce a remarkably beautiful tone quality scarcely distinguishable from a fine acoustic viola sound.

5. Repertory.

(i) To 1800.

(ii) From 1800.

Viola, §5: Repertory

(i) To 1800.

The best viola makers have often been successful in minimizing the inherent acoustical difficulties discussed above and a fine viola, played by a true artist, is therefore capable of a beauty and variety of tone and effects of virtuosity that are thrilling and moving in the alto-tenor register. However, the viola has always suffered as a solo instrument by comparison with the greater brilliance of the violin and the strength and depth of the cello. Both violin and cello can compete more successfully with the symphony orchestra in concertos, and this explains why, over the years, composers have written innumerable violin concertos, a fair number for cello and until recently comparatively few for viola. Before 1740 the viola was seldom treated as a soloist in any context, generally being banished to the decent obscurity of the accompaniment, realizing the harmony of the middle parts. At the low point of its fortunes the instrument was described by J.J. Quantz (Versuch, 1752):

The viola is commonly regarded as of little importance in the musical establishment. The reason may well be that it is often played by persons who are either still beginners in the ensemble or have no particular gifts with which to distinguish themselves on the violin, or that the instrument yields all too few advantages to its players, so that able people are not easily persuaded to take it up. I maintain, however, that if the entire accompaniment is to be without defect, the violist must be just as able as the second violinist.

From such stuff are splendid inferiority complexes born and bred in viola players! Yet it was true that before 1740 there were no known outstanding viola players and virtually no repertory requiring them. (The Viola Concerto in B minor ascribed to Handel is a 20th-century forgery, ‘realized’ and ‘orchestrated’ by Henri Casadesus and probably written by him.) Virtuoso music composed before 1740 exists for 20th-century concert viola players mostly in the form of arrangements or transcriptions – transposed down from the violin or up from the cello (for example the Bach solo violin sonatas and the cello suites) or transcribed from the viol, viola d'amore or other instruments. On the other hand, there is a fair amount of viola music in ensemble that is musically fascinating to play, especially in fugues and other pieces found in the concertos of such composers as Corelli, Bach, Handel and Vivaldi. Geminiani promoted the viola to the role of soloist in the concertino of his concerti grossi. There are viola parts of genuine musical interest in the ‘orchestras’ used in the sacred and secular works of Bach and Handel, especially when contrapuntal textures or descriptive effects (as in opera from Monteverdi to Gluck and Mozart) are involved. Sometimes a melody was given to the inside voices, as in the second passepied of Bach's Suite no.1 in C, where the melody is played by the second violins and violas in unison. Occasionally the viola was used for special colouristic or sonorous effects: for instance, as a true bass of an accompaniment (there being no bass part or figured continuo), in Vivaldi's Violin Concerto in A minor op.3 no.6, whose slow movement features an aria-like violin solo accompanied by two violins and a viola. In Purcell's soprano aria ‘See, even night herself is here’ (from The Fairy Queen, 1692), the accompaniment comprises two muted violins and (evidently unmuted) a viola which acts as the true bass to an imitative-counterpoint trio. However, in spite of the many musical beauties discoverable in the ensemble use of the viola in early music, the viola part in the orchestra seldom exploited the technical potential of the instrument, even within the limits of 3rd position.

After about 1740 the viola began to enjoy a new lease of life though less noticeably in its orchestral role than elsewhere. It was treated increasingly as a solo instrument in concertos. According to Ulrich Drüner (1981), the history of the viola concerto begins with that of Telemann (probably written shortly before 1740) and is represented by only three other concertos from the Baroque period, those of J.M. Dömming, A.H. Gehra and J.G. Graun. The early classical viola concerto is represented by Georg Benda, Zelter in Berlin, Vanhal in Vienna, and the Stamitz family in Mannheim. The Concerto in D by Carl Stamitz, one of the virtuoso viola players of his day, is one of the standard works in the modern repertory. A description of the viola in J.N. Forkel's Musikalischer Almanach für Deutschland of 1782 concludes: ‘But would anyone who has heard Stamitz play the viola with a taste for majesty and tenderness, which appears to be peculiar only to him, not then declare himself for the viola, would he not then accept it among his favourite instruments’. In 1792 E.L. Gerber wrote of him: ‘With what extraordinary art and facility he plays the viola’. Among the better known classical viola concertos are those of J.A. Amon, Friedrich Benda, F.A. Hoffmeister, Roman Hofstetter, Ignace Pleyel, Josef Reicha, G.A. Schneider, Joseph Schubert and, above all, Alessandro Rolla.

During the lifetime of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven a good many changes took place in the treatment of the viola in chamber music, especially in quartets and quintets and occasionally in string trios and duos (e.g. those of Mozart; his Trio for viola, clarinet and piano k498 should also be mentioned). The changes came about partly because a basic concept of late 18th-century chamber music was that a single player played each part (thus setting chamber music apart from the orchestra where each string part, at least, was played by several players). In this context a viola player of any attainment would become increasingly impatient simply playing the harmonic filler ‘parts of the middle’ while the first violin was playing the main melodies. Except for fugues, where the musical interest was equally distributed, composers of early quartets, like Haydn, saw that the inner parts of string quartets would have to be made more interesting by giving them thematic motifs or even, from time to time, main melodies, obbligato parts or virtuoso figuration (as in Haydn, op.33 and later). This factor in turn animated the solo player to greater mastery of the technique of his instrument.

A greater equality of part-writing and a notable advance of viola technique can be observed in the mature chamber music, especially string quartets, of Mozart and Beethoven. For instance, in Mozart's last string quartet (k590, 1790), the part-writing is equalized, solos are given to the viola and a considerable degree of virtuosity is demanded of the instrument, especially in any chromatic passages. Similar remarks may be made about Beethoven's chamber music, which also makes additional use of special devices or colouristic effects. A melody might be emphasized or reinforced, for example, by playing it in octaves, as in the viola and first violin parts in the first movement (bars 42ff) of op.18 no.4. More unusual at this time is the exploiting of the colour possibilities of the higher register of the C string in the fugal last movement of op.59 no.3, where from bar 160 the viola player is required to play on the C string in the 5th position. Beethoven treated the viola in somewhat comparable fashion in the orchestra, but not to the same degree. Even when the orchestral violas are heard playing melodic material they are often doubled with the second violins (as in the Ninth Symphony, slow movement D major theme) or with the cellos.

Mozart, in his concerto for violin and viola (Sinfonia concertante k364/320d, 1779), treated the violin and viola as equal partners, even sharing the same degree of difficulty in the written-out cadenza. He thus made technical demands of the viola quite unprecedented at that time, requiring the player to reach the 7th position at the end of the last movement (bar 439; see ex.1). Mozart was himself an excellent player on both violin and viola, and in certain respects his double concerto is one of the most fascinating pieces ever written for viola – if played as he wrote it. For one thing, he provided subtle supports for the viola player, the details of which might escape casual attention. He also scored the concerto so that the natural brilliance of the violin is somewhat muted, while the natural reticence of the viola is somewhat brightened and amplified. This was done by using the key of E for the concerto and by writing a scordatura part for the viola. The key of E is not a brilliant one for the violin (none of the open strings serves to reinforce the principal notes of this key). The same is normally true of the open strings of the viola, but Mozart followed the practice of writing the part in D, with the strings tuned up a semitone. This ‘transposition scordatura’ means that the viola player fingers the music as if it were in the key of D, but it sounds in E. This particular retuning has several important effects: it increases the tension on the strings making the viola a bit more brilliant and slightly louder; three of the four viola strings – now tuned to what is enharmonically d, a, e' and b' – reinforce the tonic, subdominant and dominant notes of the main key of E; and finally, it is easier for the viola player to play in D than in E. In short, by the choice of key and by this particular way of writing for the viola, Mozart managed to equalize the violin and viola physically, as well as musically, with respect to brilliance, carrying power and ease of execution. The technique of tuning the viola up a semitone or whole tone was used in several late 18th- and early 19th-century pieces, including Vanhal's concerto in F (written in E for the viola), Carl Stamitz's viola and piano sonata in B (written in A for the viola) and his Symphonie concertante for violin and viola, in which both solo instruments are tuned up a semitone. Two versions of the Sinfonia concertante exist in manuscript copies. In one (US-Wc) the orchestra is in E and the soloists are in D; in the other (D-BFb), both orchestra and soloists are in D.

Mozart's Quintet in G minor for two violins, two violas and cello (k516, 1787) amply demonstrates the potential of the viola as a chamber music instrument in the hands of a master. Particularly noteworthy is the practice, possibly learnt from Michael Haydn, of highlighting the first violin and first viola as soloists on an equal footing, while at the same time ensuring that each instrument in the ensemble has an interesting part to play. Also worthy of remark is the way that Mozart made the first viola serve as either a treble or a bass: that is, as a bass to the trio of the upper three instruments or – a marked contrast in tone-colour – as the treble to the lower three. The resulting dark–light colour contrast of trio combinations is illustrated by the opening bars of the work. Finally, in the slow movement, the contrasted key of E is subdued still more by Mozart's direction to use mutes on all the instruments (mutes being rarely called for in 18th-century chamber music). The second subject is worked out in a glorious duet between violin I (bar 27) and viola I a few bars later. Even viola II has a moment or two of dramatic comment (e.g. bar 19) on the musical action.

Several viola methods, somewhat analogous to those for violin and cello, were published at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries; they include those by Michel Corrette (1773), Michel Woldemar (c1800), François Cupis (attributed, 1803) and M.J. Gebauer (c1805).

Viola, §5: Repertory

(ii) From 1800.

Early in the 19th century an outstanding method by A.B. Bruni (c1820) and viola studies by Bartolomeo Campagnoli and J.-J.-B. Martinn were published. In the 20th century the viola began to share in the technical advances of the violin (most viola players having begun their training as violinists). The trend towards virtuosity became much more pronounced in the 20th century, when, for instance, players were obliged to cultivate the highest positions on the lower three strings. The average orchestral viola player around 1900 was still regarded as a cast-off from the violin section, but in the 20th century the viola was increasingly called upon, especially the viola soloist in chamber music, to perform special effects such as col legno bowings (e.g. Schoenberg), rebounding pizzicatos (Bartók), glissandos, harmonics and so on. Developments in fingering were similar to those for the violin (see Fingering, §II, 2(ii)) and are enshrined in the methods of Dolejši (1939) and Primrose (1960) as well as in the 20th-century repertory.

Berlioz had already shown (1834) how magical a sul ponticello could sound in an arpeggio passage for solo viola against muted orchestral strings (in ‘Marche des pèlerins’ from his Harold en Italie). These demands by composers meant that an efficient technique was slowly being acquired by viola players in all types of instrumental music. After Beethoven, the string parts in the music of such composers as Berlioz, Brahms, Verdi and Tchaikovsky gradually increased in difficulty. In Wagner and Richard Strauss and later in Mahler and Ravel, and of course 12-note compositions, the demands made on viola players are greater still, tending at times to equal those on the other strings. In much 20th-century chamber music, for instance, the technical demands on the viola are often as great as on the other parts, notably in Schoenberg's String Trio or Bartok's string quartets (particularly nos.3–6). In the case of modern concertos the viola soloist is normally called on for an imposing array of accomplishments of the left and right hand – in the relatively rare (though increasingly frequent) viola recital, one may occasionally hear such a tour de force as a transcription of a Paganini caprice.

While 19th-century composers seldom called on the viola soloist for the same degree of pyrotechnics as the violin, they became more appreciative of the viola's potential with respect to tone-colour and sonority. Brahms is a good example. In the Agitato movement of his String Quartet in B op.67, he assigned the opening solo to the viola accompanied by muted violins and cello – a remarkable essay in the colouristic use of the viola ranging over all four strings. In his Serenade op.16 Brahms omitted the violins, featuring the violas as a treble part as he did also in the first movement of the German Requiem.

Treated mainly as a tenor in early times, the viola had also been used occasionally as an alto or even, for special effect, as a bass (see examples of Vivaldi and Purcell cited in §(i) above). The cultivation of tone-colour of different registers after 1800 led composers to use the viola as any voice-part of the ensemble for momentary effect. To increase power and sonority, special violas such as Hermann Ritter's viola alta were introduced into the orchestra. Since sonority and colour of the string section were important components of Romantic music in achieving its effect, some later composers who disliked this type of music – Stravinsky, for example – sought to use the strings more drily or even percussively rather than melodically or colouristically, or did not use them at all (his Symphony of Psalms is scored without violins or violas).

For reasons already suggested, there are dozens of violin concertos for every one for the viola (Drüner lists 141 between 1740 and 1840, knows of none between 1840 and 1870, and finds a gradually increasing number after 1870). Indeed it would be difficult to call to mind more than one ‘famous’ viola concerto in the 19th century: namely, Berlioz's Harold en Italie, and that a viola concerto disguised as a programme symphony. Even this work originated through a special set of circumstances. Paganini, having acquired a fine Stradivari viola, commissioned Berlioz to write a viola concerto for him. Harold en Italie was the result, but Paganini declined to play it because, as he told Berlioz, ‘I am not given enough to do’. Berlioz, however, was by no means uninterested in the viola. ‘Of all the instruments in the orchestra’, he stated, ‘the viola is the one whose excellent qualities have been longest ignored’. In Harold (and elsewhere) Berlioz wrote marvellously for the instrument, not only for the solo part but also for the orchestral violas – consider the main ‘Harold’ melody, the cadenza at the end of the first adagio, or the whole of the ‘Marche des pèlerins’.

In the 20th century compositions featuring the solo viola have become more numerous because, among other reasons, the presence of such outstanding players as Lionel Tertis, William Primrose and Paul Hindemith has encouraged composers. Tertis, in particular, inspired a number of pieces by British composers, including (though indirectly through Thomas Beecham) the Walton Viola Concerto, one of the best in modern times. (This work was offered to Tertis for its first performance but was actually first played with Hindemith as soloist, 3 October 1929.) The posthumous Bartók Viola Concerto (‘prepared for publication by Tibor Serly’ in 1950, with a revised version by Nelson Dellamaggiore and Peter Bartók in 1995) was commissioned by and written for Primrose, who first performed it. Hindemith, equally distinguished as composer and viola player, wrote a number of solo works for viola, which, in the older tradition of the composer-performer like Mozart, he played himself. Among these are four viola concertos, six pieces for viola and piano and four for unaccompanied viola. Many other distinguished composers might be mentioned for their viola compositions, including Berio, Bloch, Britten, Henze, Milhaud, Penderecki, Piston, Rochberg, Schnittke, Shostakovich and Vaughan Williams.

In spite of the relatively numerous 19th- and 20th-century pieces originally written for the viola as a soloist in one capacity or another, perhaps the instrument is most at home (and treated in the most congenial fashion by composers) in chamber music. Among the many chamber-music combinations, composers have evidently written for the viola the most frequently and with the greatest devotion in that most perfect of musical mediums, the string quartet, as a number of the finest works of the most celebrated composers attest: among them Beethoven, Schubert, Dvořák, Brahms, Debussy, Ravel, Bartók, Dohnanyi, Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Schoenberg and Webern. The viola is common in quartets and quintets with piano, and has fared well in string quintets and sextets (two violas), some of which approach orchestral sonority (e.g. those of Brahms).

Composers tended, conversely, to shy away somewhat from the viola as a solo instrument in works involving fewer instruments, where each became more prominent to the whole. Thus the string trio of violin, viola and cello is much less commonly used by composers than the piano trio (violin, cello, piano). Similarly, there are few sonatas in the 19th century originally written for viola and piano: even the two by Brahms (op.120, 1895), arranged by the composer from his clarinet and piano sonatas, do not have quite the verve and freshness of the original versions. The same might be said of several other Brahms chamber works in which he substituted viola for clarinet. The viola is, however, sometimes used with marked success in song accompaniments, as in Brahms's Geistliches Wiegenlied, where the singer is accompanied by piano and viola obbligato.

In any case, the literature available to the modern viola player is very considerable, ranging from simple ensemble parts to concertos of great difficulty, and the instrument may be said to have progressed immensely since 1750 in realizing its potential of tone and technique.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

a: general

MersenneHU

MGG2 (W. Sawodny; also ‘Streichinstrumentenbau’, T. Drescher)

SachsH

H. Berlioz: Grand traité d’instrumentation et d’orchestration modernes (Paris, 1843, 2/1855/R; Eng. trans., 1856, rev. 2/1882/R by J. Bennett)

H. Ritter: Die Geschichte der Viola alta (Leipzig, 1876/R)

H. Ritter: Die fünfsaitige Alt-Geige (Bamberg, 1898)

E. van der Straeten: ‘The Viola’, The Strad, xxiii–xxvi (1912–16) [series of articles]

F.H. Martens: String Mastery (New York, 1923)

W. Altmann: ‘Zur Geschichte der Bratsche und der Bratschisten’, AMz, lvi (1929), 971–2

W. Altmann, ed.: Die Bratsche: Mitteilungsblatt des Bratschisten-Bundes (Leipzig, 1929–30)

L. Tertis: Beauty of Tone in String Playing (London, 1938; repr. in My Viola and I (London, 1974))

J.A. Watson: ‘Mozart and the Viola’, ML, xxii (1941), 41–53

E.N. Doring: How Many Strads? (Chicago, 1945)

H. Besseler: Zum Problem der Tenorgeige (Heidelberg, 1949)

L. Tertis: Cinderella No More (London, 1953, enlarged 1974 as My Viola and I) [autobiography, with valuable appx and work-lists]

W. Piston: Orchestration (New York, 1955)

G. Pasqualini: ‘Referendum internazionale sulla viola moderna’, Santa Cecilia, viii (1959), 81–3

H. Kunitz: Violine/Bratsche (Leipzig, 1960)

G. Pasqualini: ‘Risultati sul referendum’, Santa Cecilia, ix (1960), 73–4

C.M. Hutchins: ‘The Physics of Violins’, Scientific American, ccvii/5 (1962), 78–84, 87–93

D.D. Boyden: ‘The Tenor Violin: Myth, Mystery, or Misnomer’, Festschrift Otto Erich Deutsch, ed. W. Gerstenberg, J. LaRue and W. Rehm (Kassel, 1963), 273–9

D.D. Boyden: The History of Violin Playing from its Origins to 1761 (London, 1965/R)

A. Baines: European and American Musical Instruments (London, 1966/R)

S.M. Nelson: The Violin and Viola (New York, 1972)

M. Rosenblum: ‘The Viola Research Society’, American String Teacher, xxiii/2 (1973), 29–30

A. Arcidiacono: La viola: gli strumenti musicali (Milan, 1974)

L. Tertis: My Viola and I: a Complete Autobiography (London, 1974)

S. Marcuse: A Survey of Musical Instruments (Newton Abbot and New York, 1975)

L.C. Witten: ‘Apollo, Orpheus, and David’, JAMIS, i (1975), 5–55

Y. Menuhin and W. Primrose: Violin and Viola (London, 1976/R)

W. Primrose: Walk on the North Side: Memoirs of a Violist (Provo, UT, 1978)

F. Zeyringer: The Problem of Viola Size (New York, 1979)

M.W. Riley: ‘The Early Development of the Viola by Luthiers of the Brescian and Cremonese Schools’, Journal of the Violin Society of America, v/1 (1980), 120–52

M.W. Riley: The History of the Viola (Ypsilanti, MI, 1980) [incl. full bibliography]

D. Gill: ‘Vihuelas, Violas and the Spanish Guitar’, EMc, ix (1981), 455–62

M. Awouters: ‘X-raying Musical Instruments: a Method in Organological Study’, RBM, xxxvi–xxxviii (1982–4), 207–15, esp. 213

M. Robinson: The Violin and Viola (London, 1983)

S. Ponjatovskij: Istorija al'tovogo iskusstva [The history of the viola] (Moscow, 1984)

M.W. Riley: The Teaching of Bowed Instruments from 1511 to 1756 (Ann Arbor, 1986)

C. Beare: Capolavori di Antonio Stradivari (Milan, 1987)

D. Dalton: Playing the Viola: Conversations with William Primrose (New York, 1988)

C.A. Johnson: Viola Source Materials: an Annotated Bibliography (diss., Florida State U., 1988)

A.M. Woodward: ‘Observations about the Status, Instruments, and Solo Repertoire of Violists in the Classic Period’, Journal of the Violin Society of America, ix/2 (1988), 81–104

F. Zeyreinger: Die Viola da braccio (Munich, 1988)

M.W. Riley: The History of the Viola, ii (Ypsilanti, MI, 1991)

M. Tiella and C. Beare: Strumenti di Antonio Stradivari (Cremona, 1991)

D. Pounds: The American Viola Society: a History and Reference (n.p., 1992, 2/1995)

M. Fox: ‘Crazy but Correct Viola’, New York Times (4 Aug 1997)

b: methods

M. Corrette: Méthodes pour apprendre à jouer de la contre-basse à 3, à 4, et à 5 cordes, de la quinte ou alto et de la viole d'Orphée (Paris, 1773/R)

Complete Instructions for the Tenor Containing such Rules and Examples as are necessary for Learners with a Selection of Favorite Song-Tunes, Minuets, Marches, etc. (London, n.d. [between 1782 and 1798])

M. Woldemar: Méthode d’alto contenant les premiers élémens de la musique (Paris, c1800)

?F. Cupis: Méthode d’alto précédé d’un abrégé des principes de musique de différents airs nouveaux dont plusieurs avec variations et terminé par un long caprice ou étude (?Paris, ?1803)

M.J. Gebauer: Méthode d’alto contenant les principes de musique avec les gammes accompagnées dans tous les tons suives de petites pièces en duo tirées des plus célèbres auteurs tels que Haydn, Mozart, Boccherini &c (Paris, c1805)

A.B. Bruni: Méthode pour l’alto viola contenant les principes de cet instrument suivis de 25 études (Paris, c1820)

J.-J.-B. Martinn: Nouvelle méthode d’alto contenant des gammes et exercises dans tous les tons, douze leçons en duos et trois sonates faciles (Paris, n.d. [between 1826 and 1830])

R. Dolejší: Modern Viola Technique (Chicago, 1939/R)

W. Primrose: Technique is Memory: a Method for Violin and Viola Players Based on Finger Patterns (London, 1960)

H. Barrett: The Viola: Complete Guide for Teachers and Students (Birmingham, AL, 1972, 2/1978)

S.L. Kruse: The Viola School of Technique: Etudes and Methods Written between 1780 and 1860 (Ann Arbor, 1986)

c: periodicals

The Strad (1890/91–)

Hindemith-Jb (1971–)

Newsletter of the American Viola Research Society (1973–8)

Journal of the Violin Society of America (1975–)

British Viola Research Society Newsletter (1976–83)

Newsletter of the American Viola Society (1978–85)

The Viola: Yearbook of the International Viola Research Society (Kassel, 1979–)

British Viola Society Newsletter (1983–)

Journal of the American Viola Society (1985–)

Strings (1986–)

d: repertory

R. Clarke: ‘The History of the Viola in Quartet Writing’, ML, iv (1923), 6–17

W.W. Cobbett: Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music (London, 1929–30/R)

W. Altmann and V. Borissowsky: Literaturverzeichnis für Bratsche und Viola d’amore (Wolfenbüttel, 1937)

H. Letz: Music for the Violin and Viola (New York, 1948)

F. Zeyringer: Literatur für Viola (Hartberg, 1963, suppl. 1965, 3/1985)

K. Ewald: Musik für Bratsche (Liestal, 1975)

T. Serly: ‘A Belated Account of the Reconstruction of a 20th Century Masterpiece’, College Music Symposium, xv (1975), 7–25 [on Bartók’s Viola Concerto]

T.J. Tatton: English Viola Music, 1870–1937 (diss., U. of Illinois, 1976)

U. Drüner: ‘Das Viola-Konzert vor 1840’, FAM, xxviii (1981), 153–76

L. Inzaghi and L.A. Bianchi: Alessandro Rolla (1757–1841): vita e catalogo tematico delle opere (Milan, 1981)

W. Lebermann: ‘Das Viola-Konzert vor 1840: Addenda und Corrigenda’, FAM, xxx (1983), 220–21

B.R. Toskey: Concertos for Violin and Viola: a Comprehensive Encyclopedia (Seattle, 1983)

Viola, Dalla [Della].

See Dalla Viola family.

Viola, Francesco.

See Dalla Viola family, (2).

Viola, Giovanni Domenico

(b ?Naples, c1540–55; d Naples, before 1602). Italian composer. He was maestro di cappella at the royal church of S Giacomo degli Spagnoli, Naples, a church praised by contemporary writers for its choice music. He may have been appointed before 4 September 1573, when the archives record that ‘Reverendo’ G.D. Viola bought a consort of six viols for six ducats. Cerreto mentioned him as an excellent composer, then (in 1601) deceased. Viola’s Delli responsorii (Naples, 1622), for four voices, were printed posthumously, edited by Marcello Magnetta who also provided a basso continuo part. The volume also includes Fabrizio Dentice’s famous falsobordone settings of the Miserere and Benedictus, ornamented with passaggi for all four voices in turn.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

S. Cerreto: Della prattica musica vocale e strumentale (Naples, 1601/R), 159

G. Filangieri, ed.: Documenti per la storia, le arti e le industrie delle provincie napoletane, v (Naples, 1891), 26

U. Prota-Giurleo: ‘Aggiunte ai “Documenti per la storia dell’arte a Napoli”’, Il fuidoro, ii (1955), 273–9

F. Strazzullo: ‘Inediti per la storia della musica a Napoli’, Il fuidoro, ii (1955), 106–8, esp. 107

KEITH A. LARSON

Viola, Orazio della.

See Bassani, Orazio.

Viola bastarda.

A style of virtuoso solo bass viol playing favoured in Italy from about 1580 to about 1630, which condensed a polyphonic composition (madrigal, chanson or motet) to a single line, whilst retaining the original range, and with the addition of elaborate diminutions, embellishments and new counterpoint (see Diminution (i)). The bastarda technique was not exclusive to the viol: Francesco Rognoni (1620) explained that it could be performed on ‘organs, lutes, harps and similar instruments’; however, the viol's agility and three and a half octave range made it ‘the queen’ of the bastarda style.

In 1584 Girolamo Dalla Casa (d 1601) published his Il vero modo di diminuir, the earliest treatise to use the term ‘viola bastarda’. Dalla Casa gave ten examples of diminutions for viola bastarda (five based on madrigals and five on chansons) of progressive difficulty starting with diminutions in quavers and moving on to semiquavers, demisemiquavers and triplet demisemiquavers over a range of D-f''. The other important treatise on viola bastarda playing is Rognoni's Selva de varii passaggi (Milan, 1620). He cautioned players against improvising more than six sequences in succession ‘because it would then be tedious and offensive’, to avoid ‘making parallel octaves and 5ths with any of the parts’, and he finally reminded them ‘that it is of greater worth to sustain one note with grace or a sweet and gentle stroke of the bow than to make so many diminutions beyond that which is required’.

Dalla Casa wrote that ‘you can [also] play these madrigals in company’, and suggested the lute as a possible supporting instrument (playing the original composition). Sometimes viola bastarda diminutions were accompanied by viol consort. However, in 1591 Giovanni Bassano recommended the accompaniment of a ‘plucked instrument’ (lute or harpsichord) with a second instrument on the bass line. The later bastarda compositions by Oratio Bassani [della Viola] (d Parma 1615) and Vincenzo Bonizzi (d 1630) were provided with a continuo bass.

39 viola bastarda compositions survive; the ten by Dalla Casa are the earliest. Riccardo Rognoni's four pieces, published eight years later in Passaggi per potersi essercitare, were the first to be truly idiomatic to the viol, employing syncopated leaps and taking the instrument up to b'' on the d' string. However, the most innovative settings of the school are the two by Oratio Bassani on Lassus's Susanne un jour and Wert's Cara la vita mia (both in GB-Lbl Add.30491). In these works Bassani uses the simple bass part of his chosen madrigal as a foil for breathtakingly virtuoso embellishments, generally freed from any further relationship to the original composition. Bassani delights in bold dissonance and striking syncopation; and the ‘pasaggi d'imitationi’ found in Riccardo Rognoni's pieces are now developed within the sequence. Indeed these are perhaps the most virtuoso viol pieces ever to be written. Bassani's nephew and pupil Francesco Maria Bassani kept a pedagogic notebook, Regole di contrapunto, which contains eight pieces, seven of which are probably by Oratio. Whilst they do not make the same technical demands as the two in Add.30491, they display a stylistic likeness; interestingly, two are toccatas over a free bass-line, possibly intended as a prelude to the more extended madrigal settings. The later compositions by Francesco Rognoni (son of Riccardo) and Bonizzi return to the conservative method of embellishing the whole contrapuntal work. Francesco Rognoni's publication contains some ‘essempi per sonar alla bastarda’ which give suggestions of how to divide a bass line.

All viola bastarda music is written for the standard viol tuning, of 4ths with a 3rd in the middle. It most commonly uses the lowest string tuned to D (i.e. like the modern bass viol) but sometimes the lowest string is a G (i.e. using the range of a modern tenor) or an A; the later players of the early 16th century, such as Bassani and Bonizzi, also used a tuning based on a low A' or G'. Regarding the instrument's size, Francesco Rognoni, whose compositions use the D tuning, stated: ‘The viola bastarda … is an instrument which is neither a tenor nor a bass viol, but which is between the two in size’. However, the term in 16th-century descriptions seems to refer to the instrument's function rather than to its size; in addition, the wide pitch range of the lowest note for surviving works indicates that viols of different sizes were used as appropriate (or as available).

During the 50 years that the viola bastarda flourished the technique developed from one that found its roots in the prima pratica to the latest seconda pratica style, experimenting with highly virtuosic and rhetorical improvisation over a supporting continuo bass. The legacy of the viola bastarda technique can be seen in the new idiomatic violin music of Monteverdi and Marini, and also in the English lyra viol music and the practice of divisions on a ground. There are two examples of viola bastarda music outside Italy. In London in 1613, the Italian, Angelo Notari, who worked at James I's court, published diminutions in bastarda style on the tenor and bass parts of Cipriano de Rore's madrigal Ben qui si mostra il ciel, and the dulcian player in Vienna, Bartolemeo de Selma y Salaverde, included three bastarda settings in his Primo libro of 1636.

References to the viola bastarda by Praetorius and Adam Jarzębski are misleading. Praetorius, in his Syntagma musicum, ii (1618, 2/1619), gave a variety of tunings that would appear to be more appropriate to the lyra viol than the viola bastarda. Jarzębski used the title ‘viola bastarda’ for the bass viol part in his trio and quartet sonatas, which are of a modest range and only occasionally ornamented with divisions. (Jarzębski's misnomer may have arisen because he worked at the court of Sigismund III of Poland where Francesco Rognoni had also been employed.)

SOURCES OF VIOLA BASTARDA MUSIC

(all transcribed in Paras, 1986)

Girolamo Dalla Casa: Il vero modo di diminuir (Venice, 1584/R)

Giovanni Bassano: Motetti, madrigali et canzoni francese (Venice, 1591)

Riccardo Rognoni: Passaggi per potersi essercitare nel diminuire terminatamente con ogni sorte di instrumenti, et anco diversi passaggi per la semplice voce humana (Venice, 1592)

Aurelio Virgiliano: Il Dolcimelo (MS, c1600, I-Bc) [facs., Florence, 1979]

Oratio Bassani: (MS, 1626, GB-Lbl Add.30491)

Giovanni de Macque or Francesco Lambardi: (MS, 1626, GB-Lbl Add.30491)

Francesco Maria Bassani: Regole di contrapunto (MS, 1620–22, I-Bc)

Antonio Notari: Prima musiche nuove (London, 1613)

Francesco Rognoni: Selva de varii passagi secondo l'uso moderno, ii (Milan, 1620/R)

Vincenzo Bonizzi: Alcune opere, di diverse auttori a diverse voci, passaggiate principalmente per la viola bastarda (Venice, 1626/R)

Bartolomé de Selma y Salaverde: Primo libro, canzoni fantasie et correnti da suonar (Venice, 1638/R)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Veronika Gutmann: ‘Viola bastarda: Instrument oder Diminutionspraxis’, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, xxxv (1978), 178–209

Jason Paras: The Music for the Viola Bastarda (Bloomington, 1986)

S. Saunders: ‘Giovanni Valentini's “In te Domine speravi” and the Demise of the Viola Bastarda’, JVdGSA, xxviii (1991), 1–20

LUCY ROBINSON

Viola da braccio

(It.).

A 16th- and 17th-century term for a member of the Violin family. ‘Da braccio’ (‘on the arm’), as opposed to ‘da gamba’ (‘on the leg’), was one of the ways the generic word viola was qualified in 16th-century Italian to distinguish the violin from the viol. At this stage it was usually applied to the complete family: in the printed score of Monteverdi's L'Orfeo (1609) five-part passages evidently intended for two violins, two violas and bass are collectively labelled ‘Viole da braccio’. Later in the century it became customary to restrict the term to the alto, tenor and bass parts of string consort music while the soprano parts were given the more precise label ‘violino’. The first setting of ‘Beatus vir’ in Monteverdi's Selva morale e spirituale (Venice, 1641) calls for ‘6. voci concertato con due violini & 3 viole da brazzo ouero 3 Tronboni’, while a sonata by Clemens Thieme (1631–68) composed about 1660 (S-Uu) is said to be for two ‘Violini’, two ‘Trombetti’ and four ‘viole di Braccio’ – the last being parts in alto, tenor and bass ranges. By then it was becoming more common to restrict ‘viola da braccio’ (or sometimes just ‘braccio’) to viola parts. Bratsche, the most common German word for viola, preserves a form of this usage in modern terminology.

PETER HOLMAN

Viola da gamba.

An Italian term for the Viol (literally, ‘leg viol’). During the 16th century bowed string instruments were sometimes classified according to the way in which they were held during performance, the viol being designated ‘leg viol’ and the violin ‘arm viol’ (Viola da braccio). From the mid-17th century the bass instrument of the viol family was most regularly used, and ‘viola da gamba’ gradually assumed its modern specific meaning of bass viol. By the time of the final phase of the viol’s popularity in England, in the 1770s and 80s, corrupt forms of the original Italian term, occasionally found since the early 17th century, had become the norm, e.g. ‘Viol de Gambo’; ‘viol-de-gamba’; ‘Viol di Gamba’; ‘Viol da gamba’; ‘Viol di Gambo’. The abbreviated form ‘gamba’ is now frequently used.

See also Organ stop.

IAN WOODFIELD

Viola da Gamba societies.

Societies exist in Britain, Switzerland and the USA to promote the playing and the study of viols. The British society was founded in 1948; its presidents have been Jack Westrup and Nathalie Dolmetsch, and Gordon Dodd was prominent in its organization. In 1998 the president was Alison Crum. The society has indexed sources and supervised an edition of Jenkins's consort music. It holds lectures and discussions and issues a newsletter and an annual journal, Chelys. The American society, founded in 1963, has several chapters, sponsors a large national workshop each summer (the Conclave), and publishes a newsletter and a valuable annual journal. The Swiss society, the Viola da Gamba-Gesellschaft, was founded in Winterthur in 1992 under the presidency of Manfred Harras. It publishes a quarterly magazine, Viola da-gamba Mitteilungen.

Viola d'amore

(Fr. viole d'amour; Ger. Liebesgeige).

A kind of viola popular during the late 17th and 18th centuries; also a stop on the Romantic organ that imitates its timbre. Normally the viola d'amore is about the size of a viola but with the physical characteristics of a viol: flat back, wide ribs flush with the top and back, sloping shoulders and a carved head at the top of the pegbox (see fig.1). The soundholes are commonly in the shape of a ‘flaming sword’ and there is usually an additional rosette. The instrument is held under the chin and played like a violin; it is unfretted. Its tone, though not as brilliant or powerful as that of the violin or viola, is singularly sweet. Usually there are 14 strings: seven playing strings, which cross the top of the bridge, and seven sympathetic (resonating) strings, which run through the bridge and under the fingerboard into separate pegs in the pegbox. Various instruments, however, may have various combinations of playing and sympathetic strings.

1. History.

The use of Sympathetic strings and the ‘flaming-sword’ soundhole (symbolic of Islam) on the viola d'amore suggest a Middle Eastern influence, and many Indian chordophones, such as the sārangī, dilrubā, esrāj, sitār and sarod, have sympathetic strings. In western Europe sympathetic strings were applied to the viol in England in the early 17th century, and also (at various times) to other instruments including the violin, kit, baryton (see Baryton, (i)), trumpet marine and Norwegian Hardanger fiddle, as well as the viola d'amore.

The first known mention of the name ‘viol d'amore’ appeared in John Evelyn's diary (20 November 1679):

I dind at the Master of the Mints with my wife, invited to heare Musique which was most exquisitely performed by 4 of the most renouned Masters, DuPrue a French-man on the Lute: Signor Batholomeo Ital: on the Harpsichord: & Nicolao on the Violin: but above all for its swetenesse & novelty the Viol d'Amore of 5 wyre-strings, plaied on with a bow, being but an ordinary Violin, play'd on Lyra way by a German, than which I never heard a sweeter Instrument or more surprizing…

Extant instruments and early writings show that two types of viola d'amore have existed: a small, shallow-ribbed, viol-shaped 17th-century type with metal playing strings and no sympathetic strings, and a later, larger type that prevailed during the 18th century – of viola body-length but viol-shaped and equipped with sympathetic strings. Some extant late 17th-century violas d'amore have sympathetic strings, although the earliest known explicit reference to them is in Joseph Majer's Museum musicum (1732). Other 17th- and 18th-century writers who described the instrument include Speer (Grund-richtiger … Unterricht, 1687, rev., enlarged 1697), Brossard (Dictionaire de musique, 1703), Mattheson (Das neu-eröffnete Orchestre, 1713), Walther (Musicalisches Lexicon, 1732), Eisel (1738) and Rousseau (Dictionnaire, 1768). Mattheson extolled its ‘tender and languishing effect’ and regretted that ‘its use should not be greater’. Leopold Mozart (Versuch, 1756) wrote that the viola d'amore was ‘a special kind of violin that sounds lovely in the stillness of the night’ and emphasized that it permitted many different tunings. Albrechtsberger (1790) called it a ‘pleasant chamber instrument’.

The abundance of extant 17th- and 18th-century violas d'amore shows that the instrument was in great demand, particularly in Austria, Germany, Bohemia and Italy. Some of the more notable craftsmen who made violas d'amore were J.A. and Mathias Albani, Lorenzo and Tomaso Carcassi, J.U. Eberle, four members of the Gagliano family, Matteo Gofriller, Giovanni Grancino, G.B. Guadagnini, C.F. Landolfi, Vincenzo Ruggieri, Jacob Stainer, Lorenzo Storioni and P.A. Testore. Plans by Antonio Stradivari from 1716 exist, but no corresponding instrument has been found.

For the greater part of the 18th century the viola d'amore was tuned in the key of the individual composition it was to be used to play. Mattheson and Walther wrote that the instrument was tuned in either C minor or C major: g–c'–e'(e')–g'–c''. In addition to the C (minor or major) tuning Eisel offered another: F–B–d–g–c'–g'–b'. Extant compositions from the first half of the 18th century show a wide variety of scordatura tunings. Majer listed 16 for the viola d'amore in 1732. By the end of the 18th century, however, the standard tuning was in the tonality of D major: A–d–a–d'–f'–a'–d''. The sympathetic strings were tuned in unison with the playing strings.

18th-century music for the viola d'amore was sometimes notated to sound as written (as in the music of J.S. Bach and Graupner), but more often in scordatura, whereby the composer would write g–d'–a'–e'' for the four highest open strings, which were tuned to and would sound d'–f'–a'–d'' in the D major tuning (or other pitches in different tunings). Fingered notes were indicated accordingly. Notes written in the bass clef (when it was used for the three lower strings) sounded an octave higher. Ex.1 illustrates typical viola d'amore notation. Attilio Ariosti in his ‘lessons’ for viola d'amore and continuo used a unique notation system, placing the alto clef in its usual position and the soprano clef on different leger lines to indicate hand position rather than actual pitch.

2. Repertory.

Among the earliest known works that use the viola d'amore are J.C. Pezel's cantata Des Abends, Morgens und Mittags (MS, 1690, D-F Ms.Mus.449), Wilderer's Il giorno di salute (1697), Ariosti's Marte placato (1707), Giovanni Bononcini's Turno Aricino (1707), Fux's Gli ossequi della notte (1709), Keiser's Desiderius (1709) and Kayserliche-Friedenspost (1715), Mattheson's Boris Goudenow (1710) and Henrico IV (1711), Alessandro Scarlatti's Il Tigrane (1715), Stölzel's Brockes-Passion (1712), Telemann's 1716 Passion Der sterbende Jesus and his cantata Herre, lehre uns bedenken, 1720 – all with obbligato viola d'amore; and Biber's Partita no.7 for two violas d'amore and continuo from the Harmonia artificiosa-ariosa (1712).

The viola d'amore was used to great effect by J.S. Bach (the cantatas Schwingt freudig euch empor bwv36c, Tritt auf die Glaubensbahn bwv152 and Der zufriedengestellte Äolus bwv205, and the St John Passion), Telemann (a concerto for flute, oboe d'amore and viola d'amore with strings and harpsichord, and a trio sonata), Christoph Graupner (nine concertos, 12 overtures, one sinfonia, six trio sonatas and 14 cantatas) and Vivaldi (eight concertos, Juditha triumphans and Nisi Dominus). Attilio Ariosti, one of the first virtuosos on the instrument, composed six ‘lessons’ for viola d'amore and continuo (1724/R), 15 sonatas for viola d'amore and continuo, and a cantata Pur al fin gentil viola for soprano, viola d'amore and continuo.

During the second half of the 18th century the viola d'amore was frequently used in both solo and chamber compositions. Carl Stamitz (see Stamitz family, (2)), a virtuoso on the instrument, wrote two concertos, sonatas and a quartet with viola d'amore. Hoffmeister composed four quartets in which the viola d'amore is the leading instrument. F.W. Rust wrote demanding and musically superior works that made dramatic use of the instrument's technical possibilities, including sonatas with bass or harpsichord, a sonata with violin, a duet with viola, an Aria con variazioni for viola d'amore and bass and a trio for viola d'amore and two flutes. Other 18th- and early 19th-century composers who wrote solo or chamber works for viola d'amore include Albrechtsberger, F. Benda, Eybler, Farinelli, Girànek, Haydn, Heinichen, Locatelli, Pepusch, Pez, Pezold, Quantz and J.C. Toeschi.

Baroque composers, primarily interested in the special timbre of the instrument, tended to ignore its multiple-stop and chordal possibilities. Late 18th-century composers, however, made abundant use of double and multiple stops (see ex.2) as well as arpeggios and harmonics.

The popularity of the viola d'amore declined during the 19th century, despite its effective use in Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots (1836), Ferenc Erkel's Bánk bán (1861), Gustave Charpentier's Louise (1900), C.M. Loeffler's La mort de Tintagiles (1900), Massenet's Le jongleur de Notre-Dame (1902), Puccini's Madama Butterfly (1904), and Pfitzner's Palestrina (1917). Interest was revived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries owing to a general growth of interest in old instruments, the work of outstanding players such as Louis van Waefelghem, Walter Voigtländer and Carli Zoeller, and the efforts of the performer-composers Paul Hindemith and Henri Casadesus. Hindemith's Kammermusik no.6 for viola d'amore and chamber orchestra (1927) and Kleine Sonate for viola d'amore and piano (1923) and Frank Martin's Sonata da chiesa for viola d'amore and organ (1938) were the first major works for viola d'amore in the 20th century. Hindemith's viola d'amore works, though thoroughly 20th-century in content, extend the typical viola d'amore techniques of the 18th century (see ex.3). Other 20th-century composers who have written works with viola d'amore are A. Arcidiacono, Siegfried Borris, York Bowen, Hans Gál, G.F. Ghedini, Ginastera (Don Rodrigo, 1964; Bomarzo, 1967), Janáček (Kát’a Kabanová, 1921; The Makropulos Affair, 1926; the original versions of the Sinfonietta, 1926, and the String Quartet no.2, 1928), A. Kaufman, V. Nelhybel, Dika Newlin, Prokofiev (Romeo and Juliet, 1938), K.G. Roger, Cyril Scott, Mátyás Seiber and H.W. Henze (We Come to the River, 1976, and in his edition of Monteverdi's Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria, 1985).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

J.P. Eisel: ‘Von der Viole d'Amour’, Musicus autodidaktos (Erfurt, 1738/R), 31–6

L.T. Milandre: Méthode facile pour la viole d'amour (Paris, 1777/R)

F.A. Weber: ‘Abhandlung von der Viole d'Amour oder Liebesgeige’, Musikalische Real-Zeitung (5, 12, 19 Aug, 9, 16, 23 Sept, 1789)

J.G. Albrechtsberger: Gründliche Anweisung zur Composition (Leipzig, 1790/R, enlarged 3/1821; Fr. trans., 1814; Eng. trans., 1844)

F. Wiese: Theoretischer Unterricht für die Viole d'Amour (Darmstadt, c1850)

J. Král: Anleitung zum Spiele der Viole d'Amour (Hamburg, c1880)

C. Zoeller: New Method for the Viole d'amour (London, 1885)

E. de Bricqueville: La viole d'amour (Paris, 1908)

W. Voigtländer: Der moderne Viola d'amore-Spieler: systematisch geordnetes Übungsmaterial zur Erlernung des Viola d'amore-Spiels für Violinspieler (New York, 1914)

P. Shirley: The Study of the Viola d'amore (New York, 1920)

D. Fryklund: ‘Bidrag till kännedomen om viola d'amore’, STMf, iii (1921), 1–36

P. Garnault: ‘Les violes’, EMDC, II/iii (1927), 1753–93, esp. 1781

H. Casadesus: Technique de la viole d'amour suivi de 24 préludes (Paris, 1931)

E. Lesser: ‘Zur Skordatura der Streichinstrumente mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Viola d'amore’, AcM, iv (1932), 123–7, 148–60

W. Altmann and W. Borissowsky: Literaturverzeichnis für Bratsche und Viola d'Amore (Wolfenbüttel, 1937)

R. Dolejší: ‘The Viola d’amore - Yesterday and Today’, Modern Viola Technique (Chicago, 1939/R), 38–42

H. Danks: ‘The Viola d'amore’, ML, xxxviii (1957), 14–20

K. Stumpf: Neue Schule für Viola d'amore (Vienna, 1957/R)

H. Danks: ‘The Viola d'amore and its Repertoire’, Brio, xxx/2 (1966), 10–15

K. Stumpf: ‘The Viola d'amore’, The Strad, lxxvii (1966–7), 249–55

R. Sabatini: ‘Die Viola d'amore’, Musikerzeihung, xx (1967), 122–5

K. Stumpf: ‘Die Viola d'amore in der neuen Musik’, Musikerziehung, xxi (1968), 175–7, 228–31

J.H. van der Meer: ‘Zur Frühgeschichte der Viola d'Amore’, IMSCR XI: Copenhagen 1972, 547–55

A. Arcidiacono: La viola (Ancona and Milan, 1973)

M. Vogel: ‘Was hatte die “Liebesgeige” mit der Liebe zu tun?’, Musicae scientiae collectanea: Festschrift Karl Gustav Fellerer zum siebzigsten Geburtstag, ed. H. Hüschen (Cologne, 1973), 609–15

P. Hindemith: ‘Über die Viola d'amore’, Hindemith-Jb, iv (1974–5), 158–65

H. Danks: The Viola d'amore (Halesowen, 1976, 2/1979)

M. Jappe: ‘Zur Viola d'Amore in Darmstadt zur Zeit Christoph Graupners’, Basler Studien zur Interpretation der Alten Musik (Winterthur, 1980), 169–79

K. Stumpf: ‘Die Viola d'amore: Tradition oder Weterentwicklung’, Musikerziehung, xxxiv (1980), 70–76

L. Nassimbeni: ‘La Viola d'amore’, Liutheria, ii/6 (1982), 15–20

A. Martin: ‘Die Viola d'amore im 20. Jahrhundert’, Das Orchester, xxxii (1984), 952–4

M. Rosenblum: ‘The Viola d'amore: an Instrument for the 18th Century’, Continuo, vii/6 (1984), 2–8

H. Berck: Viola d’amore Bibliographie (Kassel, 1986, enlarged 2/1994)

E. Küllmer: Mitschwingende Saiten: Musikinstrumente mit Resonanzsaiten (Bonn, 1986)

W. Schrammek: ‘Die Viola d'amore zur Zeit Johann Sebastian Bachs’, Bach Studien, ix (1986), 56–66

H. Danks: ‘The Viola d'amore: its Past, Present, and Future’, Strings, iv/4 (1990), 39–40

H. Boatwright: ‘A Memoire: Paul Hindemith and the Viola d'amore’, Newsletter of the Viola d'amore Society of America, xvi/2 (1992), 13–16

M. Rônez: ‘Aperçus sur la viole d'amore en Allemagne du Sud vers 1700’, Amour et sympathie: Limoges 1992, 223–71

J.-P. Vasseur: ‘1800–1990: viole d'amore, tradition ininterrompue’, Amour et sympathie: Limoges 1992, 173–218

J. Hansen: ‘Discovering the Viola d'amore’, American String Teacher, xlv/4 (1995), 51–4

M. Rosenblum: ‘The Viola d'amore: a Baroque Stringed Instrument for the 20th Century’, Penn Sounds, vi/3 (1995), 4–6; vii (1995–6), no.1, pp.4–6; no.2, pp.4–7

M. and D. Jappe: Viola d’amore Bibliographie (Winterthur, 1997)

M. Rosenblum: ‘Cupid’s Strings’, The Strad, cx (1999), 176–181; continued as ‘Bridging the Gap’, ibid., 276–80

MYRON ROSENBLUM

Viola da spalla [violoncello da spalla]

(It.).

An 18th-century name given to a bowed string instrument, possibly a cello or a smaller variant of it, played at shoulder height with the instrument held across the player's chest by a strap over the shoulder (It. spalla).

Zaccaria Tevo (1706) mentions the viola da spalla as an instrument that plays bass parts in an ensemble. Musicians from the Veneto, such as Tevo, frequently referred to the bass member of the violin family as a viola, and his viola da spalla is probably an equivalent of the violoncello da spalla mentioned by Bartolomeo Bismantova, who gives its tuning as D or C, G, d, a. Johann Mattheson followed Tevo's usage, but added considerable detail – including the playing position and the use of a strap to keep the instrument in place – in his account of the viola da spalla, which he described along with the violoncello and bassa viola as a small bass violin. J.F.B.C. Majer, Museum musicum (1732), added that the viola da spalla, taken now as an equivalent of the cello, may also be held between the legs. Jacob Adlung, Anleitung zu der musikalischen Gelahrtheit (1758), simply equated the viola da spalla with the cello.

Iconographic evidence – formerly taken as bizarre or incompetent renditions of violins or violas – confirms the use of a shoulder-held cello during the period reported by these writers. An illustration in the cello music of Giuseppe Torelli's Concertino per camera op.4 (1688), for example, shows a standing figure with just such an instrument. Significantly, the engraver of this publication, Carlo Buffagnotti, was himself a cellist who held the rank of suonatore in the Accademia Filarmonica of Bologna.

See Violoncello, §II, 1(ii); and Bass violin.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

B. Bismantova: Compendio musicale (MS, 1677, I-REm); facs. ed. (Florence, 1978)

Z. Tevo: Il Musico testore (Venice, 1706/R)

J. Mattheson: Das neu-eröffnete Orchestre (Hamburg, 1713/R)

G. Barnett: ‘The Violoncello da Spalla: Shouldering the Cello in the Baroque Era’, JAMIS, xxiv (1998), 82–107

GREGORY BARNETT

Viola di bardone [viola di bordone].

A term used by Brossard (Dictionaire, 1703) for the baryton; see Baryton (i).

Viola di fagotto

(It.; Ger. Fagottgeige).

A bowed string instrument of south German/Austrian origin, in use from 1670–1782. It was probably the bass equivalent of the treble schalmei geige (see Spielmann), and most likely was also the viola piffero encountered in instrumental pieces by J.H. Schmelzer. Its gut strings were wound with silver or copper wire, thereby producing a buzzing sound like a bassoon, an effect most probably caused by the strings striking the fingerboard when bowed. Leopold Mozart wrote that some people inaccurately called the instrument Handbassel (apparently the same as Viola da spalla).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

D. Speer: Grundrichtiger Kurtz-Leicht- und Nöthiger Unterricht der musikalischen Kunst (Ulm, 1687, 2/1697/R)

D. Merck: Compendium musicae instrumentalis chelicae (Augsburg, 1695)

J.F.B.C. Majer: Museum musicum (Schwäbisch Hall, 1732/R, 2/1741)

L. Mozart: Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule (Augsburg, 1756/R, 4/1800; Dutch trans., 1766/R; Fr. trans., 1770; Eng. trans., 1939 [?1948], 2/1951/R)

M. Spielmann: ‘“Violino Pifferato” und “Viola di Fagotto”’, Die Viola: Jb der Internationalen Viola-Gesellschaft, vii (1985), 50–56 [with Eng. summary, 96]

HOWARD MAYER BROWN/STEPHEN BONTA

Violão

(Port.).

See Guitar.

Viola pomposa

(It.).

A five-string viola, tuned either c–g–d'–a'–e'', i.e. like a regular viola with an additional e'' string, or possibly d–g–d'–g'–c'' as Galpin suggested. It was in use from about 1725 to about 1770 and was played on the arm. Some writers (for example H.C. Koch and J.G. Graun) also called it violino pomposo.

The only surviving music for the instrument comprises two duets for flute and viola pomposa or violin by G.P. Telemann (from Der getreue Music-Meister), a double concerto by J.G. Graun, two sonate da camera by J.G. Janitsch, and a solo sonata with continuo by C.J. Lidarti. The invention of the instrument was erroneously ascribed to J.S. Bach by several late 18th-century writers, apparently because they confused the viola pomposa with the violoncello piccolo which J.C. Hoffmann of Leipzig made for Bach and for which Bach occasionally wrote.

See Violoncello, §II, 1(ii).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

F.T. Arnold: ‘Die Viola pomposa’, ZMw, xiii (1930–31), 141–5 [see also the rejoinders by G. Kinsky (xiii, 325–8 and xiv, 178–9); F.W. Galpin (xiv, 35–8); H. Engel (xiv, 38 only); reply by F.T. Arnold (xvi, 35 only)]

F.W. Galpin: ‘Viola Pomposa and Violoncello Piccolo’, ML, xii (1931), 354–65

H. Husmann: ‘Die Viola pomposa’, BJb 1936, 90–100

W. Schrammek: ‘Viola pomposa und Violoncello piccolo bei Johann Sebastian Bach’, Internationales Bach-Fest III: Leipzig 1975, 345–54

U. Drüner: ‘Violoncello piccolo und Viola pomposa bei Johann Sebastian Bach: zu Fragen von Identität und Spielweise dieser Instrumente’, BJb 1987, 85–112 [summaries in Eng., Fr.]

HOWARD MAYER BROWN/R

Viole

(Fr.).

See Viol.

Viole, Rudolf

(b Schochwitz, 10 May 1825; d Berlin, 7 Dec 1867). German composer. Originally trained to be a teacher, he studied music with R.J. Hentschel in Weissenfels and was also a pupil of Liszt; but he never achieved prominence as a concert pianist and, after his student days, lived in Berlin as a piano teacher and occasional contributor to the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. Among Liszt’s early pupils he occupies an important position; his first sonata (1855), which caused a sensation, is greatly varied within a coherent single-movement form, and achieves something of the harmonic boldness and rhapsodic power, the almost bombastic tumult of the climax of Liszt’s own Sonata. Bülow, the dedicatee, described it as ‘sweepingly innovatory, music of the future in the highest degree’, which offered, he added, an example for ‘the artistic emancipation from formalism’. His ensuing, less stormy sonatas, particularly in the slow movements, represent a skilful development of his formal principles, despite their conflicting stylistic elements. Beside these achievements his other works, written primarily for his own instrument and now virtually forgotten, are of little significance. Liszt contributed a valuable set of fingerings to Viole’s Die Gartenlaube, a collection of studies more important pedagogically than aesthetically.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

U. von Dommer: Review of Viole’s Bagatelles op.5, Poésies lyriques op.12 and Caprice héroique op.13, NZM, xlvi (1857), 241–2

M. von Bülow, ed.: Hans von Bülow: Briefe und Schriften, iii: Ausgewählte Schriften (Leipzig, 1896, 2/1911), 140–44

La Mara [M. Lipsius], ed.: Briefwechsel zwischen Franz Liszt und Hans von Bülow (Leipzig, 1898)

REINHOLD SIETZ

Viole d'amour

(Fr.).

See Viola d'amore.

Viole d’orchestre.

I. The instrument, its technique and its repertory

Violet.

See English violet.

Violeta

(Sp.).

An Organ stop (Violetta).

Violetta

(It.).

(1) A word used at various times to mean Viol, Violin, Viola or Violoncello.

G.M. Lanfranco (Scintille di musica, Brescia, 1533) wrote about ‘violette da arco senza tasti’ (small bowed violas without frets), which may be rebecs but are more probably violins. Tuned in 5ths with the higher members of the family having only three strings, they are the equivalent of the kleine Geigen described by Martin Agricola (1529) and other 16th-century German writers. This usage also appeared in other 16th- and 17th-century sources, for example in Pietro Cerone's El melopeo y maestro (Naples, 1613), 1057.

Zacconi (Prattica di musica, 1592) called the treble viol a Violetta piccola, a term Praetorius (Syntagma musicum, 2/1619) used both for treble viol and for violin. Sebastiano Cherici, observing the Venetian usage of his time (wherein the term ‘viola’ was used for the larger size of the bass violin, ‘violetta’ for the smaller), applied the term ‘violetta’ to the small bass violin or Violoncello in his Inni Sacri (1672). The compass of Cherici's part for the instrument was D–e'. Banchieri (L'organo suonario, Venice, 2/1611, p.97) discusses a basso violetta da brazzo, which is tuned in 5ths, one octave below the violin.

In the 17th and 18th centuries violetta commonly meant ‘viola’. On the other hand, J.G. Walther, in his Musicalisches Lexicon (1732), defined it as a bowed string instrument that played a middle part, either a viola or a small viola da gamba (‘eine Geige zur Mittel-Partie, sie werde gleich auf Braccien, oder kleinen Viole di Gamben gemacht’). Telemann may have been observing this practice when he called for the ‘violetta’ as an alternative to the ‘violin’ in several orchestral parts for two of his violin concertos (Musikalische Werke, xxiii, no.6 in F and no.8 in G). Given the range of the parts, either viola or bass viola da gamba would serve as suitable substitutes.

The English violet is a kind of viola d'amore; see also Violetta marina.

(2) An Organ stop.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

S. Bonta: ‘From Violone to Violoncello: a Question of Strings’, JAMIS, iii (1977), 64–99

S. Bonta: ‘Terminology for the Bass Violin’, JAMIS, iv (1978), 5–42

J. Catch: ‘No, not Anyone's Violetta’, Chelys, xxiii (1994), 90–91

HOWARD MAYER BROWN/STEPHEN BONTA

Violetta marina

(It.).

A bowed string instrument with sympathetic strings. Structurally it probably resembled the viola d'amore. It was developed by Pietro Castrucci (b Rome, 1679; d Dublin, 29 Feb 1752), leader of Handel's opera orchestra in London for over 22 years. A pair of obbligato parts inscribed ‘violette marine per gli Signori Castrucci’ occur in the hero's sleep aria in Handel's Orlando (1733) and a part for one instrument is included in Sosarme (1732); the ‘violetta’ in Ezio (1732) and Deborah (1733) might refer to the same instrument. A brief passage by Burney (History, ii, 1782, p.698) is the chief source of information about the violetta marina, though it is possible that it was identical with the English violet.

STEPHEN BONTA

Violetta piccola

(It.).

According to Lodovico Zacconi’s Prattica di musica (Venice, 1592), book 4, chap.56, a descant Viol. Praetorius, in Syntagma musicum, ii (2/1619) used the term to mean either descant viol or Violin.

Violette, Wesley La.

See La Violette, Wesley.

Violin

(Fr. violon; Ger. Violine, Geige; It. violino; Sp. violín).

Soprano member of the family of string instruments that includes the viola and cello (the Double bass is also usually considered to be a member of the violin family though in some of its features – all explicable in terms of the practicalities of playing such a large instrument – the influence of the Viol family is apparent: it is tuned in 4ths rather than 5ths, historically had a variable number of strings and normally has sloping shoulders and a flat back that is ‘broken’ so that the upper section slopes inward towards the neck). In the Hornbostel-Sachs system the violin is classified as a Chordophone: bowed lute (or fiddle).

II. Extra-European and folk usage

DAVID D. BOYDEN/PETER WALLS (I, 1–2, 4), PETER HOLMAN (I, 3(i–iv)), KAREL MOENS (I, 3(v)), ROBIN STOWELL (I, 5), ANTHONY BARNETT, MATT GLASER, ALYN SHIPTON (I, 6), PETER COOKE, ALASTAIR DICK AND OTHERS (II, 1–3), CHRIS GOERTZEN (II, 4)

Violin

I. The instrument, its technique and its repertory

1. Introduction.

2. Structure.

3. History and repertory to 1600.

4. History and repertory, 1600–1820.

5. Since 1820.

6. Jazz and blues.

Violin, §I: The instrument, its technique and its repertory

1. Introduction.

The violin is one of the most perfect instruments acoustically and has extraordinary musical versatility. In beauty and emotional appeal its tone rivals that of its model, the human voice, but at the same time the violin is capable of particular agility and brilliant figuration, making possible in one instrument the expression of moods and effects that may range, depending on the will and skill of the player, from the lyric and tender to the brilliant and dramatic. Its capacity for sustained tone is remarkable, and scarcely another instrument can produce so many nuances of expression and intensity. The violin can play all the chromatic semitones or even microtones over a four-octave range, and, to a limited extent, the playing of chords is within its powers. In short, the violin represents one of the greatest triumphs of instrument making. From its earliest development in Italy the violin was adopted in all kinds of music and by all strata of society, and has since been disseminated to many cultures across the globe (see §II below). Composers, inspired by its potential, have written extensively for it as a solo instrument, accompanied and unaccompanied, and also in connection with the genres of orchestral and chamber music. Possibly no other instrument can boast a larger and musically more distinguished repertory, if one takes into account all forms of solo and ensemble music in which the violin has been assigned a part.

The most important defining factor of the Western orchestra, ever since it emerged during the 17th century, has been the body of ‘strings’ (i.e. violin-family instruments) playing together with (usually) more than one player to a part. The violin (and violin family), however, had originated well before the 17th century – the three-string violin was certainly in existence in the 1520s and perhaps even earlier – and by the early 17th century the reputation and universal use of the violins were such that Praetorius declared (Syntagma musicum, ii, 2/1619): ‘since everyone knows about the violin family, it is unnecessary to indicate or write anything further about it’.

The present article concerns the violin as part of the heritage of Western art music.

Violin, §I: The instrument, its technique and its repertory

2. Structure.

(i) Components of the modern violin.

The violin gives an appearance of deceptive simplicity to the eye, but is in fact constructed of some 70 parts, which require the skill of a master craftsman to cut and assemble. Acoustically it is one of the most complex of instruments (see §2(ii) below). The body is a hollow box (see fig.1) about 35·5 cm long, consisting of an arched top plate (‘belly’) and arched back plate, joined by sides (‘ribs’) of slightly varying heights (a typical Stradivari measurement is 2·8 cm at the top end of the instrument and 3·2 cm at the bottom). The edges of the belly and back are not flush with the ribs as is usual in a viol, but project beyond, overhanging the ribs slightly. The belly is made of softwood, generally European spruce, and the back and sides are fashioned of hardwood, usually maple. The neck, pegbox and scroll are also customarily of maple. The fingerboard runs along the neck and extends over the belly towards the bridge; it is now normally made of ebony. It is unfretted, a feature that distinguishes the violins from the viols.

Both top and back may be made of one piece of wood, or (much more usually) of two pieces joined. The wood may be cut either radially ‘on the quarter’ (see fig.2a and b) or in layers (‘on the slab’). One-piece backs (either quarter- or slab-cut; see fig.2c and d) are not uncommon but one-piece slab-cut tops are rare because for acoustical reasons they seldom give satisfactory results. Radial cutting is generally favoured, especially for tops, because the properties of the various radial sections are about the same from one piece to another. Fig.3 shows how a radial section is split from the top and the resulting two sections then glued base to base. In this way the resulting piece of wood will have the same properties relative to the join in the middle. The appearance of the wood surface depends on which of the two methods of cutting is used. The ‘waves’ in the veined wood are generally called ‘curls’, and in the one-piece back shown in fig.2c these are seen to run continuously upwards from left to right. In two-piece backs the curls (if there are any) would not be continuous because they would be interrupted by the join in the middle (as in the ‘Messiah’ Stradivari violin; see Stradivari, fig.2). The pattern of curls is referred to as ‘figure’. Highly-figured wood looks very beautiful, but it is not necessarily acoustically better than plainer maple (which has often been used by the great makers). Figure is distinct from ‘grain’, the latter being the arrangement of the fibres of the wood which are distributed in alternating strata of impacted resin (summer growth when the sap is rising) and paler wood (winter carbohydrate growth). In a cross-section of a tree trunk the grain is seen as annular rings, but in radial sections used for violin backs and bellies they appear as parallel lines running longitudinally from pegbox to tailpiece. The grain is generally more prominent in the spruce of the belly than in the back where the eye tends to be distracted by the figure in the maple. The distance between the parallel grain lines varies, sometimes being narrow (‘close’ grain), sometimes wider (‘open’ grain); for violins the ideal range is between 1 and 2 mm. In a typical belly the spacing of the grain lines widens symmetrically from the centre join. Grain is important acoustically since the resin lines conduct sound while the carbohydrate growth acts as a damper; the balance of these two features, especially in the belly, determines the suitability of the wood. For further information on cutting, preparation and other matters with respect to wood used in violin making, see Drescher (MGG2, ‘Streichinstrumentenbau’, §A), Leipp (A1965) and Rubio (B1984).

The four strings of the violin are anchored in the upper end of the tailpiece, strung over a carefully fitted bridge of maple, then carried over and above the fingerboard to the ebony (or ivory) nut and secured by the pegs of ebony (or rosewood) in the pegbox (see fig.1). The latter is crowned by an ornamental scroll. At the lower end of the violin, the tailpiece is secured by the tailgut (traditionally a heavy piece of gut but now sometimes wire or nylon) that runs over the ebony saddle (see figs.1 and 4) and is looped over, and secured by, the end-button (‘end pin’). The tension of the strings is regulated by turning the pegs to bring the four strings to their proper pitches: g, d', a' and e''. In modern violins the steel E string (and sometimes the others also) is generally fine-tuned by means of a mechanical adjuster attached to the tailpiece (see fig.4).

The strings of the violin were originally all gut. From the 1660s, however, the lowest (G) string was commonly wound with silver wire to give a better response. Today violinists generally use wound strings for the D and A strings as well and also use a steel E string, the latter being far more durable. Other kinds of stringing have been developed in the 20th century; strings with a steel core (overwound with, usually, silver) or a core of synthetic material (e.g. nylon). Both types are widely used, though neither has displaced the gut-core string as the preferred choice of most professional players.

Inside the violin, the top-, bottom- and corner-blocks and the side linings (see fig.1) strengthen and stabilize the structure. The soundpost and bass-bar give additional support for the interior of the instrument. The soundpost, ordinarily of spruce, stands vertically between back and belly and is located under the right foot of the bridge – not directly under the bridge's foot but on a line with it, slightly towards the tailpiece. The position of the soundpost is a critical factor in producing the best sound from the instrument. The bridge too must be fitted exactly to the contours of the belly and is positioned in line with the notches of the f-holes. The Bass-bar, also normally of spruce, is glued to the undersurface of the belly, running under the left foot of the bridge. Like the soundpost, the bass-bar helps support the top and also serves an acoustical purpose (see §2(ii) below). The Chin rest is made of wood (usually ebony) or vulcanite. Many players also attach a shoulder rest to the underside of the instrument. These devices, the first invented by Spohr in about 1820 (though much improved since) and the second a 20th-century development, make it possible for players to support their instruments without any assistance from the left hand.

The beautiful design and shape of the violin are not merely ornamental but are functional to a considerable degree. The vaulting of the back and the belly is essential for strength and for acoustical reasons, the whole body being designed to furnish the best amplification of sound. The narrow waist – that is, the ‘middle bouts’ – permits ease of playing on the highest and lowest strings. The scroll is decorative, although the instrument may be hung up by it. The line of Purfling which runs just inside the outer edge of back and belly not only emphasizes the beauty of the outline but also minimizes cracks and prevents any damage to the overhanging edges from going further into the body. Some acoustical experts (see Backus, B1969, 2/1977) think that purfling may be a factor in the fine tone of a violin. The soundholes (f-holes) and the bridge are basically acoustical in function (see §2(ii) below), though their actual forms are influenced by decorative considerations. In any case, early bridges vary in design somewhat from modern bridges (see fig.5).

Finally, the varnish, so beautiful in the finest violins, is functional as well as decorative, being indispensable as a preservative. Varnish cannot improve the tone, but if it is too hard, too soft or badly applied it may prevent the best tone qualities inherent in the instrument from being realized.

The composition of the Cremona varnish, which contributes so much to the visual beauty of a Stradivari and other Cremonese violins, remains something of a mystery, although there could not have been anything very mysterious about it in its time. Jacob Stainer (?1617–1683) in the Austrian Tyrol, for instance, knew all about it, and the Venetian makers used an equally fine varnish. However, easier and quicker methods of varnishing were later applied, and by 1750 or 1760 the old process had nearly disappeared, G.B. Guadagnini being one of the last (c1780) to use Cremona varnish. Nevertheless, excellent varnishes are once again being used today.

Distinctive structural characteristics of the violin from c1600 to c1785 (‘Baroque violin’) are described in §4(ii) below.

(ii) Sound production and acoustics.

Any violin has a certain potential of volume, whose realization depends partly on ‘accessories’ – the type of strings and their tension, the type of bridge, the quality of the bow, even the type of chin and shoulder rests – and partly on the skill of the player. Fingering, vibrato, bow speed and pressure, and the relative placing of the bow between the bridge and the end of the fingerboard all have a direct bearing on the dynamic and tonal characteristics of the sound.

When the bow sets the string or strings in motion, the vibrations are transmitted to the belly and the back via the bridge and the soundpost. The soundpost renders the right foot of the bridge (the nearest to the E string) effectively immobile, leaving the left one relatively free to transmit vibrations to the bass-bar and belly (which functions as the soundboard of the instrument) and thence, through the sides to the back (whose primary function, however, is as a reflector). The total area of the soundbox then further amplifies the vibrations and transmits them eventually to the ear of the listener. The soundholes operate as a secondary and complementary acoustical system, adding considerably to the resonance.

The quality and character of the tone depend on the vibrating string and how well its fundamental pitch frequency and upper partials are received and transmitted by the wood of the violin's body. The string vibrates (for any given pitch) not only as a whole – that is, as stopped between nut and bridge by the player's finger – but also in various parts of its length so as to produce the other harmonics of the fundamental, thus giving richness and complexity to the timbre. Some individual tones are the result of the complex interaction of as many as 20 upper partials in addition to the fundamental.

The role of the violin body is to amplify and project the string vibrations to the outer air. What makes a particular violin good is the degree to which it transmits the string vibrations of the fundamental and its harmonics with equal response over the whole register of the instrument. The tone of the violin, then, depends initially on the capacity of the many resonance frequencies of the wood to respond to the string vibrations. Many makers, when adjusting the final thicknesses of the back and belly of a new violin, tap the plates (or fix them in a clamp and bow their edges) to tune them. The notes produced are known as ‘tap tones’. (The natural resonance of the interior air space – the so-called ‘air tone’ – has a frequency normally in the area of the D string in superior violins.)

Many experiments have been made, especially in the last 50 years, to determine which factors affect the timbre of a single note or of all the notes of a particular violin, thus distinguishing one violin from another. Modern acoustics, using electronic equipment, has shown that some previously accepted theories, including the ‘formant’ theory, will have to be modified or even discarded. There are still major questions regarding the acoustics of the violin (not to mention related areas in the physiology of hearing) that are not yet completely or satisfactorily answered – for example, what makes a violin a ‘good’ one, and whether old violins are better than modern ones (at present, the best available answer to the second question is ‘Not necessarily’).

Since its origins, the violin has undergone a considerable evolution of detail to meet the changing requirements of successive generations of performers and composers. The first century and a half of the ‘true’ violin culminated in the magnificent ‘classical’ model of Antonio Stradivari shortly after 1700. But this was not the end of the instrument's evolution; in the early years of the 19th century it was altered in a number of respects to attain greater power and a more mellow tonal quality (see §5 below). It was in this era, too, that the Tourte bow gained universal acceptance. Today the violin is a more powerful instrument, supporting greater tensions and pressures thanks largely to the move away from gut strings described above. These changes in the violin (and bow) were occasioned by new styles of music and new techniques of playing. Fig.6 juxtaposes the radically different approaches to violin playing in the 17th and 20th centuries. Whether we regard these changes as improvements is an entirely subjective matter. Many musicians now take the view that a particular repertory will be served best by performing it with instruments set up (and played) in the way the composers of the time expected. It is in response to this approach that so many violinists have now acquired ‘Baroque’, ‘Classical’, or even ‘Renaissance’ violins (while some, too, perform Romantic literature on violins strung as they would have been in the 19th century).

See also Acoustics, §II, 1; for an account of attempts to make mechanically self-playing violins, see Violin player, automatic.

Violin, §I: The instrument, its technique and its repertory

3. History and repertory to 1600.

(i) Antecedents and origins.

(ii) Sizes and tunings.

(iii) Dissemination.

(iv) Usage.

(v) Authenticity and surviving instruments.

(i) Antecedents and origins.

As with many instruments, the violin has traditionally been defined mainly by its shape. However, it came into being at a period of rapid change and adventurous experimentation in instrument making, and the ‘classic’ outline only became standard in Italy around 1550; in northern Europe non-standard variants were still in use well after 1600. For this reason studies of the early violin need to take into account the way it was played and how it was used as well as its appearance, and need to be informed by a wide understanding of the development of instruments and instrumental music in the late Middle Ages.

15th-century pictures show two main types of bowed instrument: the alto-range medieval fiddle, usually with five or more strings (one of which could be a bourdon running off the fingerboard), and the small pear-shaped rebec, with two or three strings. Both are routinely depicted with a flat bridge or no bridge at all, which means that they must have been used essentially to play monophonic music in chords – the way folk survivals such as the Greek lira and the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle are still played today. To play single-line polyphonic music on them would have required arched bridges of the modern type, and there is no convincing evidence of these before the second half of the 15th century, when polyphony played on pairs of soft, or bas instruments became fashionable. Johannes Tinctoris (De inventione et usu musice, c1481–3) described a bowed viola with strings ‘stretched in a protuberant manner so that the bow … can touch any one string the player wills, leaving the others untouched’ and reported a recent performance in Bruges of polyphonic songs played on fiddles by the brothers Jean and Charles Fernandes.

The instruments played by the Fernandes brothers probably had three strings tuned in 5ths – the most usual tuning by that time, according to Tinctoris – and must have been similar to the earliest alto/tenor members of the violin family. However, there is no indication that they, or any other bowed instrument, had been developed in more than one size as early as the 1480s. The idea of creating instruments in sets or consorts of several sizes to make them suitable for polyphonic music was first developed in the 14th century with the bombarde, a tenor-range shawm, and was subsequently applied to the flute, the recorder and the douçaine, all apparently made in sets in the 15th century. This ‘consort principle’, as we might call it, does not seem to have been applied to bowed instruments until the 1490s, when the earliest viol consorts were apparently developed on the orders of Isabella d'Este, wife of Francesco Gonzaga of Mantua, from a large, single-size, guitar-like drone instrument recently imported into Italy from Catalonia. Isabella ordered three viols of two sizes from an unnamed maker in Brescia in March 1495, and a letter dated 19 March 1499 reveals that her brother Alfonso was in Venice and wanted to order five ‘viole da archo’ made ‘in all the possible sizes [modi] in the world’, which suggests that the third size, the soprano, had been developed by then.

The consort principle was apparently applied about a decade later to the fiddle, producing the violin family. Circumstantial evidence suggests that it happened in Ferrara, Isabella d'Este's home town. A three-string violin-like instrument and a large four-string viola-like instrument are depicted in Ferrarese wall paintings executed between about 1505 and 1510 (fig.7), and two Ferrarese court documents suggest the existence of a violin consort by 1511. References to ‘Una viola, zoè un basso’ and ‘Una viola, zoè un tenore’ in an inventory of that year can be identified as violins by a process of elimination: ‘Viole da gamba’, ‘lauti’ and ‘violoni alla napolitana’ (vihuelas) are also listed. On 20 December 1511 ‘maestro Sebastian da Verona’ was paid to look for timber for making ‘violette’ for the Ferrara court, and for repairing its ‘viole e violoni’. In 16th-century Italian, violins were usually distinguished from the larger-bodied viols by the addition of the descriptive phrases ‘da braccio’ and ‘da gamba’ to the generic term viola, or by qualifying it with the diminutives violette and violini and the augmentative violoni. It should be emphasized that these terms applied to violins and viols as a class, irrespective of the size of particular instruments. Violino did not specifically mean a soprano violin, or violone a contrabass viol, until much later.

The viol and violin families seem to have been developed as part of a humanist cultural agenda that preferred ‘noble’ strings to ‘ignoble’ winds. Isabella d'Este commissioned a cycle of allegorical paintings for her studiolo in which string instruments are consistently associated with virtue, spiritual love and harmony, while wind instruments are associated with vice, sensual love and strife. Isabella also followed the traditions of female patronage of music in preferring soft string instruments to loud winds, with their indecorous warlike and phallic associations. The two families should therefore be seen as complementary, and were usually played as alternatives by professional musicians in the 16th century, though the viol was also played by amateurs. The viol, soft, sonorous but rather lacking in attack, was suitable for serious contrapuntal music and for accompanying the voice, while the sprightly violin was quickly recognized as the ideal vehicle for the new composed polyphonic dance music that developed soon after 1500.

The Ferrarese wall paintings show instruments that conform surprisingly closely to the later standard shape of the violin, with four corners. However, the earliest Brescian violins may have had only two corners, connecting a broad lower half to a narrower upper half. The shape can be seen in several early pictures of viols, as well as a vihuela and a lira da braccio depicted in an intarsia panel made between 1506 and 1508 for the door of one of Isabella d'Este's cabinets at Mantua (see Mantua, fig.2). We know nothing of the earliest violin makers apart from Sebastian of Verona (assuming he was the person who made the Ferrarese violin consort), although G.M. Lanfranco (Scintille di musica, 1533/R) mentioned the Brescians Giovanni Giacobo dalla Corna and Zanetto da Montichiaro as makers of ‘Liuti, Violoni, Lyre & simili’. Zanetto's son Peregrino [Pellegrino] Micheli, Girolamo di Virchi, Gasparo da Salò [Bertolotti] and G.P. Maggini continued to make stringed instruments in Brescia, though a rival tradition was established in Venice by Francesco Linarol and his son Ventura. With Andrea Amati and his sons Antonio and Girolamo [Hieronymus] (i), the centre of Italian violin making moved to Cremona.

(ii) Sizes and tunings.

According to the first detailed description of the violin family, in Lanfranco's Scintille di musica, there were four sizes of ‘Violette da Arco senza tasti’ (also called ‘Violetta da Braccio, & da Arco’), ‘Soprano’, ‘Contraalto’, ‘Tenore’ and ‘Basso’, with three tunings; the alto and tenor were tuned in unison. In other words, the consort consisted of a single violin, two violas of different sizes, and a bass violin. This disposition, confirmed by later treatises, was the standard one for 16th-century violin consorts, though a third viola was added when five-part dance music became common after 1550. Scorings with two violin parts were gradually adopted in most countries during the 17th century, though the French court orchestra, the ‘Vingt-quatre violons’, retained the old layout until after 1700. The earliest violin consorts probably consisted entirely of three-string instruments. Sylvestro di Ganassi dal Fontego (Lettione seconda, 1543/R) gave the sizes pitched a 5th apart, as in wind consorts of the period: the bass was tuned F–c–g, the violas c–g–d', and the violin g–d'–a'.

This simple and logical arrangement was soon complicated by the addition of a fourth string. Lanfranco's system of specifying the intervals between the strings rather than absolute pitches implies the use of a three-string violin and viola tuned as in Ganassi, but with a four-string bass tuned B'–F–c–g. This tuning, with the fourth string at the bottom extending the range downwards, is the one given by the majority of 16th- and 17th-century sources; given the limitations imposed by the plain gut strings of the time, it must have been used on large instruments with long string lengths, such as the two in an illustration of the banquet for the marriage in 1568 of Duke Wilhelm to Renée of Lorraine. C–G–d–aand F–c–g–d' were specified by Praetorius (Syntagma musicum, ii, 1618, 2/1619/R), while Adriano Banchieri (Conclusioni nel suono dell'organo, 1609/R) specified G–d–a–e'. F–c–g–d' and G–d–a–e' were evidently arrived at by adding the fourth string at the top rather than the bottom, and were probably used on instruments made small enough to be played standing or walking along, supported, in the words of Philibert Jambe de Fer (Epitome musical, 1556), ‘with a little hook in an iron ring, or other thing, which is attached to the back of the said instrument quite conveniently, so it does not hamper the player’.

Jambe de Fer was the first writer to record four-string violins and violas, with the fourth string placed at the top as in the modern tunings. It extended their ranges in 1st position to c''' and f'' respectively, their normal top notes in ensemble music throughout the 16th and 17th centuries. However, Lodovico Zacconi (Prattica di musica, 1592/R), copied by Daniel Hitzler (Extract aus der Neuen Musica oder Singkunst, 1623), gave F–c–g–d' as an alternative for the viola, adding the fourth string at the bottom, and this has given rise to the modern notion of the ‘tenor violin’. Large violas tuned in this way may have existed around 1600, but they are not required by the inner parts of 16th- and 17th-century violin consort music, which never go below c, the lowest note on the ordinary viola.

(iii) Dissemination.

(a) Italy.

Little is known about how the violin consort spread outside the Este-Gonzaga circle, for there are few reliable references to it prior to the second quarter of the 16th century, by which time it was widely distributed both sides of the Alps. Northern Italy, repeatedly invaded and fought over by French and imperial armies at the time, was not a promising environment for the creation and survival of documents, and, according to Jambe de Fer, ‘few persons are found who make use of it [the violin] other than those who, by their labour on it, make their living’; it was not played by the literate classes, who might have discussed it in correspondence or literature. We also have no means of knowing whether some of the many unqualified references to viole – such as the ‘quattro suonatori di liuto, viole e altri strumenti’ who appeared in a Bolognese triumphal car in 1512, or the viole heard in a play during the Roman carnival of 1519 – were to violins rather than viols.

The French language is less ambiguous in this respect, since the terms viole and violon seem to have been used consistently to distinguish between the viol and violin from the beginning. It is not surprising, therefore, that the largest body of unambiguous early references to the violin is in the French-language accounts of the dukes of Savoy, who ruled Savoy and Piedmont from Turin. There was a payment to a group of ‘vyollons’ from Vercelli as early as 1523, and dozens of professional groups across northern Italy were evidently using violins by the 1540s and 50s, often in small towns such as Abbiategrasso, Desenzano, Rovereto and Peschiera. A large town such as Milan might support several groups: one day in December 1544 four violinists entertained the Duke of Savoy during the day, and four others in the evening. In general, the Savoy accounts give the impression that by then the violin consort was the most popular choice of professional groups – wind instruments are rarely mentioned – and was being used by quite humble classes of musician.

The violin spread with remarkable rapidity during the first half of the 16th century, in part because it was often cultivated by independent, mobile family groups, who recruited their own personnel, composed or arranged their own music, often made their own instruments, and were prepared to travel great distances to work for the right patron. The largest courts employed enough musicians to allow groups to specialize in particular instruments, though most groups had to be versatile: the six-man Brescian group which Vincenzo Parabosco recommended to the Farnese court in January 1546 played viole da brazo as well as seven types of wind instrument. The normal practice of the time was to use the various instrumental families as alternatives on a musical menu rather than ingredients in a single dish, choosing them according to circumstances: violins were suitable for dancing, viols for serious contrapuntal music and for accompanying the voice, loud wind instruments for playing outdoors, and so on. However, mixed ensembles became more and more common in the second half of the 16th century: Parabosco particularly recommended ‘the combinations of these instruments, one type with another, and combined in various ways with vocal music’ because it was ‘something unusual and so new’.

(b) France and England.

A Parisian woodcut dating from 1516 shows that consorts of bowed instruments were known in France in the second decade of the century, however unlikely the situation (the players are Plato, Aristotle, Galen and Hippocrates) and fanciful the details (see fig.8). A six-man group described variously as ‘viollons, haulxboys et sacquebuteurs’ and ‘violons de la bande françoise’ was already established at the French court by 1529. The musicians all have French names, so they may have come into contact with the violin while accompanying the French court on its forays south of the Alps. But several groups of Italian violinists served in Paris during the 1530s and 40s, and in about 1555 a violin consort led by Balthasar de Beaujoyeux is said to have arrived there from the Milan area.

It is not clear when an orchestral violin band was established at the French court, for a number of received ‘facts’ seem to be no more than hearsay. For instance, the idea that Andrea Amati made a complete set of 38 instruments for Charles IX (reigned 1560–74) seems only to go back to a statement in Jean-Benjamin de La Borde's Essai sur la musique ancienne et moderne (1780/R), and Moens (B1998) has recently challenged the authenticity of the surviving instruments decorated with devices relating to Charles IX (see §V below). In any case, they include small- as well as large-pattern violins, which were probably made for different pitch standards and are unlikely to have been played together in a single band. However, legal agreements between members of the Paris musicians’ guild, the Confrérie de St Julien-des-Ménétriers, show that groups of orchestral size were formed in the middle of the 16th century – there are instances of nine players in 1547, eight in 1551 and 11 in 1552 – and violins are always given as one of the options, usually as an alternative to cornetts, when particular instruments begin to be mentioned in the 1580s.

The violin was apparently brought to England by a group of six Jewish string players from Milan, Brescia and Venice that arrived at Henry VIII's court in the spring in 1540; the institution they founded served successive monarchs up to the beginning of the Civil War in 1642, and during the Restoration it formed the basis of the 24 Violins (see London, fig.11). Surviving documents suggest that violins began to appear in English aristocratic households in the 1560s, and began to be taken up by town waits, theatre groups and the more humble classes of musician around 1600. Most violins played in 16th-century England were probably imported or made by the instrumentalists themselves. Members of the Lupo family, who served in the court violin consort between 1540 and 1642, are known to have made instruments, though the earliest English violin maker so far identified is the Cambridge University wait Benet Pryme: an inventory drawn up at his death in 1557 includes ‘vii vyalles & vyolans’ valued at £3, as well as ‘a nest of unp[er]fyte vyall[e]s’ and ‘unp[er]fytt regall[e]s & oth[e]r lu[m]ber’ – evidently the contents of a workshop.

(c) Germany and Poland.

The same pattern was repeated in German-speaking areas of Europe. The violin consort at Munich was founded by four members of the ‘Bisutzi’ family in the 1550s, and was enlarged around 1568, probably for Duke Wilhelm's marriage with Renata of Lorraine (see Munich, fig.1). The five newcomers, who included three members of the Morari family, may have been part of Renée's entourage; the court at Nancy acquired a set of violins as early as 1534. Italian violinists (including three members of the Ardesi family from Cremona) were at the Viennese court by the 1560s, at Weimar in 1569, at Innsbruck in the 1570s and 80s, and at Hechingen in the Black Forest from 1581. Italian instruments mentioned in inventories include a set of Brescian ‘geig’ at Augsburg (1566), ‘Ein Italinisch Stimwerckh von Geigen, darinn ein discant, drey tenor und ein Bass’ at Baden-Baden (1582), and ‘Funf venedische geugen’ at Hechingen (1609).

The use of the term ‘Geige’ presents another thorny terminological problem. Around 1400 it seems to have been used in opposition to Vedel to distinguish the rebec from the medieval fiddle, just as it was used around 1600 in opposition to Phyolen or Violen to distinguish violins from viols. Early 16th-century German writers such as Sebastian Virdung (1511), Hans Gerle (1532) and Martin Agricola (1529, 5/1545) used the term Geigen for both instruments, qualifying it with grossen and kleinen as in Italian terminology of the period. These treatises illustrate kleinen Geigen with instruments shaped like rebecs, so it is not clear when the term began to be used for the violin. In 1545 Agricola described a third type, the ‘Polischen Geigen’; there are no illustrations but the instrument was apparently played without frets, using fingernails to stop the strings. It had three strings; there was also a four-string bass version. Several violin makers, including Mateusz Dobrucki, Bartłomiej Kiejcher and Marcin Groblicz the elder, are known to have been active in 16th-century Poland, and some apparently 16th-century Polish violins survive, often with non-classic shapes, though not enough research has been done into them (or contemporary German instrument making for that matter) for us to be sure at present what relationship they had with Italian violin-making traditions.

By 1600 the violin consort must have been one of the most familiar sounds in the courts and towns of northern Europe (fig.9). But in the northern Italian courts, its cradle, it seems to have been in decline. Regular violin consorts do not seem to have been employed at the Mantuan and Ferrarese courts in the late 16th century – Mantua hired violini from Parma and Casalmaggiore in 1588, presumably because it had no group of its own – and in 1608 the Florentine court recruited 12 violinists from France. Vincenzo Giustiniani wrote in about 1629 that consorts made up of a single type of instrument, ‘with the uniformity of sound and of the consonances, became tiresome rather quickly and were an incentive to sleep rather than to pass the time on a hot afternoon’. He associated shawms and ‘bands of violins’ with unfashionable milieus such as ‘festivals in small towns and country districts, and also in the great cities at the festivals of the common people’. As discussed below, the fashion in advanced musical circles in Italy was for mixed ensembles, in which the violin was often used without the other members of its family. The lead in the development of violin consorts passed to northern Europe, and it was more than half a century before Italy recovered it.

(iv) Usage.

(a) Consort dance music.

It cannot have been an accident that the violin consort developed at a time of profound change in courtly dance and dance music. Soon after 1500 the pavan and its related saltarello or galliard replaced the old basse danse. The new dance music was composed rather than improvised, and was usually written in simple block chords in four, five or six parts with the tune in the soprano rather than the tenor. There are no sources of this repertory earlier than Six gaillardes et six pavanes and Neuf basses dances deux branles (both Paris, 1530), the first two books in the series of Danceries published by Pierre Attaingnant, though they contain italianate pieces that were probably fairly old by the time they were published; a similar repertory with slightly more antique features survives in D-Mbs Mus.ms.1503h.

As an increasingly popular vehicle for courtly dancing, violins must be regarded as a principal option for these and later collections of consort dance music, such as those published by Jacques Moderne (Lyons, c1542), Tylman Susato (Antwerp, 1551), Giorgio Mainerio (Venice, 1578) and Pierre Phalèse (ii) and Jean Bellère (Antwerp, 1583), though the repertory continued to be written in a neutral style, with limited ranges so that it could be played on as many different types of instruments as possible. Composers only began to specify particular instruments when they began to write in idioms that favoured one rather than another, and that did not happen until after 1600. The odd exception, such as the five-part dances printed in Beaujoyeux's Balet comique de la Royne (Paris, 1582/R; ed. in MSD, xxv, 1971), proves the rule: the accompanying text mentions that they were played on violins in the original performance, though there is nothing intrinsically violinistic about them.

(b) New roles.

The violin family was particularly associated with dance music throughout the 16th century, though it acquired a new role and a new repertory when it began to be used in churches. There are references to Brescian violini playing in church as early as 1530 and 1538, and the Venetian Scuola Grande di S Rocco employed ‘sonadori di lironi’ (probably violins rather than viols, for viols could not be played on the move) in ‘masses and processions’ from at leat 1550, when the governors ordered them to play motets and laudi rather than canzoni and love songs. References to instrumentalists in Italian churches become common from the 1560s, and some of them were violinists: Giuseppe Maccacaro, for instance, was given a post at Verona Cathedral in 1566. They probably initially played instrumental versions of French chansons and motets – a Venetian print of motets by Gombert mentions lyris and tibijs as early as 1539 – but a repertory of ensemble canzonas soon developed. Significantly, two of the earliest composers of canzonas, Marc’Antonio Ingegneri and Florentio Maschera, were violinists, and served respectively as maestri di cappella at the cathedrals in Cremona and Brescia.

The four-part ensemble canzonas of the 1570s and 80s were doubtless played mostly by conventional monochrome consorts, though the development of polychoral music in the 1590s inevitably involved the creation of ensembles mixing cornetts and trombones with violins – which usually involved detaching particular sizes of violin from the rest of the consort. Most of the canzonas and sonatas in Giovanni Gabrieli's Sacrae symphoniae (1597) are for unspecified instruments, though an alto-range violino is specified with cornetts and trombones in two pieces, and there are similar specified parts in two motets of his posthumous Symphoniae sacrae (1615); there are also a number of soprano-range violin parts in Gabrieli's Canzoni et sonate (1615).

Violins were also used in secular mixed ensembles, such as the ones mentioned in the description of the 1568 Munich wedding, or the ones that accompanied intermedi at the Florentine court. In the 1589 intermedia five-part sinfonia by Luca Marenzio was played by ‘dua Arpe, due Lire, un Basso di viola, due Leuti, un Violino, una Viola bastarda, & un Chitarrone’, while a chorus by Cristofano Malvezzi was accompanied by ‘quattro leuti, quattro viole, due bassi, quattro tromboni, due cornetti, una cetera, un salterio, una mandola, l'arciviolata lira, un violino’. A third type of mixed ensemble involving the violin was the sets of passaggi or variations on the soprano parts of vocal music, intended to be accompanied by a keyboard reduction of the original vocal lines; examples were published by Girolamo Dalla Casa (1584) and Giovanni Bassano (1591). This viruoso repertory, the ancestor of the early Baroque violin sonata, was doubtless partially conceived for the agile, expressive violin, though Dalla Casa only specified ‘fiato, & corda, & di voce humana’ while Bassano used the standard formula ‘con ogni sorte di stromenti’ for the solo part.

Histories of instrumentation have traditionally focussed on Italian ad hoc ensembles, though the English mixed or broken consort was arguably more significant, since it was the first to have a scoring that was sufficiently standardized to attract a sizeable repertory that exploited its peculiar characteristics. It was developed in the 1560s and 70s, possibly at Hengrave Hall near Bury St Edmunds, and consisted of violin or treble viol, flute or recorder, bass viol, lute, cittern and bandora. The treble viol is mentioned in some of the early descriptions of the group, and is called for in the collections of mixed consort music published by Thomas Morley (1599, 2/1611) and Philip Rosseter (1609), though all the surviving pictures show a violin, and one of the manuscripts of mixed consort music at GB-Cu has pages headed ‘Treble violan’ and ‘The treble violan parte’. Furthermore, there is some evidence that the word ‘viol’ in Elizabethan English could mean a violin.

Violin, §I: The instrument, its technique and its repertory

(v) Authenticity and surviving instruments.

The study of the early violin relies on written and iconographical sources, as well as on surviving instruments. Dozens of instruments from the violin family preserved in museums and private collections are attributed to 16th-century makers such as Zanetto di Montichiaro, his son Peregrino, and Gasparo da Salò, all from Brescia, the Venetian Ventura Linarol, the Cremonese Andrea Amati, Dorigo Spilmann from Padua, and Gaspar Tieffenbrucker from Bologna and Lyons, as well as to anonymous makers. Attributions to Tieffenbrucker and a number of obscure builders are no longer taken seriously, but other instruments are still used as trustworthy evidence material. Current knowledge on the early violin is based on instruments attributed to about six Italian builders, on some anonymous examples and on a few, mainly Italian, iconographical representations. Surviving instruments of primitive (or ‘rustic’) form are given dates mainly in the first half of the 16th century, while instruments resembling modern violins are said to be from the second half of the century.

These widely accepted views on the early violin need to be questioned. Thorough critical examination of the instruments at stake has cast doubt on their authenticity: signatures on instruments attributed to a single maker usually differ greatly and are often poorly forged; several instruments said to be from the same maker may show substantial differences of design or construction; some components of an instrument have been shown to have different origins or to have been heavily adapted or restored, whether or not with fraudulent intent. The signature, shape and construction of many of these instruments are thus unreliable and therefore useless as evidence material for the study of the 16th-century violin. Proven historical facts uphold this conclusion. For example, while it is true that a Paris account dating from 1572 mentions a ‘violin façon de Cremone’, it is almost certain that the long-held belief that Andrea Amati made an extensive range of instruments for King Charles IX of France is false: close investigation of preserved instruments bearing the arms of Charles IX uncovers too many inconsistencies for them to be from a single maker.

We therefore have no clear picture of the violins made by the early famous masters. Lire da braccio and viols attributed to 16th-century makers have the same problems of authenticity and therefore are also unreliable as reference material.

However, a small number of little-known instruments from the 16th century or the early 17th have been preserved practically in their original form: considered together with iconographical sources and folk instruments with archaic forms from later periods, these can shed new light on the construction and shape of a representative part of late 16th-century violin making. Perhaps the most remarkable of the surviving instruments are a group of five instruments attributed to members of the Klemm family from Randeck, near Freiberg in Saxony, and now in Freiberg Cathedral (where they are held by a group of angel musicians in the roof of one of the chapels; for a detailed description, see Heyde and Liersch, B1980). The group is a rare example of an complete violin consort, consisting of a small three-string discant violin (or Violino piccolo; see fig.10), a treble violin, a tenor violin and two bass violins (all with four strings). These instruments share characteristics that are at variance to those of the violins attributed to famous 16th-century makers, but which often recur in regional varieties of fiddle that persisted in later periods (and in some cases are still played), including the 17th-century Allemannische violin (then common in the Black Forest and German-speaking districts of Switzerland and France; see Adelmann, B1990), the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle, the Swedish nyckelharpa, the Sorbian Klarfidel (Cz. skřpsky) of the jihlava district of the Czech Republic (see also Husla), the Polish mazanki, and 18th- and early 19th-century violins from North and South America. These shared characteristics include the following: a strongly curved belly and back; long and pointed bevelled corners to the ribs; an entirely or partly flat pegbox back; a deeply-cut scroll clearly separated from the pegbox; painted inlaid decorations on the belly and back; lobe and brace forms on the tailpiece and fingerboard; the belly carved with a thickening in the inside (instead of separate bass-bar); the neck fitted directly into the body rather than into a top-block; the absence of a bottom-block; and the ribs anchored into grooves cut into the back and belly.

4. History and repertory, 1600–1820.

(i) The instrument.

(ii) Violinists and repertory.

(iii) Technique and performing practice.

Violin, §I, 4: History and repertory, 1600–1820

(i) The instrument.

(a) Violin makers.

(b) Characteristics of ‘Baroque’ and ‘Classical’ violins.

Violin, §I, 4(i): History and repertory, 1600–1820: The instrument.

(a) Violin makers.

At the dawn of the 17th century, the violin was beginning to develop a role as an expressive and virtuoso solo instrument. New idiomatic repertory appeared at a rate which suggests an almost feverish excitement in its possibilities. Already two towns, Brescia and Cremona, had emerged as pre-eminent in the manufacture of the instrument. Brescia had been known for its string instruments since early in the 16th century; its reputation as a centre for violin making was established principally by two makers, Gasparo da Salò (1540–1609) and Gio Paolo Maggini (bap. 1580; d ?1630–31). Cremona's fame was due at first to Andrea Amati (b before 1511; d 1577) and his descendants. In the early 17th century his sons Antonio and Girolamo (i) were making superb instruments, working together as ‘the brothers Amati’. The violins made by Girolamo's son Nicolò are generally considered the pinnacle of the Amatis' achievement. Although the family's traditions were carried into the next generation by Girolamo (ii), Nicolò's mantle passed to more illustrious pupils outside the family, most notably Antonio Stradivari (b 1644–9; d 1737) but also Andrea Guarneri (1623–98). Guarneri in turn founded a dynasty, the most distinguished member being his grandson Giuseppe Guarneri (‘del Gesù’) (1698–1744). The latter has for the past two centuries been regarded the greatest maker after Stradivari. His contemporary Carlo Bergonzi was followed into the trade by a son and grandsons. Numerous references in writings of the period point to the prestige of acquiring a Cremona violin. English court records from 1637 onwards distinguish between the purchase of Cremona and other, by implication more ordinary, violins. In the early 18th century Roger North observed that so many fine instruments had been imported ‘that some say England hath dispeopled Itally of viollins’.

Distinguished violin makers in other parts of Italy in the late 17th century and the 18th included Matteo Goffriller, Sanctus Seraphin and Domenico Montagnana in Venice, David Tecchler and Michael Platner (fl 1720–50) in Rome, the Gagliano family in Naples, Giovanni Grancino and the Testore family in Milan, Camillo Camilli and Thomas Balestrieri in Mantua, Giovanni Tononi in Bologna and his son Carlo in Bologna and Venice.

One non-Italian maker was of cardinal importance in the 17th century: Jacob Stainer, who worked in Absam in the Tyrol. His characteristically high-arched violins are easily distinguished from Cremonese models and were greatly prized (and imitated) in the 17th and 18th centuries (for illustration see Stainer, Jacob; see also fig.13a below). Two other centres were the source of a large number of well-made, though not especially sought-after, violins. Mittenwald in Germany became identified with violin making in the 17th and 18th centuries through the work of Mathias Klotz and his descendents, and to this day it has sustained a reputation as a centre for violin making (and for the teaching of the craft). Mirecourt in France had similar associations in the 17th and 18th centuries, though many makers who learned their skills there moved on to Paris. (The last and most famous of these was Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume, who left in 1818.) By the early 19th century Paris had in fact taken over as the violin-making capital of the world; Nicolas Lupot, especially, was thought to have absorbed the principles of Stradivari better than the makers still working in Cremona. Fine instruments were produced by his friend and business associate François-Louis Pique and by his apprentice Charles-François Gand. (Paris was also identified with bows of the most advanced design and superb craftsmanship thanks to the work of the Tourte family.)

Preferences in the late 18th century do not match up with the modern view that Stradivari represents the doyen of violin makers. The 1785 edition of the Encyclopédie Méthodique names Jacob Stainer as the maker of ‘greatest reputation’ followed by the Amatis (and principally Andrea and the brothers Amati rather than Nicolò). ‘Among the skilled makers of more recent date’, Stradivari is singled out as having made ‘a very large number of good violins; the merit of his instruments consists in their masculine, powerful, and melodious tone’. This hierarchy was endorsed in the later 18th century by the violin makers Antonio Bagatella (1786) and Giovanni Antonio Marchi (1786) and, in a less clear-cut way, the theorist Francesco Galeazzi (1791). The change in fashion is thought to have started in France, thanks to G.B. Viotti's persuasive playing in the 1780s on Stradivari and Guarneri instruments. Michel Woldemar expressed a preference for Stradivari and Guarneri over Amati and Stainer because of their more vigorous sound but also because he considered the less pronounced arching more convenient for holding the violin when playing virtuoso music. A history of violin making written by the Abbé Sibire (1757–1827), La Chélonomie, ou Le parfait luthier (Paris, 1806), culminates in a paean to Stradivari:

I prostrate myself in front of the patriarch of violin makers. … If in his century a competition had been staged in which all the great violin makers had been judged by their best works, the five Amatis would have obtained honourable mention, Stainer would have been runner-up, but without hesitation and unanimously, Stradivari would have been awarded the prize. … The first six are simply admirable, each one in a particular aspect of the art, while the last is perfection itself.

That reputation remains intact: ‘Stradivari’ has become a byword for perfection and value.

Violin, §I, 4(i): History and repertory, 1600–1820: The instrument.

(b) Characteristics of ‘Baroque’ and ‘Classical’ violins.

Violins of the Baroque period are distinct in a number of basic features from their modern counterparts. The neck, usually shorter than on modern instruments, projects straight out from the body so that its upper edge continues the line of the belly's rim (see fig.13). The neck is fixed by nails (or occasionally screws) through the top-block rather than mortised into it as in modern instruments. The fingerboard is wedge-shaped and, again, shorter than the modern fingerboard. Bridges were cut to a more open pattern and were very slightly lower. The bass-bar was shorter and lighter and the soundpost thinner. Violins (and violas) lacked chin rests. The tone of these instruments is brighter, clearer, less loud and less ‘mellow’ than that of their modern counterparts.

Such a summary, necessarily peppered with inexact comparative adjectives, may be useful enough; but getting beyond it is no easy matter. Throughout the period all these instruments underwent change, which took place unevenly in different parts of Europe. To acknowledge this is to recognize the term ‘Baroque violin’ as merely a serviceable generalization. Instruments which have never been altered are scarce and may be of dubious value as models: their survival intact may be attributable to their lack of appeal to discriminating players. Contradictions and approximations in other sorts of evidence create difficulties. The James Talbot manuscript of around 1695 (GB-Och Music MS 1187) gives measurements for a whole range of wind and string instruments but its laconic notes are sometimes tantalizingly inconclusive. Another late 17th-century manuscript, the violin method attributed to Sébastien de Brossard (F-Pn Rés.Vm), contains a few apparently detailed measurements, but these are surprising. The bridge, for example, seems thinner rather than thicker than modern bridges: ‘about a demie-ligne’ (1:125 mm) for the base, and the top should be ‘thin, but not too much so or it will cut the strings’.

The term ‘Classical violin’ is another convenient generalization. The key features of violins that were used in the second half of the 18th century and the early years of the 19th were the size of the soundpost and bass-bar and the length of the neck and fingerboard. (Chin rests and shoulder rests still did not exist.) Not surprisingly, these dimensions on Classical instruments lie mostly somewhere between 17th-century and modern averages. This is not to say that the Classical violin should be regarded as a ‘transitional’ instrument, at least not without acknowledging that the violin has always been and continues to be in a state of transition.

Hardly any extant soundposts can be positively identified as late-18th-century, but the manuscript treatise on violin making completed by the Bolognese violin maker G.A. Marchi (fl from c1755) in 1786 suggests that some makers must have been inserting soundposts as large as the modern standard (6·5 mm), with a diameter ‘such that it can only just pass through the f-holes’. More substantial bass-bars were used as the century progressed – but the picture is far from simple. Surviving examples show great variation within an overall trend towards increase in mass. Compared with Baroque period models, original necks from the later 18th century tend to be longer and slightly tilted back. Fingerboards show considerable variation in length (and besides, some late-18th-century players were using instruments built long before). Mozart owned an early-18th-century Mittenwald violin which still has its original fingerboard (long enough to play up to d'''). An unaltered 1783 violin by Antonio Gragnani (Smithsonian, Washington, DC) allows for a range of a 12th above the open string, that is, up to b'''. Marchi noted that it was better to copy longer fingerboards ‘because some players today are so good that they can exploit the whole length’. Galeazzi advised that fingerboards should be long enough to produce the note two octaves above the open string.

Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the most sought-after violins were those made in the previous two centuries, especially Cremonese instruments. But virtually all of these have been altered to bring them into line with later ideas about tonal quality and strength in a violin. Quite a lot of updating must have taken place as an incidental by-product of repairs and more drastic alterations. Many over-confident makers and repairers took it into their heads to adjust the thicknesses of backs and bellies on instruments that came into their workshops. By Marchi's own account, he made comparatively few new instruments since he was kept very busy repairing and ‘improving the quality and strength of tone’ of old instruments. (He mentions in particular reducing cellos to smaller forms.)

Antonio Bagatella, in his Regole per la costruzione de' violini (Padua, 1786), said that he got his break as a violin maker because Tartini sent many violins to him for adjustment. He described altering a great many old violins to give them either a ‘voce humana’ (suitable for solos) or a ‘voce argentina’ (for orchestral playing). The essay gives dimensions for the neck (virtually modern length) and bass-bar (puzzingly small), and describes in detail how the soundpost should be fitted; but it never even hints that those found in older instruments would need altering. Bagatella described a gadget he had invented for ensuring that the neck is correctly aligned, and from this it is clear that he was still using the traditional way of fixing the neck to the body with nails through the top-block.

The Hills, in their pioneering study of Stradivari (B1902), quoted from the journal of Dom Vicenzo Ascensio who described alterations he made to the quintet of Stradivari instruments at the Spanish court in the 1783. In the interests of what he called ‘improving the tone’ Ascensio almost certainly modernized the dimensions of neck and bass-bar (though claiming to be following Stradivari's principles). But this was all mixed up with more barbaric acts; Ascensio, too, ‘corrected’ thicknesses, as shown by his description of repairs to the violoncello:

I pieced the centre, replaced the bar by one adjusted to mathematical proportions based on that of Stradivari. I corrected the thicknesses, pieced the four corner-blocks, took the back off and inserted a piece in the centre, as it was too thin. I had to replace the neck, which I did in the most careful manner. I then adjusted the instrument, the tone of which was rendered excellent by all these changes.

Marchi, Bagetella and Ascensio were among many craftsmen working in the second half of the 18th century who participated (at least piecemeal) in what we now see as something of a revolution: the adaptation of old instruments to modern requirements. The nonchalance with which they write about what would now be considered fundamental transformations in an instrument suggests that much of the modernization must have been carried out with no other aim than to apply current best practice in the craft. It was only from the early 19th century onwards that the practice of replacing bass-bars and resetting necks was explicitly acknowledged. In 1806 the Abbé Sibire wrote at some length on the subject in La Chélonomie. He described these structural changes as a response to changes in musical expression:

I shall confine myself hereafter to a daily occurrence …. It is a kind of restoration (loosely called) which is purely accessory and yet at the same time crucial. This is a process which does not imply the slightest deterioration and yet which virtually every old violin, no matter how well preserved it is in other ways, could not avoid: REBARRING. The revolution which music has experienced needs to be replicated in instrument making; when the first has set the style, the other must follow. … Formerly it was the fashion to have necks well elevated, bridges and fingerboards extremely low, fine strings, and a moderate tone. Then the bass bar, that necessary evil in the instrument, could be short and thin because it was sufficient for it to have enough strength to sustain the weight of five to six pounds which the strings exerted on it. But since then music, in becoming perfect, has placed a demand on violin making. The tilting back of the neck, the raising of the bridge, of the fingerboard, and the amplification in sound, necessitate increasing by a full third the resistant force. Repairers have only one choice: strengthening the old bar, or replacing it with a new one.

Vincenzo Lancetti (Notizie biografiche, Milan, 1823) suggested that the process of replacing necks was in full swing by the end of the 18th century and implied that this started in Paris: ‘About 1800 the Brothers Mantegazza were restorers of instruments who were often entrusted by French and Italian artists to lengthen the necks of their violins, after the Paris fashion, an example which was followed by amateurs and professionals all over North Italy’.

Violin strings in the 17th and 18th centuries were usually gut, although metal stringing was known and liked for a short time at the beginning of the Baroque period. In his Syntagma musicum, ii (2/1619) Praetorius expressed the opinion that ‘when brass and steel strings are used on these instruments they produce a softer and lovelier tone than other strings’. There were various types of gut string. Exactly what 17th-century musicians understood by such terms as ‘minikins’, ‘gansars’, ‘catlines’, ‘Lyons’ and ‘Pistoy basses’ is not absolutely clear, but the vehemence with which these were variously recommended or condemned indicates that the distinctions were important. The invention in the late 20th century of strings made of roped gut to which the term ‘catline’ has been appropriated is not based on secure historical evidence, although they can sound good. By the early 18th century gut strings wound with silver were being used on various instruments. These appear to have been invented in Bologna in the mid-17th century (see Bonta, B1977). They must have reached England by 1664 since John Playford (i) advertised them then as a ‘late invention … which sound much better and lowder than common Gut Strings, either under the Bow or Finger’. Because they allowed for an increase in mass without an increase in diameter (and consequent loss of flexibility), covered strings could produce good-sounding bass notes from a shorter vibrating length than pure gut strings of the same pitch. For the violin this meant a more resonant and refined-sounding G string. There is, however, evidence that in parts of Europe (notably Italy and Germany) violinists continued using pure gut G strings until well into the 18th century. French sources mention strings which are half covered (‘demi-filée’ i.e. wound with a single open spiral of metal thread). The manuscript treatise attributed to Brossard recommends them for the D string. Such strings are extremely resonant and mediate well between the covered G string and a pure gut A. (See also String, §3.)

For discussion of bows of the period see Bow, §I, 3 and 4.

Violin, §I, 4: History and repertory, 1600–1820

(ii) Violinists and repertory.

(a) Italy.

(b) England.

(d) France.

Violin, §I, 4(ii): History and repertory, 1600–1820: Violinists and repertory

(a) Italy.

If violin making was virtually an Italian preserve at the beginning of the 17th century, so too was the development of an idiomatic soloistic repertory for the instrument. It is, of course, coincidence that the greatest stile moderno composer, Monteverdi, came from Cremona – though his realization of the violin's rhetorical power and his exploration of its technical resources in such works as Orfeo (1607) or Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda (1624) may owe something to his origins. Works by other composers of the period also seem to be born of excitement at the possibilities of the instrument: notably, Tarquinio Merula, also Cremonese, G.P. Cima from Milan; Salamone Rossi from Mantua, one of Monteverdi's colleagues there; Biagio Marini, a Brescian composer and instrumentalist who also worked under Monteverdi, this time in Venice; Marco Uccellini from Modena; Maurizio Cazzati, associated primarily with Bologna; Giovanni Legrenzi, whose career took him from Bergamo to Ferrara and elsewhere; and Carlo Ambrogio Lonati, who played throughout Italy. Their contributions to the repertory, and many others, are surveyed in Apel (F1983). Their works poured from the presses in Venice (which dominated Italian music publishing in the first 60 years of the century), and then also from Bologna and, to a lesser extent, other Italian cities. Allsop (D1996) noted that the paucity of surviving manuscripts means that we are hugely dependent on printed sources for our knowledge of 17th-century Italian violin music, which may give us a distorted view of the technical achievements of these composer-violinists. It is possible that Italian violinists were just as adept at multiple stops, for example, as their German confrères; but the limitations of movable type ensured that, if this was so, it has not been recorded.

In the early part of the century the terms ‘canzona’, ‘sonata’ and ‘sinfonie’ were largely interchangeable. Many pieces were based on popular songs (and were often given titles which point to their origin); others (with titles like ‘Sonata sopra l'aria di Ruggerio’) were variations on stock themes or bass lines (the numerous ciaccone and passacaglias). Single-movement pieces, in which contrasting sections initiated by new thematic material or different metre run on one into the next, gave way in the 1620s to single-movement sonatas with sections separated by full cadences. In the early 1640s the first sonatas divided into distinct movements appeared. (See also Sonata, §§I–II.)

Almost all publications were miscellanies for different combinations of instruments, often unspecified (‘per ogni sorte d'istrumenti’) and often, at least until around 1640, naming cornett as an alternative to the violin. Hindsight, moulded by the way these genres developed in the early years of the 18th century, has encouraged the notion that two combinations were especially important in the violin repertory of the Baroque era: the trio sonata and the sonata for solo violin and continuo. Any examination of the full range of violin music of the period, particularly before 1650, gives a rather different picture: these were only two possibilities in a wide range of dispositions. It was not until the later 17th century that collections of pieces for any one standardized combination involving violin appeared. Corelli's orderly arrangement of Sonate a tre in opp.1–4 (Rome, 1681–94) was a new development in the 1680s. The inadequate modern term ‘trio sonata’ is used to describe music written both for two treble instruments and basso continuo and for two treble instruments with a more thematically significant bass part plus, often, a continuo part which may be identical to, or a simplification of, the melodic bass. Italian practice in the 17th century (even then not properly understood outside Italy) was to designate pieces a2, a3 etc. by the number of melodic lines, disregarding any basso continuo part. A sonata a2 may well involve two violins and basso continuo while a sonata a3 might also require only three players, not four.

Italian virtuosity was exported as violinists and composers for violin moved around Europe. G.B. Buonamente left Mantua to work at the Viennese court. Biagio Marini spent long periods in Düsseldorf between 1623 and 1645, and Carlo Farina worked in Dresden with Schütz. The Florentine G.B. Viviani spent substantial periods between 1656 and 1676 at the court at Innsbruck. It is in the eccentricities of these composers that the connections are most easily seen; virtually every special effect (see §(iii) (e) below) in Farina's Capriccio stravagante (1627) is matched in J.J. Walther's Hortulus chelicus (1688), except col legno, which was, however, used by H.I.F. von Biber. However, these are obviously symptoms of a more general cross-fertilization, a shared enthusiasm for the violin's potential. Other Italian composers of violin music, not necessarily violinists themselves, who spent part of their careers north of the Alps include G.M. and G.F. Cesare, Tarquinio Merula, Massimiliano Neri, Antonio Bertali and P.A. Ziani. The violinist and composer Giuseppe Torelli, most closely associated with the orchestra at S Petronio in Bologna, was from at least 1698 to the end of 1699 maestro di concerto for the Margrave of Brandenburg in Ansbach.

The steady stream of musicians into Italy was another way in which the Italian style was disseminated. Schütz had two periods of study in Venice, first with Gabrieli and then with Monteverdi. Johann Rosenmüller spent more than 20 years working in Venice. As a young man Johann Jakob Walther entered the service of Cosimo III de Medici in Florence. The influx of foreign musicians seeking instruction, inspiration and good instruments in Italy reached flood proportions by the later 17th century, especially after Corelli came to prominence; notably, Georg Muffat, N.A. Strungk and J.G. Pisendel all studied in Rome.

Arcangelo Corelli had an extraordinary influence. To him more than to any other composer of the central Baroque period may be attributed the acceptance of certain instrumental genres as deserving of composers' attention: what we now call trio sonatas, continuo sonatas and concerti grossi. He thus had a classicizing role; and this extended beyond the broader structures into musical detail of all kinds. Sir John Hawkins was later to comment that ‘Men remembered, and would refer to passages … as to a classic author’ (1776). Corelli's reputation as a violinist was already well established by 1686 when the Roman agent of Francesco II d'Este reported that ‘There is much doubt that he would leave Rome because he is so highly esteemed, cherished, and paid here’. The op.5 violin sonatas, published in Rome in 1700, were eagerly awaited by a European-wide audience. The collection went through a prodigious number of editions in the course of the 18th century. The edition published in Amsterdam by Roger in 1710 purporting to contain embellishments for the Adagio movements ‘as M. Corelli himself plays them’ (for an illustration from the third edition of 1715, see Roger, Estienne), was controversial from the outset; whether or not the ornamentation was supplied by Corelli (which seems likely), the publication provides evidence of the performing practice expectations surrounding Italianate slow movements in the period.

Corelli's op.5 provided a model for many other sonata collections. Francesco Geminiani's op.1 sonatas (London, 1716), though technically more advanced than Corelli's op.5, acknowledge a debt to them in the opening sonata, which has a first movement alternating between short adagio passages and brilliant allegro passage-work. Other works also take their points of departure from one or another of Corelli's sonatas. Tartini's L'arte dell'arco (1758) is a set of 38 variations on the Gavotte from op.5 no.10. The Dissertazioni … sopra l'opera quinta del Corelli by Francesca Maria Veracini is a more back-handed compliment since, as J.W. Hill (The Life and Works of Francesco Mária Veracini, Ann Arbor, 1979) demonstrated, it consists of reworkings of the op.5 sonatas to enhance the compositional structures (tightening up the counterpoint etc.). Telemann's Sonate metodiche (Hamburg, 1728 and 1732) provide models (rather different in approach from the Roger edition) for playing Corelli-style Adagios, while the Sonates corellisantes (Hamburg, 1735) represent a more general tribute.

The violinists who either learned from Corelli or acknowledged his influence were legion. According to Roger North, ‘divers young gentlemen [travelled] into Italy, and after having learnt of the best violin masters, particularly Corelli, returned with flourishing hands; and for their delicate contour of graces in the slow parts, and the stoccata, and spirit in other kinds of movements, they were admired and imitated’. Many Corelli disciples (both pupils and other violinists who were perceived as wearing his mantle) made their careers outside Italy. Giovanni Steffano Carbonelli (d 1752), Pietro Castrucci and his brother Prospero all, like Geminiani, ended up in London, Michele Mascitti in Paris, and P.A. Locatelli in Amsterdam. Locatelli’s L'arte del violino, 12 concertos with written-out cadenzas and 24 virtuoso caprices for unaccompanied violin, have earned him the title ‘the Paganini of the 18th century’. Corelli's pupil Giovanni Battista Somis taught Jean-Marie Leclair l'aîné, Louis-Gabriel Guillemain and Gaetano Pugnani, who, in turn, was Viotti's teacher. Geminiani's pupils included Matthew Dubourg, Michael Christian Festing and Charles Avison. Many of these musicians seem to have regarded the ability to perform a Corelli sonata as the touchstone of musical sensitivity. Hubert Le Blanc wrote that ‘one of the most beautiful things to hear was an Adagio of Corelly played à la Geminiani’. Though Locatelli was famous primarily for the strength of his playing, his rendering of the opening Adagio of Corelli op.5 no.4 was, according to Blainville, enough to make a canary fall from its perch in a swoon of pleasure.

Unlike Corelli, Antonio Vivaldi died in reduced circumstances, and his music fell out of fashion within a few decades. Yet he had been both prolific and popular. He had a formidable technique: in 1715 Uffenbach heard him play a cadenza in which ‘he brought his fingers up to only a straw's distance from the bridge, leaving no room for the bow – and that on all four strings with imitations and incredible speed’. Two enduringly important Vivaldi collections were published in Amsterdam during his lifetime: L'estro armonico in 1711 and Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione (the collection which includes the ‘Four Seasons’ concertos) around 1725. The first is an orderly presentation of four concertos each for four, two and one solo violins (some also with cello obbligato). Forkel asserted that Bach studied these works as models, and Bach transcribed several of them as harpsichord concertos or solo organ works. Quantz (in his autobiography of 1754–5) also said that ‘the magnificent ritornellos of Vivaldi served me as excellent models’. Certainly Vivaldi established a three-movement template for the solo concerto which was to become the norm during the 18th century. The ‘Four Seasons’ concertos prompted imitations (G.A. Guido's Le quattro staggioni dell'anno op.3) and arrangements (Nicolas Chédeville's Le printems ou Les saisons amusantes, 1739). They became a standard part of violinists’ repertory; Michel Corrette (c1782) gave fingerings for some of the more difficult passages (this is not the only work by Vivaldi to have received his attention in this way).

Giuseppe Tartini was a figure of immense importance. His early biographers insist that, after hearing F.M. Veracini play in Venice (probably in 1716), Tartini went into seclusion for several years in order to perfect his technique (which, as his more than 125 concertos reveal, was prodigious). In 1721 he became first violinist at the basilica of S Antonio in Padua. In about 1728 he founded what became known as the ‘School of Nations’, attracting students from all over Europe, including Pietro Nardini. Some of his teaching principles are encapsulated in the Traité des agréments de la musique (Paris, 1771), which also survives in various manuscript versions copied by his pupils and in the letter to Signora Maddelena Lombardini, published in Venice in 1770 and then in English (1771), French (1773) and German (1784) translations. Quantz, who had heard him in Prague around 1723, recorded his impressions in his autobiography: Tartini is a violinist of the first order; he produces very beautiful sounds. His fingers and bow obey him equally well. He executes the greatest difficulties with ease. He does trills and double trills with all his fingers perfectly and he plays in high positions a great deal. But his performance has nothing moving about it; his taste is not noble and often it is absolutely contrary to good style.

Tartini's favourite and most illustrious pupil was Nardini, known particularly for the beauty of his tone and his expressive performance of Adagio movements. Nardini, in turn, taught or influenced many others who were to affect the development of violin performance and repertory: Thomas Linley (ii), Antonio Lolli, Pollani (the teacher of Pierre Baillot), Bartolomeo Campagnoli (whose violin method was influential) and Cambini (another author of a violin method). Nardini and Lolli were both employed at the Stuttgart court in the 1760s; Lolli subsequently toured throughout Europe.

Gaetano Pugnani was similarly influential. His playing was characterized by power and richness. He is said to have adopted a straighter, longer bow and used thicker strings. Viotti, who came to prominence at the end of a two-year European tour with his teacher, described himself as ‘pupil of the famous Pugnani’.

Violin, §I, 4(ii): History and repertory, 1600–1820: Violinists and repertory

(b) England.

In the first half of the 17th century, expert playing of the violin (as distinct from the viol) in England seems largely to have been confined to the court. The major strides in the development of violin technique in England seem to have been prompted by players from Europe. The best performers, at least until the 1630s, were such French imports as Jacques Cordier (also known as Bocan) and Stephen Nau (who was appointed composer for the violins, and effectively leader of the violin ensemble, early in the reign of Charles I). Davis Mell, one of the violinists under Nau, was the composer of twelve ‘suites’ (GB-Och Mus. 433) and various pieces in Playford miscellanies (notably The Division Violin, 1684). These require good left-hand facility (though never extending beyond 3rd position) and agile bowing for rapid division work. There was a new wave of French fashion after the Restoration when Charles II (who had spent his formative years in France) reconstituted the court violin band as an ensemble of 24 violins under the directorship of Louis Grabu. Foreign influences were not exclusively French. About 1656 the German violinist Thomas Baltzar came to England after the dissolution of Queen Christina's Swedish court, and about 15 years later the Italian Nicola Matteis (i) arrived. These two virtuosos revolutionized English attitudes to violin playing. The diarist John Evelyn recorded that the English had considered such players as Mell ‘as excellent in that profession as any were thought in Europe’ until Baltzar came on to the scene. 18 years later, he described Matteis's virtuosity with a sense of wonder, saying that he ‘seem'd to be so spiritato'd & plaied such ravishing things on a ground as astonished us all’. A group of solo violin pieces by Baltzar (GB-Ob, Mus. Sch. F.573) require considerable facility in chordal playing and string crossing. Matteis's four books of airs (1676 and 1685) demonstrate a highly developed technique and a fiery imagination.

By the end of the century Italian violin composition had an enormous impact on English taste. Purcell three times acknowledged the importance of Italian models for his own work: in the prefaces to the Sonnata's of III Parts (1683) and Dioclesian (1691), and in the section on composition he contributed to the 12th edition of Playford's An Introduction to the Skill of Music (1694). In the 18th century London, as the largest and most cosmopolitan city in Europe, became a mecca for foreign virtuosos, many of whom (Geminiani, F.M. Veracini, Felice Giardini and Viotti) settled there at least for a time. Native English violinists seem not to have been able to hold their own against this sort of competition. Had he not died in a boating accident at the age of 22, Thomas Linley (ii) might have been an exception to this trend. Linley, an able composer, studied with Nardini in Florence (and struck up a warm friendship with Mozart whom he met there).

Violin, §I, 4(ii): History and repertory, 1600–1820: Violinists and repertory

(c) Germany and Austria.

German violin playing in the first half of the 17th century seems, on the basis of the surviving repertory, to have been comparable to that in England. In fact, such English expatriates as Thomas Simpson and William Brade had a significant influence in the first quarter of the century, though their published works consisted essentially of non-virtuoso consort dance arrangements. Brade knew Johann Schop (i) and taught Nicolaus Bleyer, whose variations on English Mars (c1650) are among the earliest German pieces for violin and bass. It was the next generation of Germans who, inspired by Italian violinists, emerged as virtuosos. The progression from technically-modest consort repertory to extremely demanding soloistic showpieces can be traced through the works of a succession of violinists employed at the court of the Elector of Saxony at Dresden. J.W. Furchheim (in Dresden by 1651), J.J. Walther and J.P. von Westhoff (both there from 1674), N.A. Strungk (from 1688) and J.G. Pisendel (from 1712) might well be considered a ‘Dresden school’. Of these, Walther, Westhoff and possibly Pisendel take their place alongside J.H. Schmelzer and H.I.F. von Biber in the first rank of violinist-composers of the 17th century. Schmelzer seems to have been playing at the Viennese court from around 1635, though he had to wait until 1649 (the year in which Antonio Bertali was appointed Kapellmeister) for an official appointment. In 1679 Schmelzer was himself promoted to Kapellmeister. He was the first non-Italian to hold the post, and his Sonatae unarum fidium (1664) were the first published sonatas for solo violin and continuo by a non-Italian. His music is extrovert and technically demanding. In 1660 Schmelzer was described by J.J. Müller as ‘the most famous and nearly most distinguished violinist in all Europe’. Biber (1644–1704) may have studied with Schmelzer and was certainly well aware of his achievements; the opening of Biber's sonata ‘La Pastorella’ is a transcription using double stops of Schmelzer's trio sonata of the same name. A penchant for multiple stops and chordal playing (evident in both the ‘Rosary’ or ‘Mystery’ Sonatas (c1676) and the Sonatae violino solo of 1681) distinguish Biber's writing from Schmelzer's.

Walther seems to have taken a somewhat competitive attitude to Biber. His preface to Hortulus chelicus (1688) claims that the collection is based on a sound orthodox technique rather than ostentatious virtuoso tricks such as ‘squeaking on two or more strings falsely tuned ad nauseam' – a barb clearly aimed at Biber's fondness for scordatura writing (see §(iii) (e) below). For all that, Hortulus chelicus and the earlier Scherzi da violino solo (1676) provide a compendium of virtuoso devices; they represent the technical summit of German violin playing at that time.

As a composer of violin works, J.S. Bach neglected the main genres of his age. The solo violin concertos (bwv1041 and 1042) and the concerto for two violins (bwv1043) are in the Vivaldian mould, though they far outstrip their models in musical content (especially in harmonic complexity). But with the exception of that contained in the Musical Offering there are no authentic trio sonatas involving violin, and there are just two continuo sonatas, dating from early in Bach's career. He did, though, invent new genres of his own. The six sonatas for harpsichord and violin (bwv1014–19) are the earliest such compositions, effectively trio sonatas in which the harpsichord acts as both second violin and bass. There is a significant repertory of unaccompanied violin music before Bach's (1720): by Thomas Baltzar (in GB-Ob Mus. Sch. 573), J.P. von Westhoff (a suite for violin ‘sans basse’, 1683, and six partitas, 1696), Biber (Passacaglia, c1676) and J.G. Pisendel (unaccompanied sonata, ?1716). But nothing approaches the Bach solo violin sonatas and partitas (bwv1001–6) either for musical architecture or for a comprehensive exploration of the technical and expressive capabilities of the violin.

Pisendel was a pivotal figure in the history of the violin in 18th-century Germany. A pupil of Giuseppe Torelli (at Ansbach) in his youth, Pisendel travelled in the entourage of the Elector of Saxony to both France and Italy where, in 1716, he took lessons from Vivaldi. His seven violin concertos show his indebtedness to this composer. Pisendel was influential in what is sometimes referred to as the Prussian school. Quantz paid tribute to his playing of Adagio movements; it may well be Pisendel's practice which is codified in Quantz's systematic account (Versuch, 1752) of how to decorate such movements. Pisendel taught Johann Gottlieb Graun, who in turn taught Franz Benda, a prolific composer for the violin who was also famous for his affecting performance of Adagios (some of his ornamentations survive).

The four great composers of the classical Viennese School all studied the violin. Joseph Haydn did so at St Stephen's in Vienna during his childhood, and though he was to describe himself later as ‘no conjuror on any instrument’, his writing for the violin shows a player's understanding. W.A. Mozart doubtless began his instruction on the instrument with his father, whose Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule (1756) was the most comprehensive work on violin playing yet to have been published. Mozart's abilities as a violinist were exceptional, even though after he settled in Vienna in 1781 he chose to concentrate as a performer on the piano (he continued to play the viola in informal chamber music gatherings). From 1789 to 1792 Beethoven was employed as a viola player in the Bonn court orchestra; Schubert, during his years as a pupil at the Imperial and Royal City College in Vienna, became leader of the first violins in Josef von Spaun's student orchestra. All four wrote works for violin and orchestra. The last three (k216, k218 and k219) of the violin concertos Mozart wrote in Salzburg in 1775 give cause to wonder what masterpieces might have ensued had he contributed to this genre during his Vienna years. The Beethoven violin concerto (op.61, 1806), a work driven by musical rather than virtuoso imperatives, has been a cornerstone of the repertory ever since Pierre Baillot and Joseph Joachim rescued it from near oblivion in the mid-19th century. Perhaps the greatest contribution of the Viennese composers to violin repertory is in chamber music. The string quarters of all four are of exceptional importance. In his violin and piano sonatas Mozart transformed the accompanied sonata into the duo sonata. This development was consolidated and extended in the ten great sonatas by Beethoven, whose ‘Kreutzer’ sonata (op.47, 1803) establishes a new register both technically and musically for the genre; Beethoven described it as being ‘written in a very virtuoso style like a concerto’.

Violin, §I, 4(ii): History and repertory, 1600–1820: Violinists and repertory

(d) France.

The link between dance and violin playing dominated the history of the instrument in 17th-century France. French dancing masters, for whom violin playing was essentially an ancillary skill, were in demand all over Europe and in England. The music they composed was simple, often little more than an assemblage of stock melodic formulae subsequently scored for five-part string ensemble. In this form, though, the music and their performances became the envy of Europe. The Ballet de la délivrance de Renaud, performed at the French court in 1617, mentions 24 violins playing together (a number which may owe less to any musical rationale than to an allusion to the courtly ensemble of 24 musicians surrounding the throne in Revelation v.8). Exactly when this became a fixed ensemble (as distinct from a group assembled for a particular occasion) is unclear but there seems no particular reason for specifying 1626, the date so often given. By the time Lully came to prominence at the French court, the 24 Violons du Roi were an established court orchestra; they remained an important institution into the 18th century, although under Lully the élite ‘Petits Violons’ (c1656–c1664), otherwise known as ‘La Petite Bande’, soon surpassed them.

The next generation began writing music which made virtuoso demands on performers. Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre composed two sonatas for violin, bass viol and continuo (c1695) which contain the first documented use of double stops in French violin music. In 1704 Michele Mascitti, who had recently settled in Paris, published the first of nine collections of violin sonatas and François Duval his first book of Sonates; in 1705 Jean-Féry Rebel published his Pièces de violon avec la basse continue. Both Rebel and Duval were members of the court orchestra, but both were influenced by Italian practices. Michel Corrette (1753) claimed that Rebel heard and was inspired by the first Paris performance of Corelli's sonatas. He also asserted that these works seemed too difficult at first for French violinists and that Duval and Baptiste, who studied with Corelli in Rome, were among the first to master them.

In the next generation of violinists two figures stand out: Jean Baptiste Senaillé and Jean-Marie Leclair l'aîné. Senaillé, who is thought to have studied with G.A. Piani, published five books of violin sonatas between 1710 and 1727. Senaillé's music exploits a wide range of bowstrokes and requires a well-developed left-hand technique (reaching 7th position on the fingerboard). In 1738 the Mercure credited him with the development of violin playing in France, claiming that his music was so attractive that violinists were keen to master its technical difficulties. Senaillé taught other important violinist-composers, notably Jacques Aubert and Louis-Gabriel Guillemain.

J.-M. Leclair l'aîné began as a promising dancer and violinist in Lyons. But after publishing his op.1 violin sonatas in Paris in 1723 he went to Turin, where he studied with Giovanni Battista Somis. He performed with Locatelli in Kassel in 1728 before returning to Paris where, for the next eight years or so, he was a frequent performer at the Concert Spirituel. His sonatas are demanding by any standards, ranging up to 8th position and requiring an agile left hand with such devices as double trills in combination with a wide vocabulary of bowstrokes. His younger brother, Jean-Marie Leclair le cadet, spent most of his career in his native Lyons, but his set of violin sonatas, op.1 (1739) require a sophisticated technique.

Two other brothers associated with the coming-of-age of violin virtuosity in France were Louis and François Francoeur, both members of the 24 Violons. Jean-Joseph Cassenéa de Mondonville further extended the technical demands of the French violin sonata, especially in his sonatas for violin and continuo (1733) and Les sons harmoniques (1738). His Pièces de clavecin en sonates avec accompagnement de violon (1734) are among the earliest examples of the accompanied sonata, and, at least from the violinist's point of view, the most musically satisfying.

While in the late 17th century and the early 18th French virtuoso violin playing and composition were dependent on Italian teachers and Italian models, by the 1740s an independent French violin school was thoroughly established. The key figures had been taught by their compatriots. L'abbé le fils studied with J.-M. Leclair, and at the age of 14 made his debut at the Concert Spirituel playing a Leclair duo with the 13-year-old Pierre Gaviniés. Gaviniés's Vingt-quatre matinées (pieces for solo violin in all keys) indicate an advanced technique. He had a huge influence on the next generation of violinists in France; he taught Marie-Alexandre Guénin, Abbé Robineau (who went on to study with Lolli in Naples), Simon Leduc and Nicolas Capron.

In the last 20 years of the 18th century Paris could lay claim to being the violin capital of Europe; the greatest makers worked there and the greatest performers gave concerts there. Most importantly, in 1782 G.B. Viotti made a spectacularly successful début at the Concert Spirituel. Viotti, who made Paris his base for ten years (until political developments forced him to leave for England), had a profound influence. His preferences for the bows of François Tourte and the violins of Stradivari made them the most sought-after. His playing was an inspiration for Rodolphe Kreutzer, Pierre Baillot and Pierre Rode. These three great violinists were professors at the Paris Conservatoire from its founding in 1795, and together in 1803 they produced the Conservatoire's official Méthode de Violon, which provided the basis for Baillot's encyclopedic L'art du violon (1834).

Violin, §I, 4: History and repertory, 1600–1820

(iii) Technique and performing practice.

(a) Treatises.

Roger North wrote of techniques ‘which may be knowne but not described’. Some subtleties are indescribable, and some, particularly in the 17th century, may have been kept as mysteries of the trade. For all that, the most obvious sources of information on technique and performing practice are treatises. A great deal of fascinating information is contained in two great encyclopedic works, Praetorius's Syntagma musicum and Mersenne's Harmonie universelle (1636–7). With these outstanding exceptions, however, most 17th-century treatises were written by generalists and directed at amateur players, and confine themselves to rudimentary matters. This tradition of what Boyden (1965), picking up on the title of a 1695 publication, called ‘self-instructors’ continued throughout the first half of the 18th century.

Many tutors addressed to amateurs do little more than sketch the topography of the fingerboard and provide a few simple tunes. Speer (1697) concluded his instructions for the violin with the frustrating comment: ‘a true teacher will be sure to show his student what remains: how to hold the violin properly, how to place it on the breast, how to manage the bow, and how to play trills, mordents, slides and tremolos combined with other ornaments’. Where these writers did venture into technical matters their advice may be suspect. Some, like Prinner (1677) and Berlin (1744), are manifestly non-specialist since they were probably not string players and set out (like Speer) to give instruction in a whole range of musical instruments. Such volumes are, however, not entirely without interest. John Lenton's The Gentleman's Diversion, or the Violin Explained (London, 1693), for example, manages – despite its quite explicit targeting of hobbyists – to give us some tantalizing glimpses of the practices of advanced players in turn-of-the-century England. Even such a publication as Robert Bremner's Compleat Tutor for the Violin (London, after 1761) helps in an oblique way to fill out the picture. Addressed to beginners, its eight pages of instruction contain almost nothing useful about violin technique. But it includes a charming frontispiece of a violinist with portraits behind him of Corelli and Handel (an indicator of taste), a revealing one-page dictionary of musical terms, and a fascinating advertisement for musical accessories (e.g. ‘mutes or sardines’) sold by Bremner.

The picture changed markedly in the mid-18th century with an explosion of treatises written by real violinists for those aspiring to be real violinists: Geminiani's The Art of Playing on the Violin (London, 1751), Leopold Mozart's Violinschule (Augsburg, 1756), Herrando's Arte y puntual explicación del modo de tocar el violín (Paris, 1756) and L'abbé le fils's Principes du violon (Paris, 1761). Two other manuals should really be included in this group: Quantz's Versuch einer Anweisung die Flöte traversiere zu spielen (Berlin, 1752), since it contains a great deal which is specifically relevant to violin playing, and Tartini's Traité des agréments, published posthumously in 1771 but circulating in manuscript for some years before that. Of the many later 18th-century manuals, probably the most significant are G.S. Löhlein's Anweisung zum Violinspielen (1774), the French publications of C.R. Brijon (1763), T.-J. Tarade (c1774) and Antoine Bailleux (1798), and the first volume (on violin playing) of Francesco Galeazzi's Elementi teorico-pratici di musica (1791).

All of these treatises must be approached with a sense of context (and hence of the limits of their applicability). Quite apart from broad differences in stylistic orientation, performers obviously had diverse ideas, then as now, on matters of technique and interpretation. Geminiani, the pupil of Corelli, is often regarded as an exponent of an Italian violin tradition, but by 1751 he had become fascinated with French music. The hybrid character of his style led John Potter to observe in 1762, ‘his taste is peculiar to himself’, and even his great admirer, Sir John Hawkins, doubted ‘whether the talents of Geminiani were of such a kind as qualified him to give a direction to the national taste’ (1776). Hence he should be regarded as a rather idiosyncratic guide to Baroque practice. It is difficult even to establish a context for some volumes. Giuseppe Tartini’s precepts were published in the Traité des agréments de la musique (Paris, 1771) shortly after his death, but it is generally assumed that at least some of it must have been written before 1756 since Leopold Mozart referred in his Violinschule (1756) to Tartini's remarks on the augmented-2nd trill, and virtually plagiarized Tartini's notes on vibrato. It is not known when exactly this work was compiled or how much of it was written by pupils; nor is it clear how to reconcile, for example, Tartini's advice (in the letter to Signora Maddalena Lombardini) to ‘make yourself a perfect mistress in every part of the bow’ with his puzzling injunction (in the ‘Rules for Bowing’) never to play near the point or heel. As sources of information on performing practice, treatises must take their place alongside other invaluable (but often also equivocal) forms of evidence such as paintings, observers’ accounts of performances, records of payment for instruments and musical services – and, most importantly, the music itself.

(b) Holding the violin.

Where exactly on the upper body the violin rested was not completely standardized until late in the 18th century. In the early Baroque era, violinists might hold their instruments almost as low as their waists (as some traditional fiddlers still do). When Nicola Matteis arrived in England in the 1670s, observers were struck by the way he held the violin against ‘his short ribs’. Many players preferred to support the violin against their chests just beneath the collar-bone. John Playford (i) (1654), addressing amateurs, advocated this breast position (see fig.16), but so too did Geminiani writing nearly a century later with much more accomplished players in mind. Even in the later 17th century some chose to rest the violin on the collar-bone with the option of using their chins to steady the instrument, particularly when shifting. Lenton (C1693) advocated resting the instrument on the collar-bone but without chin pressure:

I would have none get the habit of holding an Instrument under the Chin, so I would have them avoid placing it as low as the Girdle, which is a mongrel sort of way us'd by some in imitation of the Italian. … The best way of commanding the Instrument will be to place it something higher than your Breast your fingers round and firm in stopping.

Obviously, none of these positions can be regarded as standard. G.B. Rangoni's essay on Nardini, Lolli and Pugnani published in 1790 argues that:

Just as each person is differently built, it follows that the position of the instrument shouldn't be the same for all; and that making anyone hold the violin in a way contrary to their natural bearing (which is always related to the constitution of their limbs) would introduce obstacles in a student's progress and prevent the development of their talent.

As early as 1677, however, Prinner asserted that the violin should be held ‘so firmly with your chin that there is no reason to hold it with the left hand – otherwise it would be impossible to play quick passages which go high and then low or to play in tune’. Corrette (C1738) and Berlin (C1744) both regarded chin support as essential when shifting (advice repeated by Bailleux in 1779). In 1756 Leopold Mozart offered violinists a choice between a chest-high hold (elegant, he thought, but inconvenient for shifting) and an under-the-chin method (comfortable and efficient). In the same year, Herrando stated simply that ‘The tailpiece must come under the chin, being held by it there, turning the head slightly to the right’ (fig.17).

Various other methods in the second half of the 18th century describe the violin as being held on the collar-bone without specifying whether or not to stabilize it with the chin. In 1761 L'abbé le fils proposed that the chin should be on the G-string side of the instrument, but this practice was apparently still not completely accepted by the end of the 18th century. In 1796 Francesco Galeazzi attacked the idea of playing with the chin on the E-string side, and his vehemently defensive tone makes it clear that this must still have been an issue; he claimed that it looked ridiculous, necessitated unwieldy movements with the bow and numbed the left ear because of the proximity of the instrument. The Paris Conservatoire Méthode of 1803 states quite unequivocally that ‘the violin is placed on the collar-bone, held by the chin on the left-hand side of the tailpiece, and inclined a little to the right’. By the late 18th century chin pressure on one side or the other must have been standard; but this meant something quite different from modern practice. Bartolomeo Campagnoli's treatise of 1824 stresses that the pressure exerted by the chin on the tailpiece must be light and that the head should be held as upright as possible. The inventor of the chin rest, Louis Spohr, listed among its advantages the fact that it makes it easier to hold the head upright. He claimed in his Violinschule (1832) that in the ten years since he had invented it, the chin rest had found favour with many violinists; but the Méthode de violon (1858) by the great Belgian violinist Charles-Auguste de Bériot fails to acknowledge its existence.

With the exception of Herrando, all of these writers identified shifting as the principal reason for applying pressure with the chin (see Fingering, §II, 2). Yet it is obvious that many skilled violinists who held the instrument beneath the collar-bone (and probably others who held it on the collar-bone but without chin support; for illustration see Veracini, Francesco Maria) were capable of playing virtuoso repertory requiring an advanced shifting technique. Even Prinner, the earliest and most vehement advocate of chin-on playing, conceded (1677): ‘I have known virtuosos of repute who irrespective of this put the violin only against the chest, thinking it looks nice and decorative’. Pictorial evidence from the 17th and 18th centuries seems to reflect what must have been a genuine diversity in ways of holding the violin. A number of paintings, in fact, depict several violinists, each holding his instrument differently, playing in a single ensemble. For all that, the vast majority of violinists depicted in the art of the period use holds in which the chin could not be used to stabilize the instrument. Geminiani's instructions for shifting (described in Fingering, §II, 2(i)) are predicated on such a hold and we can only assume that many virtuosos had mastered such a technique (as, in fact, a good number of period instrument players did in the later 20th century).

It may be that chin stabilization was disdained by 17th-century virtuosos but adopted by amateurs as a stratagem that got them around the most perplexing technical problem: that of shifting. In the course of the 18th century the situation reversed itself; by around 1800 professional players were unanimous in resting the chin (however lightly) on the tailpiece, while chin-off methods (especially ways of holding the violin lower than the collar-bone) were the preserve of tavern and traditional fiddlers. (There is a parallel with the adoption of the end-pin on the cello, recognized as a possibility by the early 18th century but spurned by advanced players for almost two centuries thereafter.)

For discussion of bowing technique and other aspects of performing style on the violin in this period, see Bow, §II; Col legno; Ornaments, §§5–9; Pizzicato; Scordatura, §1; and Vibrato.

Violin, §I: The instrument, its technique and its repertory

5. Since 1820.

(i) The instrument.

(ii) Repertory.

(iii) Technique and performing practice.

Violin, §I, 5: Since 1820

(i) The instrument.

(a) The violin.

(b) Makers.

(d) The bow.

(a) The violin.

Most violins made before about 1800 have been modified to yield greater tonal power and brilliance. The flat-model Stradivari flourished as concert instruments, while the highly arched, smaller-toned Stainers and Amatis lost their former popularity. The main body of the violin remained unaltered despite further attempts at ‘acoustical improvement’, ranging from the construction of instruments from metals, glass, leather, plastics and ceramics to experiments with various shapes, notably Félix Savart's trapezoidal violin with straight sides and straight slits for soundholes (1817) and François Chanot's guitar-shaped model with small crescent soundholes (also of 1817).

During the 1960s and 70s, Carleen Hutchins and her associates developed a ‘concert violin’, with a longer, revamped body and larger f-holes, and a string octet, compromising mathematical, acoustical and violin-making principles to produce instruments in different frequency ranges that possess the dynamic power and timbre of the violin family (see New Violin Family). These instruments range from the contrabass violin (body length 130 cm, tuned E'–A'–D'–G) to the small treble (or ‘sopranino’) violin (tuned an octave above the normal violin).

Experiments with building electric instruments based on the violin family, often with solid bodies and amplified usually by means of one or more sets of electromagnetic pickups or contact microphones (see Pickup), have continued since the 1920s (see Electronic instruments, §I, 2(i)(c)). The kit-like Raad violin was developed in the late 1970s to dispense with the earlier primitive arrangement of surface pickups and to cultivate a more sophisticated sound. By allowing the instrument's signal to be amplified, modified or altered through changes in frequency response, rapid changes in amplitude, harmonic alteration (of overtones), echo and reverberation effects, and distortion, it has served a wide range of classical and popular musical styles.

(b) Makers.

The burgeoning concert activity and educational opportunities of the early 19th century increased demand for instruments, especially for cheaper ‘factory fiddles’, mass-produced in France at Mirecourt and in Germany at Mittenwald and Markneukirchen. Mirecourt is still a centre for specialist craftsmen, having a violin-making school and a small factory which produces high-quality instruments at reasonable prices by implementing some mechanized processes. Similar schools have been established in recent years in Britain (especially in London and Newark-on-Trent), the USA, Italy (Cremona), Switzerland (Brienz), Poland (Poznań) and many other countries.

Although there were some significant 19th-century Italian makers such as G.F. Pressenda (1777–1854), Giuseppe Rocca (1807–65) and Gaetano Chiocchi (1814–81), the leadership in violin making passed to the French, notably Nicolas Lupot (1758–1824), F.-L. Pique (1757–1822) and Lupot's pupils C.-F. Gand (1787–1845) and S.-P. Bernardel (1802–70). Most influential was Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume(1798–1875), who worked for François Chanot and Simon Lété in Paris before establishing his own business in 1827. In 1855 he purchased Luigi Tarisio's collection of fine Italian violins. His talented workforce copied these instruments, including the ‘Messiah’ Stradivari, producing many high-quality violins. Most of these bear Vuillaume's label and brand, serial number and the date of manufacture. Among skilled craftsmen who worked for Vuillaume were Paul Joseph Bailly (1844–1907), Honoré Derazey (1794–1883) and Hippolyte Silvestre (1808–79).

J.F. and J.B. Cuypers, the sons of J.T. Cuypers (1724–1808), continued their father's work in The Hague, but to a lesser standard. Central to the British violin market was the firm of W.E. Hill & Sons, formally established in 1835, as well as the family businesses of J.T. Hart, the younger Georges Chanot, Edward Withers and John Beare. Several skilled foreign luthiers also lived and worked in Britain, among them the younger B.S. Fendt (1800–52), George Craske (1795–1888) and J.F. Lott (1776–1853).

Leading 20th-century makers include C.G. Becker (1887–1975), Sergio Peresson (1913–91), Dario D'Attili (b 1922), David Burgess (b 1953) and Luiz Bellini (b 1935) in the USA; Annibale Fagnola (1866–1939), Giuseppe Fiorini (1861–1934), Cesare Candi (1869–1947), Fernando Sacconi (1895–1973), Vittorio Bellarosa (1907–79), Francesco Bissolotti and Giovanni Battista Morassi (b 1969) in Italy; Joachim Schade and Eugen Sprenger (1882–1953) in Germany; Pierre Gaggini (b 1903), Etienne Vatelot (b 1925) and Frédéric Becker in France; the Portuguese Antonio Capela (b 1932); and the Czechs Přemsyl Špidlen (b 1920), Vilém Kužel, and Tomáš and Vladimír Pilař, as well as several fine Japanese craftsmen. In the postwar resurgence of violin making in Britain the work of William Luff (1904–93), Thomas Earle Hesketh (1866–1945), Geroge Wulme-Hudson (1862–1952), Arthur Richardson (1882–1965), Maurice Bouette (1922–92), Wilfred Saunders (b 1927), Clifford Hoing (1903–89), Lawrence Cocker (1912–82), Roger Hargrave (b 1948) and Gimpel Solomon (b 1934) is outstanding. The early music revival has encouraged craftsmen such as Ronald Prentice (b 1932), Derick Sanderson (b 1932), Colin Irving (b 1945), Rowland Ross and David Rubio (b 1934) to make reproduction instruments to Baroque dimensions.

(c) Strings and accessories.

A report by François-Joseph Gossec presented to the Institut national, later published in Procès-verbaux de l’Académie des beaux-arts, i (1937), 156–61, puts forward some of the perceived disadvantages of gut stringing: the need to keep them moist; their tendency to unravel; their sensitivity to variation in atmospheric temperature and the common incidence of knots. Yet despite the increased preference for overspun D strings and these well-publicized disadvantages of gut stringing, H. Welcker von Gontershausen strongly advocated all-gut stringing (Neu eröffnetes Magazin musikalischer Tonwerkzeuge, Frankfurt, 1855). However, the combination of plain gut E and A, high-twist gut D and a G with copper, silver-plated copper or silver round wire close-wound on a gut core was the norm throughout the 19th century. The gut E was gradually replaced by a more durable and responsive steel variety, and the metal adjuster for greater facility in fine tuning, championed by the violinists Willy Burmester (1869–1903) and Anton Witek. Only a few performers, most notably Fritz Kreisler, persevered with a gut E string as late as 1950. Flesch (C1923) documents the use of an overspun A string, while the high-twist D was replaced by gut with aluminium winding. By the mid-20th century, flat-ribbon and flat-ground round windings (with interleaved plastic) were applied to roped steel and plastic as well as gut, for A, D and G strings; the development of more flexible woven core led to the introduction of metal strings, which have the advantages of longer wear, easier tuning with adjusters (usually on specially designed tailpieces), minimal stretching, and precise moderation of thicknesses for true 5ths. However, their perceived tonal inferiority and the additional pressures they place on the instrument have encouraged a preference for metal-wound strings with a gut or nylon core. Early music specialists employ gut strings almost exclusively; this revival of interest is prompting research into, and attempts at reconstructing, the manufacturing techniques of the late Renaissance period and the Baroque.

Mutes of various types and weight have been employed. The three-pronged clamp model (sometimes two- or five-pronged) made from wood, metal, ivory or, latterly, bakelite remained virtually unchallenged until the mid-19th century, when Vuillaume, J.F.V. Bellon and others attempted (with little success) to introduce models which could be applied more quickly and conveniently. In the 20th century, designs for mutes which are stored between the bridge and the tailpiece, notably the ‘Tourte’, ‘Heifetz’ and ‘Roth-Sihon’ models, have gained preference (see Mute, §1).

The Chin rest has become a standard accessory, ensuring the stability of the instrument and increased left-hand mobility. Invented by Spohr in about 1820, it was originally of ebony and placed directly over the tailpiece, not to the left side as later became customary. The chin rest only gradually achieved general approbation but has come to be adopted by most violinists. It is normally made from wood (usually ebony or rosewood) or vulcanite, and is available in numerous forms and sizes.

Pierre Baillot (1834) was the first to recommend ‘a thick handkerchief or a kind of cushion’ for the correct and comfortable support of the instrument. The production of shoulder rests has been a growth industry since the 1950s, designs ranging from wooden models made in various sizes, to pads affixed to metal frames which grip the instrument with feet covered with rubber protectors, and to inflatable cushions. Late 20th-century pedagogical trends have largely discouraged their use, due to their perceived adverse effect on tone-quality and their causing unwanted body tensions for many violinists.

Violin, §I, 5: Since 1820

(d) The bow.

Apart from some minor 19th-century additions and unsuccessful attempts to improve the bow, Tourte's standardized design has remained unsurpassed. The most significant of his French successors worked in Paris or Mirecourt, notably Jacques Lafleur (1757–1833) and his son Joseph René (1812–74), Jacob Eury (1765–1848), Etienne Pajeot (1791–1849), Nicolas Maire (1800–78), Jean Dominique Adam (1795–1865) and his son Grand-Adam (1823–69), and François Lupot (1775–1838); their bows are generally more heavily wooded and slightly shorter than Tourte's. Lupot adopted a narrower outline for the head and probably added (c1820–30) the metal underslide to prevent wear on the nut caused by friction with the stick.

Vuillaume trained and hired countless bowmakers (among them Dominique Peccatte, Joseph Fonclause, Pierre Simon, J.P.M. Persoit and F.N. Voirin) in his workshops and disseminated the best qualities of Tourte's work, publishing in 1856 a theory that the taper of Tourte's sticks generally corresponded to a logarithmic curve. Among Vuillaume's inventions were: a tubular steel bow, which was championed by C.-A. de Bériot and Alexandre Artôt, but generally lacked the resiliency of its wooden counterpart, was deficient in balance, and kinked, dented or bent easily; and the ‘self-hairing’ bow with fixed frog. His other experiments achieved more lasting approbation, notably the round-edged frog or curved ferrule combined with the stepped bottom plate for a good spread of hair at the heel, the indentation of the channel and track of the frog, and the combination of rear and upper heel plates into one right-angled metal part.

Peccatte (1810–74), Joseph Henry (1823–70), Simon (1808–81) and Voirin (1833–85) also challenged the supremacy of Tourte's legacy, striving for a lighter, more elegant product. Particularly characteristic were the slimmer and less-square profile of the head and the different camber, the progression of which was moved closer to the head for additional strength in the stick. The balance was redressed by a reduction in the diameter of the lower end of the stick, with the frog appropriately in proportion.

Outstanding among Voirin's successors were Louis and Claude Thomassin and Eugène Sartory. The Thomassins were trained by Charles Bazin (1847–1915), himself an imitator of Voirin. Louis later worked for Voirin and succeeded to his business (1885), while Claude worked for Gand & Bernardel, Caressa and Caressa & Français in Paris, before opening his own workshop there (1901). Sartory's predominantly round sticks are indebted to Voirin and A.J. Lamy but are characterized by their smaller heads and greater strength and weight. Among other leading makers of the fortified Voirin model were J.A. Vigneron, Victor and Jules Fétique and E.A. Ouchard (1900–69).

French bowmaking declined during the two World Wars, but the products of André Chardon (1867–1963), Louis Gillet (1891–1970), Jacques Audinot (b 1922), Jean-Paul Lauxerrois (b 1928), Jean-Jacques Millant (1928–98), B.G.L. Millant (b 1929) and André Richaume (1905–66), most of whom returned to the style and hatchet head of Peccatte and Tourte, are well respected. The Mirecourt bowmaking tradition was revived with the establishment of a school (1971–81) under the direction of Bernard Ouchard (1925–79) and, later, Roger-François Lotte (b 1922). Among its distinguished ‘graduates’ are Stéphane Tomachot, Jean Grunberger, Pascal Lauxerrois, Benoît Rolland, Christophe Schaeffer, Martin Devillers, Sylvie Masson and Jean-Yves Matter. Along with Didier Claudel, Masson and Matter are among France's principal makers of reproduction pre-Tourte bows.

Bowmaking in 19th-century Britain was founded on the work of the Dodd and Tubbs families, who favoured functional durability over artistic craftsmanship. John Dodd (1752–1839) experimented with various weights, shapes of head, lengths and forms of stick and mountings on the nut, his somewhat crude product approximating to the Cramer type, which, together with the bows of his father Edward Dodd (1705–1810), most likely served as his model. Many of his bows are slightly shorter and lighter than Tourte's, and his early examples lack a metal ferrule. William Tubbs (1814–78) and his son James (1835–1921) retained the robust qualities of the Dodds but softened the angularity of the earlier English style. William was the first significant maker to use silver or gold (as opposed to ivory or ebony) facings for the head.

Samuel Allen (1848–c1905) was the chief inspiration behind the ‘Hill bow’. Preserving the robust English tradition, this model was developed by makers in the workshops of W.E. Hill, notably W.C. Retford (1875–1970), William Napier (1848–1932), Sydney Yeoman (1876–1948), Charles Leggatt (1880–1917) and Frank Napier (1884–1969). Among other talented trainees in Hill's workshops were Arthur Barnes (1888–1945), Edgar Bishop (1904–43), Albert Leeson (1903–46), W.R. Retford (1899–1960), Berkeley Dyer (1855–1936), A.R. Bultitude (1908–90), Malcolm Taylor (b 1933) and William Watson (b 1930). Garner Wilson (b 1930), Brian Alvey (b 1949), Michael Taylor (b 1949), John Stagg (b 1954) and John Clutterbuck (b 1949) have become leading British makers, while history reserves a niche for Lawrence Cocker's cane bows. Matthew Coltman (b 1955) and Brian Tunnicliffe (b 1934) are among the prominent British makers of reproduction pre-Tourte bows.

Germany became known during the 19th century for the mass-production of bows made from a cheaper and harder substitute for Brazil wood, sometimes called ‘Braziletta’. There were few specialist bowmakers of international repute, but the work of Nikolaus Kittel (1839–70), Ludwig Bausch (1805–71), and the Knopf, Nürnberger, Pfretzschner and Weidhaas families, is well respected. Siegfried Finkel (b 1927) continued the Weidhaas tradition in Switzerland and his son Johannes (b 1947) worked in London and the USA. The roll of distinguished 20th-century American bowmakers includes John Bolander jr, William Salchow (b 1926), José da Cunha (b 1955), John Lee (b 1953) and Charles Epsey (b 1946). Christophe Landon (b 1959) is renowned for his reproduction pre-Tourte bows, as are the Netherlanders Luis-Emilio Rodriguez and Gerhard Landwehr.

20th-century inventions include the highly arched Vega (or ‘Bach’) bow. Promoted in the 1950s by Emil Telmányi and Albert Schweitzer to address the misconception that Bach's polyphonic violin music should be sustained precisely as written, it enabled all four strings to be sounded individually or in combination, its hair tension being controlled by a mechanical lever operated by the thumb. It had no precedent in the Baroque and made little impression. With supplies of pernambuco dwindling, bows of fibreglass, metal, graphite fibre and other materials have been introduced, but without ousting the conventional pernambuco from its favoured position.

Traditionally, bowhair comes from the tails of white horses, but some players use black horsehair or synthetic substitutes such as nylon, arguably to coarser tonal effect. Bronislaw Huberman (1882–1947) made experiments with fine-gauge wire which also yielded mixed tonal results.

(ii) Repertory.

(a) The solo concerto after Beethoven.

(b) Sonata.

(d) Other solo repertory.

(a) The solo concerto after Beethoven.

The violin concerto developed in three main directions during the 19th century. Spohr, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Bruch, Brahms and Saint-Saëns among others stressed traditional musical values; Paganini, Bériot, Vieuxtemps, Wieniawski and Ernst followed the virtuoso path. Some composers introduced a new type of ‘national’ concerto (Joachim, Konzert in ungarischer Weise; Lalo, Symphonie espagnole and Concerto russe; Bruch, Schottische Fantasie; and works by Dvořák and Tchaikovsky).

Spohr's 18 concertos are indebted to the French school in their lyrical, expressive slow movements, dramatic qualities and bravura passage-work; but their structure, texture, thematic integration and development demonstrate a Beethovenian symphonic breadth. Most characteristic is his concerto no.7. No.8, the most popular of the 18, is subtitled ‘in modo di scena cantante’. Its one continuous movement comprises an instrumental da capo aria framed by dramatic recitative, with a virtuoso cabaletta-like finale. Spohr was both attracted and repelled by Paganini, rejecting his performing ‘tricks’ at a time when violinists all over Europe wished to acquire them. He now seems a bulwark against the trivialization of musical taste, a man of the highest musical standards who salvaged the traditions of Corelli and Tartini and handed them down to his pupil Ferndinand David and to Joachim.

David composed five violin concertos, but he is better known as adviser for (and the first performer of) Mendelssohn's E minor Concerto op.64. More experimental in structure and symphonic in scope than his D minor Concerto (1822), it is remarkable for the soloist's entrance in the second bar, the central placement of the cadenza before the recapitulation, and the transitional section, played by the bassoon, from the first movement into the Andante. The bridge to the finale results in a through-composed design similar to that of Mendelssohn's two piano concertos.

Mendelssohn's influence on succeeding generations was made more potent through the achievements of his protégé (and David's pupil) Joseph Joachim, who became the greatest violinist-interpreter of the second half of the 19th century, and to whom concertos and sonatas were dedicated by Schumann, Bruch, Brahms, Dvořák and others. Schumann composed two concertante works for Joachim in 1853: the Concerto in D minor and the Phantasie op.131. Joachim's misgivings about the violin writing in the concerto along with its structural weaknesses, uneven content and miscalculations of orchestration, account for its neglect until 1937, when Schumann's great-niece Jelly d'Arányi gave its first performance. Joachim was also the catalyst for Bruch's unconventionally structured Concerto in G minor. Its large-scale Prelude comprises three principal thematic elements punctuated by solo recitatives and linked to an expressive Adagio. The finale contrasts noble melodies with virtuoso figuration. Among his other music for violin and orchestra, Bruch composed two more concertos, neither of which is often played today, and the Schottische Fantasie (1880).

The greatest work inspired by Joachim was Brahms's concerto, which was conceived in deliberate opposition to the virtuoso trend of the Romantic concerto. Hubert Foss described the opening Allegro as ‘a song for the violin on a symphonic scale’. In the Adagio (substituted for the two original central movements) the soloist largely extends and elaborates upon an expansive oboe melody. Brahms sent Joachim a few sketches of the final rondo, which has a strong Hungarian character, so that he could ‘prohibit the awkward passages right away’. Joachim answered ‘It is all playable, some of it even violinistically original – but whether it will be enjoyable to play in a hot concert hall is a different question’. Even after their joint first performance of the work in 1879, Brahms urged his friend to make further changes in the violin part, but despite a considerable correspondence the composer ultimately rejected as many suggestions as he accepted. Hence the unusual difficulty of the solo part is due not to an ignorance of the instrument but to broader musical factors. Brahms's Double Concerto for violin and cello, written for Joachim and Robert Hausmann, demonstrates similar national characteristics in its finale; the first two movements give little scope for virtuoso display.

Among Russian composers only Tchaikovsky seriously pursued the concerto genre. His concerto outshines those of Anton Rubinstein (1857), Arensky (1891) and Conus (1896). Its opening movement and trepak-like finale are technically challenging, but virtuosity is subservient to musical effect. The central Canzonetta was originally published as ‘Méditation’ in Tchaikovsky's Trois souvenirs d'un lieu cher for violin and piano. Despite a disastrous criticism by Hanslick after the première in Vienna, the Tchaikovsky concerto has become a standard repertory piece. Of lesser significance are the concertos of Franz Berwald, Dvořák, Saint-Saëns, Lalo, Karl Goldmark, Richard Strauss, Chausson, Enescu and Busoni.

Paganini, whose playing became known to audiences outside Italy in 1828, was the inspiration for virtuoso concertos by Bériot, Vieuxtemps, Wieniawski, Ernst, Bull and Lipiński. A gifted melodist and a phenomenal technician, Paganini is believed to have written eight concertos, of which only six have survived. Their opening movements reveal the influence of the Viotti school, while their central slow movements are of simpler, aria-like construction with cadenzas; popular melody generally infiltrates their finales.

At the turn of the century there was a consolidation of concerto traditions, and many of the more radical composers deliberately eschewed the genre. In Scandinavia, the concertos of Sibelius, Carl Nielsen, Valen, Larsson, Saeverud, Sallinen and Tuukkanen, and Saariaho's Graal théâtre (1994) are most significant. Sibelius's rhapsodic opening movement, with its unusual tonal relationships and a cadenza substituting for formal development, represents a reappraisal of the traditional form.

Much early 20th-century Russian music was broadly national in spirit, but Glazunov's concerto displays his affinity with Western European idioms, and Stravinsky's inspiration for his concerto emanated largely from J.S. Bach. Although Stravinsky enlisted the help of Samuel Dushkin in shaping the violin part, the violin writing is craggy and not very idiomatic, challenging the soloist to find solutions to new technical problems. Prokofiev's two violin concertos display various influences, ranging from the impressionistic opening movement of no.1 to the Russian rondo finale of no.2. Kabalevsky's absorption of the Russian popular song tradition is exemplified in the second movement of his concerto, while Khachaturian's concerto features Armenian folk material, and Eshpay's two concertos reflect his interest in Mari folk music. Shostakovich's two concertos represent distinct phases in his development. No.1, completed in 1948 but withheld by the composer until 1955 because the political climate was thought to be unfavourable for a work of such modernity, is a complex four-movement work with a passacaglia (including solo cadenza) as its kernel. No.2 (1967), which was received with considerable approval, is a more intimate, three-movement design with a prominent part for solo horn. Other Russian concertos of note include those of Myaskovsky, Khrennikov, Karayev, Schnittke and Sil'vestrov (Widmung, 1990–91).

In Germany, Reger and Pfitzner perpetuated the Romantic tradition, while Hindemith's fourth Kammermusik and Violin Concerto look back respectively on Bach's Brandenburg Concertos and the 19th-century symphonic concerto. The concertos of Blacher and Fortner are similarly retrospective, while those of Weill (for violin and wind orchestra), Zimmermann, Henze and H.K. Gruber (Nebelsteinmusik, 1988) are more experimental. Henze’s Concerto no.1 dabbles with serialism, while no.2 borders between concert music and Expressionist music theatre. Schoenberg's op.36, which he said required a ‘six-fingered violinist’, extracts remarkable lyricism from its fundamentally serialist language, as does Berg's memorial concerto for Manon Gropius. Intended as a biographical portrait of the young woman, Berg’s work concludes with a moving Adagio based on the choral Es ist genug in Bach's own harmonization.

German Romanticism gripped many Hungarian composers, notably Dohnányi, Hubay and Weiner. Bartók's First Concerto adopts the two-movement structure (slow–fast) of a rhapsody, but his Second, incorporating six variations on a ‘Magyar’ theme, represents the composer's mature style. Ligeti’s five-movement concerto (1989–93) adopts a Bartókian symmetry, incorporating two slow movements, the second of which is a passacaglia on a chromatic idea. Its first movement also involves experiments with tunings, requiring one violin and one viola from the small body of orchestral strings each to adopt a different scordatura tuning, and harmonics are employed to striking effect.

Szymanowski's First Concerto (1916), which follows the programme of Miciński's poem A Night in May, has an oriental flavour and gives the impression of an improvisation, while the more concise no.2 incorporates Polish folk materials. Other major Polish contributors to the repertory include Panufnik, Bacewicz, Penderecki and Lutosławski (Chain II).

In France, Milhaud, Martinon, Françaix, Jolivet and Dutilleux (L'arbre des songes, 1979–85) have made significant contributions. Italy is represented chiefly by the neo-classical works of Respighi, Casella, Rieti, Pizzetti and Bucchi; however, composers such as Riccardo Nielsen, Malipiero, Donatoni, Peragallo, Maderna, and Aldo Clementi turned with varying strictness to 12-note technique.

In the USA composers cultivated a range of styles, from Austro-German dodecaphony (Krenek, Ross Lee Finney), Expressionism (Sessions) and neo-classicism (Piston) to neo-romanticism (Barber, Bloch, Korngold, Menotti) and home-cultivated jazz and spirituals (Gruenberg, Harris). Significant works have been written by Ben Weber, William Schuman, Peter Mennin, Benjamin Lees, William Bergsma, George Rochberg and Elliott Carter. More experimental have been Diamond, Lou Harrison (for violin, percussion and orchestra), Kirchner (violin, cello, ten wind instruments and percussion), Wuorinen (amplified violin), Schuller, Glass and John Adams. In Latin America, Allende, Chávez, Mignone and Ginastera represent their respective national styles; the microtonal experiments of Carrillo are also noteworthy.

Elgar's is in the vanguard of 20th-century British violin concertos; as with those of Delius, Walton and Britten, its unity is achieved by thematic cross-reference and recall. The works of Harty, Vaughan Williams, Bax, Moeran, Gerhard, Rawsthorne, Hamilton, Leighton, Bliss, McCabe, Rubbra, Berkeley, Goehr, Wood, Blake, Richard Rodney Bennett, Stevenson, Maxwell Davies, Holloway, Patterson, Heath, Casken and Maw demonstrate the wealth and diversity of the British concerto repertory. Heath's Alone at the Frontier is a concerto for electric violin and orchestra in which the solo part is entirely improvised.

Other notable contributions to the literature include those of Henk Badings (four concertos; two double concertos for two violins, one double concerto for violin and viola), Arthur Benjamin, Martinů (two concertos; two double concertos), Skalkottas, Saburo Moroi, Rodrigo, Frank Martin, Michio Mamiya (two concertos), Akira Miyoshi, Malcolm Williamson, Don Banks, Toshi Ichiyanagi (Circulation Scenery, 1983), Maki Ishii (three concertos, including Lost Sounds, 1978), Takemitsu (Far Calls, Coming Far!, 1980) and Joji Yuasa.

(b) Sonata.

Between the violin sonatas of Beethoven, Schubert's three compact sonatas (‘sonatinas’) of 1816 and Schumann's two sonatas of 1851, Germany produced only minor works by Spohr, Weber and Mendelssohn. Schumann's op.121, which incorporates variations on the chorale melody Gelobt seist du Jesu Christ, is more ambitious than his op.105, in which the melancholy opening melody is recalled in the coda of the toccata-like finale. Schumann's Third Sonata evolved from a collaboration with Albert Dietrich and Brahms in honour of Joachim and based on Joachim's motto, ‘F.A.E.’ (‘frei aber einsam’). Schumann originally contributed the second and fourth movements, but later composed two further movements to replace those of his collaborators.

Brahms discarded four sonata attempts before composing his op.78 in G major; much of its thematic material was inspired by his songs Regenlied and Nachklang (op.59 nos.3 and 4). His Second Sonata op.100 is more concise, its central movement serving as both slow movement and scherzo, while op.108 in D minor is of broader design, comprising four movements of symphonic proportions.

Other German works in the genre include Raff's five sonatas, and sonatas by Richard Strauss and Busoni. Busoni's Second Sonata makes extensive use of thematic cross-reference and concludes with variations on a chorale melody. Strauss's work, conceived in orchestral terms, incorporates numerous quotations, notably from Beethoven's ‘Pathétique’ Sonata, Wagner's Tristan and Schubert's Erlkönig. Schubert’s three sonatas, published posthumously as ‘sonatinas’, are compact, fully developed sonatas; the first comprises three movements, but the others are four-movement structures (the third movement being a minuet). His Duo in A (1817) lacks the varied experimentation of the sonatinas but is broader in scope and more mature.

Lalo and Alkan apart, French composers showed little interest in the sonata until the establishment, after the 1870–71 war with Prussia, of the Société Nationale de Musique and various private societies devoted to chamber music performance. Fauré's two sonatas contrast in style and expression, the second being texturally less opulent and musically more concise, employing cyclical treatment of its initial motive. Of Saint-Saëns's two published sonatas, the first features thematic cross-reference, while the second is more polyphonic. The sonatas of Franck and Lekeu also exploit the cyclical principle. Franck's, which utilizes four main recurrent themes, is outstanding for its melodic inspiration and thematic integration.

Apart from the works of Pixis, Fibich and Novák, the Czech lands are represented only by Dvořák's sonata and sonatina (1893). The sonata’s finale is perhaps most indicative of its Czech origins, while the sonatina blends the native music of the Americas with Dvořák's Czech heritage.

Grieg's three sonatas represent the main periods of his stylistic development: the first naive and rich in models; the second nationalistic; and the third more dramatic and cosmopolitan. Sinding's Sonate im alten Stil op.99 (1909) is essentially a suite in five short movements; his three other sonatas are broadly conceived three-movement works which intermingle the influences of Wagner, Liszt and Strauss with nationalistic traits. Danish interest in the genre is represented chiefly by Gade and Nielsen. Grieg's voice is predominant in Sibelius's modest sonata and sonatine.

Like much early 20th-century French chamber music, d'Indy's cyclical, four-movement sonata op.59 suffers from a somewhat stultifying intellectual approach. D'Indy's dogmatic instruction is reflected in the first of Roussel's two sonatas, while the works of Koechlin, Milhaud, Tailleferre, Françaix (Sonatine) and Poulenc are of lesser significance. Debussy's sonata combines his impressionistic vocabulary with a rediscovered classicism and some jazz influences. Ravel's second sonata (1923–7) also incorporates jazz elements, especially in the central ‘Blues’, as well as bitonality.

Foremost among Russian sonatas in the early 20th century were Stravinsky's Duo concertant (1931–2), written in collaboration with Dushkin, and Prokofiev's two works, the second of which is an arrangement, made with the help of David Oistrakh, of his Flute Sonata. Works by Gnesin, Aram Khachaturian, Myaskovsky, Karen Khachaturian, Medtner, Rakov, Ustvol'skaya, Golubev, Shebalin and Shostakovich are also noteworthy, along with Slonimsky's response to the microtonal inflections of Russian peasant vocal style. Schnittke wrote two sonatas, the first of which he described as ‘a tonal world with atonal means’ including citations from popular music and Shostakovich's Second Piano Trio.

Reger's admiration of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms is reflected in most of his seven full-scale sonatas, and in his two Kleine Sonaten op.103b. His influence is also evident in the first two of Hindemith's four sonatas for violin and piano. Korngold (op.6), Toch (opp.23, 44), Krenek, Rathaus (opp.14, 43), Blacher, Fortner, Henze, Zimmermann, Stockhausen (Sonatine) and Klebe also made significant contributions, as did the Austrian Gottfried von Einem.

Czech national elements were perpetuated by Nedbal (op.9), Janáček and Martinů (five sonatas). Janáček's work has motivic affinities with his opera Kát'a Kabanová, most stemming from the germ announced in the opening violin ‘improvisation’. Hába's early sonata is atypical of his mature style. German influence permeates the sonatas of the Hungarians Dohnányi and Weiner. Effects suggestive of cimbalom and gamelan feature in Bartók's First Sonata, but, apart from the driving dance rhythms of the finale, this is among his least folk-orientated works. The more compact, restrained Second Sonata is a continuous two-movement structure, its rondo-like second movement adopting variation procedures and including several melodic references to its predecessor.

Foremost among the ‘Young Poland’ group of composers was Szymanowski, whose Romantic sonata has close affinities with Franck's. Górecki's Sonatina takes after Bartók, and Bacewicz's five sonatas are in neo-Baroque style. Skalkottas's four sonatinas and two sonatas and Enescu's three sonatas constitute the core of their violin output. Enescu's Third Sonata, composed ‘dans le caractère populaire roumain’, is the most individual, including parlando-rubato style and other folk influences; the violin part occasionally incorporates quarter-tones and gypsy-style music. Enescu's contemporaries Lazăr, Andricu, Drăgoi and Jora were also strongly influenced by Romanian folk idioms in their sonatas, while Constantinescu and Dumitrescu adapted folk material to contemporary international musical trends.

Each of Ives's four surviving sonatas incorporates hymns, popular tunes or dance melodies, the Fourth Sonata (Children's Day at the Camp Meeting) is based entirely on hymn tunes. Antheil's Second Sonata includes much percussive violin writing, as well as a part for tenor and bass drums. Bloch, Moore, Thomson, Piston, Harris and Copland (two sonatas) also made their mark, along with Quincy Porter (two sonatas), Finney (three sonatas, Duo), Sessions, Kirchner (Duo, Sonata concertante), Robert Ward, Lees (two sonatas), Samuel Adler (four sonatas), Robert Palmer, Mennin (Sonata concertante) and Bernard Rogers. More progressive were the works of Weber (two Sonatas), Diamond (two sonatas), Cowell, Riegger (op.39), Wuorinen (Duo) and Carter (Duo).

Works by 20th-century British composers range from Elgar's passionate Sonata to Bridge's dramatic, through-composed Second Sonata and the rhapsodic, lyrical works of Delius (three sonatas) and Ireland (two sonatas). Moeran's and Vaughan Williams's sonatas are inflected by English folk idioms, whether directly through melodic quotation or indirectly in phrasing, rhythm and tonality. Walton's Sonata bows towards serialism in its second movement, while Seiber's is a true serial piece and Rawsthorne's experiments with bitonality. Bax (four sonatas), Howells (opp.18, 26, 38), Rubbra (three sonatas), Lennox Berkeley (opp.1, 17), Reizenstein, Robin Orr (two sonatas), Fricker (opp.12, 94), Arnold Cooke (no.2 in A), Malcolm Arnold (opp.15, 43), Mathias (two sonatas), Hoddinott (op.63, op.73 no.1, op.78 no.1, op.89), Richard Rodney Bennett and Robert Simpson also contributed to the resurgence of the genre in Britain. Maxwell Davies's Sonatina for violin and cimbalom is an interesting novelty.

Honegger's two sonatas lean towards French idioms, while Martin's First Sonata, influenced by Franck, contrasts with his more progressive and cosmopolitan Second Sonata. German influence is paramount in the sonatas of Conrad Beck (two sonatas), Burkhard (opp.45, 78) and Schoeck (Albumblatt, two sonatas). Sjögren (opp.19, 24, 32, 47, 61), Stenhammar (op.19) and Rosenberg (two sonatas) are among the principal Swedish sonata composers; Vagn Holmboe (opp.2a, 16, 89) succeeded Nielsen as the leading Danish contributor. Turina's Sonata espagnola and Rodrigo's Sonata pimpanteare the most notable Spanish contributions. In Latin America the most significant works were written by Guarnieri (six sonatas), Villa-Lobos (four), Uribe Holguín (five) and Ficher (three). Pizzetti, Respighi and Malipiero have been among the most prominent Italians. Notable among Australians are Sutherland, John Hart (opp.7, 42, 142), Arthur Benjamin and Don Banks. In Japan, Kishio Harao and Akira Miyoshi have written important works.

(c) Unaccompanied violin music.

19th-century composers showed little interest in writing for unaccompanied violin. Apart from various concert études, only Romberg's three Etudes ou sonates op.32, Jansa's Sonate brillante, Bull's Quartet for solo violin (1834), David's Suite and the numerous caprices and variations of Paganini are noteworthy. One of Paganini's principal successors in the 20th century was Ysaÿe, who composed imaginative variations on Paganini's 24th Caprice and six sonatas op.27, each written in the style of a celebrated violinist (Szigeti, Thibaud, Enescu, Kreisler, Crickboom and Quiroga). Kreisler composed his Recitative and Scherzo Caprice op.6 in homage to Ysaÿe.

Reger's 11 sonatas (op.42, op.91) and numerous short works in neo-Baroque style were imitated by Hindemith in his two sonatas op.31 and by Jarnach. Notable serialist composers who have written for unaccompanied violin include Hauer (seven Stücke), Klebe (opp.8, 20), Jelinek (Sonata) and Gruber (Vier Stücke op.11).

Bartók's sonata, commissioned by Yehudi Menuhin, represents the culmination of the genre in the 20th century. Its opening sonata-form Tempo di ciacona is followed by a free fugue and a muted ternary-form movement, its reprise subjected to variation procedures. The mute remains in place for the beginning of the final Presto, originally written in quarter-tones, and is only removed for the contrasting parlando Hungarian melody.

Notable Russian contributions include works by Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Shebalin, Kabalevsky and Schnittke; the latter's charismatic Prelude in Memoriam Dmitry Shostakovich for violin and tape employs the musical monograms D–S–C–H and B–A–C–H. In the USA significant works have been written by Bloch, Krenek, Thomson, Persichetti, Sessions, Finney, Diamond, Perle (two sonatas), Harrison, Wuorinen, Rochberg, Lazarof, Carter and Kirchner. In a more experimental vein, Reich's Violin Phase was inspired by the sounds produced by multiples of the same instrument, either ‘live’ or in a mixed ‘live-recorded’ context. Cage's collaboration with Paul Zukofsky (Freeman Etudes, 1977–80, 1989–90) proved especially progressive, involving unconventional notation, microtonal inflections and specific performance directions. Glass's Strung out for amplified violin exposes his minimalist principles in their purest form. Xenakis's Mikka and Mikka ‘S’ are outstanding, the latter venturing into the language of quarter-tones. Nono's fruitful collaboration with Gidon Kremer produced La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura for violin and tape. Other works of note include those by Petrassi, Maderna, the ninth of Berio's Sequenze, von Einem, Henze (Sonata, Etude philharmonique, Serenade) and Gehlhaar.

Violin, §I, 5: Since 1820

(d) Other solo repertory.

The works of lasting significance from the 19th-century French and Belgian schools emanated from Berlioz (Rêverie et caprice), Saint-Saëns (Introduction et rondo capriccioso op.28; Havanaise op.83), Bériot (Scène de ballet op.100), Vieuxtemps (Fantasia appassionata and Ballade et polonaise) and Chausson (Poème op.25). Schubert's Rondo d438, Konzertstück d345 and Polonaise d580, all for violin and orchestra, are more idiomatic than the Rondo d895 and Fantasie d934 for violin and piano. Sinding's Légende op.46 and Romanze op.100, and Svendsen's Romance op.26, are representative of the Scandinavian input, while British composers such as Mackenzie, Coleridge-Taylor and Delius also made worthy contributions.

The air varié was a popular vehicle for virtuoso display in the 19th century; notable examples were written by Bériot, Vieuxtemps, Ernst, Wieniawski, Boehm, Hubay, Lipiński, Georg Hellmesberger, Pixis, Bull and Joachim. Most of Paganini's works are based on operatic themes, ‘national’ tunes, dances or other popular melodies. Many fantasias on operatic themes were written by pairs of eminent virtuosos such as Lafont and Moscheles, Vieuxtemps and Anton Rubinstein, and Ernst and George Osborne. Rimsky-Korsakov's Fantasia on Two Russian Themes and Nápravník's Fantasia on Russian Themes are somewhat awkward attempts at ‘nationalizing’ the concerto. Szymanowski's Three Paganini Caprices op.40, Messiaen's Thème et variations and Milstein's Paganiniana (1954) are rare examples of independent 20th-century variation sets for violin.

The various editions and transcriptions of 17th- and 18th-century masterworks by violinists such as David (Die Hohe Schule des Violinspiels, Leipzig, 1867–72) were a valuable source of repertory in the 19th century, as were the exemplary arrangements by Joachim of Brahms's Hungarian Dances, the Schubert-Wilhelmj Ave Maria, the Schubert-Ernst Erlkönig, the Bach-Wilhelmj Air on the G String, the Wagner-Wilhelmj Träume, Wilhelmj's selections from Wagner's operas and his concert paraphrases on Siegfried and Parsifal. By the end of the century, however, abuse of the genre resulted in a glut of inferior arrangements and even falsifications. Although some of Kreisler's ‘transcriptions’ were genuine, many were pseudo-Classical pieces that he wrote himself and ascribed falsely to composers such as Pugnani. Similarly, Dushkin arranged pieces for his own concert use, some of which were actually original compositions attributed to earlier composers. His collaboration with Stravinsky spawned a transcription from Petrouchka (entitled Danse russe) as well as more substantial works in other genres. Auer and Heifetz were also renowned for their transcriptions.

The composition of a large number of short genre pieces (with orchestra or piano) widened the repertory during the 19th century. Outstanding examples include Wieniawski's Légende op.17 and Scherzo-tarantelle op.16; Hubay's Concertstück op.20; Dvořák's Romance op.11 and Four Romantic Pieces op.75; Sarasate's Zigeunerweisen op.20; Bruch's Romance op.42 and Swedish Dances op.63; Paganini's Moto perpetuo op.11; Bazzini's La ronde des lutins; Suk's Four Pieces op.17 and Fantasy op.24; and Tchaikovsky's Trois souvenirs d'un lieu cher op.42. Some composers promoted their patriotic feelings, notably Lipiński (Rondos alla polacca), Wieniawski (Polonaises opp.4 and 21 and Mazurkas opp.12 and 19), Hubay (Szenen aus der Czarda opp.12, 30 and 60, and Hejre Kati op.32), Smetana (Fantaisie sur un air bohémien and Z domoviny), Dvořák (Mazurek op.49) and Sarasate (Spanish Dances opp.21–3, 26, 27, 29).

In the 20th century the virtuoso concert rhapsodies by Ravel (Tzigane) and Bartók were particularly significant. Tzigane comprises a long, unaccompanied violin cadenza, full of heavy Magyar accents, expressive portamenti and rubati, and a traditional series of gypsy improvisations. Bartók's two rhapsodies follow the Hungarian csárdás plan of an introductory lassu followed by a more vigorous friss; the First Rhapsody includes a cimbalom in its orchestration. Nationalistic in another sense, Vaughan Williams's The Lark Ascending (1921) incorporates a folk-like episode in its evocative canvas inspired by Meredith's verse, while James MacMillan's After the Tryst was suggested by William Soutar's love poem, and his Kiss on Wood (1993) is a meditation on the Good Friday versicle ‘Ecce lignum crucis’. Among other notable British works are Britten's dazzling Reveille and his larger-scale Suite op.6, a series of fantasies on a four-note motto; Gerhard's complex Gemini and Holloway's Romanza. Rihm's Lichtzwang is a moving piece of modern impressionism, while his Time-Chant exploits the violin's higher registers.

The vast repertory of 20th-century ‘character’ pieces includes Sibelius's Humoresques opp.87 and 89, Prokofiev's Cinq mélodies op.35 bis, Reger's neo-Baroque Suite im alten Stil, Schnittke's neo-classical Suite in the Old Style, Schoenberg's Phantasy op.47, Bloch's Baal Shem, and Webern's Four Pieces op.7. Copland's Two Pieces are jazz-inspired; other progressive American impulses came via the experiments of Cowell (Homage to Iran; Hymn and Fuguing Tune no.16) and Cage (Nocturne, Six Melodies, Cheap Imitation). Szymanowski's works include the three Mythes op.30, inspired by Greek mythology, and Notturno e tarantella. Penderecki's Capriccioand Three Miniatures, Baird's Espressioni varianti and Lutosławski's microtonal Partita and Subito represent the more prominent later Polish contributions.

(iii) Technique and performing practice.

(a) Historical outline.

(b) Sources of information and pedagogical literature.

(d) Fingering and shifting.

(e) Vibrato.

(f) Special effects.

Violin, §I, 5(iii): Since 1820: Technique and performing practice

(a) Historical outline.

Giovanni Battista Viotti, the ‘father of modern violin playing’, was trained in the classical Italian tradition by Pugnani and first went to Paris in 1782. There he taught or inspired the founders of the French violin school (Baillot, Rode and Kreutzer), who exerted an immense influence on violin playing in the 19th century. Viotti's cantabile was based on Tartini's maxim ‘per ben suonare, bisogna ben cantare’. He was also one of the first to appreciate the specific beauties of the lowest (G) string, including its high positions; and his concertos unite the singing style, the brilliance of passage-work, and such specialized bowings as the ‘Viotti’ stroke (see §(f) below). In addition, Viotti persuaded the Parisians of the beauty of the Stradivari violins; and he may have assisted Tourte in creating the modern bow.

The Italian school reached its final flowering in Nicolò Paganini, who aroused audiences to hysterical enthusiasm by the technical perfection and verve of his playing and by the intense projection of his hypnotic personality. His music uses practically all known technical devices in a grand, virtuoso and frequently novel manner, including glissandos, harmonics of all types, pizzicatos of both right and left hand, octave trills, the solo on the G string alone (a speciality of his), multiple stops, extensions and contractions of the hand, and the scordatura. Staccato, ricochet and mixed bowings of all sorts were also among his stock in trade.

Paganini and Pierre Baillot set the technical standard of the early 19th century. A school of violin playing similar to the Paris school was founded in Brussels in 1843 by Charles-Auguste de Bériot, who, like the Parisians, was heavily indebted to Viotti. Among Bériot's illustrious successors were Hubert Léonard, Henry Vieuxtemps, Henryk Wieniawski and Eugène Ysaÿe; the latter's bowing facility, energetic personality and golden tone became legendary.

The Germans were generally more conservative in technique and more serious in musical attitude than the French, whose virtues included great technical facility, elegance and imagination. Spohr was astonished by the accuracy of intonation of Paganini and Ole Bull but was unimpressed with such virtuoso devices as their elaborate harmonics, intense vibrato, bounding bow and the air played solely on the G string. Spohr's pupil Ferdinand David made an important contribution to the violin repertory in his Hohe Schule des Violinspiels (1867–72). Among David's pupils was Joseph Joachim, whose editions of such works as the Mendelssohn and Beethoven violin concertos reveal much about the technique of the 19th century and the implied ideas of expression (including the deliberate portamento slide in shifting).

Sharp distinctions in schools of instruction became less clear in the course of the 19th century. There was a strong tendency to mix the teachings of various schools, to amalgamate their styles and, under outstanding teachers, to select the best from all methods. The old Italian training was grafted on to the newer precepts in France and Belgium, and the results, in turn, to various teachings in Vienna, Prague, Leipzig and Budapest. Leopold Auer upheld the Franco-Belgian tradition at the St Petersburg Conservatory, while in Prague, Kiev and Vienna Otakar Ševčík revolutionized and systematized basic technique, especially of the left hand, by a system of numberless exercises based on the semitone system (rather than the diatonic system, as previously). Among the most distinguished teachers to appear in the course of the 20th century were Carl Flesch, Max Rostal, Lucien Capet, Pyotr Stolyarsky, Louis Persinger and Ivan Galamian.

Violin, §I, 5(iii): Since 1820: Technique and performing practice

(b) Sources of information and pedagogical literature.

Baillot's L'art du violon (Paris, 1834), perhaps the most influential violin treatise of the 19th century (see fig.18 below), easily surpasses in detail Baillot, Rode and Kreutzer's Méthode de violon (Paris, 1803), previously adopted by the Paris Conservatoire. Baillot's influence was perpetuated by his pupils François-Antoine Habeneck (Méthode, Paris, c1835, incorporating extracts from Viotti's unfinished treatise), Delphin Alard (Ecole du violon, Paris, 1844) and Charles Dancla (Méthode élémentaire, Paris, 1855). The celebrated études of Rode, Kreutzer and Gaviniés helped to consolidate the teachings of the French violin school. The principal contributions of the Belgian school are Bériot's Méthode de violon (Paris, 1858) and Léonard's Méthode (Paris, 1877).

Karl Guhr's Über Paganinis Kunst die Violine zu spielen (Mainz, 1831) focusses on specific aspects of Paganini's performing style, while Spohr's Violinschule (Vienna, 1832) and David's Violinschule (Leipzig, 1863) are more comprehensive. The important three-volume Violinschule (Berlin, 1902–5) of Joachim appears to have been written largely by Joachim's pupil Andreas Moser.

Flesch attributed the development of technique and pedagogy in the late 19th century principally to Dont, Schradieck, Sauret and Ševčík, although the works of Kayser and Courvoisier are also noteworthy. Flesch's Kunst des Violin-Spiels (Berlin, 1923–8) is a synthesis of the techniques and artistic priorities of the principal schools of violin teaching in the 19th and early 20th centuries. His Urstudien (1911) also contributed to the systematic development of left-hand technique, and his Hohe Schule des Fingersatzes auf der Geige (first published in Italian, Milan, 1960) significantly loosened traditional concepts of fingering.

Other notable 20th-century pedagogical literature includes Capet's Technique supérieure de l'archet (Paris, 1916), Auer's Violin Playing as I Teach it (New York, 1921), Demetrius Dounis's Künstlertechnik (Vienna, 1921), Elma and Erich Doflein's Geigenschulwerk (Mainz, 1931), Galamian's Principles of Violin Playing and Teaching (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1962) and various works by Menuhin and Bronstein. Kato Havas and Paul Rolland have focussed on developing relaxation, control and coordination. The ‘Suzuki method’ has revolutionized violin teaching in some areas, allowing pupils to develop artistic potential simultaneously with technical skills (see Suzuki, Shin'ichi). However, most 20th-century sources are based on traditional methods; few account for the extended harmonic language, diversity of styles and the resultant technical and rhythmic demands of much contemporary music. Exceptions include Galamian and Neumann's Contemporary Violin Technique (New York, 1966) and Zukofsky's All-Interval Scale Book (New York, 1977), which are essentially modern approaches to scales and arpeggios, and study books by Hindemith, Adia Ghertzovici and Elizabeth Green.

Violin, §I, 5(iii): Since 1820: Technique and performing practice

(c) Posture and manner of holding the violin.

Not until the early 19th century was there general agreement on the optimum posture and manner of holding the violin (see fig.18). A ‘noble’ and relaxed position was recommended, with head upright, feet normally in line but slightly apart, and body-weight distributed slightly towards the left side. The seated position preserved the erect trunk but required the right leg to be turned inward slightly to avoid ‘fouling’ the bow. 20th-century attitudes have generally been more flexible, emphasizing comfort and ease while prohibiting exaggerated body movement; but Flesch (1923) stressed the importance of feet placement, recommending a ‘rectangular’ leg position in which the feet are close together; an ‘acutangular’ position in which the feet are separated, with either right or left foot advanced and the body-weight on the rear foot; and his favoured ‘spread-leg’ position.

Although Spohr's chin rest was originally positioned directly over the tailpiece, a chin-braced grip on the left of the tailpiece gained universal approval by the mid-19th century, affording firm support for the instrument and allowing it to be held horizontally at shoulder height and directly in front of the player at almost 90 degrees. Optimum freedom of left-hand movement and bow management was thus achieved; some violinists employed a pad to increase security and comfort and avoid raising the left shoulder. The right arm adopted a position closer to the player's side than formerly, requiring the violin to be inclined more to the right for optimum bowing facility on the lowest string. Baillot (1834) prescribed an angle of 45 degrees, Spohr (1832) 25 to 30 degrees. Flesch, Suzuki and most 20th-century teachers recommend that the violin be held parallel to the floor.

Violin, §I, 5(iii): Since 1820: Technique and performing practice

(d) Fingering and shifting.

The ‘Geminiani grip’ (ex.1) remained the most common guide to correct elbow, hand, wrist and finger placement (in 1st position) until well into the 20th century. The hand and fingers generally formed a curve to enable the top joints of the fingers to stop the strings from the same height. With the chin-braced violin hold, shifting proved less precarious, the left hand was able to move more as a unit than before, and a closer relationship developed between shifting and phrasing. Baillot (1834) acknowledged this interrelationship, demonstrating Kreutzer's frequent shifts for brilliance of effect and Rode's more uniform tonal objectives, incorporating ports de voix. Baillot's discussion of ports de voix and expressive fingering provides clues to the mechanics of shifting. Anticipatory notes (unsounded) indicate the method of shifting, the stopped finger sliding forwards (or backwards) in order to be substituted by another finger. Spohr (1832) endorsed this, especially for rapid shifts involving leaps from a low to a high position in slurred bowing without glissando (ex.2), and illustrated a fast shift in which the highest note is a harmonic (ex.3). A sliding effect is clearly intended in another Spohr example (ex.4), and Habeneck (c1835) and Baillot (1834) allowed the tasteful introduction of portamento, especially in slow movements and in sustained melodies when a passage ascends or descends by step. Bériot (1858) used signs to indicate three types of port de voix: vif, doux and traîné.

Exploitation of portamento as an ‘emotional connection of two tones’ (commonly in slurred bowing and with upward shifts) to articulate melodic shape and emphasize structurally important notes became so prevalent in the late 19th century that succeeding generations reacted strongly against the false accents it created, its slow execution and its use for convenience in shifting rather than expressive purpose. Flesch (1923) distinguished three portamento types: a straightforward one-finger slide; the ‘B-portamento’, in which the beginning finger slides to an intermediary note; and the ‘L-portamento’, in which the last finger slides from an intermediary note (ex.5). The first two types were commonly employed in the early 20th century, but the L-portamento was rarely used until the 1930s. Broadly speaking, the execution of portamento became faster, less frequent and less prominent as the century progressed.

In shifting, the odd-numbered positions began to be emphasized, and an increased use of semitone shifts facilitated achievement of the prevalent legato ideal. The higher positions were exploited more frequently for expressive reasons, particularly of sonority and uniformity of timbre. The fingered-octave technique, first discussed by Baillot (1834), gradually gained favour for its greater clarity and accuracy, and less frequent displacements of the hand. Geminiani's fingering for chromatic scales, largely ignored by his contemporaries and successors, achieved more positive recognition in the 20th century when re-introduced by Flesch (1923), due to its greater evenness, articulation and clarity. However, the diversity of systems used in 20th-century methods and studies confirms that fingering is a matter for individual decision rather than textbook regulation.

Many 19th-century violinists opted for a more advanced thumb-position to achieve greater mobility and facility in extensions, sometimes avoiding formal shifts between positions. Some of Paganini's fingerings, for example, anticipate the flexible left-hand usage of 20th-century violin technique, in which contractions, extensions and ‘creeping fingerings’ liberate the hand from its customary position-sense and the traditional diatonic framework. In 20th-century music this was demanded by increased chromaticism, whole-tone, microtone and other scale patterns, and non-consonant double and multiple stopping. The increased use of glissandos (by, for example, Xenakis: Pithoprakta, 1956; Syrmos, 1959; and Aroura, 1971) and Feldman's experiments with intonation systems are also significant (e.g. Violin Concerto, 1979; For John Cage, 1982; Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello, 1987). The general application to violin fingering of Cage's concept of a ‘gamut’ of sounds, in which a specific string is assigned for a specific pitch (e.g. Six Melodies for Violin and Keyboard, 1950), has revealed new possibilities of structural and timbral organization.

Violin, §I, 5(iii): Since 1820: Technique and performing practice

(e) Vibrato.

Up to the early 20th century vibrato was employed sparingly as an expressive ornament linked with the inflections of the bow. It served to articulate melodic shape and assist in cantabile playing and was employed particularly on sustained or final notes in a phrase, at a speed and intensity appropriate to the music's dynamic, tempo and character.

Spohr (1832) described four kinds of vibrato: fast, for sharply accentuated notes; slow, for sustained notes in impassioned melodies; accelerating, for crescendos; and decelerating, for decrescendos. Like Baillot (1834), he emphasized that deviation from the note should be scarcely perceptible. Baillot expanded the vibrato concept to include three types of ‘undulated sounds’: left-hand vibrato; a wavering effect caused by variation of pressure on the bowstick; and a combination of the two. He recommended that notes should be begun and terminated without vibrato to achieve accuracy of intonation and provided examples of Viotti's vibrato usage, some of which link the device with the ‘swell’ effect.

Joachim (1902–5) and Auer (1921), among others, recommended selective use of vibrato; Ysaÿe's vibrato, though more perceptible, was restricted to long notes. Flesch (1923) attributed the reintroduction of continuous vibrato (previously practised in the second half of the 18th century; see Vibrato, §3) to Kreisler, though it should probably be accredited to Lambert Massart, Kreisler's teacher. By the late 1920s vibrato was considered more a constituent of a pleasing tone than an embellishment. Most theorists advocated a combination of finger, hand and arm movements for optimum vibrato production, but Rolland also included the shoulder.

Several 20th-century composers prescribed extreme applications of vibrato, even reversing traditional usages by demanding intense, fast vibrato in soft passages, or a slow, wobbly vibrato in loud passages; others employed the ornamental vibrato-glissando in which the finger slides up and down the string, creating a siren-like sound (e.g. Penderecki, String Quartet no.1). By contrast, the senza vibrato indication has been used increasingly for contrast or special effect.

Violin, §I, 5(iii): Since 1820: Technique and performing practice

(f) Special effects.

Universal acceptance of harmonics was slow to materialize, but interest was eventually aroused by virtuosos such as Jakob Scheller and Paganini. Paganini introduced the technique of artificial harmonics (see Harmonics, §3) in double stopping, and, by using harmonics, extended the range of the G string to at least three octaves. Chromatic slides, single trills, trills in double stopping, double trills, all in harmonics, and some pseudo-harmonic effects were incorporated into his vocabulary.

The use of the index finger for pizzicato was customary in the 19th century, but the right-hand thumb was occasionally employed, the instrument sometimes being held guitar-fashion for sonorous arpeggiation of chords or for soft passages. Berlioz (1843) recommended the second finger for most pizzicatos but suggested using the thumb and first three fingers in appropriate rapid passages. Left-hand pizzicato was employed by Paganini and later composers such as Bartók and Penderecki, sometimes in combination with right-hand pizzicato or simultaneously with bowed notes (e.g. Bartók's Contrasts). Paganini's Introduction and Variations on Paisiello's ‘Nel cor più non mi sento’, for example, employs left-hand pizzicato in accompanying, melodic and decorative roles, and the 15th variation of his Carnaval de Venise involves pizzicato for both left and right hands. Sculthorpe also employs left-hand pizzicato extensively (e.g. in Requiem).

Pizzicato techniques demanded by composers in the 20th century included the prescription of various pizzicato locations (e.g. mid-point of the string, at or behind the bridge, or either side of the stopping finger) or specific plucking agents (e.g. with the nail or the fleshy pad of the finger), requiring strings to be stopped with the fingernail for pizzicato, perpendicular strumming and oblique strumming of chords, or specifying pizzicato with alternating fingers (e.g. Crumb, Four Nocturnes). A ‘scooping’ technique was developed to obtain mellow, resonant pizzicatos in single and double stopping. Other effects involved ‘flicking’ the string with the nail, pizzicato glissando using the finger or peg (Crumb), pizzicato tremolo (Bartók), ‘snap’ pizzicatos (introduced by Biber but popularized by Bartók), pizzicato natural harmonics (Crumb) and pizzicato with vibrato in varying degrees.

Scordatura gradually lost popularity during the 19th century, although it never became obsolete; Mazas, Spohr, Paganini, Bériot, Prume, Winter, Baillot, Bartók, Mahler, Scelsi and Ligeti are among those who have employed it. Ligeti's Ramifications (1968–9) for 12 solo strings, which requires half the ensemble to be tuned a quarter-tone higher than normal pitch, reflects 20th-century interest in microtones, initiated by Julián Carrillo's experimental ‘sonido 13’ system (of equal-tempered quarter-tones) of the 1890s. Among others who experimented with microtonal effects for expressive purposes or as an integral compositional device were Ives (Quarter-tone Chorale op.36), Bartók (Sonata, 1944), Hába, Vïshnegradsky, Penderecki, Cage, Boulez, Husa, Szymanowski, Takemitsu and Crumb.

Sculthorpe and other 20th-century composers have prescribed unconventional violin sounds, including tapping on various parts of the instrument or on the strings with the fingers or with a wood, metal, glass or plastic beater. Others have exploited sounds extraneous to the violin, using percussion, sounds such as floor stamping or finger snapping, or vocal sounds in combination with violin playing. Pre-recorded tape has further expanded the range of texture and effect, notably in Reich's Violin Phase.

Violin, §I: The instrument, its technique and its repertory

6. Jazz and blues.

(i) Jazz.

The earliest use of the violin in a jazz-related context was as a solo instrument in the ragtime orchestras of the early 20th century. Most orchestral arrangements of ragtime included parts for one or two violins, which were of equal melodic and structural importance to that of the clarinet or trumpet, but gradually the violin became subservient to the brass and woodwind instruments in the ensemble. A recording such as A.J. Piron’s Lou’siana Swing (1924, OK) provides a late example of the violin being employed as a full and equal member of the front line. Territory bands often included a violin in their instrumentation; most notably Stuff Smith developed an innovative horn-like approach and experimented with acoustic and electric amplification while with Trent in the late 1920s. Eddie South first rose to prominence in the 1920s in Chicago as musical director of Jimmy Wade’s orchestra. Multi-instrumentalist Juice Wilson, by all accounts an accomplished violinist, worked with South in Freddie Keppard’s band and later recorded with Noble Sissle in London in 1929 before drifting into obscurity. Other early multi-instrumental pioneers were Darnell Howard and Edgar Sampson. Howard first recorded as a member of a three-violin section with W.C. Handy’s Orchestra of Memphis in 1917 and later as a soloist with Earl Hines. Some big bands of the mid-1920s incorporated violin sections, the principal example being that of Paul Whiteman, where the section was led by Matty Malneck.

Gradually the violin reasserted its position as a solo instrument, particularly owing to the work of four musicians – Joe Venuti, Eddie South, Stephane Grappelli and Stuff Smith. Venuti established his reputation through his duet recordings with the guitarist Eddie Lang in the mid-1920s. Similarly, Grappelli formed an association with the guitarist Django Reinhardt in the Quintette du Hot Club de France (see fig.20). Smith played an important role from the mid-1930s as a leader and risk-taking soloist in small swing groups. South, a classically trained swing musician with a fine technique, was influenced by gypsy music (he recorded with Reinhardt and Grappelli).

Other significant violinists of the swing era were Svend Asmussen, Ray Perry and the rhapsodic Ray Nance. Nance’s best work was as a member of Duke Ellington’s orchestra. During the 1940s Perry became a transitional figure between the harmonic invention of Smith and the new bop style. But despite the influence exerted by Smith on the bop trumpet virtuoso Dizzy Gillespie, bop violin lacked solid representation on record until the work of Dick Wetmore and Harry Lookofsky in the 1950s. Lookofsky, who had played in the NBC Symphony Orchestra under Toscanini for 12 years, recorded brilliant bop in which his solos, as well as his multitrack section work, bear all the hallmarks of convincing improvisation but were executed almost entirely from written arrangements. Inspired by Smith, the early explorations of the Frenchman Jean-Luc Ponty and the Polish Michał Urbaniak in the 1960s were in a bop vein, before they turned to free jazz and fusion. The classically trained Hungarian, Elek Bacsik, recorded virtuoso bop improvisations in the USA in the 1970s. In the 1980s Max Roach developed convincing bop arrangements for strings in his double quartet.

Different approaches to violin technique have led to a wide range of styles among jazz players: some have drawn on the techniques of classical and traditional music players, while others have invented original methods. Grappelli retained the tonal aesthetic of the classical violin tradition, and his precise, light sensitivity was itself an influence on virtuoso concert violinists such as Paul Zukofsky. Venuti and Asmussen made more use of the instrument’s harmonic resources and employed the bow in a percussive manner. Smith revolutionized the vocabulary of jazz violinists with his wild, biting attack, wide vibrato, unorthodox fingerings and expressive intonation. Venuti devised a novel bowing technique that involved wrapping the bow hair around all four strings, and holding the stick of the bow beneath the body of the violin. Perry introduced the idea of singing in unison with the violin, a device quickly taken up by several double bass players and by Asmussen.

The acoustical and musical demands of many types of modern jazz and rock have led to modifications in the way in which the violin is played. Jazz musicians have always found that the relatively quiet sound of the instrument has placed them at a disadvantage. Following early acoustic-amplified designs, such as the Stroh violin, Smith from the late 1930s and Perry in the 40s favoured conventionally built, electrically amplified violins, while Ginger Smock recorded in 1946 on a solid-bodied electric instrument. Since the 1980s the majority of jazz violinists have relied on amplification, making use of a microphone, a transducer or a purpose-built instrument with integral transducer. Electronic enhancement devices are also common.

Players have shown great stylistic flexibility in jazz. Zbigniew Seifert, for example, executed fast trills as a substitute for vibrato, while Lookofsky and Ponty virtually abandoned vibrato altogether. Others, such as Michael White and John Blake, have experimented with non-Western tonal systems or have made extensive use of sliding pitch. Early free-jazz violinists, often classically trained, such as Michel Sampson and Ramsey Ameen, took their cue mainly from the explorations of Ornette Coleman. Coleman is self-taught on the instrument, and performs in an intense, percussive manner using unorthodox fingerings and bowing positions, but uses the violin mainly for colouristic purposes. Two violinists who came to the fore in the immediate wake of Coleman are Leroy Jenkins and Billy Bang, both of whom consistently play outside the equal-tempered system. Bang traces his lineage to Stuff Smith while Jenkins traces his primarily to Eddie South, bringing to the idiom a virtuoso classical technique. Coleman and Jenkins have both written concert pieces for string quartets.

A resurgence of interest in the improvisational possibilities of the violin has spawned a number of exceptionally gifted violinists who have successfully combined free playing and organized structures in individualistic ways during the 1990s. India Cooke displays lyrical sensitivity and imaginative strength, free from cliché. Mat Maneri’s enquiring work is by turns pointillistic and arching, on a variety of acoustic and electric instruments. Jim Nolet displays wonderfully controlled dynamics and stylistic shifts. Examples of more conventional approaches to improvisation are heard in the playing of Mark Feldman and Regina Carter. Feldman epitomizes what might be termed a flash-classical approach. Malcolm Goldstein is an example of a radical improvising violinist who has recorded works by such composers as Ornette Coleman and John Cage.

Efforts by non-improvising concert violinists to record as soloists with jazz musicians have almost invariably resulted in violinistic compromise and musical failure. An exception might be made for the Suite for Violin and Jazz Trio released in 1977 by Pinchas Zukerman with the composer Claude Bolling. Similarly, the French, classically trained jazz violinist Michel Warlop recorded some of his best playing in his ambitious Swing Concerto (1942), parts of which are Gershwin-inspired. A number of 1940s recordings by Heifetz of pieces by Gershwin and others are successful examples of jazz-tinged performances by a virtuoso concert violinist.

Some musicians have sought ways of expanding the range of the violin downwards. Ponty, Urbaniak and Bacsik played the violectra, an electric instrument sounding an octave below the conventional violin. Ponty and Urbaniak later took up a five-string electric violin (the lowest string on which was tuned to c) and Urbaniak performs on a six-string model (with the addition of a string tuned to F). The acoustic tenor violin, pitched an octave below the violin, has been used in jazz to best effect by Lookofsky. Leroy Jenkins and Jim Nolet double on viola. Lakshminarayana Shankar plays a ten-string violin with two necks, an instrument that he designed himself.

(ii) Blues.

During the 1920s and 30s many African-American violinists, either self-taught or legitimately trained, played obbligatos on Chicago and New York recordings by blues and vaudeville vocalists and, to a lesser extent on intrumentals. These included Leon Abbey, Clarence Black, Leroy Parker with Mamie Smith, Leroy Pickett, Robert Robbins with Bessie Smith, and Cordy Williams. The remarkable classically trained Angelina Rivera was the first black woman to record in the genre, with Josephine Baker in Paris in 1926. This tradition differed somewhat from the raw blues of string band fiddlers such as Eddie Anthony or Will Batts. Nevertheless, urban as well as country styles may trace their origins to 19th-century plantation fiddling, often on home-made instruments. Several guitarists, most notably Lonnie Johnson, doubled on violin, as did the electric blues guitarist Clarence Gatemouth Brown from the 1940s. Later electric blues violinists included Papa John Creach and Don Sugarcane Harris, both of whom enjoyed second careers in rock bands. Remo [Ray] Biondi, who doubled on swing guitar and violin, is a rare example of a white American violinist who recorded raw, authentic blues with black Americans, such as Roosevelt Sykes and Jimmy Reed, in the 1950s. Like many jazz musicians, the urbane Eddie South recorded a number of blues instrumentals, while Stuff Smith frequently turned his attention to the form to incisive effect. From the 1970s, Leroy Jenkins, in particular, has used the structure and emotion of the blues in several of his improvisations and compositions.

Violin, §I: The instrument, its technique and its repertory

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A Catalogues, bibliographies, general histories. B Makers, aspects of violin making. C Treatises, methods. D Commentaries on technique. E To 1600. F After 1600. G Performers. H Jazz and Blues.

a: catalogues, bibliographies, general histories

b: makers, aspects of violin making

c: treatises, methods

d: commentaries on technique

Violin, §I: The instrument, its technique and its repertory: Bibliography

a: catalogues, bibliographies, general histories

MoserGV

F. Regli: Storia del violino in Piemonte (Turin, 1863)

W. Sandys and S.A. Forster: The History of the Violin (London,1864)

J.W. von Wasielewski: Die Violine und ihre Meister (Leipzig, 1869, rev. 8/1927/R by W. von Wasielewski)

A.K. Tottmann: Führer durch den Violinunterricht (Leipzig, 1873, rev. 4/1935 as Führer durch die Violinliterature)

G. Hart: The Violin and its Music (London, 1881/R)

E. Heron-Allen: De fidiculis bibliographia: being an Attempt towards a Bibliography of the Violin and all Other Instruments played with a Bow in Ancient and Modern Times (London, 1890–94/R)

A. Pougin: Le violon, les violonistes et la musique du violon du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1924)

A. Bachmann: An Encyclopedia of the Violin, ed. A.E. Wier (New York and London, 1925/R)

A. Bonaventura: Storia del violino, dei violinisti e della musica per violino (Milan, 1925, 2/1933)

F. von Reuter: Führer durch die Solo-Violinmusik (Berlin, 1926)

M. Pincherle: Feuillets d'histoire du violon (Paris, 1927)

G.R. Hayes: Musical Instruments and their Music, 1500–1750, ii: The Viols, and Other Bowed Instrumetns (London, 1930/R)

E. van der Straeten: The History of the Violin (London, 1933/R)

F. Farga: Geigen und Geiger (Zürich, 1940, rev. 7/1983 by K.F. Mages, W. Wendel and U. Dühlberg; Eng. trans., 1950, rev. 2/1969)

S. Babitz: The Violin: Views and Reviews (Urbana, IL, 1955, 3/1980)

E. Leipp: Le violon: histoire, esthétique, facture et acoustique (Paris, 1965; Eng. trans., 1969)

B.G. Seagrave and J. Berman: The A.S.T.A. Dictionary of Bowing Terms for String Instruments (Urbana, IL, 1968)

Violinspiel und Violinmusik: Graz 1972

W. Kolneder: Das Buch der Violine: Bau, Geschichte, Spiel, Pädagogik, Komposition (Zürich, 1972, 3/1984; Eng. trans., 1998)

A. Loft: Violin and Keyboard, the Duo Repertoire (New York, 1973/R)

E. Melkus: Die Violine: eine Einführung in die Geschichte der Violine und des Violinspiels (Berne, 1973/R, enlarged 2/1997)

P. Marcan: Music for Solo Violin Unaccompanied: a Performer's Guide to the Published Literature of the Seventeenth, Eighteenth, Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (High Wycombe, 1983)

B.R. Toskey: Concertos for Violin and Viola: a Comprehensive Encylopedia (Seattle, 1983)

D. Gill, ed.: The Book of the Violin (Oxford and New York, 1984)

K. Osse: Violine: Klangwerkzeug und Kunstgegenstand: ein Leitfaden für Spieler und Liebhaber von Streichinstrumenten (Wiesbaden, 1985)

H. Edlund: Music for Solo Violin Unaccompanied: a Catalogue of Published and Unpublished Works from the Seventeenth Century to 1989 (High Wycombe, 1989)

R. Stowell, ed.: The Cambridge Companion to the Violin (Cambridge, 1992)

R. Dawes, ed.: The Violin Book (London, 1999)

Violin, §I: The instrument, its technique and its repertory: Bibliography

b: makers, aspects of violin making

LütgendorffGL

MGG2 (‘Streichinstrumentenbau’, §A; T. Drescher)

VannesE

A. Bagatella: Regole per la costruzione de' violini, viole, violoncelli e violoni (Padua, 1786/R; Eng. trans., 1995)

G.A. Marchi: Il manoscritto liutario di G.A. Marchi (Bologna, 1786); ed. and Eng. trans. as The Manuscript on Violin Making/Il manoscritto liutario, ed. R. Regazzi (Bologna, 1986)

F.-J. Fétis: Antoine Stradivari, luthier célèbre (Paris, 1856; Eng. trans., 1864/R)

E. Heron-Allen: Violin-Making, as it was and is (London, 1884, 2/1885/R)

W.H., A.F. and A.E. Hill: Antonio Stradivari: his Life and Work (1644–1737) (London, 1902, 2/1909)

G. Fry: The Varnishes of the Italian Violin-Makers (London, 1904)

W.M. Morris: British Violin-Makers, Classical and Modern (London, 1904, 2/1920 as British Violin-Makers)

O. Möckel: Die Kunst des Geigenbaues (Leipzig, 1930, 6/1984)

F. Hamma: Meisterwerke italienischer Geigenbaukunst (Stuttgart, 1931, rev. 2/1964 by W. Hamma as Meister italienischer Geigenbaukunst, with Eng. trans., rev. 4/1976)

W.H., A.F. and A.E. Hill: The Violin Makers of the Guarneri Family (London, 1931)

C. Bonetti: La genealogia degli Amati liutai e il primato della scuola liutistica cremonese (Cremona, 1938; Eng. trans., 1989, as A Genealogy of the Amati Family of Violin Makers, 1500–1740)

J.H. Fairfield: Known Violin Makers (New York, 1942, 5/1988)

E.N. Doring: How Many Strads? Our Heritage from the Master (Chicago, 1945, 2/1998)

J. Michelman: Violin Varnish: a Plausible Re-Creation of the Varnish Used by the Italian Violin Makers between the Years 1550 and 1750 (Cincinnati, 1946)

J.W. Reiss: Polskie skrzypce i polscy skrzypkowie [Polish violins and violinists] (Warsaw, 1946)

F. Hamma: Meister deutscher Geigenbaukunst (Stuttgart, 1948, 2/1961; Eng. trans., 1961 as German Violin Makers)

E.N. Doring: The Guadagnini Family of Violin Makers (Chicago, 1949)

W. Senn: Jakob Stainer, der Geigenmacher zu Absam: die Lebengeschichte nach urkundlichen Quellen (Innsbruck, 1951)

K. Jalovec: Italští houslaři/Italian Violin Makers (Prague, 1952; edn in Eng. only, 1957, 2/1964)

R. and M. Millant: Manuel pratique de lutherie (Paris, 1952/R)

Z. Szulc: Słownik lutników polskich [Dictionary of Polish violin-makers] (Poznań, 1953)

W. Henley and C. Woodcock: Universal Dictionary of Violin and Bow Makers (Brighton, 1959–69)

K. Jalovec: Čeští houslaři [Czech violinists] (Prague, 1959; Eng. trans., 1959)

C.M. Hutchins: ‘The Physics of Violins’, Scientific American, ccvii/5 (1962), 78–84, 87–93

J. Backus: The Acoustical Foundations of Music (New York, 1969, 2/1977)

S. Milliot: Documents inédits sur les luthiers parisiens du XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1970)

H.K. Goodkind: Violin Iconography of Antonio Stradivari, 1644–1737 (Larchmont, NY, 1972)

D. Abbott and E. Segerman: ‘Strings in the 16th and 17th Centuries’, GSJ, xxvii (1974), 48–73

S. Bonta: ‘From Violone to Violoncello: a Question of Strings’, JAMIS, iii (1977), 64–99

A. Gauge: ‘“La lutherie” at Mirecourt’, Journal of the Violin Society of America, iii/3 (1977), 68–79

M. Brinser: Dictionary of Twentieth Century Violin Making (Irvington, NJ, 1978)

C. Taylor: ‘The New Violin Family and its Scientific Background’, Soundings, vii (1978), 101–16

F. Prochart: Der Wiener Geigenbau im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Tutzing, 1979)

F. Mele: ‘19th- and 20th-Century Violin Makers’, The Strad, xc (1979–80), 912–15

R.B. Nevin: ‘Violin Varnish’, The Strad, xc (1979–80), 446–8

P.L. Shirtcliff: ‘The Violin-Making Schools of Europe’, The Strad, xc (1979–80), 442–5

H. Heyde and P. Liersch: ‘Studien zum sächischen Musikinstrumentenbau des 16./17. Jahrhunderts’, Jb Peters, ii (1980), 230–59

C. Vettori: Linee classiche della liuteria italiana/The Classic Lines of Italian Violin Making (Pisa, 1980)

G. Tumminello: Arte, artigianato, società: dall' albero al violino, lavoro e creatività (Cremona, 1981)

W. Prizer: ‘Isabella d'Este and Lorenzo da Pavia, “Master Instrument Maker”’, EMH, ii (1982), 87–127

J.S. and W.R. Robinson: The Guarneri Mold and Modern Violin Making (Oklahoma City, OK, 1982)

I. Vigdorchik: The Acoustical Systems of Violins of Stradivarius and other Cremona Makers (Westbury, NY, 1982)

L.C. Witten: ‘The Surviving Instruments of Andrea Amati’, EMc, x (1982), 487–94

A. Cohen: ‘A Cache of 18th Century Strings’, GSJ, xxxvi (1983), 37–48

A. Lolov: ‘Bent Plates in Violin Construction’, GSJ, xxxvii (1984), 10–15

D. Rubio: ‘The Anatomy of the Violin’, The Book of the Violin, ed. D. Gill (Oxford and New York, 1984), 17–47

E.J. Ward: The Strad Facsimile: an Illustrated Guide to Violin Making (Kaneoho, HI, 1984)

K. Coates: Geometry, Proportion, and the Art of Lutherie (Oxford, 1985)

R. Doerr: Violin Maker's Handbook (Battle Creek, MI, 1985)

K.D. Marshall: ‘Modal Analysis of a Violin’, JASA, lxxvii (1985), 695–709

P.L. Polato: ‘Liutai veneziani nei secoli XVI, XVII e XVIII: ricerca documentaria nell'Archivio di Stato di Venezia’, Flauto dolce, no.12 (1985), 6–15

W.S. Gorrill and N. Pickering: ‘Strings: Facts and Fallacies’, Journal of the Violin Society of America, viii/1 (1986), 27–40

W. Hamma: Geigenbauer der deutschen Schule des 17. bis 19. Jahrhunderts/Violin-Makers of the German School from the 17th to the 19th Century (Tutzing, 1986)

R. Hargrave: ‘Safety Pins’, ‘Tried and Tested’, ‘Keeping Fit’, The Strad, xcvii (1986–7), 116–18, 194–9, 257–8

A. Dipper and D. Woodrow, ed. and trans.: Ignazio Alessandro Cozio di Salabue: Observations on the Construction of Stringed Instruments and their Adjustment, 1804, 1805, 1809, 1810, 1816 (Taynton, 1987)

K. Moens: ‘Der frühe Geigenbau in Süddeutschland’, Studia organologica: Festschrift für John Henry van der Meer, ed. F. Hellwig (Tutzing, 1987), 349–88

S. Bonta: ‘Catline Strings Revisited’, JAMIS, xiv (1988), 38–60

D. Draley: ‘The Transition of the Amati Workshop into the Hands of Stradivari, 1660–1684’, Journal of the Violin Society of America, ix/3 (1988), 71–97

H.M. Brown: ‘The Trecento Fiddle and its Bridges’, EMc, xvii (1989), 311–29

Liuteria e musica strumentale a Brescia tra Cinque e Seicento: Salò 1990

O. Adelmann: Die alemannische Schule: archaischer Geigenbau des 17. Jahrhunderts im südlichen Schwarzwald und in der Schweiz (Berlin, 1990)

F. Dassenno and U. Ravasio: Gasparo da Salò e la liuteria bresciana tra Rinascimento e Barocco (Brescia and Cremona, 1990)

T. Drescher: Die Geigen- und Lautmacher vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart (Tutzing, 1990)

P. Kass: ‘The stati d'anime of S. Faustino in Cremona: Tracing the Amati Family, 1641 to 1686’, Journal of the Violin Society of America, xii/1 (1992), 3–85

D. Rosengard: ‘Cremona after Stradivari: the Bergonzi and Storioni Families’, Journal of the Violin Society of America, xii/1 (1992), 91–162

C. Beare and B. Carlson: Antonio Stradivari: the Cremona Exhibition of 1987 (London, 1993)

P. Biddulph: The Violin Masterpieces of Guarneri del Gesù (London, 1994)

D.G. Plowright: Dictionary of British Violin and Bow Makers (Exmouth, 1994)

B.W. Harvey: The Violin Family and its Makers in the British Isles (Oxford, 1995)

J. Jaskulski, J. Podbielski and R.J. Wieczorek: Polakowi tylko boga a skrypic: dzieje lutnictwa na ziemiach polskich di II wojny światowej [To a Pole, the almighty and a violin: history of the violin-making art in Poland until the Second World War] (Poznań, 1996)

J. Beament: The Violin Explained: Components, Mechanism, and Sound (Oxford, 1997)

K. Moens: ‘Vuillaume et les premiers luthiers/Vuillaume and the First Violin Makers’, Violons, Vuillaume, 1798–1875: un maître luthier français du XIXe siècle/Violins, Vuillaume, 1798–1875: a Great French Violin Maker of the 19th Century, Musée de la Musique, 23 Oct 1998 – 31 Jan 1999 (Paris, 1998), 130–38, 160–62 [exhibition catalogue]

Violin, §I: The instrument, its technique and its repertory: Bibliography

c: treatises, methods

PraetoriusSM, ii

PraetoriusTI

VirdungMG

M. Agricola: Musica instrumentalis deudsch (Wittenberg, 1529/R, enlarged 5/1545; Eng. trans., ed. W. Hettrick, 1994)

H. Gerle: Musica teusch (Nuremberg, 1532/R, rev. 3/1546/R as Musica und Tabulatur)

G.M. Lanfranco: Scintille di musica (Brescia, 1533/R); Eng. trans. in B. Lee: Giovanni Maria Lanfranco’s ‘Scintille di musica’ and its Relation to 16th-Century Music Theory (diss., Cornell U., 1961)

S. di Ganassi dal Fontego: Regola rubertina (Venice, 1542/R); ed. W. Eggers (Kassel, 1974); Eng. trans. in JVdGSA, xviii (1981), 13–66

S. di Ganassi dal Fontego: Lettione seconda (Venice, 1543/R); ed. W. Eggers (Kassel, 1974)

P. Jambe de Fer: Epitome musical (Lyons, 1556); repr. in F. Lesure: ‘L'epitome musical de Philibert Jambe de Fer’, AnnM, vi (1958–63), 341–86

R. Rognoni: Passaggi per potersi essarcitare (Venice, 1592)

L. Zacconi: Prattica di musica (Venice, 1592/R)

F. Rognoni: Selva de varii passaggi (Milan, 1620/R)

G. Zanetti: Il scolaro (Milan, 1645)

J.J. Prinner: Musicalischer Schlissl (MS, 1677, US-Wc)

J. Lenton: The Gentleman's Diversion, or the Violin Explained (London, 1693, 2/1702 as The Useful Instructor on the Violin)

Nolens volens, or You Shall Learn to Play on the Violin Whether You Will or Not (London, 1695)

The Self-Instructer on the Violin (London, 1695, 2/1700 as The First, Second and Third Books of the Self-Instructor on the Violin)

D. Merck: Compendium musicae instrumentalis chelicae, das ist: kurtza Begriff, welcher Gestalten die Instrumental-Music auf der Violin, Pratschen, Viola da Gamba, und Bass gründlich und leicht zu erlernen seye (Augsburg, 1695)

G. Muffat: Florilegium secundum (Passau, 1698; ed. in DTÖ, iv, Jg.2/ii, 1895/R)

M. Corrette: L'école d'Orphée, méthode pour apprendre facilement à jouer du violon dans le goût françois et italien avec des principes de musique et beaucoup de leçons (Paris, 1738/R, enlarged 2/1779)

J.-J.C. de Mondonville: Introduction to Les sons harmoniques, op.4 (Paris and Lille, 1738)

H. Le Blanc: Défense de la basse de viole contre les entreprises du violon et les prétentions du violoncel (Amsterdam, 1740/R)

J.D. Berlin: Musikalske elementer (Trondheim, 1744); ed. B. Korsten (Bergen, 1977)

R. Crome: The Fiddle New Model'd, or a Useful Introduction for the Violin (London, c1750)

F. Geminiani: The Art of Playing on the Violin (London, 1751/R1952 with introduction by D.D. Boyden)

L. Mozart: Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule (Augsburg, 1756/R, 3/1787/R; Eng. trans., 1948, as A Treatise on the Fundamental Principles of Violin Playing, 2/1951/R)

G. Tartini: L'arte del arco (Paris, 1758); repr. in J.B. Cartier: L'art du violon (Paris, 1798, enlarged 3/c1803/R)

The Compleat Tutor for the Violin: Containing the Best and Easiest Instructions for Learners to Obtain a Proficiency on that Instrument (London, after 1761)

L'abbé le fils [J.-B. Saint-Sévin] Principes du violon (Paris, 1761/R, 2/1772)

C.R. Brijon: Reflexions sur la musique et la vraie manière de l'exécuter sur le violon (Paris, 1763/R)

G. Tartini: Lettera [dated 1760] del defonto Signor Giuseppe Tartini alla Signora Maddalena Lombardini inserviente ad una importante lezione per i suonatori di violone, L'Europa letteraria, v/2 (Venice, 1770; Eng. trans., 1771, 2/1779/R) [It., Eng., Fr. and Ger. edns repr. in E.R. Jacobi, ed. G. Tartini: Traité des agréments de la musique (Celle, 1961)]

G. Löhlein: Anweisung zum Violinspielen (Leipzig and Züllichau, 1774, enlarged 3/1797 by J.F. Reichardt)

T.-J. Tarade: Traité du violon (Paris, c1774/R)

M. Corrette: L'art de se perfectionner dans le violon … suite de L'école d'Orphée (Paris, 1782/R)

A. Lolli: L'école du violon en quatuor (Berlin and Amsterdam, c1784)

I. Schweigl: Verbesserte Grundlehre der Violin (Vienna, 1786, 2/1795 as Grundlehre der Violin)

F. Galeazzi: Elementi teorico-pratici di musica con un saggio sopra l'arte di suonare il violino analizzata, ed a dimostrabili principi ridotta, i (Rome, 1791, enlarged 2/1817), Eng. trans., ed. A. Franscarelli (DMA diss., U. of Rochester, 1968); ii (Rome, 1796), Eng. trans. of pt 4, section 2, ed. G.W. Harwood (M.A. thesis, Brigham Young U., 1980)

J.A. Hiller: Anweisung zum Violinspielen für Schulen und zum Selbstunterrichte (Leipzig, 1792)

M. Woldemar: Méthode pour le violon (Paris, 1795–8)

A. Bailleux: Méthode raisonée pour apprendre à jouer du violon (Paris, 1798/R)

J.-B. Cartier: L'art du violon (Paris, 1798, enlarged 3/c1803/R) [incl. G. Tartini: L'arte del arco]

M. Woldemar: Grande méthode ou étude élémentaire pour le violon (Paris, 1798–9, 2/1802–3)

G.G. Cambini: Nouvelle méthode théorique et pratique pour le violon (Paris, c1800/R)

P. Baillot, P. Rode and R. Kreutzer: Méthode de violon (Paris, 1803/R)

B. Campagnoli: Nouvelle méthode de la mécanique progressive du jeu de violon … op.21 (Leipzig, 1824; It. trans., n.d.; Eng. trans., 1856)

K. Guhr: Über Paganinis Kunst die Violine zu spielen (Mainz, 1831; Eng. trans., rev., 1915; new Eng. trans., 1982, ed. J. Gold)

L. Spohr: Violinschule (Vienna, 1832; Eng. trans., 1843)

P. Baillot: L'art du violon: nouvelle méthode (Paris, 1834)

G. Dubourg: The Violin (London, 1836, rev. 5/1887 by J. Bishop)

J.-D. Alard: Ecole du violon: méthode complète et progressive (Paris, 1844)

H. Wieniawski: L'école moderne op.10 (Bonn, 1854)

C.-A. de Bériot: Méthode de violon op.102 (Paris, 1858)

F. David: Violinschule (Leipzig, 1863)

F. David: Die hohe Schule des Violinspiels (Leipzig, 1867–72, 2/1903)

O. Ševčík: Schule der Violin-Technik op.1 (Prague, 1881)

O. Ševčík: Schule der Bogentechnik op.2 (Leipzig, 1895)

J. Joachim and A. Moser: Violinschule (Berlin, 1902–5; Eng. trans., c1907; trilingual edn, 1959, rev. M. Jacobsen)

O. Ševčík: Violinschule für Anfänger op.6 (Leipzig, 1904–8)

C. Flesch: Urstudien für Violine (Berlin, 1911)

L. Capet: La technique supérieure de l'archet (Paris, 1916)

D. Fryklund: Studien über die Pochette (Sundsvall, 1917)

L. Auer: Violin Playing as I Teach it (New York, 1921/R)

D.C. Dounis: Die Künstlertechnik des Violinspiels/The Artist's Technique of Violin Playing op.12 (Vienna, 1921)

A. Jarosy: Die Grundlagen des violinistichen Fingersatzes (Berlin, 1921; Fr. orig., Paris, 1924, as Nouvelle théorie du doigté; Eng. trans., 1933, as A New Theory of Fingering)

C. Flesch: Die Kunst des Violin-Spiels, i (Berlin, 1923, 2/1929; Eng. trans., 1924, 2/1939; ii (Berlin, 1928; Eng. trans., 1930)

L. Auer: Violin Master-Works and their Interpretation (New York, 1925/R)

L. Auer: Graded Course of Violin Playing (New York, 1926)

E. and E. Doflein: Geigenschulwerk (Mainz, 1931, 2/1951; Eng. trans., 1957)

I.M. Yampol'sky: Osnovï skripichnoy applikaturï [The principles of violin fingering] (Moscow, 1933, enlarged 3/1955; Eng. trans., 1967)

S. Babitz: Principles of Extensions in Violin Fingering (Philadelphia, 1947; enlarged 2/1974 as Violin Fingering)

C. Flesch: Alta scuola di diteggiatura violinistica (Milan, 1960; Eng. trans., rev., 1966/R, as Violin Fingering: its Theory and Practice; Ger. orig., ed. K. Rebling, Frankfurt, 1995, as Die hohe Schule des Fingersatzes auf der Geige)

W. Primrose: Technique is Memory: a Method for Violin and Viola Players Based on Finger Patterns (Oxford, 1960)

I. Galamian: Principles of Violin Playing and Teaching (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1962, 2/1985)

I. Galamian and F. Neumann: Contemporary Violin Technique (New York, 1966)

Y. Menuhin: Violin: six lessons with Yehudi Menuhin (London, 1971/R)

R. Gerle: The Art of Practising the Violin: with Useful Hints for All String Players (London, 1983)

Violin, §I: The instrument, its technique and its repertory: Bibliography

d: commentaries on technique

BoydenH

A. Pougin: Viotti et l'école moderne de violon (Paris, 1888)

M. Pincherle: ‘La technique du violon chez les premiers sonatistes français (1695–1723)’, BSIM, vii (1911), no.8, pp.1–32; no.9, pp.19–35; no.10, pp.10–23

G. Beckmann: Das Violinspiel in Deutschland vor 1700 (Leipzig, 1918, music suppl. 1921)

A. Moser: ‘Die Violin-Skordatur’, AMw, i (1918–19), 573–89

E. Lesser: ‘Zur Scordatura der Streichinstrumente’, AcM, iv (1932), 123–7, 148–60

T. Russell: ‘The Violin “Scordatura”’, MQ, xxiv (1938), 84–96

P.G. Gelrud: A Critical Study of the French Violin School (1782–1882) (diss., Cornell U., 1941)

I.M. Yampol'sky: Russkoye skripichnoye iskusstvo: ocherki i materialï [Russian violin playing: essays and materials] (Moscow, 1951)

A. Wirsta: Ecoles de violon au XVIIIème siècle d'après les ouvrages didactiques (diss., U. of Paris, 1955)

S. Babitz: ‘Differences between 18th-Century and Modern Violin Bowing’, The Score, no.19 (1957), 34–55; rev., pubd separately (Los Angeles, 1970, enlarged, 2/1975)

B. Seagrave: The French Style of Violin Bowing and Phrasing from Lully to Jacques Aubert (1650–1730) (diss., Stanford U., 1958)

G.J. Kinney: ‘Viols and Violins in the Epitome Musical (Lyon, 1556) of Philibert Jambe de Fer’, JVdGSA, iv (1967), 14–20

E. Winternitz: Gaudenzio Ferrari: his School and the Early History of the Violin (Milan, 1967)

F. Neumann: Violin Left Hand Technique: a Survey of Related Literature (Urbana, IL, 1969)

A. Silbiger: ‘The First Viol Tutor: Hans Gerle's Musica Teusch’, JVdGSA, vi (1969), 34–48

A. Wirsta: L'enseignement du violon au XIXième siècle (diss., U. of Paris, 1971, addenda, 1974)

R. Donington: String Playing in Baroque Music (London, 1977)

R. Stowell: ‘Violin Bowing in Transition’, EMc, xii (1984), 316–27

P. Walls: ‘Violin Fingering in the 18th Century’, EMc, xii (1984), 300–15

S. Monosoff: ‘Violin Fingering’, EMc, xiii (1985), 76–9

R. Stowell: Violin Technique and Performance Practice in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries (Cambridge, 1985)

M.W. Riley: The Teaching of Bowed Instruments from 1511 to 1756 (Ann Arbor, 1986)

G. Moens-Haenen: Das Vibrato in der Musik des Barok: ein Handbuch zur Aufführungspraxis für Vokalisten und Instrumentalisten (Graz, 1988)

P. Walls: ‘The Influence of the Italian Violin School in 17th-Century England’,EMc, xviii (1990), 575–87

R. Philip: Early Recordings and Musical Style: Changing Tastes in Instrumental Performance, 1900–1950 (Cambridge, 1992)

P. Allsop: ‘Violinistic Virtuosity in the Seventeenth Century: Italian Supremacy or Austro-German Hegemony?’, Il saggiatore musicale, iii (1996), 233–58

Violin, §I: The instrument, its technique and its repertory: Bibliography

e: to 1600

B. de Beaujoyeux: Le balet comique de la Royne (Paris, 1582/R)

H. Prunières: ‘La musique de la chambre et de l'écurie sous la règne de François Ier (1516–1547)’, Année musicale, i (1912), 215–51

F. Lesure: ‘La communauté des joueurs d'instruments au XVIe siècle’, Revue historique de droit français et étranger, 4th ser., xxxi (1953), 79–109

W.L. Woodfill: Musicians in English Society from Elizabeth to Charles I (Princeton, NJ, 1953/R)

F. Lesure: ‘Les orchestres populaires à Paris vers la fin du XVIe siècle’, RdM, xxxvi (1954), 39–54

D.D. Boyden: ‘The Tenor Violin: Myth, Mystery or Misnomer?’, Festschrift Otto Erich Deutsch, ed. W. Gerstenberg, J. LaRue and W. Rehm (Kassel, 1963), 273–9

D. Kämper: Studien zur instrumentalen Ensemblemusik des 16. Jahrhunderts in Italien, AnMc, no.10 (1970)

H.M. Brown: Sixteenth-Century Instrumentation: the Music for the Florentine Intermedii, MSD, xxx (1973)

B. Geiser: Studien zur Frühgeschichte der Violine (Berne, 1974)

K. Moens: ‘Problems of Authenticity of Sixteenth Century Stringed Instruments’, CIMCIM Newletter, xiv (1989), 41–9

K. Polk: ‘Vedel und Geige – Fiddle and Viol: German String Traditions in the Fifteenth Century’, JAMS, xlii (1989), 504–46

L. Libin: ‘Early Violins: Problems and Issues’, EMc, xix (1991), 5–6

K. Polk: German Instrumental Music of the Late Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1992)

P. Holman: Four and Twenty Fiddlers: the Violin at the English Court 1540–1690 (Oxford, 1993, 2/1995)

K. Moens: ‘De viool in de 16de eeuw’, Musica antiqua, x (1993), 177–83; xi (1994), 5–12

K. Moens: ‘La “nascita” del violino nei Paesi Bassi del sud: alla ricerca di un lougo dove collocare l'inizio della storia del violino’, Monteverdi: imperatore della musica , ed. M. Tiella (Rovereto, 1993), 84–131

R. Baroncini: ‘Contributo alla storia del violino nel sedicesimo secolo: i “sonadori di violini” della Scuola Grande di San Rocco a Venezia’, Rececare, vi (1994), 61–190

K. Moens: ‘De eerste violisten in Antwerpen, 1554–1560’, Musica antiqua, xi (1994), 170–3

K. Moens: ‘De vroege viool in Brussel’, Musica antiqua, xi (1994), 53–9

K. Moens: ‘De viool in Antwerpen op het einde van 16de eeuw’, Musica antiqua, xii (1995), 16–20

K. Moens: ‘Geiger in der Münchner Hopfkapelle zur Zeit Lassos und ihre Bedeutung für die Frühgeschichte der Violine’, Yearbook of the Alamire Foundation, (1995), 383–413

K. Moens: ‘Renaissancegamba's in het Brussels Instrumentenmuseum’, Bulletin van de Koninklijke Musea voor Kunst en Geschiedenis, lxvi (995), 161–237

J.W. Hill: ‘The Emergence of Violin Playing into the Sphere of Art Music in Italy: Compagnie di Suonatori in Brescia during the Sixteenth Century’, Musica Franca: Essays in Honor of Frank D'Accone, ed. I. Alm, A. McLamore and C. Reardon (Stuyvesant, NY, 1996), 333–66

K. Moens: ‘Violes ou violons?’, Musique – images – instruments, no.2 (1996), 18–38

P. Holman: Dowland: Lachrimae (1604) (Cambridge, 1999)

Violin, §I: The instrument, its technique and its repertory: Bibliography

f: after 1600

La LaurencieEF

B. Studeny: Beiträge zur Geschichte der Violinsonate im 18. Jahrhundert (Munich, 1911)

S. Cordero di Pamparato: ‘Emanuele Filiberto di Savoia, protettore dei musici’, RMI, xxxiv (1927), 229–47, 555–78; xxxv (1928), 29–49

E. Reeser: De klaviersonate met vioolbegeleiding in het Parijsche muziekleven ten tijde van Mozart (Rotterdam, 1939)

B.F. Swalin: The Violin Concerto: a Study in German Romanticism (Chapel Hill, NC, 1941/R)

D.D. Boyden: ‘Monteverdi's Violini Piccoli alla Francese and Viole da Brazzo’, AnnM, vi (1958–63), 387–402

R. Aschmann: Das deutsche polyphone Violinspiel im 17. Jahrhundert (Zürich, 1962)

K.M. Stolba: A History of the Violin Etude to about 1800 (Hays, KS, 1968–9)

E. Dann: ‘The Second Revolution in the History of the Violin: a Twentieth-Century Phenomenon’, Journal of the Violin Society of America, iv/1 (1977–8), 48–56; repr. in College Music Symposium, xvii/2 (1977), 64–71

S. Bonta: ‘Terminology for the Bass Violin in Seventeenth-Century Italy’, JAMIS, iv (1978), 5–42

W. Apel: Die italienische Violinmusik im 17. Jahrhundert (Wiesbaden, 1983; Eng. trans., 1990)

D. Johnson: Scottish Fiddle Music in the 18th Century: a Musical Collection and Historical Study (Edinburgh, 1984)

D. Fox: ‘The Baroque Violin’, Journal of the Violin Society of America, viii/1 (1986), 57–70

N. Zaslaw: ‘When is an Orchestra not an Orchestra?’, EMc, xvi (1988), 483–95

S. McVeigh: The Violinist in London's Concert Life, 1750–1784: Felice Giardini and his Contemporaries (New York, 1989)

S. Bonta: ‘The Use of Instruments in Sacred Music in Italy 1560–1700’, EMc, xviii (1990), 519–35

A. Pople: Berg: Violin Concerto (Cambridge, 1991)

P. Allsop: The Italian ‘Trio’ Sonata: from its Origins until Corelli (Oxford, 1992)

P. Walls: ‘Mozart and the Violin’, EMc, xx (1992), 7–29

C. White: From Vivaldi to Viotti: a History of the Early Classical Violin Concerto (Philadelphia, 1992)

P. Holman: Four and Twenty Fiddlers: the Violin at the English Court 1540–1690 (Oxford, 1993, 2/1995)

R. Stowell, ed.: Performing Beethoven (Cambridge, 1994) [incl. C. Brown: ‘Ferdinand David's Editions of Beethoven’, 117–49; R. Stowell: ‘The Violin Concerto op.61: Text and Editions’, 150–94]

C. Bordas: ‘Les relations entre Paris et Madrid dans le domaine des instruments à cordes (1800–1850)’, Musique – images – instruments, no.1 (1995), 84–97

R. Stowell: Beethoven: Violin Concerto (Cambridge, 1998)

Violin, §I: The instrument, its technique and its repertory: Bibliography

g: performers

A. Bachmann: Les grands violonistes du passé (Paris, 1913)

M. Pincherle: Les violonistes, compositeurs et virtuoses (Paris, 1922/R)

C. Flesch: Memoirs (London, 1957/R, 2/1958; Ger. orig., Freiburg, 1960, 2/1961)

J. Szigeti: A Violinist's Notebook (London, 1964)

J. Szigeti: Szigeti on the Violin (London, 1969/R)

M. Campbell: The Great Violinists (London, 1980)

H. Roth: Master Violinists in Performance (Neptune City, NJ, 1982)

B. Schwarz: Great Masters of the Violin: from Corelli and Vivaldi to Stern, Zukerman, and Perlman (New York, 1983)

Y. Menuhin: The Compleat Violinist: Thoughts, Exercises, Reflections of an Itinerant Violinist (New York, 1986)

Y. Menuhin: La légende du violon (Paris, 1996)

H. Roth: Violin Virtuosos: from Paganini to the 21st Century (Los Angeles, 1997)

Violin, §I: The instrument, its technique and its repertory: Bibliography

h: jazz and blues

J.-E. Berendt: Das Jazzbuch: Entwicklung und Bedeutung der Jazzmusik (Frankfurt, 1953, rev. and enlarged 5/1981 as Das grosse Jazzbuch: von New Orleans bis Jazz Rock; Eng. trans., 1982, as The Jazz Book: from New Orleans to Fusion and Beyond), 288ff

D. Morgenstern: ‘Jazz Fiddle’, Down Beat, xxxiv/3 (1967), 16–19, 38 only

E. Jost: Free Jazz (Graz, 1974/R)

M. Glaser and S. Grappelli: Jazz Violin (New York, 1981) [incl. transcrs.]

G. Lowinger: Jazz Violin: Roots and Branches (New York and London, 1981) [incl. transcrs.]

J. Lyonn Lieberman: Blues Fiddle (New York, 1986) [incl. transcrs.]

S. Glass: Die Rolle der Geige im Jazz (Berne, 1991 [recte 1992]) [incl. transcrs.]

Fable Bulletin: Violin Improvisation Studies (1st ser., 1993–9)

A. Barnett: Desert Sands: the Recordings and Performances of Stuff Smith: an Annotated Discography and Biographical Source Book (Lewes, 1995, suppl., Up Jumped the Devil, 1998) [incl. transcrs.]

J. Lyon Lieberman: Improvising Violin (New York, 1995)

H. Grässer: Der Jazzgeiger Stéphane Grappelli: Untersuchen zur Entwicklung sinseines Personalstils und zur seiner Violintechnik (Regensburg, 1996) [incl. transcrs.]

H. Grässer and A. Holliman: Design und Technik der elektrischen Streichinstrumente/Design and Technique of Electric Bowed String Instruments (Frankfurt, 1998)

D. Lockwood and F. Darizcuren: Cordes & âme: méthode d’improvisation et de violin jazz (Paris, 1998) [incl. transcrs.]

A. Barnett: Black Gypsy: the Recordings of Eddie South: an Annotated Discography and Itinerary (Lewes, 1999) [incl. transcrs.]

Violin

II. Extra-European and folk usage

1. Europe.

2. Middle east and south Asia.

3. South-east Asia.

4. The Americas.

1. Europe.

From Praetorius’s time the violin rapidly penetrated throughout Europe finding favour among all strata of society wherever there was already a native tradition of bowed string playing (rebecs, fiddles, viols, bowed zithers etc.); this was probably because of its greater dynamic range and more flexible tone. Nevertheless, use of indigenous predecessors of the violin persisted for centuries making it hard to be precise about the chronology of the diffusion of the violin. Alexandru (1983) remarked on three aspects of the transfer to the violin: firstly, wherever this happened there was a tendency to apply to the violin a playing technique learnt from earlier indigenous instruments; secondly, despite its perfection of form, there were often modifications to the structure of the violin (e.g. adding sympathetic strings in the case of the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle); thirdly, different tunings were adopted to facilitate the execution of the characteristic repertory of each region.

(i) Scandinavia and western Europe.

In this region cheap instruments were readily imported because they proved ideal for dance music, but numerous native variants also appeared. The violin often retained the name of the older instrument, for instance, in the British Isles the term ‘fiddle’ or variants of it is still used synonymously for the violin, though often a difference in the status of the music or the performer is implied in use of one term or the other: fiddlers play indigenous airs and dance music, violinists play a ‘classical’ European repertory. In these regions the instrument was often used solo, the playing style making much use of the open strings as variable drones to enrich the musical texture and help with rhythmic accentuation. Until the middle of the 20th century, most musicians rarely played outside the 1st position; they used the left hand to hold the fiddle along the arm and against the chest rather than under the chin.

Less is known about traditions of fiddling in England than elsewhere in the British Isles. This is probably because there were few, if any, English publishers over the centuries who were interested in fiddle music specifically, compared with those in Scotland and Ireland. But fiddlers’ tune books have been discovered from several areas of England, especially the north, which suggest that the fiddle was popular in the countryside, even if the pipe and tabor and, from the 19th century onwards, free-reed instruments such as the concertina were more frequently favoured by musicians attached to morris and sword dance groups. By contrast, the popularity of the fiddle in both Scotland and Ireland is attested by large collections of the repertory both printed and manuscript, and the proximity of the two traditions by a considerable overlap in the repertory. By the late 18th century a semi-classical influence was discernible in the repertories of fiddler-composers such as William Marshall and Simon Fraser, but found its chief exponent in the flamboyant person of James Scott Skinner (1843–1927). His influence has been considerable in Scotland, causing many humbler fiddlers to try to emulate his style and technique (see Scotland, §II, 6(ii)).

Since the mid-19th century in Scotland, Ireland and Scandinavia the custom of concerted playing has developed along with fiddlers’ societies. The building of community halls and specialized dancing venues led to the single dance fiddler being joined by other players, notably of the accordion, piano and drums. One outcome of the folk revivals in all these countries has been the growth of importance of the ‘session’: usually taking place in public houses, small informal groups of instrumentalists, often including a fiddler, meeting together to play for their own enjoyment (and not usually for dancing).

In Wales, the fiddle (ffidil) superseded the bowed lyre (crwth) during the 18th century as the principal bowed folk instrument and was eventually to challenge the harp as the main accompanying instrument for popular dance (although both instruments frequently performed together in that capacity). From the 18th century onwards, however, dance was vigorously condemned by puritanical nonconformist religion; whereas during the 19th century the harp was retained as a symbol of nationality and granted a respectable place within the eisteddfod, the ffidil was doomed to be associated almost solely with taverns and wild celebrations. By the end of the century it was almost extinct, and played only by gypsy families until around World War I. More lately it has been revived by Welsh folk-dance and song groups.

In Portugal the violin has kept the older name viola; indigenous bowed instruments are distinguished by the name rebecca (from ‘rebec’). The Portuguese played a major role in the dispersal of the violin throughout the world; they took it with them to their trading posts and colonies in the East, e.g. Goa, India and the port of Melaka in Malaysia, as well as along the coast of Angola in Africa.

(ii) Eastern and south-eastern Europe.

As the violin displaced indigenous instruments, it became a favoured instrument of gypsy musicians (see Hungary, §II, fig.8). Sarosi reported (1978) that as early as 1683, ‘nearly every nobleman has a gypsy who is a fiddler or locksmith’. Two violins, a string bass and a plucked instrument make a typical dance ensemble in central Europe, Romania and the Balkans.

The violin is the most popular folk instrument in Poland. The skrzypce is made by villagers themselves out of a single piece of wood, apart from the soundboard, and has three or four strings. The skrzypce podwiązane or skrzypce przewiązane is an ordinary violin with a match or small stick placed under the strings and then bound, so that it can be played as in the 1st position but in a higher register; in the 19th century this instrument began to replace the mazanki, a small fiddle with three strings that was played along with the bagpipe (dudy). The skrzypce is played chiefly as the melody instrument in folk bands. In Slovakia the oktávka (octave-violin) and the shlopcoky (scuttle-shaped violin) are used as well as the standard violin. Instruments are played solo, in combinations such as bagpipe and violin, or in diverse ensembles of bowed string instruments.

In Romania the vioară (violin) is known under several different local names. Players, particularly in Oltenia and Muntenia, use a wide range of scordatura to facilitate the playing of certain tunes, to obtain unusual sounds and to imitate other instruments, such as the bagpipes. The contră of Transylvania has only three strings (tuned g–d'–a), which are stretched over a notched bridge and bowed simultaneously to obtain chords. The violin in south-west Moldova usually has seven sympathetic strings, probably a relic of the Turkish kemençe, with sympathetic strings. The Stroh violin, called vioră cu goarnă (‘bugle violin’) or higheghe in Bihor, became widespread between the two World Wars (it was invented in London for use in gramophone recording studios at the turn of the 20th century). Lăutari (professional folk musicians) make the instrument themselves, replacing the soundbox with a metal bell and resting the strings on a small mica sheet. In Romania and Moldova the violin repertory also includes the virtuoso instrumental doina, a largely improvised genre in rhapsodic style and free metre.

The smuikas of Lithuania is also often made by the musicians themselves and accordingly is found in a great variety of sizes and forms, of varying quality. The back and sides are made of maple, apple or ash, the belly of fir or pine and the bridge and tuning-pegs of oak, hornbeam, beech or ash. The instrument may have three, four or more strings, usually tuned in 5ths, but in bands the tuning is adapted to suit the concertina and the clarinet. The player sometimes places a small piece of wood on the soundboard to muffle the timbre; experienced musicians adorn dance melodies with melismata and double or triple stopping. Similar traditions of violin playing are also found in neighbouring countries such as Estonia, where the instrument is known as the viiul, and Belarus, Moldova and the Ukraine, where the skripka has its own folk technique. The instrument is usually tuned in 5ths, but higher and lower tunings are used depending on the genre of music. Players use mainly the bottom two strings, more rarely the third. Fiddle playing has been an established profession in many Belarusian towns since the 17th century and the instrument maintains a strong role in rural musical life.

2. Middle east and south Asia.

The violin has been adopted in a wide range of indigenous art music, from North Africa to South India, and each culture has adapted the holding position to meet its own requirements. In many cases the first introduction of the instrument to these countries was in European-influenced, popular music contexts, such as café music of the Middle East. The violin has shown its flexibility and power as an accompanying instrument, especially where a voice sets the model in timbre and phrasing, as well as for solo playing. In Morocco, one or more violins take a leading part in the vocal-instrumental nawbā suites played by traditional orchestras. In North Africa and Turkey it is usually called keman (from the generic term kemençe or kamānche, the latter used for spike fiddles) and is often played in an upright position, resting on the seated player’s thigh. In Iran, the violin is the only Western instrument to be admitted without reservation into traditional music because it is possible to play the whole of the kamānche repertory on it when technique and articulation are suitably adapted. Its great success at the beginning of the 20th century threatened the existence of the kamānche, and it has now quite eclipsed the traditional instrument.

In India, where it was introduced in the 17th century, the violin became prominent in the classical music of the South from about 1800 after B. Dīksitar and his pupil Vadivelu adopted it for accompanying vocalists at the court of Travancore. It is usually played with the scroll resting on the right foot of the player, who sits cross-legged; the other end is wedged against his left shoulder. The player’s left hand is thus free for the complex gamaka of Karnatak music (see India, §III, 3(i)(b)). The strings are tuned to tonic and 5th of the lower and middle octaves at a pitch nearer that of the Western viola pitch. At this pitch level it gives, in the view of Bandyophadaya, ‘a deep and melodious sound perfectly suited to male musicians’. When accompanying a singer, the violinist’s role is to ‘shadow’ the soloist, echoing each phrase in a virtually continuous canon. During the last two decades of the 20th century, virtuosos such as L.K. Subramaniam have elevated the violin to the status of solo instrument. This has been accompanied by changes in technique, the earlier two-finger left-hand technique, derived from that for the vīnā, developed into one involving all four. In northern India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, where the classical vocal styles dhrupad and khayāl are more long-breathed and relaxed, the violin is much less common in vocal accompaniment; here it is in competition with the deeper-toned, indigenous sārangī fiddle. However, violins form an essential section in each of the modern filmi orchestras of the South Asian broadcasting and television industries. Alternative north Indian names are behalā, bela (Hindi) and behālā (Bengali), which probably derive from the Portuguese viola; in Goa, where the Portuguese ruled for over four centuries, the violin is called ‘rebec’.

The violin was brought to Sri Lanka by Parsi theatrical troupes from Bombay during the 19th century. The ravikiňňa is now used by the Tamils for playing Karnatak music and, less often, for rukada (string-puppet plays).

3. South-east Asia.

The violin was introduced into South-east Asia by the Portuguese during the 17th century, and became known as the biola from the Portuguese name. European instruments were played in European fashion in colonial houses by slaves of varied origin. In Batavia (Jakarta) in 1689, a bride who had 59 slaves referred in a letter to ‘a slave orchestra which played the harp, viol and bassoon at meal-times’ (Boxer, 1965, p.240). Ensembles combining Malay instruments and styles with European ones entered the Malay courts of the Riaulinggu archipelago, East Sumatra and the Malay peninsula. Old royal dances combining Portuguese movements with intricate Malay hand and finger movements are still practised in areas such as Bintan Island, Riau; these include the tari makan sirih (‘betel-nut-eating dance’), accompanied by biola, accordion, rebana (frame drum) and gong, and the tari joget jangkung (‘tall joget dance’), accompanied by biola, guitar, rebana and gong. In east Aceh, an ensemble accompanying local dances includes biola, geundrang (double-headed drum), buloh meurindu (bamboo clarinet) or bangsi (bamboo flute) and one or two canang (small bossed gong). Biolas are usually made locally by hand and are generally tuned like the European viola.

The Osinger people of East Java use the biola in their gandrung ensemble. It is played in several other ensembles, including the orkes Dul Muluk (theatre ensemble) of parts of South Sumatra, the orkes gambus of northern Java, Sumatra and Malaysia, and the orkes Lampung of Lampung, Sumatra.

Biyolin is the term used for the violin by many groups in the Philippines. The instrument is used to play European-type songs in serenades or for entertainment in town feasts. String players for city symphony orchestras are sometimes recruited from the provinces where musical traditions date back to training by Spanish friars in the 17th century. More recently, the biyolin has been introduced into the music of some indigenous northern groups.

4. The Americas.

The violin arrived in large numbers in North America during the 17th century, and has flourished ever since as both concert violin and folk fiddle. Fiddling is marked not just by a heavy reliance on oral tradition, but also by customary functions, venues, repertories, and, especially in certain parts of the southern states, by playing techniques and some use of scordaturas. The categories of violin and fiddle overlapped considerably at first, and still do: some violinists also play old tunes from memory at dances, and some fiddlers did and do aspire to music literacy, and may play for passive listeners or solely for their own enjoyment. Manuscript music commonplace books from the decades flanking the turn of the 19th century contain reels and hornpipes and popular song tunes alongside classical excerpts. While the romantic image of the illiterate backwoods fiddler of later decades bears more than a germ of truth, many fiddlers were educated community leaders: a steady stream of publications of dance tunes testifies to continued music literacy on the part of some of these men. And while modern contest fiddlers (now including both men and women) include musicians who play only by ear, others puzzle out tunes laboriously from print, and yet others are converted classical violinists.

While violin and fiddle still look alike, the fiddle is less narrowly defined in terms of quality and style of woodworking and varnish application, and in range of desirable timbres. Indeed, in many eras and locations, the relatively nasal and cutting timbres associated with rough-and-ready construction and cheap metal strings helped a solo fiddler be heard by vigorous dancers. The fiddle was the main instrument for the performance of British-American and French-American folk music from the late 18th century well into the 20th. Fiddlers in the colonies that were later to become the USA drew primarily on British traditions (initially Scottish and English, later also Irish) for tunes, ways to compose tunes and shape repertories, and playing styles. The young USA then spawned regional styles, with the North drawing closely on English models and retaining a greater degree of music literacy, and a burgeoning array of southern substyles more strongly linked to Scottish repertories, transmitted both through print and orally, and which absorbed considerable black American influence in performance styles. French Canada drew on French traditions and nurtured new ones (notably in Nova Scotia), while English-speaking Canada nourished styles related to that of New England. The imported tunes and home-grown tunes on imported models that formed the core of the fiddlers' repertory were usually linked with dance genres. During the early 19th century the repertory was supplemented with vocal airs, marches and other popular tunes. As decades passed, and the solo fiddler, fifer or flautist was replaced in cultivated circles by ensembles or keyboard instruments, fiddle music emerged as a discrete, generally rural array of older dances, plus a few descriptive airs and hymn tunes. British hornpipes and reels became American hoedowns, just as other duple-time social dance tunes were eventually fitted into the polka category and various triple-time dances were reworked as waltzes.

As American fiddling became less British or French and more American, other instruments more frequently joined in performance. The fife, which had been closely associated with the fiddle since the Revolutionary War era, was also played in fife and drum corps, so military and dance tunes came to be shared between fiddlers and fifers. Fiddle and banjo duos became widespread in the wake of the popularity of blackface minstrelsy (from 1843; see Minstrelsy, American) and of medicine shows, and significantly more common when late 19th-century mail-order catalogues helped disseminate a wide range of cut-price products, including families of instruments. Although minstrel-style banjo playing, which survives down to the present day in the upper South as ‘clawhammer’ or ‘frailing’ styles, included African-derived playing techniques, the central repertory for the Southeastern string band (fiddle, banjo, and a few supplementary string instruments including guitar, upright bass, mandolin etc.) has always focussed on British-American dance tunes.

The common-time reel and breakdown usually consist of two (or rarely more) eight-bar strains which contrast in tessitura. A typical performance in older, dance-oriented style consists of one strain twice, the other twice, the first twice, and so on until the dancers are sated. While a few Northern contradances preserve a formerly more common linkage of specific tunes with specific sets of dance figures, many tunes are used interchangeably. That certain tunes are irregularly phrased or otherwise inapt for dance accompaniment reflects the fact that fiddlers have always also played purely for their own and their peers’ pleasure. Today's regional styles are characterized by the degree of melodic ornamentation and variation employed (primarily linear styles predominate in areas such as Texas and Ontario), the degree of affinity with older published models (New England style leads here), and the amount of African- and Scottish-derived syncopation, both bold and subtle. The latter is particularly characteristic of the various styles of the Southastern USA, which are in turn differentiated by whether the high or low strain of a tune is played first, and other factors.

Although most other dance genres have been assimilated into the breakdown, the British hornpipe remains vital in Canada and New England, and a few marches, jigs and descriptive pieces have survived here and there. The most widespread alternative to the breakdown remains the waltz, which arrived in large numbers in the 1810s and 20s, received new impetus around the turn of the 20th century from the new pop song styles of Tin Pan Alley, and has returned as a standard ingredient in modern fiddle contests in most of North America. These contests represent a nativistic folk revival, in which a blend of rural and urban brands of nostalgia, the modern luxury of plenty of practice time for players of all socio-economic backgrounds, and the listening-oriented venue, has spawned legions of polished instrumentalists, again blurring the line between folk and art performance, and between violin and fiddle.

For further discussion of the use of the violin in particular cultures, see the entry on the country or countries in which that culture is contained.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

and other resources

EMC2 (‘Fiddling’; A. Lederman)

J. Scott-Skinner: The Scottish Violinist (Glasgow, 1900)

S.P. Bayard: Hill Country Tunes: Instrumental Folk Music of Southwestern Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1944)

R. Stevenson: Music in Mexico: a Historical Survey (New York, 1952/R)

C.R. Boxer: The Portuguese Seaborne Empire: 1415–1825 (London, 1965)

M. Thede: The Fiddle Book (New York, 1967)

R. Stevenson: Music in Aztec and Inca Territory (Berkeley, 1968/R)

B. Breathnach: Folk Music and Dances of Ireland (Dublin, 1971, 2/1977)

A. Jabbour: disc notes, American Fiddle Tunes, Library of Congress AFS L62 (1971)

E. Southern: Readings in Black American Music (New York, 1971, 2/1983)

L. Burman-Hall: Southern American Folk Fiddling: Context and Style (diss., U. of Princeton, 1974)

L. Shankar: The Art of Violin Accompaniment in South Indian Classical Vocal Music (diss., Wesleyan U., 1974)

B. Traerup: ‘Albanian Singers in Kosovo’, Festschrift to Ernst Emsheimer, ed. G. Hilleström, (Stockholm, 1974), 244–51

L. Burman-Hall: ‘Southern American Folk Fiddle Styles’, EthM, xix (1975), 47–65

R. Sevåg: ‘Die Hardingfele: Instrument, Spieltechnik, Musik’, Studia instrumentorum musicae popularis VI: Kazimierz Dolny 1977, 71–9

B.C. Deva: Musical Instruments of India (Calcutta, 1978)

B. Sarosi: Gypsy Music (Budapest, 1978)

P.F. Wells: disc notes, New England Traditional Fiddling: an Anthology of Recordings, 1926–1975, JEMF 105 (1978)

S. Bandyopadhyaya: Musical Instruments of India (Varanasi, 1980)

M.P. Baumann: ‘Saiteninstrumenten in Lateinamerika’, Studia instrumentorum musicae popularis VII: Seggau 1980, 157–76

S.P. Bayard, ed.: Dance to the Fiddle, March to the Fife: Instrumental Folk Tunes in Pennsylvania (University Park, PA, 1982)

M.A. Alburger: Scottish Fiddlers and their Music (London, 1983)

T. Alexandru: ‘Quelques repères chronologiques des violons comme instruments populaires chez les Roumains’, Studia instrumentorum musicae popularis VIII: Piran, Croatia, 1983, 103–7

E. Dahlig: ‘Intracultural Aspects of Violin Playing in Poland’, ibid., 112–17

B. Feintuch: ‘Examining Musical Motivations: Why does Sammy Play the Fiddle?’, Western Folklore, xlii (1983), 208–15

D. Johnson: Scottish Fiddle Music in the 18th Century: a Music Collection and Historical Study (Edinburgh, 1984)

C. Goertzen: ‘American Fiddle Tunes and Historic-Geographic Method’, EthM, xxix (1985), 448–73

B. Nettl: The Western Impact on World Music: Change, Adaptation, and Survival (New York and London, 1985), 47–50

P. Cooke: The Fiddle Tradition of the Shetland Isles (Cambridge, 1986)

C. Goertzen and A. Jabbour: ‘George P. Knauff's Virginia Reels and Fiddling in the Antebellum South’, American Music, v/2 (1987), 121–44

C. Goertzen: ‘The Transformation of American Contest Fiddling’, JM, vi (1988), 107–29

B. Aksdal: ‘Ensemble Playing in Norwegian Folk Music: a Historical Perspective’, Studia instrumentorum musicae popularis X: Lillehammer 1989, 14–24

S.T. Chapman: ‘The Almost Forgotten Musical Heritage of Lake District Reels and Hornpipes’, English Dance and Song, lii/3 (1990), 8–9

G. Ashman, ed.: The Ironbridge Hornpipe: a Shropshire Tune Collection from John Moor's Manuscripts (Blyth, 1991)

Fiddle Music Worldwide, Musical Traditions, x (1992) [inc. K. Chandler: ‘150 Years of Fiddle Players and Morris Dancing at Bampton, Oxfordshire’, 18–24]

P. Cooke: ‘The Violin: Instrument of Four Continents’, The Cambridge Companion to the Violin, ed. R. Stowell (Cambridge, 1992), 234–48

C. Quigley: Music from the Heart: Compositions of a Folk Fiddler (Athens, GA, 1995)

C. Bartram: ‘The Fiddle in Southern England’, English Dance and Song, lviii/2 (1996), 2–4

C. Goertzen: ‘Balancing Local and National Approaches at American Fiddle Contests’, American Music, xiv/3 (1996), 352–82

R. Dawes, ed.: The Violin Book (London, 1999)

Violina (i).

Violina (ii).

A type of mechanical violin player (the Hupfeld Phonoliszt Violina). See Violin player, automatic.

Violine

(Ger.).

See Violin.

Violino

(It.).

See Violin.

Violino, Carlo del.

See Caproli, Carlo.

Violino, Il.

See Cortellini, Camillo.

Violin octet.

See New Violin Family.

Violino di ferro

(It.).

See Nail violin.

Violino piccolo

(It.).

A small violin on which high violin parts were played from the late 16th century to the 18th. Its function is comparable to that of a piccolo flute; however, the size of the now obsolete instrument continues to be debated. It is classified as a bowed lute (or fiddle) in the Hornbostel-Sachs system.

The violino piccolo was variously pitched up to a 5th higher than the full-size violin (hence sometimes called in German Terzgeige, Quartgeige etc.) to accommodate high parts, which could then be played principally in the 1st position. Although violin virtuosos played in the 6th or 7th position by the end of the 17th century, the average violinist normally did not exceed the 3rd or 4th position. The violino piccolo was therefore specified when composers wished to extend the range of the violin upwards. As shifting became a standard part of violin technique in the 18th century, the violino piccolo, as it was originally conceived, became obsolete.

Violini piccoli existed as early as the late 16th century; several claine discant violins are listed in an inventory, dated 1596, of the collection in Schloss Ambras, near Innsbruck (Schlosser, 1920). Michael Praetorius (2/1619) noted that the instrument was common in his day. His treatise demonstrates that the Klein Discant Geig was significantly smaller than a full-size violin, having a body length of 26·8 cm (according to Besssaraboff’s 1941 interpretation of Praetorius’s scaling). It had four strings, was tuned in 5ths, and was pitched a 4th higher than the full-size violin.

The dimensions of Praetorius’s Klein Discant Geig closely match those of an unaltered violino piccolo (body length of 26·6 cm) that was made in the shop of the brothers Antonio and Girolamo Amati (1613, Cremona), and is preserved in the Shrine to Music Museum, University of South Dakota, Vermillion. A number of violins, with body lengths of 23–27 cm, survive by makers such as Cati, Giuseppe Guarneri, Klemm, and both Antonio and Omobono Stradivari. They are similar in length to a modern 1/4-size violin, but built for an adult hand rather than for teaching children; they have distinctly thicker necks, slightly wider fingerboards, and somewhat larger pegboxes than children’s instruments.

The earliest music specifically calling for the violino piccolo is Monteverdi’s opera Orfeo (1607). J.S. Bach specified the violino piccolo in three compositions: Cantatas nos.96 and 140, and the First Brandenburg Concerto. Many present-day violinists choose to perform these parts on so-called ⅞-size violins, rather than on smaller instruments. Numerous examples of ⅞-size violins with body lengths of about 34 cm (only 1 or 2 cm less than the size of standard violins), survive from the 17th and 18th centuries, but no persuasive arguments have been offered to clarify the use for which they were originally intended. Clearly, they are not the Klein Discant Geig described by Praetorius nor could they represent the violino piccolo described by Leopold Mozart in his Violinschule (1756). All the bowed string instruments known to Mozart are described in the introduction to his tutor. He notes that the violino piccolo is smaller than the ordinary violin and is capable of being tuned to a much higher pitch. Most significant is his remark that violini piccoli were no longer needed to play the high violin parts since by then violinists were accustomed to shifting into higher positions. Therefore, Mozart notes, the small violins were used instead to train young boys. These remarks suggest that the violino piccolo in the mid-18th century was significantly smaller than a ⅞-size violin and was more likely the size of the 1613 Brothers Amati instrument.

Concertos, sonatas, orchestral suites and cantatas featuring the violino piccolo were composed as late as the third quarter of the 18th century. Composers whose works call for it include Dittersdorf, Doles, Erlebach, Förster, Fux, Harrer, Janitsch, Krause, Pfeiffer and Rosetti.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

M. Praetorius: Syntagma musicum, ii (Wolfenbüttel, 1618, 2/1619/R; Eng. trans., 1986, 2/1991)

A.Moser: ‘Der Violino Piccolo’, ZMw, i (1918–19), 377–80

J. Schlosser: Die Sammlung alter Musikinstrumente (Vienna, 1920/R)

N. Bessaraboff: Ancient European Musical Instruments (Cambridge, MA, 1941), 301, 353–6

D.D.Boyden: ‘Monteverdi’s violini piccoli all francese and viole da brazzo’, AnnM, vi (1958–63), 387–402

L. Sirch: ‘Violini piccoli all francese e canto alla francese nell’ Orfeo (1607) e negli Scherzi musicali (1607) di Monteverdi’, NRMI, xv (1981), 50–65

P.Liersch: ‘Bericht über die für die Bachgedenkstätte gearbeitete Kopie des Violino piccolo Cati 1741’, Cöthener Bach-Hefte, iii (Köthen,1985), 57–64

M.D.Banks: ‘The Violino Piccolo and Other Small Violins’, EMc, viii (1990), 588–96

MARGARET DOWNIE BANKS

Violino pomposo.

See Viola pomposa.

Violino primo

(It.).

First violin. See Leader.

Violin player, automatic.

A Mechanical instrument incorporating at least one violin that is bowed and fingered automatically. Normally this is placed in the case of an upright Expression piano or Reproducing piano, and the playing mechanism of both piano and violin is operated by a musical programme in the form of a pneumatic paper-roll system.

The principle of the ‘endless bow’, often in the form of a rosined wheel, is an ancient one, and characteristic of such instruments as the hurdy-gurdy. Designs for keyboard instruments applying this principle go back to Leonardo da Vinci (see Sostenente piano, §1). Makers of fairground organs and orchestrions such as Gavioli, Mortier and J.D. Philipps sought to imitate a string tone using specially voiced, narrow-scaled organ pipes. During the 18th and 19th centuries, however, various attempts were made to construct an automatic violin player. The first practical and reliable instruments were made by Hupfeld in Leipzig, beginning around 1900. After two unsuccessful prototypes, they produced the Phonoliszt Violina in 1907 (put on the market in 1908). This spectacular instrument uses as a base a Hupfeld Phonoliszt expression piano – later a reproducing piano was used – having three violins each with one string played by a pneumatic fingering system. The violins are set vertically, with the necks lowermost, in a cupola set into the case of the piano (see illustration). A circular rotating bow, strung with horsehair, encompasses the violins and is driven at variable speeds between 7 and 32 r.p.m. by a pneumatic motor. When a note is to be sounded, the violin with the appropriate string is pushed outwards so that the string makes contact with the rotating bow. At the same time a small pneumatic motor presses a mechanical ‘finger’ down onto the string to stop it at the required pitch. A wide range of expressive possibilities is available through varying the speed of the bowing wheel or its pressure on the string, the provision of a bridge mute and a vibrato effect caused by an eccentric rotating wheel attached to the tailpiece of the violin. Duet or trio passages can be played by the violins sounding together, and the violins are accompanied by the reproducing piano; the effect is extremely convincing.

Another model was designed for use in public places such as restaurants and bars, having two music rolls that could be played interchangeably, and therefore non-stop, when accompanying silent films. A later version had six violins.

A Swedish engineer, Henry K. Sandell, employed by the Mills Novelty Company in Chicago, took the Swedish nyckelharpa, or keyed fiddle, as his model, and in 1905 produced the Automatic Virtuoso – an electrically operated violin with a perforated paper roll. The instrument created a sensation on a tour of Britain in 1908. On 13 March the Birmingham Gazette reported: ‘Everything that a fine violinist could do, the machine did, and did perfectly. It executed trills and shakes, picked the strings, or played sliding notes just as the composition demanded, and throughout there was no sound or sign of mechanical origin save only the slight buzzing of the motor’. The company then placed this device in a cabinet with a symmetrically-strung 44-note piano, and called it the Violano-Virtuoso. In this coin-operated machine the violin is placed horizontally; for each of the four strings there is a separate small celluloid disc ‘bow’ and pitch is controlled by four rows of electro-magnetic ‘fingers’. The electro-magnetic action also included variable-speed bowing and variable vibrato.

The firm tried to capitalize on the popularity of the Violano-Virtuoso with the Viol-Cello (which had an additional side-cabinet containing a cello, forming a piano trio), the Viol-Xylophone (which replaced the piano with a metal-bar xylophone), the String Quartette (with three violins and a cello) and the Melody Violin (a two-manual keyboard from which ‘any number of violins from one to a hundred’ could be played with an electric mechanism), but none of these achieved the same success.

Other makers of automatic violin players included Hegeler & Ehrlers of Oldenburg (the Geigenpiano, 1906–8), E. Dienst of Leipzig (Sebstspielende Geige, 1910–12), Popper of Leipzig (Violinovo, 1930–31) and J.D. Philipps & Söhne of Frankfurt. The latter experimented with a violin in one of its Paganini orchestrions (c1910–14) but opted in the end for violin-toned organ pipes in its Paganini Violin Piano (piano-orchestrion). None of these had the success of the Hupfeld instrument.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L. Hupfeld: Dea-Violina (Leipzig, 1909)

H.N. Roehl: Player Piano Treasury (Vestal, NY, 1961, 2/1973)

Q.D. Bowers: Put Another Nickel in: a History of Coin-Operated Pianos and Orchestrions (Vestal, NY, 1966)

Q.D. Bowers: Encyclopedia of Automatic Musical Instruments (Vestal, NY, 1972)

A.W.J.G. Ord-Hume: ‘The Violano-Virtuoso and its Swedish Origins’, Music & Automata, i (1983–4), 134–42

J. Brauers: Von der Äolsharfe zum Digitalspieler: 2000 Jahre mechanische Musik, 100 Jahre Schallplatte (Munich, 1984)

M. Kitner and A. Reblitz: The Mills Violano-Virtuoso: the Famous Self-Playing Violin and Piano (Vestal, NY, 1984)

H. Jüttemann: Mechanische Musikinstrumente: Einführung in Technik und Geschichte (Frankfurt, 1987)

ARTHUR W.J.G. ORD-HUME

Violon (i)

(Fr.).

See Violin.

Violon (ii)

(Ger.).

An Organ stop (Violón).

Violón

(Sp.).

I. Origins and history to c1700

Violoncello [cello].

The bass instrument of the violin family. In the Hornbostel-Sachs system it is classified as a bowed lute (fiddle). The violoncello’s present name means, in Italian, a ‘small large viol’, as it employs both the superlative suffix -one, and a diminutive one, -ello. Such a bizarre name suggests that its early history is not straightforward. In this article the term Bass violin will be used for the earliest forms of the instrument: not until the early years of the 18th century did the smaller model of cello become standard, and the name violoncello was generally adopted at about the same time. The bass violin was given myriad names before this date: ‘bas de violon’ (Jambe de Fer, 1556, p.61f); ‘basso di viola’ (Zacconi, 1592, p.218); ‘bass viol de braccio’ (Praetorius, ii, 2/1619, ‘Tabella universalis’, p.26); and ‘basse de violon’ (Mersenne, 1637, ii, p.185). Other terms given in Italian prints from 1609 to 1700 include: bassetto, bassetto di viola, basso da brazzo, basso viola da brazzo, viola, viola da braccio, viola da brazzo, violetta, violoncino, violone, violone basso, violone da brazzo, violone piccolo, violonzino, violonzono, vivola da brazzo. The variety of names shown here were often localized in time, place, or both. They further suggest that in the 16th and 17th centuries the instrument existed in several sizes. For a discussion of the use of the term ‘violone’, see Violone.

The two earliest prints that are known to include music for bass violin are Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo (Venice, 1609), under the name ‘basso viola da braccio’, and Caterina Assandra’s Motetti op.2 (Milan, 1609), under the name ‘violone’. G.C. Arresti, in his Sonate op.4 (Venice, 1665), was the earliest known composer to use the term ‘violoncello’. This newer term was soon generally accepted in Italy and Germany, and after 1700 in France and England, though the term ‘bassetl’ (see Bassett (i)) persisted in Austria during Haydn’s younger years. The abbreviation ‘cello’ is commonly used in English and German.

See also Organ stop.

II. 18th and 19th centuries

III. 20th century

STEPHEN BONTA (introduction, I), SUZANNE WIJSMAN (II), MARGARET CAMPBELL (III, 1–2), BARRY KERNFELD, ANTHONY BARNETT (III, 3)

I. Origins and history to c1700

1. The instrument.

The history of the bass violin has yet to be thoroughly traced, primarily because of the confusion arising from the many names applied to the instrument and the great variety of sizes it took in pictorial sources throughout its early years. In Italy, until the early years of the 18th century and with the exception of Venice, the term ‘violone’ probably indicated bass violin. (From the 1660s Venetians seem to have applied this term to a contrabass instrument.) Depending on time and place in Italy, the terms ‘violetta’ and ‘viola’ could apply either to alto or bass instruments. What seems certain is that the bass violin first appeared and attained its present size, name and tuning south of the Alps.

The earliest-known evidence of the instrument's existence is found in Agricola's Ein kurtz deudsche Musica (Wittenberg, 1528), where the Geige appears as the bass member of a newly emergent, four-part violin consort. The earliest-known pictorial representation appears in an ‘Angel Concert’, painted by Gaudenzio Ferrari in 1534–6 on the dome of the sanctuary of the Madonna dei Miracoli in Saronno (fig.1).

The history of the instrument, before it was called violoncello, may have been directly related to the material used for its strings (see also String, §3). Originally, all four were made solely of sheep gut. Numerous illustrations of early bass and contrabass instruments demonstrate how great was the disparity in thickness between top and bottom strings (fig.2). Thick strings, regardless of material, are afflicted by inharmonicity (the overtones are badly out of tune, resulting in a poor quality of sound). Moreover, the volume of sound produced with thick gut strings is much less than with thin strings. Longer strings could be thinner and hence better sounding, so string length on early bass violins was made as long as the maker dared without exceeding the reach of the fingers of the left hand in first position; hence one of the commonest names for the early bass violin was ‘violone’.

Development of the wirewound string, produced by winding a fine wire around a gut core, provided a solution to several of these problems by increasing the density of the strings, allowing them to be made much thinner and also shorter. Two pieces of evidence pinpoint the time and place of this development: a notice in the fourth edition of Playford's Introduction (C1664), mentioning that wirewound gut or silk strings, a ‘late invention’, sounded ‘much better and lowder than the common Gut strings’; and a request in 1701 for reimbursement for a set of four strings purchased for a violone by Andrea Mauritij, a viola player at S Maria Maggiore in Bergamo, who specified of the bottom string: ‘la quarta coperta d'Argento di Bologna’.

The cumbersome violone could thus be cut down in size – many literally were so – and the name ‘violoncello’ emerged. Two bass violins, made by Gaspar Borbon and now in the Musée des Instruments de Musique of the Brussels Conservatory, illustrate the drastic results of these operations. One, dating from 1702, was unaltered and hence retained its original, larger size. In contrast to a typical modern cello, whose sounding string length is 68–69 cm and body length 75–76 cm, this instrument has a sounding string length of 73 cm and a body length of 80 cm. The other instrument, of 1670, has been altered in a rather drastic and unsightly fashion. Among the operations performed on it was the relocation of the f holes. The original ones were filled in with pieces of wood whose grain necessarily differed from what was found in the original belly; the holes were subsequently recarved at another, higher location.

Fig.3 shows the earliest known representation (1681) of a wirewound bass string. Significantly, the two smaller string instruments, a viola and violin, do not have wirewound strings.

The early bass violin existed in two sizes with different families of higher and lower tunings. Instruments with the higher tunings are somewhat older. It is possible that such an instrument is pictured in the fresco by Ferrari (fig.1). Agricola (C1529) and Ganassi (Lettione seconda, Venice, 1543/R) were the first to mention a three-string bass instrument tuned F–c–g. Hans Gerle (Musica teusch, Nuremberg, 1532) was the earliest to describe a four-string cello, and gave the tuning that is used today: C–G–d–a. Praetorius (Syntagmu Musicum, ii, 2/1619) was the next to give this tuning. However in the intervening years, and even later, the tuning of the bass violin was most often one step lower, B'–F–c–g, given by Lanfranco (C1533), Jambe de Fer (C1556), Zacconi (C1592), Cerone (El melopeo y maestro, Naples, 1613), Mersenne (Harmonie Universelle) and Playford (C1664). This tuning continued the downward progression based on fifths established for the violin, the common note between soprano and bass instruments being g.

Later writers give one or another version of a higher family of tunings, adding a fourth string to the treble end of Agricola's tuning: Zacconi and Praetorius both give F–c–g–d', Banchieri (Conclusioni nel suono dell'organo, Bologna, 1609) gives G–d–a–e'. An instrument probably intended for one of the higher tunings belongs to the Gemeentemuseum, The Hague; made by Jan Boumeester in 1676, it has a sounding string length of 52 cm and a body length of 53 cm.

An analysis of the tessitura used by Monteverdi favours the tuning of C–G–d–a. Other composers, such as Giovanni Valentini, (Musiche concertate, 1619), wrote bass lines that call for B'. The tuning based on B' was in use in France and England until the 18th century; Corrette (Méthode … pour apprendre … le violoncelle, 1741) stated that the tuning based on C was introduced to France around 1710, and J.F. de la Fond's A New System of Music indicates that by 1725 it was in use in England.

Although the term ‘violoncello’ was increasingly used in publications in the latter years of the 17th century, the earlier name for this instrument, ‘violone’, persisted well into the 18th century. Corelli used the term ‘violone’ for the bass string instrument in all his prints. The partbook for the bass string instrument in G.A. Silvani's Il secondo libro delle litanie op.14 (Bologna, 1725) was entitled ‘Violone o tiorba’. Ten years later, G.A. Perti's Messa e salmi concertati op.2 was published in Bologna, including a partbook entitled ‘Violoncello o violone di ripieno’.

Andrea Amati and his descendants in Cremona (c1511–1740), and Gasparo da Salò (1540–1609) and his successor G.P. Maggini (c1580–?1630/1) in Brescia, were among the earliest makers of bass violins. Other somewhat later makers included Francesco Rugeri (c1630–1698) and members of the Guarneri family (1623–1744) in Cremona, G.B. Rogeri (fl c1670–c1705) in Brescia, and members of the Grancino family (1637–c1726).

It appears that the neck on the early bass violin was, like that on the early violin, directly aligned with the belly of the instrument, requiring a wedge under the fingerboard to make it parallel with the strings. One unaltered example with this construction, made by Egidius Snoeck in 1736, survives in the Musée des Instruments de Musique of the Brussels Conservatory. By installing a neck that canted backward the downward force on the bridge is increased, thereby conveying more energy from the strings to the instrument and producing the louder sound needed for an instrument expected to compete with an orchestra in a concerto. By the early years of the 18th century Stradivari had established a body length of 75–6 cm, which has served as the standard ever since, although some makers continued to make larger sizes into the 1750s.

2. Technique and performers.

The early bass violin rested on the floor while being played (fig.4). This position was still used as late as the 1750s, as can be seen in a drawing by P.L. Ghezzi (fig.5). Towards 1700 it became usual for the player to raise the instrument off the floor, supporting it with the calves, in the traditional posture of the bass viol player. This higher position made it easier for the performer to explore more demanding fingering and bowing techniques. Published tutors for the instrument do not exist before the 18th century. It is clear that the performer in Metsu's painting (fig.4) holds the bow as a viol player, using an underhand position, although other pictures (e.g. fig.1) show an overhand grip.

Little is yet known about performers on the instrument, especially those north of the Alps. In the last decades of the 17th century, three men made reputations as solo cellists performing in and around Bologna: Petronio Franceschini (c1650–80); Domenico Gabrielli (1651–90), and Giuseppe Maria Jacchini (c1663–1727). All three were cellists at S Petronio.

3. Repertory.

The only repertory for the early bass violin that has thus far been investigated with any thoroughness is music that was used in the Roman Rite. Among the earliest surviving prints of pieces with a part for the bass violin (called ‘violone’ in each instance) are two published in Milan. The first, a motet entitled O salutaris hostia in Motetti à due, & tre voci op.2 (1609) by Caterina Assandra, a nun at the convent of S Agata, Lomello, near Milan, has a violone part with a very limited range, F–c', and could be performed in first position on either size of bass violin or on some kind of bass viol (ex.1). The second, the Concerti ecclesiastici by G.P. Cima, was published the following year, and contains a Sonata per violino e violone. Here the writing is somewhat more demanding in terms of fluency of execution (ex.2). The range of Cima's part for violone C–d' indicates that at least one of Assandra's contemporaries may have been writing parts for an instrument tuned C–G–d–a. Certainly Legrenzi was writing for an instrument with this tuning when he published his Sonate op.2 (1655) in Venice (ex.3).

In 1665, the year following Playford's announcement of the development of the wirewound string (see §I, 1, above), Cazzati's semiquaver broken octaves in the violone part of his Sonate op.35 require greater bow control than the previous examples as well as e' (ex.4). G.C. Arresti's Sonate op.4 appeared in the same year and was the earliest print to call for the ‘violoncello’. G.M. Placuzzi's violoncello part in his Suonate op.1 (1667) (ex.5), and Cazzati's Capriccio detta il Lambertini, in his Varii, e diversi capricci op.50 (1669) (ex.6), both contain rapid broken octaves. In Ferrara, Sebastian Cherici published his Inni sacri op.1 (1672), including a bass part labelled Violetta, with a range of D–e' (ex.7).

Evidence that in late 17th-century Italy the violone had become distinct from the violoncello appears in G.A. Perti's Messa à 5 concertate con instromenti (c1675–85), which includes partbooks for violoncello, violone and contrabasso (ex.8). The range of the violoncello part is D–c'.

The appearance of the term ‘bassetto’ adds to the confusion: the title of Andrea Grossi's op.1 (1678) reads Balletti … a tre, due violini e violone, and Giorgio Buoni's op.2 (1693) is entitled Suonate a due Violini, e Violoncello, yet in each case the bass partbook is labelled ‘Bassetto’.

Other early Italian composers for the bass violin (using various terminology) include (published in Venice): Claudio Monteverdi (viola da brazzo), Vespro della Beata Vergine (1610), Selva morale (1641), and Messe à 4 et salmi (1650); Alessandro Grandi (violone), Il secondo libro de motetti (1613) and (viola) Motetti a una, et due voci, libro III (1629); Giovanni Priuli (violone), Missae [8vv] (1624) and (viola), Delicie musicali (1625); Tarquinio Merula (violone), Libro secondo de concerti spirituali (1628), Canzoni overo sonate (1637), and Il quarto libro delle canzoni da suonare (1651); G.B. Buonamente (basso da brazzo), Il quinto libro di varie sonate sinfonie, gagliarde, corrente, & ariette (1629) and Sonate et canzoni … libro sesto (1636); Maurizio Cazzati (violone), Canzoni op.2 (1642), Sonate op.8 (1648). Composers who published in Bologna include Cazzati, Sonate op.35 (1665), and Varii, e diversi capricci op.50 (1669); Cherici (violetta), Inni sacri (1672) and (bassetto), Harmonia di devoti concerti op.2 (1681) and Compieta op.3 (Bologna, 1686). The following composers, publishing in either Bologna or Venice, specified ‘violoncino’ as the bass: G.B. Fontana, Sonate (1641); Domenico Freschi, Messe e salmi op.1 (1660); Simpliciano Olivo, Salmi di compieta op.2 (1674); Francesco Cavalli, Musiche sacre (1656) and Gasparo Gaspardini, Sonate op.1 (1683).

1. Organological development.

II. 18th and 19th centuries

2. Technique.

3. 18th-century use, performers and repertory.

4. 19th century.

1. Organological development.

(i) 18th century.

Although there is evidence that Maggini, Francesco Rugeri and members of the Amati family manufactured a small type of cello before 1700, Antonio Stradivari is credited with standardizing and perfecting its dimensions in about 1707 with his smaller model, labelled ‘forma B’ and ‘forma B piccola’ on original patterns found in Stradivari’s workshop. The ‘forma B’ body length measured 75–6 cm, and its maximum width was 44·5 cm, being both shorter and narrower than at least 30 cellos that he made between 1680 and 1701. The most famous extant example of his older, larger model is the ‘Servais’ cello of 1701 (whose proportions have not been altered except for the modern neck, bridge and fingerboard) which measures 79 cm in body length and 47 cm in width. By the end of the 18th century, however, Stradivari’s ‘forma B’ dimensions, exemplified by his ‘Duport’ and ‘Mara’ cellos (both of 1711), had become accepted as the norm.

Some makers, such as the Austrian-born David Tecchler (b 1668; d after 1747) in Rome, were still making larger cellos (known as ‘church basses’ in England) into the middle of the 18th century. In his treatise on playing the flute (Versuch, Berlin, 1752), J.J. Quantz also mentions the need for cellos of two sizes: the larger with thick strings for orchestral (ripieno) playing, and the smaller with thin strings for solos.

During the course of the 18th century, many of these larger, late 17th- and early 18th-century instruments were cut down in size to conform to the smaller dimensions established by Stradivari. This reconstruction often also included a new, stronger bass bar and a longer, thinner neck. At the time, such ‘repairs’ were considered desirable by players, but the unfortunate results of such alterations were often detrimental to the integrity of an instrument's acoustic design. Very few examples remain today of early cellos with original body dimensions, neck, fingerboard or bass bar. Those that have survived in original condition point to an early 18th-century cello with a fingerboard pitch (upwards angle from the plane of the table) giving a bridge height of at least 7·6 cm, achieved by inserting a wedge under the fingerboard. This degree of fingerboard pitch is high when compared with that of contemporaneous examples of violin construction, on which the fingerboard is generally closer to the parallel with the table of the instrument.

The earliest documented measurements for the neck and fingerboard of a cello are those of James Talbot (c1695) who gives 10 inches (25·4 cm) as the length of the neck (nut to shoulder) and 13 inches (33·8 cm) from the nut to the end of the fingerboard, allowing for a range of stopped notes to approximately a'. A string length, from nut to bridge, of around 68·8 cm was standard by the middle of the 18th century. The fingerboard gained length as the range of hand positions demanded by players increased during the 18th century to encompass four octaves, and playing in thumb position became more widely used. Iconographical and documentary evidence indicates that the standard fingerboard length was about 60·7 cm by the early 19th century. Frets were still used on some cellos in the mid-18th century, as observed by Quantz (1752), and advocated by Robert Crome in his tutor (C1765). (For a discussion of use of the Endpin and other methods of supporting the cello, see §II, 2(i), below.)

(ii) Five-string and piccolo cellos.

Although cellos with four strings predominated in Italy by the end of the 17th century, cellos with more than four strings were still used elsewhere. The advent of thumb position fingerings (the technique in which the whole hand is put on top of the strings with the thumb placed across and perpendicular to them, functioning as a moveable nut in relation to the other fingers) may have caused the redundancy of cellos with more than four strings at the beginning of the 18th century. However, five-string cellos were used in Germany into the middle of the 18th century. In addition to J.S. Bach’s solo cello suite no.6 bwv1012, written for a five-string cello, the cello part of his cantata Gott ist mein König bwv71, requires a range extended to c'' (f'' in Bach’s original, unorchestrated version), suggesting that an E string would have been required for the execution of this part. Five-string cellos also appear in numerous Dutch, Flemish and German paintings and etchings from the 17th and 18th centuries. (see fig.2).

The correct definition of the violoncello piccolo has been widely debated. At least eight of Bach’s cantatas written between 1724 and 1726 have obbligato parts designated as such. The term piccolo means ‘small’. An original cello pattern of Antonio Stradivari is labelled forma B piccola di violincello but it is likely that Stradivari sought simply to distinguish this new smaller pattern from his earlier larger instruments. But these violoncello piccolo parts by Bach imply that a four-string cello tuned G–d–a–e' was used.

A late 18th-century account by E.L. Gerber (whose father was a student of Bach) claimed that Bach invented a special sort of small cello or large viola – called a viola pomposa – to facilitate the execution of rapid obbligato parts in the bass (see W. Neumann and H.-J. Schulze, D1972, p.469). Dreyfus (D1987) has suggested that this instrument may have been the same as the Viola da spalla (‘shoulder-viola’) mentioned by J.J. Walther in his Musicalisches Lexicon (Leipzig, 1732), which was tuned like a cello but with an added fifth string and held over the shoulder by a strap. However, there is evidence of the earlier existence of both small and large four- and five-string instruments (Stradivari, apparently, also made a five-string viola), and it seems doubtful that this was actually Bach's invention. Rather, it reflects the broad variety of instrument sizes and types still being used in Germany around 1720, and the terminological amibiguity associated with them. (Surviving instruments that may be examples of the viola pomposa, viola da spalla, or violoncello piccolo are listed by M.M. Smith, B1998.)

(iii) 19th century.

The basic design of the cello changed very little in the 19th century from that established in the 18th century. 19th-century cello manufacture continued to rely principally on older Italian models, especially Stradivari's model ‘B’. However, crude alterations to older cellos at the beginning of the 19th century were very common. Exhortations against these practices occur frequently in 19th-century treatises and literature on violin-making, and suggest that efforts to establish more firmly the standard dimensions of the cello at this time occurred in response to the damage to many fine old instruments caused by these ‘repairs’.

The German cellist B.H. Romberg (1767–1841) experimented with minor modifications to the cello’s set-up and was responsible for inventing the practice (known as the ‘Romberg’) of slightly scooping out and angling the upper surface of the bass side of the fingerboard to accommodate the wide vibrations of the C string; this is especially necessary when played in high positions. It is clear from contemporary accounts that this invention, as well as alterations to the neck, did not meet with universal approval until the end of the 19th century.

It is possible that the two sizes of cello continued to be used into the 19th century. Two different terms were still used in the Paris Conservatoire Méthode (1805): violoncelle to describe the solo instrument, and basse for the accompaniment and orchestral instrument.

(iv) Makers.

The high demand for cellos in Italy during the period 1680-1740 was reflected the growing output of Italian makers. In addition to Stradivari, other North Italian makers of good cellos in the late 17th and early 18th centuries included Domenico Montagnana, Sanctus Seraphin, Pietro Guarneri and Matteo Goffriller in Venice; Francesco Rugeri, G.B. Rogeri and Andrea and Guiseppe Guarneri in Cremona; P.G. Guarneri in Mantua; the Grancino and Testore families in Milan; and (slightly later) G.B. Guadagnini in Turin. The Gagliano family in Naples made cellos from about 1700 for well over a century. An important 19th-century maker was Giuseppe Rocca in Turin (later in Genoa).

Jacob Stainer (c1617–1683), worked in Absam in the Austrian Tyrol but may have been trained as a luthier in Italy. Tyrolean cellos are distinct in their high arching and square upper bouts. Stainer’s influence can be seen in the prevalence of these characteristics in cellos of successive Austro-German makers, particularly the Klotz family (founders of the Mittenwald School), and in the instruments of early English makers.

In addition to Stainer, 17th- and 18th-century English violin-making was influenced by the Brescian school of Maggini. The earliest cello identifiable as ‘English’ was made by William Baker in Oxford in 1672. Other important early makers of cellos in London were Barak Norman (1651–1724), Nathaniel Cross (c1689–1751) and Peter Wamsley (fl 1725–45). Succeeding generations produced a large number of excellent makers of cellos. Among these were Benjamin Banks, Richard Duke, Thomas Kennedy, Vincenzo Panormo, and the Betts, Dodd, Forster and Hill families. Makers in the second half of the 18th century were influenced by the work of Stradivari and the Cremonese school, although features of the earlier English style were retained, such as high arching of the back and belly, and square bouts.

In France the documented ownership of good Italian instruments by prominent 18th-century French cellists, such as J.L. Duport, suggests that fine Italian cellos were readily available and preferred over locally manufactured instruments. However, French makers later achieved high standards in the production of cellos, such as the Lupot family in the second half of the 18th century, and Vuillaume in the 19th.

(v) The bow.

The evolution of the cello bow in the 18th century was influenced by that of both the violin and viola da gamba. Early cellists used bows of many different sizes; measurements of pre-Tourte, 18th-century bows range from approximately 67 cm to 74 cm in length and weigh from 65 to 86 grams. Italian players were known to use thicker strings and correspondingly heavier bows that produced more sound. Quantz also provides evidence that cellists may have used different types of bow hair: coarser black hair on a heavier bow for orchestral use and white hair on a lighter bow for solo playing.

Experiments with violin bow design in the second half of the 18th century affected cello bow manufacture. The technical requirements of repertory composed by cellists associated with Mannheim, such as Anton Fils (1733–60) and Peter Ritter (1763–1846), suggest the use of a concave rather than convex bow in Germany as early as 1760, because of the leverage required to make many passages in thumb position on the thick lower two strings sound well.

François Tourte perfected his bow design by 1786. J.L. Duport (1749–1819) discussed the merits of different bow lengths, weights and hair tightness in his Essai (c1806), and specifically recommended Tourte’s bows, stating that ‘there is no one who has succeeded better in our day in the manufacture of bows than Mr Tourte jr’, and that Tourte’s pre-eminence as bowmaker was generally acknowledged at the time. With the perfection of the modern bow design by Tourte, most players began using the concave bow because of its strength of tone and capacity to sustain a legato line. The length of the stick of Tourte’s cello bows ranged between 72 cm to 73·6 cm, with the hair length 60 cm to 62 cm. The balance point of the bow was approximately 18·2 cm from the end of the frog.

There were relatively few changes to bow design after Tourte’s, and these were mainly concerned with increasing the power of the bow or affording the player greater convenience. The leading French makers of cellos bows in the mid-19th century were F.N. Voirin and Dominique Peccatte, both of whom worked in the Parisian workshop of Vuillaume and whose bows often bear his stamp. Other fine French makers of cello bows included A.J. Lamy, E.F. Ouchard and Pierre Simon. The Dodd family produced excellent bows in London in the early 19th century, although some bear the stamp ‘Forster’, representing the shop where they worked (see Bow, §I, 3–4).

2. Technique.

(i) Holding the cello.

Although all treatises and tutors of the 18th and early 19th centuries advocate supporting the cello by holding it solely with the legs, iconographic and documentary evidence indicates that endpins, stools and boxes were used by cello players, probably for reasons of acoustic enhancement or comfort, throughout the 18th century. The use of a wooden peg to support the cello is mentioned by Robert Crome in his Compleat Tutor (Cc1765) and by Corrette in his Méthode (C1741), as an aid for cellists when they were required to stand.

J.-L. Duport (C1806) noted that the cello could be held in varying ways according to the ‘habits and stature of persons’. He stated that the usual method of supporting the cello was to sit very far forward on a chair with the left foot forward and the right drawn back, so that the left-hand corner of the cello falls into the hollow of the right knee with the weight of the cello resting against the left leg. The right leg steadies the instrument against the lower right side of the cello. Etchings from 18th and 19th century treatises often show the right calf enveloping the top of the lower right bout, probably for stability. Romberg (C1839) emphasized the importance of maintaining good posture when sitting with the cello, warning against slumping: ‘stiffness in the arm generally proceeds from bending the body too much forward, and raising the elbows too high. This defect may be also avoided in playing the violoncello, by sitting quite straight, and taking care not to raise the shoulders’.

The endpin re-emerged only at the end of the 19th century. Its use was recommended for the first time in print only from 1882, by Jules de Swert (The Violoncello, London, 1882), a pupil of A.F. Servais. Servais began to use an endpin to support his cello about 1860, when he became too portly to hold his large-sized Stradivari cello solely with his legs. Being such a prominent performer and teacher, he has been erroneously credited with its invention because he promoted its use. Since cellists in the 19th century did not generally use endpins, his adoption of this manner of supporting the cello was considered innovative at the time.

Other cellists in his circle followed suit, probably encouraged by his example and relishing the greater comfort it afforded, especially when playing in high positions. The adjustable endpin was introduced after 1890. An increase in the number of women cellists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, especially in England, may reflect the greater freedom the endpin offered, allowing the cello to be held in a side-saddle manner that did not conflict with prevailing rules of decorum. Lisa Cristiani (1827–53) was the only notable female cellist before the late 19th century.

Various types of endpin material – such as wood or metal – were thought to have special acoustic properties; Hugo Becker (1864–1941) apparently used not only a wooden endpin, but rested it on a box to enhance and augment his cello’s tone. Many prominent late 19th-century cellists, such as Alfredo Piatti (1822–1901) and Robert Haussmann (1852–1909), never used an endpin. Haussman was closely associated with Brahms and known to produce a very powerful tone. A photograph of the young David Popper from 1861 shows him holding the cello in the older manner, without an endpin.

(ii) Left-hand technique and fingering.

According to John Gunn in his Theory and Practice of Fingering on the Violoncello (C1789), earlier cellists held the neck of the cello with the fingers of the left hand at a slanted, oblique angle and the thumb behind the first finger (fig.6). This position, a diatonic fingering system adapted from the violin, was adopted by English cellists, probably following Italian models, and is documented elsewhere as being used by some late 18th-century cellists, such as J.B. Janson (1742–1803), J.B. Tricklir (1750–1813), and Romberg as late as 1839.

The earliest French cellists, who were usually trained as viol players (such as Martin Berteau), adapted the left-hand technique of the viol, which is based on semitones, to the cello. In this technique the fingers are perpendicular to the strings and fingerboard, with the thumb opposite the second finger of the left hand. Corrette also advised placing the thumb opposite the second finger, stating that ‘those who play the bass viol learn the neck of the cello more easily than do the others. They already possess the finger technique and almost the positions of the cello’. Duport was quite specific in his instruction that the thumb should be placed exactly between the first and second fingers of the left hand, and parallel with them. This system, as developed and systematized by Duport, was widely accepted by cellists at the beginning of the 19th century and provides the basis of modern left-hand technique. Romberg stated that an oblique left-hand position in the higher positions of the neck, with rounded fingers, afforded the player greater power in the left hand, and he commented on the relative lack thereof in Duport’s position, although being more perpendicular to the fingerboard, the latter allowed greater relaxation of the palm and base joints of the left hand.

Virtuoso left-hand techniques, such as the use of thumb position, were developed early in the 18th century by Italian cellists such as Salvatore Lanzetti (c1710–80). The origins of thumb position are unclear, although it may be linked to the technique of playing the trumpet marine, on which harmonics were produced by placing the left thumb lightly on the string and drawing forceful bow strokes. Corrette’s Méthode contains the first documented reference to the use of thumb position, although earlier cello compositions indicate that thumb position was already being use by Italian cellists at this time. French cellists, beginning with Berteau, used harmonics as a technical effect, and works written by prominent 18th-century French cellists such as Jean Barrière, J.-B.-A. Janson, J.-P. Duport and J.B. Bréval often feature passage-work in the highest positions. 18th-century German virtuosos favoured thumb position fingerings for passage-work, using stationary, ‘blocked’ hand positions with fingerings across the strings, thus avoiding frequent position changes. They also had a propensity to use the fourth finger in thumb position. French cellists avoided using the C string until the early 19th century, possibly because of the lower pitch standard in Paris and the resulting lower tension of the string.

(iii) Vibrato.

Vibrato is mentioned in a few 18th- and 19th-century treatises. Called the ‘close shake’ or ‘tremolo’, Dotzauer (C1832) referred to it as being practiced primarily by Italian players, and suggested that it should be used to intensify long notes. Romberg gave examples with specific notation for vibrato on long notes, but stated that it should occur only at the beginning of the note and not be sustained. Both Dotzauer and Romberg recommended using vibrato judiciously. Romberg comments ‘formerly, the close shake was in such repute that it was applied indiscriminately to every note of whatever duration. This produced a most disagreeable and whining effect, and we cannot be too thankful that an improved taste has at length exploded the abuse of this embellishment’. Later cellists, such as O.-C. Vaslin (1794–1889) and Bernhard Cossmann (1822–1910), also seem to have used vibrato sparingly and commented that its over-use was in poor taste. It is likely that cellists of the French school used little, if any, vibrato, focussing instead on nuances of bowing for beauty of tone and expression.

(iv) Bowing.

The bow was held in a variety of ways by 18th-century cellists. The underhand grip, derived from viol technique, was still used towards the end of the 18th century by some players, such as Antonio Vandini (c1700–73) and J.G. Schetky (1737–1824). Quantz makes reference to its frequent use in Germany in the mid-18th century (see fig.4 above).

The most common way of holding the lighter, convex bow was the violin-influenced overhand grip, above the frog, with the thumb under the stick (fig.7). Corrette (C1741) reported that Italian players held the bow in this manner, although he gave two alternative overhand grips that he considered to be equally good: one as that described above, but with the thumb under the hair; and the other with the thumb underneath the frog.

Tourte’s perfecting of the concave bowstick design greatly affected cello bowing technique and tone production. Duport advocated holding the bow with a flat thumb on the stick above the frog, between the second and third fingers, with the little finger balancing the movements of the hand and bow. He also recommended that the second finger should bear on the hair, and suggested that mobility in the fingers of the right hand on the stick is necessary to facilitate expression in the bow. The use of the bow grip above the frog is documented in France, England and Spain to the end of the 19th century.

French bowing in the 18th and 19th centuries was characterized by use of regulated bow strokes and varied bowing styles. The custom of holding the bow above the frog allowed for development of light and off-the-string virtuoso bowing techniques, such as slurred staccato.

In Germany, Romberg and his pupils, including Friedrich Dotzauer (1783–1860), held the bow on the frog, allowing for increased leverage and bowing power. It is possible that this manner of holding the bow developed when concave sticks began to be used in Mannheim in the third quarter of the 18th century, although this manner of using the bow was not univerally adopted in Germany. It was consistent with bowing technique of the French violin school of Viotti, whom Romberg greatly admired. Romberg advocated holding the bow very firmly in the hand, with a straight thumb and fingers, in a position which he stressed should remain constant while bowing, irrespective of direction. The arm should remain low and relaxed, hanging close to the body. He admonished the student:

it is only by placing the hand firmly on the bow, that a strong, powerful tone can be drawn from the instrument … if the strength of the tone proceed from the arm, the instrument must be played with the arm held stiff; which entirely prevents a fine execution, and this is the cause that so few players arrive at perfection, they play with the arm and not with the hand.

The pervasive influence of the Dresden school, originating with Romberg’s pupil Dotzauer (see §II, 4(ii)(a), below), can be seen in 19th-century German and Russian cello technique, and throughout the 20th century; today the frog-held bow is the standard practice of most modern cellists.

(v) Clefs.

In the early 18th century, when Italian cellists dominated the field, vocal clefs were most commonly used, i.e. bass (F4) clef, combined with movable c clefs to notate passages in high positions. In the middle of the century, this practice changed and passages not written in bass clef were written in g2 clefs, both at pitch and transposed one octave below. By the latter part of the century, it was common practice for high solo passages in cello music to be notated in the g2 clef an octave above the actual pitch played, although accompaniments and lower parts were still written in bass and tenor (c4) clefs.

(vi) Accompaninent.

The art of accompaniment was a special skill, the importance of which was emphasized in 18th- and early 19th-century cello methods (e.g. Baudiot, Baumgärtner, Corrette, Gunn, Kauer, Mozart, Quantz, Schetky). The accompanying cellist was seen as a subordinate partner to the principal melodic voice, instrumental or vocal, in aria, melody and recitative. Required skills for the cellist in this role included the regulation of time (rhythm, metre and tempo) in an ensemble, and the expressive articulation of musical character through the sensitive and appropriate use of bow strokes. There is some disagreement about adding ornaments to the bass in early sources, although this apparently was practised by the English cellist Robert Lindley well into the 19th century. J.B. Baumgärtner’s Instructions de musique … à l'usage du violoncelle (Cc1774) provides detailed advice for cellists about how to accompany recitatives and harmonically embellish a bass line, with arpeggiated chords and double stops. Several 18th-century writers advocated using larger-sized instruments for the purpose of accompaniment (e.g. Gunn, Quantz).

(ii) Austria and Germany.

3. 18th-century use, performers and repertory.

(i) Italy.

(iii) Britain.

(iv) France.

Violoncello, §II, 3: 18th-century use, performers and repertory

(i) Italy.

Notwithstanding the terminological ambiguity associated with the larger members of the violin family, lasting well into the 18th century, there is ample iconographic and musical evidence to show that the cello was firmly established as a member of the continuo group in Italy by the beginning of the 18th century. At that time the cello played an important role in the opera orchestras of Venice and Naples as an obbligato instrument in vocal accompaniment. The orchestra of the Teatro S Carlo in Naples had a well-fortified bass section in the mid-18th century, with two to three cellos, and an equal or larger number of double basses as the century progressed. Benedetto Marcello’s comments (1720) about the excessive improvisational liberties taken by cellists when accompanying singers is indicative of both the players’ high skill and the soloistic nature of their role in both arias and recitatives. In chamber ensembles the cello was the most common bowed instrument in the continuo group by the beginning of the 18th century. Italian compositions for solo cello increased in the early 18th century with the growing importance of the solo cellist in the orchestra and chamber ensemble (see §3(iv) below).

Numerous cellists were employed at the Basilica of S Marco in Venice in the late 17th century and the 18th as maestri de’ concerti or as instrumentalists. Some of these were notable composers as well, such as Antonio Caldara (c1670–1736). Caldara is of special interest because of his migration to the Hofkapelle in Vienna after about 1700 and the resulting spread of Italian influence. His extant works include a collection of 16 cello sonatas and a chamber concerto. His manuscript Lezioni (A-Wn EM 69), consisting of 44 two-part pieces (alongside over 100 similar, though unattributed works), are among the earliest pedagogical works for the cello. Other significant Venetian repertory includes the six sonatas for cello and basso continuo by Benedetto Marcello (Amsterdam, c1734), and a large number of pieces for cello by Vivaldi, including nine extant continuo sonatas, and 27 concertos. Domenico Della Bella was a cellist and maestro di capella at Treviso (c1700–15) whose compositions include four cello sonatas and a set of sonate da chiesa (Venice, 1704). These are characterized by contrapuntal writing and virtuoso solo parts, including multiple stopping.

Naples became an important centre of cello playing in the early 18th century, probably due to the rise of Neapolitan opera and the need for good cellists to accompany singers. Francesco Scipriani (1678–1753) wrote one of the earliest known instruction manuals: Principij da imparare a suonare il violoncello e con 12 toccate a solo (undated MS, I-Nc). His Sonate a 2 violoncelli e basso also require advanced fingering technique. The famous conservatories in Naples produced internationally recognized virtuosos in the early 18th century, such as Francesco Alborea (1691–1739) and Salvatore Lanzetti (c1710–80). Alborea, known popularly as ‘Francisc(h)ello’, was the most famous and admired virtuoso of the early 18th century, and his skill on the cello remained legendary for later generations of musicians including Quantz, Geminiani (as quoted by Burney) and Benda, although little documentary or musical evidence of Alborea’s career has survived. From Naples he travelled to Rome and abroad, and in 1726–39 was employed as solo cellist to the Hofkapelle in Vienna, where he was the highest paid cellist there in the 18th century. Two attractive sonatas in manuscript are attributed to him.

Lanzetti, also became a touring cello virtuoso. He made his way to Paris and London, where he resided for an extended period until about 1754. He then went to Germany and returned to Italy, where he was employed in the royal chapel in Turin from about 1760. His Principes is among the earliest instruction manuals to pay special attention to fingering. Lanzetti’s technical skill and innovative approach can be seen in his cello sonatas, which are some of the most interesting pieces for the instrument from this period. His Sonatas op.1 (Amsterdam, 1736) contain unusual and imaginative special effects, both musical and technical, and extend the upper range to b''. Thumb position is used extensively in these works, along with double, triple and quadruple stopping, rapid string crossings and passage-work and slurred staccato bowings.

Luigi Boccherini (1743–1805) was possibly the greatest cellist of the late 18th century. Evidence of Boccherini’s virtuosity can be seen in his many technically challenging and attractive solo and chamber works for the cello, written in an elegant rococo style. The range is extended as high as b''' in his sonatas, and florid passages in the highest positions abound. Boccherini wrote 11 cello concertos, 34 sonatas for cello and basso continuo, and dozens of string quintets with two cellos.

Although a violinist, Francesco Geminiani (1687–1762) wrote six remarkably original and technically challenging continuo sonatas for cello (Paris, 1746), which he later transcribed for the violin. Other significant 18th-century Italian works for the cello include sonatas by Boni, Vandini, Platti, Porpora, Antoniotti, Bononcini, Pergolesi, J.-B. Canavas, Caporale, Cervetto, and Graziani. There are two concertos by Cirri, six by Leo, one each by E.F. Dall’Abaco, Porpora and Vandini, and 20 by Platti.

Violoncello, §II, 3: 18th-century use, performers and repertory

(ii) Austria and Germany.

In Austria and Germany the cello appears to have been used primarily in dance music, or as a part of the continuo group to reinforce the bass or to play obbligato parts. It did not gain a more independent role until the second half of the 18th century.

In 1730 J.S. Bach’s orchestra at Leipzig had two cellists and one violone player. By the second half of the 18th century, the number of cellists in German court orchestras began to increase to balance the expanding wind and brass sections. In the orchestra of the Prussian court at Berlin, for example, the ratio of cellos to basses were, respectively, 4:2 in 1754, 6:3 in 1783, and 8:4 in 1787. The orchestras at Mannheim in 1782 and Dresden in 1783 had slightly more modest sections with four cellos and three basses. At the same time, the numbers in Haydn’s orchestra at Eszterháza remained relatively small: still only two cellos and two basses in 1783.

The six solo suites by J.S. Bach, along with the numerous obbligato parts in his cantatas and Brandenburg concertos, are anomalous in German music of the period, since music written specifically for solo cello before the middle of the 18th century is extremely rare. Composed at Cöthen about 1720, the technical demands of the suites suggest they were written for a player of high skill, either Christian Ferdinand Abel (according to the supposition of Spitta, although it is by no means certain that he played the cello) or C.B. Linike (1673–1751). Characteristic of the suites are complicated bowing patterns, the use of batteries, bariolage, arpeggios, multiple stopping, chords and a high degree of left hand virtuosity in the positions of the neck. Suite no.5 uses scordatura tuning. These demands are associated more with contemporary violin and viol performing practice than contemporary German cello technique as represented in obbligato and continuo cello parts. The sixth suite uses a five-string cello.

The Mannheim court was an important centre of cello playing in the 1750s. Anton Fils wrote numerous works for cello while employed at the Kapelle in 1754–60, including four concertos, sonatas and chamber works. They show an innovative approach to left-hand technique in the use of stationary, blocked hand positions for virtuoso passage-work, especially in thumb position. He also used thumb position on the G and C strings as a technical effect for contrasting registers. The Mannheim tradition was continued by Peter Ritter (1763–1846), who composed many solo works for the cello, as well as operas and chamber works.

Early Viennese works for the cello include concertos by M.G. Monn (1745) and G.C. Wagenseil (1752 and 1763). These show an emerging virtuosity in the Austrian school, the range employed by each composer extending to d'' and e'' respectively. Special techniques, such as batteries, brisure, double stopping and arpeggios are also used.

The cellists in the employ of the Kapelle of Prince Esterházy at the time of Haydn’s association with the court provided the stimulus for an expanding repertory of significant works for the cello, and the emergence of a role distinct from its traditional bass line accompaniment function in ensembles. Already in the op.20 string quartets (1774), Haydn explored the concept of equal four-part writing and treated the cello as a principal melodic voice like that of the violin. His Concerto in C (c1761–5) is the first cello concerto by a major composer of the Classical period, although Haydn’s interest in exploring the cello's technical possibilities in a concertante role can be seen already in several of the early symphonies (nos.6, 7, 8, 15, 31 and 45). Written for Joseph Weigl, then principal cellist at Eszterháza, the Concerto in C is a musical masterpiece and a virtuoso showpiece for the cellist. It uses techniques similar to those employed by Fils in his concertos: fast passages implying the use of horizontal thumb position fingerings across three strings in blocked hand positions, arpeggios, batteries, brisure, double stops alternating with lower open strings, and lower-register sonorities. The range of the cello part extends to a''.

The Concerto in D (1783) was written for the Bohemian cellist, Anton Kraft (1749–1820), principal cellist at Eszterháza from 1778 to 1790. It was erroneously attributed to Kraft in Schilling’s Lexikon der Tonkunst (1837), leading to a century of doubt about its authenticity until Haydn’s autograph was found in Vienna in 1951. Its style and special technical effects give ample opportunity for virtuosity and expressiveness, suggesting that a high degree of collaboration between Kraft and Haydn may have occurred in the compositional process. Kraft’s own compositions for the cello include virtuoso sonatas, duos, salon pieces and concertos for cello. These works, as well as the cello part of Beethoven’s Triple Concerto op.56, written for Kraft, show his technical fluency. Techniques such as lower string octave passages, double stops in thumb position, brisure, passages specifically intended to be played on lower strings, arpeggios, bariolage, batteries, and bowing sul ponticello, are employed in these works. His playing was noted for its power and expressiveness, and he performed the premières of numerous works of Beethoven.

Beethoven demonstrated an early interest in writing for the cello. The two sonatas op.5 represented an experiment with a new type of ensemble: cello alone with piano. Written for performance by Beethoven and Duport in 1796 at the royal court at Berlin, these works incorporate technical effects characteristic of Duport’s style and give the cello an unprecedented equality with the piano part.

The interest of 18th-century Prussian monarchs in music, and the cello in particular, provided the stimulus for a large number of good compositions for the cello. In addition to the works by Beethoven, C.P.E. Bach wrote three concertos for cello, and Boccherini, as court composer to Friedrich Wilhelm II, dedicated numerous pieces to the king. The cello also has a prominent part in chamber works written for this monarch, such as Mozart’s three ‘Prussian’ Quartets k575, 589 and 590, and Haydn’s Quartets op.50.

Other prominent expatriate Bohemian cellists of the 18th century include J.B. Mara (1744–1808), whose dissolute lifestyle ruined his promising career, Josef Reicha (1752–95), who was employed as musical director at the court in Bonn from 1787, and Jan Šťastný (c1764–c1826), whose works for the cello have retained a place in the repertory.

Violoncello, §II, 3: 18th-century use, performers and repertory

(iii) Britain.

Although it is possible that the cello came to England in the first half of the 17th century, the earliest cello identifiable as ‘English’ was made by William Baker in Oxford in 1672. This date corresponds with the rising popularity of Italian-style opera and chamber music in 17th-century England, which would have called for a cello rather than a bass viol. The cello, sometimes known as the ‘church bass’ or even ‘bass viol’ in this context, also had an important role in 18th-century England as the favoured continuo instrument in those parishes which used an instrumental ensemble to accompany the church choir, instead of an organ (see Bass viol; this practice carried on in the British and US churches well into the 19th century). The cello in England also has associations with the aristocratic class: both Frederick Louis, Prince of Wales (1707–51; see Mandolin, fig.2), and George IV (1762–1830) played the cello. Numerous instruments were commissioned by the royal family from contemporary makers (e.g. the younger William Forster’s ‘Royal George’ cello, c1782). The instrument’s popularity undoubtedly was enhanced by the large number of tutors and music published during the 18th century for the amateur market, and by the London performances of Italian and French cellists, beginning early in the century.

It was migrating Italian cellists, such as Lanzetti, Giovanni Bononcini (1670–1747) and Giacobbe Basevi Cervetto (1680–1783), Andrea Caporale (fl mid-18th century), Guiseppe Dall’Abaco (1662–1726) and Pasqualini de Marzis (fl 1740s), who established cello playing in England in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Many of these produced works for the burgeoning English music publishing market. Cervetto’s son, James (1748–1837), and John Crosdill (1751–1825) were the leading English cellists of the latter half of the 18th century and both men enjoyed highly successful performing careers. Robert Lindley (1776–1855), a pupil of James Cervetto, exceeded his master in ability and reputation.

John Gunn’s Theory and Practice in Fingering on the Violoncello (C1789) is the most comprehensive English treatise of the 18th century on cello technique and the history of stringed instruments. Aimed at the musically literate amateur, it provides a detailed glimpse into technical practices and musical aesthetics in England at the time. Gunn’s discussion of fingering includes reference to the Italian oblique left hand position as being ‘formerly much in use’ (fig.6). It is not clear what caused the old-fashioned, consecutive diatonic system of fingering to be superseded by the semitone system of finger spacing, although it may be indicative of French influence on the English school, possibly through Crosdill, who studied with J.-P. Duport.

Violoncello, §II, 3: 18th-century use, performers and repertory

(iv) France.

Although the cello was used for the basso continuo in Italy by the middle of the 17th century, supplanting the viol, in France the latter remained the favoured chamber music instrument into the 18th century. Hubert Le Blanc’s Defense de la basse de viole contre les entreprises du violon et les prétensions du violoncel (C1740) colourfully expresses the resistance with which the cello, along with other Italian influences, was greeted by musical conservatives in France. Le Blanc wrote that the cello, ‘a miserable dunce, hated, & a poor devil … now flatters himself that in place of the bass viol, he will receive many caresses’, and compared its tone quality to the trumpet marine. However, from the late 17th century there is clear evidence that the cello was preferred to accompany the violin. The penetrating tone of the violin and cello was better suited to public concerts, such as the Concert Spirituel, which was inaugurated in the 1720s.

In his Méthode (C1741), the earliest dated instruction manual on playing the cello, Michel Corrette described the cello as the ideal bass-line instrument, attributing to it excellent sonority, capacity for volume, articulate and clean tone, and versatility as the bass instrument in different types of ensembles. Other testimony to the rapid rise in the cello’s popularity in France is the fact that the Parisian music publisher Le Clerc produced at least 26 volumes of French and Italian cello sonatas between 1738 and 1750. A relatively large number of low string instruments were used in the orchestra of the Paris Opéra: eight basses (combined) in 1713, eight cellos and four double basses in 1763, and 12 cellos and five basses in 1790. Four sets of cello sonatas were published by Jean Barrière (1707–47) between 1733 and 1739. A member of the Académie Royale de Musique from 1730, he was noted for the precision of his playing. His works require an advanced command of left-hand and bowing techniques, and show a strong Italian influence in style, possibly due to Barrière's sojourn in Italy, 1726–9. They are unusual in that the accompaniments are sometimes written with separate parts for keyboard and a second cello, often as elaborate as that of the solo part.

Corrette’s Méthode was directed at both the beginner and the viol player taking up the cello for the first time. Martin Berteau (1708–71) was one such player who, according to legend, abandoned the viol for the cello after hearing Francischello (Francesco Alborea) play, and became the founder of the French school of cello playing. Of his cello compositions, only a set of six violoncello sonatas (Paris, 1748) and one study attributed to him (no.6 in J.-L. Duport’s 21 exercices, c1813) are extant. However, his influence as the teacher of a small but important group of Parisian cellists had a profound impact on the development of cello playing. Berteau’s noteworthy students included François Cupis (1732–1808) and his nephew Jean-Baptiste (b 1741), J.-P. Duport (1741–1818), J.-B.-A.J. Janson (1742–1803) and J.B. Tillière (c1740–90). Tillière published a cello tutor in 1764 which was followed by a more detailed method by Jean-Baptiste Cupis in 1772, but the most highly regarded of Berteau’s pupils was Jean-Pierre Duport. Among Duport's distinguished pupils were his brother Jean-Louis Duport, John Crosdill, Nikolaus Kraft (1778–1853), Peter Ritter and Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia. The players of the French school were distinguished by smoothness and purity of tone, and a high degree of left-hand skill, especially in high positions.

J.-L. Duport’s Essai (C1806), which credited Berteau with the development of technical principles for the cello, is an advanced exposition on both left-hand and bowing techniques. Although it is unknown how many students he taught, the methodical, thoroughly tested principles presented in the Essai shows Duport’s extensive experience as a teacher. His systematic standardisation of fingering and bowing principles, and the 21 exercices (Paris, c1813) that comprise the second part of the Essai, influenced successive generations of cellists and remain an important part of the advanced study repertoire to the present day.

J.-B.S. Bréval (1753–1823), a student of Cupis, was a cello virtuoso, a prolific composer and a teacher. However his comprehensive technical method, the Traité du violoncelle op.42 (C1804), was overshadowed by the publication of Duport’s Essai. Bréval’s works for solo cello include seven concertos and several sets of continuo sonatas. When the Paris Conservatoire was founded in 1795, Janson and J.-H. Levasseur (1764–1823) were appointed as cello professors. The official Méthode (C1804) of the Conservatoire was co-written by Levasseur, C.-N. Baudiot, C.-S. Catel and Pierre Baillot. Although it preceded the Duport Essai in date of publication, the professors of the new Conservatoire, particularly Levasseur, were already heavily influenced by Duport’s teaching.

4. 19th century.

(i) Use and repertory.

The role of the cello in large and small ensembles in the 19th century followed the practice established in orchestral and chamber compositions of the last decades of the 18th century. The increasing number of cellist-composers enlarged the solo repertory, developing with it an expanded range of virtuoso techniques for both the left hand and the bow, although many compositions written by cellists for their own concert performances have failed the test of time.

A number of first-rate works by pre-eminent early 19th century composers feature the cello prominently. Works with piano include three later sonatas by Beethoven (opp.69 and 102), two by Mendelssohn (opp.45 and 58), and one sonata (op.65) and several shorter pieces by Chopin. The cello’s capacity for cantilena playing in the tenor register, as well as for playing accompanying bass and tenor lines, is exploited by Romantic composers for dramatic and melodic effect in chamber works. Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Dvořák all wrote string quartets, quintets, trios and other works that contain prominent cello parts.

The core of the late 19th-century repertory for solo cello and orchestra consists of Schumann’s Concerto in A minor op.129, the Brahms Double Concerto op.102, Dvořák’s Concerto in B minor op.104, Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations, Lalo’s Concerto in D minor and the first (in A minor) of two concertos by Saint-Saëns. There are numerous significant works for cello and piano from this period, including two sonatas each by Brahms and Mendelssohn, sonatas by Strauss, Grieg and Saint-Saëns, the Fünf Stücke im Volkston by Schumann and the Fauré Elégie. Short salon pieces also abound.

In the operatic literature the cello section was often divided (e.g. Rossini’s Guillaume Tell, Verdi’s Otello, Puccini’s La bohème), and many 19th-century operas have solo cello passages. In other orchestral works a solo cellist is often given important obbligato parts, for example the piano concertos in B and A by Brahms and Liszt respectively, Le carnival des animaux by Saint-Saëns and Don Quixote by Strauss. Romantic composers also wrote section solos for the cellos in the symphonic repertory.

As the size of wind and brass sections of the symphony orchestra increased, the size of the cello section more than doubled for some large-scale works. Even as early as 1814, Beethoven’s Seventh and Eighth Symphonies were performed using 12 cellos and seven basses, compared with two of each for his Symphonies nos.4–6. The Ninth Symphony reportedly had 12 of each, matching the double winds. Berlioz recommended the use of at least 11 cellos and nine basses for the Symphonie fantastique, and 29 cellos and 18 basses for his Requiem. Richard Wagner’s orchestra at Bayreuth in 1876 had a relatively modest bass sections, consisting of 12 cellos and eight basses, the same numbers of players used by Richard Strauss for his major orchestral works, such as Ein Heldenleben. The Gewandhaus Orchestra, Leipzig, had three cellos and three basses in 1802, increasing to ten of each by 1890.

(ii) Performers and schools of playing.

At the beginning of the 19th century distinct schools of cello playing existed in Austria and Germany, France, and England, with those of J.-L. Duport in France and Bernhard Romberg in Germany dominating. As a result of the migrations during the French Revolution there was interaction between the various schools. Duport and Romberg shared an orchestra desk in Berlin for a brief period and other important cellists of the time also had contact with them. Romberg’s powerful, expressive style of playing and technical prowess earned him the pre-eminent place among cellists of the early 19th century. He travelled extensively in Europe, giving concerts. His cantilena playing was particularly admired and many other sought to emulate his style of playing. His Violoncell-Schule (C1839) contains a comprehensive treatment of cello-playing and is an excellent source of information on early 19th-century performing practice in Germany, including elementary and advanced techniques, aspects of instrument set-up (including life-sized diagrams), elements of general musicianship, phrasing and expression, ensemble playing and musical style.

(a) Germany and the Dresden school.

The ideas of Duport and Romberg were synthesized by Dotzauer, who studied with Duport’s student, J.J. Kriegk (1750–1814), and later with Romberg himself in Berlin. Although Dotzauer was well-known as a performer and composer in his own time, he is best remembered for his contribution to cello pedagogy as the founder of the ‘Dresden school’. His Violoncell schule (1832) predated Romberg’s by seven years, and was the first significant method to appear by a German cellist. Dotzauer’s many students included F.A. Kummer, K.L. Voigt, Karl Drechlser and Carl Schuberth, through whom the principles of Dotzauer’s teaching were preserved and disseminated to other regions, including (through Schuberth) Russia.

Kummer succeeded Dotzauer in Dresden in 1852, both as solo cellist in the orchestra and professor at the Conservatory. Kummer was renowned for his natural technique and elegant musical style. His pedagogical works are among the most musically interesting from this period and have remained in the étude repertory to the present day. The systematic and progressive instruction contained his Violoncell-Schule (c1839) remains an invaluable resource for teachers and shows the musical emphasis which he placed on the teaching of technique. Kummer taught several significant 19th-century cellists, among them Julius Goltermann (1825–76), later professor at the Prague Conservatory, and Bernhard Cossmann.

Karl Drechsler (1800–73) was based in Dessau, where he served as principal cellist and professor. His students included Cossmann, and Friedrich Grützmacher (1832–1903). Grützmacher’s influence dominated the Dresden school in the latter half of the 19th century. Hugo Becker (1864–1941), Diran Alexanian (1881–1954), and Julius Klengel (1859–1933), among the most influential cellists and teachers around the turn of the century, are all linked directly or indirectly to Grützmacher.

(b) France and Belgium.

The technical principles of the French school, as outlined by Duport in his Essai and the Paris Conservatoire Méthode, were disseminated by his pupils and those of Janson. J.-M.H. Lamare (1772–1823) and Louis Norblin (1781–1854) were among the early graduates of the Paris Conservatory who became prominent cellists and teachers. N.J. Platel (1777–1835), a student of Lamare, eventually founded the Belgian school of playing when he was appointed professor at the Conservatory in Brussels in 1826.

Platel’s student, A.F. Servais (1807–66), known as the ‘Paganini’ of the cello, rose to prominence because of his technical brilliance, graceful style and beautiful tone. Servais was a prolific composer for the cello, writing many works for his own concert performances, which contain innovative and arresting technical effects. Servais is credited with developing left-hand technique to new heights of virtuosity. His Six Caprices op.11 (Mainz, ?1854) features much passage-work in thumb position and double stops including octaves and 10ths. He performed extensively in Europe, including numerous concert tours to Russia, where his performances were an important catalyst for interest in the cello in the emerging Russian school. Servais succeeded Platel in the cello professorship at the Brussels Conservatory in 1848, where he instructed cellists such as Jules de Swert (1843–1891), Joseph Hollmann (1852–1927) and Ernest De Munck (1840–1915).

Auguste Franchomme (1808–84), a pupil of Norblin and Levasseur at the Paris Conservatoire, inherited the mantle of Duport. Highly successful as a solo cellist and known for his impeccable musicianship and beautiful cantilena, Franchomme was a close associate of Chopin and the dedicatee of the Sonata op.65. In 1846 he was appointed principal professor at the Conservatoire, a position he held until his death. His pupils included L.A. Vidal (1820–91) and Louis Hegyesi (1853–94).

(c) Italy.

After Boccherini, no internationally prominent Italian cellist emerged until Alfredo Piatti (1822–1901), a pupil of Gaetano Zanetti and Merighi. Early concert successes led to an active career as both performer and teacher. His playing was greatly admired for its musical integrity, technical virtuosity and beauty of tone. His 12 Caprices (Berlin, 1875), explore a broad range of virtuoso techniques, such as slurred staccato, sautillé, ricochet, double and triple stopping, octaves and passages in thumb position.

(d) The English school.

Robert Lindley was England’s leading cellist for most of his life and taught at the RAM. His desk partner F.W. Crouch (c1808–44) was also an accomplished player and published a comprehensive treatise on the cello based on the Paris Conservatoire method. In 1846, Alfredo Piatti took up residence in London and, as professor at the RAM, influenced the next generation of English cellists, which included Edward Howell, W.E. Whitehouse and Leo Stern. Whitehouse and Howell were also very active as teachers at the RAM, the English pedagogical line from Whitehouse being particularly strong into the 20th century.

(e) The Russian school.

The patronage of the Russian Counts Saltïkov and Mateusz Wielhorski, and of Prince N.B. Golitsïn (the latter two of whom were amateur cellists), was an important factor in generating a rich Russian musical life in the 19th century, and helped to stimulate interest in the cello. The sojourn of Romberg in Russia, where he fled following the invasion of Prussia by Napoleon in 1806, and his close association with Wielhorski in particular, laid the foundation for the Russian school.

K.Y. Davïdov (1838–89), a pupil of Carl Schuberth, is particularly associated with the Russian school, being the first Russian cellist to gain a professorship at the St Petersburg Conservatory in 1862. His training was based on the teaching of Grützmacher, and his high level of technical skill, purity of intonation and expressive playing set a new standard in his native Russia and abroad. Davïdov adopted a new system of fingering on the cello (documented in his unfinished Violoncell-Schule Leipzig, 1888), in which the left hand has complete mobility over the entire compass of the fingerboard, without reference to fixed positions. Davïdov composed many attractive pieces for the instrument in the German Romantic style. Wilhelm Fitzenhagen (1848–90), a pupil of Grützmacher, was a soloist and chamber musician, and was also very influential as the teacher of many Russian cellists in the latter part of the century.

(f) The Czechs and Hungarians.

Along with Davïdov, David Popper (1843–1913) was among the most influential cello virtuosos of the later 19th century. Born and educated in Prague, Popper was a prolific composer of advanced studies for the cello, as well as light showpieces, concertos and chamber works, all still very popular with modern performers. He was appointed professor at the National Hungarian Royal Academy of Music in Budapest in 1886, establishing the Hungarian school of cello playing. According to his contemporaries, Popper’s mastery of the cello was unsurpassed, and his playing was characterized by musical refinement and rich tone, as well as faultless virtuosity, even in the highest register of the instrument. Popper, along with Piatti, was among the first 19th century cellists to revive interest in older masterpieces, by playing works such as the Haydn Concerto in D and the Schumann Concerto.

Popper’s Hohe Schule des Violoncello-Spiels op.73 (Leipzig, 1901–5) is still among the most important pedagogical works for the cello, using advanced virtuoso techniques, such as double stopping and octaves, position changes in thumb position, trills, and bowing techniques such as slurred staccato, sautillé, spiccato, piqué, and rapid string crossings. The dazzling virtuoso salon pieces he wrote were innovative in their departure from the characteristically soulful quality of the cantilena style that was traditionally associated with the cello in the 19th century.

Violoncello, §III: The 20th century

III. 20th century

1. History.

2. Repertory.

3. Jazz.

1. History.

With the proliferation of cellists the world over, the extraordinary development in the technique of the instrument under the guidance of the great teacher-performers and the way in which composers have accepted the challenges these developments offer, extending and enriching the repertory, the cello' identity as a solo instrument has been confirmed in the 20th century.

The endpin or spike was regarded as an accepted part of the instrument and revolutionized technique. It also allowed women to play the cello in a dignified manner. Before the 20th century, few women played the instrument owing to the way in which it was held, although a handful of women compromised by playing ‘side-saddle’. The invention of the endpin brought about the liberation of women cellists, and the pioneers included May Mukle (1880–1963), Guilhermina Suggia (1888–1950; fig.8) and Beatrice Harrison (1892–1965). Paul Tortelier later devised the longer, angled spike which was also adopted by Mstislav Rostropovich (fig.9). By raising the point at which the bow touches the strings and the incline of the strings towards the horizontal it is said to be easier for the left hand to negotiate the upper part of the fingerboard. However, most cellists today employ the shorter, straight endpin.

During the 20th century many large concert halls were built; consequently there arose a need for a larger sound. Players began experimenting with steel or steel-covered gut strings, replacing the gut strings in use until this time. Although steel strings are the most widely used today, some cellists have reverted to gut for some if not all of their strings.

In other respects, the construction of the instrument itself has not changed, having reached a standard form in the previous century. However, the proliferation of cellists throughout the world has called for more instruments to be available. The old Italian and German instruments still fetch high prices for those who can afford to pay, but there is a constant demand for good new instruments, and good makers are now emerging from all over the world who are responding to this demand.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the German school of cello playing was leading the field with many distinguished soloists and chamber music players, many of whom were also teachers. The two most influential figures were Julius Klengel (1859–1933) and Hugo Becker (1864–1941). Although both stemmed from the Dresden school, in their approach they were poles apart. Becker concentrated on the scientific aspect, having made researches into anatomy and physiology, whereas Klengel favoured an empirical approach.

Klengel was a fine soloist and a respected composer. He also wrote a number of teaching works, some of which are still in use. He taught at the Leipzing Conservatory, and many of his students achieved international reputations; these included Emanuel Feuermann, Guilhermina Suggia, Edmund Kurtz, Gregor Piatigorsky and William Pleeth. Piatigorsky said that he ‘taught without teaching’ and always allowed a student to play a piece to the end. Pleeth confirmed this view: ‘he had no whims, no sophistication and never encouraged us to copy. We were all different’.

Becker was also a fine performer in his earlier days, but latterly he concentrated upon teaching. In complete contrast to Klengel, he made explorations into the physiological aspects of performance and attempted to align these to the most natural way of playing. Many cellists criticized his dogmatic and logical approach; Raya Garbousova said that he was ‘obsessed with anatomy, but never took into consideration the fact that no two people are identical in this respect’.

But it was Pablo Casals (1876–1973) who brought the cello into equal popularity with the violin as a solo instrument. For him, technique was a means, not an end: ‘The purpose of technique is to transmit the inner meaning, the message of the music. The most perfect technique is that which is not noticed at all’. Casals popularized chamber music and, in particular, brought the Bach solo suites into the regular cello recital repertory.

Ever since the publication of Duport's Essai (C1806), the left-hand technique has been based on a series of positions, together with the use of the thumb. While acknowledging the notion of positions, Casals favoured giving weight and freedom to every finger, allowing the centre of gravity to shift from one finger to another. By using extension of the left hand undesirable glissandos, which were in common use before this time, could be avoided and portamento used only for special effect. The use of the first and second fingers to encompass a tone in the lower position required a different lay of the hand: the traditional ‘square’ lay of the hand had militated against a smooth flow of position changing and portamentos. These developments in cello playing released energy in the service of expression.

When Casals described his method as ‘Freedom with Order’, he was referring to his overall approach to playing the instrument. He taught the importance of relaxation and how to train the left hand to create a balance between tension and relaxation. Casals' principles are explained by his disciple, Diran Alexanian, in the Traité théorique et pratique du violoncelle (Paris, 1922). It covers half-step shifts with the same finger, shifting in repeated finger patterns, minimum shifting within phrases, contractions and extensions, as well as plucking the string with the left hand to ensure precise articulation in descending passages and percussive finger-falls in ascending passages.

Casals' pupil and close friend Maurice Eisenberg (with M.B. Stanfield) gave a full exposition of Casals' left-hand technique in his Cello Playing of Today (D1957). Eisenberg had previously studied with Klengel, Alexanian and Willeke; in his preface he states that working with cellists of different ‘schools’ enabled him to ‘see the changing outlook of our epoch in a clear perspective’. He also notes that Casals' more natural way of holding the instrument serves interpretative ends. Eisenberg's manual includes thumb-position drills, studies of unisons, tenths, fingered octaves and fingerings for major and minor scales and arpeggios on all strings, and for double stops, chords and harmonics. Eisenberg spoke of ‘vocalization’ and ‘the living hand’: ‘the hand must be trained to be so vital and flexible that as soon as a finger strikes its note, the preparation for the following note begins’ and, according to Eisenberg, ‘the hand shifting must never be audible. When the hand moves backwards across the strings to a lower position, the thumb should act as a pivot over which the extended fingers are shifted swiftly and smoothly’.

The Hungarian-born cellist Janos Starker systemized this by introducing position control: discarding the idea of seven positions and the thumb-position he developed a unique system of the same control for every half tone all over the cello, which represented a minor revolution in cello playing. In An Organized Method of String Playing: Violoncello Exercises for the Left Hand (1961), he offered examples from the repertory. More recently, Christopher Bunting's Essay on the Craft of ‘Cello-Playing (C1982) covered aspects of technique and also of mental attitude.

Many other 20th-century cellists have contributed to the development of the instrument. They include Alexander Baillie, Christopher Bunting, Gaspar Cassado, Orlando Cole, Rohan da Saram, Joan Dickson, Emanuel Feuermann, Amaryllis Fleming, Jacqueline du Pré, Pierre Fournier, Raya Garbousova, Maurice Gendron, Karine Georgian, Natalia Gutman, Lynn Harrell, Florence Hooton, Steven Isserlis, Antonio Janigro, Ralph Kirshbaum, Julian Lloyd Webber, Yo-Yo Ma, Enrico Mainardi, Mischa Maisky, Zara Nelsova, Siegfried Palm, Gregor Piatigorsky, William Pleeth, Gabor Reijto, Leonard Rose, Miloš Sadlo, Felix Salmond, Eleanore Schoenfeld, Luigi Silva, Daniil Shafran, Frances Marie Uiti, Raphael Wallfisch and Phyllis Young. Many are or were also great teachers.

In the latter part of the 20th century teachers such as Joan Dickson (1921–94) and William Pleeth (1916–99) became less bound to ‘schools’, and there was a great deal more individuality in the way they attempted to understand their students, not only as musicians but psychologically. Some, following Pleeth, are of the opinion that too much emphasis is placed on technical perfection and would like to see a better marriage between technique and creative musicality. Casals himself said: ‘Two things are essential – method and instinct’. He also maintained that, since his pupils had so many different opinions about his approach, it was proof that he never treated any two the same way.

Violoncello, §III: The 20th century

2. Repertory.

In the 20th century an enormous amount of music was written for the cello by composers from all over the world. Early in the century, cellists relied on the legacy of the late 19th-century repertory, and the early writing of the new century was in a lush, post-Romantic style: Rachmaninoff's Sonata in G minor (1901), Dohnányi's Konzertstück in D (1904), Bloch's Schelomo (1915–16), Fauré's two Sonatas (1918 and 1922) and Elgar's Concerto (1919) are but a few examples. Webern, in his atonal Drei kleine Stücke (1914), and Debussy, in his Sonata (1915), were among the first to break with Romantic tradition. The composers who followed include: in the UK, Bax, Benjamin, Bridge, Britten, Delius, Finzi, Holst, Ireland, Rubbra and Walton; in France, Caplet, d'Indy, Françaix, Honegger, Ibert, Milhaud, Poulenc and Tortelier; in Russia/former USSR, Denisov, Glazunov, Glière, Grechaninov, Gubaydulina, Kabalevsky, Khachaturian, Myaskovsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Tishchenko and Ustvol'skaya; in the USA, Barber, Carter and Piston, and US citizens born elsewhere: Bloch, Hindemith, Krenek, Schoenberg and Stravinsky; Wellesz (Austria); the Czech Martinů; Henze (Germany); Pijper (Holland); Bartók, Kodály (Hungary), Casella, Castelnuovo-Tedesco and Dallapiccola (Italy), Chávez (Mexico), Enescu (Romania), Villa-Lobos and Ginastera (S. America), Casals and Cassadó (Spain), Larsson (Sweden), Sallinen and Kokkonen (Finland).

Frank Bridge's Oration, Concerto elegiaco (1930) is, among English cello concertos, an early but important forward-looking work. Prokofiev wrote three concertos for cello, the first Symphony-Concerto (1950–51, rev. 1952), was published posthumously in 1955, completed by Rostropovich and orchestrated by Kabalevsky. Walton's Concerto (1955–6, rev. 1975), commissioned by Piatigorsky, exuding Mediterranean warmth and sensuality, came at the time when Romanticism became distinctly unfashionable and serialism was all the vogue. Written only six years later, Britten's Cello Symphony (1963, rev.1964) is dark, disturbing and highly innovative and incorporates many new ideas such as the clever use of trilled, stopped harmonics in the Scherzo.

Shostakovich's Cello Concerto no.1, op.107 (1959), brings several novel features such as a long passage where the cello is in dialogue with the celesta, playing harmonics and a cadenza which lasts for the entire third movement. Lutosławski's aleatory Cello Concerto (1969–70) is also a colourful and innovative work which is now firmly in the repertory; it uses quarter tones and employs rapid groups of notes to achieve percussive effects. Schnittke's First Cello Concerto (1986), written for Natalia Gutman, is an exceedingly difficult work and expressive on an epic scale. In the final apotheosis the cello leads a hymn-like processional, and in order to avoid being drowned by the orchestral crescendo, the cello is amplified, creating a very beautiful and unearthly effect.

Samuel Barber's concerto (1945) is one of the most challenging works known for the cello (Leonard Rose once proclaimed it to be the most difficult piece he had ever encountered). Rostropovich, one of the major musical figures of the latter half of the 20th century, commissioned over 100 works for his instrument from composers such as Britten, Lutosławski, Penderecki, Prokofiev and Shostakovich. Dutilleux's concerto Tout un monde lointain … (1967–70) was one of these: it is a carefully crafted work which is free in thought, and follows Debussy and Ravel in its colourful and evocative scoring.

Following the revival of the Bach solo suites by Casals, there was a rush of compositions for solo cello: from 1900 to 1960 there were over 160 composed. One of the most popular is the Sonata op.8 (1915), by Kodály, who was a cellist himself. The sonata uses left hand pizzicato extensively to accompany the melodic line, and scordatura in a daring and original manner (the two bottom strings are tuned to B' and F, which together with the D string give an unusually resonant and evocative chord of B minor). Hindemith's Sonata op.25, no.3 (1923), in five linked movements, is one of his best compositions for cello. Iannis Xenakis in his Nomos alpha for solo cello (1965–6), wrote the wide ranging chords on three staves and in three clefs – two bass and one treble. His Kottos (1977) is even more challenging. Franco Donatoni's Lame (1982), two pieces for unaccompanied cello, are innovative and show influences of the composer's previous essay into 12-note serialism, Quartetto II (1958). Luigi Dallapiccola's Ciaccona, intermezzo e adagio (1945), which uses large spread chords across the cello to resemble a gutar, and Ernst Krenek's Suite op.84 (1939) have many original features. Britten's three Suites for Solo Cello (1964, 1967, 1972) are firmly established in the repertory. The Sacher Variations came about as a result of Rostropovich commissioning 12 composers including Britten, Lutosławski and Dutilleux to write short solo pieces based on the letters of the name SACHER, to celebrate in 1976 the Swiss conductor Paul Sacher's 70th birthday and the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Basle Chamber Orchestra. Dutilleux later added two more movements to the original, calling it Trois strophes sur le nom de Sacher (1982); in it he employs scordatura, with the C string being tuned down to B' and the G string to F. George Crumb, who was influenced by Debussy and Bartók, uses some vivid sonorities and instrumental effects in his Sonata for solo cello (1955).

Most of the composers mentioned above, and many others including Poulenc, Janáček and Alexander Goehr, have written works for cello and piano. Elliot Carter's Cello Sonata (1948) is the first example of the composer's experimentation in ‘metric modulation’, involving complex contrasting polyrhythms between the cello and the piano, and proportional tempo changes. In Britten's Sonata (1961) a whole movement is played pizzicato. Julius Klengel was one of the first to compose for massed cellos, with his Hymnus for 12 cellos (c1922). The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra subsequently formed their own 12-cello ensemble, for which Jean Françaix wrote his Aubade (1975). Villa-Lobos wrote for at least eight cellos in Bachianas Brasileiras nos.1 and 5 (1930–45), no.5 (with soprano soloist) being the most popular.

Composers for the cello have experimented in ways hitherto unknown. James Dillon's Parjanya-Vata (1981) employs streams of double stops covering all the registers of the instrument (the score has the appearance of piano writing). Jonathan Harvey, in his Curve with Plateaux (1982), uses the sixth and seventh octaves of the cello, multiphonics with mute, clashing quarter-tones, glissandos over four strings with sul ponticello and sul tasto bow strokes. Karlheinz Stockhausen's Spiral (1969), for amplified cello and short-wave radio, requires the performer to improvise within specifications marked on impulses from the radio. Tavener's The Protecting Veil for cello and orchestra (1987) captured the public imagination as a spiritual minimalist composition on a religious theme, and exploits to the full the composer's exuberant lyricism. Other composers whose works employ quarter-tone and multi-stave writing, amplified cello and graphic effects, include Roger Redgate, Michael Finnissy, Mauricio Kagel, Brian Ferneyhough, Morton Feldman, James MacMillan, Colin Matthews and Arvo Pärt.

There is now a fresh conception of what can be achieved on the cello: two-bow technique, microtones, harmonics (both natural and artificial), variations in vibrato speed, extreme finger-extensions, extended tessitura etc. The 20th century has revolutionized almost every aspect of the cello and its literature, but time alone will assess the real influence of the current writing for the cello.

Violoncello, §III: The 20th century

3. Jazz.

The cello was used in a jazz-related context as early as 1916–17 when Walter Kildare, cellist from the Clef Club, recorded in London with his brother Dan’s string band, Ciro’s Club Coon Orchestra. In 1926 it appeared in recordings by singer Ethel Waters with Will Marion Cook. However, the cello was not used with any frequency in jazz until the bop era of the late 1940s and the 50s, when it was taken up by a number of double bass players, some of whom gained significant reputations on the smaller instrument. Harry Babasin recorded pizzicato cello solos with Dodo Marmarosa (Bopmatism, 1947, Dial). Oscar Pettiford recorded on the instrument in a quintet with Duke Ellington and in a quartet with Charles Mingus (Cello Again, 1952, Roost). The following year Pettiford and Brabison recorded on cello together. George Koutzen also recorded on cello with Mingus in 1952. Chico Hamilton’s band featured cello between 1955 and 1962, played at first by Fred Katz and then by Nat Gershman. Another important jazz cellist was Calo Scott (Vinnie Burke’s String Jazz Quartet, 1957, ABC-Paramount). Other bass players who adopted the cello included Ray Brown, Ron Carter and Sam Jones, but with Carter’s introduction of the piccolo bass (tuned an octave higher than the double bass) this practice lost impetus.

From the late 1960s the cello once again found use as a solo instrument in styles derived from bop, in fusions of jazz with ethnic and classical music and in free jazz. Exponents include Irène Aebi, David Baker, Diedre Murray and, in the 1990s, Matt Turner, Michelle Kinney and saxophonist Ivo Perelman. Three pre-eminent cellists since the late 1970s are Ernst Reijseger, Tristan Honsinger, who performs ferocious free improvisations, and Abdul Wadud who combines a virtuoso classical technique with heartfelt, incisive improvisations (e.g. By Myself, 1977, Bisharra).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A Histories, catalogues, bibliographies. B Makers, technical aspects. C Treatises and methods. D Performing practice, musical aspects.

a: histories, catalogues, bibliographies

GroveJ

MGG2 (T. Drescher, H. von Loesch)

W. Sandys and S.A. Forster: The History of the Violin (London, 1864)

V.-C. Mahillon: Catalogue descriptif & analytique de Musée instrumental du Conservatoire royal de musique de Bruxelles (Ghent and Brussels, 1880–1922, repr. 1978 with addl material; i, 2/1893; ii, 2/1909)

P. Roth: Führer durch die Violoncell-Literatur (Leipzig, 1888, rev. 2/1898 by C. Hullweck)

J.W. von Wasielewski: Das Violoncell und seine Geschichte (Leipzig, 1889, enlarged 3/1925/R; Eng. trans., 1894/R)

A.M. Clarke: A Biographical Dictionary of Fiddlers, including Performers on the Violoncello and Double Bass, Past and Present, containing a Sketch of their Artistic Career (London, 1895/R)

L. Forino: Il violoncello, il violoncellista ed i violoncellisti (Milan, 1905, 2/1930)

B. Weigl: Handbuch der Violoncell-Literatur (Vienna, 1911, enlarged 3/1929)

C. Liégeois and E. Nogué: Le violoncelle: son histoire, ses virtuoses (Paris and Bordeaux, 1913)

E. van der Straeten: History of the Violoncello, the Viol da Gamba, their Precursors and Collateral Instruments (London, 1915/R)

M. Vadding and M. Merseburger: Das Violoncell und seine Literatur (Leipzig, 1920)

A. Broadley: The Violoncello: its History, Selection and Adjustment (London, 1921)

E. Nogué: La littérature du violoncelle (Paris, 1925, 2/1931)

E. Nogué: Le violoncelle, jadis et aujourd'hui (Paris, 1937)

W. Mirandolle: De violoncel: haar bouw, geschiedenis en ontwikkelingsgang (The Hague, 1943)

L. Ginzburg: Istoriya violonchel'nogo iskusstva [The history of the art of cello playing] (Moscow, 1950–78); Eng. trans. of vol.iv (Neptune City, NJ, 1983)

A. Dioli: L'arte violoncellistica in Italia (Palermo, 1962/R)

W. Kaminski: Skrzypce polskie [Polish violins] (Kraków, 1969)

A. Planyavsky: Geschichte des Kontrabasses (Tutzing, 1970, 2/1984)

W. Kaminski: Instrumenty muzyczne na ziemiach polskich [Musical instruments in the Polish lands] (Kraków, 1971), 88, 94–5, 104

L. Malusi: Il violoncello (Padova, 1973)

E. Cowling: The Cello (London and New York, 1975, 2/1983)

W. Wilkins: The Index of Cello Music, including the Index of Baroque Trio Sonatas (Magnolia, AR, 1979)

W. Pleeth: Cello (London, 1982)

D. Markevitch: The Solo Cello: a Bibliography of the Unaccompanied Violoncello Literature (Berkeley, 1989)

M.M. Smith: The Violoncello in Art: an Iconography of the Early Violoncello and a Reconstruction of the Violoncello-Geometry of Jakob Stainer, Flinders University Art Museum, 4 Oct – 3 Nov 1989 (Adelaide, 1989) [exhibition catalogue]

D. Homuth: Cello Music since 1960: a Bibliography of Solo, Chamber, and Orchestral Works for the Solo Cellist (Berkeley, 1994)

R. Stowell, ed.: The Cambridge Companion to the Cello (Cambridge, 1999)

b: makers, technical aspects

F.-J. Fétis: Antoine Stradivari luthier célèbre (Paris, 1856; Eng. trans., 1864/R)

M.L. Huggins: Gio: Paolo Maggini: his Life and Work (London, 1892)

C. Pierre: Les facteurs d'instruments de musique: les luthiers et la facture instrumentale (Paris, 1893/R)

E.S.J. van der Straeten: The Technics of Violoncello Playing (London, 1898, 4/1923)

W.H., A.F. and A.E. Hill: Antonio Stradivari: his Life and Work (1644–1737) (London, 1902/R, 2/1909/R)

H. Becker and D. Rynar: Mechanik und Ästhetik des Violoncellspiels (Vienna, 1929/R)

W. Vollmer: Über die Erscheinung des Wolftons bei Streichinstrumenten, insbesondere beim Cello (Karlsruhe, 1936)

M. Möller: The Violin-Makers of the Low Countries (Amsterdam, 1955); repr. in Journal of the Violin Society of America, viii/1 (1986), 100–11

E. Valentin: Cello: das Instrument und sein Meister Ludwig Hoelscher (Pfullingen, 1955)

K. Marx: Die Entwicklung des Violoncells und seiner Speiltechnik bis J.L. Duport (1520–1820) (Regensberg, 1963)

K. Jalovec: Deutscher und österreichische Geigenbauer (Prague, 1967; Eng. trans., 1967)

W. Schrammek: ‘Violapomposa und Violoncello bei Johana Sebastian Bach’ Internationales Bach-Fest III: Leipzig 1975, 345–54

L.C. Witten: ‘Apollo, Orpheus and David: a Study of the Crucial Century in the Development of Bowed Strings in North Italy 1480–1580 as seen in Graphic Evidence and some Surviving Instruments’, JAMIS, i (1975), 5–55

D. Abbott and E. Segerman: ‘Gut Strings’, EMc, iv (1976), 430–37

S. Bonta: ‘Further Thoughts on the History of Strings’, Catgut Acoustical Society Newsletter, no.26 (1976), 21–6

L. Moens: De familie Snoeck: Vioolbouwers aan het hof te Brussel in de 18de eeuw (diss., Katholieke U. Leuven, 1976)

S. Bonta: ‘From Violone to Violoncello: a Question of Strings?’, JAMIS, iii (1977), 64–99

S. Bonta: ‘Terminology for the Bass Violin in Seventeenth-Century Italy’, JAMIS, iv (1978), 5–42

N. Pyron: Everything you Wanted to Know about the Baroque Cello but were Afraid to Ask (London, 1979)

E. Meinel: ‘Zu Fragen der Akustik der Saiten und ihrer historischen Entwicklung’, Fragen der Streichinstrumente, Saiten und Stimmungen: Blankenburg, Harz, 1983, 23–31

L. Jambou: ‘La lutherie à Madrid à la fin de XVIIe siècle’, RdMc, ix (1986), 427–52

R. Gug: ‘Des bois de lutherie anciens’, Musique ancienne, xxii (1987), 114–21

R. Hargrave: ‘Antonio Stradivari “Servais” 1701’, The Strad, xcviii (1987), 927–35

T.A. Russell: ‘The Development of the Cello Endpin’, Imago musicae, iv (1987), 335–56

S. Bonta: ‘Catline Strings Revisited’, JAMIS, xiv (1988), 38–60

G. Barnett: ‘The Violoncello da spalla: Shouldering the Cello in the Baroque Era’ JAMIS, xxiv (1988), 81–106

D. Draley: ‘The Transition of the Amati Workshop into the Hands of Stradivari, 1660–1684’, Journal of the Violin Society of America, ix/3 (1988), 71–97

J. Dugot: ‘La facture des instruments à cordes au temps de Jacques Dumesnil et Jean Demoulins’, Instrumentistes et luthiers parisiens: XVIIe–XIXe siècles, ed. F. Gétreau (Paris, 1988), 35–49

A. Mell: ‘The 250th Anniversary of the Death of Stradivarius: a Pilgrimage to Cremona’, Journal of the Violin Society of America, ix/2 (1988), 142–86

P. Schuback: ‘Cremona and the 1987 Stradivarius Exhibition’, Journal of the Violin Society of America, ix/3 (1988), 98–132

A. Dürr: ‘Philologisches zum Problem Violoncello piccolo bei Bach’, Festschrift Wolfgang Rehm (Kassel, 1989), 45–50

W. Monical: Shapes of the Baroque: the Historical Development of Bowed String Musical Instruments, Library and Museum of the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, New York, 22 March – 19 June 1989 (Philadelphia, 1989), 1–4 [exhibition catalogue]

P. Parson: An Organological Study of Leg-Held Bowed Chordophones (diss., U. of Wisconsin, Madison, 1989)

F.R. Selch: ‘The Yankee Bass Viol’, Newsletter of the American Musical Instrument Society, xx/2 (1991), 6 only

L. and V. LeCanu: Les luthiers français (Paris, 1993–5)

B.W. Harvey: The Violin Family and its Makers in the British Isles (New York, 1995)

M.M. Smith: ‘Joh. Seb. Bachs Violoncello piccolo: neue Aspekte – offene Fragen’, BJb, lxxxiv (1998), 63–81

c: treatises and methods

MersenneHU

PraetoriusSM, i–iii

A. Caldara: Lezioni per il violoncello con il suo basso (MS, n.d., A-Wn EM 69)

F. Scipriani: Principij da impare a suonare il violoncello (MS, n.d., I-Nc 9607)

M. Agricola: Musica instrumentalis deudsch (Wittenberg, 1529/R, enlarged 5/1545)

G.M. Lanfranco: Scintille di musica (Brescia, 1533/R); Eng. trans. in B. Lee: Giovanni Maria Lanfranco's ‘Scintille di musica’ and its Relation to 16th-Century Music Theory (diss., Cornell U., 1961)

P. Jambe de Fer: Epitome musical (Lyons, 1556); repr. in F. Lesure: ‘L'epitome musical de Philibert Jambe de Fer’, AnnM, vi (1958–63), 341–86

L. Zacconi: Prattica di musica (Venice, 1592/R)

J. Playford: A (Breefe) Introduction to the Skill of Musick (London, 4/1664)

B.G. Marcello: Il teatro alla moda (Venice, 1720/R)

H. Le Blanc: Défense de la basse de viole contre les entreprises du violon et les prétentions du violoncel (Amsterdam, 1740/R)

M. Corrette: Méthode théorique et pratique pour apprendre en peu de tems le violoncelle dans sa perfection op.24 (Paris, 1741/R, 2/1783); Eng. trans. in C.R. Farrar: Seven String Instrument Treatises of Michel Corette (diss., North Texas State U., 1978)

S. Lanzetti: Principes ou l'application de violoncelle par tous les tons (Amsterdam, c1760)

J.B. Tillidère: Méthode pour le violoncelle contenant tous les principes nécessaires pour bien jouer (Paris, 1764; Eng. edn, London, c1795 as New and Compleat Instruction, rev. 4/1901, by I. Danke)

R. Crome: The Compleat Tutor for the Violoncello (London, c1765)

J.-B. Cupis: Méthode nouvelle et raisonnée pour apprendre à jouer du violoncelle (Paris, 1772)

J.B. Baumgartner: Instructions de musique, théorique et pratique, à l'usage du violoncelle (The Hague, c1774)

J.G.C. Schetky: Twelve Duetts for Two Violoncellos, with Some Observations & Rules for Playing on that Instrument, op.7 (London, c1780)

J. Gunn: The Theory and Practice of Fingering on the Violoncello (London, 1789, 2/1815)

F. Kauer: Kurzgefasste Anweisung das Violoncell zu Spielen (Vienna, 1789)

J.-M. Raoul: Méthode de violoncelle (Paris, c1797/R)

J. Reinagle: A Concise Introduction to the Art of Playing the Violoncello (London, 1800/R)

P.F.O Aubert: Méthode ou nouvelle études pour le violoncelle, op.11 (Paris, 1802)

J. Gunn: An Essay … on the Application of the Principles of Harmony, Thorough Bass and Modulation to the Violoncello (London, 1802)

P. Baillot and others: Méthode de violoncelle et de basse d'accompagnement (Paris, 1804/R; Eng. trans. as Method for the Violoncello by Baillot, Levasseur, Catel and Baudiot, Adopted by the Paris Conservatory, c1850; suppl., 1832)

J.-B.S. Bréval: Traité du violoncelle, op.42 (Paris, 1804)

J.-L. Duport: Essai sur le doigté du violoncelle et sur la conduite de l'archet (Paris, 1806; Eng. trans., 1878)

J.G.C. Schetky: Practical and Progressive Lessons for the Violoncello (London, 1811)

B. Stiastny: Violoncell-Schule (Mainz, n.d. [c1820])

J.J.F. Dotzauer: Violoncell-Schule/Méthode de violoncelle, op.65 (Mainz, c1825)

C.-N. Baudiot: Méthode de violoncelle (Paris, 1826–8)

F.W. Crouch: A Compleat Treatise on the Violoncello (London, 1826)

P.L. Hus-Desforges: Méthode de violoncelle à l'usage des commençants, op.56 (Paris, c1829; Eng. trans., 1840)

J.J.F. Dotzauer: Violoncellschule, op.165 (Mainz, 1832)

F.A. Kummer: Violoncell-Schule, op.60 (Leipzig, 1839; Eng. trans., 1850)

B.H. Romberg: Violoncell-Schule (Berlin, c1840); Eng. edn as A Complete Theoretical and Practical School for the Violoncello (London, 1839)

S. Lee: Méthode pratique pour le violoncelle/Praktische Violoncell-Schule, op.30 (Mainz, 1842/R)

R. Lindley: Lindley's Hand-Book for the Violoncello (London, 1855)

J.J.F. Dotzauer: Practische Schule des Violoncellospiels, op.155 (Hamburg and Leipzig, 1870)

O.-C. Vaslin: L'art du violoncelle conseils aux jeunes violoncellistes sur la conduite de l'archet (Paris, 1884)

L.A. Potter: The Art of Cello Playing (Evanston, IL, 1964, 2/1980)

J. Eckhardt: Die Violoncellschulen von J.J.F. Dotzauer, F.A. Kummer und B. Romberg (Regensberg, 1968)

G. Mantel: Cello Technik (Cologne, 1972; Eng. trans., 1975)

P. Tortelier: How I Play, How I Teach (London, 1975)

C. Bunting: Essay on the Craft of ’Cello-Playing: I, Prelude, Bowing, Coordination; II, the Left Hand (Cambridge, 1982)

C. Bunting: ’Cello Technique ‘from One Note to the Next’: a Distillation for Students of Christopher Bunting's Essay on the Craft of ’Cello-Playing, ed. D.C. Pratt (Cambridge, 1987)

R.C. Bosanquet: The Secret Life of Cello Strings: Harmonics for Cellists (Cambridge, 1996)

d: performing practice, musical aspects

F. Kohlmorgen: Die Brüder Duport und die Entwicklung der Violoncelltechnik von ihren Anfängen bis zur Zeit Bernhard Rombergs (diss., U. of Berlin, 1922)

H. Weber: Das Violoncellkonzert des 18. und beginnenden 19. Jahrhunderts (Tübingen, 1932)

E. Rapp: Beiträge zur Frühgeschichte des Violoncellkonzerts (Würzburg, 1934)

P. Harris: ‘Oscar Pettiford now on Cello Kick’, Down Beat, xvii/26 (1950), 20 only

M. Eisenberg and M.B. Stanfield: Cello Playing of Today (London, 1957/R)

W. Pape: Die Entwicklung des Violoncellspiels im 19. Jahrhundert (Saarbrücken, 1962)

W. Neumann and H.-J. Schulze, eds.: Bach-Dokumente, iii (Kassel, 1972)

G. Blees: Das Cello-Konzert um 1800: eine Untersuchung der Cello-Konzert zwischen Haydns op.101 und Schumanns op.129 (Regensberg, 1973)

G. Beechey: ‘J.G.C. Schetky and his “Observations” on Playing the Cello’, MQ, lx (1974), 451–69

L. Lützen: Die Violoncell-Transkriptionen Friedrich Grützmachers (Regensberg, 1974)

E. Selfridge-Field: Venetian Instrumental Music from Gabrieli to Vivaldi (Oxford, 1975, 3/1994)

W. Schrammek: ‘Viola pomposa und Violoncello piccolo bei Johann Sebastian Bach’, Internationales Bach-Fest III: Leipzig 1975, 345–54

J. Webster: ‘Violoncello and Double Bass in the Chamber Music of Haydn and his Viennese Contemporaries’, JAMS, xxix (1976), 413–38

P. Allsop: ‘The Role of the Stringed Bass as a Continuo Instrument in Italian Seventeenth-Century Instrumental Music’, Chelys, viii (1978–9), 31–7

J.A. Sadie: ‘Bowed Continuo Instruments in French Baroque Chamber Music’ PRMA, cv (1978–9), 37–49

J.A. Sadie: ‘Charpentier and the Early French Ensemble Sonata’ EMc, vii (1979), 330–35

J.A. Sadie: The Bass Viol in French Baroque Chamber Music (Ann Arbor, MI, 1980)

L. Jeske: ‘Abdul Wadud: Profile’, Down Beat, xlix/11 (1982), 52–3

M.M. Smith: Certain Aspects of Baroque Music for the Violoncello as finally Exemplified in the Suites for Unaccompanied Violoncello by Johann Sebastian Bach (diss., Flinders U. of South Australia, 1983)

S. La Via: Il violoncello a Roma al tempo del Cardinale Ottoboni: ricerche e documenti (diss., U. of Rome, 1983–4)

I. Parrott: ‘Beethoven, the Cello and the Treble Clef’, MR, xlvi (1985), 12–18

S. Bonta: ‘Corelli's Heritage: the Early Bass Violin in Italy’, Studi corelliani IV: Fusignano 1986, 217–31

D.J. Koury: Orchestral Performance Practices in the Nineteenth Century: Size, Proportions, and Seating (Ann Arbor, 1986)

S. La Via: ‘Violone e violoncello a Roma al tempo di Corelli’, Studi corelliani IV: Fusignano 1986, 165–91

S. Bonta: ‘L'impiego di strumenti nella musica sacra in Italia (1560–1700)’, Tradizione e stile: Como 1987, 11–28; Eng. orig., in EMc, xviii (1990), 519–35

T. Borgir: The Performance of the Basso Continuo in Italian Baroque Music (Ann Arbor, 1987)

L. Dreyfus: Bach's Continuo Group: Players and Practices in his Vocal Works (Cambridge, MA, 1987), 132–76

J.H. Adas: ‘Le célèbre Berteau’, EMc, xvii (1989), 368–80

H.M. Brown and S. Sadie, eds.: Performance Practice: Music after 1600 (New York, 1989), 239–51

C. Schmaling: ‘Violoncello piccolo für das Berliner Bach-Collegium’, Musik und Kirche, lix (1989), 268

K. Komlós: ‘The Function of the Cello in the Pre-Beethovenian Keyboard Trio’, Studies in Music, xxiv (1990), 27–46

M. Cyr: Performing Baroque Music (Portland, OR, 1992)

J. Dilworth: ‘Awakening the Sleeping Beauty’, The Strad, civ (1993), 950–54

P. Holman: Four and Twenty Fiddlers: the Violin at the English Court 1540–1690 (Oxford, 1993, 2/1995)

M.E. Parker: ‘Friedrich Wilhelm II and the Classical String Quartet’, MR, liv/3–4 (1993), 161–82

T.A. Russell: ‘New Light on the Historical Manner of Holding the Cello’, Historical Performance, vi/2 (1993), 73–8

V. Walden: An Investigation and Comparison of the French and Austro-German Schools of Violoncello Bowing Techniques: 1785–1839 (diss., U. of Auckland, 1993)

M.E. Parker: Soloistic Chamber Music at the Court of Friedrich Wilhelm II, 1786–1797 (diss., Indiana U., 1994)

D. Watkin: ‘Beethoven's Sonatas for Piano and Cello: Aspects of Technique and Performance’, Performing Beethoven, ed. R. Stowell (Cambridge, 1994), 89–116

M. Smith: ‘The Cello Bow Held the Viol Way: Once Common but now Almost Forgotten’, Chelys, xxiv (1995), 47–61

M. Vanscheeuwijk: ‘The Baroque Cello and its Performance’, Performance Practice Review, ix/1 (1996), 78–96

D. Watkin: ‘Corelli's op.5 Sonatas: “Violino e violone o cimbalo”?’, EMc, xiv (1996), 645–63

V. Walden: One Hundred Years of Violoncello: a History of Technique and Performance Practice, 1740–1840 (Cambridge, 1998)

Violoncello, Giovannino del.

See Costanzi, Giovanni Battista.

Violoncello da spalla

(It.).

See Viola da spalla.

Violoncino.

See Violoncello.

Violon de fer

(Fr.). Nail violin.

Violone

(It.: ‘large viol’).

In modern terminology, the double bass viol, the direct ancestor of the double bass. Historically, the term has embraced a variety of meanings: it was originally used, from the 1530s onwards, to denote any size of viol. Francesco Prandi, in his treatise of 1606 (see Bonta, 1977), applied the term to a low-pitched viola da gamba. In numerous Italian prints dating from 1609 to the 1730s the term refers to the early, larger size of the bass violin that existed before the invention of wire-wound strings in the mid-17th century (after which time it was reduced in size and became known as the violoncello). In some parts of Italy after 1660 (and subsequently in other countries) it was used for the double bass (see Bonta, 1978). The complexity of usage has led to continuing controversy as to the exact meaning of the term.

1. Italy.

In 16th-century Italy ‘violone’ was a generic term for the viol family (see Ganassi, Regola rubertina, 1542, and Ortiz, Trattado de glosas, 1553); it distinguished the viol family from the violins, which in some early sources are called ‘violette’. By about 1600 ‘violone’ had come to stand for a large bass viol. Banchieri (Conclusioni nel suono dell’organo, 1609, 2/1626) referred to the ‘violone da gamba’, tuned G'–C–F–A–d–g (a 5th below the normal six-string bass viol), and to a larger instrument, ‘violone del contra-basso’, tuned D'–G'–C–E–A–d. It is not clear when the term ‘violone’ first became associated with the bass violin. The bass part of Caterina Assandra’s motet O Salutaris hodie (Motetti op.2, Milan, 1609), which employs the typical Baroque trio scoring for strings, calls for a ‘violone’; this was probably the early, larger form of the bass violin, as opposed to Banchieri’s violone da gamba. The first known instance of the term ‘violone’ being specifically associated with the violin family is found in Giovanni Ghizzolo’s motet Quem terra pontus (Seconda raccolta de’ sacri canti, Venice, 1624) which is scored for ‘due canti o tenori con due violini et chitarrone o violone da brazzo’. The confusion in terminology persisted into the early 18th century; the Vocabulario degli Accademici della Crusca (Florence, 4/1729) defined violone as ‘a large viol, which is also called “bass viol” and, when of smaller size, “violoncello”’. Corelli’s use of the term ‘violone’ should be interpreted as signifying a bass violin or ‘violoncello’.

See also Violoncello, §1 and Double bass, §3; for illustration see Double bass, fig.4.

2. Germany, Austria and other countries.

Praetorius, who cited Italian sources (including Agazzari) in Syntagma musicum, ii (2/1619), illustrated in Theatrum instrumentorum (1620) a five-string ‘Gross Contra-Bas-Geig’ (pl. V) and a six-string ‘Violon, Gross Viol-de Gamba Basz’ (pl. VI), both fretted and tuned in 4ths; the length of the latter has been estimated at 114 cm (Bessaraboff; the smaller instrument is estimated at 80 cm). He also referred to the ‘Bas-Geig de bracio’, later known as ‘violoncello’. To avoid confusion he emphasized the distinction between ‘Violonistam’ (bass player) and ‘Violinistam’ (violin player). Schütz (Musicalische Exequien, 1636) referred to the violone, or Gross Bassgeige, as ‘the most convenient, agreeable and best instrument to go with the concertato voice with the accompaniment of a quiet organ’. Several German authorities of the late 17th century and the early 18th give tunings that correspond with the Italian. The earliest known instructions for the instrument are by Johann Jacob Prinner (Musicalischer Schlissl, 1677, MS in US-Wc), with the tuning F'–A'–D–F– B. Georg Falck (Getreu und gründliche Anleitung, 1688), Daniel Speer (Grundrichtiger … Unterricht, 2/1697), J.F.B.C. Majer (Museum musicum, 1732) and J.G. Walther (Musicalisches Lexicon, 1732) all give the tuning G'–C–F– A–d–g (Walther has E rather than F for the third string). J.P. Eisel (Musicus autodidactus, 1738) gave G'– C–E–A–d–g for the ‘Basse Violon’ and, for a larger violone, a tuning a 4th lower; he also mentioned a four-string ‘violone grosso’ tuned in 5ths C'– G'–D–A. Janovka (Clavis ad musicam, 2/1715) cited the tuning G–A–d–g for the violone and an octave below that for the violone grosso. The lower tuning (with E' as an alternative for the bottom string) corresponds with that given in 1694 by the Italian Bartolomeo Bismantova in his instructions for violone and violoncello (I-REm Regg.E.41). Among the composers who apparently distinguished between the violone and the violone grosso are Schütz and Bach. Georg Muffat (preface to Florilegium secundum, 1698) stated that the instrument called ‘contrabasso’ in Italy went under the name ‘violone’ in Germany; he distinguished between this and the ‘Welsches Violoncino’ or ‘Bassetl’ (the later cello). Walther noted with approval the old violone as preferable to the harsher bass violin (cello); but Quantz (Versuch einer Anweisung die Flöte traversiere zu spielen, 1752) wrote of the so-called ‘German violone’ with five or six strings which ‘has justly been abandoned’. By Leopold Mozart’s time (1756) the double bass, ‘commonly known as violone’, usually had four or five strings but sometimes only three. Koch (Musikalisches Lexikon, 1802) referred to ‘violone’ as meaning double bass. Writing in England, both Pepusch (Rules, or a Short and Compleat Method for attaining to Play a Thorough Bass, c1730) and Prelleur (The Modern Musick-Master, 1731) unambiguously identified the violone as the double bass, as did Brossard (Dictionaire de musique, 1703) in France, where the term ‘violone’ was not usual by this date.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

PraetoriusSM, ii

PraetoriusTI

N. Bessaraboff: Ancient European Musical Instruments: an Organological Study (Boston, 1941, 2/1964)

Violone (1973–) [periodical]

S. Bonta: ‘From Violone to Violoncello: a Question of Strings’, JAMIS, iii (1977), 64–99

S. Bonta: ‘Terminology for the Bass Violin in Seventeenth-Century Italy’, JAMIS, iv (1978), 5–42

S. Bonta: ‘Corelli’s Heritage: the Early Bass Viol in Italy’, Studi corelliani IV: Fusignano 1986, 519–35

S. La Via: ‘Violone e violoncello a Roma al tempo di Corelli: terminologia, modelli organologici, techniche esecutive’, ibid., 165–91

T. Bogir: The Performance of the Basso Continuo in Italian Baroque Music (Ann Arbor, 1987)

M.H. Schmid: ‘Der Violone in der italienischen Instrumentalmusik des 17. Jahrhunderts’, Studia organologica: Festschrift für John Henry van der Meer, ed. F. Hellwig (Tutzing, 1987), 407–36

S. Bonta: ‘Catline Strings Revisited’, JAMIS, xiv (1988), 38–60

W.L. Monical: Shapes of the Baroque: the Historical Development of Bowed String Instruments, Library & Museum of the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, 22 March – 10 June 1989 (New York, 1989), 1–4 [exhibition catalogue]

A. Planyavsky: Der Barockkontrabass Violone (Vienna, 1989; Eng. trans., 1998)

THARALD BORGIR/STEPHEN BONTA (1), ALFRED PLANYAVSKY/R (2)

Viotta, Henri [Henricus Anastasius]

(b Amsterdam, 16 July 1848; d Montreux, 17 Feb 1933). Dutch conductor and writer, son of Joannes Josephus Viotta. He received his musical instruction with Richard Hol in Amsterdam, and in 1864–5 studied the piano with W. Bargiel and F. Breunung, the violin with O. von Königslöw, the cello with H. Schmitt and composition with F. Hiller at the Cologne Conservatory. He then studied law at the University of Leiden and in 1877 wrote a doctoral dissertation on musical copyright. After visiting Bayreuth in 1876 and 1882 he founded the Wagner Society in Amsterdam in 1883, which he headed until 1919. He conducted the Caecilia concerts from 1889 until 1896, the year he succeeded W.F.G. Nicolai as director of the Royal Music School (from 1900 the Royal Conservatory) in The Hague. He resigned from the post in 1919. He founded the Residentie-Orkest in The Hague in 1903, and was its conductor until 1917, performing Mahler's Eighth Symphony at his farewell concert. He spent his last years in Switzerland.

Viotta did much to propagate the music of Berlioz, Liszt, Wagner and Strauss in the Netherlands. Although Tannhäuser had been staged in Amsterdam in 1858, and although Hermann Levi and Louis Saar conducted abridged performances of several Wagner operas in Rotterdam in the 1860s, Viotta gave complete performances of the operas from the 1880s onwards; in 1905 he gave the first performance of Parsifal outside Bayreuth. Viotta also conducted Wagner overtures and works by Strauss and modern French composers at the Caecilia concerts and the concerts of the Residentie-Orkest, as well as works of Bruckner and d'Indy with Excelsior, an Amsterdam choral society. He contributed numerous articles to the musical journal Caecilia, the Maandblad voor muziek (monthly magazine of the Wagner Society) and De Gids, and wrote several books on music, among them the first Dutch biography of Wagner.

WRITINGS

Lexicon der toonkunst (Amsterdam, 1881–5)

Richard Wagner, zijn leven en zijne werken, ed. P. Op de Coul (Sneek, 1883, 2 Amsterdam, 1980)

Onze hedendaagsche toonkunstenaars (Amsterdam, 1893–6)

Helden der toonkunst (Haarlem, 1899–1900)

Handboek der muziekgeschiedenis (Haarlem, 1916)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

S.A.M. Bottenheim: Levensbericht (Amsterdam, 1933) [biography]

S.A.M Bottenheim: De Opera in Nederland (Amsterdam, 1946, 2/1983), 138–56

J. Kasander: 150 Jaar Koninklijk Conservatorium (The Hague, 1976), 45–51

H. Suèr and J. Meurs: De Wagnervereeniging in Nederland (1883–1959) (Amsterdam, 1997)

JAN TEN BOKUM

Viotta, Joannes Josephus

(b Amsterdam, 14 Jan 1814; d Amsterdam, 6 Feb 1859). Dutch conductor and composer of Italian descent. The son of a merchant, he taught himself the piano, the organ and singing, and studied medicine at the University of Leiden, where he wrote a dissertation on the health of the human voice (1837). He subsequently practised as a doctor in Amsterdam. Viotta was president of the Maatschappij tot Bevordering der Toonkunst in 1844, 1848, 1852 and 1854, and a permanent member of the board of the society’s Amsterdam chapter. As répétiteur of the chapter’s chorus, he did much to promote the works of Mendelssohn, Schumann and Gade and to encourage musical education, particularly in singing. His school songs and folksong arrangements long remained popular for their lively rhythmic and melodious character; his other works, including choruses, church music, symphonies and piano pieces, have been forgotten.

JAN TEN BOKUM

Viotti, Giovanni Battista

(b Fontanetto da Po, 12 May 1755; d London, 3 March 1824). Italian violinist and composer. He was the most influential violinist between Tartini and Paganini and the last great representative of the Italian tradition stemming from Corelli. He is considered the founder of the ‘modern’ (19th-century) French school of violin playing, and his compositions, among the finest examples of Classical violin music, exerted a strong influence on 19th-century violin style.

1. Life.

2. Performance style.

3. Works.

CHAPPELL WHITE

1. Life.

Viotti was probably of humble origins (according to Fétis his father was a blacksmith), and his talent was manifest early. In 1766 he was taken to Turin under the protection of Prince Alfonso dal Pozzo della Cisterna, in whose home he lived and was educated. He first studied with Antonio Celoniat, but when Pugnani returned from London in 1770, Viotti became his pupil. Widely travelled and highly regarded as a performer and composer, Pugnani had been a pupil of G.B. Somis and was, through him, the heir of Corelli. He was the only teacher Viotti acknowledged in later life.

Viotti entered the orchestra of the royal chapel at Turin on 27 December 1775. For five years he occupied the last desk of the first violins, drawing one of the lowest salaries in the orchestra. Early in 1780 he and Pugnani set out on a concert tour, first to Switzerland, then to Dresden and to Berlin, where Viotti’s first publication, the concerto in A now known as no.3, was issued in 1781. Concerts in Warsaw preceded an extended visit to St Petersburg, and late in 1781 they returned to Berlin. Until this time Viotti had been presented as the ‘pupil of the celebrated Pugnani’, but he parted with Pugnani in Berlin and proceeded alone to Paris.

After at least one private appearance Viotti made his début at the Concert Spirituel on 17 March 1782. His success was instantaneous, and it established him at once in the front rank of all violinists. For a year and a half he played frequently, continuing to receive the highest praise of critics and public. After 8 September 1783 he retired abruptly from public concerts, and in January 1784 he entered the service of Marie Antoinette at Versailles. For a time he was also leader of Prince Rohan-Guéménée’s orchestra, and he may have held a similar position for the Prince of Soubise. In 1788, having secured the patronage of the Count of Provence, he established a new opera house called the Théâtre de Monsieur (after July 1791, Théâtre Feydeau). He proved a vigorous and ambitious administrator. His excellent company introduced a number of important works, both Italian and French, including the operas of his friend and associate Cherubini. He constructed a new theatre and established in April 1792 (possibly also in 1791) a series of Holy Week concerts. By mid-1792 the Revolution had made Viotti’s situation untenable, and in July he fled to London. He had completed the most successful and influential period of his life; probably half of his published works, including 19 violin concertos, had appeared during the decade in Paris.

In London Viotti turned again to performance and made a thoroughly successful début at Salomon’s Hanover Square Concert on 7 February 1793. For two seasons he was the featured violinist for Salomon’s series, and in 1795 he became musical director of the new Opera Concerts, himself performing no fewer than six times. He played at Haydn’s benefit concerts in 1794 and 1795, and he was a frequent performer in the homes of the wealthy, including the Prince of Wales. In the 1794–5 season he served as acting manager of Italian opera at the King’s Theatre and succeeded William Cramer as leader and director of the orchestra at the King’s Theatre in 1797.

In February 1798 the British government, suspecting Viotti of Jacobin activity, ordered him to leave the country. There is no evidence that the order was justified, and Viotti protested his innocence in a statement to The Times and in an autobiographical sketch written a few months later (see Giazotto, pp.229–31). For a year and a half he lived with English friends in Schenfeldt, near Hamburg, where he published a set of duos op.5, conceived ‘some in pain, some in hope’, according to the dedication. He left Germany in July 1799, and by 1801 (probably earlier) he had returned to London. He then retired almost entirely from music and devoted his energies to a wine business which he had entered before his exile. He continued to play and compose for his friends, and his works continued to be published in London and Paris, but he made no effort to re-establish his musical career. In 1802, 1814 and finally in 1818 he visited old friends in Paris and played for them in private. Baillot reported their wonder that his playing had lost none of its power. His name appeared as a founder of the London Philharmonic Society, but he performed in the programmes only occasionally, and then in chamber music.

The failure of his business in 1818 left Viotti deeply in debt to his English friends. His former patron, the Count of Provence, was now Louis XVIII, and on 1 November 1819, having applied for the position, Viotti was appointed director of the Paris Opéra. But the assassination of the Duke of Berry at the Opéra less than four months later aroused the antipathy of the public and the royal patrons. Viotti struggled with the difficulties for more than a year and in November 1821 he resigned. Although he continued as nominal director of the Italian Theatre for another year, he was still in debt. The will prepared at this time is testimony to his humiliation, and a letter to Rode reflects the bitter regrets of neglected talent. In 1823 he returned to London to be with his closest friends, Mr and Mrs William Chinnery. He died in their home in Portman Square.

Viotti was an attractive and forceful person, and some small measure of his extraordinary influence may be credited to the strength of his personality. He formed lasting friendships with people of talent and social position; his students and younger contemporaries idolized him. Most of the anecdotes surviving in 19th-century accounts stress his idealism, his sensitivity and his artistic integrity; yet these qualities were unable to prevent a number of scandalous rumours about him from circulating in his lifetime. In a period of social instability and of shifting values in music, his ambition and uncompromising ideals made it impossible for him to be satisfied with a career as a composer-virtuoso; when he abandoned the fields in which his great talents lay, however, he consistently met misfortune that ultimately brought his life to an unhappy end.

2. Performance style.

Viotti performed before the public for less than ten years, yet the impression he left was so strong that he dominated an entire generation of violinists. In 1810 Les tablettes de Polymnie declared that his influence had resulted in a new unity of execution in Parisian orchestras. Although contemporary accounts usually mentioned his technical brilliance, they more often emphasized beauty of sound, power and expression. The Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (3 July 1811) described the principles of Viotti’s ‘school’: ‘A large, strong, full tone is the first; the combination of this with a powerful, penetrating, singing legato is the second; as the third, variety, charm, shadow and light must be brought into play through the greatest diversity of bowing’. The London Morning Chronicle (10 March 1794) reported: ‘Viotti, it is true … astonishes the hearer; but he does something infinitely better – he awakens emotion, gives a soul to sound, and leads the passions captive’. During his second season in Paris L’almanach musical accorded him a place above all his contemporaries and wrote of ‘that boldness of the fingers and the bow which gives a very pronounced character and soul to his tone’.

The tradition that Viotti had inherited from Pugnani emphasized tone; but his playing evidently had a breadth and power that his contemporaries regarded as new, and it became the ideal of younger performers. Alday, Cartier and Rode were among his pupils, and both Kreutzer and Baillot were regarded as disciples; but Viotti’s activity as a teacher was limited, and it is difficult to separate its influence from the pervasive influence of his example. Although his own violin method remained a fragment, the principles of his manner of performance are thought to be embodied in the Méthode de violon of Baillot, Rode and Kreutzer (1803) and in Baillot’s more detailed L’art du violon: nouvelle méthode (1834).

3. Works.

Viotti’s interest as a composer centred on his own instrument. Despite his involvement with opera, he wrote no theatrical works. His arias that found their way into the operas of other composers are arrangements from his concertos; his original arias are simple, unpublished songs written for his friends. All of his piano concertos are arranged from violin concertos, despite publishers’ attempts to claim originality in two cases. Of nearly 30 piano sonatas, only seven are not demonstrably arrangements. In chamber music he preferred old-fashioned combinations (violin and bass, or two violins and bass) which assured the dominance of the violin. Of the more modern genres, his favourite was the violin duo. His string quartets, except perhaps the last three, take little notice of the balance in texture achieved by Haydn.

Only the 29 violin concertos fully reflect Viotti’s musical imagination, his power as a performer and his development as a composer. These are his most important works, both musically and historically. The repertory that Viotti worked with as a student is still unknown, but his teacher Pugnani was a widely travelled modern virtuoso and Turin was a respected, up-to-date musical centre. Viotti’s first concerto (no.3 in A) clearly reveals that his starting point for the genre was the cosmopolitan galant style developled in the 1770s in Paris by composers of various nationalities. After his arrival in Paris symphonic and operatic influences rapidly broadened the scope and deepened the drama of his concertos. The last six Paris concertos (nos.14–19), all but one in minor keys, complete the development from the galant style and approach Romanticism. Only the orchestration, particularly the French-Italian practice of assigning accompaniment to two violins and bass, remains conservative.

Viotti’s last ten concertos, written in London, are products of his full maturity. They surpass the late Paris concertos not in drama and boldness, but in craftsmanship: fuller orchestration, more varied accompaniment and richer texture, possibly influenced by contact with Haydn, particularly his late symphonies. The figuration and passage-work still reflect Viotti’s fine technique, but the brilliance is tempered by pervasive lyricism. Somewhat more varied in form than their predecessors, the late concertos occasionally show forward-looking features, by linking movements (no.26), quoting material from the first movement in the last (no.21) and foreshadowing an allegro theme in the slow introduction (no.27, and previously in no.16).

Viotti most directly influenced his French contemporaries in the 1780s and early 1790s. His late Paris concertos served as models for Rode, Kreutzer and others of less talent throughout their careers. The London concertos, delayed several years in publication, were already regarded as ‘classical’ when they appeared on the Continent from 1803, and had less effect. Although Mozart knew at least some of Viotti’s works (he added parts for trumpet and timpani to Concerto no.16), assumptions of influence are doubtful. Viotti’s influence on Beethoven, however, has been convincingly demonstrated (see Schwarz, 1958). Among German violinists, Spohr was the most significant to use the Paris concertos as his starting-point, as can be seen by comparing his first concerto with Viotti’s no.13.

In spite of elements of early Romanticism, Viotti’s concertos are generally marked by restraint, and they balance display with expression and formal clarity. They fell quickly from favour with 19th-century performers, who required more flamboyant virtuosity; however, as études for advanced students they continued to influence the German school as well as the Franco-Belgian. The admiration of some of the finest 19th-century violinists culminated in Joachim’s revival of no.22 in A minor, for which Brahms, in a letter to Clara Schumann (June 1878), expressed unstinted admiration.

WORKS

See thematic catalogue in White (1985) and Giazotto (1956). Printed works were first published in Paris unless otherwise stated; subsequent publications are cited only in cases of conflicting op. nos. or other designations. Arrangements are presumably by Viotti unless otherwise indicated.

w	no. in White catalogue
g	no. in Giazotto catalogue

violin concertos



WI	G

1	32	C (1782)
2	44	E (1782); 3rd movt arr. as vocal polacca for G. Sarti: Le nozze di Dorina (1791), and with different text for La Parisienne en Espagne (c1822) [wIa:VIIa, b]; ed. W. Lebermann (Mainz, 1968)
3	25	A (as no.1, Berlin, 1781; with new 2nd movt, Paris, 1782); arr. as symphonie concertante, 2 fl, str (1788) [wIa:19]
4	33	D (1782)
5	45	C (1782); 2nd movt arr. as trio, 2 vn, vc (c1789) [wIII:37, g21]; 2nd movt arr. as ‘Air montagnard’ for pf with variations by D. Steibelt (New York, 1812) [wVIa:291]; 2nd movt arr. as song ‘Love thee dearest’ (London, c1817) [wVIIa:3]
6	34	E (1782); arr. H. de Montgeroult as Pf Conc. no.1, E (1786) [wIa:1]
7	46	B (c1783–6); ed. in RRMCE (1976)
8	47	D (c1783–6); 2nd movt arr. N.-J. Hüllmandel as pf conc. (London, 1795; as no.8, Paris, as op.27, Offenbach) [wIa:8]; cf no.20
9	51	A (c1783–6); 1st and 3rd movts arr. as Pf Conc. no.3, vn obbl (1788–9) [wIa:3]
10	56	B (c1783–6); arr. Lachnith as Pf Conc. no.2 (1787) [wIa:2]; 1st movt arr. Hüllmandel in pf conc. (London, 1803) [wIa:11]; cf nos.12 and 14
11	63	A (1787)
12	64	B (1787–8); 3rd movt arr. Hüllmandel in pf conc. (London, 1803) [wIa:11]; ed. W. Lebermann (Mainz, 1968); cf nos. 10 and 14
13	65	A (as 2nd ser., no.1, 1788); arr. J.L Dussek as Pf Conc. no.5 (1791) [wIa:5]; 3rd movt arr. as vocal polacca for Martín y Soler: Una cosa rara, Paris, 1791, F-Pc*, pubd with various texts (Paris, London, Philadelphia, 1792) [wVIIa:2a, b]; 3rd movt arr. Dussek from vocal version as rondo for pf solo (London, c1794–5); various arr. for pf by others [wVIa:25a, b]; ed. in RRMCE (1976)
14	66	a (as 2nd ser., no.2, c1788–9); 2nd movt arr. Hüllmandel in pf conc. (London, 1803) [wIa:11]; cf nos.10 and 12
15	84	B (as 2nd ser., no.3, c1788–9)
16	85	e (as 2nd ser., no.4, c1789–90); tpt, timp pts added by Mozart, k470a; arr. C. Fürstenau as fl. conc. (Offenbach, 1802) [wIa:17]
17	86	d (as 2nd ser., no.5, c1790–91); arr. ?L.A. Adam as Pf Conc., no.6 (c1792) [wIa:6]; ed. D. da Deapo (Florence, 1977)
18	90	e (c1790–93); arr. as str qt, with introduction and new 2nd movt (c1818) [wIIa:2]; ed. in RRMCE (1976)
19	—	g (1791); rev. Viotti (1818); pf score, Pc*; arr. as str qt (c1816) [wIIa:1]; arr. as pf conc. (c1816) [wIa:9, g52]; 2nd and 3rd movts of rev. version arr. as Andante and rondo, vn, pf (Bonn, 1823) [wVa:16]; ed. in Anitca musica strumentale italiana (Milan, 1964)
20	—	D, c1792–5 (London, c1795; 2nd movt from Vn Conc. no.8; Paris, 2nd movt new, 1799); arr. Hüllmandel as Pf Conc. no.8 (London, 1795), with 2nd movt arr. from Vn Conc. no.8 [wIa:8]
21	96	E, c1792–7 (as letter A, 1802); arr. N. Isouard as pf conc. (1803) [wIa:12]
22	97	a, c1793–7 (as letter B, c1803), ed. A. Einstein (London, 1929)
23	98	g, c1793–4 (as letter C, 1804); arr. Dussek as pf conc. (London, 1795–6) [wIa:7]; arr. F. Devienne as fl conc. (Offenbach, 1804) [wIa:18]
24	105	b, c1793–7 (as letter D, 1805), 2nd movt, Pc; 1st and 3rd movts arr. as pf conc., Pc [wIa:14]
25	124	a, c1795–6 (as letter E, c1806); arr. Dussek as Pf Conc. no.3 (London, 1796; as op.18, Paris; as op.27, Offenbach) [wIa:10]
26	131	B, c1793–7 (as letter F, c1808)
27	142	C, c1794–6 (as letter G, c1815), GB-Lbl*; arr. J.B. Cramer as pf conc. (London, 1813) [wIa:13]; ed. in RRMCE (1976)
28	143	a, c1804–12 (Leipzig and Paris, 1823) F-Pc*
29	144	e, c1802–17 (Leipzig and Paris, 1824) Pc*
30	76	F, Ie symphonie concertante, 2 vn, str, ad lib obs, hns (1787); arr. Steibelt as pf conc., vn obbl (c1790) [wIa:15]; ed. F. Quaranta (Milan, 1960)
31	77	B IIe symphonie concertante, 2 vn, str, ad lib fl, obs, hns (1788); arr. as pf conc., with 2nd movt arr. from vn duo [wIV:24], op.5 no.6, Pc*; ed. F. Quaranta (Milan, 1946); ed. in The Symphony 1720–1840, ser. D, x (New York, 1982)

trios

all for 2 vn, vc



WIII	G

1–6	19–24	6 trios, op.2, A, E, C, G, B, A (1783–6; no.1 as op.3, Vienna); nos.1–2, 4–6 arr. as sonatas, pf, acc. vn, vc, in 2 bks (c1785–6; bk 1 as op.22, Offenbach) [wVIa:1–2, 4–6]
7–9	—	3 trios, A, d, D (London, 1796; as op.4, Vienna; as op.26, Offenbach); arr. as 3 duos concertans, 2 vn, 4me livre (c1796–7; as op.9, Vienna; as op.25, Offenbach); also arr. Dussek as sonatas, pf, acc. vn, vc (London, 1797) [wVIa:7–9]
10–12	99–101	3 trios, op.16, E, g, D (c1801–2; as op.20, Vienna; as op.32, Offenbach)
13–15	102–4	3 trios, op.17, A, E, G (Paris and London, 1802; as op.33, Offenbach), arr. as sonatas, pf, acc. vn, vc ad lib (c1803; as op.19, London) [wVIa:16–18]; arr. as duos for 2 vn, op.20 (c1809) [wIVa:13–15]
16–18	—	3 trios, b, D, B, op.18 (1804; as op.20, London and Leipzig; as op.9, Berlin); arr. as 3 duos, 2 vn, op.21 (c1804–9) [wIVa:16–18, g53–5]
19–21	60–62	3 trios, op.19, B, a, E (c1808; as 5me oeuvre de trios, Offenbach); arr. as 3 duos concertans, 2 vn, op.22 (c1812–13) [wIVa:19–21]

string quartets



WII	G

1–6	7–12	6 qts, op.1, A, C, E, B, E, E (1783–5)
7–12	78–83	6 qts, 2me livre, op.3, A, C, F, B, E, E (1783–6)
13–15	112–14	2 qts, ded. ‘son frere A. Viotti’, F, B, G (1817)
16–18	—	3 qts, fl/vn, vn, va, vc, op.22, B, c, E (London, 1801–6); arr. as duet for 2 vn, op.19 (c1806–7; as op.21, Leipzig; as op.35, Leipzig, Offenbach, Rotterdam) [wIVa:10–12, g87–9]
see also Vn Concs. nos.18–19; 3 duos concertans, op.5 [wIV:22–4]; 6 serenades op.23 [wIV:31–6]

duos

for 2 vn unless otherwise stated



WIV	G

1–6	1–6	6 grands duos, 1er livre, E, B, E, D, C, A (also as op.1, 1789; as op.11, Berlin, Amsterdam, Rotterdam; as op.19, Offenbach; as Cahier I–II, Leipzig; nos.1–3 as op.1, Vienna; nos.4–6 op.2, Vienna); arr. sonatas, pf, acc. vn, 5me livre (c1797–8) [wVIa:10–12]
7–12	13–18	6 duos concertans, 2me livre, B, C, G, D, a, D (c1789–90; as op.2, Hamburg; as op.12, Berlin; as op.20, Offenbach; as op.7 or 20, Rotterdam)
13–18	—	6 duos faciles, 3me livre, C, G, D, F, c, B (c1796)
19–24	106–111	6 duos concertans, op.5, A, e, B, f, C, E (Hamburg, 1797–8; as 5me livre, Paris; as op.28, Offenbach; as op.2, Vienna; as Cahier III, Leipzig); 2nd movt of 24 arr. as pf conc., F-Pc* [wIa:16]; arr. as pf solo, Pc* [wVIa:27]; 22–4 arr. as 3 str qts (Leipzig, 1809) [wIIa:3–5]
25–7	73–5, 125–7	3 duos concertants, op.18, C, A, F (c1802; as op.8, Vienna; as op.10, Berlin, Rotterdam; as op.34, Offenbach, Leipzig, Vienna [wIVa:25–7]
28–30	93–5	3 duos concertans, B, g, E, ‘Hommage à l’amitié’ (London, c1803–10; as op.9, Offenbach); arr. vn, va (c1817) [wIVa:22–4]
31–6	145–50	6 serenades, op.23, A, D, G, E, G, a (London, c1804–10; as op.13, Berlin, Paris, Leipzig, Bonn); wIV:36: 5 of 8 movts probably adapted from wVI:7; arr. 2 cl, op.23 (c1808) [wIVa: 28–33]; also arr. 2 fl, op.3 (c1808) [wIVa:34–9]; also arr. pf, acc. fl/vn, op.24 (London, c1802) [wVIa:19–24]; also arr. fl, vn, va, vc, op.25 (London, c1801–10) [wIIa:6–11]
37–42	—	6 duets concertanti, 2 vc, op.6, D, A, c, a, G, E, bks 1–2 (London, c1798–9; Paris, bk 1 only; as op.20, ?Berlin; as opp.29–30, Offenbach); arr. 2 vn (London, c1800; as opp.6–7, Paris, Bonn; as opp.29–30, Offenbach) [wIVa:4–9]; also arr. as 6 sonatas, vn, acc. vc, letters A and B (c1803–4) [wVa:1–6] also arr. M. Clementi as 3 sonatas, pf, acc. vn, vc (London, 1798–c1800; as op.29, Offenbach) [wVIa:13–15]
See also 3 trios, 2me livre [wIII:7–9]; trios, opp.17–19 [wIII:13–21]; qts, op.22 [wII:16–18]

solos

for vn, acc. b unless otherwise stated



WV	G

1–6	26–31	6 sonates, 1er livre, op.4, E, A, D, B, E, B (c1788; as Solos, bks iii–iv, London)
7–12	35–40	6 sonates, 2me livre, A, E, B, E, G, c (1792; as Solos, bks i–ii, London and Leipzig)
13–15	—	3 nouvelles sonates, 3me livre, e g, A (c1809–16)
16–18	133–5	3 airs connus et variés (?1788)
19–21	—	3 divertissemens/nocturnes, a, F, A, vc, acc. pf (c1818); arr. vn, acc. pf (c1818) [wVa:7–9, g121–3]
22	—	Arietta, vn, pf, F-Pc*
23	—	Duetto, vn solo, ‘composto da J.B. Viotti per il suo amico Cherubini’, Paris, 15 March 1821, US-NYpm*; ed. H. Szeryng (New York, 1976); ed. F. Sciannanmeo (Rocky Hill, CT, 1977)
24	—	Solo, vn, pf, E, F-Pc*
See also 6 duets concertanti, 2 vc, op.6 [wIV:37–42]; Vn Conc., no.19 (2nd and 3rd movts)

piano



WVI	G

1–3	—	3 sonates, acc. vn, vc, op.15, B, G, E (c1801–2; as op.8, Berlin; as op.31, Offenbach)
4–6	—	3 sonatinas, acc. vn, vc, op.7, C, B, E (London, c1802)
7	—	Serenata, pf, vn obbl, vc, F-Pc*; 5 movts arr. as duo, 2 vn [wIV:36]
8	—	Sonate, pf, acc, vn, vc, B, in Journal de pièces de clavecin (c1791–2)
See also Trios, op.2 [wIII:1–6], 2nd bk [wIII:7–9], op.17 [wIII:13–15]; Duos, 1er livre [wIV:1–6], op.5 [wIII:24], Serenades, op.23 [wIV:31–6], op.6 [wIV:37–9]; Qts op.1 [wII:1–3]; Vn Concs. nos.2, 5, 13, 25
For pf concs. see vn concs. nos.2, 3, 6, 8–14, 17, 19–21, 23–5, 27; sym. conc. no.2 [wI:31]; duos concertans, op.5 [wIV:24]

vocal

mostly S, pf acc., F-Pc*



WVII	G

1	120	Au fond d’une sombre vallée, cantata
2	129	Gli Zingarelli, 1802
3	57	Assis auprès d’une fontaine, romance, May 1803
4	155	Privez l’amour
5	—	C’est la verdure, romance (?S. Segur)
6	—	Dis-moi ce que j’éprouve, romance (E. Vigée[-Lebrun]), 1802
7	—	Vo triste tacito, canzonetta, 5 Dec 1804
8	58–9	Nous nous croyons heureux
9	141	O cara semplicita
10	157	Stanco di pascolar
11	—	J’amais, j’étois aimé
12	119	Ah, rammenta, Oh bella
See also vn concs. nos.2, 5, 13

other works



W	G

wVII:9	—	Grand sonata, B, hp, acc. vn ad lib (London, 1811)
wVIII:1	—	Suite in D, str, F-Pc*
wVIII:2	g132	2 canons, 2 vn?, acc. pf, Pc*
autograph fragments, sketches, unfinished works in Pc

doubtful works



W	G

wId:1	—	Vc Conc., C, I-Fc; ed. I. Gomez (Florence, c1968)
wIId:1–6	g115–17	6 str qts, op.23 (c1794–6)
wVIIId:	—	sym. arr. for military band by M.J. Gebauer, in Nouveau journal d’harmonie à l’usage des musique militaires (1808–10)
	g151–3	3 sonates, vn, pf

pedagogical

Violin method, facs. in F.-A. Habeneck: Méthode théorique et pratique de violon (Paris, c1835)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

FétisB

NewmanSCE

ScheringGIK

G.B. Viotti: Mémoire au Roi, concernant l’exploitation de l’Opéra (Paris, 1789)

A.M. Eymar: Anecdotes sur Viotti (Milan, 1801)

P.M. Baillot: Notice sur J.B. Viotti (Paris, 1825)

M. Kelly: Reminiscences (London, 1826, 2/1826/R1968 with introduction by A.H. King); ed. R. Fiske (London, 1975)

E.F. Miel: ‘Viotti’, Biographie Michaud (Paris, 1827)

W.T. Parke: Musical Memoirs (London, 1830/R)

C.F. Pohl: Mozart und Haydn in London (Vienna, 1867/R)

A. Pougin: Viotti et l’école moderne de violon (Paris, 1888)

A. Pougin: ‘Le testament de Viotti’, Le ménestrel (9, 16, 23 Nov 1902)

L. Pericaud: Théâtre de ‘Monsieur’ (Paris, 1908)

H. Curzon: ‘Quelques souvenirs de Viotti’, Le ménestrel (25 April 1924)

L. de La Laurencie: ‘Les débuts de Viotti comme directeur de l’Opéra en 1819’, RdM, v (1924), 110–22

M. Pincherle: ‘Quelques lettres de Viotti à Baillot’, RdM, v (1924), 103–09

M. Pincherle: ‘Le méthode de violon de J.B. Viotti’, Feuillets d’histoire du violon (Paris, 1927)

A. Einstein: Introduction to G.B. Viotti: Violin Concerto no.22 (London, 1929)

P.G. Gelrud: A Critical Study of the French Violin School (1782–1882) (diss., Cornell U., 1941)

B. Schwarz: French Instrumental Music between the Revolutions (diss., Columbia U., 1950)

M.M. Scott: ‘The Opera Concerts of 1795’, MR, xii (1951), 24–8

H.C.R. Landon: The Symphonies of Joseph Haydn (London, 1955; suppl. 1961)

R. Giazotto: Giovan Battista Viotti (Milan, 1956) [incl. list of works, but some citations unreliable]

B. Schwarz: ‘Beethoven and the French Violin School’, MQ, xliv (1958), 431–47

C. White: ‘Did Viotti write any Original Piano Concertos?’, JAMS, xxii (1969), 275–84

E. Badura-Skoda: ‘Ein unbekannter Brief Viottis’, Speculum musicae artis: Festgabe für Heinrich Husman, ed. H. Becker and R. Gerlach (Munich, 1970), 19–22

B. Schwarz: ‘Problems of Chronology in the Works of G.B. Viotti’, IMSCR XI: Copenhagen 1972, 644–7

C. White: ‘Toward a More Accurate Chronology of Viotti’s Violin Concertos’, FAM, xx (1973), 111–23

C. White: Introduction to G.B. Viotti: Four Violin Concertos (Madison, WI, 1976)

C. White: ‘Viotti’s Revision of his Concerto in G Minor’, Essays on the Music of Bach and Other Divers Subjects: a Tribute to Gerhard Herz, ed. R.L. Weaver (Louisville, 1981), 223–34

C. White: Giovanni Battista Viotti (1755–1824): a Thematic Catalogue of his Works (New York, 1985)

C. White: From Vivaldi to Viotti: a History of the Early Classical Violin Concerto (New York, 1992)

Viotti, Marcello

(b Gressy, Vaud, Switzerland, 29 June 1954). Italian conductor. His first studies were in the piano, the cello and singing at the conservatoires of Geneva and Lausanne. He made his conducting début in 1979, and in 1981 took first prize at the San Remo Gino Marinuzzi Competition. He served as Kapellmeister at the Teatro Regio, Turin, from 1986 to 1989, music director at Lucerne Opera (1987–91) and Generalmusikdirektor in Bremen (1990–93). In 1990 he stepped in for Muti with the Berlin PO and his international career was born. From 1991 to 1995 he was music director of the Saarbrücken RSO, and in January 1997 he made his début with the Vienna PO. Viotti makes his career primarily in opera, and has appeared at La Scala, La Monnaie, Brussels, the Paris Opéra, Zürich Opera and elsewhere. In 1997 he was appointed principal guest conductor of the Queensland SO. Among his recordings are stylish, sparkling performances of several Rossini operas, notably La scala di seta.

CHARLES BARBER

Viozzi, Giulio

(b Trieste, 5 July 1912; d Verona, 29 Nov 1984). Italian composer. Of the Italian composers born between the ‘generation of the 1880s’ and the postwar avant garde, Viozzi has a place of special interest for the quantity and quality of his large, diverse output. At the beginning of the 1950s, he moved from an initial involvement in chamber music towards theatre and orchestral music, scoring an important and immediate double success with the comic opera Allamistakeo, performed at La Scala under Maazel and at the recommendation of Sabata, and the orchestral Ditirambo. These works made clear the personal nature of Viozzi's musical language, in which references to Straussian vitality, the folk palette of Bartók and the sonic exuberance of Stravinsky and Prokofiev are combined with a sturdy rhythmic force and, even more, the evocation of the magical and surreal. This linguistic cocktail served the composer extremely well both in opera, not only in Allamistakeo, but also in his tragic masterpiece, Il sasso pagano, and in orchestral and chamber music.

WORKS

(selective list)

Ops (all librettos by the composer): Allamistakeo (1, after E.A. Poe: Some Words with a Mummy), Bergamo, Novità, 26 Sept 1954; Un intervento notturno (1, after R.A. Bowen), Trieste, Verdi, 26 Jan 1957; Il sasso pagano (3, after O. von Leitgeb), Trieste, Verdi, 10 March 1962; La giacca dannata (1, after D. Buzzati), Trieste, Verdi, 1967; Elisabetta (1, after G. de Maupassant), Trieste, Verdi, 1971; L'inverno (1, after N. Spazzali), unperf.

Ballets: Prove di scena, Milan, 1958; Agenzia teatrale, 1958, unperf.; La vampira timida, 1960, unperf.; Stricto gladio tenacius, Trieste, 1963

Orch: Hangar 26, 1947; Il castello di Duino, 1950; Punta Salvore, 1950; Ouverture carsica, 1952; Ditirambo, 1954; Legenda, 1955; Ballata, 1956; Musica dei ginepri, 1961; Musica per Italo Svevo, 1961; Studio sul tema di dodici suoni del ‘Don Giovanni’ di Mozart, 1961; Contrasti, 1963; Epicedio per Renzo Battillana, 1964; Conc., vc, pf, orch, 1966; Invenzione-memorie di Fiemme, 1966; Discorso del vento, 1968;

Other inst: Sonata, db, pf, 1967; Racconto, gui, c1978; Sonata, gui, 1984

Other works: choral music, songs, incid music

BIBLIOGRAPHY

C. de Incontrera: ‘Giulio Viozzi’, Pagine istriane, 4th ser., xi/1–2 (1960), 130–31

V. Levi: La vita musicale a Trieste: cronache di un cinquantenario 1918–1968 (Milan, 1968)

B. Bidussi: ‘Teatro di Giulio Viozzi’, Umana, xix/1–4 (1970), 16–18

G. Radole: Giulio Viozzi: una vocazione musicale (Trieste, 1986)

ALBERTO PIRONTI/ROBERTO COGNAZZO

Vir, Param

(b Delhi, 6 Feb 1952). British composer of Indian parentage. His family background in classical Indian music created an early interest in composing. After reading philosophy at Delhi University, he produced music theatre projects for young people which attracted an invitation to study with Maxwell Davies at the Dartington Summer School (1983–4) and later with Knussen at the GSM, London, where in 1985 he won the composition prize. In 1986 he was composition fellow at Tanglewood and was featured composer in the Festival of India, Geneva, in 1987. He has won the Tippett Composition Award, the PRS prize and the Britten Prize, the latter for Before Krishna (1987), the first work which overtly acknowledged his Indian heritage.

His output, though small, evinces a finely wrought synthesis of European modernism and Eastern aesthetics, influenced as much by the rich exoticism of Britten and Messiaen as by Indian instrumental sonorities, rāgas, traditional rhythms and Buddhist folklore. Horse Tooth White Rock (1994), a tone poem about the Tibetan saint Milarepa, displays the expressive translucence of its dedicatee Henze; Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva (1988) is a highly charged setting of Tagore and the Rig-Veda spiced by resonant crotales. Tagore is again the source for the one-act chamber opera Snatched by the Gods, commissioned together with Broken Strings for the Munich Biennale (1992). Wide critical acclaim for both operas led to a commission for a full-length opera, Ion, for the Aldeburgh Festival in 2000.

WORKS

(selective list)

Stage: Kidstuf, music theatre, 1979; The Demons of Bara Tooti, music theatre, 1980; Besura Desh, music theatre, 1982; Fall Out, musical, 1984; Krishna, children's op, 1988; Snatched by the Gods (chbr op, 1, W. Radice, after R. Tagore), 1990; Broken Strings (chbr op, 1, D. Rudkin, after trad. Buddhist tale), 1992, rev. 1995; Ion (op, D. Lau, after Euripedes), 2000

Vocal: Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva (Tagore, trans. W. Radice; Nasadiya from Rig-Veda), 6 solo vv, 1988; Ultimate Words: Infinite Song (K. Malthe-Bruun), Bar, 6 perc, pf, 1997

Orch: Pragati, concertante, chbr orch, 1986; Antiphons and Elegies, divided chbr orch, 1986, rev. 1987; Before Krishna, str, 1987; Horse Tooth White Rock, 1994; The Field of Opportunity, chbr orch, 1994 [version of 2nd movt of Horse Tooth White Rock]

Chbr: Contrapulse, fl/pic, ob/eng hn, cl/b cl, perc/pf, vn, vc, 1985; Clear Light, Magic Body, gui, 1993; The Comfort of Angels, 2 pf, 1996; Gift, fl, 1996; Tender Light, va da gamba, 1996;

Principal publisher: Novello

BIBLIOGRAPHY

S. Pettitt: ‘Snatched by Almeida Opera’, Soundings (1996), 5 only

The Earl of Harewood and A. Peattie, eds.: ‘Param Vir’, The New Kobbé's Opera Book (1999), 916–18

MALCOLM MILLER

Virchi [Virche, Virchinus, Virchis, Virga, Virghi, Virgis, Vigri etc], Girolamo di [de]

(b Brescia, c1523; d after 1574). Italian cittern maker. The best known member of a family of instrument makers and musicians, he was the friend and possibly the teacher of the violin maker Gasparo da Salò, for whose son, Francesco, he stood as godfather in 1565. Documents from 1559 to 1569 record his activity: in 1568, for example, he paid a salary to two carvers, which would account for the high quality of decorations on his extant instruments. There is a cittern by Virchi in the Musikinstrumenten-Museum, Berlin, and another more elaborate one of particularly fine construction in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (see Cittern, fig.2). Two more citterns may be ascribed to him on account of their rich carving and decoration: one (formerly attributed to Stradivari) is in the Musée de la Musique, Paris, and the other is in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

His brother Benedetto (b 1520; d after 1568) was also a cittern maker, whose son Bernardino (b c1565; d after 1624) was an organ maker who studied with, and worked for the Antegnatis. Girolamo’s son Paolo Virchi (c1550–1610), court musician at Fetrara and Mantua, published a cittern tablature (1574).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

G. Livi: I liutai bresciani (Milan, 1896)

A.M. Mucchi: Gasparo da Salò: la vita e l’opera 1540–1609 (Milan, 1940)

U. Ravasio: ‘Il fenomeno cetera in area bresciana’, Liuteria e musica strumentale a Brescia tra Cinque e Seicento: Salò 1990, i (1992), 123–56

UGO RAVASIO

Virchi, (Giovanni) Paolo [Targhetta]

(b Brescia, 1551–2; d Mantua, May 1610). Italian instrumentalist and composer. He was the son of Girolamo Virchi, a famous maker of stringed instruments. Paolo grew up in Brescia during the 1560s, which suggests that, like Marenzio and Bertani, he may have had some instruction from Giovanni Contino, although no confirmation of this has yet been found. Fabris suggests that he may also have benefited from the teaching of the organist F. Maschera. Despite the assertions of several modern sources, he is not identifiable with the ‘messer Paolo’ who went to the Mantuan court from the Ferrarese court in 1570. The first biographical notice of Virchi is on the title-page of his cittern tablature of 1574, where he called himself a Brescian organist. He entered the service of the Este court at Ferrara at some time between January 1579 and December 1581, probably by mid 1580, since Fabris documents that Virchi was banned from Brescian territory in May of 1580 for some unspecified crime, a ban lifted only in July 1586. Virchi is listed on the Ferrarese salary rolls among the singers, but on the title-pages of the publications of the 1580s he called himself organist and instrumentalist to the duke, and he was given an extra salary at Ferrara for teaching the heirs apparent to the Este dynasty, the children of Alfonso d’Este, Marquis of Montecchio and the Duke’s uncle, to sing and to play the viol. (He was thus the teacher of Gesualdo’s future wife and of the future cardinal, Alessandro d’Este.) Records exist of several extraordinary gifts he received at Ferrara; he was also one of the very few musicians to receive an outright salary rise during his tenure there. After the dissolution of the Ferrarese music establishment early in 1598, he was immediately appointed by the Mantuan court to the post of organist at the Palatine basilica of S Barbara, where he remained until his death. He may have provided some music for the wedding celebrations in 1608 (Fabbri, p.129). He was succeeded as court organist in Mantua by his son Fulvio.

Apart from the cittern book his only pieces surviving in complete form are madrigals, almost exclusively from the 1580s. They show that his talent and skill were comparable to Marenzio’s at that period. His use of ornamentation was almost more instrumental than vocal in concept, yet he was capable both of expressive harmonic excursions and of dramatic writing in solo passages and duets. These pieces, together with those by Bertani and Ingegneri dating from the 1580s, repay careful study. Not only do they form an important part of the background to the madrigals of Marenzio and Monteverdi, they are in themselves skillful and excellent pieces among the best of the decade.

WORKS

all published in Venice

Il primo libro di tabolatura di citthara di ricercarti, madrigali, canzoni napolitane et saltarelli (1574¹⁴)

Il primo libro de’ madrigali, 5vv (1584)

Il secondo libro de’ madrigali, 5vv (1588)

Il primo libro dei madrigali, 6vv (1591)

7 madrigals, 4–6vv: 1582⁵, 1583¹⁰, 1586¹⁰, ed. M. Giuliani, I lieti amanti (Florence, 1990), 1588¹⁷, ed. H.B. Lincoln, L’amoroso ero (Albany, NY, 1968), 1592¹⁴, 1601⁵, 1604⁸

2 madrigals in G. Wert, Duodecimo libro de madrigali (Venice, 1608); see C. MacClintock: ‘New Sources of Mantuan Music’, JAMS, xxii (1968), 508–11

Il primo libro di motetti, 5vv (1611); lost, cited in PitoniN

4 madrigals, I-MOe Mus.F.1358, early 1580s

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BrownI

NewcombMF [incl. ed. of 1 madrigal]

PitoniN

O. Rossi: Elogi historici di bresciani illustri (Brescia, 1620), 494

A. Bertolotti: Artisti in relazioni coi Gonzaga duchi di Mantova nei secoli XVI e XVII (Modena, 1885/R)

P. Fabbri: Monteverdi (Turin, 1985)

D. Fabris: ‘Il primo libro di Tabolatura di Citthara di Paolo Virchi (1574) e la tradizione degli strumenti a corda a Brescia nel Cinquecento’, Liuteria e musica strumentale a Brescia tra Cinque e Seicento: Salò 1990, ii, 65–89

ANTHONY NEWCOMB

Virchinus [Virchis], Girolamo di [de].

Virdanck, Johann.

See Vierdanck, Johann.

Virdung [Grop], Sebastian

(b ?Amberg, c1465; d after 1511). German theorist and composer. His father, Wernczlein (or Wenntzlaw) Vierdung, adopted the name Grop in 1469; he earned citizenship in Amberg (1475), then in Nuremberg (1486). Sebastian matriculated at Heidelberg University in 1483. By 1486 he was studying law while employed as an alto singer in the chapel of Count Philip, elector palatine, at Heidelberg, where Johannes von Soest served as ‘Sängermeister’ and Arnolt Schlick as organist. No record tells of Virdung's gaining a degree; by 1489, however, he had become a priest, as befitted the holder of an ecclesiastical benefice awarded him that year by the elector. Despite an accusation of slander against him in 1490 Virdung maintained his reputation, receiving a second benefice in 1500 at Stalburg Castle; at this time he bore the title of chaplain. In 1503 and 1504 Virdung wrote two letters to his employer's son, Ludwig (then on a visit to the court of Louis XII of France in Lyons), requesting the following items for the chapel library: Gaffurius's treatise Practica musice (1496) and Johannes de Muris's Compendium musice practice (c1322), and correct copies of music by Ockeghem (the Missa prolationum, the Missa cuiusvis toni and a canonic motet of 36 voices derived from six). From about 1505 Virdung was employed at the Württemberg chapel of Duke Ulrich in Stuttgart. By January 1507 he had formally left his posts at Stuttgart and Stalburg and been appointed succentor at Konstanz Cathedral, where his duties included teaching the choirboys singing, composition and counterpoint and seeing to their physical welfare. A year later, in January 1508, he was dismissed for being ‘erratic and negligent with the boys’.

In 1510, at the Diet of Augsburg, Virdung was soliciting support to complete and publish a comprehensive treatise in German, Ein deutsche Musica. Unable to find funding, he produced a greatly truncated version, covering only the section on musical instruments, which he published at Basle in late summer 1511. This work, entitled Musica getutscht, is the earliest printed treatise in the West to deal exclusively with musical instruments and aspects of their performance and pedagogy. It is also one of the earliest works on music in a vernacular tongue. Virdung hoped that dedicating this smaller treatise to Wilhelm Honstein, Bishop of Strasbourg, who had shown interest in the larger work, would elicit subvention for its completion. However, his magnum opus was never published, and the manuscript does not survive.

Musica getutscht contains much material appearing in print for the first time, including illustrations of musical instruments in current use arranged by organological categories (see illustration), German keyboard tablature, German lute tablature, recorder fingering charts, and instructions with diagrams on aspects of performance. The author presents his material as a dialogue between himself (Sebastian) and his more erudite friend, Andreas Silvanus – most likely the latinized name of Andreas Waldner, a colleague of Virdung's at Heidelberg. Sebastian acts as the more knowledgeable of the two regarding contemporary musical instruments and performing practice, while Andreas takes the role of the initiate.

Virdung's treatise provides insights into music history, both in his era and earlier. It is here, for example, that the invention of German lute tablature is attributed to Conrad Paumann (d 1473). On the issue of whether black keys be considered musica ficta or notes from the Greek chromatic genus, Virdung, citing Boethius, sides with the latter view. He expresses his conviction by lambasting Arnolt Schlick for having espoused the former view in his treatise Spiegel der Orgelmacher und Organisten, published earlier in 1511. To this attack, which included cruel allusion to his blindness, Schlick retorted angrily several months later (November 1511) in the introduction of his subsequent publication, Tabulaturen etlicher Lobgesang und Lidlein uff die Orgeln und Lauten (1512), in which he castigates Virdung for his pretentious ‘knowledge’ of Greek language and theory and for the numerous errors in the musical examples of Musica getutscht. Most of these errors result from Virdung's pedagogically inspired decision to transcribe the notes exactly, as demonstrations of instrumental notation, rather than to generate playable pieces.

Hints as to Virdung's date of death come from a treatise originally commissioned as a Latin translation of Musica getutscht but which, despite the presence of the original woodcuts, took on an identity quite its own: Othmar Luscinius's Musurgia seu praxis musicae, written about 1517 but published in 1536 and 1542. In his dedication (1536) Luscinius writes that ‘unmistakable signs’ in Musica getutscht (i.e. frequent references to the larger work) make clear that ‘Sebastian was prematurely taken away from the living’ before publication of his magnum opus could be realized. Virdung's death, then, took place after Schlick's harsh words (printed in 1512) and before the writing of Musurgia (c1517).

The popularity of both Virdung's subject matter and his illustrations inspired a second edition of Musica getutscht at some time between 1511 and 1521, and four derivative works in as many languages between about 1517 and 1529. In addition to the Latin Musurgia, these are Martin Agricola's Musica instrumentalis deudsch, in German (Wittenberg, 1529/R, enlarged 5/1545); the anonymous Dit is een seer schoon boecxken, in Flemish (Antwerp, c1528; exemplars from 1554 and 1568 survive); and the anonymous translation into French of this last work, Livre plaisant et tres utile (Antwerp, 1529).

Virdung follows a bipartite plan in Musica getutscht, first providing an illustrated instrumentarium and then offering elementary instructions for three representative instruments in preferred order of study: clavichord, lute and recorder. He also expounds the basic principles of intabulation. He places instruments in three traditional categories – strings, winds and percussion – and bases his subgroups on the instrumental notation appropriate to each. String instruments have four subdivisions: (1) those with keyboards, for which keyboard tablature is used in teaching and playing: clavichord, virginal, harpsichord (clavicimbalum), clavicytherium, hurdy-gurdy and presumably harpfentive (named but not pictured); (2) those with frets, for which (whether bowed or plucked) lute tablature is used: lutes, quintern (a small lute-like instrument) and viols (gross geigen); (3) those with multiple open strings and no keyboards or frets (tablatures are not discussed): harps, psaltery and hammered dulcimer; and (4) those with one to three strings and no frets, for which tablatures are not practical (thus rendering them ‘unprofitable instruments’): rebecs (clein geigen) and trumpet marine.

Wind instruments come in three subgroups: (1) those that can be blown by a person and have finger-holes, for which a tablature resembling fingering charts can be used (Virdung's wind tablature is unique): shawm, tenor shawm (bombardt), tabor pipe (schwegel), fife (zwerchpfeiff), recorders, russpfeif (four-hole fipple flute), curved horn (with four holes), gemshorn, cornetts, bladder pipe, crumhorns and bagpipe; (2) those that can be blown by a person but do not have finger-holes (listed but not discussed): trombones and trumpets (military trumpet [felttrummet], clareta [high trumpet] and tower trumpet [thurner horn]); and (3) those that cannot be blown by a person and are sounded by bellows, for which keyboard tablature is used: organs (large organ, positive, regal, portative).

Virdung defines percussion instruments as those ‘made of metal or other resonant substances’. Since he accepts only instruments capable of carrying melody, the sole representatives in this category are hammers and anvil, chime bells and tuned clapper bells. He dismisses drums (military kettledrums [grossen herpaucken], side drums and small drums) as ‘devilish’, for they cause ‘a smothering and a drowning of all sweet melodies’. He also rejects the following: (1) ‘foolish instruments’: Jew's harp, non-pitched bells, hunting horn, ‘field horn’ (acher horn = coiled horn), clappers and ‘beater on the pot’ (britschen uff dem hafen); (2) ‘tomfoolery’ (göckel spill, literally ‘juggler play’): whistles, birdcalls, leaves or keys into which one blows, and xylophone (hültzig gelechter, literally ‘wooden laughter’); and (3) all instruments not represented by extant examples that could be played and heard – obsolete instruments known only from pictures or descriptions. (Virdung does bow to the prevailing reverence for antiquity, however, by including the fictitious ‘instruments of Jerome’, which he recognizes as allegorical.)

Most of the pictures in Musica getutscht cannot be taken with modern expectations of technical accuracy; their presence, as in other books at the time, offered enhancement of the text through pleasing suggestion of an object. They do, however, give insights into the relative importance of certain features. The clavichord keyboard, for example, was drawn accurately (but it appears in mirror image in the print). The flat bridge on the viol shows that instrument's relationship to the vihuela. The depiction of the recorder family conveys information about consort performance: these instruments came in three sizes a 5th apart – discant, alto/tenor and bass – not four, as has been assumed. Three sizes sufficed for playing four-part music at the time, the normal disposition being one each of bass and discant and two of alto/tenor. Shawms are shown in two sizes and crumhorns in four, although the fingering charts for crumhorns in three sizes published by Agricola several decades later (1529–45) suggest pictorial misrepresentation in this instance.

As a practice piece for intabulation, Virdung provides his own sacred lied, a four-part setting of a rhymed translation into German of three Marian responsories: O haylige, onbeflecte, zart iunckfrawschafft marie. His keyboard and lute intabulations of this song in Musica getutscht are, by his own admission, literal transcriptions from staff notation to tablature intended only to demonstrate the principles involved; he pledges to provide idiomatic (and playable) versions in the larger work. Four secular songs a 4 composed by him about 1505 were printed in Peter Schoeffer's Liederbuch (RISM 1513²: nos.48, 49, 52, 54), one of which (no.54) reappeared over 20 years later in Gassenhawerlin (RISM 1535¹⁰); and the alto parts of two songs published in Ein Ausszug guter alter und newer teutscher Liedlein (RISM 1539²⁷: no.63 by Hofhaimer and no.96 by Lapicida) are attributed to Virdung. His five extant four-part works (all in bar form) exemplify various types of Tenorlied: two feature imitation between discant and tenor (O haylige and no.49), two have frequent parallelism between tenor and discant within a homophonic texture (nos.48 and 52), and one proceeds initially by point of imitation (no.54). All five have been transcribed by Meyer.

For an illustration of Virdung's lute tablature see Tablature, fig.4.

WRITINGS

Musica getutscht (Basle, 1511/R1882 with index by R. Eitner, PÄMw, xi; R1970 with commentary by K.W. Niemöller, DM, 1st ser.: Druckschriften Faksimiles, xxxi

BIBLIOGRAPHY

B.A. Wallner: ‘Sebastian Virdung von Amberg: Beiträge zu seiner Lebensgeschichte’, KJb, xxiv (1911), 85–106

K. Nef: ‘Sebastian Virdungs Musica getutscht’, Musikwissenschaftlicher Kongress: Basle 1924, 7–21

H.H. Lenneberg: ‘The Critic Criticized: Sebastian Virdung and his Controversy with Arnold Schlick’, JAMS, x (1957), 1–6

G. Pietzsch: Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte der Musik am kurpfälzischen Hof zu Heidelberg bis 1622, Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur [Mainz], Abhandlungen der geistes- und sozialwissenschaftlichen Klasse, Jg. 1963, nos.1–8 (Wiesbaden, 1963), 585–763, esp. 668–70 [=no.6, esp. 86–8]

M. Schuler: ‘Der Personalstatus der Konstanzer Domkantorei um 1500’, AMw, xxi (1964), 255–86, esp. 265–6

F. Krautwurst: ‘Bemerkungen zu Sebastian Virdungs Musica getutscht (1511)’, Festschrift Bruno Stäblein, ed. M. Ruhnke (Kassel, 1967), 143–56

G. Stradner: ‘Bemerkungen zu den besaiteten Tasteninstrumenten in Sebastian Virdungs “Musica getutscht … ”’, Der klangliche Aspekt beim Restaurieren von Saitenklavieren: Graz 1971, 79–86

E.M. Ripin: ‘A Reevaluation of Virdung's Musica getutscht’, JAMS, xxix (1976), 189–223

G. Stradner: ‘Neue Erkenntnisse zu Sebastian Virdung's “Musica getutscht”(Basle, 1511)’, Mf, xxix (1976), 169

C. Meyer: Sebastian Virdung: Musica getutscht: les instruments et la pratique en Allemagne au début du XVIe siècle (Paris, 1980) [incl. transcrs. of 5 songs, 131–45]

M. Staehelin: ‘Bemerkungen zum geistigen Umkreis und zu den Quellen des Sebastian Virdung’, Ars musica, musica scientia: Festschrift Heinrich Hüschen, ed. D. Altenburg (Cologne, 1980), 425–34

G. Stradner: Spielpraxis und Instrumentarium um 1500 dargestellt an Sebastian Virdung's ‘Musica getutscht’ (Basle 1511) (Vienna, 1983)

B. Bullard: Musica getutscht: a Treatise on Musical Instruments (1511) by Sebastian Virdung (Cambridge, 1993)

BETH BULLARD

Virelai.

One of the three formes fixes (the others are the ballade and the rondeau) that dominated French song and poetry in the 14th and 15th centuries. Its musical structure is essentially ABBA, regardless of subtleties of rhythm and metre in the superimposed text. The virelai form has a long and complex history, closely interwoven with the general history of early song and dance.

Convincing studies suggest a line of descent from 11th-century Arabic song forms in north Africa and Spain, the mūwashshah–zajal types. They would in turn have influenced Provençal troubadour song structures and by the 12th century also Old French song forms further north. These would then have persisted in France and also have been a dominant influence on the compositions in the large late 13th-century Spanish religious song collection compiled at the request of King Alfonso el Sabio (1221–84) and known as the Cantigas de Santa María. These are nearly all virelai types; and this song pattern evidently became extremely popular in both Spain and Portugal, for many examples have survived which have usually been described since the 15th century by the term ‘villancico’.

A second major school of thought prefers to see any similarities between Arabic and Romance song forms as mere coincidence. It suggests, equally convincingly, that the main source of virelai form and, indeed, of Provençal courtly song in general, is to be found in poetic and musical patterns contained in the liturgical repertory, particularly in such influential centres as the monastery of St Martial, Limoges. The whole complicated Arabic–liturgical debate, unlikely ever to find a total solution, is lucidly summed up by P. Le Gentil in his book Le virelai et le villancico (1954).

The root of the word ‘virelai’ is Old French virer (‘to turn’ or ‘to twist’). This confirms the dance origins of the form at least for France, where in the 13th century ‘vireli’ is the most common spelling; ‘virelai’ was a modification probably under the influence of another important musical and poetic form, the lai.

In the 13th century approximations to virelai form may occasionally be found in one or more voices of polyphonic motets. Such treatment was, however, more commonly accorded to the rondeau. One source in particular (GB-Ob Douce 308) clearly illustrates the extent to which virelai form had developed by the late 13th century; unfortunately the section concerned, labelled ‘ballettes’, lacks its accompanying music. The distinction between ballade and virelai here is a little hazy, but an essential guide to classification is the placing of the refrain. In the virelai the refrain is normally several lines long and occupies the whole of the first musical section, whereas in the ballade it is most commonly one line long and appears at the close of the second musical section. A typical virelai from this source is Dame, bien me doneroie (no.62), which has the following structure: I(A₇–B₇–A₇–B₇) II(c₇–d₇) II(c₇–d₇) I(a₇–b₇–a₇–b₇) I(A₇–B₇–A₇–B₇). Some other examples were less ‘tidy’ at this stage, but the 14th-century ideal had already been achieved. Its principal features were: the first musical section for the refrain, several lines in length; two sets of matching text for the repeated second musical section, usually with first-time (Ouvert) and second-time (clos) bars; the return to the first musical section with text to match the rhyme and metre of the refrain; and finally the repetition of the refrain itself. The refrain always comes at the close, even if the whole form is to be gone through two or three times, as often happens. In such a case the composition may be very extended and far more substantial than it appears in its written form (as is also true for the ballade and the rondeau).

The first direct polyphonic setting of a virelai-like piece is Adam de la Halle’s Fines amouretes ai, of which the refrain is given in ex.1. The harmony is in three-voice conductus style. The musical structure is that of the true virelai: I(A₇–B₁–A₇) II(c₇) II(c₇) I(c₇–a₇) I(A₇–B₁–A₇). The irregularities in the verse patterns, though typical of the earlier period, would not have been acceptable later in the 14th century. Jehannot de l’Escurel (d 1304) composed five monophonic virelais, all using different metrical patterns. Gracieusette (no.32) is irregular, but the remaining four are excellent examples of the now established 14th-century form – Douce Amour, confortez moi (no.20), for example, has the structure I(A₇–B₇–A₇–B₇) II(c₇–d₅) II(c₇–d₅) I(a₇–b₇–a₇–b₇) I(A₇–B₇–A₇–B₇).

An important characteristic of the virelai as it developed in the 14th century was its increasing use of complex metrical patterns in the text with much use of contrasting line lengths. In this respect, as well as in certain others, it came to be a rather more boisterous form than the ballade or the rondeau. An indication of its perhaps more ‘popular’ nature is the fact that of the 33 virelais that Machaut set to music only eight use polyphony; and of these seven are very simple two-part settings for voice and untexted tenor. The one exception, Tres bonne et belle, adds an untexted contratenor. Machaut’s virelai Mors sui, se je ne vous voy (ex.2) is characteristic. Its structure is: I(A₇–B₄–B₃–B₄–A₄–A₇–B₄) II(a₇–a₇–b₄) II(a₇–a₇–b₄) I(a₇–b₄–b₃–b₄–a₄–a₇–b₄) etc.

The texts of most virelais, as of most ballades and rondeaux, are concerned with courtly love. In the second half of the 14th century, however, a particularly interesting and attractive type, which has been called the ‘realistic virelai’, was developed. It often portrayed love in vivid terms with imagery from the hunt, from battle or from fire. Certain composers, especially those who flourished in the southern courts of Orthez, Navarre, Barcelona and Avignon, took full advantage of this opportunity for vivid musical as well as verbal scene-painting. The colourful results are reminiscent of the slightly earlier French chace and of the contemporary Italian caccia, and the texts of hunting and woodland scenes in particular recall certain 12th- and 13th-century reverdies or spring songs. It was probably the need for an impression of bustle and activity in the achievement of realistic effects that resulted in the extensive use of fragmented metrical patterns and striking rhythms. On the other hand, the realistic virelai was not so prone as the more standard virelai or the ballade to the extreme complexities of syncopation employed in the Ars Subtilior. As a characteristic example we may take Vaillant’s Par maintes foys (ex.3, bars 40–45), in which much imitation of birdsong is used to tell the story of the nightingale so infuriated at finding its song of love interrupted by an intrusive cuckoo that it summons all the other birds of the air to put the intruder to death. Also typical are the anonymous Or sus, vous dormez trop, with further bird imitation and fanfares to summon revellers out to dance on a May morning (the text mentions nakers and cornamuses), and Grimace’s Alarme, alarme sans sejour, with its canonic fanfare entries which summon the lady to take up arms on the lover’s behalf. This last piece employs two singers with supporting instruments, as do a number of other pieces, for example the fiery anonymous Restoés, horrible feu d’ardant desir, in which the counterpoint of the two singers aids (as it does in the Italian caccia) the impression of intense activity – the putting out of (amorous) fire.

In the 14th and 15th centuries the virelai was never as popular a form as the ballade or the rondeau, unlike its structural counterpart in Italy, the ballata, which dominated the late 14th century. Some indication of the way in which taste changed during this period is given in Tables 1 and 2: the occurrence of the three forms in six of the most important 14th- and early 15th-century manuscripts is shown in Table 1, and the usage of these forms by four principal composers of the period in Table 2. This demonstrates that in the 14th century the ballade was generally by far the most important lyric form, with the rondeau less important but slightly more influential than the virelai, despite the fact that Machaut especially favoured the monophonic type. In the early 15th century the dominance of the rondeau is very evident, with the relative decline of both the ballade and the virelai. However, by this stage a very substantial amount of poetry was being written which used the fundamental formes fixes but was totally divorced from music. In this realm the ballade held its ground, as may be seen in the works of Deschamps, Froissart, Christine de Pisan, Charles d’Orléans and Villon, though the virelai remained comparatively rare. After about 1420 composers would seem to have almost entirely stopped composing virelais; but some time in the 1440s the form returned to favour in France, being cultivated particularly by Busnoys and Ockeghem. Du Fay’s De ma haulte et bonne aventure (ex.4, bars 1–8) is typical of the mid-15th century, with its reversion to fairly simple rhythms, though hemiola and embellished figures are frequent. None of Dufay’s virelais possesses the textless introduction found in many of his rondeaux and ballades. Guillaume Legrant used a simple homophonic style, though with some striking chromaticisms, in a group of three interrelated virelais. The general form of the 15th-century English carol is also analogous to the virelai type.

TABLE 1

TABLE 2

For bibliography see Chanson.

NIGEL WILKINS

Virga [virgula]

(Lat.: ‘rod’, ‘staff’).

In Western chant notations a neume signifying a single note. It usually consists a single vertical stroke of the pen (hence its name), often with a small episema (adjoining stroke). It generally represented a note higher than those on either side. (For illustrations see Notation, Table 1. See also M. Huglo: ‘Les noms des neumes et leur origine’c, EG, i, 1954, pp.53–67.)

Virga, Girolamo di [de].

Virga strata [gutturalis, franculus].

In Western chant notations a neume formed by joining a Virga and an Oriscus. As with all neumes that include the oriscus there is doubt as to its exact significance. The virga strata is found most frequently in early German chant manuscripts, while comparable French sources, for instance, use a podatus (two notes in ascending order). Other manuscripts again understand it as two notes of the same pitch; this form when followed by a Punctum is a Pressus. The alternative name gutturalis (Lat.: ‘throaty’) probably indicates that this neume involves a note whose ambiguity of pitch springs from a peculiarity of the manner of its performance. According to Huglo the other term franculus is not authentic and cannot be certainly identified (see M. Huglo: ‘Les noms des neumes et leur origine’, EG, i, 1954, 53–67).

Virgelli, Emilio

(fl 1594). Italian composer. In his Primo libro de madrigali a cinque voci (Venice, 1594), he is identified as maestro di cappella at Camerino, a town in the Marche. He appears to have been a skilful composer, using an incipient concertato style involving a solo voice pitted against a chorus, employing paired voices in contrapuntal passages, and varying the vocal combinations in five-voice textures.

RUTH T. WATANABE

Virghi, Girolamo di [de].

1. Nomenclature and construction.

Virgil [Vergil; Publius Vergilius Maro]

(b Andes [?now Pietole], nr Mantua, 15 Oct 70 bce; d Brundisium [now Brindisi], 21 Sept 19 bce). Latin poet. After schooling at Cremona and Milan, he went to Rome as a student. By devoting himself to poetry, he won the favour of Octavian’s powerful counsellor Maecenas and later that of the emperor himself.

1. Virgil and music.

The Eclogues (c45–37 bce), Virgil’s first major work, differs from the Idylls of Theocritus and other Alexandrian prototypes in the earnestness of the poet’s response to a harrowing and unpoetic age. His references to wind instruments are not merely ornamental, like those of the Idylls; they form an essential part of his thought. He frequently mentioned the fistula or panpipe, often under the name of calami (see Syrinx). The primitive stipula, in contrast (iii.27), was probably an oat or wheat stalk with one end flattened as a vibrator. For Virgil it symbolized a lack of poetic skill.

A tenuis avena (‘slender oaten pipe’) is mentioned at the beginning and end of the Eclogues (i.2, x.51) and further described by the unique singular calamus (i.10). Traditionally regarded as symbolic of the pastoral genre, it was probably a stipula with finger-holes added. It would thus embody an intermediate stage, known from comparative evidence, being a true musical instrument with a real though limited compass (cf Horace, Ars poetica, 202–3; a tetrachordal or pentachordal range has been conjectured), but lacking the complex construction of the tibia with its separate reed tongue. By contrast the stipula produced only a single sound and is compared in the Eclogues to the cicada’s drone (ii.13). As the 4th-century commentator Servius noted, the avena, in the first poem of the Eclogues, typified a ‘humble style’. Accordingly, its association there with Tityrus casts doubt on the traditional assumption (doubtful on many other grounds) that he was an enviably happy figure singing with full powers; and it complicates, at best, the attempt to identify him with the poet. The avena was used similarly as a genre symbol in lines thought by some after Virgil’s death to be the true beginning of the Aeneid. It is unlikely to have been a tibia with an oaten mouthpiece like some surviving Egyptian pipes, since it is mentioned only in a simple pastoral context by Virgil and Tibullus (ii.1.53, iii.4.71) and with the deprecatory adjective ‘tenuis’ (Eclogues, i.2).

The tibia is mentioned only once in the Eclogues (viii.21, repeated as a refrain) and has no Theocritean parallel. It has been proposed that its presence served to emphasize the mood of lamentation with which the tibia and its Greek counterpart, the aulos, were frequently associated. If so, it serves as a warning against any complacently euphoric view of Virgilian pastoral. Evidently the poet referred here to a single pipe, mentioned by Theocritus in other contexts and not unconvincing in the pastoral scene, but rarely evident in Roman art or literature. Since the terms tibia and aulos alike can be generic, however, it is not clear whether a pipe with an inserted reed tongue (the Greek monaulos) or a reedless pipe (the Greek surinx monokalamos) was meant. The latter may be thought a far more likely instrument for use by herdsmen.

Occasionally Virgil sacrificed consistency in order to accommodate aspects of his own experience; although an oral tradition was natural to pastoral, he permitted himself references to writing (v.14; possibly x.53–4). The cryptic phrase ‘alterna notavi’ (v.14) seems to be a reference, unique in Latin literature, to musical notation; whether it denotes an accompaniment – notation alternating with text, line by line – or an instrumental interlude like the Hellenic diaulion remains uncertain. This forms part of a larger difficulty: for the reader or listener, the shepherds’ piping remains symbolic or characterizing or merely decorative, since it cannot be heard. The poems in consequence inevitably become somewhat artificial, but in compensation the music of the natural world receives strong emphasis and is shown to be related to the singing or playing of men. Certain lines (such as i.1), moreover, display a choice of vowel and consonant which has reasonably been interpreted as an imitation of piping.

Virgil’s works apart from the Eclogues show little concern with music as that term is usually understood. In the Georgics (c36–29 bce) there are only four references to work songs (i.293–6, ii.417) or songs proper to vintage or harvest festivals (i.350, ii.388). Otherwise music was merely decorative: cymbals (iv.64, 150–51) and the Etruscan tibia (ii.193) are mentioned, but the only substantial passage concerns the lyre-playing and singing of Orpheus (iv.464–6, 471–84).

Similarly, in the Aeneid (c26–19 bce) no instrument is prominent except the tuba or battle-trumpet. There is occasional mention of the lituus and cornu, and the buccina appears twice (vii.519, xi.474–5). The latter is seemingly termed ‘pastorale signum’ in the seventh book (vii.513), although this term does not occur in the Eclogues. Signalling was the main function of all these types of military horn. Their serviceableness for music as an art form was not relevant to Virgil’s purpose; for him, as the voice of war, they speak at times in the Aeneid with memorable power. The kithara (concert lyre) appears in one surprisingly detailed technical passage (vi.644–7) concerning a heptachordal lyre plucked alternately with the fingers and with a plectrum. Now clearly identifiable as the double pipes, the tibia is twice named in descriptions of the rites of Cybele and Bacchus that associated it with Etruria, as before, and Phrygia (ix.618–19, xi.737).

The Orpheus of the Aeneid is merely a skilled professional, without the magic force credited to his song in the Georgics, and Circe sings placidly at her weaving like any country wife (vii.12–14; cf Georgics, i.293–4). Portions of the Aeneid were given musical performance, at least from Nero’s time; and according to an early post-classical tradition, excerpts from the pastoral poems were publicly performed as sung mime not later than 43 bce. All Virgil’s works, nevertheless, were written for recitation in an age when a poetic text was complete without any accompaniment. Moreover, his metre was the hexameter, which had for many centuries enjoyed a particular independence in this respect. The musical element should not, therefore, be sought outside a literary context: for the most part it works indirectly through the rhythm, the symmetry, and particularly the countless subtle sound-patterns of his verse.

See also Greece, §I, and Rome, §I.

2. Later treatments.

Book iv of the Aeneid has been the main inspiration for Virgilian music. Aeneas, wandering after the sack of Troy, briefly frees himself in Dido’s new Carthage from the demands of destiny and the need to press on towards the foundation of Rome. Virgil ignored the 400 years that would have separated any real Dido and Aeneas, bringing them together movingly enough to compel even Metastasio to a rare tragic ending in his first original libretto. Pre-Metastasio operas include Didona by Cavalli (1641) and Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas (1689). The Metastasio century 1724–1824 begins with settings of Didone abbandonata by Sarro (1724), Albinoni (1725) and Porpora (1725), continues with such composers as Galuppi (1740, 1764), Hasse 1742, rev. 1744), Jomelli (1747, 1749) and Paisiello (1794), and enters the new century with Paer (1810), Mercadante (1823) and Reissiger (1824). Meanwhile J.M. Kraus wrote his Aeneas i Cartago to inaugurate the Royal Opera’s new theatre in Stockholm (1782, but no production until 1799). The most ambitious Virgilian opera is Berlioz’s two-part work (composed 1856–8) based on Aeneid book ii, La prise de Troie and Les Troyens à Carthage. 20th-century works include Malipiero’s Vergili Aeneis (1946), and Enea by Guido Guerrini (1953).

The marriage of Aeneas to the Latin bride Lavinia (book vii) is treated by Collasse in Enée et Lavinie (1690) and P.A. Guglielmi in Enea e Lavinia (1785). Lysenko’s Eneida (1910) made a musical comedy from Kotlyarevs'ky’s parody of Virgil, in which gods and heroes become Ukrainian bumpkins.

The first Spanish setting of Virgil comes in Mudarra’s songs with vihuela accompaniment (1546), exactly 400 years before Malipiero’s La terra for chorus and orchestra. Instrumental music inspired by Virgil includes a Pagan Poem by Loeffler, originally for chamber group (1901), then orchestra (1906), and Déodat de Séverac’s symphonic suite Didon et Enée (1903).

WRITINGS

T.E. Page, ed.: The Aeneid of Virgil (London and New York, 1894/R)

T.E. Page, ed.: P. Vergili Maronis Bucolica et Georgica (London and New York, 1898/R)

H.R. Fairclough, ed. and trans.: Virgil (London and Cambridge, MA, 1916, 2/1934–5/R)

C. Day Lewis, ed.: The Eclogues, Georgics and Aeneid of Virgil (London, 1966)

R.A.B. Mynors, ed.: P. Vergili Maronis opera (Oxford, 1969)

A. Mandelbaum, ed.: The Aeneid of Vergil (Berkeley, 1971)

R.B. Williams, ed.: The ‘Aeneid’ of Vergil (London, 1972–3)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

H.J. Rose: The Eclogues of Vergil (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1942)

V. Pöschl: Die Hirtendichtung Virgils (Heidelberg, 1964)

G. Wille: Musica romana (Amsterdam, 1967), 225ff

M.C.J. Putnam: Virgil’s Pastoral Art (Princeton, NJ, 1970)

P.L. Smith: ‘Vergil’s avena and the Pipes of Pastoral Poetry’, Transactions of the American Philological Association, ci (1970), 497–510

G. Wille: Einführung in das römische Musikleben (Darmstadt, 1977), 131–4

J. Griffin: Virgil (Oxford, 1986)

WARREN ANDERSON/THOMAS J. MATHIESEN (1), ROBERT ANDERSON (2)

Virgil, A(lmon) K(incaid)

(b Erie, PA, 13 Aug 1839 or 1842; d St Petersburg, FL, 15 Oct 1921). American music educator and inventor of musical instruments. In 1878 he opened a music school with his wife Antha Minerva Virgil (née Patchen) in Peoria, Illinois, which continued until 1883. The Virgils then moved to New York. A.K. Virgil may have devised as early as 1872 a rudimentary form of his ‘practice clavier’, a silent keyboard instrument; by the mid-1880s it was being sold under the name Techniphone and by 1892 as the Virgil Perfected Practice Clavier (see Virgil practice clavier).

In 1889 Virgil published The Virgil Clavier Method: Foundation Exercises, book 1; the following year he and his wife formed the Virgil Practice Clavier Company, and in 1891 the Virgil Piano School. He opened the Virgil Piano School and Practice Clavier Co. in Chicago in late 1896 or 1897, but this lasted only until 1900; other schools were organized in London and Berlin (1895–6), Boston (1899), and St Petersburg, Florida (1917–21). The method emphasized correct technical development during the early stages of piano study, with particular emphasis on legato playing and key release.

About 1900 Virgil and his wife separated but continued to maintain separate schools in the city. In 1902 he married Florence Dodd, who aided him in the preparation of The Virgil Clavier Method: Foundation Exercises, book 2 (1896). Antha Virgil continued to direct the Virgil Piano School, and published her own version of The Virgil Clavier Method (1902–5) as well as over 250 graded pieces for the piano and several songs. She maintained her own clavier manufacturing operation, which sold instruments under the name Tekniklavier. The Virgil method enjoyed considerable popularity around the turn of the century; 3600 instruments had been manufactured by 1896.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

D.A. Nahm: The Virgil Clavier and Keyboard Pedagogy Method (diss., Catholic U. of America, 1983) [extract (biography) in Piano Quarterly, xxxiii (1985), 48]

DOROTHEA A. NAHM

Virgil practice clavier.

A toneless keyboard instrument devised by the American almon kincaid Virgil (1839/1842–1921) in support of his physiologically based piano teaching system, published as The Virgil Clavier Method (1889–96). Dissatisfied with his pupils’ tendencies to acquire poor habits at the keyboard, Virgil, with his wife Antha Minerva Patchen (1852–1939), developed an adjustable weight-of-touch keyboard instrument on which the only sound produced was a click on the down- or up-stroke (or both). In theory, everything would be learnt and practised at the toneless instrument so that, on the transfer to a piano, fail-safe results were virtually guaranteed.

In 1883 or 1884 Virgil marketed his first practice keyboard, the Techniphone. This used a barely adjustable click-sound mechanism which generated a snapping effect (for both up- and down-clicks) through the flexing of spring steel tabs. No surviving example is known. In 1890 the company began production of the ‘Perfected Practice Clavier’, an improved direct-striker action model which had a click feature with on and off levers at each end of the keyboard, and a 56·5- to 565-gram weight-of-touch adjustment lever over the keyboard; the device had folding legs and was declared portable, although the full 71/3-octave model weighed between 41 and 45 kg.

After separating in 1900, the Virgils ran competing Clavier Method schools in New York. As well as publishing her own version of the method (1902–5), Antha established a clavier factory in Bergenfield, New Jersey, and brought out an improved model designed by her second husband, Amos Cole Bergman (1865–1948). The ‘Tekniklavier’ (or ‘Tek’) incorporated an improved, more adjustable action. Like the A.K. Virgil instruments, it was offered in a choice of wood finishes and the 71/3- and 51/3-octave models were equipped with folding legs, but it was no more portable from the weight aspect than its precursors. Both factories also made truly portable four- and two-octave suitcase models. Practice keyboards continue to be used wherever a low noise level is desirable.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

H. Brower: Piano Mastery (New York, 1915–17)

D.A. Nahm: The Virgil Clavier and Keyboard Pedagogy Method (DMA diss., Catholic U. of America, 1983)

D.A. Nahm and R.E. Sheldon: ‘The Virgil Practice Clavier’, Encyclopedia of Keyboard Instruments; i: The Piano, ed. R. Palmieri (New York, 1994)

R.E. Sheldon: ‘Keyboard Practice and Exercise Aids’, ibid.

ROBERT E. SHELDON

Virgin.

British-owned record company. It was founded in 1973 by Richard Branson, already a successful record retailer, chiefly to record popular music. The first four releases featured avant-garde work by such groups as Can from Germany and the British-based Henry Cow. The company's fortunes changed dramatically with the unexpected commercial success of Tubular Bells, an album by Mike Oldfield; issued by Virgin in 1973, it went on to sell over 20 million copies. Virgin associated itself with the punk movement by releasing work by the controversial Sex Pistols in 1977, while under the Front Line label it issued reggae recordings from Peter Tosh, U-Roy and others. During the 1980s, it established itself as a mainstream pop and rock company through such artists as Human League, Culture Club, UB 40 and Simple Minds. In 1982 Virgin acquired the Charisma label, whose most important acts included Phil Collins and Genesis. The company expanded its horizons by setting up a Virgin Classics division, with recordings by Arleen Augér, and Virgin Venture, which featured work by the Irish composer and pianist Mícheál O'Súilleabháin and the jazz composer Mike Westbrook. It had earlier become the British distributor for the JCOA (Jazz Composer's Orchestra Association) label of Mike Mantler and others. During the 1980s branches of Virgin were set up in the USA, Australia, Brazil and several European countries. Virgin Germany was responsible for the multi-million selling new age albums by Enigma (the pseudonym of the producer Michael Cretu).

By the 1990s, Branson was more interested in building up his interests in aviation, and Virgin Records and Virgin Music Publishing were sold for about £1 million to EMI in 1992. Although EMI retained the Virgin Classics label, under the new ownership the company became more orientated towards pop music, issuing best-sellers by Janet Jackson, the Spice Girls and Paula Abdul.

DAVE LAING

Virginal [virginals]

(Fr. virginale, épinette; Ger. Virginal, Instrument; It. arpicordo, spinetta, spinettina).

A smaller type of harpsichord, usually with only one set of strings and jacks and invariably with only one keyboard (it is classified in the Hornbostel-Sachs system as a chordophone: box zither).

2. Italy.

3. Flanders.

4. England and other north European countries.

EDWIN M. RIPIN/DENZIL WRAIGHT (1–3), EDWIN M. RIPIN/DARRYL MARTIN (4)

1. Nomenclature and construction.

The precise application of the term ‘virginal’ is much debated, partly because of its use in England to denote all quilled keyboard instruments well into the 17th century. Although some writers still reserve the term for rectangular instruments, present usage generally applies it to instruments whose strings run at right angles to the keys, rather than parallel with them as in a harpsichord or at an oblique angle as in a Spinet. A distinction based on the supposed uniqueness of a virginal’s having two bridges resting on free soundboard is no longer tenable, since this is also the case with some harpsichords where the wrest plank is hollowed out under the nut (wrest-plank bridge), and some virginals have one bridge deadened by a massive plank underneath the soundboard. However, ‘spinet’ is often applied to polygonal Italian virginals (in English and in German) because of the similarity to the Italian word ‘spinetta’. The late 16th-century Italian name for the rectangular virginal was spinetta, while the most common word for polygonal instruments was Arpicordo. During the 17th century, however, ‘spinetta’ came to be accepted in Italy as a generic term for any plucked keyboard instrument smaller than a harpsichord. The term ‘clavicordio’ was used in the 16th century to mean any kind of plucked keyboard instrument, but also specifically for the polygonal virginal. The word virginale did not appear in this sense in Italian usage until the 20th-century revival of early music. (For further discussion of terminology, see Spinet; for Flemish usage, see §3 below.)

The derivation of the term ‘virginal’ remains in dispute, the association with the Latin virga (‘rod’) being unproved and that with Elizabeth I (‘the virgin queen’) being without foundation. The term probably derives in some way, however, from the instrument’s association with female performers – Marcuse suggested that this results from a confusion between ‘timbrel’ (a frame drum played by women since biblical times) and the ‘cymbel’ in such terms as ‘cembalo’, ‘clavicymbel’ etc. – or from its tone, which some theorists likened to a young girl’s voice (vox virginalis). The term ‘pair of virginals’, to be found in early literature derived from organ terminology, denotes a single instrument.

In contrast to those of a spinet, the long bass strings of a virginal are at the front, making it possible to build the instrument in a wide variety of shapes, from squat rectangles to more or less graceful polygons, depending on whether the keyboard is inset or projecting. The rectangular form would appear to have been the earliest. It is cited in the manuscript treatise of Paulus Paulirinus of Prague (c1460), who described the virginal as ‘an instrument having the shape of a clavichord and metal strings making the sound of a harpsichord’. This form was also the one known to Virdung, who showed a small rectangular instrument with a projecting keyboard having a range of just over three octaves (FG–g'', lacking F) in his Musica getutscht (1511). Non-rectangular instruments appear in early 16th-century Italian representations, notably intarsias in the Vatican and Genoa Cathedral, as well as Giorgione’s well-known Concert in the Pitti Palace, Florence, all dating shortly after 1510. An earlier example is the intarsia from about 1506 in Isabella d’Este’s grotta in the Palazzo Ducale, Mantua, which probably represents an instrument made for her in 1496 by Lorenzo da Pavia, and is the earliest example of a C/E–c'''compass in a virginal (see Wraight, ii, pp.198–201). Like the intarsia in the Vatican, this instrument has some curved case sides and suggests that virginals may have been made in a variety of shapes before the straight-sided, pentagonal design became established.

The bridges of Italian virginals were invariably parallel-sided with a moulding on the top edge, but North European instruments usually have a triangular section. The right hand bridge of any virginal usually has a pronounced curve in the treble; this was always bent in Italian virginals but may be sawn in other traditions. All instruments at quart, quint and octave pitch sometimes have the right bridge (at least partly) made of straight sections. In the North European traditions the left hand bridge is virtually straight, but most Italian virginals have a curve at the bass end.

In a typical virginal the jacks are placed along a line running from the front of the instrument at the left to the back of the instrument at the right. The key-levers are correspondingly quite short in the bass and quite long in the treble, giving the keyboard of the virginal a characteristic touch, and, in some cases, making it difficult to play notes in the extreme bass easily and quickly. The jacks (one for each key) are arranged in pairs and pluck in opposite directions, so that the pairs of jacks are separated by closely spaced pairs of strings. In Italian instruments, each jack passes through a slot in the soundboard and in the solid register or jackslide (about 4 cm by 3 cm) glued to the underside. In North European virginals each pair of jacks is usually served by a single slot in the soundboard, together with another slot below in a thin guide above the keys. Leather on the soundboard and lower guide provides a quiet bearing surface for the jacks.

Although virginals were made in many shapes, the internal bracing is similar for the different types. There is a brace extending from the front to the back of the case at each side of the keyboard; this may be supplemented by corner blocks. A liner around the inside of the case supports the soundboard and carries the hitch-pins; the wrest pins (tuning pins) are held by a larger piece of hardwood. In rectangular instruments a separate diagonal hitch-pin rail and wrest plank are provided. The back corners of rectangular Italian virginals were sometimes cut off as shown by the 1593 virginal by Giovanni Celestini (Donaldson Collection, Royal College of Music, London). A few employ the false inner-outer construction in which a thick softwood case is fitted with cypress veneer and half-mouldings to make it appear as if a cypress instrument were in an outer case. The oldest known such instruments are by Joseph Salodiensis (c1570; see Wraight, ii, p.263) and Celestini (1587; in the Beurmann Collection, Hamburg). By far the most common Italian construction used thin (3–5 mm) cypress case sides with mouldings on the top and bottom edges, as in Italian harpsichords. Many of these thin-cased virginals were kept in a painted outer case.

The case joints of Italian virginals are mitred, as might be expected considering the thinness of their wood; accordingly, it is noteworthy that the corners of the 1548 Karest virginal (fig.2) are dovetailed, even though the wood is scarcely thicker. Otherwise, the structure of the instrument is hardly different from that of an Italian example (compare with fig.1), except for the replacement of the solid Italian jack register by a complete counter-soundboard mortised for the jacks and serving as a lower guide (this feature is also found in a number of German and English instruments, and dovetailing of the case joints in German harpsichords and clavichords persisted into the 18th century).

Later Flemish virginals have thick cases, like those of Flemish harpsichords, and are assembled before the bottom is put on rather than being built from the bottom up. As with the Italian instruments, however, the two principal braces run from the front of the instrument to the back at the ends of the keyboard. The decoration of these instruments normally corresponds to that of the Flemish harpsichords, either plain paint or marbling outside and block-printed papers inside, except for the inside of the lid, which may have a painted landscape on it. A few examples are painted with arabesques instead of being papered, but this must have been relatively uncommon. The inclusion of a Latin motto either on the inside of the lid, on the jackrail, or around the inside of the case above the soundboard was quite common, and this is also seen in German instruments. The case-side covering the keywell (the ‘fallboard’) was usually hinged to the case along its underside. The decorated inside face, sometimes with a motto, was thus displayed when the fallboard was opened.

2. Italy.

Numerous Italian 16th-century virginals have survived and show that often considerable trouble was taken to provide elaborate decoration: the 1577 Rossi instrument (Victoria and Albert Museum, London), with inset precious and semi-precious stones is a fine piece of work. More typical was a plain cypress case with fine mouldings, but sometimes the casework was set with intarsia work in contrasting coloured woods, as in the 1523 Francesci de Portalupis virginal (Musée de la Musique, Paris). All of these virginals have a rose in the soundboard, usually made of three or four layers of wood veneer, pierced in intricate gothic or geometric designs. Sometimes carved brackets were set either side of the keyboard. Ivory was sometimes used for the natural-key covers, but boxwood was most commonly used, with ebony-topped sharps. Most instruments by Venetian makers had projecting keyboards, and virginals from the Milan–Brescia area had partly recessed keyboards, but exceptions to these traditions are found in both regions. There is no overwhelming acoustical advantage in one system or the other. Almost all 16th-century virginals have a C/E–f''' compass and later 17th-century examples only C/E–c'''. Early 16th-century instruments were made with an FGA–f''' compass, but in the few instruments that survive the keyboard has since been modified. Some 17th-century virginals (e.g. by Francesco Poggi and Stefano Bolcioni) had split keys for d/e and g/a. Flemish and Italian virginals usually ended on a C/E short octave. A well-known instrument, the so-called ‘Queen Elizabeth’s Virginal’ (in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; see fig.3), is Italian, probably by Giovanni Baffo. Its original keyboard had a C/E–f''' compass, but a C–c'''d''' (i.e. no c''') keyboard was later installed, presumably in order to alleviate the difficulty of the non-chromatic bass. In turn, this keyboard was later modified to the present G'/B'–c''' compass (see Wraight, ii, p.50). English virginals tend to have a wide compass (see §4 below).

Modifications, which have obscured the history of the Italian harpsichord, were not undertaken often for the virginals. It was relatively difficult to replace keyboards with those from other instruments since the pairwise jackslide tends only to match the keyboards for which it was made. Nevertheless, some virginals had their scales changed and keyboards altered to keep them abreast of changing musical requirements.

Considerable discussion has been devoted to the question of the pitch of Italian virginals (see Harpsichord, §2(i), for a detailed discussion): it has been argued that the long scales (usually corresponding to C/E–f'''compasses) were intended for low pitches. Most 16th-century Italian virginals have scales between 30.5 and 35 cm at c'' (with only a few being shorter than this). These instruments were, however, designed to be strung in iron wire, which requires a longer scale than brass wire, and means that this long scale came to a normal pitch (i.e. for 35 cm about a tone below a'= 440).

Although most Italian virginals were designed for iron wire, some were quite clearly intended for brass wire at the same pitch (by reason of their sealing; for further details, see Harpsichord, §1, such as the 1693 instrument by Cristofori (Musikinstrumenten-Museum, Universität Leipzig)). Several rectangular instruments by the 17th-century maker Honofrio Guarracino are examples of the latter. They have the tuning pins on the left-hand side and only one bridge on free soundboard, with the result that the sound is much brighter than that of most virginals and closely resembles that of a bentside spinet. These virginals by Guarracino appear to have been the continuation of a Neapolitan tradition: a similar instrument was made by Alessandro Fabri in 1598 (Tagliavini and van der Meer, 1986). Since instruments of this design are unknown further north of the Italian peninsular, the speculation is permissible that this design might have been influenced by Spanish virginals. Virtually nothing is known of the latter, but Naples was under Spanish administration at that time so the introduction of Spanish instruments would have been possible. In the 16th century the use of brass wire on virginals is believed to have been uncommon, but Isabella’s intarsia virginal was probably so strung; the pitch would have been about a fourth above normal 8' pitch (a' = c415–440).

Italian makers (unlike Flemish makers; see §3, below) all adopted similar scalings and plucking points, thereby giving a fairly uniform character to their instruments. The sound of an Italian virginal is usually louder than that of an Italian harpsichord, since the virginal has two bridges on free soundboard. However, as with all keyboard instruments with a plucking action, it is possible to vary the volume considerably by voicing the plectra.

A few virginals were made with two sets of 8' strings although this was not common. Four such instruments are known: two by Donatus Undeus (1623, Brussels Museum of Musical Instruments; 1633, Kirby Collection, Cape Town), one by Celestini (1594, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg) and an unsigned instrument attributed variously to Undeus and Celestini (but probably by the latter) in Fenton House, London. Another rectangular virginal, made by Celestini in 1610 (Brussels Museum of Musical Instruments), does not have the usual pairwise arrangement of jacks: instead each string is separated from the next string by one jack. On the nameboard this instrument is described as an ‘arcispineta’. Other Italian makers whose instruments gained a high reputation at the time included Domenico da Pesaro, Vito Trasuntino and Alessandro Trasuntino (no instruments by the latter two makers survive).

3. Flanders.

Although the tonal resources of the virginal (which has a single set of strings and is seldom equipped with any means of changing timbre) are more limited than the harpsichord’s, it none the less occupies a crucial position both in musical life and in the development of quilled instruments in general in the 16th and 17th centuries. Harpsichords certainly existed throughout this period both north and south of the Alps, but they are more rarely represented in paintings, drawings etc. than virginals, and it must be concluded that they were much less common than the smaller, simpler and cheaper instrument. In addition, the sound of the virginal is excellently suited to most of the keyboard literature of the period. That the virginal occupied a central position in Flemish instrument building is well illustrated by the fact that in the rules for the admission of keyboard instrument makers to the Antwerp Guild of St Luke (drafted in 1557) the piece of work to be submitted by a candidate was specifically designated as ‘a rectangular or polygonal virginal’ (‘een viercante of gehoecte clavisymbale’) and no mention of harpsichords is made at all. Furthermore, O’Brien (1974) has shown that the Ruckers family made many more virginals than harpsichords.

The earliest surviving Flemish virginal (see fig.2), like those depicted in Flemish paintings from before 1565, is thin-cased and polygonal. These instruments thus bear a superficial resemblance to their Italian counterparts, the most obvious difference being that their keyboards are entirely recessed rather than wholly or partly projecting; however, some Italian virginals of false inner-outer design have completely recessed keyboards. The appearance of a Flemish polygonal instrument seems somewhat heavier than the graceful Italian design. Ripin (1971) has speculated that the Flemish polygonal design was transmitted to the Low Countries by way of Germany. It is known that some of the earliest 15th-century makers working in the Low Countries came from Cologne: of the earliest string keyboard instrument maker in Flanders, Hans van Cuelen (Hans from Cologne; fl 1509–57), little is known, but Joes Karest (builder in 1548 of the oldest surviving Flemish virginal; see fig.2) headed the instrument makers’ petition to the Guild of St Luke in 1557 as they sought to be admitted as instrument makers and not grouped with the painters. A German harpsichord of 1537 made by Hans Müller in Leipzig shows striking resemblances to thin-cased Italian harpsichords. However, the answer as to where these harpsichord or virginal designs originated probably lies in the 15th century, and about this period so little is known in detail that answers can be no more than speculative. As is often the case with inventions, similar designs may have been developed simultaneously in different parts of Europe.

As noted above, however, the guild regulations make it clear that rectangular as well as polygonal instruments were being made in Antwerp in the 1550s, and presumably these instruments were also thin-cased. Although no example from this period survives, the earliest Flemish depiction of a rectangular virginal (an engraving by Cornelis Cort printed in 1565, based on a painting by Frans Floris from ten years earlier, now lost) shows an instrument without a lid, suggesting that it was thin-cased and intended to be kept in a stout outer case like an Italian instrument. By the end of the 1560s, however, it would seem that a thick-cased rectangular instrument very much like those now considered typically Flemish had come into being, since a painting by Michiel Coxcie purchased by Philip II of Spain in 1569 clearly shows an instrument of this kind, which seems immediately to have superseded the thin-cased types in the Low Countries.

At the end of the 16th century, three types of virginal were being made in Flanders: one with the keyboard centred in one of the longer sides (fig.4), one with it placed off-centre to the left (called ‘spinett’ by Claas Douwes; see fig.5), and one with it placed off-centre to the right (‘muselar’; fig.6). The centre-keyboard design in normal-pitch virginals is known only from one instrument, that made for the Duke of Cleves (fig.4), and it is impossible to say whether this was an isolated example or whether it was a design that was later forgotten. Octave (4') instruments retain their central placement of the keyboard, although this is virtually obligatory because of their small size. The difference in the placement of the keyboard is important since it determines the placement of the jacks in relation to the two bridges. With the keyboard placed to the left, the jacks run in a line close to the left-hand bridge; therefore the point at which the jacks pluck the strings is close to the mid-point in the treble and well away towards the left end in the bass. This is also true with virginals with centrally-placed keyboards, although the displacement of the plucking point from the centre of the strings in the bass is reduced (see fig.3). Because of this varying plucking-point, the timbre of these virginals gradually changes from flute-like in the treble to reedy in the bass, being similar in this respect to the timbre of a harpsichord. Muselars, with their keyboard at the right, have their strings plucked at a point near the centre for virtually their entire range, producing a powerful, flute-like tone that varies little from treble to bass. Both spinetten and muselars were made in a variety of sizes, the smaller ones presumably tuned to higher pitches and the smallest ones clearly tuned an octave above the largest ones. Among the surviving instruments, muselars are more numerous in the full-size examples, spinetten in the smaller sizes.

The earliest surviving example of a muselar is by Hans Ruckers (d1598) and is dated 1581 (fig.6); it is entirely possible that Ruckers invented the muselar design, even though it must be emphasized that the other characteristics now associated with Ruckers’s work are to be found in virginals made by the preceding generation of makers, notably Hans Bos and Marten van der Biest. Muselars always have both their bridges resting on free soundboard in contrast to the spinetten and the polygonal instruments, which often appear to have had the bridge at the left deadened by a plank underneath the soundboard. Ruckers’s practice in this regard was not consistent; the smaller spinetten all seem to have the left-hand bridge deadened, but some of the full-size examples have both bridges resting on free soundboard. Muselars have the further distinction of being the only virginals normally provided with any means of changing timbre. A substantial number of the surviving examples have an Arpichordum stop, which may be engaged to produce a buzzing sound in the tenor and bass to contrast with the clear flute-like sound of the alto and treble. (For a detailed discussion of surviving Ruckers instruments, see Ruckers, §2.)

The culmination of the Flemish virginal makers’ art was the double virginal called ‘mother and child’ by Joos Verschuere-Reynvaan (Muzijkaal kunst-woordenboek, 2/1795), a usage apparently sanctioned by the makers, since the original Ruckers numbers on surviving examples include an ‘M’ and a ‘k’ for moeder and kind on the large and small instruments respectively. These instruments consisted of a virginal of normal size (the ‘mother’) with a compartment next to its off-centre keyboard in which a removable octave instrument (the ‘child’) was housed. The octave instrument was designed to be coupled directly to the larger one. An oblique slot was cut in the bottom of the octave instrument, and if the jackrail of the ‘mother’ was removed and the ‘child’ was put on top of it in place of the jackrail, the larger instrument’s jacks reached through the slot to touch the underside of the octave instrument's key-levers. Thus when a key of the ‘mother’ instrument was depressed its jack pushed upwards on the back end of the corresponding key of the ‘child’, causing the octave instrument to sound at the same time as the larger one. In addition, the octave instrument could be played separately, either when in place on top of the larger instrument or entirely removed from it. Instruments of this kind appear to have been imitated in Germany and Austria, and an Innsbruck inventory made in 1665 mentions a virginal in which two smaller ones were contained, ‘all three of which could be placed on one another and sounded together’.

4. England and other north European countries.

Unlike some Italian and Flemish examples, the surviving English virginals are all rectangular in shape. Their cases are typically of oak, and the lids were always originally vaulted. The decoration is also standardized: the outside of the cases are plain, ornamented only by ironwork strap hinges and locks; but the insides are given stylized and colourful embellishment including paintings on the lid and fallboard generally of landscapes with figures, painted decorations on the soundboard, and gilt embossed papers contrasting with finely cut mouldings, normally of cedarwood, sometimes painted. The natural keys are usually boxwood, with dark sharps, occasionally inlaid, although instruments survive with snakewood or ebony naturals and solid ivory sharps. The compass of early virginals is often from C to c''', later instruments usually having a very wide G'/B'–f''' compass, although three instruments from the mid-1660s have compasses extending down chromatically to G' or below. The short scalings, often based on a c''' string length of 6 inches (15·24 cm) suggests many instruments were strung in iron at a high pitch standard, probably one or two semitones above a' = 440. Other instruments were built to pitches one or two semitones below this high pitch and there is one instrument, the orphan of a mother-and-child virginal made by Thomas White (c1600–60; the only such instrument known to be made in England), which was designed to play a 5th above the standard high pitch.

The virginal in England probably developed in the early part of the 16th century, influenced by early instruments from Flanders and the Spanish Netherlands. There are many references to virginals in this period, including several in the inventory taken at the death of Henry VIII in 1547. Although a number of these were probably made on the Continent, about 20 virginal makers are known to have worked in Britain in the 16th century. The typical layout and decorative scheme found in the surviving instruments were most likely established by the last quarter of the century.

The surviving instruments date from 1638 to 1684, although two undated examples are probably earlier. The White family appear to be the most prolific of the early makers judging from surviving examples. Five of Thomas White's instruments have survived, including an unusual instrument with double stringing from G'/B' to A, then single strung to f'''. His son James has left two instruments. Later virginal makers of note include Stephen Keene (c1640–1719) and John Player (c1634–c1706), who both went on to make spinets, Adam Leuersidge (fl 1650–70), and the Exeter makers John Loosemore (1613–81) and Charles Rewallin (fl 1657–97). Loosemore, Rewallin and James White were also involved in making or repairing organs.

Praetorius (Syntagma musicum, ii, 2/1619/R), who also mentioned placing virginals on top of one another, depicted a rectangular instrument differing in several respects from the developed Flemish design, rather resembling pre-Ruckers examples in having a central keyboard and a jackrail supported at the left by an arm extending from the bass end of the key-well. The instrument shown by Praetorius also has a larger range than the regular Flemish virginal compass of four octaves with a bass short octave (C/E–c'''), its keyboard extending to d''', with divided accidentals in the lowest octave to provide the F and G not ordinarily available with the C/E Short octave, as well as having the E keys divided in the remaining octaves to sound D, thereby extending the range of available keys to include E major and E minor. As with virtually all north European virginals, a tool box is set in the space to the left of the keyboard.

Although north European polygonal virginals were normally housed in outer cases like their Italian counterparts, this does not seem always to have been true of the rectangular instruments. Praetorius did not show a lid for the instrument he illustrated (presumably to save space), although the presence of a hinged front board to cover the keys strongly suggests that the instrument had one; it would be of great interest to know whether such a lid would have been vaulted like those shown in French illustrations of the 1580s, on the title-page of Parthenia (London, 1612–13; fig.8) and found on all surviving English virginals, which range in date from 1641 to 1679. Despite the fact that the English instruments seem to be patterned on Flemish spinetten, the vaulted lid, the method of supporting the left end of the jackrail and the shorter scaling of English virginals (fig.9) suggest that they actually derive from the same non-Flemish tradition represented by Praetorius's illustration and the surviving 17th-century harpsichords and virginals from Germany and France – a tradition also represented by the polygonal Flemish virginals from the mid-16th century.

Outside Italy the making of rectangular virginals seems to have come to an end by the close of the 17th century, these instruments having been replaced by bentside spinets. Since only one bridge of a spinet is on free soundboard, the sound of a spinet resembles that of a harpsichord, and it may be for this reason that taste changed in favour of the spinet and against the virginal. Although the spinet is typically somewhat smaller than a rectangular virginal, the scalings employed in both instruments are similar. Polygonal virginals and spinets usually have less soundboard area in the low tenor and bass than rectangular virginals; this can impart a clearer, reedier character to the sound but, as in all keyboard instruments, it is the skill of the maker that ultimately influences the quality of the sound. Some virginals were made in the early 19th century in Italy: they resemble square pianos in appearance, but contain a plucking mechanism. The last dated of these (1839, now in the Musikinstrumentum-Museum, Leipzig University) is by Alessandro Riva of Bergamo.

The importance of the virginal has been exaggerated by some, who, unaware that the term was used for all plucked keyboard instruments in England, assume that the music of Byrd, Bull, Gibbons, Tomkins and others was intended specifically for these single-strung instruments. However, as is made clear by the title-page illustration of Parthenia In-violata or Mayden-Musicke for the Virginalls and Bass-Viol (c1624–5), which shows a harpsichord rather than the rectangular instrument of the earlier version of Parthenia, the music of the ‘virginalist composers’ was not intended to be restricted to the virginal. Other writers have relegated the instrument to a status rather lower than that of the modern upright piano. The proper assessment of the virginal lies between these extremes. Despite the limitations imposed by a single register, virginals are useful and remarkably versatile instruments with special qualities of their own, on which virtually the entire literature of their period can be played with considerable success. Thus, although virginals were often used merely as practice instruments and for domestic music-making, they should not, like the spinet, be thought of essentially as substitutes for the harpsichord.

For a discussion of the instrument's repertory, see Keyboard music, §I.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BoalchM

G. Zarlino: Le istitutioni harmoniche (Venice, 1558/R 3/1573/R); Eng. trans. of pt ii, 1968, as The Art of Counterpoint)

A. Banchieri: L'organo suonarino (Venice, 2/1611/R)

C. Douwes: Grondig ondersoek van de toonen der musijk (Franeker, 1699/R)

R. Russell: The Harpsichord and Clavichord (London, 1959, rev. 2/1973 by H. Schott)

S. Marcuse: Musical Instruments: a Comprehensive Dictionary (New York, 1964, 2/1975)

F. Hubbard: Three Centuries of Harpsichord Making (Cambridge, MA, 1965, 2/1967/R)

V. Gai: Gli instrumenti musicali della corta medicea a il Museo del Conservatorio ‘Luigi Cherubini’ di Firenze (Florence, 1969)

M.M. Velimirović: ‘The Pre-English Use of the Term “Virginal”’, Essays in Musicology in Honor of Dragan Plamenac (Pittsburgh, 1969), 341–52

G. Leonhardt: ‘In Praise of Flemish Virginals of the Seventeenth Century’, Keyboard Instruments: Studies in Keyboard Organology, ed. E.M. Ripin, (Edinburgh, 1971, 2/1977), 42–6

J.H. van der Meer: ‘Beiträge zum Cembalobau der Familie Ruckers’, Jb des Staatlichen Instituts für Musikforschung Preussischer Kulturbesitz (1971), 100–153

E.M. Ripin: ‘On Joes Karest's Virginal and the Origins of the Flemish Tradition’, Keyboard Instruments: Studies in Keyboard Organology (Edinburgh, 1971, 2/1977), 65–73

J.H. van der Meer: ‘Studien zum Cembalobau in Italien’, Festschrift Ernst Emsheimer (Stockholm, 1974), 131–48, 275–9

N. Meeùs: ‘La facture de virginales à Anvers du 16e siècle’, Brussels Museum of Musical Instruments Bulletin, iv (1974), 55–64

N. Meeùs: ‘Epinettes et “muselars”: une analyse théorique’, La facture de clavecin du XVe au XVIIIe siècle: Leuven 1976, 67–78

J. Koster: ‘The Mother and Child Virginal and its Place in the Keyboard Instrument Culture of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, Ruckers klavecimbels en copieën: Antwerp 1977, 78–96

G. Nitz: Die Klanglichkeit in der englischen Virginalmusik des 16. Jahrhunderts (Munich, 1979)

S. Howell: ‘Paulus Paulirinus of Prague on Musical Instruments’, JAMIS, v–vi (1979–80), 9–36

N. Meeùs: ‘The Nomenclature of Plucked Keyboard Instruments’, FoMRHI Quarterly, no.25 (1981), 18–20

J. Barnes: Making a Spinet by Traditional Methods (Welwyn, Herts., 1985) [with reference to instruments by S. Keene]

L.F. Tagliavini and J.H. van der Meer, eds.: Clavicembali e spinette dal XVI al XIX secolo (Bologna, 1986)

A.E. Beurmann and A. Pilipczuk: ‘A Rarity in the Art of Harpsichord Building: the 1594 Venetian Virginal by Celestini’, Das Musikinstrument, xl/10 (1991), 66–8

L. Stella: ‘La spinetta di Domenico da Pesaro delle collezione “Luigi Ciceri”’, Societât Filologjche Furlane, xlvi/2–3 (1994), 25–35

G.G. O'Brien: ‘Two Virginals by Gian Francesco Antegnati’, Gli Antegnati: Studi e documenti su una stirpe di organari bresciani del Rinascimento, ed. O. Mischiati (Bologna, 1995), 50–62

D. Wraight: The Stringing of Italian Keyboard Instruments c1500–c1650 (diss., Queen's U. of Belfast, 1997)

For further bibliography see Harpsichord.

Virginia Minstrels.

American minstrel troupe formed by Dan Emmett. See also Minstrelsy, American.

Virgis, Girolamo di [de].

(1) Giovanni Battista Vitali

Virilas

(Lat.).

A term (like Aversi and Cursiva) found only in the index to the manuscript GB-Ob Canon.misc.213, but perhaps more widely applicable to music around 1400. It is used to describe the Credo by Chierisy, which is for two voices of equal range. The style is rare in the mass music of the time (for another example, see Lambertus Brabant) but appears in the song repertory. The term could perhaps derive from the Latin virilis pars, meaning ‘an equal share’.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

H. Schoop: Entstehung und Verwendung der Handschrift Oxford, Bodleian Library, Canonici misc.213 (Berne, 1971), 49

D. Fallows: ‘Two Equal Voices: a French Song Repertory with Music for Two More Works of Oswald von Wolkenstein’, EMH, vii (1987), 227–41

DAVID FALLOWS

Virtuosa

(It., from Lat. virtus: ‘excellence’, ‘worth’; Ger.: Virtuosin).

A woman musician of extraordinary talent and accomplishment, counterpart to the male Virtuoso (which term is also often applied to women). The term seems to have come into use in the late 16th century with the rise of the professional female singer, before which time opportunities for women musicians were extremely limited. Among the first women identified as virtuose were the singers in the famous concerto delle donne established by Duke Alfonso II of Ferrara in 1580. In 1598, the music publisher Giacomo Vincenti praised the young women of the Venetian Ospedale della Pietà as ‘virtuose giovani’ (Baldauf-Berdes, 1993, p.107). As in these early examples, the term has always been associated with performance rather than composition; such 17th-century women composers as Barbara Strozzi and Francesca Caccini were called virtuose primarily on account of their vocal prowess. By the mid-17th century, the term became associated particularly with operatic singers, among whom Anna Renzie (c1620–c1661) was the most renowned. At the end of the century the term, as applied to operatic singers, yielded to Prima donna, although Benedetto Marcello still preferred virtuosa in Il teatro alla moda (c1720). In the 18th and 19th centuries the term was most often applied to instrumentalists. One early definition of the instrumental virtuosa also emphasizes the relation of the term to the quality of virtue: ‘Therefore the Italians call a person that has some good quality virtuosus or virtuosa, grounded upon the sentence of scripture that knowledge doth not enter into a wicked soul’, (T. Dart: ‘Miss Mary Burwell’s Instruction Book for the Lute’, GSJ, xi, 1958, p.45). Maddalena Laura Lombardini Sirmen (1745–1818), a violinist and singer as well as a composer, is one example of a virtuosa trained in the Venetian conservatories for girls. Clara Schumann (1819–1896) was named the ‘Royal and Imperial Chamber Virtuosa’ in 1838. In the mid-20th century, the backlash against ‘empty virtuosity’ (an emphasis on technique rather than musical communication) meant that the term became a less common designation, but it has been resuscitated, with no negative connotation, for young women soloists.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

S.C. Cook: Virtuose in Italy, 1600–1640: a Reference Guide (New York, 1983)

J.L. Baldauf-Berdes: Women Musicians of Venice: Musical Foundations 1525–1855 (Oxford, 1993)

B.L. Glixon: ‘Private Lives of Public Women: Prima donnas in Mid-Seventeenth-Century Venice’, ML, lxxvi (1995), 509–31

B.L. Glixon: ‘Scenes from the Life of Silvia Gailarti Manni, a Seventeenth-Century virtuosa’, EMH, xv (1996), 97–146

F.H. Jacobs: Defining the Renaissance ‘Virtuosa’: Women Artists and the Language of Art History and Criticism (Cambridge, 1997)

ELLEN T. HARRIS

Virtuoso

(It., from Lat. virtus: ‘excellence’, ‘worth’).

A person of notable accomplishment; a musician of extraordinary technical skill. In its original Italian usage (particularly in the 16th and 17th centuries) ‘virtuoso’ was a term of honour reserved for a person distinguished in any intellectual or artistic field: a poet, architect, scholar etc. A virtuoso in music might be a skilful performer, but more importantly he was a composer, a theorist or at least a famous maestro di cappella. In the late 17th and 18th centuries a great number of Italian musicians carried the term ‘virtuoso’ to the courts and theatres of northern Europe, regularly applying it to themselves whether or not they merited such distinction in the traditional Italian sense. Brossard (Dictionaire, 1703), writing in France at a time when debate raged over Italian music and musicians, approached the word ‘virtuoso’ by way of its Latin root ‘virtu’, emphasizing that the true virtuoso was a musician of exceptional training, especially in theory (the same emphasis is found in Walther’s Musicalisches Lexicon of 1732). Johann Mattheson, however, in his Der brauchbare Virtuoso (1720), while honouring the traditional ‘theoretische Virtuosen’, paid tribute also to the ‘virtuosi prattici’. Others drew the line less respectfully; in his tract Der musikalische Quack-Salber (1700) Johann Kuhnau left no room for confusion between the true virtuoso (‘der wahre Virtuose’) and the highly gifted musicus (‘der glückselige Musicus’) who enjoyed the support of German princes and emperors but had little to commend him apart from practical facility.

With the flourishing of opera and the instrumental concerto in the late 18th century, the term ‘virtuoso’ (or ‘virtuosa’) came to refer to the violinist, pianist, castrato, soprano etc. who pursued a career as a soloist. At the same time it acquired new shades of meaning as attitudes towards the often exhibitionist talents of the performer changed. In the 19th century these attitudes hardened even more. Liszt declared that ‘virtuosity is not an outgrowth, but an indispensable element of music’ (Gesammelte Schriften, iv, 1855–9). Wagner, on the other hand, expressed the kind of reservations often voiced in his time: ‘The real dignity of the virtuoso rests solely on the dignity he is able to preserve for creative art; if he trifles and toys with this, he casts his honour away. He is the intermediary of the artistic idea’ (Gesammelte Schriften; Eng. trans., vii, 1894–9, p.112). Pejorative implications are present in such German expressions as Virtuosenmachwerk (a piece of routine display), Pultvirtuoso (an orchestral player of virtuoso temperament) and Taktstockvirtuoso (a virtuoso of the baton). But though there has been a tendency to regard dazzling feats of technical skill with suspicion (and even, in such cases as Tartini and Paganini, to ascribe them to some supernatural power), the true virtuoso has always been prized not only for his rarity but also for his ability to widen the technical and expressive boundaries of his art.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

E. Reimer: ‘Virtuose’, HMT

H.W. Schwab: ‘Vom Auftreten der Virtuosen: Berichte und Bilder aus der Kulturgeschichte des Konzertsaals: III’, Das Orchester, xxxix (1991), 1358–63

R. Stowell: ‘The Nineteenth-Century Bravura Tradition’, The Cambridge Companion to the Violin (Cambridge, 1992), 61–78

S. Milliot: ‘Le virtuose international: une création du 18e siècle’, Dix-huitième siècle, xxv (1993), 55–64

OWEN JANDER

Virués (Espinola) [y Spinola], José (Joaquín)

(b Jerez de la Frontera, 27 June 1770; d Madrid, 13 May 1840). Spanish music theorist. A career officer in the Spanish army, he rose to field marshal and director of the Toledo Colegio de Infantería. He was also a man of letters, poet and translator of Voltaire. In 1824 he published in Madrid his Cartilla harmónica, ó El contrapunto explicado en seis lecciones, and in 1831 a much-expanded version of his theory, La geneuphonía ó Generación de la bien-sonancia música, which also appeared in English (London, 1850), translated and substantially revised by F.T.A. Chaluz de Vernevil. The presentation in both these works is coloured by an irritation against the obfuscation of professional music theorists, their unintelligible jargon and multiplication of rules. Virués sought ‘one basic principle, unique and simple’ from which all musical practice could be deduced, and he claimed to have found it in what he called ‘polytonaganism’, the application of which would allow the study of harmony to be completed within a month, thus rendering all previous theories obsolete. In this Virués appears to have been something of an autodidactic crank, especially since his system in its fully developed form was hardly less complicated and had a terminology of its own hardly less arcane than any it was designed to replace. However, his work was given some importance by its adoption as the official method of the Madrid Conservatory in its early years.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

B. Saldoni: Diccionario biográfico-bibliográfico de efemérides de músicos españoles, ii (Madrid, 1880/R), 404–5

GUY BOUR LIGUEUX

Vis-à-vis Flügel.

A term for a combination of two string keyboard instruments built so that they share a common bentside and that the keyboards are ‘facing’ (Fr. vis-à-vis) each other. Pairs of harpsichords combined in this way were known at the end of the 17th century. Johann Andreas Stein made vis-à-vis instruments consisting of a harpsichord and a piano (see Harpsichord-piano).

Viscarra Monje, Humberto

(b Sorata, 30 March 1898; d La Paz, 2 Sept 1971). Bolivian pianist, composer and teacher. He studied piano privately in La Paz, with Giovanini in Rome (1926) and with Camille Decreusse in Paris (1927–8). Returning to Bolivia in 1929, he gave private piano lessons and performed piano works by French and Russian composers. From 1937 he taught at the La Paz Conservatory, and he was a founder member of the Man Cesped Association in Cochabamba (1940). He was director of the La Paz Conservatory from 1949–69, during which period he appeared in recitals and concerts with the Bolivian National SO. Also he published several poems, essays, articles and press reviews. He won several prizes, including diplomas from the Tomás Frías University and the Caja Nacional de Seguro Social, and the National Culture Award (1970). His published compositions, almost entirely for piano, include Impresiones del Altiplano (which won a prize from the La Paz municipality), the Rondino and several pieces published posthumously in Madrid by Tubal’s Colección de Compositores Bolivianos, among them the Toccata de Lluvia. Also published in La Paz was his Album de canciones sobre ritmos collas for voice and piano. Several unpublished works are conserved in manuscript form in his daughter’s home in La Paz.

CARLOS SEOANE

Visconti, Domenico

(d Rome, 1–16 Nov 1626). Italian composer and organist. He was an organist at the Florentine court, where his wife Lucrezia also worked; they were probably in the service of Antonio de’ Medici in particular, as appears to be suggested by the dedication (written by one of his pupils) of Visconti’s 1615 publication. On 6 October 1626 he was appointed organist of S Maria in Aracoeli, Rome, but about a month later he died. The pieces in his Primo libro de madrigali a 5 voci (RISM 1615²¹), which contains two by other composers as well as 19 of his own, are similar in style to other Florentine madrigals, such as those of Marco da Gagliano, but are only of limited interest; Quel bacio che mi dai (in Butchart, ii, no.75) shows him at his best. Another madrigal by him appears in an anthology (RISM 1616²¹). There is some rather more rewarding music in his only other publication, Il primo libro de arie a 1 e 2 voci with continuo (Venice, 1616), which contains 22 pieces, 17 for one voice, the rest for two (1 duet ed. in Whenham). Most of them are strophic solo songs which in their rather ordinary melodies and hesitant tonality are similar to those of Rontani (who had also served Antonio de’ Medici) and whose main interest lies in their varied, piquant rhythms (2 pr. in Aldrich). Many pieces in this volume have ritornellos, and some of them, e.g. that in Donn’altera, seem to have been intended for keyboard instead of for the more usual violins. Occasionally Visconti devised interesting formal structures, as in Non vuoi ch’io t’ami (the second song in Aldrich), and above all in the most important piece in the book, the pastoral dialogue O selve, o fiumi. This comprises three main sections: a set of four strophic variations and a stretch of arioso, both for alternating solo voices, and a final duet with five verses in which three contrasting kinds of triple-time writing are followed by cadential phrases in duple time. The invention is unremarkable, but the design is fascinating for its intimations of certain cantatas dating from later in the 17th century.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

AmbrosGM, iv

SchmitzG

E. Schmitz: ‘Zur Geschichte des italienischen Kammerduetts im 17. Jahrhundert’, JbMP 1916, 43–60, esp. 45

A. Cametti: ‘Organi, organisti ed organari del senato e popolo romano in S. Maria in Aracoeli (1583–1848)’, RMI, xxvi (1919), 441–85, esp. 471

J. Racek: Stilprobleme der italienischen Monodie (Prague, 1965)

P. Aldrich: Rhythm in Seventeenth-Century Italian Monody (New York, 1966)

D.S. Butchart: The Madrigal in Florence, 1560–1630 (diss., U. of Oxford, 1979)

J. Whenham: Duet and Dialogue in the Age of Monteverdi (Ann Arbor, 1982)

S. Leopold: Al modo d’Orfeo: Dichtung und Musik im italienischen Sologesang des frühen 17. Jahrhunderts, AnMc, no.29 (1995)

NIGEL FORTUNE

Visconti, Gasparo

(b Cremona, 10 Jan 1683; d in or after 1713). Italian violinist and composer. The English edition of his op.1 identifies Visconti with the diminutive by which he was best known to the London public: Gasperini’s Solos … Composed by Seignr. Gasparo Visconti. The usual spelling of this name, ‘Gasparini’, often engenders confusion with Francesco Gasparini, a vocal composer of an earlier generation (see Gasparini family (1)). Born into a noble family, Visconti apparently plied the trade of a musician for his own pleasure and during a relatively short period in his youth. For these reasons, notices about him are rare. We have Visconti’s word that he was ‘five years Corelli’s scholar’ before 1702. From then until 1705 Visconti was a frequent soloist at theatres and public halls in London, performing at court at least once with the flautist James Paisible. His sonatas for violin and flute enjoyed considerable vogue in England at that time. Visconti married Cristina Steffkin in 1704; their daughter was born in Cremona in 1713. About that year, Tartini made a pilgrimage to meet and hear Visconti in his native city. His judgment later was that Visconti possessed a unique, God-given style of playing which was born and died with him.

Visconti’s sonatas of 1703 are, in large measure, successors to Corelli’s op.5, but the pupil departs from his master’s style in several important respects. Among them are the more frequent use of tonic recapitulation in the binary movements, the definition of distinct areas of motivic development, and written-out ornamentation, especially in slow movements. Since these traits are found in Tartini’s sonatas of the 1730s and 40s, we might be justified in considering Visconti a progressive innovator in spite of his use of imitation and inverted counterpoint. Visconti’s concertos are generally in the style of Vivaldi’s but make more use of repetition of small phrase units in the themes and motivic connections between tutti and solo passages.

WORKS

[6] Sonate, vn, vle/hpd, op.1 (Amsterdam, 1703, enlarged 2/c1708–12) [also as Gasperini’s Solos, London, 1703]

A Collection of Airs, 2 fl (London, 1703; Amsterdam, 2/?1712–15 as op.2)

Nolens Volens, the Third Book for the Violin, being an Introduction for the Instructing of Young Practitioners … with … a Flourish or Prelude in every Key (London, 1704)

6 concerti a 5 … delli sigr. Giuseppe Tartini e Gasparo Visconti, op.1, bk 3 (Amsterdam, c1730)

3 concs., vn, str, D-Dlb; 3 concs., vn, insts, GB-Mp; 5 sonatas, vn, bc, D-Dlb; sonata, c, SWl

BIBLIOGRAPHY

M. Tilmouth: ‘A Calendar of References to Music in Newspapers Published in London and the Provinces (1660–1719)’, RMARC, i (1961/R)

R. Monterosso: ‘Gasparo Visconti, violinista cremonese del secolo XVIII’, SMw, xxv (1962), 378–88

L. Finscher: ‘Corelli als Klassiker der Triosonate’, Nuovi studi corelliani, ed. G. Giachin (Florence, 1978), 23–9

JOHN WALTER HILL

Visconti, Giulio

(b Naples, 1750; d Naples, 4 March 1829). Italian composer. He studied philosophy and theology (becoming a priest), and had music lessons from Cotumacci and Jommelli. An amateur composer, he wrote at least seven operas for amateur performance, an oratorio, Passion music, sacred cantatas and many arias and duets with piano accompaniment, several collections of which were published. In 1826 he produced a collection of sonnets set to his own music.

Cavicchi has identified this composer with a Giulio Visconti who appears among the violinists in the La Scala orchestra on lists dated 1783 and 1802 and who is also the presumed composer of a number of instrumental works, principally concertos and trio sonatas for violins and other string instruments (in I-Mc; one in D-Dlb). It seems unlikely, however, that a priest, who always identified himself on his title pages as a dilettante, would have played in a theatre orchestra, and de Rosa made no mention of it or of a period in Milan. (MGG1 (A. Cavicchi); RosaM)

DENNIS LIBBY

Visconti (di Modrone), Count Luchino

(b Milan, 2 Nov 1906; d Rome, 17 March 1976). Italian director and designer. His family was musical and had a long association with the Teatro alla Scala, where he was at home from an early age, but he approached opera only after considerable successful experience as a director and designer in the spoken theatre and as a film director. This step was in part prompted by his admiration for Maria Callas, who sang in his first production, Spontini’s La vestale (1954, La Scala). In successive years, also with Callas, he staged La sonnambula, La traviata, Anna Bolena and Iphigénie en Tauride, all at La Scala (he wrote on Callas in Opera, xxi, 1970, pp. 806–19 and 911–21). In 1958 he directed his first opera outside Italy, the highly successful Don Carlos at Covent Garden, and inaugurated the Spoleto Festival with Macbeth. He worked frequently at Spoleto (Donizetti’s Il duca d’Alba was an important revival) and ended his opera career there in 1972 with a much admired Manon Lescaut.

Visconti’s career in the opera house coincided with and fostered the renewed interest in neglected works by the leading 19th-century Italian composers. His profound love and knowledge of music, his visual taste, his familiarity with the styles of various periods, gave his finest productions an unrivalled authenticity. His influence on opera production in Italy and elsewhere was vast. Before him, most Italian opera houses were content with routine productions, in a tired tradition; with his insistence on the individual character of each work, he renewed, indeed revolutionized, the approach to opera staging. He had a strong influence also on younger directors and designers such as Franco Zeffirelli, Piero Tosi and Filippo Sanjust, many of whom were his assistants. In collaboration with Sanjust and Enrico Medioli, he wrote the libretto for Franco Mannino’s opera Il diavolo in giardino (1963, Palermo), which he also staged.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ES (G.C. Castello)

W. Weaver: ‘Luchino Visconti’, Opera, ix (1958), 289–92

M. Estève, ed.: Luchino Visconti: l’histoire et l’esthétique (Paris, 1963)

Y. Guillaume: Luchino Visconti (Paris, 1966)

G. Nowell-Smith: Luchino Visconti (London, 1967, 2/1973)

P. Baldelli: Luchino Visconti (Milan, 1973)

G. Servado: Visconti (London, 1979)

WILLIAM WEAVER

Visée, Robert de

(b ? c1655; d 1732–3). French guitarist, theorbo, lute and viol player and composer. He was possibly a pupil of Corbetta. He is first mentioned (as theorbist and guitarist) by Le Gallois in 1680, and about that time became a chamber musician to Louis XIV. In the dedication of his first guitar book (1682) he mentions that he was often called upon by the king to amuse the dauphin, and the diary of the Count of Dangeau from the year 1686 states that he regularly played the guitar at the king’s bedside in the evenings. Between 1694 and 1705 Visée frequently performed at the French court, particularly at the evening gatherings of Mme de Maintenon, with the flautists Descoteaux and Philibert, the harpsichordist Jean-Baptiste Buterne and the viol player Antoine Forqueray. In 1709 he was appointed to the post of singer in the royal chamber in recognition of his service to the court, in which he had not until then held a position. In 1719 he was formally appointed guitar teacher to the king, although he had actually been the king’s instructor since 1695; his son François succeeded him in this post in 1721. A letter of Jean Rousseau of 1688 indicates that Visée was a respected musician at Versailles and that he also played the viol.

Visée’s two published guitar books contain a total of 12 suites as well as several miscellaneous pieces. The longer suites generally begin with the usual allemande, courante, sarabande and gigue and end with lighter pieces such as the gavotte, minuet and bourrée. In the shorter suites there is no consistent order of movements. The Suite no.6 in C minor includes a beautiful tombeau dedicated to Corbetta. Visée’s guitar compositions are intended for a five-course instrument tuned a/a–d/d'–g/g–b/b–e'. Exploiting the instrument’s resources to the fullest extent, they constitute along with the later works of Corbetta the apex of the French Baroque guitar literature. Visée’s works for Baroque lute and theorbo comprise the same types of dance pieces as are found in his guitar music and often duplicate the guitar works, although it is difficult to determine for which instrument the original versions were written. The fact that a substantial number of theorbo works survives in manuscript sources shows the regard in which Visée was held. Though they lack character pieces and Italian influence, they reveal him as a fitting partner for his colleagues Marin Marais and François Couperin. These pieces also include various tombeaux as well as arrangements of pieces by Lully, Marais, Forqueray and François Couperin.

WORKS

Edition: R. de Visée: Oeuvres complètes pour guitare, ed. R. Strizich (Paris, 1971)

Livre de guittarre dédié au roy (Paris, 1682/R)

Livre de pièces pour la guittarre (Paris, 1686/R)

Pièces de théorbe et de luth mises en partition dessus et basse (Paris, 1716)

Air, Que la bouteille a d’attraits, in Concerts parodiques, iv (Paris, 1732)

Various works, some from the foregoing publications, are in the following: Recueil des pièces de guitarre, ed. J.B.L. de Castillon, Ghent, 1730, B-Bc; Passacalles y obras de guitarra, ed. S. de Murcia, 1732, GB-Lbl; F-Pn (7 MSS)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BenoitMC

La BordeE

C. Liddell: The Guitar, Theorbo and Lute Works of Robert de Visée: a Study in his Process of Arranging (diss., Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, 1976)

A. Dunn: Style and Development in the Theorbo Works of Robert Visée: an Introductory Study (diss., U. of California, San Diego, 1989)

B.L. Prud’homme: A Source Study and Thematic Catalogue of Robert de Visée’s Theorbo Works (diss., U. of Colorado, 1992)

A. Miteran: ‘Manuscrit inédit de Robert de Visée’, Guitare, lv (1995), 32–4

ROBERT STRIZICH/DAVID LEDBETTER

Wyschnegradsky [Vïshnegradsky], Ivan (Aleksandrovich)

(b St Petersburg, 4/16 May 1893; d Paris, 29 Sept 1979). Russian composer. His father introduced him to music before he began to study harmony, orchestration and composition with Nikolay Sokolov, a pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov (1911–15). He studied the piano and became particularly interested in the works of Skryabin, whose harmonic principles he later further developed. He studied law and became fascinated by philosophy, mathematics, physics, chemistry and Far-Eastern thought; his wide cultural interests lay at the root of his desire to unite arts, sciences and spiritual thought. His first orchestral works were performed at the Pavlovsk Theatre under the direction of Aslanov (1912–13) and Varlich (1914). After writing La journée de l’existence (1916–17), for reciter, large orchestra and mixed chorus, he conceived a scheme for ‘ultrachromatic’ synthesis using intervals of one sixth and one twelfth of a tone, in addition to quarter-tones. He decided to tune two pianos a quarter-tone apart, and first introduced the use of microtones in the Chant douloureux et étude, op.6 (1918), for violin playing in third-, quarter-, sixth- and eighth-tones, and piano. He settled in Paris in 1920 and applied successively to the firms Gaveau, Erard and Pleyel to have a piano tuned in quarter-tones constructed. Following Pleyel’s inconclusive experiment with a piano employing pneumatic action (1921), Wyschnegradsky joined forces with Moellendorf, Richard Stein, Mager and Alois Hába in Berlin (1922): the first piano tuned in quarter-tones was built by the firm August Forster in Czechoslovakia in 1924, using Wyschnegradsky’s design involving a triple keyboard as a starting point. Meanwhile, the use of pianos tuned to various adjustable intervals (quarter-, sixth- and twelfth-tones) proved to be the most practical one for Wyschnegradsky who developed theoretical systems over thirty years from 1924. The serial principle had to be expanded to provide ‘any number of sounds of any pitch’, and had to be extended to include ‘the totality of all audible sounds’ and to tend towards a non-hierarchical conception ‘beyond any already established system of sounds’. Wyschnegradsky published many articles, edited a Manuel d’harmonie à quarts de ton (1932) and explained his concept of the sound continuum and ultrachomaticism in La loi de la pansonorité (1924–5, published by Editions Contrechamps, 1996). He moved towards a mathematisation of the sound continuum: ‘pansonority deriving from the Greek word “pan”, meaning “all”, pansonore means that everything makes a sound and that there is no single point where sonority does not exist’, and drew up by successive divisions and relationships a scheme of regular, irregular, semi-regular, periodic, composed and non-octaval frequential intervals. These ‘ultrachromatic’ intervals are arranged in a maximal space, tuned to twelfths of a tone, a discontinuous network of 505 sounds stretching over seven octaves from the lowest to the highest pitches. Ultrachromaticism applies also in the realm of durations and rhythms. A principal of ‘rhythmic modulation’, established on the basis of 115 divisions, allows the morphological structuring of rhythms and speeds to be administered according to the ‘coefficients of deceleration and acceleration’. Wyschnegradsky fully exploited his technique in works such as Cosmos op.28 (1939–40; first performed by Yvette Grimaud, Yvonne Loriod, Serge Nigg and Pierre Boulez), Etudes sur les densités et les volumes op.39a (1956), and Etude sur les mouvements rotatoires op.45a (1961). A special number of La Revue Musicale has been dedicated to him (1972), as well as concerts in Montreal (McGill University) and on Radio France (Paris, 1977).

WORKS

Principal publisher: Belyayev

semitone

2 préludes, op.2, pf, 1916; La journée de l’existence (Wyschnegradsky), reciter, chorus ad lib, orch, 1916–17, rev. 1927, 1939; L’automne (Nietzsche), op.1, B-Bar, pf, 1917; Le soleil décline (F. Nietzsche), op.3, B-Bar, pf, 1917–18; 4 fragments, 1st version, op.5, pf, 1918; Le scintillement lointain des étoiles (S. Savitch-Wyschnegradsky), op.4, S, pf, 1918; L’évangile rouge (V. Knyasev), 13 chants révolutionnaires, 1st version, op.8, B-Bar, pf, 1918–20; Str Qt no.3, op.38b, 1945–58; Le mot, op.36, S, pf, 1953; Etude sur le carré magique sonore, op.40, pf, 1956; Polyphonies spatiales, op.39, pf, hmn, ondes martenot, perc, str orch, 1956; Prélude, op.38a, pf, 1957

quarter–tone

Dramatic: Linnite (pantomime, 1, 5 scenes, Savitch-Wyschnegradsky), 3 female vv, 4pf, 1937

Orch: 5 variations sans thème et conclusion, op.33, 1951–2; Etude sur les mouvements rotatoires, op.45c, 2 pf, chbr orch, 1967: see 2 Pf and other works; Premier fragment symphonique, op.23, 3rd version, 1967: see 4 Pf and 2 Pf; Sym., 1 movt, op.51b, 1969

Vocal: L’évangile rouge (Knyasev), 13 chants révolutionnaires, 2nd version, op.8, B-Bar, 2 pf, 1918–20: see semitone; 2 chants (Nietzsche), op.9, B-Bar, 2 pf, 1923; 2 choeurs (A. Pomorsky), op.14, chorus, 4 pf, perc, 1926, rev. 1936; Acte choréographique (Vïshnegradsky), op.27, B-Bar, chorus, 4 pf, perc, insts ad lib (cl, va, balalaika), 1930–40; A Richard Wagner (Nietzsche), op.26, B-Bar, 2 pf, 1934–7; 2 chants russes (A. Bely, W. Mayakovsky), op.29, B-Bar, 2 pf, 1940–41; L’éternel étranger (5 épisodes de la vie d’un artiste), op.50, solo vv, mixed chorus, 4 pf, perc, 1940–60 [orchestration unfinished]

Chbr (incl. pf, insts): Str Qt no.1, op.13, 1923–4; Str Qt no.2, op.18, 1930–31; Sonata, op.34, va, 2 pf, 1945–59; Troisième fragment symphonique, op.31, 4 pf, perc ad lib, 1946; Transparences I, op.35 2 pf, ondes martenot, 1953; Quatrième fragment symphonique, op.38c, 4 pf, ondes martenot, 1956; Composition, str qt, op.43, 1960; Transparences II, op.47, 2 pf, ondes martenot, 1962–3; Str Trio, op.53, 1979; Composition, 4 ondes martenot, op.52

4 pf: Ainsi parlait Zarathoustra, sym., op.17, 1929–30, rev. 1936; Premier fragment symphonique, op.23, 1st version, 1934; Deuxième fragment symphonique, op.24, 1937; Cosmos, op.28, 1939–40

2 pf: 4 fragments, 2nd version, op.5, 1918: see semitone; 7 variations sur la note do, op.10, 1918–20; Dithyrambe, op.12, 1923–4; Prélude et danse, op.16, 1926; Prélude et fugue, op.15, 1927; Etude en forme de scherzo, op.20, 1931; 2 études de concert, op.19, 1931; Prélude et fugue, op.21, 1932; 2 pièces, 1934; 24 préludes en quarts de ton, op.22, 1934, rev. 1957–61, 1974–5; Poème, 1937; 2 fugues, op.32, 1951; Etudes sur les densités et les volumes, op.39a, 1956; Premier fragment symphonique, op.23, 2nd version, 2 pf 4 hands, 1958: see 4 Pf and Orch; Dialogue à deux, op.41, 1958–73; Dialogue, 2 pf 8 hands, 1959; Composition II, op.46b, 1960: see other works; Etude sur les mouvements rotatoires, op.45a, 1961; Intégrations, op.49, 1962; Chant funèbre; Epigrammes; 1 pièce

other works

Chant douloureux et étude, op.6, vn (in 1/3-, 1/4-, 1/6- and ⅛-tones), pf, 1918; Méditation sur deux thèmes de la journée de l’existence, op.7, vc (in 1/3-, 1/4- and 1/6-tones), pf, 1918–19, rev. 1976; Chant nocturne, op.11 bis, vn (in 1/4-, 1/6- and ⅛-tones), 2 pf (in 1/4-tones), 1927; Prélude et fugue, op.30, 3 pf (in 1/6-tones), 1945: Arc-en-ciel, op.37, 6 pf (in 1/12-tones), 1956

2 pièces, op.44, Carrillo micro-interval pf, 1958: Poème (in 1/6-tones), Etude (in 1/12-tones); Etude ultrachromatique, op.42, Fokker org (in 1/31-octaves), 1959; Composition I, op.46a, 3 pf (in 1/6-tones), 1961; Etude sur les mouvements rotatoires, op.45b, 3 pf (in 1/6-tones), orch, 1961: see quarter-tone (2 pf, orch); Prélude et étude, op.48, Carillo 1/3-tone pf, 1966; Dialogue à trois, 3 pf (in 1/6-tones), 1973–4; 2 méditations, 3 pf (in 1/6-tones)

WRITINGS

‘Raskreposhcheniye ritma’ [The liberation of rhythm], Nakanune [Berlin] (18 and 25 March 1923); repr. in MAK (1992), no.2, pp.139–41

‘Raskreposhcheniye zvuka’ [The liberation of sound], Nakanune [Berlin] (7 Jan 1923); repr. in MAK (1992), no.2, pp.137–9

‘La musique à quarts de ton’, ReM, v/11 (1923–4), 231–4

‘Quelques considérations sur l’emploi des quarts de ton en musique’, Monde musical, xxxviii (1927), 227–30

‘Musique et pansonorité’, ReM, ix/1–3 (1927–8), 143–52; repr. in Premier cahier Ivan Wyschnegradsky, ed. Association Ivan Wyschnegradsky (Paris, 1985), 41–52

‘Quartertonal Music: its Possibilities and Organic Sources’, Pro-Musica Quarterly, vi (1927–8), 19–31

Manuel d’harmonie à quarts de ton (Paris, 1932, 1980/R)

‘Etude sur l’harmonie par quartes superposées’, Le ménestrel (12, 19 April 1935)

‘L’énigme de la musique moderne I: du son à la pansonorité’, Revue d’ésthetique, ii (1949), 67–85

‘L’énigme de la musique moderne II: la pansonorité’, Revue d’esthétique (1949), April–June, 181–205

‘Préface à un traité d’harmonie par quartes superposées’, Polyphonie, iii (1949), 56–62

‘La révolution ultrachromatique’, Vie musicale, ii/3 (1952), 8–9

‘Les pianos de J. Carillo’, Guide du concert, no.218 (1959), 616–17

‘Continu et discontinu en musique’, Encyclopédie des musiques sacrées, iii, ed. J. Portes (Paris, 1970), 191–4

‘L’ultrachromatisme et les espaces non octaviants’, ReM, nos.290–91 (1972), 73–130

Premier cahier Ivan Wyschnegradsky, ed. Association Ivan Wyschnegradsky (Paris, 1985) [collected writings]

‘Quelques considérations générales à propos du quatuor à cordes opus 13’, Compositions pour quatuor et trio à cordes d’Ivan Wyschnegradsky (1990) [disc notes]

‘Perepiska Ivan Vïshnegradsky – Georgy Rimsky-Korsakov’, MAK (1992), no.2, pp.142–50

La loi de la pansonorité (1924–1925) (Geneva, 1996)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

B. De Schloezer: ‘Réflexions sur la musique en quarts de ton’, ReM, vi/6–8 (1924–5), 71–4

L.B. Campbell: ‘Wischnegradsky’s Quarter-Toned Piano’, The Musician, xlii (1937), 88, 93 only

S. Moreux: ‘Ivan Wyschnegradsky ou le musicien ami des grands nombres’, Revue française de l’élite (25 Feb 1948)

J. Vysloužil: ‘Ivan Vyšněgradskij: kapitola ze zapomenutých hudebních avantgard’ [Vïshnegradsky: a chapter from the musical avant garde], OM, i (1969), 36–40

ReM, nos.290–91 (1972) [Obukhov/Vïshnegradsky issue, ed. C. Ballif]

L. Gayden: Ivan Wyschnegradsky (Frankfurt, 1973)

G. Eberle: ‘Ivan Wyschnegradsky, ein russischer Pionier der Ultrachromatik’, NZM, Jg.135 (1974), 549–55

C. Ballif: ‘Ivan Wyschnegradsky: harmonie du soir’, Premier cahier Ivan Wyschnegradsky, ed. Association Ivan Wyschnegradsky (Paris, 1985), 9–22

P. Leroux: ‘Analyse des Intégrations op.49’, Premier cahier Ivan Wyschnegradsky, ed. Association Ivan Wyschnegradsky (Paris, 1985), 87–101

A. Lischke: ‘Ivan Wyschnegradsky’, Guide de la musique de piano et de clavecin, ed. F.-R. Tranchefort (Paris, 1987), 835–6

G.F. Haas: ‘Arc-en-ciel, op.37, Ivan Wyschnegradskys behutsame Annäherung an das Zwölfteltointervall’, Mikrotöne IV: Salzburg 1991, 79–92

G.F. Haas: ‘Die Verwirklichung einer Utopie: Ultrachromatik und nicht-oktavierende Tonräume’, Harmonie im 20. Jahrhundert (Vienna, 1993), 87–100

B. Barthelmes: Raum und Klang: Das musikalische und theoretische Schaffen Ivan Wyschnegradsky (Hofheim, 1995)

P. Criton: ‘Wyschnegradsky, théoricien et philosophe’, in I. Wyschnegradsky: La loi de la pansonorité (1924–1954) (Geneva, 1996), 9–54 [preface]

R. Brotbeck: Zwischen Differenzierung und Dissolution: Die mikrotonalen Komponisten Julian Carrillo, Harry Partch, Ivan Wyschnegradsky (forthcoming)

PASCALE CRITON

Vishnevskaya, Galina (Pavlovna)

(b Leningrad [now St Petersburg], 25 Oct 1926). Russian soprano. She studied privately with Vera Garina in Leningrad, and made her début in operetta in 1944. In 1952 she joined the Bol'shoy Theatre. A versatile and fascinating artist, she was one of the outstanding Russian singers. Her expressive, rich-hued voice of highly individual timbre, her polished technique and strong dramatic talent allowed her to appear in a wide variety of roles. Her notable array of stage portraits included Tat'yana and Lisa, Kupava (The Snow Maiden) and Marfa, Aida, Violetta, Tosca, Leonore and the solo part in Poulenc’s La voix humaine. She gave the first Bol'shoy performances of Katherine in Shebalin’s Ukroshcheniye stroptivoy (‘The Taming of the Shrew’, 1957), Natasha in War and Peace (1959), Marina in Muradeli’s Oktyabr' (‘October’, 1964) and Sof'ya in Prokofiev’s Semyon Kotko (1970). She first sang at the Metropolitan, as Aida and Butterfly, in 1961, at Covent Garden (Aida) in 1962 and at La Scala (Liù) in 1964. London critics praised her artistry, her warm, liquid tone and excellent legato, and her passionate and intense style, though some found her acting a little exaggerated. She appeared in the film of Shostakovich’s Katerina Izmaylova (1966).

Vishnevskaya often performed songs by Musorgsky, Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich, usually with the cellist Rostropovich, whom she married in 1955, accompanying her on the piano. Shostakovich dedicated his Seven Romances op.127 to her, and Britten intended the soprano part of his War Requiem for her. Although she was prevented by the Soviet authorities from singing in the première, she took part in the subsequent recording conducted by the composer. Britten also composed for her and Rostropovich his Pushkin cycle, The Poet’s Echo. Vishnevskaya has also turned to directing (e.g. Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tsar’s Bride, Washington, DC, 1987). She and Rostropovich left the USSR for political reasons in 1974 and eventually settled in the USA. She has written an autobiography, Galina: a Russian Story (London, 1984; Russ. orig., Moscow, 1991).

I.M. YAMPOL'SKY/R

Visigothic rite.

See Mozarabic chant.

Visitatio sepulchri

(Lat.: ‘visit to the sepulchre’).

The name given by modern scholars and many medieval scribes to the largest single category of medieval Latin church plays. The Visitatio takes as its nucleus the dialogue known as the Quem queritis (originally an introit trope from the Easter Mass), but is distinguished from it in a number of ways: first, by being placed at the end of Easter Matins, after the third responsory (commonly Dum transisset Sabbatum); second, by numerous accretions of liturgical chants, antiphons in particular, and laments of non-liturgical origin; third, by dramatic amplification as an acted representation of the events of the Resurrection story with impersonation and (sometimes) non-liturgical costuming. Some 400 texts of the Visitatio were described, printed or mentioned by Young, who, following earlier scholars, arranged the texts in three categories (his own word ‘stages’ is better avoided because of its overtones of steady chronological development); over 200 texts are listed by Lipphardt, not all with music.

Young’s categories are as follows: ‘one in which the dialogue is conducted by the Marys and the angel, a second in which are added the apostles, Peter and John, and a third which provides a role for the risen Christ’ (vol.i, p.239). Lipphardt’s categories are similar but, as a music historian, he stressed different aspects. The first category is divided into ‘French type’ (the basic dialogue trope) and ‘Lorraine type’ (‘antiphon-play’, in which the dialogue is transposed to fit musically with antiphons in various tones). An important musical development in this first category is the addition of the sequence Victimae paschali. In the second category the problem again arises of relating the new musical borrowings to the basic material (in an important group of texts from around Passau (south-east Germany) the dialogue and introductory antiphon, Quis revolvet?, are transposed up a 4th to give a tonal unity which accommodates the Victimae paschali and the vernacular Easter hymn Crist ist erstanden). In the third category the scene of the three Marys lamenting as they approach the sepulchre gives an opening for laments varying from the restrained, litany-like setting of Heu, Redemcio Israel (Brunswick, 14th century) to the sweeping and emotive Heu, pius Pastor (Dublin, 14th century). The final heights of this Planctus style are reserved in drama for the Passion plays and for the Ordo Rachelis. The introduction into plays of this third category of a brief scene between the Marys and the merchant from whom they buy their spices gives the opportunity for the use of melodies of a truly secular character (Origny-Ste-Benoîte, 14th century).

The final amplification of the Visitatio sepulchri, which in all the forms discussed retained its central dialogue, the ‘Quem queritis’, transforms it into the Ludus Paschalis.

For further information and bibliography see Medieval drama, §II, 2–3, esp. Young (1933), Rankin (1954), Lipphardt (1960, 1971, 1972 and 1975), Smoldon (1980) and Hiley (1993).

JOHN STEVENS

Viski, János

(b Kolozsvár [now Cluj-Napoca], 10 June 1906; d Budapest, 16 Jan 1961). Hungarian composer. Though trained as a violinist in Kolozsvár, Viski abandoned this career at the age of 19 in order to concentrate on composition. From 1927 to 1932 he attended the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, where he studied composition with Kodály. Until 1940 he then lived and worked in seclusion in Transylvania. During this time he composed his first significant orchestral works, two of which – Szimfónikus szvit (1935) and Enigma (1939) – achieved international success; the latter work, conducted in Europe by Mengelberg, Failoni and Karajan, had a determining influence on Viski’s career. In 1940 he moved to Budapest, where he taught at the city’s conservatory until 1941. He served as director of the Kolozsvár Conservatory, 1941–2, and eventually became professor of composition at the Franz Liszt Academy. Among his students were Szőnyi, Dobszay, Lendvai, Soproni, Károlyi and Eötvös. Until 1955 the principal stylistic influence on Viski’s music was Kodály, particularly as regards the prominence given to melodic invention. This is most evident in the major works composed after the war, such as the Violin Concerto (1947) and the Piano Concerto (1953). From 1955 Viski’s musical vocabulary changed in response, primarily, to the influence of Bartók (see for example the Cello Concerto, 1955, and Az irisórai szarvas (‘The Stag of Irisóra’), 1958), while works from the late 1950s onwards reflect the sudden influx into Hungary of new ideas espoused by the Second Viennese School and later serialist composers. In this last period Viski followed mainly the path taken by Webern. Highly evolved and full of poetic invention, Viski’s works received numerous prizes, including the Gerguss Medal (1941) and the Erkel (1954), and Kossuth (1956) prizes. In 1955 he was created a Merited Artist of the Hungarian People’s Republic.

WORKS

(selective list)

Inst: Szimfónikus szvit, orch, 1935; 2 magyar tánc [2 Hung. Dances], orch, 1938; Enigma, sym. poem, after B. Balassi, orch, 1939; Vn Conc., 1947; Pf Conc., 1953; Vc Conc., 1955; Sírfelirat Anton Webern emlékére [Epitath in Memory of Webern], pf, 1960

Choral: Hozsánna, 1932; Fohászkodás [Prayer] (D. Berzsenyi), male chorus, 1937; Virág és pillangó [The Flower and the Butterfly] (M. Vörösmarty), male vv, 1937; Harsan a kürtszó [The Bugle Resounds] (E. Rossa), children’s, vv, pf, 1951; A bácsika házasodik [Uncle’s Wedding], 2vv (1954); Az ifiú cigánylegény [The Young Gypsy Fellow], 2vv (1954)

Solo vocal: A haldokló [The Dying] (S. Márai), 1945; Aki meghalre [The Dead] (Márai), v, pf, 1945; Tavaszodik [Spring is Coming] (L. Áprily), v, pf, 1950; Március 1951 [March 1951] (Áprily), v, pf, 1951; Az irisórai szarvas [The Stag of Irisóra] (Áprily), Bar, orch, 1958

Principal publishers: Editio Musica, Magyar Kórus, Universal

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Lakatos: ‘Viski János’, Pásztortűz, xxvii (1941)

F. Farkas: ‘Viski János emlékezete’ [In memory of Viski], Magyar zene, i/1–6 (1960–61), 439–40

K. Dobos: Viski János’, Mai magyar zeneszerzök [Contemporary Hungarian composers] (Budapest, 1968)

G. Czigany, ed.: Contemporary Hungarian Composers (Budapest, 1970, rev. 5/1989 by B.A. Varga)

K. Dobos: Viski János élete és munkássága [The life and work of János Viski] (forthcoming)

MELINDA BERLÁSZ

Vismarri [Vismari], Filippo

(b before 1635; d Vienna, ?1706). Italian castrato singer and composer. He began receiving a monthly stipend of 60 guilders as a soprano castrato at the Habsburg court in Vienna on 1 April 1650. However, his association with the court probably dates from the previous year, for in February 1683 the Kapellmeister, Antonio Draghi, upheld his request for a pension by referring to his 34-year period of service. In addition to his salary he received numerous sums from the emperors Ferdinand III and Leopold I and the Dowager Empress Eleonora: in 1655, for example, he was given 150 guilders to send for his sister from Italy so that she could marry the court singer Baldassare Poggioli. Moreover, his monthly salary increased by 15 guilders in 1659 and again in 1671. The increase of 1659 was followed by professional success: in 1660 he sang in Leopold I’s Il sagrificio d’Abramo, and his own Orontea was produced at court. During the 1660s he occasionally acted as a political agent for Count Humbert Černín of Neuhaus. In 1679 he fled from the plague with the entire court; somewhat earlier he must have taken holy orders, for from this date on he is referred to by the title ‘Don’. He became an honorary member of the chapel when he retired in 1683, and the pension that he began to receive then continued to be paid until 1706. His disappearance from court records after this date suggests that he died then.

During his long career Vismarri seems to have enjoyed the high esteem of his colleagues. In 1656 the Kapellmeister, Antonio Bertali, supported his request for financial aid by citing his busy activity and general excellence in the theatre. Wellesz (1950, p.40) liberally praised his Orontea, a setting of the famous libretto by G.A. Cicognini that was probably first set to music by Antonio Cesti (Venice, 1649) and that served as the basis of several other operas. Divided into a prologue and three acts, Vismarri’s work adheres closely to the original libretto. Stately chordal sonatas for strings and continuo by Sances preceding the prologue and each act contrast sharply with the more detailed and idiomatic string writing found in Vismarri’s ritornellos. His gift for characterization is evident from the use of appropriate vocal and instrumental motifs, and his recitatives are distinguished by their concise, dramatic style. The texts and/or music of at least five cantatas in the volume in Vienna (A-Wn) also survive in Roman sources. Because of the mature style of the music it seems unlikely that these pieces date from his youth, before Vismarri entered the emperor’s service; he may have visited Rome during his service in Vienna. The cantatas may reflect the influence of Cesti, who arrived in Vienna in 1666 and, like Vismarri, set at least one poem by the Roman Giovanni Lotti. The 16 cantatas (in A-Wn) include five cantate morali. Most of the cantatas consist of a free intermingling of recitatives, arioso and brief arias, although a few show the clear alternation of recitative and aria typical of the late Baroque cantata. Several arias are miniature da capos, but Vismarri preferred strophic schemes, which he used with great variety and often combined with the refrain principle.

WORKS

L’Orontea, dramma musicale (G.A. Cicognini), Vienna, 1660, A-Wn

Guida disperato (Sentinello), orat, I-Baf

16 cantate e ariette per camera, 1v, bc, A-Wn, facs. of 6 cants. in ICSC, xvi (1985); some also I-MOe, Rvat

10 ?sacred works, CZ-KRa

Sonata, 1–2 vn, 1–2 va, va da gamba, trbn, org; Sonata, 1–2 va, va da gamba, trbn, org: KRa

BIBLIOGRAPHY

EitnerQ

KöchelKHM

J. Pekař: ‘Das gräflich Czerninsche Archiv von Neuhaus: zweiter Bericht (1650–1682)’, Archivalien zur neueren Geschichte Österreichs, i/2–3 (Vienna, 1909), 265–89

P. Nettl: ‘Zur Geschichte der kaiserlichen Hofmusikkapelle von 1636–1680’, SMw, xvi (1929), 70–85; xvii (1930), 95–104; xviii (1931), 23–35; xix (1932), 33–40

F. Hadamowsky: ‘Barocktheater am Wiener Kaiserhof, mit einem Spielplan (1625–1740)’, Jb der Gesellschaft für Wiener Theaterforschung 1951–2, 7–117; pubd separately (Vienna, 1955)

H. Knaus: ‘Wiener Hofquartierbücher als biographische Quelle für Musiker des 17. Jahrhunderts’, Anzeiger der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, philosophisch-historische Klasse, cii (1965), 178–206

J. Senhal: ‘Die Musikkapelle des Olmützer Bischofs Karl Liechtenstein-Castelcorn in Kremsier’, KJb, li (1967), 79–123

H. Knaus: Die Musiker im Archivbestand des kaiserlichen Obersthofmeisteramtes (1637–1705) (Vienna, 1967–9)

H. Knaus: ‘Die Musiker in den geheimen kaiserlichen Kammerzahlamtsrechnungsbüchern (1669, 1705–1711)’, Anzeiger der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, philosophisch-historische Klasse, cvi (1969), 14–38

W.C. Holmes: Introduction to A. Cesti: Orontea, WE, xi (1973)

S.C. Anderson: Selected Works from the Seventeenth Century Music Collection of Prince-Bishop Karl Liechtenstein-Kastelcorn: a Study of the Soloistic Use of the Trombone and Modern Editions (diss., U. of Oklahoma, 1977)

L. Bennett: The Italian Cantata in Vienna, c.1700–c.1711 (diss., New York U., 1980)

C. Gianturco: ‘“Cantate Spirituali e Morali”, with a Description of the Papal Sacred Cantata Tradition, 1676–1740’, ML, lxxiii (1992), 1–31

R. Flotzinger, ed.: Geschichte der Musik in Oesterreich, ii (Vienna, 1995)

LAWRENCE E. BENNETT

Vïsotsky, Mikhail Timofeyevich

(b nr Moscow, 1793; d Moscow, 16/28 Dec 1837). Russian composer and guitarist. He was one of the earliest significant exponents of the seven-string guitar. The son of a steward's assistant on the estate of the poet and dramatist M.M. Kheraskov (1784–1807), Vïsotsky received his first lessons on the guitar from S.N. Aksyonov (1773–1853) and thereafter taught himself. Liberated from serfdom in 1813, Vïsotsky moved to Moscow and soon became famous as a performer and a teacher. He was a contemporary of Andrey Sychra (1773–1850), a leading promoter of guitar music, and the teacher of Mikhail Stakhovich (1819–58), author of Istoriya semistrunnoy gitarï (‘History of the seven-string guitar’, 1864). While in Moscow he became acquainted with both John Field and Aleksandr Dubuque. He died of consumption.

Vïsotsky's compositions include about 150 guitar pieces which he wrote to perform himself. The swift scale passages, arpeggios, widely spaced chords and other technical difficulties included in these works indicate Vïsotsky's extraordinary accomplishment as a performer. He also wrote a number of short preludes which are primarily virtuoso showpieces. Just before his death he produced a Muzïkal'nïy al'bom dlya 7-mistrunnoy gitarï (‘Album of music for the seven-string guitar’); published in Moscow in four volumes, it contains many of Vïsotsky's compositions, including various short dance pieces, exercises and several sets of variations on Russian folk tunes. Pieces of this type constitute a large proportion of Vïsotsky's creative work, though he also transcribed for guitar a Bach fugue and several pieces by Mozart, Beethoven, Field and Hummel.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

M. Ivanov: ‘Mikhail Timofeyevich Vïsotsky’, SovM (1948), no.6, pp.59–61

B.L. Vol'man: Gitara v Rossii: ocherk istorii gitarnogo iskusstva (Leningrad, 1961)

G. Koltïpina, ed.: Bibliografiya muzïkal'noy bibliografii (Moscow, 1963)

O.V. Timofeyev: The Golden Age of the Russian Guitar: Repertoire, Performance Practice, and Social Function of Russian Seven-String Guitar Music, 1800–1850 (diss., Duke U., in progress)

GEOFFREY NORRIS

Visse, Dominique

(b Lisieux, 30 Aug 1955). French countertenor. At the age of 13 he became a chorister at the maîtrise of Notre Dame in Paris. Later he studied the organ and flute at the Versailles Conservatoire. Between 1976 and 1978 he was a pupil of Alfred Deller and René Jacobs, and decided to specialize in singing. In 1978 he founded the Ensemble Clément Janequin and joined Les Arts Florissants under William Christie. In 1980 Visse began to study with Jean Laurens, and in 1982 he made his opera début at Tourcoing in L'incoronazione di Poppea; subsequent roles included the title role of Charpentier's Actéon at Edinburgh (1985), Annius in Gluck's La clemenza di Tito at Tourcoing (1987) and at Lausanne (1991), Cupid in Orphée aux enfers at the Paris Opéra (1987), and Delfa in Cavalli's Giasone at Innsbruck (1988). He created Geronimo in Claude Prey's Le rouge et le noir at Aix-en-Provence in 1989, then sang Octavia's Nurse (L'incoronazione di Poppea) at Montpellier. His voice has a distinctive clarity which, with a forceful projection and a lively dramatic sense, lends colour and presence to his stage performances. Besides Poppea Visse has recorded Cavalli's Xerse and Giasone; Charpentier's Actéon, Les arts florissants, David et Jonathas and Le malade imaginaire; Campra's Tancrède; Rameau's Anacréon and Hasse's Cleofide.

NICHOLAS ANDERSON

Vissenaken [Vissenaecken, Vissenaeken], Willem van

(fl Antwerp, 1542–45). South Netherlandish printer. He formed a partnership with Tylman Susato and Hendrik ter Bruggen in order to print music; ter Bruggen acquired a privilege to do so on 22 December 1541. However, the partnership was short-lived. On 12 September 1542 Susato agreed to pay ter Bruggen for his share of the printing materials, and a lawsuit which Vissenaken brought against Susato, unsuccessfully, on 9 April 1544 showed that the association between the three had lasted for less than a year. A volume of motets published in 1542, Quatuor vocum musicae modulationes numero XXVI (RISM 1542⁷), has only Vissenaken’s name on the title-page, though Susato may have been the musical editor: one of his compositions is included in the collection and Susato’s own first publication, a book of chansons, also comprised 26 items. The 1542 motet book is the earliest dated volume printed in the Low Countries using single-impression music type. The type design is quite different from the one Susato used from 1543.

By 1543 Vissenaken was working with Adrien Verbrugghen at Willem Vorsterman’s premises, and in 1545 this house and its contents were bought by Martin Nutius. After Nutius’s death in 1558, and the sale of goods to Symon Cock, the music type reappeared in two editions of Souterliedekens, one published by Symon Cock (1559), the other by Cock’s son-in-law, Claes van der Wouwere (1564).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

GoovaertsH

H.D.L. Vervliet: Sixteenth Century Printing Types of the Low Countries (Amsterdam, 1968)

S. Bain: Music Printing in the Low Countries in the Sixteenth Century (diss., U. of Cambridge, 1974)

A. Rouzet: Dictionnaire des imprimeurs, libraires et éditeurs des XVe et XVIe siècles dans les limites géographiques de la Belgique actuelle (Nieuwkoop, 1975)

K.K. Forney: ‘New Documents on the Life of Tielman Susato, Sixteenth-Century Music Printer and Musician’, RBM, xxxvi–xxxviii (1982–4), 18–52

SUSAN BAIN

Visser-Rowland Associates.

American organ-building firm. The firm was founded in Houston in 1973 by Jan R. Rowland (b Beaumont, TX, 3 June 1944) and Pieter A. Visser (b Amsterdam, 3 Nov 1940). Rowland, a graduate of Lamar University, first worked as an installer for the Wicks firm, then went on to work for the Walcker firm in Germany from 1968 to 1969, and the Berkshire Organ Co. in the USA from 1969 to 1973. Visser was apprenticed to L. Verscheuren in the Netherlands; he went to the USA in 1960, where he worked as an installer for both Wicks and Walcker from 1960 to 1972, and for Berkshire in 1973. Visser-Rowland builds organs primarily with mechanical action, often with electric stop and combination action; their tonal designs lean towards the north European ‘neo-Baroque’ style. The firm has built some organs of substantial size, including those in St Anne’s Catholic Church, Houston (1981), St Luke’s Episcopal Church, San Antonio, Texas (1982) and the First Presbyterian Church, Stamford, Connecticut (1991). For further information see U. Pape, ed.: The Tracker Organ Revival in America (Berlin, c1977).

BARBARA OWEN

Vistamente

(It.: ‘fast’).

See Vite.

Viste.

See Vite.

Vitale, Costantino

(fl 1603–23). Italian printer. He specialized in music printing in Naples from 1603 to 1623, except for a brief period in the service of the Archbishop of Trani in 1617–18. He published secular vocal music by Macedonio di Mutio and Montella (1603), Gesualdo (1603 and 1604), Albano (1616), Camillo Lambardi (1616) and others, instrumental music by Mayone and Trabaci and a number of anthologies and music treatises. From 1607 for two or three years he was in partnership with G.G. Carlino, with whom he published madrigals by Meo and Dattilo Roccia (1608), Rodio’s Regole di musica (1609), and two collections of secular music by Donato Basile and Scialla and one of hymns by Stella (all 1610).

STANLEY BOORMAN

Vitale, Edoardo

(b Naples, 29 Nov 1872; d Rome, 12 Dec 1937). Italian conductor. He studied in Rome at the Accademia di S Cecilia; he took composition under Eugenio Terziani. From 1886 he directed operettas at the Teatro Metastasio in Rome, first as deputy, then as a regular conductor, and from 1893 also teaching harmony at the Accademia di S Cecilia. G. Ricordi urged him to become a full-time conductor, but he taught until 1897. In 1896 he conducted the first La bohème performed in Florence, then undertook a season at the Teatro Argentina in Rome (their first Götterdämmerung, 1897). Now very successful, Vitale was asked to conduct at theatres throughout Italy and in Madrid and Cairo. He deputized for Toscanini at La Scala (1908–10), revived Spontini's La vestale (1908) and conducted the first performance in Italy of Cherubini's Medée (1909). Among the other operas he introduced to Italy were Strauss's Elektra (1904) and Musorgsky's Boris Godunov (1909). From 1910 he was in South America for several seasons, conducting in Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay; he returned for tours in 1920, 1925 and 1926. Between 1913 and 1926 he was also conductor at the Teatro Costanzi, Rome, giving premières of many operas, including Mascagni's Parisina and Zandonai's Francesca da Rimini. Throughout his life he won praise for enlarging the repertory in Italian theatres, both by the production of new operas and by the revival of the classics. In 1897 he married the opera singer Lina Pasini (1872–1959).

MARVIN TARTAK

Vitali.

Italian family of musicians. The two most distinguished members were Giovanni Battista and his son Tomaso Antonio, who are discussed separately below. Another of Giovanni Battista's sons, Antonio (b Modena, 1690; d Modena, 1768), was a noted violinist at the Este court. Tomaso Antonio's sons Fausto (b Modena, 1699; d Modena, 1776), organist at Modena Cathedral from 1720 to 1738 and maestro di cappella at the Este court from 1750 until his death, and Romano, a cellist, were both prominent musicians, like their father and grandfather, at the Este court at Modena.

(2) Tomaso Antonio Vitali

JOHN G. SUESS

Vitali

(1) Giovanni Battista Vitali

(b Bologna, 18 Feb 1632; d Bologna, 12 Oct 1692). Composer, cellist and singer. He is noted for his work in establishing the Baroque sonata, especially the trio sonata. His works appear to have influenced the chamber music of such eminent composers as Corelli, Torelli and Purcell.

1. Life.

Vitali's only known teacher was Cazzati, from 1657 to 1671 maestro di cappella of S Petronio, Bologna, which Vitali joined in 1658 as a cellist (his instrument is sometimes called a violoncino, an early form of ‘violoncello’, and on the title-page of some of his publications , a ‘violone da brazzo’). By 1666 he was a member of the Accademia dei Filaschisi, and he was a founding member of the later Accademia Filarmonica. In 1673 he became maestro di cappella of S Rosario, Bologna, and in 1674 went to the Este court at Modena to become one of two vicemaestri di cappella to Duke Francesco II (the other was Giuseppe Colombi). In 1684 he was promoted to maestro di cappella, but was replaced in 1686 by the opera composer Antonio Gianettini. He then remained a vicemaestro until his death. He also appears to have been a member of the Accademia dei Dissonanti, Modena, and is credited with having introduced music publishing as a profession there.

2. Works.

In his early works, opp.2 and 5, Vitali accepted his teacher's conception of the sonata da chiesa, which was one of flexibility and experimentation applied to a form that had its roots in the monothematic canzona. These characteristics are reflected in the establishment of three basic types of movement in his early sonatas: the fast fugal movement in duple metre; the fast pseudo-contrapuntal movement in triple metre with frequent use of dance rhythms; and the slow homophonic movement in duple metre with affective harmony. His experiments include the linking of movements through harmonic formulae, the application of dance rhythms to all movements, the abbreviation and fragmentation of thematic materials, the use of variation technique and an increased use of functional harmony, particularly through the use of bass patterns. He continued and codified these experiments in his later Sonate da chiesa op.9, which also illustrate his main contribution to the Baroque ensemble sonata: the creation of a more unified style for an entire work through the use of a common contrapuntal foundation for the various movements without losing the individual character of each movement; and the intensive application of the principle of variation to all the movements of a sonata to provide diversity within the general stylistic unity.

The application of the variation principle is particularly notable in Vitali's collections of dances or sonate da camera, which differ from the sonata da chiesa in function rather than in style. The dances in these collections are generally arranged in groups of from two to six by thematic links, identical tonality and similar internal cadences. Each group includes at least one dance in duple metre and one in triple metre. All dances are in the standard binary form, and they gradually show an increasing tendency to modulate at the end of the first section. In the earlier collections, opp.1, 3 and 4, there is an emphasis on Italian dances and a stylistic separation of dances ‘per ballare’ from dances ‘da camera’; the latter are more contrapuntal, use extensive sequential expansion and have more irregular phrase structures. The later collections, opp.8, 11, 12 and 14, contain a progressively greater number of stylized French dances including the ‘borea’ (bourrée) and minuet, which Vitali was one of the first to introduce into the sonata da camera.

In 1689 Vitali published his famous Artifici musicali, a systematic pedagogical presentation of 60 compositions documenting his conception of instrumental counterpoint; it appears to be the earliest collection of its kind in the Baroque period. Through this textbook, which foreshadows Bach's Musicalisches Opfer, Vitali presents the essence of his compositional art through canons, examples of double counterpoint and nine works in the principal contemporary instrumental forms. The works vary in size and scope and are arranged in order of increasing difficulty. The collection also includes a number of unusual pieces, for example a balletto in three different metres simultaneously, a passacaglia which modulates from B to B through the circle of 5ths over some 261 bars and another balletto for two string instruments which has one line written in G and the other in F.

Although Vitali is known mainly for his instrumental music, for which he was most celebrated during his lifetime, he also composed several vocal works, ranging from two published collections – vesper psalms in concerted style, op.6, and hymns for solo voice with instrumental ritornellos, op.10 – to ten cantatas, sacred and secular, and four oratorios, the music of two of which survives; he also wrote introductory sinfonias, which are lost, to two others. The texts of his oratorios are either allegorical or based on the Old Testament. The only musical novelty in them occurs in Il Giono, where Vitali anticipates Handel's choral recitative by having the chorus narrate the story. He wrote several of his secular cantatas for meetings of the Accademia dei Dissonanti in the Este palace in Modena. They were concerned with ethical problems discussed at meetings of the academy or celebrated specific occasions such as the coronation of Maria Beatrice, Francesco II's sister, when her husband became King of England as James II. All Vitali's vocal works adhere to the conventions of the period; his arias belong to three basic types: da capo, binary and strophic, the latter occasionally employ strophic variations.

WORKS

Editions: Instrumentalsätze vom Ende des XVI. bis Ende des XVII. Jahrhunderts, ed. J.W. von Wasielewski (Bonn, 1874, 2/1920) [incl. 1 composition each from opp.1, 2, 3, 5]Musica istrumentale secolo XVII, ed. L. Torchi, AMI, vii (1907/R)G.B. Vitali: Artifici musicali, opus 13 (1689), ed. L. Rood and G.P. Smith, SCMA, xiv (1959)

instrumental

op.

1	Correnti, e balletti da camera, 2 vn, bc (spinet/vle) (Bologna, 1666) [also pubd under title Livre cinquieme du recueil des dances]
2	Sonate, 2 vn, bc (org) (Bologna, 1667)
3	Balletti, correnti alla francese, gagliarde, e brando per ballare, 4 insts (Bologna, 1679)
4	Balletti, correnti, gighe, allemande, e sarabande, vn, vle/spinet, vn 2 ad lib (Bologna, 1668)
5	Sonate, 2–5 insts (Bologna, 1669)
7	Varie partite del passemezo, ciaccona, capricii, e passagalii, 2 vn, vle/spinet (Modena, 1682)
8	Balletti, correnti, e capricci per camera, 2 vn, vle (Modena, 1683)
9	Sonate da chiesa, 2 vn, bc (Venice, 1684)
11	Varie sonate alla francese, e all'itagliana, 6 insts (Modena, 1684); ed. J.R. Dailey: Giovanni Battista Vitali's Opus XI: a Performing Edition for Orchestra (diss., U. of Colorado, 1969)
12	Balli in stile francese, 5 insts (Modena, 1685)
13	Artificii musicali ne quali se contengono canoni in diverse maniere, contrapunti dopii, invention curiose, capritii, e sonate (Modena, 1689)
14	Sonate da camera, 2 vn, vle (Modena, 1692); posthumous collection ed. by (2) Tomaso Antonio Vitali

Partite sopra diverse sonate, vle, vn; Sonate di passagalli e passemezzi, vn, b; MS copies of opp.1–13: all I-MOe

oratorios

Agare (G.B. Mauritio), Feb 1671; music lost, lib (Bologna, 1671)

Il Gefte overo Il zelo imprudente (B.G. Balbi), Bologna, 16 March 1672; music lost, lib (Bologna, 1672)

Il trionfo della fede (L. Tesini), Bologna, SS Accademici Unanimi, 17 March 1672; introductory sinfonia by Vitali, rest by G.P. Colonna and F. Pratichista; music lost, lib (Bologna, 1672)

L'alloro trionfato (T. Stanzani), Bologna, SS Accademici Unanimi, 1672; introductory sinfonia by Vitali, rest by G.P. Colonna and others; music lost, lib (Bologna, 1672)

L'ambitione debellata overo La caduta di Monmuth (G.A. Canal), 5vv, chorus, 4 insts, MOe, lib (Modena, 1686)

Il Giono (G. Rossi), 7vv, chorus, 4 insts, MOe, lib (Modena, 1689)

cantatas

most in I-MOe

Alle palme ai trionfi (‘Per la SS Concettione’), S, B, 2 vn, bc

Cessate o begli ingegni (‘Accademia sopra la problema se il mondo migliori, o peggiori’), S, insts a 5

Chi mi sia non lo so gia

Datevi pace o dotti che dal aquila estense (‘Problema, se l'aquila estense sia piu gloriosa nel promovere l'armi o nel proteggere le lettere’), B, insts a 4

Donde avien ch' tutt'ebro di vera gioia l'universo (‘Per l'Accademia della Coronatione delle Regina d'Inghilterra, Maria Beatrice nata nel 1665 … incoronata Regina d'Inghilterra il 3 Maggio 1685’)

Dunque a Tiberio, B, bc

Govonata d'applausi di Francesco il natale (‘Per la nascita di Francesco II’), S, insts a 4

Nel tartareo profondo (‘Accademia per la SS Annuntiata’), B, insts

Ola, saggi tacete (‘Accademia se le passioni amorose si debbono scoprire all’amico), B, insts

Qual di musiche note armonica magia de soave armonica (‘Accademia, qual ferisce piu la lingua o la spada’), S, insts a 6

other vocal

Salmi concerti, 2–5vv, insts, op.6 (Bologna, 1677)

Hinni sacri per tutto l'anno, 1v, 5 insts, op.10 (Modena, 1684)

Vitali

(2) Tomaso Antonio Vitali

(b Bologna, 7 March 1663; d Modena, 9 May 1745). Composer and violinist, eldest son of (1) Giovanni Battista Vitali. He went to Modena in 1674 with his father, with whom he probably learnt the violin. He began to perform professionally with the Este orchestra in 1675 and later became its leader; he remained on the court pay register until 1742. He had a number of distinguished pupils, including E.F. Dall'Abaco, Senaillé, G.N. Laurenti and L.A. Predieri.

He studied composition with Pacchioni, one of the leading musicians in Modena. He published his first two collections in 1693, a year after seeing through the press his late father's op.14. He appears to have composed only instrumental music, which is similar in style to that of his father and Corelli. This is particularly evident in his consistent employment of binary forms and in his mixture of da chiesa and da camera movements. His last published collection, op.4, is dedicated to Cardinal Ottoboni and the cello part, in being fairly independent of and yet clearly derived from the continuo, appears to be similar to the cello writing in Corelli's op.5. Sonata no.12 is a series of variations based on the well-known folia de spagna, similar to the variations published by Corelli the previous year. Recent research (by Reich among others) provides convincing evidence that the famous Ciacona for violin and continuo, long attributed to Vitali, is not by him, a conclusion supported also by a comparison of it with music definitely by him.

WORKS

op.

1	Sonate, 2 vn, vc, bc (org) (Modena, 1693)
2	Sonate, 2 vn, bc (org) (Modena, 1693)
3	Sonate da camera, 2 vn, vle (Modena, 1695)
4	Concerto di sonate, vn, vc, hpd (Modena, 1701); ed. in SCMA, xii (1954)
One trio sonata in Corona di dodici fiori armonici (Bologna, 1706)
MSS of other inst music in I-Bc, MOe
Brief examination composition for membership of the Accademia Filarmonica of Bologna, 1703, in Baf

BIBLIOGRAPHY

G. Gaspari: La musica in S. Petronio (Bologna, 1870)

L. Perrachio: ‘Dodici sonate di Tomaso Antonio Vitali trovato a Torino’, Il pianoforte, vi (1925), 344–6

E.J. Luin: ‘Antonio Giannettini e la musica a Modena alla fine del secolo XVII’, Atti e memorie della R. Deputazione di storia patria per le provincie modenesi, 7th ser., vii (1931), 145–230

E.J. Luin: Repertorio dei libri musicali di S.A.S. Francesco II d'Este nell'Archivio di stato di Modena (Florence, 1936)

G. Roncaglia: ‘Giuseppe Colombi e la vita musicale modenese durante il regno di Francesco II d'Este’, Atti e memorie dell'Accademia di scienze, lettere ed arti di Modena, 5th ser., x (1952), 31–52

E. Schenk: ‘Osservazioni sulla scuola istrumentale modenese nel Seicento’, ibid., 1–30; Ger. trans., ‘Beobachtung über die Modenesische Instrumentalmusikschule des 17. Jahrhunderts’, SMw, xxvi (1964), 3–29

L.F. Tagliavini: ‘La scuola musicale bolognese’, Musicisti della scuola emiliana, Chigiana, xiii (1956), 9–22

G. Roncaglia: La cappella musicale del duomo di Modena (Florence, 1957)

A. Damerini: ‘La sonata di Giovanni Battista Vitali’, Musicisti lombardi ed emiliani, Chigiana, xv (1958)

J.G. Suess: Giovanni Battista Vitali and the ‘Sonata da chiesa’ (diss., Yale U., 1963), 61–9

J.G. Suess: ‘Observations on the Accademia Filarmonica of Bologna in the Seventeenth Century and the Rise of a Local Tradition of Instrumental Music’, Quadrivium, viii (1967), 51–62

A. Schnoebelen: ‘Performance Practices at San Petronio in the Baroque’, AcM, xli (1969), 37–55

W. Reich: ‘Die Chaconne g-Moll: von Vitali?’, BMw, vii (1965), 149–52

W. Reich: ‘Sein oder nicht sein? Nochmals zur “Chaconne von Vitali”’, Mf, xxiii (1970), 39–41

W. Apel: ‘Studien über die frühe Violinmusik IX: Die italianischen Hauptquellen von 1690 bis 1700’, AMw, xxxviii (1981), 110–41

H. White: ‘Canon in the Baroque Era: some Precedents for the Musical Offering’, Bach Quarterly Journal of the Riemanschneider Bach Institute, xv (1984), 4–15

J.G. Suess: ‘The University of Modena, the ‘Accademia dei Dissonanti, and the Academy of Cantatas of Giovanni Battista Vitali: and Example of Cartesian Rationalism and Music’, IMSCR XIV: Bologna 1987

J.G. Suess: ‘Giovanni Battista Vitali e i suoi Artifici musicali, op.XIII (1689)’, NRMI, xxvii (1993), 623–31

C. Vitali: ‘Giovanni Battista Vitali editore di musica fra realizzazione artistica insuccesso imprenditoriale’, NRMI, xxvii (1993), 359–74

Vitali, Angelo

(b Milan; fl 1664–80). Italian composer and organist. He was a member of the clergy. On 13 June 1664 he was appointed first organist of Udine Cathedral, where he was also a violinist, theorbo player and singer. Documents about Udine clarify that he was from Milan, not Modena, as often claimed. In August 1674 he became a mansionario at Aquileia and served there as magister musices until 1676. In 1680 his opera Tomiri (libretto by A. Medolago) was performed at the Teatro S Cassiano, Venice. His arias, nine of which survive (in I-Vqs, see Dubowy), show the techniques of repetition and extension, and the tonal clarity that were becoming essential features of the da capo aria in the 1670s and 80s. Vitali’s only other surviving work is a motet, Confitebor tibi Domine, for two sopranos, bass, strings and continuo (in GB-Och); it requires considerable vocal agility. He was not the ‘Sig. Angelo Vitale’ of Orvieto to whom Angelo Berardi directed a letter on proportions (printed in Il perché musicale, Bologna, 1693); that musician, a Neapolitan, was maestro di cappella of Orvieto Cathedral from 1669 to 1671 and, according to the cathedral acts, had previously occupied similar positions at Sutri, Terni and Soriano.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

MGG1 (F. Degrada)

G. Vale: ‘La cappella musicale del duomo di Udine’, NA, vii (1930), 87–216

G. Vale: ‘Vita musicale nella chiesa metropolitana di Aquileia (343–1751)’, NA, ix (1932), 201–16

N. Dubowy: Arie und Konzert: zur Entwicklung der Ritornellanlage im 17. und frühen 18. Jahrhundert (Munich, 1991)

LORENZO BIANCONI

Vitali, Bernardino

(fl 1494–1531). Italian printer. He printed a number of volumes in partnership with his brother Matteo, who may have done no more than provide financial support. The most significant music printing that can certainly be assigned to them comprises the treatises of Aaron and Spataro, printed in Venice between 1523 and 1531. By then Bernardino, based in Venice, had also printed in Rome (1507–10) and in Rimini (1521). The printing of Degli Silvestri’s Della origine delli volgari proverbi (1526) is thought to have led directly to the establishment of Venetian censorship. The most important volume associated with Bernardino Vitali is Girolamo Cavazzoni’s Intavolatura (1543), marked with a printer’s device but no name. This has also been ascribed to Bernardus Vercellensis and even to Bernardinus de Vianis. It is now thought likely that it was printed by Vitali, which would make it his last printed work.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

D. Zasso: Introduzione della censura della stampa in Venezia nell’anno 1527 (Venice, 1880)

C. Sartori: ‘Precisazioni bibliografiche sulle opere di Girolamo Cavazzoni’, RMI, xliv (1940), 359–66

STANLEY BOORMAN

Vitali, Filippo

(b Florence, c1599; d ?Florence, after 1 April 1653). Italian composer, singer and priest. By 1618 he was in Rome, where his second book of Musiche for one and two voices was published by Robletti. It is possible that he stayed in Rome until the production of his opera Aretusa; the score was published by L.A. Soldi with a dedication (dated 20 May 1620) by the author to Cardinal Scipione Borghese, nephew of Pope Paul V. The titles and dedications of Vitali’s subsequent publications suggest that he was back in Florence in 1621. It is not known why he returned to Rome in early 1631, but on 2 February he took part in a ceremony at S Agnese as part of Cardinal Antonio Barberini’s retinue. As a member of Cardinal Barberini’s household, he annually directed festival music at S Agnese, S Agata and SS Trinità dei Pellegrini. On 10 June 1631 he entered the papal chapel as a supernumerary tenor, by order of Pope Urban VIII (who was a member of the Barberini family). Vitali was granted half pay on 26 May 1632 and the full salary that went with his post on 10 December 1634. He spent a month in Florence between April and May 1642. On 4 October 1645, he announced to his companions in the papal chapel that he had obtained permission from the Pope to retire to Florence with a benefice and a pension. From 21 September 1648 to 17 December 1649 he was maestro di cappella of S Maria Maggiore, Bergamo.

Vitali’s collection of Hymni for Vespers (Rome, 1636) does not seem to have been very successful in the papal chapel, even though the settings use the new reformed texts as authorized by the commission set up by Urban VIII to correct the Roman breviary. He was the last composer to follow Palestrina’s example in hymn writing: after a brief intonation in plainchant, the first strophe ends with polyphony and the following strophes alternate between plainchant and polyphony. However, while written in the stile antico, these 34 hymns without continuo do make some concessions to the new musical language. The solo and ensemble songs in his collections of secular music sometimes foreshadow the more highly developed aria and cantata found in Italy in the late 17th century, though some of the writing is rather stiff and pedestrian. The most interesting pieces on the whole are the strophic variations, including five based on the romanesca in the second book of the Musiche (1618). Concerto has a title-page very similar to that of Monteverdi’s seventh book of madrigals (1619). This may have been the publisher’s doing – Bartolomeo Magni published both collections – but there are one or two similarities in the contents, for example Vitali included a Lettera amorosa.

Aretusa was the first secular opera staged in Rome. In the important preface (in which he named the singers who performed the work) Vitali acknowledged his debt to the operas of Peri and Caccini. He also explained that the work was composed, copied and rehearsed in only 44 days (26 December 1619–8 February 1620). The haste is apparent in the quality of the writing and in the repetition of certain sections: one of the four ritornellos is used three times, and of the 13 choruses, one is used three times and two others twice. In the intermedi for Jacopo Cicognini’s La finta mora musical interest is centred on vocal ensembles rather than on solos (as in Aretusa), and the continuo lines show greater onward drive and rhythmic interest.

WORKS

stage

all published shortly after first production

Aretusa, favola in musica, Rome, residence of Monsignore Corsini, 1620

Intermedi … fatti per la commedia [J. Cicognini: La finta mora] degl’ Accademici inconstantini, Florence, 1623

Cocchiata [= serenata] delli Accademici rugginosi, Florence, 20 Aug 1628

sacred

Sacrae cantiones, 6vv, bc (org), liber primus (Venice, 1625)

Motetti, 2–5vv, bc (Rome, 1631)

Hymni, 4vv, Urbani VIII Pont. Max. iussu editu in musicos modos ad templorum usum digesti (Rome, 1636); ed. in Pruett; Ave maris stella also in I-Rvat

Psalmi ad Vesperas, 5vv, bc (org) ad lib (Rome, 1641)

Laudate pueri, 2vv, 3 vn, bn, violetto, org, D-Bsb

Responsori, 4vv, I-Pca

Salve me Jesu, 1v, 2 vn, bn, bc, D-Bsb

secular

Il primo libro di madrigali, 5vv (Venice, 1616²¹)

Musiche, 2–3, 6vv, libro primo (Florence, 1617²⁰)

Musiche, 1–2vv, bc, libro secondo (Rome, 1618); 3 pieces ed. K. Jeppesen, La flora (Copenhagen, 1949), ii, 13; iii, 14, 86

Musiche, 1–3vv, hpd, libro terzo (Rome, 1620)

Arie, 1–3vv, chit, gui, other insts, libro quarto (Venice, 1622)

Il secondo libro de madrigali, 5vv (Florence, 1623)

Varie musiche, 1–3, 5vv, libro quinto (Venice, 1625)

Concerto … madrigali et altri generi di canti, 1–6vv, libro primo (Venice, 1629)

Il terzo libro di madrigali, 5vv (Venice, 1629¹⁰)

Arie, 1–3vv (Orvieto, 1632)

Arie, 3vv (Rome, 1635)

Arie, 3vv (Rome, 1639)

Musiche, 3vv, libro quinto (Florence, 1647)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

SolertiMBD

A. Ademollo: I teatri di Roma nel secolo decimosettimo (Rome, 1888/R)

A. Solerti: Le origini del melodramma (Turin, 1903/R), 90

E. Celani: ‘I cantori della Cappella Pontificia nei secoli XVI–XVIII’, RMI, xiv (1907), 83–104, 752–90; xvi (1909), 55–112

J.W. Pruett: The Works of Filippo Vitali (diss., U. of North Carolina, 1962) [includes edn of Hymni]

W. Brüning: Filipo fiorentino, 1599–1654: seine 5 stimmigen Mottetten (Rome, 1965)

D.S. Butchart: The Madrigal in Florence, 1560–1630 (diss., U. of Oxford, 1979)

S. Franchi: ‘Osservazioni sulla scenografia dei melodrammi romani nella metà del seicento’, Musica e immagine: tra iconografia e mondo dell’opera: studia in onore di Massimo Bogianckino, ed. B. Brumana and G. Ciliberti (Florence, 1993), 151–76

JAMES W. PRUETT/JEAN LIONNET

Vitásek [Wittaschek, Wittasek], Jan (Matyáš Nepomuk) August [Johann Matthias]

(b Hořín, nr Mělník, 22 Feb 1770; d Prague, 7 Dec 1839). Czech composer and teacher. His dates, which have been the subject of some confusion, were satisfactorily established by Marie Tarantová from a biographical outline of the composer’s life found in the papers of his friend the composer Jan Theobald Held (1770–1851), now in the Literary Archive of the National Museum, Prague.

Vitásek received his first musical training from his father, the organist and choirmaster in Hořín. Later he studied in Prague with F.X. Dušek and J.A. Kozeluch; his early career was spent in the service of the Lobkowitz and Nostitz families. Through the Dušeks he came to know Mozart, whom he greatly admired and whose influence is evident in his music; he was himself considered an outstanding interpreter of Mozart’s works. He was also friendly with Mozart’s biographer F.X. Niemetschek, and with the lexicographer B.J. Dlabač.

In 1814 he succeeded Kozeluch as choirmaster of Prague Cathedral, the highest musical office in Bohemia. He held this post until his death, refusing the post of choirmaster at the Stephansdom, Vienna, in 1824. In 1826 he was a founder of the Society for the Promotion of Church Music in Bohemia, and he was the first director of the society’s organ school (1830–39). His pupils included Robert Führer and Josef Krejčí.

As Vitásek spent 25 years in ecclesiastical service, it is hardly surprising that a major part of his output consists of church music, but he also wrote a large amount of secular music, particularly for the piano. Since he disdained opus numbers and dates, it is difficult to arrive at an overall assessment of his output. His keyboard music reflects the Classical technique of his teacher Dušek, especially in its writing for the left hand, and although he shows some leaning towards Romantic character-pieces he is generally considered to be among representatives of 18th-century Classicism. His originality lies in his songwriting. He was one of the few late 18th-century Bohemian composers to make his career in his native country, and his songs, being some of the first 19th-century settings of Czech texts, paved the way for the Romantic and nationalistic revival which culminated in the work of Smetana. As they were composed mainly during the first two decades of the century, it is ironic that only one of them appeared in the five-volume Věnec ze zpěvů vlasteneckých (‘A garland of patriotic songs’, Prague, 1835–9), which was published as a cumulative expression of nationalist feeling.

WORKS

vocal

David oder Die Befreiung Israels (melodrama, 3, J. Münch-Bellinghausen), Prague, Estates, 19 March 1810, excerpt ed. in MAB, xiv (1953)

Sacred choral: 12 masses, incl. Missa solemnis, C (Prague, 1806); 7 Requiem; 2 TeD; numerous hymns, spiritual songs, pastoral hymns, offs, grads

Secular vocal: Sláva vlasti, sláva Češi [Hail, Fatherland, Hail Czechs], chorus (Prague, n.d.); 6 neue Gesänge (Prague, 1808); numerous Czech solo songs, incl. Žalostná píseň na smrt milenky [Lament on the Death of a Sweetheart], 1806, Marš každého Čecha ctného [The March of Every Honourable Czech], c1809, Vzhůru Češi [Upward, Czechs!], 1812, Trápení lásky [The Miseries of Love], 1835, Píseň zimní [Song of Winter], 1835

instrumental

Orch: 3 syms., incl. Sym., C, perf. Vienna, 1808, ed. in Maestri antichi boemi, ii (Prague, 1974); Pf Conc.; Cl Conc.; Basset-hn Conc.; Bn Conc.; Harp Conc.

Chbr: Partita, 2 cl, 2 hn, bn, 1813; Str Qnt; 6 str qts; 6 vn sonatas

Pf: 3 pièces favorites (Vienna, c1810); c40 minuets, in 5 bks (Prague, 1802–12); ländler, other German dances; rondos, polonaises, romances

Org: numerous preludes and fugues

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ČSHS [incl. bibliography and list of works]

M. Tarantová: ‘Český zpěv v životě a dile J.N. Vitáska’ [Czech song in Vitásek’s life and works], Zprávy Bertramky, no.23 (1960), 1

M. Tarantová: ‘Životopis Jana. Nep. Aug. Vitáska z pozůstalosti Doktora Jana Theobalda Helda’ [Vitásek’s biography from the estate of Dr Held], ibid., no.28 (1961), 3

J. Dvořáková: ‘Jan Nepomuk August Vitásek (1770–1839): v ýznamý český hudebník první poloviny 19. století’ [Vitásek: an important Czech musician of the first half of the 19th century], SPFFBU, xxx (1995), 41–9

ADRIENNE SIMPSON

Vite

(Fr.: ‘fast’; old form viste).

A tempo designation found in French music since the time of François Couperin. Qualifications include tres viste (Couperin) and fort vite (Lebègue). The adverbial form vitement also appears, as does its earlier spelling vistement, which probably explains Koch’s comment (Musikalisches Lexikon, 1802) that ‘Vistamente ist eben so viel wie presto’. Rousseau (1768) had translated vite simply as presto, the fastest of his five main degrees of musical movement.

For bibliography see Tempo and expression marks.

DAVID FALLOWS

Vitelli, Vitellozzo.

Italian prelate and musician, colleague of Carlo Borromeo.

Vitet, Ludovic [Louis]

(b Paris, 18 Oct 1802; d Paris, 5 June 1873). French critic. He showed great musical talent as a youth, but chose to study law. At the same period, he also attended the private aesthetics course of Théodore Jouffroy (1821); there he met many of the young men who three years later would form the influential periodical Le globe, founded to analyse and synthesize a wide range of subjects, without the usual mixture of gossip and party politics. Vitet himself was invited to join the journal as music and fine arts critic in November 1824. He quickly entered the debate about the nature of Romanticism that Le globe did much to advance, and reinforced his Romantic reputation with the publication of a trilogy of unstageable ‘scènes historiques’ that mixed historical exposition with theatrical dialogue. He fell deeply in love with Maria Malibran early in 1828, but his passion was not reciprocated, and his disillusionment following her marriage to the Belgian violinist Charles de Bériot, combined with the July Revolution, led to his abandonment of both journalism and (but for a brief foray many years later into the theory of neumes) writing on music. He turned instead to politics and to the visual arts, acting as General Inspector of Monuments (1830–34), and later writing studies of a wide range of painting, sculpture and architecture, and publishing a successful series of letters during the siege of Paris (1870–71).

Vitet's position as one of the most important early French music critics rests on the extended articles that he produced during his first months with Le globe (many of which were reprinted in Fragments et mélanges, i, Paris, 1845, and Etudes sur l'histoire de l'art, iv, Paris, 1864). At a time when the Romantic debate was entirely literary, he moved opera to its centre, calling for a ‘coup d'état musical’ that would put librettists under the control of composers and lead to an operatic style based on musical values different both from existing works and from Romantic spoken drama. He further recognized the institutional factors standing in the way of any change, and sought to reinforce Stendhal's alliance of Romantic art with the politics of the liberal opposition. Announcing that ‘taste in France awaits its 14th of July’, he saw the demands of the audience, educated by critics, teachers and the music itself, as the means for change. And in the years following, many of his predictions for the growth of musical appreciation in France, and for a new repertory at the Opéra, were fulfilled. From 1828, however, his obsession with Malibran led to the abandonment of many of his wider concerns about music's position in society. In their place, however, appeared an equally valuable consideration of Rossini's French operas from a position of technical expertise rarely seen before in the French press, together with a series of reviews submitting each nuance of Malibran's singing and acting to detailed analysis, building up an image of her voice that ranks with the finest vocal criticism of the century.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

P. Sauzet: Hommage à la mémoire de Ludovic Vitet (Lyons, 1874)

F. Colincamp: Louis Vitet, un vrai spiritualiste (Paris, 1874)

M. Parturier, ed.: Lettres de Mérimée à Ludovic Vitet (Paris, 1934)

J.-J. Goblot: La jeune France libérale: le globe et son groupe littéraire, 1824–1830 (Paris, 1995)

B. Walton: ‘The Professional Dilettante: Ludovic Vitet and Le globe’, Reading Critics Reading: French Operatic Criticism from the Revolution to 1848, ed. R. Parker and M.A. Smart (Oxford, forthcoming)

BENJAMIN WALTON

Vithele.

See Fiddle.

Vītoliņš, Jēkabs

(b Sarkaņi, Madona district, 5 Aug 1898; d Riga, 9 Sept 1977). Latvian musicologist. He studied composition with Jāzeps Vītols at the Latvian Conservatory in Riga (1920–24) and later had lessons in conducting with Emil Cooper. In 1929 and 1931 he studied music history at Vienna University and from 1936 to 1937 attended the Sorbonne. He took the Kandidat degree at the Leningrad Conservatory in 1956, and in 1961 was awarded the doctorate for his work on Latvian folk music. He taught at the College of Education in Riga (1922–38) and was a Dramaturg at the Latvian National Opera (1925–9). From 1932 to 1939 he edited the journal Mūzikas apskats. He was appointed senior lecturer at the Latvian Conservatory in 1938, and later became a professor (1941–4, 1946–61). In 1946 he was appointed senior research fellow at the Institute of Ethnography and Folklore in the Latvian Academy of Sciences. His work was concerned principally with Latvian folk music, to which he devoted several books and papers. In 1958 he produced a collection of Latvian work songs, which was the first volume in an anthology of Latvian folk music, Latviešu tautas mūzika; the subsequent four volumes contain traditional wedding songs (1968), children’s songs and funeral songs (1971), traditional calendar songs (1973) and matchmaking songs (1986). In 1961 Vītoliņš was dismissed from his post at the conservatory for publishing a collection of reviews by Jānis Zālītis (1884–1943), a Latvian composer and music critic whose writings were regarded as anti-Soviet.

WRITINGS

Kordirigenta māksla [The art of choral conducting] (Riga, 1928, 2/1947)

with R. Kroders: Latvju skaņu mākslinieku portrejas [Portraits of Latvian musicians] (Riga, 1930)

Mūzikas vēsture [History of music] (Riga, 1932–7)

‘Jāzepa Vītola dzīve’ [The life of Jāzeps Vītols], Jāzeps Vītols, ed. J. Graubiņš (Riga, 1944), 11–150

‘Rainis latviešu mūzikā’ [Rainis and Latvian music], Jāņa Raiņa daiļrade, ed. J. Niedre (Riga, 1954), 285–342

with N. Grinfelds: Latviyskaya SSR [The Latvian SSR] (Moscow, 1954, 2/1957)

with V. Greble and E. Kokare: Cīņas dziesmas [Songs of struggle] (Riga, 1957)

Latviešu tautas mūzika [Latvian folk music] (Riga, 1958–86)

‘Stilevïye osobennosti latïshskoy narodnoy pesni godovogo zemledel'cheskogo tsikla/Les particularités stylistiques de la chanson populaire lette du cycle agricole annuel’, Kongress antropologicheskikh i ėtnograficheskikh nauk VII: Moscow 1964, 226–31; pubd separately in Russ., Eng. (Moscow, 1964)

‘Die lettischen Hirtenlieder’, Deutsches Jb für Volkskunde, xiii (1967), 213–22

Alfrēds Kalniņš (Riga, 1968; Russ. trans., 1980)

Latïshskaya narodnaya pesnya [Latvian folk music] (Moscow, 1969)

Tautas dziesma latviešu mūzikā [Folksong in Latvian music] (Riga, 1970)

‘Muzïkal'naya kul'tura Latvii XVII–XVIII vekov’ [Musical culture in Latvia during the 17th and 18th centuries], Musica antiqua III: Bydgoszcz 1972, 701–25 [summaries in Fr., Pol.]

with L. Krasinska: Latviešu mūzikas vēsture [History of Latvian music], i (Riga, 1972) [only one vol. pubd]

Mūzikas kritika [Music criticism] (Riga, 1973)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

G.B. Bernandt and I.M. Yampol'sky: Kto pisal o muzïke [Writers on music], i (Moscow, 1971)

L. Kārkliņš: ‘Jēkabs Vītoliņš: par mūziku’ [Vītoliņš on music], in J. Vītoliņš: Mūzikas kritika (Riga, 1973), 5–23

S. Stumbre: ‘Atmiņu skices’ [Reminiscences], Latviešu mūzika, x (1973), 146–51

E. Kokare and J. Darbiniece, eds.: Latviešu folklora: žanri, stils (Riga, 1977), 281–6 [list of Vītoliņš’s writings, 1948–74]

JOACHIM BRAUN/ARNOLDS KLOTIŅŠ

Vītols, Jāzeps [Wihtol, Joseph]

(b Valmiera, 26 July 1863; d Lübeck, 24 April 1948). Latvian composer and teacher. Born into a musical family, he studied at the St Petersburg Conservatory with Rimsky-Korsakov. He graduated in 1886 and took over a composition class at the conservatory, where he was a professor from 1901 to 1918. Among his pupils were Prokofiev and Myaskovsky. Vītols was a close friend of Glazunov and Lyadov, and a regular participant at the ‘Belyayev Fridays’, meetings of distinguished Russian composers at the home of the well-known publisher and patron; Belyayev was Vītols’s main publisher at the time, though works were published under the name Joseph Wihtol. From 1897 to 1914 Vītols was music critic of the St Petersburger Zeitung, but after the revolution he moved to Riga and for 25 years he dominated the musical life of independent Latvia. He became director of the Latvian Opera in 1918 (renamed the Latvian National Opera in 1919), and in 1919 he established the Latvian State Conservatory, working there as professor until 1944 and rector during the years 1919–35 and 1937–44. There he taught most of the musicians who formed the Latvian national school, as well as some leading Lithuanian composers. In 1944 he fled before the Soviet army; he ended his life in exile and deep depression.

Vītols was the composer of the first Latvian symphony (1888), string quartet (1899) and piano sonata (1885). His music is academic in the best sense of the term: in style and form it is restrained, clear and confident however attractively coloured. Synthesizing west European and Russian musical influences of the late 19th century, the music also retains elements of Latvian folklore. His ballads and songs for chorus as well as chamber and piano pieces have attracted particular interest.

WORKS

(selective list)

Orch: Sym. no.1, e, 1888; La fête Lihgo, sym. poem, 1889; Ouverture Dramatique, 1896; 7 chants populaires lettonnes, 1903; Sprīdītis [Tom Thumb], ov., 1908; Dārgakmeņi [Precious Stones], 1924; Rudens dziesma [Song of Autumn], 1928; Latvju lauku serenāde [Latvian Village Serenade], 1935

Chbr: Str Qt no.1, 1885; Esquisse, vc, pf, 1894; Romance, vn, pf, 1894; Str Qt no.2, 1899; Fantaisie sur des chants populaires lettons, vn, pf, 1910; other works

Pf: Sonate, 1885; Variations sur un thème lette, 1891; Valse-caprice, 1897; 10 chants populaires lettonnes, 1901; Viļņu dziesma [Song of Waves], 1909; Carmina, 1921; Sonatina, 1926; c100 other pieces

c100 choral songs a cappella, incl. Gaismas pils [The Castle of Light] (Auseklis), 1899; Karalmeita [The King’s Daughter] (J. Rainis), 1903; Dūkņu sils [The Haunted Thicket] (V. Plūdonis), 1916; Uguns milna [The Burning Brand] (A. Brigadere), 1924; Saules svētki [The Sun’s Revelry] (F. Bārda), 1923; Dāvids Zaula priekšā [David Before Saul] (F. Bārda), 1928

c100 solo songs, incl. 7 dziesmas [7 songs], op.31, 1v, pf, 1893–1903; 5 dziesmas [5 songs], op.34, 1v, pf, 1905–06

Incid music

WRITINGS

‘Die Musik der Letten’, Baltische Monatshefte (Riga, 1934), 411–16 [pubd under J. Wihtol]

‘Manas dzīves atmiņas’ [Reminiscences of my life], Latviešu mūzika, i (1958), 241–352; ii (1962), 139–70

Manas dzīves atmiņas (Stockholm, 1963) [autobiography]

V. Muške, ed: Raksti [Writings] (Riga, 1964)

A. Darkevics, ed.: Vospominaniya, stat'i, pis'ma [Reminiscences, articles, letters] (Leningrad, 1969)

O. Grāvītis, ed.: Manas dzīves atmiņas (Riga, 1988)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

E. Dārziņš: ‘Jāzeps Vītols’, Zalktis, v (1908), 57–75; vi (1908), 127–34; vii (1909), 93–125

K. Egle: Komponists Jāzeps Vītols: bibliografija (Riga, 1963)

O. Grāvītis: Yazep Vitol i latïshskaya narodnaya pesnya [Vītols and the Latvian folksong] (Moscow, 1966)

V. Muške: Jāzeps Vītols mūzikas kritiķis [Vītols as a music critic] (Riga, 1974)

L. Pismennaya: Yazep Vitol i latïshskaya khorovaya kul'tura [Vītols and Latvian choral culture] (Leningrad, 1976)

L. Apkalns: ‘Jāzeps Vītols: Portrait eines lettischen Komponisten’, in L. Apkalns: Lettische Musik (Wiesbaden, 1977), 247–65

S. Vēriņa: Jāzeps Vītols: komponists un pedagogs (Riga, 1991)

JOACHIM BRAUN/ARNOLD KLOTIŅŠ

Vitruvius Pollio

(fl 1st century bce). Roman architect. His reputation is based primarily on the treatise De architectura, comprising ten books and dedicated to Emperor Augustus. In the introductory section (i.1.8–9) he asserts that music is essential to the education of the architect, along with drawing, geometry, history, philosophy, medicine, law and astronomy. A musical education enables one to perform accurately such diverse tasks as tightening the cords on projectile military engines, designing acoustical enhancements for theatres, and building water organs and other instruments. These remarks anticipate three passages in De architectura that explicitly address musical subjects.

In his discussion of theatre construction (v.3–9), Vitruvius comments on the importance of acoustical considerations in site selection as well as in the design of the structure itself. The site should neither produce an echo nor deaden the voice, and the ascending rows of seats must not obstruct the sound waves. A brief summary of Aritoxenian harmonic theory provides the background for a discussion of vases designed to resonate to various musical notes. According to Vitruvius, such vases served as acoustical enhancements in many theatres in Greece and Italy, though apparently not in Rome.

In a discussion of the architect's concern with climate (vi.1.5–7) Vitruvius draws an analogy between geographical latitude and a musical scale. Understanding that Rome would have been Vitruvius's point of reference, the reader is to imagine a circular plane figure defined by the horizon. Perpendicular to this is a triangle whose three defining points are due north, due south and the celestial north pole. This triangle represents the outline of a string instrument called the sambukē (see Sambuca), though with the strings stretching vertically. The shorter strings, to the south, explain the supposed higher-pitched voices of peoples from the tropical regions, while the longer strings correspond to the deeper voices of northern peoples.

The last book of De architectura is devoted to the construction of various machines; it includes a detailed description (x.8) of the parts and operation of the water organ (see Hydraulis).

DENISE DAVIDSON GREAVES

Vitry, Philippe de [Vitriaco, Vittriaco]

(b ?Champagne, 31 Oct 1291; d 9 June 1361). French composer, theorist and bishop.

1. Life, position, reputation; literary works.

MARGARET BENT, ANDREW WATHEY

1. Life, position, reputation; literary works.

The early career of Philippe de Vitry remains obscure: he is often styled ‘magister’, but there is no direct evidence either that he studied at the University of Paris (though some contact with its members seems likely) or that he held the degree of magister artium (he is called ‘master of music’ in F-Pn lat.7378A). Vitry is first documented in 1321, when he was presented to a canonry with the expectation of a prebend at Cambrai; in the event no vacancy occurred and Vitry dropped his claim to this position between 1327 and 1332. He may, however, already have been a canon of the collegiate church of Notre Dame in Clermont-en-Beauvais, the family church of the counts of Clermont; he certainly held this position by August 1322, probably acquiring it through the patronage of Louis de Bourbon, Count of Clermont, with whom he was closely linked, as clerk, administrator and diplomat, over the next 20 years. A connection with Louis de Bourbon may originate before 1320, providing perhaps the context for any role that Vitry may have taken in the compilation of the interpolated Roman de Fauvel (Watney, 1995; Fauvel Studies, 1998).

Vitry served as Louis’s representative at the papal curia in Avignon in 1327, as a witness to several of his charters, and as the principal clerical executor of his will in 1342 (Watney, 1995). After Louis was created Duke of Bourbon in 1327, Vitry also acted as his representative in the French royal chancery, holding the title of royal notaire by 1328. Until shortly before the duke’s death in 1342, however, Vitry was not especially active in royal service and despite receiving a fee from the French king, Philippe VI, he was concerned almost exclusively with the duke’s own business (though it is likely that he worked mainly in Paris and enjoyed good access to the royal court). From 1340, however, he held senior positions in the royal administration, as maître in the Requêtes du Palais (a specialized jurisdiction within the Parlement of Paris), and from 1344 in the Requêtes de l’Hôtel (which tried legal cases within the royal household). Vitry was present with the army led by Philippe VI’s eldest son, Jean, Duke of Normandy, at the siege of Aiguillon from April to August 1346 and, shortly after Jean was crowned king in 1350, acted as his representative at Avignon. With royal backing, Vitry was appointed Bishop of Meaux on 4 January 1351, holding this post until his death. This was the last of numerous ecclesiastical preferments that Vitry received, of which several were apparently the result of Bourbon patronage. In addition to his first canonry at Clermont, which he held at least until he became Bishop of Meaux, his most important appointments were to cathedral canonries at Verdun (by 1327) and Soissons (by 1332), and to the archdeaconry of Brie in the diocese of Soissons (1333). He also held canonries in the cathedrals of Beauvais and Paris, and in collegiate churches at Saint Omer, Saint Quentin, Amiens, Vertus (St Jean) and Paris (St Merry); in addition, he was nominated, apparently without result, to expectative benefices at Aire, Cambrai (St Géry) and Châlons-sur-Marne.

The vigorous role in French politics played by Louis de Clermont made its mark on Vitry’s own career and on his literary and musical output. Louis’s presence in the royal and princely circles in which the interpolated Roman de Fauvel (F-Pn fr.146) was created may provide a route whereby motets by Vitry were included in this collection. Similarly, the lifelong interest taken by Louis in the French kings’ crusading plans provides a context for Vitry’s motet O canenda/Rex quem/Rex regum, praising the crusade leader Robert, King of Sicily and Jerusalem (d 1343). It more directly underlies Vitry’s most substantial literary work, the 1148-line verse allegory Le chapel des trois fleurs de lis, written in 1335 and incorporating passages translated from Vegetius’s De re militari, in support of the crusade in general, and more particularly of a cancelled expedition to Anatolia and the Holy Land under the leadership of Louis, Duke of Bourbon. A 32-line verse pastoral by Vitry, Le dit du franc Gontier, was widely circulated in the 15th century and provoked responses from Pierre d’Ailly (1351–1420) and an elaborate parody in François Villon’s Contredit (1461). A satirical ballade without music, De terre en grec Gaulle appellee (?1337–8), and Vitry’s part (the sentencia judiciis) of a jeu-parti, Ulixea fulgens facundia, written with Jean de Savoie (d 1353) and Jean de le Mote, survive in an important 15th-century literary collection (F-Pn lat.3343) that also includes the triplum text of Vitry’s motet for Pope Clement VI (see below).

Vitry’s involvements in Anglo-French relations are similarly reflected in his works, and were probably also the product of Bourbon and royal patronage. He possibly accompanied the duke to London in March 1331, and in the following month he was present at Pont-Sainte-Maxence when Edward III did homage to Philippe VI for Gascony and Ponthieu. Comment on England in his poetic output, however, almost certainly dates from after the outbreak of hostilities with England in 1337. The triplum of Phi millies/O Creator/Iacet granum/Quam sufflabit, for which no music survives, calls for an end to English perfidy (‘et cessabit horum perfidis, nec plus erit hoc nomen: Anglia’) and the salvation of the French nation. The ballade De terre en grec Gaulle appellee styles England ‘de Dieu maudite’. Vitry may also be the author of an episode describing the treachery of Edward I in 1301 that he copied into his copy of Guillaume de Nangis’s Chronicon; in the same manuscript Vitry commented on the danger posed to Paris by the English in 1346 (Watney, 1992, 1998).

It was perhaps through Louis that Vitry first forged his contacts with the papal curia. Vitry was in Avignon in 1327, ?1334, 1342, 1344 and 1349–50, and enjoyed the particular support of Pierre Roger, Archbishop of Rouen, elected Pope Clement VI in 1342, and of Cardinal Guy de Boulogne. His motet Petre clemens/Lugentium siccentur/Non est inventus, written at Christmas 1342 for the visit early in 1343 of the Roman ambassadors to Avignon, supports Clement VI in his dispute with the Holy Roman Emperor over the proper seat of the papacy (Avignon versus Rome) (Watney, 1993). Alongside Paris, the papal court at Avignon emerges as a major focal point in Vitry’s network of political and intellectual contacts. It was probably there, perhaps in the 1320s, that Vitry first encountered Petrarch. He may have been at Avignon during the conference on calendar reform to which Johannes de Muris and Firmin de Beauval were summoned by Clement in 1344. Annotations by Vitry in one of his own books reveal some astronomical knowledge (specifically of Abu Ma‘shar’s De conjunctionibus); it is likely that he contributed to the series of prognostications made for the curia later that year by three of his associates (the above-named Muris and Beauval, and Gersonides) on the great conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter due to occur in 1345 (Watney, 1997).

Vitry was a leading intellectual figure and from about 1340 onwards he attracted the praise of several contemporaries. Two letters from Petrarch to Vitry survive, from 1350 and 1351; Petrarch called him ‘litteratissimus homo’ and ‘the only true poet among the French’, and also made Vitry (personified as ‘Gallus’) his co-respondent in a debate between music and poetry in the fourth eclogue of the Bucolicum carmen (?1344). On the strength of this relationship, Vitry acquired some fame among early Italian humanists, and his posthumous reputation among such scholars may be one factor in the literary circulation of his motet poetry (see below): writing in 1394, Francesco Piendibeni da Montepulciano, chancellor of Perugia, called Vitry a ‘most famous musician and philosopher, well known to Petrarch’, and for Donato degli Albanzani he was ‘in musica summus artifex’. Petrarch recorded Vitry’s death, along with very few other personal losses, on the front flyleaf of his own copy of Virgil, now in Milan.

No other 14th-century musician appears to have been praised so frequently or from so many quarters. Vitry received tributes from astronomers and mathematicians as well as from literary figures. Such regard by notable authors is unprecedented for a musician, and evidently testifies to verbal and intellectual as well as musical gifts. Although no philosophical, historical or mathematical writings have been identified as his, recent work on his library (Wathey, 1997) and its relations to his motet texts does perhaps provide some of the necessary interface. The Benedictine theologian Pierre Bersuire called him (c1340) ‘a man of excellent intellect, an exceptionally ardent lover of moral philosophy, history and antiquity, and learned in all the mathematical sciences’ (Samaran, 1962). Nicholas Oresme, the celebrated mathematician, theologian and philosopher, dedicated his Algorismus proportionum (after 1351) to Vitry, there likening him to Pythagoras and requesting his approval for its contents. Vitry was the dedicatee of two other works. Johannes de Muris, who also lent Vitry several books, dedicated his Opus quadripartitum numerorum (1343) to him as ‘the one person in the world more estimable than this work’; Gersonides claimed to have written his De numeris harmonicis (1343) in response to a direct request from Vitry, whom he dubbed ‘a leading expert in the science of music’. Nevertheless, individual tributes to his musical and poetic abilities appear to predominate and the testimony of Jean de Fillou de Venette, Prior Provincial of the Carmelite order in France (L’histoire des trois Maries, before 1357, F-Pn fr.12468, ff.142v–143), makes plain Vitry’s fusion of mastery in these two spheres:

Maistre Philippe de Vitry,
Qui en son chant est bien mery
Et pour ses diz qui sont moult beaux,
Car il est evesque de Meaux,
Bien a chanté, bien ditté;
Qui sires est de tel citté
Par ma foy bien l’a deservi,
Car de chanter a mieux servi
Et de ditter trestout ensemble
Que nul autre, si com moy semble.

The work of Vitry and his brothers (see below) was praised alongside that of Guillaume de Machaut and Jean de le Mote in the Meditations (c1350) of Gilles li Muisis, Prior of St Martin. In turn, Jean de le Mote, perhaps writing at the same time, placed Vitry among the ‘mondains dieux d’armonie’, and in a related text (1350) Jehan de Savoie, a notaire in the French royal chancery, called him the ‘eminent prince of musicians, outstanding peer to Orpheus, whose name should live for ever’, The anonymous author of the Quatuor principalia (see John of Tewkesbury), who perhaps had first-hand knowledge of the composer and is the authority for two motet attributions, described Vitry as ‘flower and jewel of singers’. The royal chaplain Gaces de la Bugne, in his Roman de deduis (1359–77), wrote that Vitry ‘mieux sceut motetz que nul homme’, while the anonymous author of the Règles de la seconde rhéthorique (between 1411 and 1432) credited Vitry, under the general rubric of poetry as a second rhetoric, with discovering ‘la manière des motès, et des ballades, et des lais et des simples rondeaux’, although little of the extensive poetic and musical production there implied has survived; as regards music, he is credited with inventing ‘les iiij prolacions, les notes rouges et la nouveleté des proportions’. Both Vitry and Machaut are mentioned in texts of two motets along with other contemporary musicians: Apollinis eclipsatur/Zodiacum signis and Musicalis sciencia/Sciencie laudabilis.

A strong case can be made for regarding Vitry as the author of his own Latin motet texts, confirming the judgment of Jean de Fillou (cited above). These texts were copied not only with music, but also enjoyed an independent literary circulation that probably originated in Vitry’s relationship with Petrarch and early Petrarchan scholarship. By the 15th century, Vitry’s motet poetry was widely copied in humanist anthologies (alongside dictaminal treatises, letters and classical works), acquiring special popularity with German students at Italian universities and subsequently in Germany (Watney, 1993). Among the non-liturgical texts set in 14th-century motets, only Vitry’s (however weakly attributed elsewhere) appear to have been circulated in this way. Although the independent grounds for attribution are sometimes not strong, inclusion in this tightly circumscribed group of works may itself offer support for Vitry’s authorship. This largely Petrarchan tradition also preserves the texts of extra voice-parts no longer found in musical sources, pairings of texts that differ from those found in the motets, and, in the case of the motet Petre clemens, a date and occasion for its composition. The dissemination of Vitry’s literary reputation and motet poetry may well have been responsible, particularly in Italy, for the attribution to him of other works, including several writings on music, as well as a commentary on Aristotle’s Libri naturales (I-Rvat Ottob.1521).

Vitry’s activities as a scholar, some of which were pursued in close proximity to (if not within) the University of Paris, have left a small but important literary deposit. He borrowed several books from Johannes de Muris (probably during the 1330s), including Muris’s own Commentum super musicam, Boethius’s De musica and the Didascalion of Hugh of St Cher. He also provided the theologian Pierre de Bersuire with a French commentary on Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and, in addition to Abu-Ma‘shar, there is evidence that he read the Historia hiersolymitana of Albert of Aachen. Three books once possessed by Vitry have survived, containing the Elementarium of Papias Grammaticus (F-RS 1092), a commentary on Aristotle’s Libri naturales (I-Rvat Ottob.1521) and Guillaume de Nangis’s Chronicon (I-Rvat Reg.lat.544). The last of these provides valuable evidence for Vitry’s scholarship and intellectual perspectives, since he annotated most of its 744 pages, recording the date of his own birth against the year 1291 and writing out (as a moralizing aside to a passage in the Chronicon) a hexameter couplet that he used in the motet Tribum que non abhoruit/Quoniam secta latronum/Merito hec patimur (see Wathey, Musica e storia, 1998). Marginal annotations by Vitry, reflecting a deep concern with legal questions and dating from his period as bishop, are also found in one of the cartularies of the cathedral chapter at Meaux (MS 63).

2. Music theory.

Vitry’s earliest reputation in modern scholarship was as a theorist, the author of the treatise Ars nova. Sanders (Grove6; after CSM, viii, 1964) reported that only the last ten of the 24 chapters are original, on the grounds that the first 14 come from a different work or section of the work, and that they in any case represent Vitry’s teaching as formulated by his disciples. Of these ten, the last five chapters occur only in full in I-Rvat Barberini 307, and in much abbreviated form in F-Pn lat.14741; the whole is greatly condensed in Pn lat.7378A (both I-Rvat 307 and F-Pn 7378A bear ascriptions to Vitry in their explicits; see Fuller). Sarah Fuller took this further with arguments that have won general acceptance: while its teaching may be associated with Vitry and with the innovations of his compositions, its connection with him is so tenuous that he can no longer be regarded as the ‘author’ of a stably transmitted text. The body of theory survives in several different related versions, often with different citations of named music examples. Some earlier arguments for Vitry’s authorship treated such citations of motet titles in ‘Vitry’s’ Ars nova as grounds for their attribution to him; however, many of the cited motets do not survive. The treatise has been dated about 1320 (Roesner, 31; or up to five years before or after, and to other dates in the early 1320s by Fuller and Michels), on grounds of the state of development of its notational theory and in relation to other datable treatises from the 1320s, notably that of Jacobus of Liège. It reflects a notational stage comparable to that found in the interpolated Fauvel manuscript, namely, that values shorter than the breve are assumed to be adequately notated as stemless semibreves to be decoded in conformity with standard groupings, though their values are clarified in the treatise by stems. None of the motets in Fauvel uses arrangements other than these that would have required stems, nor do they use minim rests or indeed distinguish minim and semibreve rests. Two of the motets assigned to Vitry by Leech-Wilkinson, however, and dated by him 1316/1317 (Per grama and Flos/Celsa) go beyond Fauvel and Ars nova in both these respects, as do their passages of nearly complete isorhythm in upper parts.

Surviving motets mentioned in the various versions of the text have invited attribution to Vitry on grounds of his supposed authorship of Ars nova, some because they are mentioned in one or more versions of the treatise: Orbis orbatus/Vos pastores, Firmissime/Adesto, Colla/Bona condit, Douce playsance/Garison (in chap.XVII, on modus and tempus changes); Douce/Garison (in chap.XVIII, on modus and tempus signs); and Douce/Garison; Garrit/In nova; Tuba/In arboris (chap.XIX, on red notes, where many other motets are named in the various versions of the treatise, only three of which are clearly identifiable with surviving compositions). All the last three have at some time been assigned to Vitry (Garrit/In nova is in Fauvel), and constitute the earliest known motets using coloration in the tenor to effect changes of tempus and modus. Vos quid/Gratissima, attributed to Vitry in the Quatuor principalia, is cited in F-Pn lat.14741, which uniquely supplies examples for the section of Ars nova (‘Chapters 20–24’) dealing with tempus and prolation. The attributions of some of these motets to Vitry are somewhat weakened by the loosening of Vitry’s connection with the various versions of the treatise, but there is in any case no significant tradition of self-citation in treatises before Tinctoris.

The chief notational innovations associated with Vitry are all present to some degree in Ars nova: values shorter than the semibreve and the use of red notes. The author of Les règles de la seconde rhéthorique attributed to Vitry the ‘quatre prolacions’ and the invention of red notes; the Quatuor principalia states that the minim was invented ‘in Navarina’ and was approved and used by Vitry. The setting out of the combinations of modus and tempus and the assignment of standard values to notes below the semibreve seems to qualify as the prolations, but the hierarchy is less completely systematized in the Ars nova writings than in fully developed Ars nova theory. The various treatises that make up the complex of Ars nova give several different meanings for red notes and are the first to do so; one could say that the grounds for assigning this body of theory to Vitry on the testimony of the seconde rhéthorique are no worse than the grounds for other assignations to him.

Of the wide range of meanings given for red notes, many are not documented in any surviving composition, or are apparently different from surviving practical uses; some of them are cited as occurring in works that do not survive. According to Ars nova, red notes can change combinations of modus and tempus from perfect to imperfect or vice versa. In Tuba/In arboris red notes effect modus change only, and effect parallel variation of tempus and modus in Douce/Garison. They can also be agents of syncopation (though no known uses are so early). A corrupt sentence seems to refer to the distinguishing of notes deviating from the chant by red notation, but the meaning may not be as clear as Sanders suggested (Grove6). Red can signal imperfection of a long before another, or non-alteration of a second breve (Garrit/In nova); or perfection of a preceding long or breve (Tuba/In arboris). Red notes can also cause upward octave transposition of a cantus firmus; two motets are cited for this usage but, as in some other examples, neither survives, nor is any example known.

3. Musical works

(i) Motets.

Apart from the special case of Machaut, most 14th-century music survives anonymously. Only two works are attributed in any musical source to Vitry. One of these (Impudenter circuivi/Virtutibus) was in F-Sm 222 (burned in 1871), the other (O canenda/Rex quem) is in a fragment (CH-Fcu Z 260) whose authority may be somewhat undermined in that its other piece is misattributed to Machaut. In Vitry we encounter a well-known public figure of formidable learning and authority whose general culture and musical composition are attested in a wide range of extra-musical sources, encouraging the enterprise of identifying his music among anonymously transmitted pieces. Vitry’s stature not only as a theorist but as a composer was first revived by Besseler, the first to attribute (eight) anonymous motets to him. Schrade extended this list to the 14 (plus one without music) in his edition.

The evidence on which modern scholars have proposed such identifications includes internal evidence from the poetic texts, such as the authorial ‘hec concino Philippus’ of Cum statua/Hugo, and the possibly self-referential ‘concinat Gallus’ in Tribum/Quoniam. The vituperative style that seems to be characteristic of Vitry may be reflected in vocabulary. Citations in treatises and literary sources are also taken as evidence for his authorship: motet titles are cited in three chapters of Ars nova, one on variations between perfect and imperfect modus and tempus, one on the use of red notes. Now that this treatise’s connection to Vitry has been loosened, an earlier notion, itself questionable, that such self-citation guaranteed his authorship of a group of works including some of the Fauvel motets, fades further, while not disqualifying their attribution on other grounds. Douce/Garison is mentioned by Gaces de la Bugne as a work of Vitry’s, naming him also as Bishop of Meaux (thus dating the mention after 1351); Kügle interpreted this reference as indicating an early work. Cum statua/Hugo and Vos/Gratissima are attributed to Vitry in the Quatuor principalia. The manuscript F-Pn lat.3343 contains the ballade De terre en grec Gaulle appellee, and also presents the texts of Phi millies Deus pulcherrime/O Creator, for which no music survives, and the triplum text of Petre clemens/Lugentium with the ascription ‘hunc motetum fecit Philippus de Vitriaco pro papa Clemente’, an ascription now corroborated by Wathey (1993) with a precise dating. Transmission of motet texts without music but with attribution to Vitry has also been taken as evidence of his authorship of these motets. The implication that he wrote his own texts is corroborated by parallel passages in motets, and in books from his library with those passages marked or annotated by him. Tribum/Quoniam has now been more firmly linked with Vitry in this way (Wathey, 1998). It must now be asked whether such separate survival is sufficiently strong evidence for the attribution of other motet texts preserved in this way, since the same group also includes some motets ascribed to him on independent grounds (notably Flos/Celsa but also the still questionable Quid scire/Dantur); some of these are mentioned in treatises. Attributions are also based on style and construction and on links between pieces (see especially Leech-Wilkinson, Kügle, Coplestone-Crow).

Sanders (1975) challenged some of Schrade’s attributions and promoted others. His list of 12 removes Dantur/Quid scire entirely, adds Floret/Florens, retains the text-only Phi millies/O Creator and relegates two of Schrade’s to doubtful status. Roesner’s judgment is the most severe: he found no secure basis for assigning any of the Fauvel motets to Vitry, or indeed for Vitry’s involvement as Chaillou’s music editor for that enterprise, confining the Vitry corpus to five, perhaps seven, reliably ascribed motets all contained in I-IVc 115 (Roesner, 38–42). Sanders proposed that Vitry was Chaillou’s editor, one of four men presumed to have been involved in Fauvel who were all at the same time in the royal chancery. Whatever Chaillou’s role, and whoever the compilers of Fauvel in F-Pn fr.146, they must have had the services of an extraordinarily learned and skilful musician (or musicians), over a wide chronological span, familiar with repertory reaching back to Notre Dame and the Ars Antiqua, as well as the monophonic courtly lyric. The use of plainchant, some of it quite obscure, suggests a deep familiarity such as to permit the use of chant snippets (sometimes satirically and subversively) ‘reflecting the latest developments of the emerging Ars Nova’. He (or they) must have had ‘considerable formal education, well-read in the artes, no ordinary musician – and [been] something of a polymath as well’ (Roesner, 38).

Six Fauvel motets have been ascribed to Vitry at various times: Orbis orbatus/Vos pastores, Aman novi/Heu fortuna, Tribum/Quoniam, Firmissime/Adesto, Garrit gallus/In nova fert and Floret/Florens (the latter is not in Fauvel but an adapted form of its triplum appears as the monophonic Carnalitas, luxuria). Leech-Wilkinson (1982–3) added five more Ivrea motets on grounds of their similarity of facture to motets more firmly attributed to Vitry. Leech-Wilkinson (1995; further discussed in Coplestone-Crow) also proposed an anonymous ‘Master of the Royal Motets’ who he believes wrote four other Fauvel motets, including Orbis orbatus/Vos pastores, previously ascribed to Vitry, while reassigning to Vitry three motets in F-Pn fr.146 which Roesner had eliminated (Garrit/In nova, Tribum/Quoniam, Firmissime/Adesto). Leech-Wilkinson also added two non-Fauvel motets not previously attributed to Vitry: the incomplete Per grama for Pope John XXII (he dated it around the time of his election, 7 August 1316, but a later dating was suggested by Bent, 1998), and Flos/Celsa for St Louis of Toulouse (canonized 7 April 1317; Leech-Wilkinson dated it before his first feast-day, 19 August; Kügle agrees). Bent, however, argues that given the advanced notation and isorhythmic structures of these works, either a later date must be considered for them, or the view that Fauvel was at the cutting edge of new developments would need revision, especially if the ‘Marigny’ motets (those that describe the downfall of the royal chamberlain Enguerran de Marigny: Aman/Heu, Tribum/Quoniam and Garrit/In nova) date from about 1317 rather than earlier (see below). Kügle accepted Flos/Celsa and In virtute/Decens carmen as works of Vitry, and indeed dated their group 1315–20; he linked a further group of motets to these: Almifonis/Rosa, Nazarea que decora/Zolomina and Amer/Durement, but stopped short of attributing them. Leech-Wilkinson (1995) assigned three motets to followers of Vitry: Floret/Florens, Aman/Heu (both supported in Coplestone-Crow) and Nulla/Plange. Floret/Florens is indeed a less well crafted piece, with uncharacteristic strings of repeated notes, but it cannot be ruled out entirely, because of its close connection to the Marigny complex; Bent (1998) has defended Aman/Heu as a work of Vitry because of its intimate connection to and contemporary genesis with Garrit/In nova and Tribum/Quoniam. Leech-Wilkinson, Kügle and Coplestone-Crow have argued for links between groups of pieces based on musical techniques, but with differing emphases with respect to attribution.

Many earlier writers have taken the Fauvel historical motets as documentary and applied dates accordingly. Bent (1998) has argued that the three ‘Marigny’ motets were designed as an interrelated group, and probably by one composer, specifically for the Fauvel project, with clear and double intent for both the Fauvel narrative and the Marigny parable (see, however, above for different views on attributions). She challenged Sanders’s basis for an ‘orderly’ chronology (Sanders, 1975, p.36), restoring Schrade’s attribution to Vitry, on grounds that progress towards periodicity and isorhythm is not the only measure of order, that his de-attribution of Aman/Heu and indeed of Orbis/Vos rests on limited criteria; and that the self-proclaimed tenses that seem to establish the order of composition of the Marigny trio might be seen as narrative fiction, overriding Sanders’s basic argument of literal documentary chronological order. If at least some of these motets served a double narrative purpose, they need not all be so early (because of its present tense, Garrit/In nova has been dated during the lifetime of Philippe IV ‘the Fair’, who died on 29 November 1314).

Criteria that may guide chronology include the extent and nature of isorhythmic organization, and the stage of notational development required by the rhythms of the upper parts. Isorhythm may not be a useful criterion, as advanced techniques are present in motets that are dated early; this is also true for modus variation using coloration. As seen in the works-list, the presumably earlier motets attributed to Vitry are preserved mostly in F-Pn 146, and the presumably later ones, with no overlap, in I-IVc. It is nonetheless difficult to propose datings for the post-Fauvel motets, apart from Petre/Lugentium. Partly on grounds of their citation in the Ars nova complex, and partly on style considerations relating them to Fauvel, Kügle suggested early dates for most of those preserved only in Ivrea, even those requiring more advanced notation for short notes than the Fauvel motets.

In the unquestionably early motets that might be by Vitry, the composer contrived great variety in manipulating modus relationships, alternating groups of twos and threes, sometimes achieved by coloration. Among the motets that juxtapose binary and ternary modus, both within and between voices, are Garrit gallus/In nova, Firmissime/Adesto and Tuba/In arboris. Some (for example the later Colla iugo/Bona condit; O canenda/Rex) have a second or third color repeat in diminution (but never more than one level of reduction); some (Firmissime/Adesto, Vos quid admiramini/Gratissima and Douce/Garison) have ‘pseudo-diminution’ – a second color that gives the impression of diminution but is in fact independently rhythmicized. Others have no diminution, or use a wide range of other repetition strategies, often setting up rich webs of musical and textual reference both within and between motets quite independently of any periodic or isorhythmic repetition.

Impudenter/Virtutibus and Vos quid admiramini/Gratissima both have essential contratenors and a ‘solus tenor’ conflation of tenor and contratenor. The motet surviving without music, O Creator/Phi millies/Iacet granum/Quam sufflabit, must have been in four voices. Other four-voice motets listed are Apta/Flos, with two different contratenors, both inessential (therefore this is not a candidate for solus tenor treatment) and In virtute/Decens carmen with an essential contratenor. Vitry is the first composer associated with the solus tenor apart from an isolated earlier English case in GB-Onc 362, no.2, also (perhaps significantly) on Jacet granum.

The upper parts of these motets, all with different texts, are much more closely integrated musically and textually than in 13th-century motets; neither can be omitted. Some have an introitus before the tenor entry: this applies to both ‘more certain’ Vitry motets (e.g. Impudenter/Virtutibus; Tribum/Quoniam) and less certain works (e.g. O Philippe/O bone dux; Apta/Flos). Sanders has shown Vitry’s skill at setting up periodic phrase structures bounded by rests in the upper parts, overlapping with each other and also overlapping with the structural tenor joins, and sometimes sharing a numerical significance with the motet as a whole. Upper-part isorhythm is most strongly cultivated in diminution or pseudo-diminution sections, or in mid-talea around points of modus change (e.g. in Tuba/In arboris).

All the Fauvel motets (and Cum statua/Hugo) arrange their short notes in normative ways that do not require overriding by stems, even if stems appear in some sources; they also do not use rests shorter than the breve, which would also require notation with stems. This would normally suggest an earlier date than compositions requiring more advanced notation. Douce/Garison, not in Fauvel but mentioned in early treatises, uses semibreve rests, but only to mark the word ‘soupir’. Vos quid admiramini/Gratissima uses minim rests in its hocket section, as does Tuba/In arboris; minim rests are also found in the textless hocket sections of Impudenter/Virtutibus and O canenda/Rex. Conventional rhythms are usually adhered to, but occasional exceptions are made, sometimes to emphasize particular words (for instance in Vos/Gratissima and Colla iugo/Bona condit). Petre/Lugentium uses semibreve and minim rests; its 9/8 rhythms depart considerably from standard trochaic patterns, requiring stems.

The novelty of the advanced motets in Fauvel that may be by Vitry is their integration of a wide range of note values, from maxima down to minim, into a single composition, under tight numerical control. Tenor organization at the modus level accommodates organization of the upper parts also by tempus and prolation. As Sanders concluded (Grove6), ‘Each composition is an integral entity with a specific structural and poetic individuality, retained throughout all its manuscript sources … The variety of uniquely conceived forms in Vitry’s works is as fascinating as the clarity and pregnancy of melodic style of many of his motets are attractive.’

(ii) Songs.

Vitry is credited in the Règles de la seconde rhéthorique with the invention of ballades; but although one text exists, no composed ballades are known to survive, nor have any been attributed to him. There has been a presumption that in order to be new, such works are likely to have been polyphonic, that the resources of the Ars Nova were brought to bear on these forms as antecedents to Machaut’s polyphonic songs. All the ballades in Fauvel are monophonic. However, the most advanced of the large-scale Fauvel ballades and some other monophonic forme-fixe songs are notated in the same way as the Fauvel motets, in stemless semibreves set off where necessary by dots. They can be read in exactly the same formulaic way and produce the same rhythmic language as the motets and as shown in Ars nova and related treatises, with a much wider range of note values than was possible previously. Thus interpreted, they are far different from all their precedents; this is masked by their free transcriptions in Rosenberg and Tischler’s edition. Could these be, or be like, the lost repertory of ballades and other song forms by Vitry? Earp (1983, p.357; 1987) and Page (1998, p.384) have affirmed the distinction between the long, unmeasured grant chant courtois and the measured rhythms of dance-song to which, around 1300, rhythmic innovations earlier applied to the motet were now applied. Page demonstrated both the antecedents of the Fauvel ballades in a series of ballade texts transmitted in GB-Ob Douce 308 and their rhythmic potential, but stopped short of claiming the Fauvel ones for Vitry. Although the loosening of Vitry’s association with the treatise formerly ascribed to him may seem to weaken his association with such notational reforms, there is enough to link him with Ars Nova practices. Given the growing evidence of Vitry’s connection with F-Pn 146, these should be considered serious candidates for his authorship. While not, in this form, polyphonic, they are ‘new’ rhythmically and in extent, and if we accept that Vitry may well have been Chaillou’s music editor, and remove the modern presumption that Vitry’s innovation in this area was necessarily polyphonic, the case for seeing these pieces as candidates – it can be put no higher than that – for the lost ballades of Vitry gains some weight.

WORKS

Editions:The Works of Philippe de Vitry, ed. L. Schrade, PMFC, i (1956) [S]Motets of French Provenance, ed. F.Ll. Harrison, PMFC, v (1968) [H]

Theory edition:Philippi de Vitriaco Ars nova, ed. G. Reaney, A. Gilles and J. Maillard, CSM, viii (1964) [A]

P1 – F-Pn lat.7378A

P2 – F-Pn lat.14741

V – I-Rvat Barberini 307

securely or plausibly attributable works

attributable through contemporary testimony or attribution, or internal evidence



Incipit	Editions	Sources (with music unless otherwise stated)	Theoretical citations	Attributions, Remarks

Cum statua/Hugo/Magister invidie	S 82	F-CA 1328; I-IVc 115; F-Pn n.a.fr.23190 (index) Text only: D-Ju Buder 4o 105	Quatuor principalia	triplum text: ‘hec concino Philippus publice’; Quatuor principalia: ‘in moteto qui vocatur Hugo quem edidit Philippus de Vitriaco’ (CoussemakerS, iv, 268); allusion in Jean de le Mote; literary transmission supports attribution; cited in Ars nova
Douce playsence/Garison/Neuma quinti toni	S 72	F-Pn n.a.fr.23190 (index); I-IVc 115	A, cap.XVII (P1, P2, V); A, cap.XIX (P1, V); Quatuor principalia; anon. treatise in V, ff.21–7, attrib. ‘Theodoricus de Campo’	attrib. in Gaces de la Bugne: Le roman de deduis, ed. Å. Blomqvist (Karlshamn, 1951), 315ff
Petre clemens/Lugentium/Tenor [Non est inventus]	S 97	F-Pn n.a.fr.23190 (index); I-IVc 115 Text only: A-Wn 4195; F-Pn lat.3343		A-Wn 4195: ‘Magister Philipus de Vitrejo in laudem Pape Clementis vj^ti anno suo primo circa natalem domini’; F-Pn lat.3343: ‘Hunc motetum [sic] fecit Philippus de Vitriaco pro papa Clemente’; literary transmission supports attribution
Tribum/Quoniam secta/Merito hec patimur	S 54	B-Br 19606; D-Mbs Clm 29775/10; D-ROu 100 (2vv); F-Pn fr.146; GB-Lbl Add.28550 (kbd arr.)	Wolf anon. 1908, ed. in KJb, xxi (1908), 33–8; Tractatus figurarum	Hexameter (citing Joseph of Exeter) at end of triplum also used by Vitry in annotations to I-Rvat Reg.lat.544 (Wathey, Musica e storia, 1998); linked by poetic subject matter to Garrit and Floret; literary transmission supports attribution
		Text only: Lübeck University 152 (lost)
Vos quid admiramini/ Gratissima/ Contratenor/Gaude gloriosa	S 76 (second ‘solus tenor’ should be disregarded; correct reading is ‘vacat [not ‘vivat’] iste’)	B-Ba 758; F-CA 1328; F-Pn n.a.fr.23190 (index); GB-DRc 20; I-IVc 115; E-E O.II.10, f.224v (tenor only)	A, cap.XX–XXIV (P2 only); Quatuor principalia	Quatuor principalia: ‘in tenore de Gratissima quem idem Philippus edidit’ (cf Cum statua). Tenor copied in Johannes de Muris's notebook on same page as the record of a book loan to Vitry. Cited in Ars nova
Phi millies/O creator/Iacet granum/Quam sufflabit	ed. in Schrade, Commentary, 119; Pognon (1939), 50–52	Music lost Text only: F-Pn lat.3343; F-TOm 520		F-Pn lat.3343: ‘Meldensis episcopus Philippus de Vittriaco’; literary transmission supports attribution
De terre en grec Gaulle appellee (ballade)	ed. in Diekstra	no music		Maistre Philippe de Vitry
		Text: F-Pn lat.3343; US-PHu French 15

attributable through relationship with known works and/or biography, textual content

Aman novi/Heu Fortuna/Heu me, tristis est anima mea	S 48	F-Pn fr.146		Included by Schrade (MQ, 1956) and Besseler (1958); doubtful work in Grove6; rejected by Leech-Wilkinson (1995) and Coplestone-Crow as the work of one of Vitry's followers; Bent (1998) reattributes it to Vitry
Floret/Florens/Neuma	ed. in Sanders (1975), 37	F-CA 1328; F-Pn fr.146; B-Br 19606	J. Boen: Musica	Linked by poetic subject matter to Garrit gallus and Tribum. Accepted by Schrade (MQ, 1956) and Sanders (1975), but assigned on stylistic grounds by Leech-Wilkinson (1995) and Coplestone-Crow to ‘a follower of Vitry’
Garrit gallus/In nova fert/Neuma	S 68	F-Pn coll.de Picardie 67; F-Pn fr.146	A, cap.XIX (P1, P2, V); Quatuor principalia; anon. treatise in V, ff.21–7, attrib. ‘Theodoricus de Campo’	Linked by poetic subject matter to Tribum and Floret. Accepted by Schrade (MQ, 1956), Sanders (1975), Leech-Wilkinson (1995), Coplestone-Crow; questioned by Roesner; cited in Ars nova
Impudenter circuivi/Virtutibus/Contratenor/Tenor [Alma redemptoris mater]	S 91	B-Ba 758; B-Br 19606; CH-BEsu 421; F-APT 16bis; NL-Lu 342A; F-Sm 222; I-Fsl 2211 Text only: A-Wn 883; D-Lu 15	Boen: Ars	F-Sm 222: ‘Philippus de Vitriaco’. Rejected by Besseler (1968) but supported by Sanders (Grove6) and Roesner; literary transmission supports attribution
O canenda/Rex quem/Contratenor/Rex regum	S 106	CH-Fcu 260; F-Pn n.a.fr.23190 (index); F-Pn lat.2444; GB-DRc 20; I-IVc 115	Boen: Ars; Musica	Crusade-related text, probably connected with Vitry's work for Louis de Bourbon in the 1330s (Wathey, Musica e storia, 1998), CH-Fcu: ‘Philippus de Vitriaco’; the motet is related in style, technique and material to Vos/Gratissima
Tuba sacre fidei/In arboris/Virgo sum	S 88	F-Pn n.a.fr.23190 (index); I-IVc 115	A, cap.XVII (P1, P2, V); Wolf anon. 1908, ed. in KJb, xxi (1908), 33–8; anon. treatise in V, ff.21–7, attrib. ‘Theodoricus de Campo’; Boen: Ars; Wolf anon. 1918–19, ed. in AMw, i (1918–19), 329–45	Citations often in a pair with Vitry's Garison. Accepted by Schrade (MQ, 1956), Sanders (Grove6), Leech-Wilkinson (1982–3); regarded as plausible by Roesner; cited in Ars nova

works attributed to vitry on stylistic grounds, weakly supported by citation in ars nova or by literary transmission

attribution widely accepted

Colla iugo/Bona condit/Libera me Domine [/Egregius labor]	S 85	E-Tc 1; E-Tc 2; F-APT 16bis; F-AS 983; F-CA 1328; F-Pn n.a.fr.23190; F-Sm 222; I-IVc 115; PL-Wru 1955k, 1 or 2vv Text only: A-KR 149; A-Wn 3219; A-Wn 3244 (twice); D-Bsb lat.2o 49; D-Bsb 991 (B.8); D-Ju Buder 4o 105; D-TRs 804; D-W Helmst.525; D-W Helmst.608; D-W 973 Novi; Signa quindecim horribilia (Cologne, after 1500)	A, cap.XVII (P1, P2, V); Boen: Musica	Accepted by Schrade (MQ, 1956), Sanders (Grove6), Leech-Wilkinson (1995); regarded as plausible by Roesner; literary transmission supports attribution; cited in Ars nova
Firmissime/Adesto/Alleluya, Benedictus	S 60	B-Br 19606; F-Pn fr.146; GB-Lbl Add.28550 (kbd arr.)	A, cap.XVII (P1, P2, V); Wolf anon. 1908, ed. in KJb, xxi (1908), 33–8	Structurally similar to Tribum (Leech-Wilkinson, 1995). Accepted by Schrade (MQ, 1956), Sanders (Grove6); literary transmission supports attribution
		Text only: D-DS 521
Flos ortus/Celsa cedrus/Tenor	H 42	D-W I.10/12a; F-CA 1328; F-Pn n.a.fr.23190 (index); F-Pn lat.2444; I-Fsl 2211; I-IVc 115 Text only: D-DS 521		Proposed by Leech-Wilkinson (1983), accepted by Kügle; since then strengthened by literary transmission. Dated 1317 by Leech-Wilkinson (1995); Bent (1993) prefers date of 1330s on grounds of advanced notation

attribution less widely accepted

Orbis orbatus/Vos pastores/Fur non venit	S 22	F-Pn fr.146	A, cap.XIX (V only)	Accepted by Schrade (MQ, 1956) and Besseler (1968); doubtful in Grove6, rejected in Roesner; attrib. ‘master of the royal motets’, Leech-Wilkinson (1995); c ited in Ars nova
Quid scire proderit/Dantur officia/[…]	S 104	F-APT 16bis; F-Sm 222; I-IVc 115		Included by Schrade (MQ, 1956) but rejected by Besseler (1968) and Sanders (Grove6); literary transmission is only weakly in favour
		Text only: B-BRs 258; M. Flacius: Carmina vetusta (Wittenberg, 1548)

works attributed on stylistic grounds

Almifonis/Rosa/Tenor	H 46	I-IVc 115; F-Pn n.a.fr.23190; Archivo Storico del Comune fragment		Tentatively proposed by Leech-Wilkinson (1982–3); see Kügle
Amer/Durement/Dolor meus	H 100	F-Pn n.a.fr.23190 (index); F-Pn coll.de Picardie 67; GB-DRc 20; I-IVc 115		Tentatively proposed by Leech-Wilkinson (1982–3); see Kügle
Apta caro/Flos/Alma redemptorisa mater	H 17	F-CA 1328; F-CH 564 (different contratenor); F-Pn n.a.fr.23190 (index); GB-DRc 20; I-IVc 115; I-Fsl 2211; I-MOe α.M.5.24;	Boen: Ars; US-BE 744	Tentatively proposed by Leech-Wilkinson (1982–3) as a late work
In virtute/Decens carmen/Clamor meus/Contratenor	H 95	F-Pn n.a.fr.23190 (index); F-Pn 2444; I-IVc 115		Proposed by Leech-Wilkinson (1982–3); accepted by Kügle
O Philippe/O bone	H 1	I-IVc 115		Tentatively proposed by Leech-Wilkinson (1982–3)
Per grama protho paret	ed. in Leech-Wilkinson (1995)	GB-Lbl Add.41667		Attrib. Vitry by Leech-Wilkinson (1995) and dated 1316; Bent prefers date of 1330s on grounds of advanced notation
Scariotis/Jure	S 8	F-Pn fr.146; F-Pn n.a.fr.23190 (index)		Proposed by Leech-Wilkinson (1995) as an ‘early’ work written in 1313 (on grounds of date of the event described in text); Bent and Wathey (1998) prefer later dating; Coplestone-Crow assigns it to a ‘master of the royal motets’
Se cuers/Rex	S 26	B-Br 19606; F-Pn fr.146; GB-Lbl Add.41667		Schrade (MQ, 1956), supported by Leech-Wilkinson (1982–3); withdrawn (1995) in favour of a ‘master of the royal motets’; Coplestone-Crow supports the latter
Se paour/Diex/Concupisco	H 84	F-Pn n.a.fr.23190 (index); F-CA 1328; GB-Ob e Musaeo 7 (different texts); I-IVc 115		Proposed by Leech-Wilkinson (1982–3)
Servant regem/O Philippe/Rex regum	S 33	F-Pn fr.146; F-Pn fr.571 (with duplum incipit ‘Ludowice’); F-Pn n.a.fr.23190 (index)		Schrade (MQ, 1956), supported by Leech-Wilkinson (1982–3); withdrawn (1995) in favour of a ‘master of the royal motets’; reassigned to Vitry by Coplestone-Crow

works cited in the ars nova tradition and thus possibly by vitry

Claerburg		music lost	A, cap.XIX (V only)
Deus iudex fortis		music lost	A, cap.XVII (P1, P2, V)
Gratia miseri (? Dei gratia ministri)		music lost	A, cap.XIX (P1, P2, V); Wolf anon. 1908, ed. in KJb, xxi (1908), 33–5
Imperatrix anglie		music lost	A, cap.XX–XXIV (P2 only)
Lampadis os manuum		music lost	A, cap.XIX (P2 only)
[?Marie] preconio/Misera per liconia		music lost	A, cap.XVII (P1 and V only)
Mon chant/Qui doloreus/Tenor	H 80	F-Pn n.a.fr.23190 (index); GB-DRc 20; I-IVc 115	A, cap.XX–XXIV (P2 only); Wolf anon. 1908, ed. in KJb, xxi (1908), 33–8	Attributed to a ‘follower of Vitry’ by Leech-Wilkinson (1982–3)
Nazarea que decora/ Zolomina/Tenor	H 62	E-Bc 853; I-IVc 115; F-Pn n.a.fr.23190 (index); F-Pn lat.2444 (lost, catchword only)	A, cap.XX–XXIV (P2 only)	Attributed to a ‘follower of Vitry’ by Leech-Wilkinson (1982–3); see Kügle
O Maria affectu		music lost	A, cap.XX–XXIV (P2 only)
Plures errores		music lost	A, cap.XIX (V only)
Quant amors		music lost	A, cap.XIX (P1, P2, V)
Thoma tibi obsequia		music lost; F-Pn n.a.fr.23190 (index)	A, cap.XIX (P2 and V only)

2. Appointment at the Pietà.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Grove6 (E. Sanders)

J. Huillard-Bréholles: Titres de la maison ducale de Bourbon, i (Paris, 1876), 354–6

A. de Longpérier-Grimoard: Notice héraldique, sigillographique et numismatique sur les évêques de Meaux (Meaux, 1876), 52–4

G. Paris: ‘Chretien Legouais et autres traducteurs ou imitateurs d’Ovide’, Histoire littéraire de la France, xxix (1885), 455–525, esp. 505–7

E. Langlois, ed.: Recueil d’arts de seconde rhéthorique (Paris, 1902/R), 12

J. Wolf: Geschichte der Mensural-Notation von 1250–1460 (Leipzig, 1904/R)

P. Aubry: Le Roman de Fauvel: reproduction photographique (Paris, 1907)

M. Gassies: ‘Philippe de Vitry, poète du XIVe siècle’, Bulletin de la Société litteraire et historique de la Brie, vii (1914), 53–66

C. Van den Borren: Le manuscrit musical M. 222 C. 22 de la Bibliothèque de Strasbourg (Antwerp, 1924)

H. Besseler: ‘Studien zur Musik des Mittelalters, i: Neue Quellen des 14. und beginnenden 15. Jahrhunderts’, AMw, vii (1925), 167–252; ii: ‘Die Motette von Franko von Köln bis Philipp von Vitry’, AMw, viii (1926), 137–258

E. Droz and G. Thibault: ‘Un chansonnier de Philippe le Bon’, RdM, vii (1926), 1–8

A. Machabey: ‘Notice sur Philippe de Vitry’, ReM, x/4 (1929), 20–39

A. Coville: ‘Philippe de Vitri’, Romania, lix (1933), 520–47

A. Gastoué, ed.: Le manuscrit de musique du trésor d’Apt, PSFM, 1st ser., x (1936)

E. Pognon: ‘Ballades mythologiques de Jean de le Mote, Philippe de Vitry, Jean Campion’, Humanisme et Renaissance, v (1938), 385–417

E. Pognon: ‘Du nouveau sur Philippe de Vitry et ses amis’, Humanisme et Renaissance, vi (1939), 48–55

W. Apel: The Notation of Polyphonic Music 900–1600 (Cambridge, MA, 1942, 5/1961; Ger. trans., rev., 1970)

F. Gennrich: Abriss der Mensuralnotation des XIV. und der ersten Hälfte des XV. Jahrhunderts (Nieder-Modau, 1948, 2/1965)

G. Zwick: ‘Deux motets inédits de Philippe de Vitry et de Guillaume de Machaut’, RdM, xxx (1948), 28–57

L. Schrade: ‘The Chronology of the Ars Nova in France’, L’Ars Nova: Wégimont II 1955, 37–59

A. Gilles: ‘Contribution à un inventaire analytique des manuscrits intéressant: l’Ars Nova de Philippe de Vitry’, RBM, x (1956), 149–54

A. Gilles: ‘Un témoignage inédit de l’enseignement de Philippe de Vitry’, MD, x (1956), 35–53

J. Maillard and A. Gilles: ‘Note sur trois motets fantômes de l’Ars Nova de Philippe de Vitry’, RdM, xxxviii (1956), 147–50

G. Reaney: ‘The “Ars Nova” of Philippe de Vitry’, MD, x (1956), 5–33

L. Schrade: ‘Philippe de Vitry: some New Discoveries’, MQ, xlii (1956), 330–54

L. Schrade: The Works of Philippe de Vitry, PMFC, i (1956) [with commentary vol.]

E. Werner: ‘The Mathematical Foundation of Philippe de Vitri’s “Ars Nova”’, JAMS, ix (1956), 128–32

A. Gilles, J. Maillard and G. Reaney: ‘Philippe de Vitry: Ars Nova’, MD, xi (1957), 12–30 [Fr. trans.]

C. Parrish: The Notation of Medieval Music (New York, 1957, 2/1959/R)

A. Gilles and G. Reaney: ‘A New Source for the Ars Nova of Philippe de Vitry’, MD, xii (1958), 59–66

L. Plantinga: ‘Philippe de Vitry’s Ars Nova: a Translation’, JMT, v (1961), 204–23

C. Samaran: ‘Pierre Bersuire, prieur de Saint-Eloi de Paris’, Histoire littéraire de la France, xxxix (1962); pubd separately (Paris, 1962)

W. Apel, ed.: Keyboard Music of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, CEKM, i (1963)

S. Gullo: Das Tempo in der Musik des XIII. und XIV. Jahrhunderts (Berne, 1964), 76ff

G. Reaney, A. Gilles and J. Maillard, eds.: Philippi de Vitriaco Ars nova, CSM, viii (1964)

H. Besseler: ‘Falsche Autornamen in den Handschriften Strassburg (Vitry) und Montecassino (Dufay)’, AcM, xl (1968), 201–3

U. Michels: ‘Der Musiktraktat des Anonymus OP: ein frühes Theoretiker-Zeugnis der Ars Nova’, AMw, xxvi (1969), 49–62

L. Gushee: ‘New Sources for the Biography of Johannes de Muris’, JAMS, xxii (1969), 3–26

U. Michels: Die Musiktraktate des Johannes de Muris (Berlin, 1970)

A. Blachly: The Motets of Philippe de Vitry (diss., Columbia U., 1971)

W. Frobenius: ‘Semibrevis’, HMT (1971)

C.H. Lohr: ‘Medieval Latin Aristotle Commentaries’, Traditio, xxviii (1972), 380–82

E.H. Sanders: ‘The Medieval Motet’, Gattungen der Musik in Einzeldarstellungen: Gedenkschrift Leo Schrade, ed. W. Arlt and others (Berne, 1973), 497–573

K. von Fischer: ‘Philippe de Vitry in Italy and an Homage of Francesco Landini to Philippe’, La musica al tempo del Boccaccio e i suoi rapporti con la letteratura: Siena and Certaldo 1975 [L’Ars Nova italiana del Trecento, iv (Certaldo, 1978)], 225–36

E.H. Sanders: ‘The Early Motets of Philippe de Vitry’, JAMS, xxviii (1975), 24–45

D. Cortese: ‘Il Petrarca e le traslazioni di Sant’Antonio di Padova’, Il Santo: rivista antoniana di storia, dottrina, arte, xviii (1978), 313–23

S. Hindman and G.M. Spiegel: ‘The Fleur-de-Lis Frontispieces to Guillaume de Nangis’s Chronique abrégée: Political Iconography in Late Fifteenth-Century France’, Viator, xii (1981), 381–415

L.M. Earp: Scribal Practice, Manuscript Production, and the Transmission of Music in Late Medieval France: the Manuscripts of Guillaume de Machaut (diss., Princeton U., 1983)

D. Leech-Wilkinson: ‘Related Motets from Fourteenth-Century France’, PRMA, cix (1982–3), 1–22

S. Fuller: ‘A Phantom Treatise of the Fourteenth Century: the Ars nova’, JM, iv (1985–6), 23–50

F.N.M. Diekstra: ‘The Poetic Exchange between Philippe de Vitry and Jean de le Mote: a New Edition’, Neophilologus, lxx (1986), 504–19

L. Earp: ‘Lyrics for Reading and Lyrics for Singing in Late Medieval France: the Development of the Dance Lyric from Adam de la Hale to Guillaume de Machaut’, The Union of Words and Music in Medieval Poetry: Austin 1987, 101–31

N. Mann: ‘In margine alla quarta ecloga: piccoli problemi di esegesi petrarchesca’, Studi petrarcheschi, new ser., iv (1987), 17–32

A.J. Minnis and A.B. Scott, eds.: Medieval Literary Theory and Criticism, c. 1100–1375: the Commentary Tradition (Oxford, 1988, 2/1991), 366–9

P. Jugie: ‘La légation en Hongrie et en Italie du Cardinal Gui de Boulogne (1348–1350)’, Il Santo, xxix (1989), 29–69

D. Leech-Wilkinson: Compositional Techniques in the Four-Part Isorhythmic Motets of Philippe de Vitry and his Contemporaries (New York, 1989)

C. Wright: Music and Ceremony at Notre Dame of Paris, 500–1500 (Cambridge, 1989), 300–01

E.H. Roesner, F. Avril and N.F. Regalado: Introduction to Le Roman de Fauvel in the Edition of Mesire Chaillou de Pesstain (New York, 1990) [facs.]

W.M. Hinkle: The Fleurs de Lis of the Kings of France, 1285–1488 (Carbondale, IL, 1991), 17–21

S. Rosenberg and H. Tischler, eds.: The Monophonic Songs in the Roman de Fauvel (Lincoln, NE, 1991)

A. von Steiger: ‘Das Berner Chansonnier-fragment: Beobachtungen zur Handschrift und zum Repertoire’, Schweizer Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft, no.11 (1991), 43–66

A. Strubel: ‘Philippe de Vitri’, Dictionnaire des lettres françaises, i, ed. G. Hasenohr and M. Zink (Paris, 2/1992)

A. Wathey: ‘European Politics and Musical Culture at the Court of Cyprus’, The Cypriot-French Repertory of the Manuscript Torino J.II.9: Paphos 1992, 33–53

M. Bent: ‘Early Papal Motets’, Papal Music and Musicians in Late Medieval and Renaissance Rome: Washington DC 1993, 5–43

P. Tucci: ‘Il cortigiano moralizzato, il villano addomesticato: note su alcuni testo medio-francesi’, Omaggio a Gianfranco Folena (Padua, 1993), 497–521

A. Wathey: ‘The Motets of Philippe de Vitry and the Fourteenth-Century Renaissance’, EMH, xii (1993), 119–50

M. Bent: ‘Polyphony of Texts and Music in the Fourteenth-Century Motet Tribum que non abhoruit/Quoniam secta latronum/Merito hec patimur and its “Quotations”’, Hearing the Motet: Washington DC 1994, 82–103

A. Robertson: ‘Which Vitry? The Witness of the Trinity Motet from the Roman de Fauvel’, ibid., 52–81

A. Wathey: ‘The Motet Texts of Philippe de Vitry in German Humanist Manuscripts of the Fifteenth Century’, Music in the German Renaissance: Sources, Styles, and Contexts, ed. J. Kmetz (Cambridge, 1994), 195–201

D. Leech-Wilkinson: ‘The Emergence of Ars Nova’, JM, xiii (1995), 285–317

N. Coplestone-Crow: Philippe de Vitry and the Development of the Early Fourteenth-Century Motet (diss., U. of Southampton, 1997)

K. Kügle: The Manuscript Ivrea, Biblioteca Capitolare 115: Studies in the Transmission and Composition of Ars Nova Polyphony (Ottawa, 1997)

A. Wathey: ‘Philippe de Vitry’s Books’, Books and Collectors 1200–1700: Essays Presented to A.G. Watson, ed. J.P. Carley and C.G.C. Tite (London, 1997), 145–52

M. Bent and A. Wathey, eds.: Fauvel Studies: Allegory, Chronicle and Image in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS français 146 (Oxford, 1998) [incl. M. Bent: ‘Fauvel and Marigny: Which Came First?’, 35–52; E. Dillon: ‘The Profile of Philippe V in the Music of Fauvel’, 215–31; C. Page: ‘Tradition and Innovation in BN fr.146: the Background to the Ballades’, 353–94; A. Wathey: ‘Gervès du Bus, the Roman de Fauvel, and the Politics of the Later Capetian Court’, 599–613]

A. Wathey: ‘Myth and Mythography in the Motets of Philippe de Vitry’, Musica e storia, vi (1998), 89–106

A.V. Clark: ‘New Tenor Sources for Fourteenth-Century Motets’, PMM, viii (1999), 107–31

Vittadini, Franco

(b Pavia, 9 April 1884; d Pavia, 30 Nov 1948). Italian composer and conductor. From 1903 he studied at the Milan Conservatory, but left prematurely because of a disagreement with the director, Giuseppe Gallignani. After a short period as organist and maestro di cappella in Varese, he spent the rest of his life in Pavia, where he directed the Istituto Musicale from 1924 to his death. He won his biggest success with Anima allegra, which was performed in several foreign countries as well as in Italy. Firmly traditional in style, the opera is notable for its refined harmony and orchestration and for vivid picturesque and atmospheric effects, ranging from the Spanish local colour in Act 2 to the Puccinian tenderness of the final pages. Among his other stage works only the ballet Vecchia Milano achieved comparable success: the later operas circulated very little after their first productions. In Caracciolo, which he himself regarded as his masterpiece, he attempted a more grandiose, tragic manner which seems to have made quite a strong impact on the work’s first audience; but the gentle, playfully sentimental Fiammetta e l’avaro was probably a more natural expression of his talent – too conservative, however, to arouse more than passing interest at its posthumous première. Outside the theatre Vittadini attracted most attention with his large output of religious music: his numerous masses and motets, mostly simple and easy to perform, reveal his admiration for Perosi; but, for all their naivety, the best of them contain unobtrusive harmonic subtleties of a kind rare in the older composer’s music. The poignant L’agonia del Redentore shows Vittadini’s church style at its best, while Nazareth forms a bridge between the religious and dramatic sides of his achievement.

WORKS

(selective list)

Stage: Il mare di Tiberiade (op, L. Illica), c1912–14, unperf.; Anima allegra (op, 3, G. Adami and L. Motta, after S. and J. Alvarez Quintero), 1918–19, Rome, Costanzi, 15 April 1921; Nazareth (visione lirica, 1, Adami), Pavia, Fraschini, 27 May 1925; Vecchia Milano (ballet, 1, Adami), Milan, 1928; La Sagredo (op, 4, Adami), Milan, Scala, 29 April 1930; Fiordisole (ballet, 1, G. Cornali), Milan, 1935; Caracciolo (op, 3, A. Rossato), Rome, Opera, 9 Feb 1938; La Taglioni (ballet, Adami), Milan, 1945; Fiammetta e l’avaro (op, 3, Adami and G. Forzano), begun 1942, Brescia, Grande, April 1951; ?3 other works, unpubd

Film music: at least 2 sets of pieces, small orch (1924), (1929)

Sacred: Il Natale di Gesù (trittico pastorale, A.S. Novaro), solo vv, chorus, orch (1931); L’agonia del Redentore (Bible, liturgy), A, 2 T, Bar, chorus, orch (1933); at least 17 masses, many motets, mostly vv, org; Quadretti francescani, small orch and/or org, 1939; many org pieces, of which 40 pubd as Vittadiniana (1952)

Orch: Armonie della notte, 1923; Scherzo (1931); Poemetto romantico, str (1938); L’ora vespertina

Other works: songs, small chbr compositions, pf pieces

Principal publishers: Carrara (Bergamo), Centimeri (Monza), Ricordi

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A. Lualdi: ‘Il ballo “Vecchia Milano” di Adami e Vittadini’, Musica d’oggi, x (1928), 11–13

A. Baratti: Vita del musicista Franco Vittadini (Milan, 1955)

A. Baratti: ‘Franco Vittadini, nel quindicesimo della morte’, Pavia economica, xviii/11 (1963), 68–71

JOHN C.G. WATERHOUSE/R

Vittori [Vittorij], Loreto [Victorius, Lauretus; Rovitti, Olerto]

(b Spoleto, bap. 5 Sept 1600; d Rome, 23 April 1670). Italian singer, composer, poet and librettist. Of the several conflicting accounts of his birth and early career, the one given by Fausti (1916 and 1922) and confirmed by Antolini seems to be based on the most reliable documentary evidence. This shows that Loreto Vittori was born in 1600, the son of Vincenzo Vittori, and that he sang as a soprano in the choir of Spoleto Cathedral, certainly from 16 October 1614 to 24 April 1617. The date of birth given by Ambros and Fétis (c1588) seems to be conjectural; and the Loreto who was baptized at Spoleto on 16 January 1604 (see Rau) must now be regarded as someone else. Tebaldini’s assertion that Vittori was, by 1612, a member of the choir of the S Casa, Loreto, though undocumented, cannot as yet be discounted.

It was probably in 1617 that Vittori was taken to Rome by Maffeo Barberini, then Bishop of Spoleto, later Pope Urban VIII. Baini and most subsequent biographers have maintained that Vittori studied at Rome under Francisco Soto de Langa, G.M. and G.B. Nanino and Francesco Soriano. There seems, however, to be no evidence to support this claim, which may be no more than a conjectural embroidery of Erythraeus’s assertion (in Pinacotheca, ii, 216) that he was taught by ‘the best masters in the whole of Italy’; in any case he would probably have been too young to have studied under G.M. Nanino (d 1607). At some time before 1619 he was taken to Florence by Niccolo Doni, a relative of G.B. Doni. He lived there in the Doni household under the patronage of Grand Duke Cosimo II and, according to Erythraeus, so profited by the education he received that he was able to take leading roles in Florentine stage productions, including Peri’s and Gagliano’s Medoro (1619). His ability as a singer also brought him to the notice of the young but powerful Cardinal Lodovico Ludovisi (nephew of Pope Gregory XV), who petitioned Cosimo to release him into his service. The autobiographical section (viii.11–41) of Vittori’s poem Troja rapita (Macerata, 1662) suggests, however, that he did not move to Rome until some six months after Cosimo’s death in 1621. At Rome he remained in Ludovisi’s service until the latter’s death in 1632. This period marked the beginning of his rise to fame as a singer. On 23 January 1622 he was admitted to the papal choir as a soprano without the usual audition. At some time between 1623 and 1624 Pope Urban VIII created him a ‘Cavaliere della Milizia di Gesù Cristo’. In 1624 he travelled to Bologna with Ludovisi and sang at Florence in Gagliano’s sacra rappresentazione La regina Sant’Orsola. In 1626 he sang at Rome in Domenico Mazzocchi’s La catena d’Adone, probably as the sorceress Falsirena. And in 1628 he travelled again to Florence and to Parma to take part in the celebrations for the wedding of Odoardo Farnese and Margherita de’ Medici. At Florence he sang in Gagliano’s Flora; at Parma probably in Monteverdi’s Mercurio e Marte. Something of the status and reputation that he had acquired by this time is reflected in a document in the Parma archives which states that, as a person of the first rank, he should be rewarded with gifts rather than with money.

At some time after Ludovisi’s death Vittori entered the service of Cardinal Antonio Barberini, although he had sung for various Barberini occasions from at least 1623. His name appears on the salary lists of Antonio Barberini’s household between 1637 and 1642 together with those of other singers, such as Marc’Antonio Pasqualini and Lorenzo Sances (Lorenzino). At the same time, however, he continued his career in the papal choir, acting as its camerlengo from 1642 to 1644. And in 1643 he was ordained priest in an imposing ceremony at the Chiesa Nuova. He left the papal choir on 27 January 1647 and requested a pension in respect of his 25 years’ service. Little is known of the last decades of his life. The last available documentary evidence of his activity in Rome shows that in 1650 he was appointed to act as choirmaster for a special Holy Year performance at the Oratorio del Crocifisso on the third Friday in Lent. It is known, however, that he also returned to his native Spoleto in 1648, 1655 and 1656 to sing at the cathedral on the Feast of the Assumption, and that in 1662 he became a member of the Accademia degli Ottusi at Spoleto. He is buried in S Maria sopra Minerva, Rome.

Vittori was one of the most fêted Roman singers of the mid-17th century and among the earliest of a long line of operatic castratos. In contemporary writings his name was often coupled, not always to his advantage, with that of Pasqualini, who was also a castrato. On 22 February 1642 both men took part in the first performance of Luigi Rossi’s opera Il palazzo incantato, ovvero La guerriera amante, Vittori taking the role of Angelica; and on this occasion at least, as Ottaviano Castelli grudgingly wrote to Cardinal Mazarin, he was voted the outstanding performer of the evening. Erythraeus, one of his most fervent admirers, left an enthusiastic description of his style of singing in an account (in Pinacotheca, ii, 217) of his performance, at the Oratorio della Vallicella, of a lament of Mary Magdalen at the feet of Christ. The suggestion (in Ambros and Gallico) that this lament may be identified as the setting of Lagrime amare in Domenico Mazzocchi’s Dialoghi, e sonetti (1638) is based on a misinterpretation of a comment by Kircher and is without foundation.

For the most part only the texts of Vittori’s dramatic works survive; and the sacred drama S Ignazio di Loyola (first performed at the Gesù, 7 July 1640, for the centenary of the founding of the Jesuit order) is known only from contemporary descriptions (see Antolini, 1978). Both Santa Irene and La fiera are of interest for the manner of their performance. Santa Irene, though intended to be sung throughout, was first performed with only some of the scenes sung, a practice recommended by the composer when a full complement of singers was not available. La fiera, inspired by the fair scene in Giulio Rospigliosi’s libretto Chi soffre speri, was actually conceived as a mixture of speech and song. Vittori’s elegant pastoral opera Galatea, the only one of his dramatic works whose music survives, was probably written during a period of enforced exile at Spoleto following Vittori’s abduction, on 7 November 1637, of Plautina Azzolini, wife of the Florentine painter Francesco Borbone (see Antolini, 1978). The opera was dedicated to Antonio Barberini and may have been given at the Teatro Barberini, though no performance is documented before one at Naples in 1644 at the palace of Prince Cariati. Some of the finest music of the work is found in its choral writing. Most scenes include at least one set piece, whether in the form of a chorus, a strophic aria or a set of strophic variations, and each of the three acts concludes with a chorus. Vittori’s recitative style is, on the whole, blander than those of Peri and Monteverdi, but moments such as Galatea’s lament ‘Pur mi lasci crudele’ (Act 3, scene i) are more intense.

Vittori’s Arie (1649) contains 25 items, including nine settings of his own texts. Most of the contents are strophic songs written in styles ranging from triple-time bel canto to rather old-fashioned madrigalian declamation. The volume also includes a sonnet – Geloso amante – set as strophic variations, and two through-composed pieces – the lament Per l’affricana riva and the cantata Udite le querele d’un disgratiato amante.

As a poet Vittori published, in addition to the aforementioned La troja rapita, a set of Dialoghi sacri e morali (Rome, 1652), texts written for the oratory of the Chiesa Nuova, Rome. One of the texts is a parody of Ottavio Rinuccini’s Lamento d’Arianna; Marazzoli’s setting of another of the texts, S Tomaso, survives in manuscript in Bologna (see Morelli, 1991).

WORKS

sacred dramatic

S Ignazio di Loyola, Rome, Il Gesù, 1640, lost (described in Erythraeus: Epistolae ad diversos, 1645)

Santa Irene (Vittori), Rome, palace of the Marchese de’ Nobili, music lost, lib pubd 1644

La pellegrina costante (Vittori), music lost, lib pubd 1647

secular dramatic

La fiera di Palestrina (Olerto Rovitti [Vittori]), music lost, lib I-Rvat

Galatea (Vittori) (Rome, 1639); lib rev. (Spoleto, 1655)

Le zitelle canterine (Vittori), music lost, lib (Genoa, 1663)

other vocal

2 sacred songs, 1v, bc, 1640²

Arie, 1v, bc (Venice, 1649)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

AllacciD

AmbrosGM

FétisB

GerberNL

RicordiE

G. Teti: Aedes Barberinae ad Quirinalem (Rome, 1642)

I.N. Erythraeus [G.V. Rossi]: Epistolae ad diversos (Amsterdam, 1645), 230, 323ff

I.N. Erythraeus [G.V. Rossi]: Epistolae ad Thyrrenum (Amsterdam, 1645), 15–16

I.N. Erythraeus [G.V. Rossi]: Pinacotheca imaginum illustrium doctrinae vel ingenii laude, virorum qui, auctore superstite, diem suum obierunt, ii (Amsterdam, 1645), 215ff

I.N. Erythraeus [G.V. Rossi]: Epistolarum ad diversos volumen posterius (Amsterdam, 1649), 110, 113

H. Goldschmidt: Studien zur Geschichte der italienischen Oper im 17. Jahrhundert, i (Leipzig, 1901–4/R), 70ff, 273ff

A. Solerti: Le origini del melodramma (Turin, 1903/R), 163, 248

A. Solerti: Gli albori del melodramma (Milan, 1904–5/R), i, 132–3

E. Celani: ‘I cantori della Cappella Pontificia nei secoli XVI–XVIII’, RMI, xiv (1907), 83–104, 752–90; xvi (1909), 55–112

C.A. Rau: Loreto Vittori: Beiträge zur historisch-kritischen Würdigung seines Lebens, Wirkens und Schaffens (Munich, 1916)

L. Fausti: ‘Un autobiografia poetica di Loreto Vittori’, Atti dell’Accademia Spoletina, 1920–22, 158–68

C. Gallico: ‘La “Querimonia” di Maddalena di D. Mazzocchi e l’interpretazione di L. Vittori’, CHM, iv (1966), 133–47

F. Hammond: ‘Musicians at the Medici Court in the Mid-Seventeenth Century’, AnMc, no.14 (1974), 151–69, esp. 168

B.M. Antolini: ‘La carriera di cantante e compositore di Loreto Vittori’, Studi musicali, vii (1978), 141–88

M. Murata: Operas for the Papal Court, 1631–1668 (Ann Arbor, 1981)

D.A. d’Alessandro: ‘La musica a Napoli nel secolo XVII attraverso gli avvisi e i giornali’, Musica e cultura a Napoli dal XV al XIX secolo, ed. L. Bianconi and R. Bossa (Naples, 1982), 145–64

S.M. Pagano: ‘Una visita apostolica alla cappella dei cantori pontifici al tempo di Urbano VIII 1630’, NRMI, xvi (1982), 40–72

J. Lionnet: ‘La Musique à Saint-Louis des Français de Rome au XVIIe siècle’, NA, new ser., iii (1985), suppl.

A. Morelli: ‘Il “Theatro Spirituale” ed altre raccolte di testi per oratori romani del Seicento’, RIM, xxi (1986), 61–143

B.M. Antolini: ‘Cantanti e letterati a Roma nella prima metà del Seicento: alcune osservazioni’, In Cantu et in sermone: for Nino Pirrotta, ed. F. Della Seta and F. Piperno (Florence, 1989), 347–62

A. Morelli: Il tempio armonico: musica nell’Oratorio dei Filippini in Roma (1575–1705), AnMc, no.27 (1991)

B.M. Antolini, A. Morelli and V.V. Spagnuolo, eds.: La Musica a Roma attraverso le fonti d’archivio: Rome 1992

J. Lionnet: ‘The Borghese Family and Music during the First Half of the Seventeenth Century’, ML, lxxiv (1993), 519–29

F. Hammond: Music and Spectacle in Baroque Rome: Barberini Patronage under Urban VIII (New Haven, 1994)

S. Leopold: Al modo d’Orfeo: Dichtung und Musik im italienischen Sologesang des frühen 17. Jahrhunderts, AnMc, no.29 (1995)

JOHN WHENHAM

Vittoria, Tomás Luis de.

See Victoria, Tomás Luis de.

Vitula

(Lat.).

See Fiddle.

Vitzthumb [Fitzthumb, Witzthumb, Vistumb], Ignaz [Ignace]

(b Baden, nr Vienna, 14 Sept 1724; d Brussels, 23 March 1816). Austrian conductor, teacher, impresario and composer, active in the southern Netherlands. In 1735, at the age of 11, he arrived in Brussels and entered the service of Archduchess Marie-Elisabeth, governor of the Netherlands, as a choirboy. In 1740 he was appointed court timpanist in the same department as the trumpeter François-Antoine Vitzthumb, his half-brother. He was to hold this post for over 40 years, although his other commitments subsequently obliged him to relinquish his duties to his son Paul (1761–1838). In 1742, during the War of Austrian Succession (1740–48), he enlisted as a drummer in a regiment of Hungarian hussars commanded by Colonel Count Hadik. He was demobilized in September 1748, returned to Brussels and took up his post as timpanist again. He is mentioned among the court musicians as a composer, tenor and violinist in 1758 and 1759, and as a composer from 1760 to 1775.

However, it was in the theatre that Vitzthumb was to show his talent. On returning from war he took part in the Flemish and French spectacles staged in Brussels by amateur companies: the Chambres de Rhétorique or Sociétés Bourgeoises. In 1758 he joined the Compagnie Saint-Charles, under the patronage of the Duke of Arenberg, which performed at the Petit Théâtre du Coffy. Performances of works by Vitzthumb (in the presence of the court) are first mentioned in the press in 1761, when his prologue Le temple des arts was performed at the Concerts Bourgeois, to which he belonged, and the pastoral ballet L’éloge de la vertu, ou Le tribut des coeurs was performed at the Théâtre de la Monnaie, where, in the same year, he is mentioned as teacher of the troupe’s children. From 1763 to 1766 he held his first appointment at La Monnaie as maître de musique et de chant under the brilliant direction of Guillaume Charlier, Pierre Van Maldere and Philippe Gamond. The directors who succeeded them thought him too severe, however, and replaced him with Granier. At the request of the citizens of Brussels, he then became director of a Chambre de Rhétorique, and took it on tour in Holland for the first time in 1768. This company was so successful that it constituted serious competition to La Monnaie, whose directors persuaded the government to ban its performances. Thanks to the support of d’Hannetaire and the Duke of Arenberg, Vitzthumb returned to La Monnaie as orchestral conductor in 1770. On 14 August 1771 he and the opera’s leading singer, Louis Compain-Despierrières, obtained an exclusive licence to direct La Monnaie for a period of ten years, from Easter 1772. His reputation as a fine conductor, already widespread abroad, continued to grow, and under his direction La Monnaie became one of the foremost theatres of Europe. Vitzthumb reorganized the orchestra and was very exacting with the performers. He paid great attention to the decoration of the auditorium and the sets and costumes, and staged novelties from the French repertory, chiefly opéras comiques. Composers fashionable in Paris such as Gossec (Toinon et Toinette), Philidor (Ernelinde) and Grétry (Zémire et Azor, Les mariages samnites, La fausse magie) were glad to entrust their works to him directly after their premières in Paris. Vitzthumb did not hesitate to adapt these works to the taste of Brussels audiences. ‘This is another of Vitzthumb’s talents’, commented the Prince de Ligne. Grétry, on the other hand, took offence at alleged corrections to his works and broke off all relations with Vitzthumb. The theatre’s financial difficulties obliged Compain to resign in 1775, leaving Vitzthumb to carry on by himself. Hoping to increase receipts he decided to stage operas in Flemish (the Spectacles Nationaux) at La Monnaie, and formed the Troupe Nationale for that purpose, with artists who included his two daughters Anne-Marie (1757–77) and Marie-Françoise (1758–1820), and singers he had discovered in the Compagnies Bourgeoises (his future son-in-law Henry Mees, Joseph Debatty and the Borremans sisters, all trained by Vitzthumb). In 1775 and 1776 the Troupe Nationale went on tour in Flanders and Holland, and performed in a temporary theatre in the Place Saint-Michel in Brussels. This enterprise ended in failure. On 31 May 1777, weighed down by enormous financial burdens, he announced the closure of the theatre. He was then imprisoned for debt and financially ruined. This tyranny and lack of understanding on the part of the government was condemned by Vitzthumb’s contemporaries; he was respected by singers and theatre directors all over Europe.

From 1779 to 1781 Vitzthumb directed the Théâtre Français of Ghent with Mees, Debatty and Lambert, and then returned to La Monnaie as maître de musique et de chant. On 27 December 1786 he was appointed maître de musique at the royal chapel, a post left vacant by the death of H.-J. De Croës. Unwilling to abandon his theatrical activities, Vitzthumb sometimes neglected the duties of this post. He also composed masonic music, and like many freemasons he took part in the uprising against Joseph II in the Brabantine revolution (1787–90). This action cost him his post, from which he was dismissed on 14 March 1791. On 23 April he announced his departure for Amsterdam, where he had been offered a post as maître de musique and stage manager at the theatre of the college of drama and opera. However, the following year he fell seriously ill, and his son Paul brought him back to Brussels, where he lived for many more years in near-poverty but still remembered by musicians.

A reputable but not inspired composer, an inventive but unlucky theatrical administrator, Vitzthumb was chiefly distinguished for his qualities as a teacher and conductor. He played an important part in the development of musical taste in Brussels, and in helping the Théâtre de la Monnaie to its prominence in the second half of the 18th century.

WORKS

stage

all first performances in Brussels

Le temple des arts (prol), Concert Bourgeois, 30 May 1761, lost

L’éloge de la vertu, ou Le tribut des coeurs (pastorale, L. Compain-Despièrrières), La Monnaie, 4 Nov 1761

Le soldat par amour (opéra-ballet, 2, J.-F. de Bastide), La Monnaie, 4 Nov 1766, collab. P. van Maldere, lost

Céphalide, ou Les autres mariages samnites (oc, 3, F. de Ligne), La Monnaie, 30 Jan 1777, collab. Cifolelli

La foire de village (comédie pastorale avec vaudevilles, 2), ?1786

La cohorte d’Amour, ou Le siège de Cythère (ballet-pantomime), La Monnaie, 21 April 1813, lost

other works

Masses, motets, Lamentations, solo vv, chorus, orch, B-Bc

Par nos accords et nos chants, chorus, ed. in de Vignolles and Du Bois: La lire maçonne (The Hague, 1787)

Inst: Sinfonie a più stromenti (Paris, n.d.); 3 syms., Bc; 1er recueil de 12 airs d’harmonie, 2 cl, 2 hn, bn (Paris, 1782); Marches et retraites, military band (Brussels, 1790)

Vocal: Recueil d’ariettes d’opéra, 2 vn, bc (Brussels, 1775–8); Recueil de 36 ariettes, vv, 2 vn, bc (Brussels, 1779–89)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BNB (S. Clercx)

EitnerQ

FétisB

Almanach nouveau … ou Le guide fidèle (Brussels, 1758–75)

Gazette des Pays-Bas (1759–86)

C.J. de Ligne: Lettres à Eugénie sur les spectacles (Brussels, 1774); ed. G. Charlier (Brussels, 1922)

C. Piot: ‘Quelques lettres de la correspondance de Grétry avec Vitzthumb’, Bulletin de l’Académie royale des sciences, des lettres et des beaux-arts de Belgique, 2nd ser., xl (1875), 408–35

A. Goovaerts: Un opéra français composé en 1774 pour le théâtre de la Monnaie à Bruxelles (Paris, 1890)

H. Liebrecht: Histoire du théâtre français à Bruxelles au XVIIe et au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1923), 253–96

P. de Zuttere: ‘Le musiciens Ignace Vitzthumb (1724–1816) et Joseph-Henry Mees (1777–1858) et leur postérité’, Intermédiaire des généalogistes, no.188 (1959), 98–113

M. Cornaz: ‘La Monnaie et le commerce des ouvrages lyriques à Bruxelles’, Le théâtre de la Monnaie au XVIIIe siècle, ed. M. Couvreur (Brussels, 1996), 275–97

D. Dujardin: ‘La direction artistique d’Ignace Vitzthumb’, ibid., 157–95

DOMINIQUE DUJARDIN

Viula

(Provençal).

See Fiddle.

Vivace

(It.: ‘flourishing’, ‘thriving’, ‘full of life’).

As a tempo designation in its own right it appears in scores from the mid-17th century on and in most of the theorists as a tempo roughly equivalent to allegro. Beethoven marked the theme of his Diabelli Variations vivace, and the second movement of his Ninth Symphony molto vivace. As a qualification, vivace was especially popular in the 19th century and often designated a mood rather than a tempo. Beethoven marked both the last two movements of his First Symphony allegro molto e vivace, but he also used andante vivace, a favourite of Piccinni. Schubert’s use of vivace as a qualification seems normally to indicate not an increase of tempo but merely a more vivacious approach to performance. The superlative forms vivacissimo (adjective) and vivacissimamente (adverb, as in the finale of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata op.81a) are also found.

In the 18th century vivace often meant something rather slower. The anonymous A Short Explication (1724) put it between largo and allegro; Leopold Mozart (1756) said that vivace and Spiritoso meant ‘that one should play with understanding and intellect … they are the median between quick and slow’; and Charles Cudworth (‘The Meaning of “Vivace” in Eighteenth Century England’, FAM, xii, 1965, p.194) gave examples where the word clearly indicates a slowish tempo.

The French form vif was equated with vivace by Rousseau (1768) and contains the same ambiguities.

For bibliography see Tempo and expression marks.

DAVID FALLOWS

Vivacissimo, vivacissimamente.

See Vivace.

Vivaldi, Antonio (Lucio)

(b Venice, 4 March 1678; d Vienna, 27/8 July 1741). Italian composer. The most original and influential Italian composer of his generation, he laid the foundations for the mature Baroque concerto. His contributions to musical style, violin technique and the practice of orchestration were substantial, and he was a pioneer of orchestral programme music.

1. Early years.

3. Years of travel.

4. Reputation.

5. Instrumental music.

PETER RYOM

1. Early years.

Vivaldi's father Giovanni Battista (1655–1736), a tailor's son, was born in Brescia. He moved with his widowed mother in 1666 to Venice, where he practised as a barber before becoming a professional violinist in early adulthood. Nine children, of whom Antonio was the eldest, are known to have been born to his union with Camilla Calicchio, a tailor's daughter, whom he married in June 1676. None of Antonio's brothers and sisters became musicians, although Francesco (1690–1752) emulated his elder brother's entrepreneurial spirit by adding to his main calling of barber those of paving contractor and publisher. On 23 April 1685 Giovanni Battista was engaged as a violinist at S Marco under the surname of Rossi. This suggests that red hair, which was to earn Antonio the sobriquet of ‘il prete rosso’ (‘the red priest’), was a family characteristic. In the same year Giovanni Battista became a founder-member of the Sovvegno di S Cecilia. He became sufficiently esteemed as a violinist to be listed alongside his celebrated son in Coronelli's Guida de' forestieri. There are signs that he was from time to time involved in operatic management. He certainly travelled widely, often with Antonio, to play the violin at church festivals. He may even have been a composer: La fedeltà sfortunata, an opera attributed to one G.B. Rossi, was performed at an unidentified Venetian theatre in 1688–9. On 30 September 1729, he was granted a year's leave from S Marco to accompany a son (presumably Antonio) to Germany. Father and son worked in the closest collaboration: the hand of Antonio's principal copyist, from the mid-1710s to the mid-1730s, is believed to be that of Giovanni Battista, with whom he shared a succession of apartments in Venice.

Antonio was baptized officially on 6 May 1678. Because the life of the newborn infant was thought to be in danger the midwife had performed a provisional baptism on the day of his birth; a possible cause was the earthquake which shook Venice on 4 March, but it is more likely that the ailment which the composer claimed to have afflicted him from birth was already manifesting itself. This condition (‘strettezza di petto’ was how Vivaldi described it) is generally identified with bronchial asthma. Although Vivaldi as an adult was evidently determined not to let it prevent him from undertaking frequent and arduous journeys, even if that meant maintaining a large and expensive entourage, its physical and particularly its psychological effect on him should not be underestimated.

Between 18 September 1693 (the date of his tonsure) and 23 March 1703 (the date of his ordination) Vivaldi was trained for the priesthood at the local churches of S Geminiano and S Giovanni in Oleo while continuing to live with his family in the parish of S Martino. He probably learnt the violin from his father, for whom he is said to have occasionally deputized at S Marco; his participation as a ‘supernumerary’ violinist in Christmas services at the basilica in 1696 is his earliest known public appearance. A few years after his ordination (probably in late 1706) he ceased for good to say Mass, thereby sacrificing a useful income as a house priest (mansionario) at the Pietà. In 1737, while under censure for conduct unbecoming a priest, he blamed this failure on his ailment, but it is not hard also to suspect an opportunist motive in view of his immersion in musical activities. Perhaps his defence is slightly strengthened by a fanciful early 19th-century report of his temporary retirement to the sacristy during celebration of Mass (if one chooses to discount the explanation that his purpose was to write down a fugue). Outwardly Vivaldi remained pious, and even traded on his status as a priest. The religious motto ‘Laus Deo’ (abbreviated as L.D.) and an expanded version ‘LDBMDA’, usually found in monogram form and possibly standing for ‘Laus Deo Beataeque Mariae Deiparae Amen’, occur with great frequency at the head of his scores – strange to say, particularly those of operas. From Goldoni's account of a meeting with Vivaldi in 1735 we glimpse the composer taking refuge from a rather unwelcome confrontation in mechanical recitation from his breviary.

2. Appointment at the Pietà.

In September 1703 Vivaldi obtained his first official post, becoming maestro di violino at the comfortable but unremarkable annual salary of 60 ducats at the Pio Ospedale della Pietà, one of four Venetian institutions devoted to the care of orphaned, abandoned and indigent children and specializing in the musical training of those among the girls who showed aptitude. Services with music – one might almost call them concerts – at the Pietà were a focal point in the social calendar of the Venetian nobility and foreign visitors, and it was essential to ensure both the competent instruction and rehearsal of the young musicians and the regular supply of new works for them. Vivaldi owed his appointment to a request made earlier that year by the Pietà's maestro di coro (musical director) Francesco Gasparini that violin and oboe masters be engaged. In August 1704, 40 ducats were added to his salary in consideration of his teaching of the viole all'inglese – a family of variously sized instruments resembling viole d'amore in having sympathetic strings. To Vivaldi fell in addition the task of acquiring new string instruments for the orchestra and maintaining those already in use. The governors renewed his post annually until February 1709, when a majority voted on a second ballot against retaining him. It seems less probable that Vivaldi was dismissed from his post on grounds of incapacity or misconduct, or through personal animosity, than that the post itself was temporarily discontinued, perhaps in the interests of economy. The orchestra would certainly be left in capable hands, for the Pietà's teachers had deputies (maestre di coro) assigned to them; these were the foremost performers among the girls and women, and some of them (for example, the Anna Maria commemorated in the title of several of Vivaldi's violin and viola d'amore concertos) attained fame beyond the Pietà's walls. In addition, an élite group of a dozen women, the figlie privilegiate di coro, were responsible for teaching their younger fellow inmates and were even allowed to take pupils from outside. Ironically, Vivaldi's very success in building up a cadre of seasoned performers may have contributed to his redundancy. This explanation gains support from the fact that the comparable post of teacher of wind instruments was left unfilled for long periods, and that during his lifetime no other violin teacher was ever appointed, although teachers of the cello, beginning with Antonio Vandini (sometimes confused in the Pietà's records with Vivaldi – whose name did, however, appear anagramatically as Lotavio Vandini in the libretto of Aristide), were employed between 1720 and 1731.

Meanwhile, Vivaldi was seeking recognition as a composer. The earliest extant edition of his op.1, a set of 12 chamber sonatas in the trio medium, is that by Sala dated 1705 and dedicated to Count Annibale Gambara, a Brescian nobleman. That edition describes Vivaldi on the title-page as ‘Musico di violino, professore veneto’, making no mention of his appointment at the Pietà but acknowledging his status as a priest by use of the title ‘Don’; it could be a reprint of a lost original edition dating from 1703, though the inclusion of a letter of dedication implies otherwise. His op.2, consisting of violin sonatas, was hurriedly dedicated in 1709 to Frederik IV of Denmark during the king's brief visit to Venice. By then Vivaldi was also writing concertos, which circulated in manuscript; copies of some of his cello concertos made by the musician Franz Horneck while staying in Venice during the carnival season of 1708–9 have survived in the library of the Counts of Schönborn.

Vivaldi was voted back into his former post at the Pietà in September 1711 and was reappointed against steadily mounting opposition every year until March 1716, when the required majority of two-thirds was not obtained. Surprisingly, in May 1716 he was appointed to a position of nominally greater responsibility, maestro de’ concerti. The departure, in April 1713, of Gasparini on a sick leave from which he never returned gave Vivaldi an opportunity to write sacred music, for Pietro Scarpari, the singing master, was only a modest composer. The governors were so pleased with Vivaldi's efforts that in June 1715 they awarded him the choirmaster's customary annual bonus of 50 ducats in respect of ‘an entire mass, a vespers, an oratorio, over 30 motets and other labours’. In late 1716 Vivaldi followed his earlier Moyses Deus Pharaonis with a new oratorio, Juditha triumphans, which contained patriotic references to Venice's war against the Turks. This was probably the most elaborate work he ever wrote for the Pietà.

In 1711 Etienne Roger, the Amsterdam publisher, brought out what was to become the most influential music publication of the first half of the 18th century: Vivaldi's L'estro armonico op.3, dedicated to Grand Prince Ferdinando of Tuscany; it comprised 12 concertos divided equally into works for one, two and four solo violins (see fig.1). The change to Roger from local publishers, which several other eminent Italian composers made about the same time, reflected not only the superiority of the engraving process over the printing from type still normally used in Italy (a superiority acknowledged in Vivaldi's preface to L'estro armonico) but also the enormous growth in demand for the latest Italian music in northern Europe. Nowhere was the enthusiasm for Vivaldi's concertos stronger than in Germany. Bach transcribed several of them (including five from op.3) for keyboard, and his noble patron Prince Johann Ernst of Saxe-Weimar wrote concertos in Vivaldi's style. German musicians visiting Venice such as Stölzel (1713–14), Heinichen (1713–16) and Pisendel (1716–17) sought him out. Pisendel, who is supposed to have taken lessons from him, copied out several of his sonatas and concertos and also received autograph scores of many works directly from the master, who continued to have close relations with the Saxon court. Quantz, who first heard Vivaldi's concertos at Pirna in 1714, gave him credit in his Anweisung for having reformed the concerto (together with Albinoni); the formula for composing a concerto set out by Quantz conforms in every particular to Vivaldi's normal practice.

La stravaganza op.4, a set of 12 violin concertos, was dedicated in about 1716 to Vettor Delfino (Dolfin), a young pupil of Vivaldi from the Venetian nobility. The next three publications (opp.5–7, comprising six sonatas and 18 concertos), belonging to the years 1716–20, were left undedicated: apparently Roger ordered them from the composer and had them engraved at his own expense, which shows Vivaldi's exceptional popularity – this procedure, later in the century to become normal, was still rather rare.

During the 1710s, if not earlier, Vivaldi followed his father into the turbulent world of opera. Although his earliest known stage work, Ottone in villa, was performed at the summer resort of Vicenza in May 1713, he first established himself, as both a composer and an impresario, at the small, somewhat unfashionable Venetian theatre of S Angelo. In the carnival of 1713–14 Vivaldi wrote the dedication of the libretto by Grazio Braccioli for M.A. Gasparini's Rodomonte sdegnato, as he did again a year later for Luca Papirio, set to music by Predieri. It was possibly Predieri's opera that the Frankfurt lawyer J.F.A. von Uffenbach heard on 4 February 1715, when he noted in his diary that Vivaldi was the ‘entrepreneur’ (mistakenly believing him also to be the composer). Vivaldi's own Orlando finto pazzo opened the 1714–15 season, and a pasticcio (Nerone fatto Cesare) and two new operas followed up to 1717. Between 1716 and 1718 he also wrote three operas for the S Moisè theatre; in addition, there were some revivals.

3. Years of travel.

In April 1718 Vivaldi took his recently composed opera Armida al campo d'Egitto to Mantua, where he stayed until 1720. During that time he wrote three operas for performance in the 1719 and 1720 carnival seasons. The Governor of Mantua (for the Habsburgs) was Prince Philip of Hesse-Darmstadt, a noted music lover. Vivaldi became his maestro di cappella da camera, a curiously worded title (probably meaning ‘director of secular music’) that he retained after leaving Mantua. He wrote several cantatas and serenatas for the Mantuan court.

Having briefly returned to Venice, Vivaldi was soon off to Rome, where, according to two letters of 1737 to Guido Bentivoglio d'Aragona, he spent three carnival seasons and was invited twice to play before the pope. Three operas performed in Rome during the 1723 and 1724 carnival seasons are known, and it is possible that the other season for which Vivaldi wrote was that of 1720, when he contributed an act to a pasticcio, Tito Manlio, performed at the Teatro Pace. Pier Leone Ghezzi's famous caricature of Vivaldi (fig.2) was drawn during Carnival 1723 when Ercole su 'l Termodonte was being staged. While in Rome, Vivaldi came into contact with Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, Corelli's former patron; numerous concertos and a handsome volume of violin sonatas in Manchester can be traced back to Ottoboni's library. In July 1723 the Pietà governors agreed to ask Vivaldi to supply the orchestra with two concertos every month (at one sequin each), sending them by post if necessary, and to direct three or four rehearsals of them when in Venice. The institution's accounts confirm payment to him for over 140 concertos between 1723 and 1729. As a composer Vivaldi was evidently a major asset to the Pietà, notwithstanding his frequent travels, which ruled out a teaching post.

It was around this time that Vivaldi's association with the contralto Anna Girò must have begun. She was the daughter of a Mantuan wigmaker of French origin and became his singing pupil. Between 1723 and 1748 she appeared regularly on the operatic stage, especially in Venice. Goldoni thought her voice weak but conceded that she was a good actress and had an attractive appearance. The alterations made by Goldoni at Vivaldi's insistence to Zeno's original libretto for Griselda show that Vivaldi was aware of his pupil's limitations. Both Anna and her half-sister Paolina (who acted as her chaperone) were loyal members of his entourage. Tongues inevitably wagged, and it was widely believed that Anna Girò was Vivaldi's mistress, despite his plausible denials.

From 1726 to 1728 Vivaldi was again active as a composer and impresario at S Angelo. At the same time his instrumental works were continuing to spread his reputation. Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione op.8 (opening with the four concertos portraying the seasons) appeared by 1725 and was dedicated to his Bohemian patron Count Wenzel von Morzin (a distant relative of the Morzin who employed Haydn). La cetra op.9 was dedicated to Emperor Charles VI, whom Vivaldi met in September 1728 at or near Trieste, and from whom he reportedly received much money and a golden chain with a medallion. (The 12 different concertos also entitled La cetra and dated 1728 in a manuscript in Vienna may commemorate that meeting; the published La cetra appeared earlier, in 1727.) The pioneering flute concertos of op.10 and the string concertos of opp.11 and 12 were issued by Le Cène in 1729. Although the publisher bore the costs of all five collections, Vivaldi was evidently dissatisfied with the financial returns, for in 1733 he told the English traveller Edward Holdsworth of his decision not to have any more concertos published as this inhibited his more profitable trade in manuscripts, for which the current price was a guinea per concerto; and indeed no work of his published after op.12 appeared with his proven consent (op.13, Il pastor fido, is a clever pastiche by the French musette player Nicolas Chédeville, while a presumably equally spurious op.14 was announced in Paris but never appeared).

Between late 1729 and early 1733 Vivaldi travelled widely. Perhaps the invitation to Vienna cited in a letter of 1737 relates to this period. He may well have visited Prague (where since 1724 an opera company headed by the Venetian singer Antonio Denzio had been active at the court of Count Sporck), as two new operas were given there in autumn 1730 (Argippo) and spring 1731 (Alvilda). By his own account, Vivaldi liked to oversee productions of his new operas, so the dates and places of their premières provide valuable clues to his movements.

During the period 1733–5 he wrote several operas for S Angelo and the Grimani theatre of S Samuele to which Goldoni was attached. His entrepreneurial activities in Venice seem mainly to have petered out; instead, he increasingly promoted opera in smaller mainland centres like Verona, Ancona, Reggio nell'Emilia and Ferrara. From L'Adelaide (1735, Verona) onwards Vivaldi styled himself maestro di cappella of François III, Duke of Lorraine and (from 1737) Grand Duke of Tuscany, the future Emperor Francis I. This title was doubtless little more than honorific. Meanwhile, he was reinstated at the Pietà as maestro di cappella in August 1735. The governors now wished to take a firmer line on his travelling, and his renewed absences probably contributed to his failure to gain reappointment in March 1738. His links were not severed, however: when Friedrich Christian, Crown Prince of Saxony-Poland, visited the Pietà on 21 March 1740 Vivaldi was asked to supply and direct the performance of three concertos (rv540, 552, 558) and one sinfonia (rv149); the scores, mostly autograph, were taken back to Dresden. During the interregnum between maestri di coro Giovanni Porta (1726–37) and Gennaro d'Alessandro (1739–40) he also sold the Pietà numerous sacred vocal works.

Vivaldi was on close terms with Guido Bentivoglio d'Aragona, a marquis from Ferrara. He enlisted Bentivoglio's support to stage operas at Ferrara during the carnival seasons of 1737, 1738 and 1739; 13 letters by Vivaldi to Bentivoglio and copies of several replies by the marquis, most of which are in the Bentivoglio archives, provide, among other things, an illuminating record of these three essays (all of them less than successful in their different ways) in opera promotion. In 1737 there were wrangles over a singer's contract and the choice of operas, and an unseemly attempt by Vivaldi to exact the maximum payment. In 1738 Cardinal Tomaso Ruffo, Archbishop of Ferrara (a papal domain), forbade Vivaldi to enter Ferrara, ostensibly on account of his relationship with Anna Girò and his refusal to say Mass, so that he was compelled to put the enterprise in the hands of local impresarios in whom he had little confidence. In 1739 Vivaldi, who was in Venice supervising the performances of Feraspe, paid dearly for his absence from Ferrara. The first opera, Siroe, was criticized for faults in its recitatives (because, Vivaldi bitterly claimed, of alterations arbitrarily introduced by the harpsichordist, Pietro Antonio Berretta) with the result that the theatre's patrons refused to mount Farnace, the second opera. Bentivoglio was sympathetic but too diplomatic to intervene.

De Brosses, who met Vivaldi in autumn 1739, found his stock low with the Venetian public. That may be one reason why Vivaldi was persuaded to undertake his last journey in 1740 (the ground for which may have been prepared by Anna Girò's visits to Graz in 1739 and 1740 to sing in operas presented by Angelo Mingotti's company). On 29 April (not August) 1740 the Pietà governors, having got wind of his imminent departure, rejected a motion to buy ‘a certain portion of concertos’ from him; they must have relented, however, as on 12 May he was paid for 20 concertos. It appears that Vivaldi's departure was connected with the intended production of one or more operas at the Kärntnertortheater in Vienna. The death of Charles VI in October 1740 and the ensuing closure of all Viennese theatres for the duration of the following carnival must have frustrated this plan, but Vivaldi, perhaps too ill or too poor to return to Venice, lingered on in the city. On 28 June 1741 he signed a receipt for the sale of several concertos to Count Antonio Vinciguerra di Collalto. On 27 or 28 July he died in a house owned by the widow of a Viennese saddler named Waller and was given a pauper's burial on the latter day at the Hospital Burial Ground (Spettaler Gottesacker), confirming a statement in a contemporary Venetian commonplace book (Commemoriali Gradenigo) which notes that Vivaldi, who had once earned 50,000 ducats (presumably annually), died in poverty through his prodigality. Anna Girò, who had accompanied him, returned to Venice and continued her career; his opera L'oracolo in Messenia was produced posthumously at the Kärntnertortheater in 1742.

4. Reputation.

Vivaldi was so unconventional a man and musician that he was bound to elicit much adverse comment in his lifetime. His vanity was notorious: he boasted of his fame and illustrious patrons, and of his fluency in composition, asserting before De Brosses that he could compose a concerto in all its parts more quickly than it could be copied. In many cases these claims were clearly exaggerated. He told Holdsworth, for example, that 17 (not 12) collections by him had been published, rather deceitfully counting double each opus divided into two volumes. His claim to Bentivoglio in 1739 that he had composed 94 operas (fewer than 50 are known) needs to be interpreted in this light. Along with his vanity went an extreme sensitivity to criticism, which comes out even in the dedications of his opp.1 and 4, where one sees a phrase such as ‘i miei sudori forse malignati dalla critica’ (‘my efforts, which are perhaps spoken ill of by the critics’). His preoccupation with money was excessive by most standards: it is a subject that surfaces continually in his letters to Bentivoglio. Holdsworth and De Brosses found that Vivaldi drove a hard bargain with foreign visitors. Yet the sheer zest of the man compelled admiration. De Brosses wrote of his ‘furie de composition’, and Goldoni painted a charming picture of the old man's enthusiasm on seeing the aria text his visitor had penned before his very eyes. His egotism must have been redeemed by higher qualities for him to have retained the loyalty of the Girò sisters and several patrons. If the well-known engraving of him by François Morellon La Cave (and its imitation by James Caldwall) conveys all too successfully his self-satisfaction, the anonymous painting in Bologna of an unnamed violinist believed to be Vivaldi shows a more sympathetic, pensive side.

Vivaldi was praised more readily by his contemporaries as a violinist than as a composer, though few went as far as Goldoni, who categorized him as ‘excellent joueur de violon et compositeur médiocre’. Uffenbach's report of his ending the accompaniment to an operatic aria with ‘a fantasy [i.e. cadenza, or ‘capriccio’] which really terrified me, for such has not been nor can ever be played; he came with his fingers within a mere grass-stalk's breadth of the bridge, so that the bow had no room – and this on all four strings with imitations and at incredible speed’ vividly captures his predilection for extremely high positions, cadenza-like passages and multiple stopping. Such pyrotechnics undoubtedly hindered his acceptance as a serious composer. Avison found his compositions ‘equally defective in various harmony and true invention’, an opinion found too sweeping by William Hayes, who, attributing the composer's faults ‘to his having a great command of his instrument, being of a volatile disposition (having too much mercury in his constitution) and to misapplication of good parts and abilities’, nonetheless thought that the 11th concerto in L'estro armonico (rv565) gave evidence of his ‘capacity in solid composition’. Hawkins admitted the ‘peculiar force and energy’ of his concertos, though he found them ‘wild and irregular’ and disparaged their part-writing.

Quantz had turned against Vivaldi by the time his Anweisung appeared in 1752, reproaching him for too much routine composing and for falling under the bad influence of opera. Further, many of Quantz's criticisms directed towards particular features of the contemporary Italian style, such as its fondness for simple, functional bass parts thematically unrelated to the upper parts, apply a fortiori to Vivaldi, their originator or popularizer. C.P.E. Bach taxed ‘a certain master in Italy’ (obviously Vivaldi) with initiating the custom of writing the bass in a high register and assigning it to violins, a usage already deplored by Benedetto Marcello in his satire Il teatro alla moda (1720), which targets Vivaldi in particular. Vivaldi's kindest German critic was the italophile Johann Mattheson, who commended him for his observation of the distinction between apt vocal and instrumental writing (the first avoiding the leaps of the second). Ironically, Tartini was reported by De Brosses to have instanced Vivaldi as one of those men gifted in instrumental composition who met with failure when they essayed opera – perhaps a case of sour grapes, for Goldoni wrote that most of Vivaldi's operas were successful.

A few decades passed, and Vivaldi fell into virtual oblivion, except among a few music historians and lexicographers – to be rescued, like so many of his contemporaries, via Bach scholarship. The influence of Vivaldi on Bach had been acknowledged by Forkel; now Rühlmann and Waldersee unearthed the Vivaldi originals of the Bach transcriptions and made their comparisons – always, at that time, to the Italian's disadvantage. His unequivocal importance to the history of the concerto was first demonstrated by Arnold Schering in 1905. The steady growth of interest in him received a tremendous spur from the discovery by Alberto Gentili in the 1920s of Vivaldi's personal archive of scores (the great variety of genres, both sacred and secular, and the preponderance of autograph scores make it impossible that the collection originally belonged to the Pietà, as some have suggested): the Foà and Giordano collections, now in the Biblioteca Nazionale, Turin. These were once, before their arbitrary division as a legacy into two collections, the property of the Venetian bibliophile Jacopo Soranzo, and later of Gluck's patron Count Giacomo Durazzo. The seal was set on Vivaldi's rehabilitation by the inauguration in 1947 of a collected edition of his instrumental works published by Ricordi in association with the Istituto Italiano Antonio Vivaldi and the appearance of Marc Pincherle's famous study in the following year.

The cataloguing of Vivaldi’s large and diverse output has proved a difficult task, especially as works having thematic incipits in common often prove on closer examination to be different (conversely, works with different incipits often share secondary material). With the rapid progress of Vivaldi research in recent years the two principal older catalogues, by Pincherle and Mario Rinaldi, have largely fallen into disuse, while the catalogue by Antonio Fanna, though still used, functions mainly as a finding list for the instrumental works published by Ricordi. The most recent and currently preferred catalogue by Peter Ryom, which exists in several versions published from 1973 onwards, is the only one that can claim to be complete. Although much more rationally organized than its predecessors, it has begun to show signs of its age, not least in the mass of recently discovered works untidily occupying the numbers from rv754 onwards and the confusing transfers of works (in both directions) between the main series (rv) and the one containing works of disputed or uncertain authorship (rv Anh).

5. Instrumental music.

No brief description can do justice to the variety of form, scoring and imaginative conception in Vivaldi's 500-odd concertos. If he did not invent ritornello form – the form in which varied restatements in different keys of a ritornello (refrain), usually scored for the full ensemble, alternate with modulating episodes of free thematic character, where a soloist predominates – he was at least the first composer to use it regularly in the fast movements of concertos, so providing his contemporaries with the models they were seeking. The same is true of the standard three-movement plan. Several occasional features of Vivaldi concertos were taken further and made normative by his successors: the northern Italians, including Tartini and Locatelli, copied his reference to the ritornello opening at the start of the first solo episode, the infiltration of solo writing into the ritornello, and the provision of a cadenza; the Germans, notably Bach, developed his techniques of thematic integration – the reprise of the first solo idea in the final episode and the use of ritornello fragments to accompany the soloist. Very often, Vivaldi has a double statement of the ritornello in the tonic at the end of the movement (which facilitates the matching of the openings of the first and last episodes) or a single statement of the ritornello interrupted by one or more solo excursions generally either reminiscent of earlier solo material or in the nature of a cadenza. G.M. Alberti and Telemann were among the composers who often copied this feature. One Vivaldian idiosyncrasy – the tendency to make ritornello restatements progressively shorter and less complete, while the length of episodes increases – was not taken over by his imitators, who preferred more symmetrical proportions. This peculiarity was accentuated by Vivaldi's impulsive way of composing: certain ideas in the opening ritornello, it seems, captured his imagination and recur almost automatically, while others, equally fertile in possibilities, are passed over, allowing the ritornello to become whittled down by a process akin to natural selection. It also happens that spontaneous modifications devoid of specific purpose are made to the ritornello in the act of writing it out again, as if the composer disdained to refresh his memory by consulting earlier pages. A simplified version of ritornello form is often used in slow movements, though binary form or through-composed form (sometimes employing a ground bass) also occur. Binary and variation form are occasionally found in finales.

Roughly 350 concertos are for one solo instrument and strings, over 230 of them for violin. Other solo instruments are (in descending order of frequency) bassoon, cello, oboe, flute, viola d'amore, a violin adapted to sound like a trumpet marine, recorder (including the so-called ‘flautino’) and mandolin. There are 40-odd double concertos, mostly for two similar instruments but including such rare combinations as viola d'amore and lute (rv540). Multiple concertos, in which three or more soloists participate, number over 30 and introduce, among other instruments, clarinets (making one of their earliest orchestral appearances), chalumeaux, theorbos, horns and timpani. A very important group of works is constituted by nearly 60 ripieno concertos (or string concertos without soloist), stylistically often very close to operatic sinfonias, with which they can be virtually interchangeable; some of them demonstrate an impressive sense of thematic economy and a flair for fugal writing that should give pause to those who consider Vivaldi an arch-instigator of the ‘flight from counterpoint’. Over 20 concertos are for a small group of solo instruments without string ripieno; the tutti is formed by the united soloists, as in Bach's Brandenburg Concerto no.3. Finally, there are a small number of works for double string orchestra with soloists, continuing an old Venetian and Italian tradition.

Many of the concertos received descriptive titles of various kinds. Some refer to the original performer or performers (e.g. Il Carbonelli rv366), while others recall the particular feast on which the work was performed (as in the concertos ‘per la Solennità di S Lorenzo’). Some allude to an unusual technical feature; in L'ottavina (rv763), for instance, all the solos are directed to be played an octave higher than written. Other titles (e.g. L'inquietudine rv234) characterize the pervading mood of the work. Lastly, some programmatic or onomatopoeic concertos have appropriate titles (e.g. Il Gardellino rv90, 428; La tempesta di mare rv98, 433, 570). In these, the elements in the ‘programme’ that remain constant (e.g. the huntsmen in the finale of the ‘Autumn’ concerto from the ‘Four Seasons’) are, quite logically, incorporated in the ritornello, while transitory events (e.g. the death of their quarry) are depicted in individual episodes. The slow movements are mostly static tableaux in which instrumentation is sometimes skilfully used to differentiate parts of the scene: in the central movement of the ‘Spring’ concerto, for instance, we hear simultaneously a sleeping shepherd (solo violin), a rippling brook (orchestral violins) and a vigilant sheepdog (viola).

Vivaldi was a deft and enterprising orchestrator. In general, the number of real parts is reduced and the texture lightened in solo passages, but the ways in which that is achieved are so varied as to defy enumeration. Single-line accompaniments on continuo or ripieno violins are the most common. He employed many special colouristic effects, such as muting and pizzicato, and paid exceptional attention for his time to the nuances of string articulation and bowing. The well-known passage in op.3 no.10 (rv580) where each of the four solo violins arpeggiates in a different manner is a representative instance. In particular, Vivaldi was fond of syncopated bowing in which the change of bow occurs on a note off the beat. Occasionally he seems to call for a true crescendo or diminuendo, anticipating early Classical style.

His approximately 90 sonatas are by comparison conservative in form and style, reflecting the special role of the genre in Italy as the repository of traditional technique. The trio sonatas of opp.1 and 5 are firmly in the chamber style, paying due homage to Corelli, while the solo sonatas, variously for violin, cello and wind instruments, are mostly in a composite church–chamber style where da camera elements have the upper hand, as shown by the supremacy of binary form, even in slow movements. The most interesting sonatas are perhaps a group of four for two violins performable without bass support (rv68, 70, 71, 77), which probably antedate Leclair's op.3 duets.

In his instrumental music Vivaldi was an uninhibited self-borrower. The extent to which material, including whole movements, was not merely re-used in works of the same genre but even transferred from one genre to another is remarkable. The slow movement of a solo sonata (rv12) can reappear in a solo concerto (rv582). A binary sonata finale (rv755) can be converted into ritornello form and used in a concerto (rv229). More subtly, the opening of the Allemanda finale of rv3 supplies the material of the episodes in the first movement of rv101 and its later version rv437. In those cases the sequence of borrowing is fairly clear, but in many others guesses are hazardous on present evidence. Vivaldi was also prone to modify existing works when they were required for new purposes; it is unlikely that he would ever have considered any version definitive. In recent years it has become evident that many of Vivaldi's movements in the stile antico are borrowed, usually with only slight adaptation, from older composers, including Giovanni Maria Ruggieri and Antonio Lotti.

6. Vocal music.

Vivaldi's sacred music, less well known outside Italy, was subject to the operatic influences of his age, although many individual movements remain close to the stile osservato. His numerous solo motets, well described by Denis Arnold as ‘concertos for voice’, have frankly exhibitionistic vocal parts. Vivaldi left eight ‘introductory’ motets (introduzioni) designed to preface a large-scale setting of a liturgical text (Gloria, Dixit Dominus, Miserere). Few examples of this subgenre are known from other composers. It is noteworthy how frequently the principal melodic interest in choral movements is allotted to the violins, leaving the choir to declaim homophonically in the background (as in the outer movements of the Credo rv591), thus anticipating the symphonic mass of Haydn's generation. Alongside operatic influence, that of the concerto is rarely absent. An extreme case is the Beatus vir rv598, conceived as a vast span of 420 bars in ritornello form; here the vocal soloists are heard in the episodes and the choir fulfils tutti and solo functions by turns. In his church music Vivaldi succeeded admirably in conveying the general sense of the text, but his word-setting can be cavalier (as, indeed, in his secular vocal music) and his attentiveness to the individual word or phrase disappointingly slight. It is the factor of a strong musical personality rather than artistic refinement that has brought deserved popularity in recent times to the Gloria rv589, the Magnificat rv610 and 611, and the oratorio Juditha triumphans.

His cantatas and serenatas are written in the style often misleadingly termed ‘Neapolitan’ after Alessandro Scarlatti. Their backbone is a series of two or more da capo arias, with which recitatives alternate. Over three-quarters of his cantatas are for solo voice (soprano or alto) and continuo alone, the favoured combination of the time. They constitute the least innovatory portion of his output, but by no means the least expertly written. There is a hint in one cantata (Nel partir da te mio caro rv661) that Vivaldi sometimes wrote the poetic text himself, for whereas three rejected openings of one recitative there have one text, the successful fourth version has a similar but not identical text. (Vivaldi is also suspected of having penned the sonetti dimostrativi explicating the ‘Four Seasons’.) The serenatas are more extended works, intermediate in style between cantata and opera and commissioned to celebrate an event or eulogize some person. Lacking the length and bombast of the operas, while furnishing more interesting sonorities than the cantatas, they fully deserve revival.

The scores of 21 operas, some lacking one or more acts, have survived. They include his first opera (Ottone in villa) and one of his last (Rosmira). Viewed dramatically, the operas merely supply what was expected of a composer working within narrow and at the time universal conventions; that apart, the music is as vital and imaginative as any he wrote. Obbligato instruments are introduced from time to time: for example, Armida calls for a solo violin, Giustino a psaltery and L'olimpiade a horn. It is interesting that some of the later scores include a few arias by Leo, Hasse, Handel, Pergolesi and other composers of the moment. Vivaldi may have wished to lend a veneer of fashion to the operas, no longer confident of his ability to satisfy public taste; or perhaps he borrowed simply for convenience or at a singer's behest.

7. Points of style.

Vivaldi's musical language is so distinctive that it is worth mentioning a few of its peculiarities. His melody shows a penchant for Lombardic rhythms (which, according to Quantz, he was the first to introduce) and for syncopation – betraying, perhaps, Venice's connections with Dalmatia and the Slavonic hinterland. His treatment of the variable sixth and seventh degrees of the minor scale was amazingly flexible, admitting the augmented 2nd as a melodic interval even in an ascending line. Compound intervals, including the octave, could assume an expressive melodic value hitherto barely exploited. He transported ideas from the major into the minor mode (and vice versa) with almost Schubertian freedom. He formed melodies from mere cadential fragments (a phenomenon well described by Kolneder as ‘Kadenzmelodik’). His harmony abounds in 7th chords, and he used the higher dominant discords (9th, 11th, 13th) over pedals with near recklessness. He can modulate extremely abruptly, often through a VII–I rather than V–I progression. Juxtapositions of very slow and very fast harmonic rhythms are frequent. His phrasing often includes irregular groups (e.g. of one and a half bars' length). His two violins frequently toss a pair of contrapuntally contrasted motifs back and forth over several bars, either at one pitch (producing a quasi-canonic effect) or at different pitches in a sequential pattern; sequence, incidentally, was a device whose attractiveness to Vivaldi could be dangerous in his more facile moments. Ostinato phrases in one part which contradict the changing harmonies of the other parts are typical.

It is rare that such an individualist attracts many followers. Yet during the period 1710–30 Vivaldi's influence on the concerto was so strong that some established composers older than him like Dall'Abaco and Albinoni felt obliged to modify their style in mid-career. In most of Italy, and in France after about 1725, the Vivaldian model was enthusiastically adopted. Only in conservative Rome and certain other parts of Europe (notably England) where the Corellian style had taken firm root was its hegemony resisted, and even then a Vivaldian spirit informs many concertos whose form is more Corellian than Vivaldian. Because the influence of the concerto permeated all forms of composition Vivaldi can legitimately be regarded as a most important precursor of G.B. Sammartini and the Bach sons in the evolution of the Classical symphony. Equally, he can be seen as a harbinger of musical Romanticism, not just on account of the pictorialism of certain programmatic concertos, but in more general terms because of the higher value he placed on expression than on perfection of detail.

concertos for small ensemble

WORKS

Catalogues:P. Ryom: Table de concordances des oeuvres (RV) (Copenhagen, 1973); Verzeichnis der Werke Antonio Vivaldis (RV): kleine Ausgabe (Leipzig, 1974, 2/1979); Répertoire des oeuvres d’Antonio Vivaldi: les compositions instrumentales (Copenhagen, 1986) [RV]A. Fanna: Opere strumentali di Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741): catalogo numerico-tematico secondo la catalogazione Fanna (Milan, 1986) [F]

Editions:Le opere di Antonio Vivaldi, ed. G.F. Malipiero and others (Milan, 1947–72) [M no.]Nuova edizione critica delle opere di Antonio Vivaldi, ed. Istituto Italiano Antonio Vivaldi (Milan, 1982–) [N (unnumbered)]

solo sonatas

trio sonatas

other sonatas

concertos and sinfonias for strings and continuo

solo concertos

double concertos

multiple concertos

concertos for double orchestra

masses, mass sections

psalms and other vespers music

works incorrectly attributed to vivaldi

operas

solo sonatas

with continuo; for violin unless otherwise stated

Sources:Sonate, vn, hpd (Venice, 1709); as op.2 (Amsterdam, 1712)VI sonate, vn/2 vn, bc, op.5 [continues numbering of op.2] (Amsterdam, 1716) [printed nos. given]Il pastor fido, musette/vielle/fl/ob/vn, bc, ‘op.13’ (Paris, c1737) [pastiche by Nicolas Chédeville]VI sonates, vc, bc (Paris, c1739)



RV	Key	F	M, N	Sources; remarks

1	C	XIII,34	399	op.2 no.6
2	C	XIII,11	369	D-Dlb: facs. in Musik der Dresdener Hofkapelle (Leipzig, 1982); 2nd, 4th movts in rv4
3	C	XIII,8	366, N	Dlb, GB-Mp, I-CF
4	C	—	—	A-Gd, inc.; 2nd, 4th movts in rv2
5	c	XIII,10	368	D-Dlb
6	c	XIII,14	372, N	Dlb: facs. in Musik der Dresdener Hofkapelle (Leipzig, 1982), GB-Mp
7	c	—	—	A-Gd, inc.
7a	c	XIII,61	N	I-CF, UDa; rv7 with different 3rd movt
8	c	XIII,35	400	op.2 no.7
9	D	XIII,39	404	op.2 no.11
10	D	XIII,6	364	D-Dlb
11	D	—	—	A-Gd, inc.; also Breitkopf catalogue, see Brook
12	d	XIII,7	365, N	D-Dlb, GB-Mp; 1st movt in rv582 (as 2nd movt)
13	d	XIII,50	—	S-Skma, spurious (? by J.H. Roman)
14	d	XIII,31	396	op.2 no.3
15	d	XIII,9	367	D-Dlb
16	e	XIII,37	402	op.2 no.9
17	e	—	—	A-Gd, inc.
17a	e	XIII,57	N	GB-Mp: rv17 with different 3rd movt also in rv314 (as 2nd movt)
18	F	XIII,41	430	op.5 no.13
19	F	XIII,47	491	F-Pc: facs. in Musik der Dresdener Hofkapelle (Leipzig, 1982)
20	F	XIII,32	397	op.2 no.4, S-Uu
21	f	XIII,38	403	op.2 no.10
22	G	XIII,56	N	B-Bc, GB-Mp; 3rd movt in rv212a (as 2nd movt); related to rv776
23	G	XIII,36	401	op.2 no.8
24	G	XIII,49	529	D-WD, probably spurious
25	G	XIII,13	371	Dlb: facs. in Musik der Dresdener Hofkapelle (Leipzig, 1982)
26	g	XIII,15	373	Dlb
27	g	XIII,29	394	op.2 no.1
28	g	XIII,5	356	?ob, Dlb
29	A	XIII,12	370	Dlb: facs. in Musik der Dresdener Hofkapelle (Leipzig, 1982)
30	A	XIII,42	431	op.5 no.14
31	A	XIII,30	395	op.2 no.2
32	a	XIII,40	405	op.2 no.12
33	B	XIII,43	432	op.5 no.15
34	B	XIII,16	374	?ob, Dlb
35	b	XIII,44	433	op.5 no.16
36	b	XIII,33	398	op.2 no.5
37	b	—	—	A-Gd, inc.
38	d	—	—	vc, lost; Breitkopf catalogue, see Brook
39	E	XIV,8	504	vc, I-Nc
40	e	XIV,5	477	vc, VI sonates, no.5, F-Pn
41	F	XIV,2	474	vc, VI sonates, no.2, Pn
42	g	XIV,9	530	vc, D-WD
43	a	XIV,3	475	vc, VI sonates, no.3, F-Pn
44	a	XIV,7	503	vc, I-Nc
45	B	XIV,4	476	vc, VI sonates, no.4, F-Pn
46	B	XIV,6	478	vc, VI sonates, no.6, D-WD, F-Pn
47	B	XIV,1	473	vc, VI sonates, no.1, Pn, I-Nc
48	C	XV,3	490	fl, GB-Cu
49	d	XV,5	517	fl, S-Uu, probably spurious
50	e	XV,6	—	fl, Skma, probably spurious
51	g	XV,9	N	fl, D-LEm, adapted from rv27
52	F	XV,4	501	rec, I-Vqs
53	c	XV,2	375	ob, D-Dlb
54	C	XVI,5	467	musette/vielle/fl/ob/vn, ‘op.13’ no.1
55	C	XVI,9	471	musette/vielle/fl/ob/vn, ‘op.13’ no.5
56	C	XVI,6	468	musette/vielle/fl/ob/vn, ‘op.13’ no.2
57	G	XVI,7	469	musette/vielle/fl/ob/vn, ‘op.13’ no.3
58	g	XVI,10	472	musette/vielle/fl/ob/vn, ‘op.13’ no.6
59	A	XVI,8	470	musette/vielle/fl/ob/vn, ‘op.13’ no.4
754	C	XIII,60	N	GB-Mp
755	D	XIII,53	N	Mp; 3rd and 4th movts in rv229 (as 2nd and 3rd movts, scoring differs)
756	E	XIII,59	N	Mp
757	g	XIII,52	N	Mp
758	A	XIII,55	N	Mp; 1st and 3rd movts formerly numbered rv746 (withdrawn)
759	B	XIII,54	N	Mp
760	b	XIII,58	N	Mp
776	G	—	—	D-Dlb: pastiche opening with 3rd movt of rv22
785	D	—	—	I-UDa, inc.
791	B	—	—	H-Bn [microfilm of privately owned MS], inc., authenticity uncertain
798	D	—	N	I-BGc

trio sonatas

with continuo; for 2 violins unless otherwise stated

Sources:Suonate da camera a 3, 2 vn, vle/hpd, op.1 (Venice, 1705)VI sonate, vn/2 vn, bc, op.5 [continues numbering of op.2] (Amsterdam, 1716) [printed nos. given]

60	C	XIII,48	528	D-WD
61	C	XIII,19	384	op.1 no.3
62	D	XIII,22	387	op.1 no.6
63	d	XIII,28	393	op.1 no.12, ‘Follia’
64	d	XIII,24	389	op.1 no.8
65	E	XIII,23	388	op.1 no.7
66	E	XIII,20	385	op.1 no.4
67	e	XIII,18	383	op.1 no.2
68	F	XIII,3	57	I-Tn, bc optional
69	F	XIII,21	386	op.1 no.5
70	F	XIII,4	58	Tn, bc optional
71	G	XIII,1	17	Tn, bc optional; 2nd movt in rv516
72	g	XIII,46	435	op.5 no.18
73	g	XIII,17	382	op.1 no.1
74	g	XIII,51	N	S-L
75	A	XIII,25	390	op.1 no.9
76	B	XIII,45	434	op.5 no.17
77	B	XIII,2	24	I-Tn, bc optional
78	B	XIII,26	391	op.1 no.10
79	b	XIII,27	392	op.1 no.11
80	G	XV,7	—	2 fl, S-L, probably spurious
81	c	XV,8	N	2 ob, L
82	C	XVI,3	63	vn, lute, I-Tn
83	c	XVI,1	20	vn, vc, Tn
84	D	XII,43	355	fl, vn, D-Dlb
85	g	XVI,4	75	vn, lute, I-Tn
86	a	XV,1	18	rec, bn, Tn

other sonatas

with continuo

130	E	XVI,2	21	2 vn, va, I-Tn; ‘Suonata a 4 al Santo Sepolcro’
169	b	XI,7	22	2 vn, va, Tn; ‘Sinfonia al Santo Sepolcro’
779	C	XVI,11	N	vn, ob, org (obbl), chalumeau (optional), D-Dlb
Anh.66	C	—	—	fl/ob, ob/vn, bn/vc, D-HRD, probably authentic

concertos for small ensemble

with continuo

87	C	XII,30	155	rec, ob, 2 vn, I-Tn
88	C	XII,24	143	fl, ob, vn, bn, Tn
89	D	XII,51	—	fl, 2 vn, S-Skma, probably spurious
90	D	XII,9	42	fl/rec/vn, ob/vn, vn, bn/vc, GB-Mp, I-Tn; ‘Il gardellino’, see rv428
91	D	XII,27	149	fl, vn, bn, Tn
92	D	XII,7	39	rec, vn, bn/vc, Tn
93	D	XII,15	62	lute, 2 vn, Tn
94	D	XII,25	144	rec, ob, vn, bn, Tn
95	D	XII,29	154	rec/vn, ob/vn, vn, bn, GB-Mp, I-Tn; ‘La pastorella’
96	d	XII,42	354	fl, vn, bn, D-Dlb
97	F	XII,32	248	va d’am, 2 hn, 2 ob, bn, I-Tn
98	F	—	—	fl, ob, vn, bn, Tn; ‘Tempesta di mare’, see rv433 and 570
99	F	XII,26	147	fl, ob, vn, bn, Tn; see rv571
100	F	XII,21	106	fl, vn, bn, Tn
101	G	XII,13	52	rec, ob, vn, bn, Tn; 2nd movt in rv242, see rv437
102	G	XII,52	—	fl, 2 vn, S-L, probably spurious
103	g	XII,4	23	rec, ob, bn, I-Tn
104	g	XII,5	33	fl/vn, 2 vn, bn, Tn; ‘La notte’, see rv439
105	g	XII,20	103	rec, ob, vn, bn, Tn
106	g	XII,8	41	fl/vn, vn, bn/vc, Tn
107	g	XII,6	40	fl, ob, vn, bn, D-Dlb, I-Tn
108	a	XII,11	44	rec, 2 vn, Tn
751	D	—	—	2 fl, 2 vn, 2 bn, lost; Sonsfeld catalogue

concertos and sinfonias for strings and continuo

Source:6 concerti, solo vn, 2 vn, va, org, vc, op.12 (Amsterdam, 1729)

109	C	XI,23	185	conc., I-Tn
110	C	XI,25	200	conc., Tn; 2nd movt in rv537
111	C	—	—	conc., A-Wgm
111a	C	—	—	sinfonia, D-Bsb, Dlb; rv111 with different 2nd movt
112	C	XI,47	507	sinfonia, A-Wn, D-Dlb (with inauthentic parts for 2 fl)
113	C	XI,48	509	conc., A-Wn
114	C	XI,44	493	conc., F-Pc
115	C	XI,38	309	I-Tn; ‘Concerto ripieno’
116	C	XI,46	506	sinfonia, D-Dlb, F-AG
117	C	XI,37	308	conc., I-Tn
118	c	XI,9	32	conc., Tn
119	c	XI,20	177	conc., F-Pc, I-Tn
120	c	XI,8	30	conc., Tn
121	D	XI,30	246	conc., F-Pc, I-Tn
122	D	XII,45	362	sinfonia, D-Dlb (with inauthentic parts for 2 ob)
123	D	XI,16	114	conc., I-Tn
124	D	XI,42	464	conc., op.12 no.3, Tn (frag.)
125	D	—	—	sinfonia, D-Bsb, inc.
126	D	XI,15	113	conc., I-Tn; 2nd movt in rv153
127	d	XI,19	176	conc., F-Pc, I-Tn
128	d	XI,31	251	conc., Tn
129	d	XI,10	36	Tn; ‘Concerto madrigalesco’
131	E	XI,18	161	sinfonia, Tn
132	E	XI,50	515	sinfonia, D-Bsb, spurious (by J.G. Janitsch)
133	e	XI,43	492	conc., F-Pc
134	e	XI,13	56	conc./sinfonia, I-Tn
135	F	XII,46	363	sinfonia, D-Dlb (with inauthentic parts for 2 hn)
136	F	XI,14	59	conc., F-Pc, I-Tn
137	F	XI,51	516	sinfonia, D-Bsb
138	F	XI,34	288	conc., I-Tn
139	F	—	—	conc., Tn; see rv543
140	F	XI,29	242	sinfonia/conc., D-Dlb (with inauthentic parts for 2 ob and 2 hn), I-Tn
141	F	XI,28	241	conc., Tn
142	F	XI,2	6	conc.,Tn
143	f	XI,35	289	conc., Tn
144	G	XI,49	512	‘introdutione’, A-Wn, probably spurious (? by G. Tartini), renumbered as rv Anh.70
145	G	XI,32	252	conc., I-Tn
146	G	XI,41	361	sinfonia, D-Dlb, SWl (‘concerto’), I-Nc (‘concerto’), N-T (‘concerto’)
147	G	XI,53	N	sinfonia, D-Dlb (with inauthentic parts for 2 fl and ob), S-L
148	G	XII,49	360	sinfonia, A-Wn, D-Dlb, probably spurious (? by D. Gallo); renumbered as rv Anh.68
149	G	XI,40	321	sinfonia, Dlb: facs. in Musik der Dresdener Hofkapelle (Leipzig, 1977)
150	G	XI,36	290	conc., F-Pc, I-Tn
151	G	XI,11	49	Tn; ‘Concerto alla rustica’, 2 ob in 3rd movt
152	g	XI,27	226	conc., Tn
153	g	XI,33	287	conc., Tn; 2nd movt in rv126
154	g	XI,39	310	conc., F-Pc, I-Tn
155	g	XI,6	11	conc., Tn; solo vn in 3rd and 4th movts
156	g	XI,17	115	conc., Tn
157	g	XI,21	182	conc., F-Pc, I-Tn
158	A	XI,4	8	Tn; ‘Concerto ripieno’
159	A	XI,1	5	conc., F-Pc, I-Tn; 2 solo vn, solo vc in 3rd movt
160	A	XI,22	184	conc., F-Pc, I-Tn
161	a	XI,26	201	conc., Tn
162	B	XII,44	359	sinfonia, D-Dlb (with inauthentic parts for 2 fl and 2 ob)
163	B	XI,5	9	conc., I-Tn; “Conca”
164	B	XI,12	50	conc., F-Pc, I-Tn
165	B	I,78	172	conc., Tn
166	B	XI,3	7	conc., Tn
167	B	XI,24	190	conc., Tn
168	b	XI,52	518	sinfonia, S-L, Skma, Uu
786	D	—	—	sinfonia, I-Vc, inc.

solo concertos

with strings and continuo; for violin unless otherwise stated

Sources:L’estro armonico (2 bks), op.3 (Amsterdam, 1711)La stravaganza (2 bks), op.4 (Amsterdam, 1716)VI concerti a 5 stromenti, op.6 (Amsterdam, 1719)Concerti a 5 stromenti (2 bks), op.7 (Amsterdam, 1720)Il cimento dell’armonia e dell’inventione (2 bks), op.8 (1725)La cetra (2 bks), op.9 (Amsterdam, 1727)VI concerti, fl, str, op.10 (Amsterdam, 1729)6 concerti, op.11 (Amsterdam, 1729)6 concerti, op.12 (Amsterdam, 1729)

170	C	I,172	379	D-Dlb
171	C	I,93	194	I-Tn
172	C	I,140	322	D-Dlb
172a	C	—	—	Dlb, inc.; pastiche: 1st and 2nd movts of rv172 and 3rd movt of conc. by C. Tessarini (withdrawn)
173	C	I,213	465	op.12 no.4
174	C	—	—	Ringmacher catalogue, lost
175	C	I,232	508	A-Wn; authenticity uncertain
176	C	I,226	495	F-Pc
177	C	I,67	160	D-Dlb, I-Tn
178	C	I,31	85	op.8 no.12; see rv449
179	C	—	—	VI concerti a 5 stromenti (Amsterdam, 1736), no.3, D-Dlb; see rv581
179a	C	—	—	I-Vc, inc.; different 3rd movt
180	C	I,27	81	op.8 no.6; ‘Il piacere’
181	C	—	—	Tn
181a	C	I,47	122	op.9 no.1; 3rd movement identical with that of rv183
182	C	I,94	195	Tn
183	C	I,111	256	A-Wn, I-Tn
184	C	I,146	328	?ob, D-Dlb
185	C	I,186	424	op.4 no.7
186	C	I,3	13	I-Tn
187	C	I,135	311	Tn
188	C	I,198	443	op.7/i no.2
189	C	I,169	376	6 concerti a 5 stromenti (Amsterdam, 1735), no.1, A-Wn, D-Dlb, F-Pc, GB-Mp
190	C	I,46	120	I-Tn
191	C	I,114	259	Tn
192	C	I,68	162	D-Dlb, I-Tn (‘sinfonia’); 2 solo vn in 1st movt
192a	C	I,68	162	Tn (‘sinfonia’); different 3rd movement
193	C	—	—	Rheda catalogue, lost
194	C	I,73	167	Tn
195	C	I,217	481	VI concerts à 5 & 6 instrumens (Amsterdam, 1736), no.6, D-Dlb
196	c	I,189	427	op.4 no.10
197	c	I,79	173	I-Tn
198	c	—	—	D-Dlb
198a	c	I,58	133	op.9 no.11; different 2nd movt
199	c	I,2	4	Dlb, I-Tn; ‘Il sospetto’
200	c	—	—	Brtnice (Pirnitz) catalogue, lost
201	c	I,105	230	Tn
202	c	I,210	461	op.11 no.5, A-Wn, D-Bsb, Dlb
203	D	—	—	A-Wn, inc.
204	D	I,190	428	op.4 no.11 (2 solo vn in 1st movt), I-Nc
205	D	I,149	331	D-Dlb
206	D	I,228	497	SWl
207	D	I,89	188	op.11 no.1, Dlb, I-Tn, Vc
208	D	I,138	314	D-SWl, I-CF, Tn; ‘Grosso Mogul’, basis for bwv594
208a	D	I,206	452	op.7/ii no.5, N-T; without cadenzas in 1st and 3rd movts, different 2nd movt
209	D	I,120	286	I-Tn
210	D	I,30	84	op.8 no.11
211	D	I,116	261	Tn
212	D	—	—	D-Dlb, inc. (with inauthentic parts for 2 ob); ‘Concerto fatto per la solennità della santa lingua di S. Antonio in Padoa 1712’
212a	D	I,136	312	I-Tn; different 2nd movt identical with 3rd movt of rv22
213	D	I,162	347	D-Dlb (with inauthentic parts for 2 fl, 2 ob)
213a	D	—	—	I-Vc, inc.; different 3rd movt
214	D	I,207	453	op.7/ii no.6, D-SWl, N-T, S-L (attrib. ? D. Gallo)
215	D	I,132	305	I-Tn
216	D	I,195	439	op.6 no.4
217	D	I,19	69	Tn
218	D	I,134	307	Tn
219	D	I,153	335	D-Dlb
220	D	I,218	482	Concerti a 5 (Amsterdam, 1717), no.6
221	D	I,97	203	‘vn in tromba [marina]’, I-Tn
222	D	I,124	294	Tn, Vc
223	D	I,225	494	see rv763; withdrawn
224	D	I,158	343	D-Dlb: facs. in Quattro concerti autografi della Sächsische Landesbibliothek di Dresda (Siena, 1949)
224a	D	—	—	Dlb; different 2nd movt identical with that of rv772
225	D	I,80	174	Dlb, I-Tn
226	D	I,129	302	D-Dlb, I-Tn
227	D	I,234	513	A-Wgm
228	D	I,160	345	D-Dlb
229	D	I,45	117	Dlb, I-Tn, Vc; 2nd and 3rd movts in rv755 (as 3rd and 4th movts, scoring differs)
230	D	I,178	414	op.3 no.9; basis for bwv972
231	D	I,8	31	Tn
232	D	I,18	68	Tn
233	D	I,133	306	Tn
234	D	I,10	37	GB-Mp, I-Gl, Tn; ‘L’inquietudine’
235	d	I,113	258	Tn
236	d	—	—	op.8 no.9, Tn; for ob as rv454
237	d	I,143	325	D-Dlb
238	d	I,56	131	op.9 no.8
239	d	I,197	441	op.6 no.6, Dlb
240	d	I,142	324	Dlb: facs. in Quattro concerti autografi della Sächsische Landesbibliothek di Dresda (Siena, 1949)
241	d	I,154	336	Dlb
242	d	I,28	82	op.8 no.7, Dlb; 2nd movt in rv101
243	d	I,11	45	vn ‘senza cantin’, I-Tn
244	d	I,212	463	op.12 no.2
245	d	I,151	333	D-Dlb
246	d	I,119	285	Dlb, I-Tn
247	d	I,126	296	Tn
248	d	I,21	74	Tn, Vc
249	d	I,187	425	op.4 no.8
250	E	I,102	227	Tn
251	E	I,109	254	Tn
252	E	I,164	349	Af, Tn
253	E	I,26	80	op.8 no.5, D-Dlb (with inauthentic parts for 2 ob), GB-Mp; ‘La tempesta di mare’
254	E	I,9	38	I-Tn
255	E	—	—	Brtnice (Pirnitz) catalogue, lost
256	E	I,231	502	Nc; ‘Il ritiro’
257	E	I,92	193	Tn
258	E	I,75	169	Tn
259	E	I,193	437	op.6 no.2, D-Dlb, WD
260	E	I,166	352	Dlb: facs. in Quattro concerti autografi della Sächsische Landesbibliothek di Dresda (Siena, 1949), I-Vc
261	E	I,131	304	Tn, Vc; 2 solo vn in 1st movt
262	E	I,156	340	D-Dlb
263	E	—	—	I-Tn
263a	E	I,48	123	op.9 no.4; different 3rd movt identical with that of rv762
264	E	I,72	166	Tn
265	E	I,179	417	op.3 no.12; basis for bwv976
266	E	I,84	180	Tn
267	E	I,145	327	D-Dlb
267a	E	—	—	I-Vc, inc.; different 2nd movt
268	E	I,7	29	F-Pc, I-Tn
269	E	I,22	76, N	op.8 no.1, F-Pc, GB-Mp; ‘La primavera’
270	E	I,4	15	Mp, I-Tn; ‘Il riposo, concerto per il Santissimo Natale’
270a	E	—	—	Vc, inc.; different 2nd movt
271	E	I,127	297	A-Wn, I-Tn; ‘L'amoroso’
272	e	—	—	D-SWl (attrib. J.A. Hasse), GB-Mp (attrib. A.M. Scaccia); ?inauthentic, renumbered as rv Anh.64 and 64a
273	e	I,70	164	I-Tn
274	e	I,238	—	S-L, SK; authenticity uncertain
275	e	I,220	484	Concerti a 5 (Amsterdam, 1717), no.12, A-Wn, CH-Zz, S-L
275a	e	—	—	D-DS; different 2nd movt, ? by C. Graupner; for fl as rv430
276	e	I,216	480	Concerts à 5, 6 & 7 instrumens (Amsterdam, 1714), no.1, A-Wn
277	e	I,208	459	op.11 no.2, Wn; ‘Il favorito’
278	e	I,37	93	I-Tn
279	e	I,181	419	op.4 no.2, D-Dlb
280	e	I,196	440	op.6 no.5
281	e	I,74	168	I-Tn
282	F	I,33	87	Tn
283	F	I,128	301	Tn
284	F	I,188	426	op.4 no.9; 1st movt in rv285
285	F	I,161	346	D-Dlb; 1st movt in rv775 and 284
285a	F	I,201	446	op.7/i no.5; different 1st movt
286	F	I,20	70	A-Wn, D-SWl, GB-Mp, I-Nc, Tn (‘Concerto per la solennità di S Lorenzo’), Vc, S-L (attrib. ? J.G. Graun)
287	F	I,88	187	I-Tn
288	F	I,17	66	Tn
289	F	I,71	165	Tn
290	F	—	—	Brtnice (Pirnitz) catalogue, lost
291	F	I,215	479	op.4 no.4 in the Walsh edition (1728); 2nd movt in rv357
292	F	I,167	357	A-Wn (attrib. F. Chelleri), D-Dlb
293	F	I,24	78, N	op.8 no.3, GB-Mp; ‘L'autunno’
294	F	—	—	Mp; ‘Il ritiro’
294a	F	I,205	451	op.7/ii no.4, A-Wn, D-Dlb (with inauthentic parts for 2 ob), S-L; ‘Il ritiro’, different 2nd movt
295	F	I,130	303	I-Tn
296	F	I,66	158	Tn
297	f	I,25	79, N	op.8 no.4, GB-Mp; ‘L'inverno’
298	G	I,191	429	op.4 no.12, D-Dlb
299	G	I,203	449	op.7/ii no.2, Dlb; basis for bwv973
300	G	I,49	124	op.9 no.10
301	G	I,182	420	op.4 no.3, S-L
302	G	I,168	358	D-Dlb, F-Pc (attrib. G.B. Somis), GB-Mp
303	G	I,103	228	I-Tn
304	G	—	—	Brtnice (Pirnitz) catalogue, lost
305	G	—	—	Ringmacher catalogue, lost
306	G	I,87	186	Tn
307	G	I,110	255	Tn
308	G	I,209	460	op.11 no.4, Vc
309	G	—	—	Brtnice (Pirnitz) catalogue, lost; ‘Il mare tempestoso’
310	G	I,173	408	op.3 no.3; basis for bwv978
311	G	I,96	202	vn ‘in tromba [marina]’, Tn
312	G	I,107	247	Tn
313	G	I,64	156	vn ‘in tromba [marina]’, Tn
314	G	I,91	192	D-Dlb, GB-Lbl, Mp, I-Tn; 2nd movt in rv17a (as 3rd movt)
314a	G	—	—	D-Dlb; different 2nd movt
315	g	I,23	77, N	op.8 no.2, GB-Mp, I-Gl, S-L; ‘L'estate’
316	g	—	—	formerly D-DS, lost; basis for bwv975
316a	g	I,185	423	op.4 no.6, CH-Zz; different 3rd movt
317	g	I,211	462	op.12 no.1
318	g	I,194	438	op.6 no.3
319	g	I,165	351	D-Dlb (with inauthentic parts for 2 ob)
320	g	—	—	I-Tn, inc.
321	g	I,122	292	Tn
322	g	—	—	A-Wn, inc.
323	g	I,147	329	D-Dlb
324	g	I,192	436	op.6 no.1
325	g	I,108	253	I-Tn
326	g	I,199	444	op.7/i no.3
327	g	I,112	257	Tn
328	g	I,82	178	D-Dlb, I-Tn, US-BE
329	g	I,152	334	D-Dlb
330	g	I,36	92	I-Tn
331	g	I,125	295	Tn
332	g	I,16	65	op.8 no.8, Tn
333	g	I,81	175	Tn
334	g	I,52	127	op.9. no.3, GB-Mp; see rv460
335	A	I,223	487	N-T, S-L, Uu (2 vn), both with different 2nd movt by J.H. Roman; ‘The Cuckow’ (London, 1717)
335a	A	—	—	I-AN; different 2nd movt; ‘Il rosignuolo’
336	A	I,90	191	op.11 no.3, Tn
337	A	—	—	Brtnice (Pirnitz) catalogue, lost
338	A	I,221	485	probably by J. Meck, renumbered as rv Anh.65
339	A	I,227	496	D-SWl
340	A	I,141	323	Dlb
341	A	I,148	330	6 concerti a 5 stromenti (Amsterdam, 1735), no.4, Dlb
342	A	I,224	489	GB-Cfm: facs. in Fac-simile di un autografo di Antonio Vivaldi, ed. O. Rudge (Siena, 1947)
343	A	I,39	100	D-Dlb, I-Tn, Vc
344	A	I,155	339	D-Dlb
345	A	I,51	126	op.9 no.2, Dlb
346	A	I,104	229	I-Tn
347	A	I,184	422	op.4 no.5
348	A	I,54	129	op.9 no.6, GB-Mp, I-Nc
349	A	I,123	293	D-Dlb, GB-Mp, I-Tn, Vc
350	A	I,106	245	Tn
351	A	—	—	Ringmacher catalogue, lost
352	A	I,5	16	Tn
353	A	I,137	313	Tn
354	a	I,200	445	op.7/i no.4, GB-Mp
355	a	I,236	519	S-Uu; authenticity uncertain
356	a	I,176	411	op.3 no.6
357	a	I,183	421	op.4 no.4; 2nd movt in rv291
358	a	I,53	128	op.9 no.5, D-Dlb, S-Skma (attrib. Piantanida)
359	B	I,55	130	op.9 no.7
360	B	—	—	A-Wn, inc.
361	B	I,214	466	op.12 no.6
362	B	I,29	83	op.8 no.10, D-Dlb, I-Tn; ‘La caccia’
363	B	I,163	348	D-Dlb, I-Vc; ‘Il corneto da posta’
364	B	I,219	483	Concerti a 5 (Amsterdam, 1717), no.8, D-SWl
364a	B	—	—	L'élite des concerto [sic] italiens (Paris, 1742–51), no.1, Dlb; different 2nd movt
365	B	I,69	163	I-Tn
366	B	I,150	332	D-Dlb, I-Vc; ‘Il Carbonelli’
367	B	I,1	1	Tn
368	B	I,121	291	Tn
369	B	I,65	157	D-Dlb, I-Tn
370	B	I,95	199	D-Dlb, I-Tn
371	B	I,117	262	Tn
372	B	I,118	284	Tn
373	B	I,204	450	op.7/ii no.3, D-Dlb; ?spurious
374	B	I,202	447	op.7/i no.6
375	B	I,32	86	I-Tn
376	B	I,76	170	Tn
377	B	I,230	499	D-SWl
378	B	—	—	I-Tn, inc.
379	B	I,86	183	op.12 no.5, D-Dlb, I-Tn
380	B	I,15	64	Tn
381	B	I,235	514	D-Bsb; see rv528; basis for bwv980
382	B	I,233	511	A-Wn
383	B	I,170	377	D-Dlb
383a	B	I,180	418	op.4 no.1, PL-GD; different first movt almost identical with that of rv381
384	b	I,144	326	D-Dlb
385	b	I,229	498	SWl; probably spurious
386	b	I,115	260	I-Tn
387	b	I,83	179	Tn, Vc
388	b	I,171	378	D-Dlb
389	b	I,38	96	I-Tn
390	b	I,77	171	Tn
391	b	I,50	125	op.9 no.12, A-Wn, GB-Mp, I-Tn
392	D	II,5	337	va d'amore, D-Dlb
393	d	II,4	—	va d'amore, I-Tn; basis for rv769
394	d	II,2	196	va d'amore, Tn
395	d	—	—	va d'amore, Tn
395a	d	II,3	—	va d'amore, Tn; withdrawn, see rv770
396	A	II,1	189	va d'amore, Tn; basis for rv768
397	a	II,6	341	va d'amore, D-Dlb, I-Tn
398	C	III,8	218	vc, Tn
399	C	III,6	211	vc, Tn
400	C	III,3	204	vc, Tn
401	c	III,1	19	vc, Tn
402	c	III,27	527	vc, D-WD
403	D	III,16	235	vc, I-Tn
404	D	III,20	500	vc, D-SWl
405	d	III,24	524	vc, WD
406	d	III,7	212	vc, I-Tn
407	d	III,23	523	vc, D-WD
408	E	III,5	206	vc, I-Tn
409	e	XII,22	137	vc, Tn, with solo bn
410	F	III,17	243	vc, Tn
411	F	III,14	233	vc, Tn
412	F	III,11	221	vc, Tn
413	G	III,12	231	vc, Tn
414	G	III,19	317	vc, Tn; see rv438
415	G	III,22	522	vc, D-WD; spurious
416	g	III,26	526	vc, WD
417	g	III,15	234	vc, I-Tn
418	a	III, 18	244	vc, Tn
419	a	III,10	220	vc, Tn
420	a	III,21	521	vc, D-WD
421	a	III,13	232	vc, I-Tn
422	a	III,4	205	vc, D-Dlb, WD, I-Tn
423	B	III,25	525	vc, D-WD
424	b	III,9	219	vc, I-Tn
425	C	V,1	98	mand, Tn
426	D	—	—	fl, S-Skma; probably spurious
427	D	VI,3	102	fl, I-Tn
428	D	VI,14	456	fl, op.10 no.3; ‘Il gardellino’, see rv90
429	D	VI,10	153	fl, D-SWl, I-Tn
430	e	—	—	fl, D-DS; for vn as rv275a
431	e	—	—	fl, I-Tn, inc.
432	e	—	—	fl, Tn, inc.
433	F	VI,12	454	fl, op.10 no.1; ‘La tempesta di mare’, see rv98 and 570
434	F	—	—	fl, op.10 no.5; version of rv442 with 2nd movt transposed
435	G	VI,15	457	fl, op.10 no.4
436	G	VI,8	151	fl, D-Bsb, I-Tn, S-Skma
437	G	VI,16	458	fl, op.10 no.6; see rv101
438	G	VI,6	138	fl, I-Tn; see rv414
439	g	VI,13	455	fl, op.10 no.2; see rv104
440	a	VI,7	148	fl, Tn
441	c	VI,11	159	rec, Tn
442	F	VI,1	46	rec, Tn; basis for rv434
443	C	VI,4	105	flautino, Tn
444	C	VI,5	110	flautino, Tn
445	a	VI,9	152	flautino, Tn
446	C	VII,20	—	ob, S-L; ?spurious
447	C	VII,6	216	ob, I-Tn; see rv470
448	C	VII,7	217	ob, Tn; adaptation of rv470
449	C	—	—	ob, op.8 no.12; for vn as rv178
450	C	VII,11	283	ob, Tn; adaptation of rv471
451	C	VII,4	222	ob, Tn
452	C	VII,17	520	ob, S-Uu
453	D	VII,10	279	ob, I-Tn
454	d	VII,1	2	ob, op.8 no.9; for vn as rv236
455	F	VII,2	14	ob, D-HRD, I-Tn
456	F	VII,16	488	ob, Harmonia mundi (London, 1728), no.5; authenticity uncertain
457	F	VII,12	315	ob, Tn; adaptation of rv485
458	F	VII,18	—	ob, S-L; probably spurious
459	g	—	—	ob, D-WD, inc; spurious
460	g	—	—	ob, op.11 no.6; see rv334
461	a	VII,5	215	ob, I-Tn
462	a	VII,19	N	ob, S-L, Uu
463	a	VII,13	316	ob, I-Tn; adaptation of rv500
464	B	VII,15	448	ob, op.7/ii no.1; probably spurious
465	B	VII,14	442	ob, op.7/i no.1; probably spurious
466	C	VIII,28	274	bn, Tn
467	C	VIII,18	239	bn, Tn
468	C	—	—	bn, Tn, inc.
469	C	VIII,16	237	bn, Tn
470	C	VIII,33	281	bn, Tn; see rv447; basis for rv448
471	C	VIII,34	282	bn, Tn; basis for rv450
472	C	VIII,17	238	bn, Tn
473	C	VIII,9	118	bn, Tn
474	C	VIII,4	47	bn, Tn
475	C	VIII,21	267	bn, Tn
476	C	VIII,31	277	bn, Tn
477	C	VIII,13	224	bn, Tn
478	C	VIII,3	34	bn, Tn
479	C	VIII,26	272	bn, Tn
480	c	VIII,14	225	bn, Tn
481	d	VIII,5	67	bn, Tn
482	d	—	—	bn, Tn, inc.
483	E	VIII,27	273	bn, Tn
484	e	VIII,6	71	bn, Tn
485	F	VIII,8	109	bn, Tn; basis for rv457
486	F	VIII,22	268	bn, Tn
487	F	VIII,15	236	bn, Tn
488	F	VIII,19	240	bn, Tn; with 2 solo vn in 1st movt
489	F	VIII,20	266	bn, Tn
490	F	VIII,32	278	bn, Tn
491	F	VIII,25	271	bn, Tn
492	G	VIII,29	275	bn, Tn
493	G	VIII,30	276	bn, Tn
494	G	VIII,37	300	bn, Tn
495	g	VIII,23	269	bn, Tn
496	g	VIII,11	214	bn, Tn
497	a	VIII,7	72	bn, Tn
498	a	VIII,2	28	bn, Tn
499	a	VIII,12	223	bn, Tn
500	a	VIII,10	119	bn, Tn; basis for rv463
501	B	VIII,1	12	bn, Tn; ‘La notte’
502	B	VIII,24	270	bn, Tn
503	B	VIII,35	298	bn, Tn
504	B	VIII,36	299	bn, Tn
752	D	—	—	Sonsfeld catalogue, lost
761	c	I,239	N	GB-Mp; ‘Amato bene’
762	E	—	—	F-Pc (D, formerly rv223), GB-Mp; 3rd movt in rv263a
763	A	I,240	N	Mp, I-Vc; ‘L'ottavina’
768	A	—	—	Tn, adaptation of rv396; different 2nd movt formerly rv744 (withdrawn)
769	d	—	198	Tn; adaptation of rv393
770	d	—	197	Tn; adaptation of rv395; formerly rv395a
771	c	—	—	Vc, inc.
772	D	—	—	Vc, inc.; 2nd movt in rv224a
773	F	—	—	Vc, inc.
780	A			hpd, Tn; putative alternative version of rv546
783	D	VI,17	N	fl, D-SWl
784	G	—	—	fl, Esterházy catalogue, lost
787	e	—	—	vc, I-Vc, inc.
788	B	—	—	vc, Vc, inc.
790	B	—	—	Vc, inc.; rv372 with different 2nd movt
792	A	—	—	Vc, inc.
794	F	—	—	Vc, inc.

double concertos

with strings and continuo

Sources:L'estro armonico (2 bks), op.3 (Amsterdam, 1711)La cetra (2 bks), op.9 (Amsterdam, 1727)

505	C	I,85	181	2 vn, I-Tn
506	C	I,157	342	2 vn, D-Dlb
507	C	I,43	112	2 vn, Dlb (with inauthentic parts for 2 ob), I-Tn
508	C	I,44	116	2 vn, D-Dlb (with inauthentic parts for 2 ob), I-Tn
509	c	I,12	48	2 vn, Tn
510	c	I,14	60	2 vn, GB-Lam, I-Tn; for vn, org as rv766
511	D	I,35	89	2 vn, Tn
512	D	I,41	108	2 vn, Tn
513	D	I,222	486	2 vn, VI concerti a 5 stromenti (Amsterdam, 1736), no.6
514	d	I,100	209	2 vn, Tn
515	E	I,101	210	2 vn, Tn
516	G	I,6	27	2 vn, Tn; 2nd movt in rv71
517	g	I,98	207	2 vn, Tn
518	A	v	—	2 vn; inauthentic version of rv335 in S-Uu (withdrawn)
519	A	I,175	410	2 vn, op.3 no.5; many MS copies
520	A	—	—	2 vn, A-Wn, inc.
521	A	I,159	344	2 vn, D-Dlb (with inauthentic parts for 2 ob)
522	a	I,177	413	2 vn, op.3 no.8; basis for bwv593
523	a	I,61	140	2 vn, F-Pc, I-Tn
524	B	I,40	107	2 vn, Tn
525	B	I,63	145	2 vn, Tn
526	B	—	—	2 vn, A-Wn, inc.
527	B	I,99	208	2 vn, I-Tn
528	B	—	—	2 vn, S-Uu; arrangement of rv381 (?inauthentic)
529	B	I,42	111	2 vn, I-Tn
530	B	I,57	132	2 vn, op.9 no.9
531	g	III,2	61	2 vc, Tn
532	G	V,2	104	2 mand, Tn
533	C	VI,2	101	2 fl, FZc, Tn
534	C	VII,3	139	2 ob, FZc, Tn
535	d	VII,9	264	2 ob, Tn
536	a	VII,8	263	2 ob, Tn
537	C	IX,1	97	2 tpt, Tn; 2nd movt in rv110
538	F	X,1	91	2 hn, Tn; solo vc in 2nd movt
539	F	X,2	121	2 hn, Tn
540	d	XII,38	320	va d'amore, lute, D-Dlb: facs. in Musik der Dresdener Hofkapelle (Leipzig, 1977)
541	d	XII,19	95	vn, org, I-Tn
542	F	XII,41	353	vn, org, D-Dlb
543	F	XII,35	265	vn, unison ob, I-Tn; see rv139
544	F	IV,5	135	vn, vc, Tn; ‘Il Proteo, o sia Il mondo al rovescio’, see rv572
545	G	XII,36	280	ob, bn, Tn
546	A	IV,6	146	vn, vc all'inglese, Tn; basis for rv780
547	B	IV,2	35	vn, vc, D-WD, I-Tn
548	B	XII,16	73	vn, ob, Tn; for 2 vn as rv764
764	B	—	—	2 vn, GB-Mp; for vn, ob as rv548
765	F	I,241	N	2 vn, Lam; for vn, org as rv767
766	c	—	—	vn, org, Lam; for 2 vn as rv510
767	F	—	—	vn, org, Lam; for 2 vn as rv765
774	C	—	—	vn, org, I-Vc, inc.
775	F	—	—	vn, org, Vc, inc.; 1st movt in rv284 and 285
781	D	XII,50	510	2 ob/?tpt, A-Wn; solo vn in 2nd movt; formerly rv563 (withdrawn)
Anh.91	G	—	—	vn, vc, I-Vc, inc.; certainly authentic

multiple concertos

with strings and continuo

Source:L'estro armonico (2 bks), op.3 (Amsterdam, 1711)

549	D	IV,7	406	4 vn, op.3 no.1; solo vc in 1st movt
550	e	I,174	409	4 vn, op.3 no.4
551	F	I,34	88	3 vn, D-Dlb, I-Tn
552	A	I,139	319	vn, ‘echo’ vn, D-Dlb (facs. in Due concerti autografi della Sächsische Landesbibliothek di Dresda (Siena, 1950); facs. in Musik der Dresdener Hofkapelle (Leipzig, 1977)); with two solo vn as accompaniment to the ‘echo’ vn
553	B	I,59	134	4 vn, I-Tn
554	C	XII,34	250	vn, org/vn, ob, Tn
554a	C	—	—	vn, org/vn, vc, Tn; alternative version of rv554
555	C	XII,23	142	3 vn, ob, 2 rec, 2 va all’inglese, chalumeau, 2 vc, 2 hpd, Tn; 2 tpt, vn ‘in tromba marina’, 2 vle/?vc in 3rd movt
556	C	XII,14	54	2 ob, 2 cl, 2 rec, 2 vn, bn [lute in 2nd movt], Tn; ‘Concerto per la solennità di S Lorenzo’, later version without 2 cl, Tn
557	C	XII,17	90	2 vn, 2 ob [2 rec, bn in 2nd movt], Tn
558	C	XII,37	318	2 vn ‘in tromba marina’, 2 rec, 2 mand, 2 chalumeaux, 2 theorbos, vc, D-Dlb (facs. in Due concerti autografi della Sächsische Landesbibliothek di Dresda (Siena, 1950); facs. in Musik der Dresdener Hofkapelle (Leipzig, 1977)), Vc (frag. of inauthentic arr. incl. 2 hn)
559	C	XII,2	10	2 ob, 2 cl, Tn
560	C	XII,1	3	2 ob, 2 cl, Tn
561	C	IV,3	53	vn, 2 vc, Tn
562	D	XII,47	380	vn, 2 ob, 2 hn, D-Dlb, I-Tn; ‘Concerto per la solennità di S Lorenzo’
562a	D	—	—	vn, 2 ob, 2 hn, timp, NL-Au; rv562 with different 2nd movt
563	D	XII,50	510	2 ob/?tpt [solo vn in 2nd movt], A-Wn; reclassified as double conc. rv781
564	D	IV,4	99	2 vn, 2 vc, I-Tn
564a	D	—	—	2 vn, 2 ob, bn, D-Dlb; different (probably inauthentic) scoring
565	d	IV,11	416	2 vn, vc, op.3 no.11; basis for bwv596
566	d	XII,31	213	2 vn, 2 rec, 2 ob, bn, I-Tn
567	F	IV,9	412	4 vn, vc, op.3 no.7
568	F	XII,39	338	vn, 2 ob, 2 hn, bn, D-Dlb
569	F	XII,10	43	vn, 2 ob, 2 hn, bn [solo vc in 3rd movt], Dlb, I-Tn
570	F	XII,28	150	fl, ob, bn [solo vn in 1st movt], Tn; ‘Tempesta di mare’, see rv98 and 433
571	F	XII,40	350	vn, 2 ob, 2 hn, bn [solo vc in 1st movt], D-Dlb; see rv99
572	F	—	—	2 fl, 2 ob, vn, vc, hpd, GB-Mp; ‘Il Proteo, o sia Il mondo al rovescio’, see rv544
573	F	—	—	2 ob, 2 hn, 2 bn, lost (formerly D-DS)
574	F	XII,18	94	vn, 2 trbn ‘da caccia’ (? = hn), 2 ob, bn [solo vc in 3rd movt], Dlb, I-Tn
575	G	IV,1	26	2 vn, 2 vc, Tn
576	g	XII,33	249	vn, ob, 2 rec, 2 ob, bn, D-Dlb, I-Tn
577	g	XII,3	25	vn, 2 ob, 2 rec, bn, Tn; ‘per l'orchestra di Dresda’
578	g	IV,8	407	2 vn, vc, op.3 no.2
579	B	XII,12	51	vn, ob, chalumeau, 3 va all’inglese, Tn: facs., ed. O. Rudge (Siena, 1947); ‘Concerto funebre’
580	b	IV,10	415	4 vn, vc, op.3 no.10; basis for bwv1065

concertos for double orchestra

solo instruments with strings in two ‘cori’ and continuo

581	C	I,13	55	vn, I-Tn, Vc; ‘Per la SS Assontione di Maria Vergine’, see rv179
582	D	I,62	141	vn, D-Dlb, I-Tn, Vc; ‘Per la SS Assontione di Maria Vergine’, 2nd movt in rv12 (as 1st movt)
583	B	I,60	136	vn, Tn
584	F	—	—	vn, org (coro 1); vn, org (coro 2), Tn, inc.
585	A	XII,48	381	2 vn, 2 rec, vc (coro 1); 2 vn, 2 rec, vc, org (coro 2), D-Dlb: facs. in Quattro concerti autografi della Sächsische Landesbibliothek di Dresda (Siena, 1949)
793	C	—	—	2 org, I-Vc, inc.

masses, mass sections



RV	Key

586	C	Sacrum (mass), S, A, T, B, 4vv, 2 tpt (ad lib), 2 vn, vc, bc, PL-Wu; spurious
587	g	Kyrie, 2 choirs (S, A, 4vv, str, bc; S, A, 4vv, str, bc), str, bc, I-Tn, M
588	D	Gloria, S, S, A, T, B, 4vv, tpt, 2 ob, 2 vn, 2 va, 2 vc, str, bc, Tn, N; 3 movts adapted from Gloria by G.M. Ruggieri (rv Anh.23)
589	D	Gloria, S, S, A, 4vv, tpt, ob, vn (ad lib), str, bc, Tn, M; 1 movt adapted from Gloria by G.M. Ruggieri (rv Anh.23)
590	D	Gloria, 5vv, Kreuzherren catalogue, lost; ? identical with rv588 or 589
591	e	Credo, 4 vv, str, bc, Tn, M
592	G	Credo, S, A, 4vv, ob (ad lib), str, bc, PL-Wu; spurious (attrib. J.A. Hasse)

psalms and other vespers music

593	G	Domine ad adjuvandum me festina, 2 choirs (S, 4vv, 2 ob, str, bc; 4vv, str, bc), I-Tn, N
594	D	Dixit Dominus, 2 choirs (S, A, T, B, 4vv, 2 tpt, 2 ob, str, bc; S, 4vv, str, bc), Tn, M
595	D	Dixit Dominus, S, S, A, T, B, 5vv, tpt, 2 ob, 2 vc, str, bc, CZ-Pnm, N; 3 movts arr. from works by other composers
596	C	Confitebor tibi Domine, A, T, B, 2 ob, str, bc, I-Tn, N
597	C	Beatus vir, 2 choirs (S, A, T, B, 4vv, 2 ob, org, str, bc; S, 4vv, org, str, bc), Tn, M; see rv795
598	B	Beatus vir, S, S, A, 4vv, str, bc, Tn, M
599	—	Beatus [vir], 5vv, Kreuzherren catalogue, lost; ? orig. version for single choir of rv597 and 795
600	c	Laudate pueri Dominum, S, str, bc, CZ-Pnm, I-Tn, N
601	G	Laudate pueri Dominum, S, fl, 2 ob, str, bc, D-Dlb, I-Tn, M
602	A	Laudate pueri Dominum, S, 4vv, ob, str, bc; S, str, bc, Tn, N
602a	A	Laudate pueri Dominum, 2 choirs (S, 4vv, fl, str, bc; S, ?4vv, str, bc), Tn, N; arr. from rv602
603	A	Laudate pueri Dominum, 2 choirs (S, 4vv, fl, str, bc; 4vv, str, bc), Tn; arr. from rv602a
604	C	In exitu Israel, 4vv, str, bc, Tn, Vc, N
605	C	Credidi propter quod locutus sum, 5vv, str, bc, Tn, N; mostly adapted from rv Anh.35
606	d	Laudate Dominum omnes gentes, 4vv, str, bc, Tn, N
607	F	Laetatus sum, 4 vv, str, bc, Tn, N
608	g	Nisi Dominus, A, va d'amore, str, bc, Tn, M
609	e	Lauda Jerusalem, 2 choirs (S, 4vv, str, bc; S, 4vv, str, bc), Tn, M
610	g	Magnificat, S, S, A, T, 4vv, 2 ob, str, bc, Tn, M, N
610a	g	Magnificat, 2 choirs (S, T, 4vv, 2 ob, str, bc; S, S, A, 4vv, str, bc), Tn, M, N
610b	g	Magnificat, S, S, A, T, 4vv, str, bc, CZ-Pak
611	g	Magnificat, S, A, 4vv, str, bc, I-Tn, Vc, M, N; late (1739) version of rv610 with several substituted movements
612	C	Deus tuorum militum, A, T, 2 ob, str, bc, Tn, N
613	B	Gaude mater Ecclesia, S, str, bc, Tn, N
614	F	Laudate Dominum omnes gentes, off, S, A, 4vv, 2 hn, 2 vn, bc, PL-Wu; spurious
615	—	Regina coeli, T, 2 tpt, str, bc, I-Tn, inc.
616	c	Salve Regina, 2 choirs (A, 2 rec, fl, str, bc; str, bc), Tn, M, N
617	F	Salve Regina, S, vn, str, bc, CZ-Bm, N
618	g	Salve Regina, 2 choirs (A, 2 ob, str, bc; str, bc), I-Tn, N
619	—	Salve Regina, S, 2 rec, ?vc, bc, Kreuzherren catalogue, lost
620	C	Sanctorum meritis, S, str, bc, Tn, N
621	f	Stabat Mater (hymn), A, str, bc, Tn, M, N
622	—	Te Deum, lost; perf. Venice, 19 Sept 1727
789	B	Confitebor tibi Domine,Vc, inc.
795	C	Beatus vir, S, 2A, T/A, 4vv, str, bc, D-Dlb (attrib. B. Galuppi), I-Vc, N; see rv597

solo motets

623	A	Canta in prato, ride in monte, S, str, bc, I-Tn, N; text basis for rv636
624	G	Carae rosae, respirate, S, str, bc, GB-Lbl, Lcm (inc.)
625	F	Clarae stellae, scintillate, A, str, bc, I-Tn, N
626	c	In furore (g)iustissimae irae, S, str, bc, Tn, N
627	G	In turbato mare irato, S, str, bc, D-Dlb, N
628	G	Invicti, bellate, A, str, bc, I-Tn, inc.
629	g	Longe mala, umbrae, terrores, S, str, bc, Tn, N; see rv640
630	E	Nulla in mundo pax sincera, S, str, bc, Tn, N
631	E	O qui coeli terraeque serenitas, S, str, bc, Tn, N
632	F	Sum in medio tempestatum, S, str, bc, D-Dlb, N
633	F	Vestro principi divino, A, str, bc, I-Tn, N
634	A	Vos aurae per montes, S, str, bc, Af, N; ‘Per la solennità di S Antonio’
635	A	Ascende laeta, S, str, bc, Tn, N; introduzione to Dixit Dominus
636	G	Canta in prato, ride in fonte, S, 2 ob, str, bc, Tn, N; introduzione to Dixit Dominus, text adapted from rv623
637	B	Cur sagittas, cur tela, cur faces, A, str, bc, Tn, N; introduzione to Gloria
638	c	Filiae maestae Jerusalem, A, str, bc, Tn, N; introduzione to Miserere
639	D	Jubilate, o amoeni chori, A, tpt, 2 ob, org, str, bc, Tn, N; introduzione to Gloria [rv588]
639a	D	Jubilate, o amoeni chori, S, tpt, 2 ob, org, str, bc, Tn, N; introduzione to Gloria, arr. from rv639
640	g	Longe mala, umbrae, terrores, A, str, bc, Tn, N; introduzione to Gloria, see rv629
641	F	Non in pratis aut in hortis, A, str, bc, Tn, N; introduzione to Miserere
642	D	Ostro picta, armata spina, S, str, bc, Tn, N; introduzione to Gloria
646	F	Ad corda reclina (Concertus italicus), A, str, bc, PL-Wu; anon. arr. of Vedrai nel volto di quella infelice from rv700; renumbered as rv Anh.59.24
647	E/D	Eja voces plausum date/Nato pastor pro me melos (Aria de sanctis), B, str, bc, Wu; anon. arr. of Benché nasconda la serpe in seno from rv728; renumbered as rv Anh.59.25
648	E	Ihr Himmel nun (Concertus italicus), A, vn, str, bc, Wu; anon. arr. of Son come farfalletta from rv728; renumbered as rv Anh.59.26
747	B	Candida lylia (cantata de tempore), A, ?str, bc, Kreuzherren catalogue, lost
748	G	Aria per la communione, Kreuzherren catalogue, lost

oratorios

643	Moyses Deus Pharaonis, Venice, Ospedale della Pietà, 1714, lost
644	Juditha triumphans devicta Holofernes barbarie (G. Cassetti), Venice, Ospedale della Pietà, 1716, I-Tn (facs., Siena, 1948); ed. A. Zedda (Milan, 1971)
645	L'adorazione delli tre re magi al bambino Gesù nella capanna di Betlemme, Milan, S Felice, 9 Jan 1722, lost
782	La vittoria navale predetta dal S Pontefice Pio V Ghisilieri, Vicenza, S Corona, 23 June 1713, lost

solo cantatas

649	All'ombra d'un bel faggio, S, bc, I-Tn, N
650	Allor che lo sguardo, S, bc, Tn, N
651	Amor, hai vinto, S, bc, Tn, N; same text as for rv683
652	Aure, voi più non siete, S, bc, Tn, N
653	Del suo natio rigore, S, bc, Tn, N
654	Elvira, anima mia, S, bc, Tn, N
655	Era la notte quando i suoi splendori, S, bc, D-Dlb, I-Tn, N
656	Fonti del pianto, S, bc, D-Dlb, I-Tn, N
657	Geme l'onda che parte dal fonte, S, bc, D-Dlb, I-Tn, N
658	Il povero mio cor, S, bc, Tn, N
659	Indarno cerca la tortorella, S, bc, Tn, N
660	La farfalletta s'aggira al lume, S, bc, Tn, N
661	Nel partir da te, mio caro, S, bc, Tn, N
662	Par che tardo oltre il costume, S, bc, D-Dlb, I-Tn, N
663	Scherza di fronda in fronda, S, bc, D-Dlb, N
664	Se ben vivono senz'alma, S, bc, I-Tn, N
665	Si levi dal pensier, S, bc, Tn, N
666	Sì, sì, luci adorate, S, bc, Tn, N
667	Sorge vermiglia in ciel la bella Aurora, S, bc, D-Dlb, I-Tn, N
668	T'intendo, sì mio cor, S, bc, Tn, N
669	Tra l'erbe i zeffiri, S, bc, Tn, N
670	Alla caccia dell'alme e de' cori, A, bc, Tn, N
671	Care selve, amici prati, A, bc, Tn, N
672	Filli di gioia, A, bc, Fc; probably spurious
673	Ingrata, Lidia, hai vinto, A, bc, Fc; probably spurious
674	Perfidissimo cor! Iniquo fato, A, bc, D-Dlb, N
675	Piango, gemo, sospiro, A, bc, I-Fc; probably spurious
676	Pianti, sospiri e dimandar mercede, A, bc, D-Dlb, N
677	Qual per ignoto calle, A, bc, Dlb, N
678	All'ombra di sospetto, S, fl, bc, Dlb, N
679	Che giova il sospirar, povero core, S, str, bc, MEIr, N
680	Lungi dal vago volto, S, vn, bc, I-Tn, N
681	Perché son molli, S, 2 vn, bc, GB-Ob, N
682	Vengo a voi, luci adorate, S, str, bc, I-Tn, N
683	Amor, hai vinto, A, str, bc, Tn, N; same text as for rv651
684	Cessate, omai cessate, A, str, bc, Tn, N
684a	Cessate, omai cessate, A, str, bc, Tn, inc.; with different 1st aria
685	O mie porpore più belle, May 1719, A, str, bc, Tn, N
686	Qual in pioggia dorata i dolci rai, A, 2 hn, str, bc, Tn, N
753	Prendea con man di latte, S, bc, GB-Ob; spurious
796	Usignoletto bello, S, bc, D-Dlb, N
798	Tremori al braccio e lagrime sul ciglio, S, bc, A-Wgm, N

serenatas

688	Le gare del dovere, 5vv, Rovigo, sum. 1708, music lost
690	Mio cor, povero cor, 3vv, bc, c1719, I-Tn
689	Le gare della Giustizia e della Pace (G.B. Catena), c1721, lost
687	Dall'eccelsa mia reggia, 2vv, bc, Venice, 12 Sept 1725, Tn (facs. in DMV, xv, 1995)
692	Queste, Eurilla gentil (V. Vettori), 4vv, bc, Mantua, 31 July 1726, music lost
693	La Senna festeggiante (D. Lalli), 3vv, bc, ?Venice, c1726, Tn (facs. in DMV, xv, 1995)
694	L'unione della Pace e di Marte (A. Grossatesta), 3vv, bc, Venice, 19 Sept 1727, music lost
691	Il Mopso (Egidio Nonnanuci [G. Cendoni]), Venice, date uncertain, lost

works incorrectly attributed to vivaldi

Conc., C, rv Anh.2, by A.W. Solnitz; conc., d, rv Anh.3, anon.; sinfonia, G, rv Anh.4, by J.A. Hasse; sonata, A, rv Anh.5, by G. Sammartini; vn conc., C, rv Anh.7, by T. Albinoni; vn conc., D, rv Anh.9, Fanna I,237, by F.M. Veracini; vn conc., d, rv Anh.10, by G. Torelli (= bwv979); vn conc., e, rv Anh.11, by Johann Ernst of Saxe-Weimar; vn conc., G, rv Anh.12, probably by Johann Ernst of Saxe-Weimar; vn conc., A, rv Anh.14, by F.M. Veracini; vn conc., a, rv Anh.15, anon.; ob conc., d/c, rv Anh.16, by A. Marcello (= bwv974); conc., vn, ob, c, rv Anh.17, Fanna XII,53, by G.P. Telemann; vn conc. arr. vn and pf, rv Anh.62, by F. Kreisler; vn conc., g, rv Anh.73, by G. Tartini; vn conc., B, rv Anh.75, by M. d’Alay

See also entries under rv13, 24, 49, 50, 80, 89, 102, 132, 144, 148, 172a, 272, 274, 338, 355, 373, 415, 426, 446, 456, 458–9, 464–5 and 776

operas

drammi per musica, in three acts, unless otherwise stated; list includes pasticcios arranged by Vivaldi

†	later versions or revivals under different titles



RV	Title	Libretto	Performances	Principal MS sources; remarks

729	Ottone in villa	D. Lalli, after F.M. Piccioli: Messalina	Vicenza, Garzerie, May 1713	I-Tn (facs. in DMV, xii, 1982); passed by censor 21 April 1713
727	Orlando finto pazzo	G. Braccioli	Venice, S Angelo, Nov 1714	Tn (lacking sinfonia); ded. 10 Nov 1714
Anh. 84	Orlando furioso	Braccioli, after L. Ariosto	Venice, S Angelo, aut. 1714	Tn (partly autograph score of Acts 1 and 2); ded. 17 Dec 1714; extensive rev. of G.A. Ristori: Orlando furioso, 1713
724	Nerone fatto Cesare	M. Noris	Venice, S Angelo, carn. 1715	pasticcio arr. Vivaldi, containing 12 arias by him; passed by censor 12 Feb 1714 [=1715]
			Brescia, Accademia, carn. 1716	? adaptation of 1715 version, many new arias, but 6 of Vivaldi’s aria texts the same
706	La costanza trionfante de gl’amori e de gl’odii	A. Marchi	Venice, S Moisè, carn. 1716	ded. 18 Jan 1715 [=1716]; passed by censor 21 Jan 1715 [=1716]
701	†Artabano, re de’ Parti	Venice, S Moisè, carn. 1718	revival of La costanza trionfante, 1716; passed by censor 5 Jan 1718
Anh.57	†Die über Hass und Liebe siegende Beständigkeit, oder Tigranes, König von Armenien	Hamburg, Gänsemarkt, 5 May 1719	6 arias D-Bsb; int Dorimena e Tuberone; almost all arias are from Artabano, 1718
Anh.51	†L’odio vinto dalla constanza	B. Vitturi, after Marchi	Venice, S Angelo, carn. 1731	? pasticcio arr. A. Galeazzi; int Melinda; passed by censor 24 Jan 1731
708	†Doriclea		Prague, Sporck, carn. 1732	adapted from 1st version of La costanza trionfante
700	Arsilda, regina di Ponto	Lalli	Venice, S Angelo, 27 or 28 Oct 1716	I-Tn (1 autograph working score, 1 copy), 16 arias, D-Dlb; int L’alfier fanfarone; passed by censor 18 Oct 1716; same sinfonia as Teuzzone, 1718
719	L’incoronazione di Dario	A. Morselli	Venice, S Angelo, 23 Jan 1717	I-Tn; passed by censor 15 Jan 1716 [=1717]
737	Tieteberga	A.M. Lucchini	Venice, S Moisè, 16 Oct 1717	2nd version made during 1717 season, with 9 arias by other composers
Anh.58	Il vinto trionfante del vincitore	Marchi: Zenobia, regina de’ Palmireni	Venice, S Angelo, aut. 1717	pasticcio, ? with some music by Vivaldi; ded. 22 Nov 1717
699	Armida al campo d’Egitto	G. Palazzi, after T. Tasso	Venice, S Moisè, 15 Feb 1718	Tn (Acts 1 and 3 autograph; partly rev. with non-autograph addns for 1738 perf.); same sinfonia as Ercole, 1723
720	†Gli inganni per vendetta	? arr. Lalli	Vicenza, Grazie, 1720	passed by censor 12 May 1720; adapted from Armida
	†Armida al campo d’Egitto		Ravenna, Industria, 1726	addns by A. Monteventi
			Venice, S Margherita, carn. 1731	int Lidia ed Ircano; rev. (not by Vivaldi himself)
			Venice, S Angelo, 12 Feb 1738	pasticcio arr. Vivaldi, based on 1718 version with several new arias, incl. 2 from Leo: Farnace
732	Scanderbeg	A. Salvi	Florence, Pergola, 22 June 1718	4 arias, 2 recits Tn
736	Teuzzone	A. Zeno	Mantua, Arciducale, 28 Dec 1718	D-Bsb (copy of final version), I-Tn (working score, partly autograph); aria ‘Ritorna a lusingarmi’ probably by Orlandini, possibly other foreign arias; same sinfonia as Arsilda, 1716
738	Tito Manlio	Noris	Mantua, Arciducale, carn. 1719	Tn (1 autograph headed ‘musica del Vivaldi fatta in 5 giorni’, 1 copy; both lacking sinfonia); 8 arias Tn
704	La Candace, o siano Li veri amici	F. Silvani, rev. Lalli, after P. Corneille: Héraclius, empereur d’Orient	Mantua, Arciducale, carn. 1720	11 arias, 1 qt Tn
778	Tito Manlio[Act 3]	Noris	Rome, Pace, carn. (? 8 Jan) 1720	10 arias F-Pc, 9 arias, 1 chorus D-WD; a few of Vivaldi’s arias correspond with 1719 version; Act 1 by G. Boni, Act 2 by G. Giorgi; int Breno e Dina; formerly rv Anh.56
739	La verità in cimento	Palazzi and Lalli	Venice, S Angelo, aut. (? 26 Oct) 1720	I-Tn, 12 arias D-Mbs, 6 arias, 1 qt I-Tn; int L’avaro by F. Gasparini; passed by censor 3 Oct 1720
715	Filippo, re di Macedonia [Act 3]	Lalli	Venice, S Angelo, 27 Dec 1720	Acts 1 and 2 by G. Boniventi; passed by censor 17 Dec 1720; int Melinda e Tiburzio
734	La Silvia	E. Bissarri	Milan, Regio Ducale, 28 Aug 1721	9 arias Tn; dramma pastorale
710	Ercole su’l Termodonte	G.F. Bussani	Rome, Capranica, Jan 1723	23 arias, 1 duet D-MÜs, 6 arias, sinfonia F-Pc; same sinfonia as Armida, 1718
740	La virtù trionfante dell’amore, e dell’odio, overo Il Tigrane [Act 2]	Silvani	Rome, Capranica, 1st op in carn. 1724	Act 2 I-Tn; Act 1 and int by B. Micheli, Act 3 by N. Romaldo; also known as Mitridate
717	Giustino	P. Pariati, after N. Beregan	Rome, Capranica, 2nd op in carn. 1724	Tn; ed. R. Strohm (Milan, 1991)
721	L’inganno trionfante in amore	? G.M. Ruggieri, after Noris: Laodicea e Berenice	Venice, S Angelo, aut. 1725	? pasticcio arr. Vivaldi
707	Cunegonda	A. Piovene: La principessa fedele	Venice, S Angelo, 29 Jan 1726	? pasticcio arr. Vivaldi; passed by censor 22 Jan 1726
712	La fede tradita e vendicata	Silvani	Venice, S Angelo, 16 Feb 1726	passed by censor 10 Feb 1726
Anh.45	†Ernelinda		Venice, S Cassiano, carn. 1750	? pasticcio (with music by Vivaldi, Gasparini and Galuppi); int La preziosa ridicola
Anh.55	La tirannia gastigata	Silvani: La fortezza in cimento	Prague, Sporck, carn. 1726	ded. 20 Feb 1726; arr. A. Denzio using arias from La costanza trionfante; recits. by A. Guerra
709	Dorilla in Tempe	Lucchini	Venice, S Angelo, 9 Nov 1726	melodramma eroico-pastorale
			Venice, S Angelo, c2 Feb 1734	Tn; pasticcio arr. Vivaldi, based on 1726 version, with arias by Hasse, Giacomelli and Leo
722	Ipermestra	Salvi	Florence, Pergola, 25 Jan 1727	3 arias US-BE
711	Farnace	Lucchini	Venice, S Angelo, 10 Feb 1727	passed by censor 6 Feb 1727; revived in aut. 1727 with several new arias by Vivaldi; I-Tn (partly autograph, 1731, Pavia); Tn (autograph, dated 1738, Acts 1 and 2; ? 1739, Ferrara)
735	Siroe, re di Persia	P. Metastasio	Reggio nell’Emilia, Pubblico, Ascension 1727	ded. 29 April 1727
			Ancona, Fenice, sum. 1738	incl. many arias from Vivaldi’s other operas
			Ferrara, Bonacossi, 1st op in carn. 1739	? pasticcio arr. Vivaldi
728	Orlando [Orlando furioso]	Braccioli, after Ariosto	Venice, S Angelo, aut. (? 10 Nov) 1727	Tn (working score, mainly autograph, lacking sinfonia); lib similar to, but music largely different from, 1714 version; passed by censor 5 Nov 1727; int Il marito giocatore
			Brno, Taverna, carn. 1735	music by Vivaldi ‘a riserva di alcune arie’; perfs. of Orlando furioso in Bergamo and Vicenza 1738, Este 1740 and Bassano 1741 may be pasticcios with Vivaldi’s arias
730	Rosilena ed Oronta	Palazzi	Venice, S Angelo, carn. 1728	passed by censor 12 Jan 1728; ded. 17 Jan 1728
702	L’Atenaide	Zeno	Florence, Pergola, 29 Dec 1728	Tn (lacking sinfonia), 6 arias D-Dlb
697	Argippo	Lalli	Prague, Sporck, aut. 1730
696	Alvilda, regina de’Goti	Zeno: L’amor generoso and G.C. Corradi: L’amazzone corsara	Prague, Sporck, spr. 1731	only some arias by Vivaldi, probably from other operas; renumbered as rv Anh.88
733	Semiramide	Silvani	Mantua, Arciducale, carn. 1732	6 arias in Dlb; ded. 26 Dec 1731
714	La fida ninfa	S. Maffei	Verona, Filarmonico, carn. 1732	I-Tn (lacking sinfonia), ed. R. Monterosso (Cremona, 1964); 8 arias, 1 trio D-Dlb; written for opening of new theatre; ded. 6 Jan 1732
777	†Il giorno felice		Vienna, 1737	? some music by Vivaldi; renumbered as rv Anh.92
723	Motezuma	A. Giusti	Venice, S Angelo, 14 Nov 1733
725	L’Olimpiade	Metastasio	Venice, S Angelo, 17 Feb 1734	I-Tn
703	Il Tamerlano [Il Bajazet]	Piovene	Verona, Filarmonico, carn. 1735	Tn; tragedia per musica; pasticcio arr. Vivaldi using arias by Hasse, Giacomelli, Porpora and R. Broschi
695	L’Adelaide	? Salvi	Verona, Filarmonico, carn. 1735
718	Griselda	Zeno, rev. C. Goldoni, after G. Boccaccio: Il decamerone	Venice, S Samuele, 18 May 1735	Tn (facs. in IOB, xxxv, 1978), ed. R. Fasano (Palermo, 1985)
698	Aristide	? Goldoni	Venice, S Samuele, aut. 1735	drama eroi-comico per musica, 1 act; ded. signed by Domenico Lalli; ? not by Vivaldi; int Il filosofo; renumbered as rv Anh.89
716	Ginevra, principessa di Scozia	Salvi, after Ariosto	Florence, Pergola, 17 Jan 1736
705	Catone in Utica	Metastasio	Verona, Filarmonico, May 1737	Tn (Acts 2 and 3)
731	Rosmira [Rosmira fedele]	S. Stampiglia: Partenope	Venice, S Angelo, 27 Jan 1738	Tn (sinfonia by G. Micheli); pasticcio arr. Vivaldi
726	L’oracolo in Messenia	Zeno: Merope	Venice, S Angelo, 30 Dec 1737	passed by censor ? 27 Dec 1737
			Vienna, Kärntnertor, carn. 1742	most aria texts unchanged
713	Feraspe	Silvani [lib orig. L’innocenza giustificata]	Venice, S Angelo, 7 Nov 1739
Arrs. of Hasse: Demetrio, 1737; Alessandro nell’Indie, 1737
Arias in A-Wgm, Wn; B-Bc; CH-Gc; D-Bsb, BNms, Dlb, Hs, LEm, Mbs, MÜs, MÜu, ROu, SHs, SWl, WDm; DK-Kk; F-Pc, Pn; GB-Cfm, Lbl, Mp; I-Mc, Nc, Tn, Vc; S-L, SK; US-BE

specialist periodicals and collections

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ISV

Informazioni e studi vivaldiani

catalogues and documentation

specialist periodicals and collections

Antonio Vivaldi: note e documenti sulla vita e sulle opere, Chigiana, i (1939)

La scuola veneziana (secoli XVI–XVIII): note e documenti, Chigiana, iii (1941)

Fac-simile di un autografo di Antonio Vivaldi, Quaderni dell'Accademia chigiana, xiii (Siena, 1947)

Fac-simile del Concerto funebre di Antonio Vivaldi, Quaderni dell'Accademia chigiana, xv (Siena, 1947)

Vivaldiana, i (Brussels, 1969) [only one issue pubd]

Vivaldi informations (Copenhagen, 1971–3)

F. Degrada and M.T. Muraro, eds.: Antonio Vivaldi da Venezia all'Europa (Milan, 1978)

NRMI, xiii/1 (1979) [Vivaldi issue]

Vivaldi veneziano europeo: Venice 1978

Informazioni e studi vivaldiani: bollettino annuale dell'Istituto Italiano Antonio Vivaldi (1980–) [ISV]

Vivaldi-Studien: Dresden 1978

Opera & Vivaldi: Dallas 1980

Antonio Vivaldi: Venice 1981

Nuovi studi vivaldiani: Venice 1987

La prima ‘Settimana musicale senese’ e la Vivaldi Renaissance (1939–1989): Siena 1989 [Chigiana, new ser., xxi (1989)]

Vivaldi: vero e falso: Poitiers 1991

Cinquant’anni di produzione e consumi della musica dell’età di Vivaldi: Venice 1997

catalogues and documentation

BrookB

A. Fuchs: Thematisches Verzeichniss über die Compositionen von Antonio Vivaldi (MS, D-Bsb, 1839); facs. with commentary ed. P. Ryom in Vivaldi informations, i (1971–2), 43–71

W. Altmann: ‘Thematischer Katalog der gedruckten Werke Antonio Vivaldis’, AMw, iv (1922), 262–79

A. Gentili: ‘La raccolta di rarità musicali “Mauro Foà” alla Biblioteca Nazionale di Torino’, Accademie e biblioteche d'Italia, i (1927–8), 3–50; repr. as ‘La raccolta “Mauro Foà” nella Biblioteca Nazionale de Torino’, RMI, xxxiv (1927), 356–68

A. Gentili: ‘La raccolta di antiche musiche “Renzo Giordano” alla Biblioteca Nazionale di Torino’, Accademie e biblioteche d'Italia, iv (1930–31), 117–25

M. Rinaldi: Catalogo numerico tematico delle composizioni di Antonio Vivaldi (Rome, 1945)

M. Pincherle: Antonio Vivaldi et la musique instrumentale, ii (Paris, 1948/R)

H.R. Jung: ‘Die Dresdner Vivaldi-Manuskripte’, AMw, xii (1955), 314–18

P.P. Domokos: ‘Két Vivaldi-emlék’ [Two Vivaldi fragments], Magyar zene, iii (1962), 156–7 [concerns rv791]

G. Gentili Verona: ‘Le collezioni Foà e Giordano della Biblioteca Nazionale di Torino’, Accademie e biblioteche d'Italia, xxxii (1964), 405–30; repr. with Eng. summary in Vivaldiana, i (1969), 31–56

P. Damilano: ‘Inventario delle composizioni musicale manoscritte di Antonio Vivaldi esistenti presso la Biblioteca Nazionale di Torino’, RIM, iii (1968), 109–79

A. Fanna: A. Vivaldi: catalogo numerico-tematico delle opere strumentali (Milan, 1968); rev. 2/1986 as Opere strumentali di Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741): catalogo numerico-tematico secondo la catalogazione Fanna [catalogue of the Ricordi edition]

P. Ryom: ‘Le recensement des cantates d'Antonio Vivaldi’, DAM, vi (1968–72), 81–100

J.-P. Demoulin: ‘Indice thématique “pro memoria” conservé dans la collection Foà de Turin’, Vivaldiana, i (1969), 147–50

J.-P. Demoulin: ‘Un “Salve Regina” inconnu pour soprano, violon solo, orchestre à cordes et orgue’, ibid., 143–6 [concerns rv617]

R. Eller: ‘Über Charakter und Geschichte der Dresdner Vivaldi-Manuskripte’, ibid., 57–67

P. Ryom: ‘Àpropos de l'inventaire des oeuvres d'Antonio Vivaldi: étude critique des catalogues et nouvelles découvertes (48 manuscrits inconnus)’, ibid., 69–114

K. Heller: Die deutsche Überlieferung der Instrumentalwerke Vivaldis (Leipzig, 1971)

P. Ryom: ‘Nouvelles découvertes, 1–4’, Vivaldi informations, i (1971–2), 14–16, 30–35, 87–90; ii (1973), 106–7

P. Ryom: ‘Le premier catalogue thématique des oeuvres d'Antonio Vivaldi’, Festskrift Jens Peter Larsen, ed. N. Schiørring, H. Glahn and C.E. Hatting (Copenhagen, 1972), 127–40

K. Beckmann: ‘Zur Echtheitsfrage des Concertorv275’, Vivaldi informations, ii (1973), 7–16

P. Ryom: Antonio Vivaldi: table de concordances des oeuvres (Copenhagen, 1973)

P. Ryom: ‘Inventaire de la documentation manuscrite des oeuvres de Vivaldi: I. Biblioteca Nazionale di Torino (première partie: le fonds Foà)’, Vivaldi informations, ii (1973), 61–100

R. Strohm: ‘Eine neuentdeckte Mantuaner Opernpartitur Vivaldis’, ibid., 104–6 [concerns rv736]

P. Ryom: Verzeichnis der Werke Antonio Vivaldis: kleine Ausgabe (Leipzig, 1974, 2/1979)

F. Fano: ‘Una traccia prossima alla prima origine della raccolta di musiche vivaldiane conservata alla Biblioteca Nazionale di Torino’, Medioevo e umanesimo, xxiv (1976), 83–93

P. Ryom: Les manuscrits de Vivaldi (Copenhagen, 1977)

M. Fechner: ‘Neue Vivaldi-Funde in der Sächisischen Landesbibliothek Dresden’, Vivaldi-Studien: Dresden 1978, 42–58, 174–5

E. Garbero: ‘Drammaturgia vivaldiana: regesto e concordanze dei libretti’, Antonio Vivaldi da Venezia all'Europa, ed. F. Degrada and M.T. Muraro (Milan, 1978), 111–53

O. Landmann: ‘Katalog der Dresdener Vivaldi-Handschriften und -Frühdrucke’, Vivaldi-Studien: Dresden 1978, 101–67

L. Bellingardi: ‘Discografia di Antonio Vivaldi’, NRMI, xiii (1979), 290–304

A. Girard and G.Rostirolla: ‘Catalogo delle composizioni di Antonio Vivaldi’, ibid., 210–89

R.-C. Travers: ‘Discographie Vivaldi’, ISV (1980–)

A.L. Bellina, B.Brizi and M.G. Pensa: I libretti vivaldiani: recensione e collazione dei testimoni a stampa (Florence, 1982)

M. Talbot: ‘A Vivaldi Discovery at the Conservatorio “Benedetto Marcello”’, ISV, iii (1982), 3–12

R.-C. Travers and T.Walker: ‘Discographie Vivaldi 78 tours’, ibid., 74–97

P. Everett: ‘A Roman Concerto Repertory: Ottoboni's “What Not”?’, PRMA, cx (1983–4), 62–78

M. Grattoni: ‘Una scoperta vivaldiana a Cividale del Friuli’, ISV, iv (1983), 3–19 [concerns rv208]

R.-C. Travers: ‘Nouvelles informations sur la discographie Vivaldi 78 tours’, ibid., 98–100

P. Everett: ‘Vivaldi Concerto Manuscripts in Manchester’, ISV, v (1984), 23–52; vi (1985), 23–52; vii (1986), 5–34

M. Grattoni: ‘Nuove fonti vivaldiane a Udine e a Cividale del Friuli’, ISV, v (1984), 3–22 [concerns rv7a, 208, 519, 757 and 785]

M. Talbot: ‘Vivaldi in the Sale Catalogue of Nicolaas Selhof’, ISV, vi (1985), 57–63

C. Timms: ‘“Prendea con man di latte”: a Vivaldi Spuriosity?’, ibid., 64–73 [concerns rv753]

P. Ryom: Répertoire des oeuvres d'Antonio Vivaldi: les compositions instrumentales (Copenhagen, 1986)

P. Everett: ‘Towards a Chronology of Vivaldi Manuscripts’, ISV, viii (1987), 90–107

I. Fragalà Data and A. Colturato: Biblioteca nazionale universitaria di Torino, i: Raccolta Mauro Foà, roccolta Renzo Giordano (Rome, 1987)

F.S. Tanenbaum: ‘The Pietà Partbooks and More Vivaldi’, ISV, viii (1987), 7–12

P. Everett: ‘Towards a Vivaldi Chronology’, Nuovi studi vivaldiani: Venice 1987, 729–57

M. Fechner: ‘Bemerkungen zu einigen Dresdner Vivaldi-Manuskripten’, ibid., 775–84

M. Talbot: Antonio Vivaldi: a Guide to Research (New York, 1988), 1–108 [comprehensive bibliography]

F.S. Tanenbaum: ‘The Pietà Partbooks – Continued’, ISV, ix (1988), 5–13

A. Basso: ‘I codici vivaldiani di Torino, ovvero fatti e misfatti, avventure e disavventure del collezionismo musicale’, La prima ‘Settimana musicale senese’ e la Vivaldi Renaissance (1939–1989): Siena 1989 [Chigiana, new ser., xxi (1989)], 161–84

P. Everett: The Manchester Concerto Partbooks (New York, 1989)

P. Everett: ‘Vivaldi's Italian Copyists’, ISV, xi (1990), 27–87

P. Everett: ‘Vivaldi's Marginal Markings: Clues to Sets of Instrumental Works and their Chronology’, Musicology in Ireland, ed. G. Gillen and H. White (Dublin, 1990), 248–63

Vivaldi: vero e falso: Poitiers 1991 [incl. P. Ryom: ‘Vivaldi ou Galuppi? Un cas de doute surprenant’, 25–41 [concerns rv795]; K. Heller: ‘Zu einigen Incerta im Werkbestand Vivaldis’, 43–58 [concerns rv51, 796 and Anh.71]; M. Fechner: ‘Wer ist der Komponist der Sinfonia rv132?’, 149–54]

M. Talbot: ‘Vivaldi in the Sale Room: a New Version of “Leon Feroce”’, ISV, xii (1991), 5–17

B. Over: ‘Ein unbekanntes Vivaldi-Autograph im Conservatorio “Benedetto Marcello”’, ISV, xiii (1992), 5–16

L. Pancino: ‘Le caratteristiche grafiche della mano di Vivaldi secondo il metodo grafologico’, ibid., 67–95

P. Ryom: ‘rv749’, ISV, xiv (1993), 5–50 [lists operatic arias preserved separately]

P. Ryom: ‘Les doubles dans les partitions d'opéra de Vivaldi’, ISV, xv (1994), 5–50

general

M. Abbado: Antonio Vivaldi, I maestri della musica, xxix (Turin, 1942)

M. Rinaldi: Antonio Vivaldi (Milan, 1943)

M. Pincherle: Antonio Vivaldi et la musique instrumentale (Paris, 1948/R)

M. Pincherle: Vivaldi (Paris, 1955; Eng. trans., 1958, as Vivaldi: Genius of the Baroque)

W. Kolneder: Antonio Vivaldi: neue Studien zur Biographie und zur Stilistik der Werke (diss., U. of Saarbrücken, 1956)

W. Kolneder: Antonio Vivaldi: Leben und Werk (Wiesbaden, 1965; Eng. trans., 1970)

R. Giazotto: Vivaldi (Milan, 1965, 2/1973 as Antonio Vivaldi)

R. de Candé: Vivaldi (Paris, 1967, 2/1994)

M. Talbot: Vivaldi (London, 1978, 3/1993)

W. Kolneder: Antonio Vivaldi: Dokumente seines Lebens und Schaffens (Wilhelmshaven, 1979)

M. Talbot: Vivaldi (London, 1979)

K. Heller: Antonio Vivaldi: Kalendarium zur Lebens- und Werkgeschichte, Studien zur Aufführungspraxis und Interpretation der Musik des 18. Jahrhunderts, xxxiii (Michaelstein-Blankenburg, 1987)

K. Heller: Antonio Vivaldi (Leipzig, 1991; Eng. trans., 1997)

H.C.R. Landon: Vivaldi: Voice of the Baroque (London, 1993)

M. Talbot: Venetian Music in the Age of Antonio Vivaldi (Aldershot, 1999)

life

Choron-FayolleD

E. Wright: Some Observations Made in Travelling through France, Italy &c. in the Years 1720, 1721, and 1722, i (London, 1730), 84

C. de Brosses: Lettres historiques et critiques sur l'Italie, i (Paris, 1799), 297–9

Commemoriali Gradenigo (MS, I-Vmc, c1750), ii, f.36r

J.A. Hiller: ‘Lebenslauf des ehemaligen königlich polnischen und churfürstlichen sächsischen Concertmeisters Herrn Johann Georg Pisendel’, Wöchentliche Nachrichten und Anmerkungen die Musik betreffend, i (1766–7), 277–82, 285–92

C. Goldoni: Preface to Commedie, xiii (Venice, 1775), 10–13

J.A. Hiller: Lebensbeschreibung berühmter Musikgelehrten und Tonkünstler neuerer Zeit (Leipzig, 1784/R), 189–90

C. Goldoni: Mémoires, i (Paris, 1787), 286–91

G. Orloff: Essai sur l'histoire de la musique en Italie, ii (Paris, 1822), 288–91

F. Caffi: Storia della musica teatrale in Venezia (MS, I-Vnm, c1850), iv, ff.310–15

F. Stefani, ed.: Sei lettere di Antonio Vivaldi maestro compositore della prima metà del secolo XVIII (Venice, 1871)

A. Salvatori: ‘Antonio Vivaldi (il Prete Rosso): note biographiche’, Rivista mensile della città di Venezia, vii (1928), 325–46

M. Pincherle: ‘Antonio Vivaldi: saggio biografico’, RaM, ii (1929), 513–26, 599–605; Fr. trans. as ‘Antonio Vivaldi: essai biographique’, RdM, xi (1930), 161–70 and 265–81

G.F. Malipiero: ‘Un frontespizio enigmatico’, Bollettino bibliografico musicale, v/1 (1930), 16–19

R. Gallo: ‘Antonio Vivaldi, il Prete Rosso: la famiglia – la morte’, Ateneo veneto, cxxiv (1938), 165–72

M. Pincherle: ‘Vivaldi and the Ospitali of Venice’, MQ, xxiv (1938), 300–12

P. Berri: ‘La malattia di Vivaldi’, Musica d'oggi, xxiv (1942), 9–13

O. Rudge, ed.: Lettere e dediche di Antonio Vivaldi, Quaderni dell'Accademia chigiana, i (Siena, 1942)

E. Preussner: Die musikalischen Reisen des Herrn von Uffenbach (Kassel, 1949)

M. Antoine: ‘Antonio Vivaldi et François de Lorraine’, Annales de l'est, v (1954), 159–62

A. Cavicchi: ‘Inediti nell'epistolario Vivaldi–Bentivoglio’, NRMI, i (1967), 45–79

H. Pabisch: ‘Neue Dokumente zu Vivaldis Sterbetag’, ÖMz, xxvii (1972), 82–3

Vivaldi veneziano europeo: Venice 1978 [incl. M. Talbot: ‘Charles Jennens and Antonio Vivaldi’, 67–75; C. Gallico: ‘Vivaldi dagli archivi di Mantova’, 77–88; L. Moretti: ‘Dopo l'insuccesso di Ferrara: diverbio tra Vivaldi e Antonio Mauro’, 89–99; G. Vio: ‘Precisazioni sui documenti della Pietà in relazione alle “figlie di coro”’, 101–22]

T. Antonicek: ‘Vivaldi in Österreich’, ÖMz, xxxiii (1978), 128–34

L. Moretti: ‘Le inconvenienze teatrali: documenti inediti su Antonio Vivaldi impresario’, Antonio Vivaldi da Venezia all'Europa, ed. F. Degrada and M.T. Muraro (Milan, 1978), 26–9

R. Antonetto: Un documento della civiltà piemontese del Settecento: il castello di Guarene (Turin, 1979), 139

G. Corti: ‘Il Teatro della Pergola di Firenze e la stagione d'opera per il carnevale 1726–1727: lettere di Luca Casimiro degli Albizzi a Vivaldi, Porpora e altri’, RIM, xv (1980), 182–8

G. Vio: ‘Antonio Vivaldi prete’, ISV, i (1980), 32–57

M. Talbot: ‘Vivaldi and a French Ambassador’, ISV, ii (1981), 31–42

G. Vio: ‘Antonio Vivaldi violinista in S. Marco’, ibid., 51–60

F. della Seta: ‘Documenti inediti su Vivaldi a Roma’, Antonio Vivaldi: Venice 1981, 521–32

R.-C. Travers: La maladie de Vivaldi (Poitiers, 1982)

R.-C. Travers: ‘Une mise au point sur la maladie de Vivaldi’, ISV, iii (1982), 52–60

G. Vio: ‘Una nuova abitazione de Vivaldi a Venezia’, ibid., 61–6

G. Vio: ‘Antonio Vivaldi e i Vivaldi’, ISV, iv (1983), 82–97

F. Degrada: ‘Le lettere di Antonio Vivaldi pubblicate da Federico Stefani: un caso di “revisione” ottocentesca’, ISV, v (1984), 83–9

L. Cataldi: ‘I rapporti di Vivaldi con il “Teatro detto il Comico” di Mantova’, ISV, vi (1985), 88–110

C.F. Panagl: ‘Bilddokumente zu Vivaldis Tod in Wien’, ibid., 111–26

B. Brizi: ‘Vivaldi a Vicenza: una festa barocca del 1713’, ISV, vii (1986), 35–54

J.M. Whittemore: Revision of Music Performed at the Venetian Ospedali in the Eighteenth Century (diss., U. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 1986)

L. Cataldi: ‘Alcuni documenti relativi alla permanenza di Vivaldi a Mantova’, ISV, viii (1987), 13–23

L. Cataldi: ‘La rappresentazione mantovana del “Tito Manlio” di Antonio Vivaldi’, ibid., 52–89

M. Talbot: ‘Vivaldi and the Empire’, ibid., 31–51

G. Vio: ‘Ancora due residenze vivaldiane a Venezia’, ibid., 24–30

L. Cataldi: ‘L'attività operistica di Vivaldi a Mantova’, Nuovi studi vivaldiani: Venice 1987, 131–45

W.C. Holmes: ‘Vivaldi e il Teatro La Pergola a Firenze: nuove fonti’, ibid., 117–30

O. Termini: ‘Vivaldi at Brescia: the Feast of the Purification at the Chiesa della Pace (1711)’, ISV, ix (1988), 64–74

R. Eller: ‘Vier Briefe Antonio Vivaldis’, ISV, x (1989), 5–23

C. Vitali: ‘Vivaldi e il conte bolognese Sicinio Pepoli: nuovi documenti sulle stagioni vivaldiane al Filarmonico di Verona’, ibid., 25–56

M. Talbot: ‘“Lingua romana in bocca veneziana”: Vivaldi, Corelli and the Roman School’, Studi corelliani IV: Fusignano 1986, 303–18

G. Vio: ‘Alla ricerca della data dell'ultimo addio di Vivaldi a Venezia’, ISV, xi (1990), 89–97

G. Vio: ‘Appunti vivaldiani’, ISV, xii (1991), 77–86

C. Vitali: ‘I fratelli Pepoli contro Vivaldi e Anna Girò: le ragioni di un'assenza’, ibid., 19–46

N. Billio D'Arpa: ‘Festività solenni al Santo di Padova: testimonianze inedite su Vivaldi e su altri musicisti e virtuosi’, Il Santo, xxxii (1992), 345–59

D.E. Freeman: The Opera Theater of Count Franz Anton von Sporck in Prague (New York, 1992)

M. Saccardo: ‘Un autografo vivaldiano a Venezia’, ISV, xiii (1992), 17–22

E. Selfridge-Field: ‘Vivaldi and the Accademia Filarmonica’, ibid., 39–49

D.E. Freeman: ‘“Orlando Furioso” in the Bohemian Lands: was Vivaldi's Music Really Used?’, ISV, xiv (1993), 51–74

W.C. Holmes: Opera Observed: Views of a Florentine Impresario in the Early Eighteenth Century (Chicago, 1993)

C. Vitali: ‘Castelli di carte: Vivaldi, Pietro degli Antonii e l'Accademia Filarmonica di Bologna’, ISV, xiv (1993), 75–96

G. Vio: ‘Ancora sull'ultima residenza vivaldiana’, ISV, xv (1994), 75–81

G. Vio: ‘Antonio Vivaldi chierico veneziano’, ISV, xvi (1995), 123–31

C. Vitali: ‘I nove “principi di altezza” corrispondenti di Vivaldi e la dedica enigmatica del Concerto rv574: alla ricerca dell'indirizzario perduto’, ibid., 59–89

R. Rasch: ‘La famosa mano di Monsieur Roger: Antonio Vivaldi and his Dutch Publishers’, ISV, xvii (1996), 89–137

works

BoydenH

HawkinsH

NewmanSBE

ScheringGIK

SchmitzG

B. Marcello: Il teatro alla moda, o sia Metodo sicuro e facile per il ben comporre ed eseguire l'opere italiane in musica all'uso moderno (Venice, 1720; Eng. trans. in MQ, xxxiv (1948), 371–403, xxxv (1949), 85–105; also trans. in StrunkSR1)

J. Mattheson: Der vollkommene Capellmeister (Hamburg, 1739/R), 205

C. Avison: An Essay on Musical Expression (London, 1752, 2/1753/R, 3/1775), 42–3

J.J. Quantz: Versuch einer Anweisung die Flöte traversiere zu spielen (Berlin, 1752, 3/1789/R; Eng. trans., 1966 as On Playing the Flute)

W. Hayes: Remarks on Mr. Avison's Essay on Musical Expression (London, 1753), 39–41

J.J. Quantz: ‘Lebenslauf’, in F.W. Marpurg: Historisch-kritische Beyträge zur Aufnahme der Musik, i (Berlin, 1754/R), 197–250

L. Torchi: La musica istrumentale in Italia nei secoli XVI, XVII e XVIII (Turin, 1901)

S. Clercx: ‘A propos des sinfonies de Vivaldi’, La revue internationale de musique, no.1 (1938), 632–5

R.G. Pauly: ‘Benedetto Marcello's Satire on Early 18th-Century Opera’, MQ, xxxiv (1948), 222–33

W. Kolneder: ‘Vivaldi als Bearbeiter eigener Werke’, AcM, xxiv (1952), 45–52

W.S. Newman: ‘The Sonatas of Albinoni and Vivaldi’, JAMS, v (1952), 99–113

W. Kolneder: Aufführungspraxis bei Vivaldi (Leipzig, 1955, 2/1973)

R. Eller: ‘Geschichtliche Stellung und Wandlung der Vivaldischen Konzertform’, Musikwissenschaftlicher Kongress: Vienna 1956, 150–55

R. Eller: Das Formprinzip des Vivaldischen Konzerts: Studien zur Geschichte des Instrumentalkonzerts und zum Stilwandel in der ersten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts (diss., U. of Leipzig, 1957)

H.R. Rarig: The Instrumental Sonatas of Antonio Vivaldi (diss., U. of Michigan, 1958)

L.E. Rowell: Four Operas of Antonio Vivaldi (diss., U. of Rochester, 1959)

A. Hutchings: The Baroque Concerto (London, 1961, 3/1973)

W. Kolneder: Die Solokonzertform bei Vivaldi, Sammlung musikwissenschaftlicher Abhandlungen, xlii (Strasbourg and Baden-Baden, 1961)

D.S. Higbee: ‘Michel Corrette on the Piccolo and Speculations regarding Vivaldi's “flautino”’, GSJ, xvii (1964), 115–16

W. Kolneder: ‘Vivaldis Aria-Concerto’, DJbM, ix (1964), 17–27

T. Volek and M.Skalická: ‘Vivaldis Beziehungen zu den böhmischen Ländern’, AcM, xxxix (1967), 64–72

D. Lasocki: ‘Vivaldi and the Recorder’, American Recorder, ix (1968), 13–14; repr. in Recorder and Music Magazine, iii (1969), 22–7

H.C. Wolff: ‘Vivaldi und der Stil der italienischen Oper’, AcM, xl (1968), 179–86

P. Damilano: ‘Antonio Vivaldi compose due vespri?’, NRMI, iii (1969), 652–63

M.M. Dunham: The Secular Cantatas of Antonio Vivaldi in the Foà Collection (diss., U. of Michigan, 1969)

K. Heller: ‘Die Bedeutung J.G. Pisendels für die deutsche Vivaldi-Rezeption’, GfMKB: Leipzig 1966, 247–51

R.E. Fort: An Analysis of Thirteen Vesper Psalms of Antonio Vivaldi Contained in the Foà-Giordano Manuscripts (diss., Union Theological Seminary, 1971)

P. Ryom: ‘Le concerto “Per il Natale” de Vivaldi’, Vivaldi informations, i (1971–2), 75–80

M. Talbot: ‘The Concerto Allegro in the Early Eighteenth Century’, ML, lii (1971), 8–18, 159–72

D. Arnold: ‘Vivaldi's Church Music: an Introduction’, EMc, i (1973), 66–74

D. Burrows: ‘Style in Culture: Vivaldi, Zeno, and Ricci’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, iv (1973–4), 1–23

W. Kolneder: Melodietypen bei Vivaldi (Zürich, 1973)

I. Farup-Madsen: Vivaldis anvendelse af fløjteinstrumenter (diss., U. of Copenhagen, 1974)

H. Maurer: The Independent Arias of Antonio Vivaldi in Foà 28 (diss., Indiana U., 1974)

R.D. Seidler: The Bassoon Concertos of Antonio Vivaldi (diss., Catholic U. of America, 1974)

K. Heller: ‘Zu einigen Aspekten der solistischen Improvisation im Instrumentalkonzert des frühen 18. Jahrhunderts’, Zu Fragen des Instrumentariums, der Besetzung und Improvisation in der ersten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts: Blankenburg, Harz, 1975, 80–87

E. Selfridge-Field: Venetian Instrumental Music from Gabrieli to Vivaldi (Oxford, 1975, 3/1994)

K. Heller: ‘Tendenzen der Tempo-Differenzierung im Orchesterallegro Vivaldis’, Die Blasinstrumente und ihre Verwendung sowie zu Fragen des Tempos in der ersten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts: Blankenburg, Harz, 1976, 79–84

R. Strohm: Italienische Opernarien des frühen Settecento (1720–30), AnMc, no.16 (1976)

L. van Hasselt: ‘Heeft Vivaldi in 1738 Amsterdam bezocht?’, Mens en melodie, xxxii (1977), 398–9

M. Talbot: ‘Vivaldi's “Manchester” Sonatas’, PRMA, civ (1977–8), 20–29

Vivaldi-Studien: Dresden 1978 [incl. K. Heller: ‘Vivaldi's Ripienkonzerte: Bemerkungen zu einigen ausgewählten Problemen’, 1–31, 169–73; P. Ahnsehl: ‘Bemerkungen zur Rezeption der Vivaldischen Konzertform durch die mittel- und norddeutschen Komponisten im Umkreis Bachs’, 59–72; M. Talbot: ‘Ungewöhnliche Tonleiterformen bei Vivaldi’, 73–80, 176–9; R. Strohm: ‘Bemerkungen zu Vivaldi und der Oper seiner Zeit’, 81–99]

Vivaldi veneziano europeo: Venice 1978 [incl. W. Kolneder: ‘Musikalische Symbolik bei Vivaldi’, 13–23; D. Arnold: ‘Vivaldi's Motets for Solo Voice’, 37–48; F. Degrada: ‘Vivaldi e Metastasio: note in margine a una lettura dell'Olimpiade’, 155–81; B. Brizi: ‘Domenico Lalli librettista de Vivaldi?’, 183–204; G. Folena: ‘Prima la parola, poi la musica: Scipione Maffei poeta per musica e la Fida ninfa’, 205–33; E. Selfridge-Field: ‘Juditha in Historical Perspective: Scarlatti, Gasparini, Marcello and Vivaldi’, 135–53; M.T. Muraro and E. Povoledo: ‘Le scene della Fida ninfa: Maffei, Vivaldi e Francesco Bibiena’, 235–52]

P. Avanzi: ‘Sulla realizzazione del basso continuo nell'opera 2 di Antonio Vivaldi’, Ricerche musicali, ii (1978), 113–57

E. Cross: ‘Vivaldi as Opera Composer: “Griselda”’, MT, cxix (1978), 411–16

E. Cross: ‘Vivaldi's Operatic Borrowings’, ML, lix (1978), 429–39

K. Heller: ‘Zwei “Vivaldi-Orchester” in Dresden und Venedig’, Musikzentren in der ersten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts und ihre Ausstrahlung: Blankenburg, Harz, 1978, 56–63

J.W. Hill: ‘Vivaldi's Griselda’, JAMS, xxxi (1978), 53–82

N. Mangini: ‘Sui rapporti del Vivaldi col teatro di Sant'Angelo’, Venezia e il melodramma nel Settecento, ed. M.T. Muraro (Florence, 1978), 263–70

P. Ryom: ‘Antonio Vivaldi: les relations entre les opéras et la musique instrumentale’, ibid., 249–62

E. Selfridge-Field: ‘Vivaldi's Esoteric Instruments’, EMc, vi (1978), 332–8

R. Strohm: ‘Zu Vivaldis Opernschaffen’, Venezia e il melodramma nel Settecento, ed. M.T. Muraro (Florence, 1978), 237–48

W. Witzenmann: ‘“Credo in unum Deum”: un confronto tra interpretazioni di Gasparini e di Vivaldi’, Francesco Gasparini: Camaiore 1978 [Quaderni della RaM, vi (1981)], 119–32

D. Arnold: ‘The Solo Motet in Venice (1625–1775)’, PRMA, cvi (1979–80), 56–68

L. Bianchi: ‘Intorno alla Juditha di Vivaldi’, NRMI, xiii (1979), 204–9

N. Ohmura: ‘I “concerti senza orchestra” di Antonio Vivaldi’, NRMI, xiii (1979), 119–49

M. Rinaldi: Il teatro musicale di Antonio Vivaldi (Florence, 1979)

M. Talbot: ‘Vivaldi e lo chalumeau’, RIM, xv (1980), 153–81

M. Talbot: ‘Vivaldi's Op. 5 Sonatas’, The Strad, xc (1979–80), 678–81

C. Vitali: ‘Una lettera vivaldiana perduta e ritrovata, un inedito monteverdiano del 1630 e altri carteggi di musicisti celebri, ovvero splendori e nefandezze del collezionismo di autografi’, NRMI, xiv (1980), 404–12

Antonio Vivaldi: Venice 1981 [incl. R. Strohm: ‘Vivaldi's Career as an Opera Producer’, 11–63, repr. in R. Strohm: Essays on Handel and Italian Opera (Cambridge, 1985), 122–63; M. Talbot: ‘Vivaldi's Serenatas: Long Cantatas or Short Operas?’, 67–96; C. Timms: ‘The Dramatic in Vivaldi's Cantatas’, 97–129; G. Folena: ‘La cantata e Vivaldi’, 131–90; H. Hucke: ‘Vivaldi und die vokale Kirchenmusik des Settecento’, 191–206; K. Heller: ‘Anmerkungen zu Vivaldis Opernsinfonien’, 207–16; R. Wiesend: ‘Vivaldi e Galuppi: rapporti biografici e stilistici’, 233–55; B. Brizi: ‘Gli Orlandi di Vivaldi attraverso i libretti’, 315–30; M.G. Pensa: ‘L'Atenaide di Apostolo Zeno adattata per la musica di Vivaldi’, 331–44; F. Fido: ‘Le tre Griselde: appunti su Goldoni librettista di Vivaldi’, 345–63]

E. Cross: The Late Operas of Antonio Vivaldi, 1727–1728 (Ann Arbor, 1981)

K.D. Graumann: Antonio Vivaldi: Performance Editions of Nine Sacred Vocal Works on Liturgical Texts Preserved in the Raccolta Foà-Giordano (diss., U. of Oklahoma, 1981)

M. Talbot: ‘A Vivaldi Sonata with Obbligato Organ in Dresden’, Organ Yearbook, xii (1981), 81–103

W. Kolneder: ‘“Laudate Dominum”: eine Motette von Michel Corrette nach dem Frühlingskonzert op.VIII Nr.1 von Vivaldi’, Logos musicae: Festschrift für Albert Palm, ed. R. Görner (Wiesbaden, 1982), 124–30

K. Heller: Concerto ripieno und Sinfonia bei Vivaldi (diss., U. of Rostock, 1983)

K. Heller: ‘Über die Beziehungen zwischen einigen Concerto- und Sinfonia-Sätzen Vivaldis’, ISV, iv (1983), 41–60

J.W. Hill: ‘Vivaldi's “Ottone in villa” (Vicenza, 1713): a Study in Musical Drama’, DMV, xii (1983), pp.vii–xxxvii

T.E. Hoeprich: ‘Finding a Clarinet for the Three Concertos by Vivaldi’, EMc, xi (1983), 61–4

K. Hortschansky: ‘Arientexte Metastasios in Vivaldis Opern’, ISV, iv (1983), 61–75

R. Wiesend: ‘Die Arie “Già si sa ch'un empio sei”: von Vivaldi oder von Galuppi?’, ibid., 76–81

Opera & Vivaldi: Dallas 1980 [incl. E. Cross: ‘The Relationship between Text and Music in the Operas of Vivaldi’, 279–307; K. Kropfinger: ‘Vivaldi as Self-Borrower’, 308–26; J.W. Hill: ‘Vivaldi's Orlando: Sources and Contributing Factors’, 327–46]

H. Hell: ‘Ein Doppelkonzert Antonio Vivaldis als Triosonate’, AnMc, no.22 (1984), 149–96 [concerns rv516 and 71]

E. Selfridge-Field: ‘Dating Vivaldi's Venetian Operas’, ISV, v (1984), 53–65

M. Talbot: ‘Vivaldi's Conch Concerto’, ibid., 66–82

P. Weiss: ‘Venetian Commedia Dell'Arte “Operas” in the Age of Vivaldi’, MQ, lxx (1984), 195–217

P. Ahnsehl: ‘Geneis, Wesen, Weiterwirken: Miszellen zur Vivaldischen Ritornellform’, ISV, vi (1985), 74–86

P.G. Gillio: ‘Il mottetto per voce sola nella produzione di Antonio Vivaldi’, Rivista internazionale di musica sacra, vi (1985), 137–96

E. Stipcevic: ‘Sull'opera “Scanderbeg” di Antonio Vivaldi’, Subsidia musica veneta, v (1985–6), 1–119

L. Della Libera: Il flauto traverso in Vivaldi (diss., U. of Rome, 1986–7)

M. Stegemann: ‘Vivaldi und das Horn: Mutmassungen über die Genese der Concertirv538 undrv539’, ISV, vii (1986), 62–70

F. Tàmmaro: ‘Il “Farnace” di Vivaldi: problemi di ricostruzione’, Studi musicali, xv (1986), 213–56

F. Tàmmaro: ‘Il “Farnace” fiorentino del 1733’, ISV, vii (1986), 55–61

C. Fertonani: L' ‘imitazion convenevole’: i concerti ‘a programma’ di Antonio Vivaldi e l'estetica del primo Settecento (diss., U. of Milan, 1987–8)

R. Strohm: ‘Vivaldi's and Handel's Settings of Giustino’, Music and Theatre: Essays in Honour of Winton Dean, ed. N. Fortune (Cambridge, 1987), 131–58

Nuovi studi vivaldiani: Venice 1987 [incl. F. Tàmmaro: ‘I pasticci di Vivaldi: “Dorilla in Tempe”’, 147–84; A.L. Bellina, B. Brizi and M.G. Pensa: ‘Il pasticcio “Bajazet”: la “favola” del Gran Tamerlano nella messinscena di Vivaldi’, 185–272; M. Collins: ‘L'orchestra nelle opere teatrali di Vivaldi’, 285–312; N. Dubowy: ‘Anmerkungen zur Form in den frühen Konzerten Antonio Vivaldis’, 431–49; M. Grattoni: ‘“Qui si ferma a piacimento”: struttura e funzione della cadenza nei concerti di Vivaldi’, 472–92; E. Selfridge-Field: ‘“La pastorella sul primo albore”: a Case Study in the Relationship between Text and Music in the Cantatas of Marcello and Vivaldi’, 493–500; P.G. Gillio: ‘Il mottetto a voce sola: un oratorio in miniatura’, 501–10; J.W. Hill: ‘A Computer-Based Analytical Concordance of Vivaldi's Aria Texts: First Findings and Puzzling New Questions about Self-Borrowing’, 511–34; D.E. Monson: ‘The Trail of Vivaldi's Singers: Vivaldi in Rome’, 563–89; M. Talbot: ‘Vivaldi's Sacred Vocal Music: the Three Periods’, 759–69; E. Selfridge-Field: ‘Vivaldi and Marcello: Clues to Provenance and Chronology’, 785–800; L. Zoppelli: ‘Tempeste e stravaganze: fattori estetici e recettivi in margine alla datazione dei concerti “a programma”’, 801–10]

M. Talbot: ‘Vivaldi and Rome: Observations and Hypotheses’, JRMA, cxiii (1988), 28–46

K. Vlaardingerbroek: ‘Thematic Links to Other Works in the “Confitebor”rv596: their Nature and Context’, ISV, ix (1988), 47–63

P. Whitmore: ‘Towards an Understanding of the Capriccio’, JRMA, cxiii (1988), 47–56

P. Everett: ‘Vivaldi's Paraphrased Oboe Concertos of the 1730s’, La prima ‘Settimana musicale senese’ e la Vivaldi Renaissance (1939–1989): Siena 1989 [Chigiana, new ser., xxi (1989)], 197–216

C. Lawson: ‘Single Reed Instruments in the Music of Vivaldi’, ibid., 185–96

U. Roseman: Antonio Vivaldi's ‘Orlando finto pazzo’: an Analysis and Critical Edition (diss., UCLA, 1989)

Vivaldi: vero e falso: Poitiers 1991 [incl. P.J. Everett: ‘Opening “Il sepolcro”: Ziani, Vivaldi and a Question of Stylistic Authenticity’, 69–89: K. Vlaardingerbroek: ‘Vivaldi and Lotti: Two Unknown Borrowings in Vivaldi's Music’, 91–108; E. Selfridge-Field: ‘Vivaldi's Cello Sonatas’, 127–48]

P. Lescat: ‘“Il Pastor Fido”, une oeuvre de Nicolas Chédeville’, ISV, xi (1990), 5–10; expanded in Vivaldi: vero e falso: Poitiers 1991, 109–26

F. Doé de Maindreville: Les neuf sonates pour violoncello et basse continue de A. Vivaldi (diss., U. of Paris IV, 1991)

C. Fertonani: Antonio Vivaldi: la simbologia musicale nei concerti a programma (Pordenone, 1992)

S. Mamy: ‘“Le Printemps” d'Antonio Vivaldi revu et corrigé à Paris par Nicolas Chédeville, Michel Corrette et Jean-Jacques Rousseau’, ISV, xiii (1992), 51–65

M. Talbot: ‘New Light on Vivaldi's “Stabat Mater”’, ISV, xiii (1992), 23–37

M. Talbot: ‘Vivaldi and the Concertante Organ’, The Organist, ii/2 (1992), 1–3

C. White: From Vivaldi to Viotti: a History of the Early Classical Violin Concerto (Philadelphia, 1992)

A. Hermes-Neumann: Die Flötenkonzerte von Antonio Vivaldi (Egelsbach, 1993)

P.A. Mori: Vivaldi's Bassoon Concerto Variants: a Schenkerian Approach (diss., Peabody Institute, Johns Hopkins U., Baltimore, 1993)

W. Alexander: ‘Zur Spezifik des Ritornells in Antonio Vivaldis Konzerten für mehrere verschiedene Instrumente, Orchester und Basso continuo’, Rudolf Eller zum achzigsten Geburtstag, ed. K. Heller and A. Waczkat (Rostock, 1994), 41–9

L. Pancino: ‘“Arsilda regina di Ponto”: per una ricostruzione della versione primitiva’, ISV, xv (1994), 51–73

P. Ryom: Vivaldis koncerter (Copenhagen, 1994)

M. Talbot: ‘Tenors and Basses at the Venetian Ospedali’, AcM, lxvi (1994), 128–38

E. Cross: ‘Vivaldi and the Pasticcio: Text and Music in Tamerlano’, Con che soavità: Studies in Italian Opera, Song, and Dance, ed. T. Carter and I. Fenlon (Oxford, 1995), 275–311

L. Pancino: ‘Le opere di Vivaldi nel raffronto fra libretti e partiture, i: “Ottone in villa”; “Orlando finto pazzo”; “Arsilda regina di Ponto”; “L'incoronazione di Dario”’, ISV, xvi (1995), 5–58

M. Talbot and P.Everett: ‘Homage to a French King: Two Serenatas by Vivaldi (Venice, 1725 and ca. 1726)’, DMV, xv (1995), pp.ix–lxxxvii

M. Talbot: The Sacred Vocal Music of Antonio Vivaldi (Florence, 1995)

K. Vlaardingerbroek: ‘Venetian Echoes on Northern Canals: some Observations on Vivaldi's Music in the Netherlands’, ISV, xvi (1995), 91–121

P. Everett: ‘Vivaldi at Work: the Autograph of the “Gloria”rv589’, ISV, xvii (1996), 68–86

P. Everett: Vivaldi: ‘The Four Seasons’ and Other Concertos, Op. 8 (Cambridge, 1996)

L. Pancino: ‘Le opere di Vivaldi nel raffronto fra libretti e partiture, ii: “Armida al campo d'Egitto”: “Teuzzone”; “Tito Manlio”’, ISV, xvii (1996), 5–67

U. Zilkens: Antonio Vivaldi zwischen Naturalismus und Pop: die vier Jahreszeiten im Spiegel ihrer Interpretationen durch Musiktheoretiker und Musiker, in Bearbeitungen und auf Plattencovern (Cologne-Rodenkirchen, 1996) [incl. discography by R.-C. Travers]

C. Fertonani: La musica strumentale di Antonio Vivaldi (Florence, 1997)

C. Fertonani: ‘Antonio Vivaldi: le sonate a tré’, ISV, xviii (1997), 5–36

O. Rouvière: ‘Siro di Vivaldi, ou Metastasio à Venise’, ibid., 45–61

L. Pancino: ‘Le opere di Vivaldi nel raffronto fra libretti e partiture, iii: “La verità in cimento”; “La virtù trionfanate dell’amore e dell’odio, overo il Tigrane”; “Giustino”’, ISV, xix (1998), 5–31

R. Rasch: ‘Some Remarks on Vivaldi’s “Amsterdam Concerto” (rv562a)’, ibid., 33–43

O. Rouvière: ‘De Zeno à Goldoni: trois versions de “Griselda”’, ibid., 75–99

revival

J.-P. Demoulin: ‘Chronologie des principaux événements qui ont marqué la résurrection d'Antonio Vivaldi, au vingtième siècle’, Vivaldiana, i (1969), 21–8

M. Pincherle: ‘Rencontre de Vivaldi’, ibid., 7–11

M. Rinaldi: ‘Vita, morte e risurrezione di Antonio Vivaldi’, Studi musicali, vii (1978), 189–214

M. Abbado: ‘Antonio Vivaldi nel nostro secolo, con particolare riferimento alle sue opere strumentali’, NRMI, xiii (1979), 79–112

Vivaldi veneziano europeo: Venice 1978 [incl. M. Rinaldi: ‘Itinerario della rivalutazione vivaldiana’, 289–302; F. Nicolodi: ‘Vivaldi nell'attività di Alfredo Casella organizzatore e interprete’, 303–32; R.-C. Travers: ‘La redécouverte de Vivaldi par le disque, de 1950 à 1978’, 333–46]

F. Nicolodi: Gusti e tendenze del Novecento musicale in Italia (Florence, 1982), 163–204

L.T. Billiet: La redécouverte de Vivaldi par le disque (diss., U. Libre de Bruxelles, 1984)

Nuovi studi vivaldiani: Venice 1987 [incl. K. Heller: ‘Zum Vivaldi-Bild im deutschen Schrifttum des 19. Jahrhunderts’, 19–32; W. Kolneder: ‘Vivaldi in der Polemik Schreyer-Spitta’, 33–44; R.-C. Travers: ‘L'exhumation des opéras de Vivaldi au XX siècle’, 313–54; H.L. Hirsch: ‘VI? VAL? DI? Der “Prete Rosso” in den Medien: Versuch einer Spurensicherung’, 713–28]

D.E. Freeman: ‘J.S. Bach’s “Concerto” Arias: a Study in the Amalgamation of Eighteenth-Century Genres’, Studi musicali, xxvii (1998), 123–62

L. Alberti: ‘Come nacque a Venezia il Centro di Studi Vivaldiani’, La prima ‘Settimana musicale senese’ e la Vivaldi Renaissance (1939–1989): Siena 1989 [Chigiana, new ser., xxi (1989)], 53–64

B. Brizi: ‘Per l'edizione dei testi operistici vivaldiani’, ibid., 137–60

J.-P. Demoulin: ‘Du rôle complémentaire du concert et du disque dans l'histoire de la renaissance de Vivaldi au XXème siècle’, ibid., 217–34

C. Fertonani: ‘Edizioni e revisioni vivaldiane in Italia nella prima metà del Novecento (1919–43)’, ibid., 235–66

R. Meloncelli: ‘Antonio Vivaldi e il rinnovamento musicale a Roma tra le due guerre’, ibid., 65–111

F. Nicolodi: ‘Fonti critiche e storiografiche della riscoperta italiana di Vivaldi’, ibid., 19–39

M. Talbot: ‘The Fortunes of Vivaldi Biography, from Pincherle to the Present’, ibid., 113–35

Cinquant’anni di produzione e consumi della musica dell’età di Vivaldi: Venice 1997 [incl. R.-C. Travers: ‘1947–1997: Vivaldi, les baroques et la critique: toute une histoire’, 53–74; F. Deleméa: ‘Les opéras de Vivaldi au XXe siècle: la poursuite di l’exhumation (1987–1996)’, 129–201]

F. Delaméa: ‘La redécouverte du théâtre vivaldien: état des lieux et perspectives’, ISV, xix (1998), 45–73

iconography

F. Vatielli: ‘Un ritratto di Antonio Vivaldi?’, RaM, xi (1938), 224–7

M. Talbot: Antonio Vivaldi: a Guide to Research (New York, 1988), 149–53

F. Farges and M.Ducastel-Delacroix: ‘Au sujet du vrai visage de Vivaldi: essai iconographique’, Vivaldi: vero e falso: problemi di attribuzione, ed. A. Fanna and M. Talbot (Florence, 1992), 155–79

F.M. Sardelli: ‘Ciuffi rossi ed altri dettagli: per una riconsiderazione dell'iconografia vivaldiana’, ISV, xv (1994), 103–13

J. Wende: ‘Ein Porträt Don Antonio Vivaldis?’, ibid., 83–98

vivaldi and bach

J.N. Forkel: Über Johann Sebastian Bachs Leben, Kunst und Kunstwerke (Leipzig, 1802/R), 23–4

C.L. Hilgenfeldt: Johann Sebastian Bach's Leben, Wirken und Werke (Leipzig, 1850), 128

J. Rühlmann: ‘Antonio Vivaldi und sein Einfluss auf Johann Sebastian Bach’, NZM, lxiii (1867), 393–7, 401–5, 413–16

P. Waldersee: ‘Antonio Vivaldis Violinconcerte unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der von Johann Sebastian Bach bearbeiteten’, VMw, i (1885), 356–80

A. Schering: ‘Zur Bach-Forschung’, SIMG, iv (1902–3), 234–43

M. Schneider: ‘Das sogenannte “Orgelkonzert d-moll von Wilhelm Friedemann Bach”’, BJb (1911), 23–36

R. Eller: ‘Zur Frage Bach-Vivaldi’, GfMKB: Hamburg 1956, 80–85

R. Eller: ‘Vivaldi-Dresden-Bach’, BMw, iii/4 (1961), 31–48

P. Ryom: ‘La comparaison entre les versions différentes d'un concerto d'Antonio Vivaldi transcrit par J.S. Bach’, DAM, v (1966–7), 91–111

H.-G. Klein: Der Einfluss der Vivaldischen Konzertform im Instrumentalwerk Johann Sebastian Bachs (Baden-Baden, 1970)

J.T. Igoe: ‘Bachs Bearbeitungen für Cembalo solo: eine Zusammenfassung’, BJb 1971, 91–7

H.-J. Schulze: ‘J.S. Bach's Concerto-Arrangements for Organ: Studies or Commissioned Works?’, Organ Yearbook, iii (1972), 4–13

R. Eller: ‘Vivaldi and Bach’, Vivaldi veneziano europeo: Venice 1978, 55–66

H.-J. Schulze: ‘Neue Ermittlungen zu J.S. Bachs Vivaldi-Bearbeitungen’, Vivaldi-Studien: Dresden 1978, 32–41

W. Kolneder: ‘Vivaldi in der Polemik Schreyer-Spitta’, Nuovi studi vivaldiani: Venice 1987, 33–44

C. Wolff: ‘Vivaldi's Compositional Art and the Process of “Musical Thinking”’, ibid., 1–17

Vivanco, Sebastián de

(b Avila, c1551; d Salamanca, 26 Oct 1622). Spanish composer. He was born in the same town as Victoria, and was his close contemporary; he presumably studied with the same cathedral maestros.

On 4 July 1576 the Lérida Cathedral chapter dismissed Vivanco from the post of maestro de capilla ‘for causes that do not affect his honour’. On 9 October 1576 he was already under consideration for the equivalent post at Segovia Cathedral, and on 9th February he was formally hired on the recommendation of examiners who deemed him worth much more than the half-prebend that was being offered to him. His services were so meritorious that he was frequently awarded bonuses for extra music on feast days. He resigned on 31 August 1587 in order to accept the post of maestro de capilla at Avila Cathedral. Earlier that month he had been invited by Seville Cathedral to become Guerrero's assistant there, and, perhaps prompted by financial difficulties at Avila, he visited Seville, taking charge of the choristers on 29 February 1588. However, on 12 March he informed the authorities in Seville that he did not wish to stay, and returned to Avila, where he remained until Salamanca Cathedral appointed him maestro de capilla on 20 October 1602. At a formal competition on 19 February 1603, presided over by a panel that included the previous music professor of Salamanca University, Bernardo Clavijo de Castillo, he was appointed university professor there. On 4 March he became Master of Arts.

In 1607 Artus Taberniel, the Antwerp-born printer based in Salamanca, published in luxurious folio Vivanco's Liber magnificarum, then in 1608 ten masses, and in 1610 a large collection of motets. Studies of his works have established Vivanco as one of the leading composers of his age. He was capable of writing canons of ingenious complexity as well as movements of great expression. Not a parodist in any conventional sense, he selected instead top lines from his own motets O quam suavis and Assumpsit Jesus for intensive rhythmic and contrapuntal reworking in his masses of the same names. In a manuscript held in Valladolid (E-V 1) his masses on Doctor bonus and O quam suavis are renamed ‘Tone V’ and ‘Tone I’. These titles, however, are open to question since the finals are G with no flat and D with one flat. His Missa super octo tonos began a practice observed by the Évora composer Pedro Vaz Rego a century later (in his Missa omnitonum) of basing a mass on the eight psalm-tone cadential formulae, strung together into a thread of melody. Like Bernardino de Ribera, he reserved his most erudite canons for the Sanctus of his masses rather than the final Agnus, as was more usual. Vivanco's pair of Lady Masses, one for feasts, one for Saturdays (without Credo), his Quarti toni (unusual because the last Agnus ends on A), and Sexti toni (on F) complete his list of four-part masses. The six-part Missa ‘Crux fidelis’ and the eight-part Missa ‘In manus tuas’ reveal his profound skill in vocal part-writing. In his use of harmonics he stayed principally within the vocabulary of his age, but employed numerous augmented triads and bold false relations.

WORKS

Libro de misas (Salamanca, 1608):

Missa ‘Assumpsit Jesus’, 5vv; Missa in festo Beata Maria Virgine, 4vv; Missa Beata Virgine in sabbato, 4vv, ed. in RRMR, xxxi (1978); Missa ‘Crux fidelis’, 6vv; Missa ‘Doctor bonus’, 4vv; Missa ‘In manus tuas’, 8vv (inc.); Missa ‘O quam suavis es, Domine’, 4vv, ed. in RRMR, xxxi (1978); Missa quarti toni, 4vv; Missa sexti toni, 4vv, ed. in RRMR, xxxi (1978); Missa super octos tonos, 4vv

Officium et Missa defunctorum, E-GU s.s.(2) (olim II)

Liber [18] Magnificarum (Salamanca, 1607); 1 ed. in Mapa mundi, ser.A, xviii (London, 1978)

[Liber motectorum] (Salamanca, 1610); 10 ed. S. Rubio, Antología polifónica sacra (Madrid, 1954–6), 1 ed. S. Rubio, TSM, xxxviii (1955), music suppl., 53–5; 13 ed. in Mapa mundi, ser.A, xxxiii–xxxvi (London, 1979), lx–lxii (London, 1985) [complete list of 37 motets in Mapa mundi, ser.A, xxxv]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

StevensonSCM

M. Cantor: The ‘Liber Magnificarum’ of Sebastián de Vivanco (diss., New York U., 1967)

E.A. Arias: The Masses of Sebastián de Vivanco (ca. 1550–1622): a Study of Polyphonic Settings of the Ordinary in Late Renaissance Spain (diss., Northwestern U., 1971)

I. Fernández de la Cuesta: ‘Cantorales polifónicos de la abadía de Santo Domingo de Silos’, TSM, lvii (1974), 35–9, esp. 36

D. Crawford: ‘Two Choirbooks of Renaissance Polyphony at the Monasterio de Nuestra Señora of Guadalupe’, FAM, xxiv (1977), 151, 168–74

E.A. Arias: ‘Canonic Usage in the Masses of Sebastián de Vivanco’, AnM, xli (1986), 135–43

R.M. Stevenson: ‘Spanish Polyphonists in the Age of the Armada’, Inter-American Music Review, xii/2 (1991–2), 17–114, esp. 93–103

ROBERT STEVENSON

Vivarino, Innocentio

(b Adria, c1575; d Adria, sum. 1626). Italian composer and organist. As organist of the cathedral and teacher of organ and singing at the local school, he was from 1602 the central figure in the musical life of Adria; earlier, in 1592, he may have belonged to the Compagnia del SS Sacramento there. Despite offers of positions abroad, he continued to serve the cathedral and the town council until his death. The ideas of the literary circle of the Accademia degli Illustrati, the influence of the Counter-Reformation, the probable demand in Adria for music for few voices, and the trouble he took to assimilate the musical innovations of nearby Venice and Ferrara made him a confirmed – and competent – monodist. He published at least six volumes of music, but only two are extant; two others can be identified, and in the dedication of his book of solo motets of 1620 he mentioned masses and motets for several voices that he had composed. The 16 solo motets have singable vocal lines over a continuo bass with few figures. In the 24 madrigals of op.6, most of which are early examples of the chamber duet, he combined madrigalesque word-painting with expressive evocation of the texts: two of them have concertante instrumental parts, for viola and two violins respectively. The eight solo sonatas published with his solo motets are not very virtuoso in character and are uniform in language and structure. The latter consists of a kind of free variation based on a single theme, with two outer sections in duple time that begin imitatively and a middle section in triple time. The sonatas show how the development of the genre was influenced by the instrumental duet, and by the dominance of the outer parts of the instrumental canzona.

WORKS

Edition: Cantio sacra, lxvi, ed. R. Ewerhart (Cologne, 1995)

Il primo libro de [16] motetti … 1v, bc, con 8 sonate, vn/other inst (Venice, 1620); 1 motet ed. in Adrio, appx, ex.5; 2nd sonata ed. in Riemann; 7th sonata ed. in Schering

[24] Madrigali, 1–3vv, vns, e sinfonie, hpd/chit/other inst, op.6 (Venice, 1624)

Arias, bk 2, str acc.; Motets, 1–4vv, bc, ?lost, MischiatiI

BIBLIOGRAPHY

NewmanSBE

A. Schering: ‘Zur Geschichte der Solosonate in der ersten Hälfte des 17. Jahrhunderts’, Riemann-Festschrift (Leipzig, 1909/R), 309–25

H. Riemann: Handbuch der Musikgeschichte, ii/2 (Leipzig, 1912, rev. 2/1922/R by A. Einstein), 114ff

G. Beckmann: Das Violinspiel in Deutschland vor 1700 (Leipzig, 1918, music suppl. 1921), 12

A. Adrio: Die Anfänge des geistlichen Konzerts (Berlin, 1935), 25ff

I. Cavallini: ‘Il fondo musicale dell'Archivio della Chiesa Cattedrale di Adria: elenco’, Fontes artis musicae, xxvii (1980), 84–92

PETER BILOWITZKI

Vives [Roig], Amadeo [Amadeu]

(b Collbató, nr Barcelona, 18 Nov 1871; d Madrid, 2 Dec 1932). Spanish composer and writer. He studied under Ribera and, later, Felipe Pedrell in Barcelona. With his fellow-pupil Luis Millet he founded in 1891 the Orfeó Català, which was to become the leading Catalan choir, and for which he wrote a number of compositions and arrangements. For a short time he was organist and choirmaster at a convent of Loreto nuns, but an attack of infantile paralysis, complicated by a badly set fractured shoulder, left him with an almost useless right arm. Nevertheless, in 1896 he became chorus master at the Teatro Novedades in Barcelona, where his first opera Artus (on the Arthurian legend) was produced with some success the following year. This led him to move to Madrid and to devote the rest of his life, with the exception of a brief period of teaching at the Madrid Conservatory, to composing operas, operettas and zarzuelas. In this last sphere he was as much appreciated by discriminating musicians as by the general public, since he markedly raised standards by the finesse of his harmony and orchestration and by his superior taste. He was a prodigious worker, in 35 years composing over 100 stage pieces, about a quarter of them in collaboration with others, as was common practice (three unperformed zarzuelas were written with the young Falla); he also contemplated further operas to librettos by the Quintero brothers. An extremely well-read man with a mordant tongue, he took a cynical view of his own popularity and hankered after more serious status. Of his operas, Euda d’Uriac (1900, written in Catalan) owed some of its success to its incorporation of Catalan folksongs, but his only real triumph was the sentimental Maruxa (1914). His reputation today rests largely on this, the operetta La generala (1912), and zarzuelas such as Bohemios (1904) and, particularly, Doña Francisquita (1923), considered his masterpiece.

WORKS

(selective list)

stage works first performed in Madrid unless otherwise stated

for full list of stage works see GroveO

Ops: Artús (4, S. Trullol y Planes), Barcelona, Novedades, 19 May 1897; Euda d’Uriac (4, A. Guimerá, after his Los monjes de Sant Ayman), Barcelona, Novedades, 17 Oct 1900; Colomba (2, C. Fernández Shaw and L. Ballesteros, after P. Mérimée), Real, 15 Jan 1910; Maruxa (egloga lírica, 2, L. Frutos), Zarzuela, 28 May 1914; Balada de carnaval (1, L. Ardavín and J. Montero), Gran, 5 July 1919

Operettas: La favorita del rey (1, G. Perrín and M. Palacios), Apolo, 27 July 1905; La reina Mimí (3, Perrín and Palacios), Apolo, 8 July 1910; La generala (2, Perrín and Palacios), Gran, 14 June 1912; La veda del amor (1, Perrín and Palacios), Gran, 5 Dec 1912; El pretendiente (1, M. Echegaray), Apolo, 27 June 1913; El duquesito (3, Frutos), Reina Victoria, 16 April 1920

c100 zars, incl. La primera del barrio (1, S.M. Granés and J.G. Rufino), Zarzuela, 1898; Don Lucas del Cigarral (3, T. Luceño and C. Fernández Shaw, after F. de Rojas: Entre bobos anda el juego), Parish, 18 Feb 1899; Campanas y cornetas (1, E. Sellés), Apolo, 14 Feb 1900; La buenaventura (1, Fernández Shaw and Ballesteros, after M. de Cervantes: La gitanilla), Apolo, 30 April 1901, collab. J. Guervós; A estudiar a Salamanca (1, Luceño), Apolo, 10 May 1901, collab. Guervós; La caprichosa (1, Frutos and A.L. Monis), Zarzuela, 25 April 1902, rev. as Sangre torera, Eslava, 6 Dec 1906

El ramo de azahar (1, Iráyzoz), Zarzuela, 19 Feb 1903; Bohemios (1, Perrín and Palacios), Zarzuela, 24 March 1904, rev. C. del Campo (op), Real, 26 Feb 1920, rev. R. Ferrer (3, J.L. Rubio), 1965; El húsar de la guardia (1, Perrín and Palacios), Zarzuela, 1 Oct 1904, collab. J. Giménez; El cochero (1, R. Rocabert), Cómico, 21 Jan 1905; El príncipe ruso (1, L. Boada and M. de Castro Tiedra), Moderno, 18 May 1905; El arte de ser bonita (1, A. Paso and J. Prieto), Cómico, 7 Sept 1905, collab. Giménez; ¡Libertad! (1, Perrín and Palacios), Price, 30 Dec 1905, collab. Giménez

El guante amarillo (1, J.J. Veyán and J. Capella), Cómico, 5 Oct 1906, collab. Giménez; Las tres cosas de Jerez (3, Fernández Shaw and P. Muñoz Seca), Eslava, 30 April 1907; Episodios nacionales (1, M. Thous and E. Cerdá), Zarzuela, 30 April 1908, collab. Lleó; El talismán prodigioso (1, S. Delgado), Apolo, 6 Nov 1908; A la vera der queré (1, P. Pérez Fernández and G. de la Cruz), Cómico, 10 July 1909; Juegos malabares (1, Echegaray), Apolo, 4 Feb 1910

Los viajes de Gulliver (3, Paso and J. Abati), Cómico, 21 Feb 1911, collab. Giménez; La canción española (1, Mihura and G. del Toro), Gran, 14 Dec 1911, collab. Barrera; El gran simpático (1, del Toro), Martín, 7 Nov 1913; Miss Australia (1, Perrín and Palacios), Gran, 11 April 1914; Los pendientes de la Trini [No hay mal que por bien no venga] (1, A. Asenjo and T. del Alamo), Apolo, 1 Feb 1916; El señor Pandolfo (3, Pérez Fernández and L. Ardavín), Apolo, 27 Dec 1916

El tesoro (3, de la Puente), Zarzuela, 7 April 1917; Pepe Conde [El mentir de las estrellas] (3, Frutos), Apolo, 5 Jan 1920; Doña Francisquita (3, F. Romero and G. Fernández Shaw, after F. Lope de Vega: La discreta enamorada), Apolo, 17 Oct 1923; La villana (3, Romero and G. Fernández Shaw, after Lope de Vega: Períbañez y el comendador de Ocaña), Zarzuela, 1 Oct 1927; El talismán (3, Romero and G. Fernández Shaw, after Guillen de Castro: La fuerza de la costumbre), Calderón, 6 Dec 1932

Unperf. zars, collab. M. de Falla: El cornetin de órdenes, c1903 (3), lost; La cruz de Malta, c1903, lost; Prisionero de guerra, c1903–4

Choral pieces, incl. L’emigrant, 1894; Follies i paistages, 1928

Songs, incl. Canciones epigramáticas, 1915

Principal publisher: Unión Musical Española

WRITINGS

Sofía (Madrid, 1923/R) [Essays]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

J. Subirá: ‘Ideario estético y ético de Amadeo Vives’, Revista musical catalana (1933), Jan [Vives issue]; pubd separately as Ideario estético de Amadeo Vives (Barcelona, 1933)

‘Chispero’: El Teatro Apolo (Madrid, 1953)

G. Fernández Shaw: Un poeta de transición: Carlos Fernández Shaw (Madrid, 1969)

A. Sagardía: Amadeo Vives: vida y obra (Madrid, 1971)

T. Borrás and others: Amadeo Vives (1871–1971) (Madrid, 1972)

S. Burguete: Amadeo Vives (Madrid, 1978)

X. Aviñoa: Doña Francisquita: Amadeu Vives (Barcelona, 1986)

J.M. Lladó i Figueras: Amadeu Vives (1871–1932) (Montserrat, 1988)

LIONEL SALTER

Viviani, Antonio Maria

(b ? before 1630; d Vienna, Oct 1683). Italian organist, singer, composer, court official and priest, older cousin of Giovanni Buonaventura Viviani. He went to the Innsbruck court before 1648 and was at first organist, chaplain and secretary to the archduke, who ennobled him in 1654. In 1660 he was superintendent of the Italian chamber musicians at court. In 1669 and 1670 he was at the imperial court and in 1673 went with the retinue of the widowed Archduchess Anna to Vienna, where he became maestro di musica to her daughter, Empress Claudia Felicitas. After her death three years later he was paid as a singer and poet by Emperor Leopold I. He wrote the music for an Introduzzione drammatica (the libretto, by Diego de Lequile, is in SI-Lf), performed in 1652 during a tournament at the court in Innsbruck. He may also have written part of the Spanish opera Aun vencido vence Amor, o El Prometeo, performed in Vienna in 1669. Eight Italian and Spanish cantatas and arias ascribed to ‘Abbate Viviani’ survive in manuscript (A-Wn and I-Fc).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

SennMT

H. Knaus: Die Musiker im Archivbestand des kaiserlichen Obersthofmeisteramtes (1637–1705), ii (Vienna, 1968)

H. Seifert: Giovanni Buonaventura Viviani: Leben, Instrumentalwerke, Vokale Kammermusik (Tutzing, 1982)

H. Seifert: Die Oper am Wiener Kaiserhof im 17. Jahrhundert (Tutzing, 1985), 69–70

HERBERT SEIFERT

Viviani, Elena Croce.

See Croce, Elena.

Viviani, Giovanni Buonaventura

(b Florence, 15 July 1638; d ?Pistoia, after 1692). Italian composer and violinist. He was a violinist at the court at Innsbruck at least between 1656 and 1660. From 1672 to 1676 he was director of the court music at Innsbruck, which, after the extinction of the Tyrolean Habsburgs, had come under the control of the emperor. In publications of 1678 he still described himself as holding this position. But during the opera season in Venice from 1677 to 1678 his arrangement of Cavalli’s Scipione affricano and his own opera Astiage were performed, which suggests that he must have been there, and in 1678 at the Oratorio di S Marcello in Rome he directed an oratorio in which Corelli and Pasquini participated. He was probably elevated to the nobility in the same year, since he subsequently designated himself ‘Nobile del Sacro Romano Imperio’. Between 1678 and 1679 and 1681 and 1682 he was in Naples as director of a troupe of opera singers, and while he was there he performed some of his own operas and oratorios. In 1686 he was maestro di cappella to the Prince of Bisignano. From January 1687 to December 1692 he was maestro di cappella of Pistoia Cathedral.

Viviani’s operas and solo cantatas follow the style of Antonio Cesti’s, even in detail, which may imply that he studied with Cesti during his Innsbruck years; in any case he certainly knew Cesti’s work. His instrumental works are predominantly in the Italian style, though south German and Austrian influences are also recognizable. Of particular interest are the instrumental recitatives of the Sinfonia cantabile in his op.4, which is written in imitation of a solo cantata; there are also two sonatas in op.4 for trumpet and continuo. The Solfeggiamenti, textless vocal pieces intended for teaching purposes, are unusual examples of this genre because of the number of their movements and their exceptional length.

WORKS

operas

Astiage (3, M. Noris, after G.F. Apolloni), Venice, SS Giovanni e Paolo, wint. 1677, 21 arias I-Vqs, pubd lib Bc; rev. Naples, S Bartolomeo, Dec 1682, Mc, Nc, arias in Vqs

Scipione affricano (3, T. Fattorini, after N. Minato), Venice, SS Giovanni e Paolo, carn. 1678, 1 aria Vqs, pubd lib Vnm [rev. of Cavalli’s 1664 opera]

Mitilene, regina delle Amazoni (3, Count G. Barbò), Naples, Palazzo Real, 13 Nov 1681; Fiorentini, 1681–2, Nc

L’Elidoro, o vero Il fingere per regnare (3, after J.B. de Villegas), Saponara, 15 June 1686, pubd lib Nn

La vaghezza del fato (3, P. Guadagni), ?unperf., A-Wn

oratorios

La strage degli innocenti, Naples, 1682, I-Nf

L’Esequie del Redentore, Naples, 1682, Nf

Le nozze di Tobia (A. Fineschi), Florence, 1692, only lib extant

L’Abramo in Egitto, MOe

Faraone, Nf

other vocal works

op.

3	Intreccio armonico di fiori ecclesiastici (Augsburg, 1676), lost
5	Salmi, motetti e litanie, 1–3vv, vn, bc (Bologna, 1688)
6	[10] Cantate, 1v, bc (Bologna, 1689)
7	[11] Veglie armoniche, 1–3vv, vn, bc (Florence, 1690)
8	[12] Solfeggiamenti, 2vv (Florence, 1693)
Several arias, solo cants., A-Wn, GÖ, I-Nc

instrumental

1	[12] Suonate a 3 (Venice, 1673)
4	Capricci armonici da chiesa e da camera, vn … et sonate, tpt, bc (Venice and Rome, 1678)
Sonate, vn, bc, A-Wm

BIBLIOGRAPHY

W. Senn: Musik und Theater am Hof zu Innsbruck (Innsbruck, 1954)

U. Prota-Giurleo: ‘Notizie inedite intorno a Gio. Bonaventura Viviani’, Archivi d’Italia e rassegna internazionale degli archivi, 2nd ser., xxv (1958), 225–38

H. Seifert: Giovanni Buonaventura Viviani: Leben, Instrumental werke, Vokale Kammermusik (Tutzing, 1982)

HERBERT SEIFERT

Vivier, Claude

(b Montreal, 14 April 1948; d Paris, 12 March 1983). Canadian composer. During his short career he composed about 50 works and developed a musical style characterized by distinctive melodies and complex orchestral timbres. He studied composition and analysis with Gilles Tremblay at the Montreal Conservatoire where he was considered an exceptional student. His most important work from this period, Prolifération (1969) for ondes martenot, piano and percussion, employs a post-serial idiom, combined with theatrical and improvisational elements. In 1971 he received a scholarship from the Canada Council to continue his training in Europe. He studied electronic music at the Institute of Sonology in Utrecht and composition with Stockhausen at the Musikhochschule in Cologne (1972–4). Stockhausen's influence is noticeable primarily in Vivier's employment of parametrical and mathematical compositional techniques throughout his career.

In 1973 Vivier composed Chants for seven female voices, a work which he often referred to as marking the true beginning of his life as a composer. During the years he spent in Cologne he completed four other vocal compositions. A preference for the human voice and an emphatic melodic orientation are characteristic of Vivier’s oeuvre as a whole. He usually set his own texts, which express on the one hand uninhibited powers of imagination and lust for life, and on the other an anxious obsession with death. These texts also contain passages in a ‘language’ of Vivier’s own invention, consisting of series of sounds which were chosen after, and in accordance with, the notes.

On his return to Canada, Vivier lectured at the University of Ottawa and received several commissions, among them the ambitious orchestral work Siddhartha (1976) composed wholly on the basis of a single melodic phrase. In the autumn of 1976 Vivier undertook a journey through Asia, during which he spent time in Japan, Bali and Iran. This experience was the catalyst for the development of a new musical style. After the success of works such as Journal (1977), Shiraz (1977) and the opera Kopernikus (1979), this style flourished, particularly in a cycle of vocal pieces composed between 1980 and 1982. The psychological theme which emerges in these works is, in Vivier’s words, ‘the exploration of the inner spaces’, the challenge for each individual to probe his own unknown depths. For Vivier the orient was a metaphor for mystery; he became fascinated with the explorer Marco Polo and gave his compositions titles such as Zipangu (Japan), Bouchara and Samarkand. Lonely Child (1980) for soprano and chamber orchestra and Prologue pour un Marco Polo (1981) for five solo voices and instrumental ensemble are the most important works from this period. The harmonic and rhythmic dimensions of these compositions are largely derived from their principal melodies: while cadential formulae display the influence of Gregorian chant, the suggested modality is of short duration as all 12 notes of the chromatic scale are systematically employed. Both the sectional nature of the form and the homorhythmic texture offer stable backgrounds for a rich exploration of orchestral timbres (what the composer called ‘colours’), the most striking aspect of Vivier's late style. These ‘colours’ are in fact chords covering the whole instrumental range and can be understood as the sound of one large instrument, the ensemble. They are composed using a method which imitates electronic ring modulation: the pitches of all the parts are calculated by a series of additions based on the frequencies of the notes of the melody and the bass. These artificial timbres, containing many quarter tones and harmonics, are juxtaposed with the timbre of the gong, an instrument which Vivier used frequently in his earliest compositions.

In 1981 the Canadian Music Council awarded Vivier the accolade of Composer of the Year. The following year a scholarship from the Canada Council enabled him to settle in Paris where he embarked on an opera on the death of Tchaikovsky. He died there in tragic circumstances.

WORKS

stage

Love Songs (ballet, 1, Vivier), 4 female vv, 3 male vv, 1977; Nanti malam (ballet, Vivier), 7vv, 1977; Kopernikus (op, 2, Vivier), 2 S, Mez, A, Bar/T, Bar, B, ob, 3 cl, tpt, trbn, vn, perc, tape, 1979

instrumental

Ens: Str Qt, 1968; Prolifération, ondes martenot, pf, perc, 1969, rev. 1976; Désintégration, [1] 2 pf, 1972, [2] 2 pf, 4 vn, 2 va, 1974; Deva et Asura, double wind qnt, 3 tpt, 2 trbn, str qt, db, 1972; Improvisation, bn, pf, 1975; Pièce, fl, pf, 1975; Pièce, vc, pf, 1975; Pièce, vn, pf, 1975; Pour violon et clarinette, 1975; Siddhartha, orch, 1976; Pulau dewata [Island of the Gods], insts [ad lib], 1977; Greeting Music, fl, ob, vc, perc, pf, 1978; Paramirabo, fl, vn, vc, pf, 1978; Orion, orch, 1979; Zipangu, 13 amp str, 1980; Et je reverrai cette ville étrange, tpt, va, vc, db, perc, pf, 1981; Samarkand, wind qnt, pf, 1981

Solo: Pianoforte, 1975; Pour guitare, 1975; Les communiantes, org, 1977; Shiraz, pf, 1977; 5 chansons, perc, 1980

Tape: Hommage (Musique pour un vieux Corse triste), 1972; Variation I, 1972

vocal

Choral: Musique pour une liberté à bâtir, female chorus, orch, ?1968; Musik für das Ende (Vivier), SATB, perc, 1971; Chants (Vivier), 2 S, 2 Mez, 3 A, 1973; Jesus erbarme dich (Vivier), 1973; O! Kosmos (Vivier), 1973; Journal (L. Carroll, Vivier, Novalis), S, A, T, B, SATB, perc, 1977; A Little Joke (Vivier), 1981; Glaubst du an die Unsterblichkeit der Seele (Vivier), SATB, 3 synth, 2 perc, 1983

Solo: Ojikawa, S, cl, perc, 1968; Hiérophanie (Vivier), S, 2 fl, cl, hn, 3 tpt, 2 trbn, 2 perc, 1971; Lettura di Dante (Dante, Vivier), S, ob, cl, bn, tpt, va, perc, 1974; Hymnen an die Nacht (Novalis, Vivier), S, pf, 1975; Liebesgedichte (Vivier), S, A, T, B, 2 ob, cl, bn, 2 hn, 2 tpt, 1975; Lonely Child (Vivier), S, chbr orch, 1980; Bouchara (Vivier), S, wind qnt, str qt, db, perc, tape, 1981; Prologue pour un Marco Polo (Chamberland, Vivier), S, A, T, Bar, B, 6 cl, 13 str, 2 perc, 1981; Wo bist du Licht! (J.C.F. Hölderlin, Vivier), Mez, str orch, perc, tape, 1981; 3 airs pour un opéra imaginaire (Vivier), S, 2 fl, 3 ob, 2 hn, str qt, db, perc, 1982

MSS in C-Tcm

Principal publisher: Dobermann-Yppan

BIBLIOGRAPHY

S. Frykberg: ‘Claude Vivier in Conversation’, Musicworks, xviii (1982), 8–9

J. Rea: ‘Reflets dans l’eau … bénite. Douze images impures: la vie et la musique de Claude Vivier’, Circuit, i/2 (1990), 71–9

G. Ligeti: ‘Sur la musique de Claude Vivier’, Circuit, ii/1–2 (1991), 7–15

J. Mijnheer: ‘Shiraz pour piano de Claude Vivier’, Cahiers de l’association pour l’avancement de la recherche en musique du Québec, xiii (1991), 90–105

J. Mijnheer and T. Desjardins: ‘La chronologie des oeuvres de Claude Vivier: historisation de la déshistoire’, Circuit, ii/1–2 (1991), 17–29

J. Rivest: ‘Claude Vivier: les oeuvres d’une discographie imposante’, Circuit, ii/1–2 (1991), 137–61

V. Robert, ed.: ‘Claude Vivier: Writings’, Circuit, ii/1–2 (1991), 39–135

P. Tannenbaum: ‘Claude Vivier Revisited’, SoundNotes, i (1991), 12–27

J. Mijnheer: ‘Het akkoord voorbij: kleur volgens Claude Vivier’, Mens en melodie, liii (1998), 10–15

JACO MIJNHEER

Vivier, Eugène (Léon)

(b Brioude, 4 Dec 1817; d Nice, 24 Feb 1900). French horn player of Corsican heritage. He studied law (Poitiers, 1838–41), and worked as a tax collector and journalist (Lyons, 1841–3) before joining the Lyons Grand Théâtre orchestra as a violinist in 1842. He was later offered the position of first horn, which he refused. In the same year, Thalberg and Labarre heard his horn-playing and suggested he move to Paris. He arrived in 1843 and used social connections to solicit work and sponsors. His immediate success was largely due to his ability to produce chords on the horn, which confounded many, even though it was a technique that had been both used and discouraged by performers and teachers for years. He probably had lessons with Gallay (Fétis), but any other teachers remain unknown. He reportedly played briefly in several theatre orchestras, but he was more interested in being a concert performer. His (paid) début came in 1844, with Adam accompanying on the piano. For 25 years he toured throughout Europe, collaborating with the likes of Thalberg and Jenny Lind. He charmed heads of state with his flashy technique and theatrical presence. Musically, however, he received mixed reviews. He eventually retired to Nice.

According to Fétis, Vivier had a beautiful sound, but played mainly in a one-octave range. He reportedly preferred the E crook and generally performed his own compositions, which showed off his technique and sense of humour, but well-known composers (including Rossini) also wrote music for him. He composed romances (including L’oiseau mort and Madeleine et Mathurin, both performed in Paris in 1844) and published some minor writings (primarily on non-musical topics), but these do not appear to have survived. Limouzin’s biography contains flowery accounts of his life and travels until 1852; an advertised sequel apparently never appeared. While some viewed him only as a showman with more flash than substance, he elevated the horn’s image as a solo instrument. A horn made for Vivier by Sax in 1844 survives in the Musée de la Musique, Paris.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

FétisB

Grove6 (R. Morley-Pegge/H. Fitzpatrick)

C. Limouzin: Eugène Vivier: la vie et les aventures d’un corniste, 1817–1852 (Paris, c1888)

B. Coar: A Critical Study of the Nineteenth-Century Virtuosi in France (De Kalb, IL, 1952)

R. Morley-Pegge: The French Horn (London, 1960, 2/1973)

R. Gregory: The Horn (London, 1961, 2/1969)

JEFFREY L. SNEDEKER

Vivo

(It.: ‘alive’, ‘vigorous’).

A tempo designation and an indication of mood. Caccini’s Le nuove musiche (1601/2) contains the successive directions esclamazione languida and esclamazione più viva, but the word seems not to have had much currency in music until the middle of the 19th century. Verdi marked the ‘Rataplan’ in La forza del destino as allegro vivo (crotchet = 126) with the final section poco più vivo. It has many of the same uses and ambiguities as Vivace.

See also Tempo and expression marks.

DAVID FALLOWS

Viyel'gorsky, Matvey Yur'yevich.

See Wielhorski, mateusz.

Viyel'gorsky, Mikhail Yur'yevich.

See Wielhorski, michał.

Vizzana [Vizana], Lucrezia Orsina

(b Bologna, 3 July 1590; d Bologna, 7 May 1662). Italian composer, singer and organist. About 1598 she entered the Camaldolese convent of S Christina, Bologna, where she probably learnt music from her aunt, Camilla Bombacci, sometime convent organist, and from Ottavio Vernizzi, unauthorized music master at S Christina from about 1615 to about 1623. By contrast with the lavish, double-choir music by Adriano Banchieri, Gabriele Fattorini, G.B. Biondi and Ercole Porta dedicated to nuns at S Christina and almost certainly performed there, Vizzana’s own motets, published in Componimenti musicali de motetti concertati a 1 e più voci (Venice, 1623), chiefly solos or duets with continuo, betray the influence of the stile moderno in their delicately virtuoso ornamentation for rhetorical effect, frequent insertion of phrases in declamatory style, juxtaposition of chromatic chords a 3rd apart, and, most notably, in expressive leaps from suspended dissonances, a technique Vizzana probably learnt from works by Monteverdi or Porta. Some motets were conceived for feast days at the convent; the greatest number are directed to Christ as redeemer or spouse, or as the object of veneration in the sacrament or on the cross; others may reflect the political struggles at S Christina from 1620 onwards. Vizzana’s early retirement from music probably resulted from increasing ill health and from the convent’s notorious battles with the diocesan curia between 1623 and 1647, partly provoked by music. According to her confessor, Vizzana was so traumatized by these events that she lost her mind.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

FétisB

GerberL

GroveW (C. Monson) [incl. further bibliography]

SchillingE

SchmidlD

C. Monson: ‘The Making of Lucretia Orsina Vizzana’s Componimenti musicali (1623)’, Creative Women in Medieval and Early Modern Italy, ed. E.A. Matter and J.W. Coakley (Philadelphia, 1994), 297–323

C.A. Monson: Disembodied Voices: Music and Culture in an Early Modern Italian Convent (Berkeley, 1995)

C. Monson: ‘Lucretia Vizzana’, Women Composers: Music through the Ages, i: Composers Born before 1599, ed. M.F. Schleifer and S. Glideman (New York, 1996), 264–305

CRAIG MONSON

Vlaamse Operastichting

(Flem.: ‘Flemish Opera Foundation’).

Company founded in Antwerp in 1893 as Vlaamsche Opera; it was renamed the Koninklijke Vlaamsche Opera in 1920. In 1981 it joined with the opera company of Ghent to form Opera voor Vlaanderen, since 1988 the Vlaamse Operastichting.

Vlachopoulos, Yannis [Jannis]

(b Piraeus, 8 March 1939). Greek composer. He studied composition with Y.A. Papaïoannou at the Hellenic Conservatory, Athens (1960–65), and with Zimmermann and Eimert at the Cologne Musikhochschule (1966–9). During 1965–6 he attended courses given by Messiaen and Wildberger at the Hochschule für Musik, Karlsruhe. In 1970 he began teaching theory, composition and piano at the Städtische Musikschule, Hürth.

Beginning with 12-note serial writing, Vlachopoulos subjected other elements to serial procedures in Anamnissis (‘Memories’, 1967), a piece of subtle timbral and rhythmic interplay, and then turned to chance procedures and music theatre in works which denounce the inhumanity of technological society with a poetic nostalgia for the past. Many of his later compositions present a kaleidoscopic yet intensely dramatic succession of shifting aural impressions. They often originate from an initial statement – such as a motif, a rhythm or a focal pitch – which gradually becomes a source of musical energy, its proliferation creating further harmonic implications, varieties of tone-colour and rhythmic interplay. In Patmios esperinos (‘Vespers in Patmos’, 1989–90) initial expectations of a sober musical conception, liturgical and static, are thwarted by a powerful build-up of emotion and drama.

WORKS

(selective list)

Dramatic: Spiegel (music theatre, textless), 1968–9; Dialexi-synthessi [Lecture-Composition] (music theatre, 3, textless), 1971–2; Behaviorism (op, Vlachopoulos), 1973, inc.; Figuren (ballet), 1976–7; Vernissage (ballet), 1977–8; Stone (ballet), 1979–81; L’étoile de mer (film score), 1980

Orch: Symposion, timp, orch, 1977–8 [after Plato]; Rue des pas oubliés, str qt, mar, orch, 1986–7; Quantum, 1984–5; Monolithos, 1985–6; Magma, mar, orch, 1986–7

Vocal: Morfes II (textless), male v, ob, elec org, perc, vc, 1972–3; Arnissi [Negation] (textless), male v, ob, vc, elec org, pf, cel, perc, 1975; Sappho (frags. in Gk. and Ger. trans.), Mez, fl, perc, pf + cel, 1981–3; Stachya [Ears of Corn] (N. Vrettakos), Mez, pf, 1989; Patmios esperinos [Vespers in Patmos] (Pss ciii, cxl, cxli, cxvi), nar, A, small orch, 1989–90; Abendmahl (Bible: Luke, Matthew, John), mixed chorus, orch, 1991–2; 4 Orphica (Orphic hymns), mixed chorus, pf, 2 perc, 1993–8; 7 Fragmente aus ‘Sappho’, fl, pf, perc, female chorus, 1996

Chbr: Meditation, vn, pf, 1963; 3 kleine Stücke, pf, 1965, rev. 1975; Fantasia, 11 insts, pf, 1964; Trio, ob, vc, hp, 1965; Duo, fl, pf, 1965; 3 Ideen, vc, pf, 1966; Anamnissis [Memories], cl, b cl, elec gui, perc, vn, vc, 1967; Sképis [Thought], pf, 1977; Aries [Arias], fl, cl, tuba, vn, vc, db, pf, 1978; Psalmen I, II, 4 perc, 1988–9; Trio, fl, vc, pf, 1991; Sacré-coeur, pf, 1993; Trigon, 3 vc, 1996; Saxophonie, sax qt, 1997; Präsens, pf, 6 perc, 1999–2000

Tape: Permutationen, tape, 1967; Morfes I, tape, 1970; Conc., pf, tape, 1971; Morfes III, tape, 1973–4; Adiéxodos [Deadlock], pf, 2 perc, tape, 1977

Principal publishers: Forberg, Gravis

GEORGE LEOTSAKOS

Vlach Quartet.

Czech string quartet. It was formed on the initiative of the violinist Josef Vlach (b Ratměřice, 8 June 1923; d Linköping, Sweden, 17 Oct 1988), originally with Václav Snítil (b Hradec Králové, 1 March 1928), violin, Soběslav Soukup (b Stod, 23 Aug 1922), viola, and Viktor Moučka (b Kolín, 6 Feb 1926), cello. Having been members of the Czech Chamber Orchestra under Talich, they began working together regularly in 1950 and made their concert début as the Vlach Quartet on 28 April 1951. The viola player was subsequently changed twice, Soukup being replaced in 1952 by Jaroslav Motlík (b Chudeřín, nr Most, 20 April 1926), who was in turn replaced by Josef Koďousek (b Prague, 27 Nov 1923; d Prague, 20 May 1995) from 1954. The quartet won the 1955 Liège International Quartet Competition, and following this success toured throughout the world. The players became members of the drama orchestra at the Prague National Theatre, which they left in 1957, and were the resident chamber group of Prague radio until 1971. The quartet was dissolved in 1976, after which the players taught at the Prague Conservatory and the Academy of Musical Arts. Vlach, who remained leader of the Czech Chamber Orchestra, was chiefly responsible for the quartet’s musical character, based on a unity of technical assurance and interpretative feeling. Its repertory ranged from Tartini and Gluck to contemporary composers, with special attention to Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Dvořák, Smetana and Janáček. Much of its repertory was recorded, and its recordings of certain Beethoven quartets were praised for firmness of pulse, forceful character and exemplary textural clarity. In 1982 Jana Vlachová, the daughter of Josef Vlach, founded the New Vlach Quartet. Known as the Vlach Quartet Prague from 1995, it follows in the rich tradition of its predecessor. Its members are Jana Vlachová (b Prague, 9 Sept 1955), violin, Karel Stadtherr (b Plzen, 15 Jan 1955), violin, Petr Verner (b Prague, 7 March 1963), viola and Mikael Ericsson (b Arvika, Sweden, 19 March 1952), cello.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ČSHS

K. Mlejnek: Smetanovci, Janáčkovci a Vlachovci [The Smetana, Janáček and Vlach quartets] (Prague, 1962), 99ff [with discography]

J. Kozák: Českoslovenští koncertní umělci a komorní soubory [Czechoslovak concert artists and chamber ensembles] (Prague, 1964), 405–8

ALENA NĚMCOVÁ

Vlad, Roman

(b Cernauti, Bukovina, 29 Dec 1919). Italian pianist, composer and writer on music of Romanian birth. He studied with Titus Tarnawski and Liviu Russu in his place of birth; after receiving a piano diploma, he moved to Rome in 1938 (he took Italian citizenship in 1951). Enrollment at the University of Rome followed, together with advanced piano classes under Casella at the Accademia di S Cecilia (diploma, 1941). His early career was as a performer and composer; he won the Enescu Prize in 1942 for his Sinfonietta, and the Silver Mask Award for his film music. He also began to work as a music critic and lecturer in Germany, France and Britain as well as in Italy. He taught at the Dartington Summer School in 1954 and 1955, and was appointed professor of composition at Perugia Conservatory in 1968. Vlad has played an important role as the artistic director of various Italian musical institutions: the Accademia Filarmonica Romana (1955–8 and 1966–9); Maggio Musicale Fiorentino (1964); the Florence Municipal Theatre (1968–73); the Ravello Music Festival (since 1975); the RAI Orchestra, Turin (1976–80); La Scala (1994–7). He has also been president of the Società Aquilana dei Concerti, artistic advisor to the Turin Settembre Musica festival and, from 1980 to 1982, director of the Teatro dell'Opera in Rome. In 1995 he was appointed president of the Accademia Filarmonica Romana. As a writer, Vlad has contributed to many Italian and international newspapers and periodicals. He has been editor of the journals Musica e Dossier and Lo Spettatore and joint editor of the musical section of the Enciclopedia dello Spettacolo and the NRMI. In 1974 he was awarded the honorary DMus by the National University of Ireland in Dublin and in 1996 he received the honour of ‘Cavaliere di gran croce dell'ordine al merito della repubblica italiana’.

Vlad's music has consistently remained tied to serialism, though not in a rigid or a dogmatic manner. He has commented on ‘always having tried to avoid ideologies and opposed extremes, refusing to adopt the views of others based on reactionary traditionalism, as well as over-ambitious avant gardism and the search for what is new for the sake of it’. While the earlier works from Studi dodecafonici to Musica per archi exhibit a ‘classical’ dodecaphony, Vlad subsequently extended the serial method to all parameters as well as using quarter-tones and aleatory techniques, and experimenting with the electronic medium. At the same time, he has included tonal quotation and Classical procedures. Such eclecticism is seen particularly in his compositions for the theatre, for example Storia di una mamma (1951), Il sogno (1973) and the ballets Die Wiederkehr (1962, rev. 1968) and Il gabbiano (1968), where his ability to mediate between different art forms is evident. Vlad's vocal works, in particular, are of high quality, from Cantata no.3 (‘Le ciel est vide’; 1952–3) and Lettura di Michelangelo (1964, rev. 1968) to the more recent Tre liriche di Montale (1976), in which there is a clear link between sound and text, the music rooted in the phonetic structure of the verse.

WORKS

(selective list)

dramatic

La strada sul caffé (ballet, C. Brandi), 1942–3, unperf.

La dama delle camelie (ballet, A. Milloss, after A. Dumas), Rome, 1945; rev., Rome, 1956

Fantasia 1920 (pantomime for show by V. Pandolfi), Florence, 1948

Storia di una mamma (fiaba musicale, 1, G. da Venezia, after H.C. Andersen), Venice, 5 Oct 1951; also version with chbr orch, 1945

Masques ostendais (ballet, after M. de Ghelderode), Spoleto, 1959; rev., Hannover, 1960

Il dottore di vetro (radio op, 1, M.L. Spaziani, after P. Quinault), RAI, 26 Feb 1960; rev. (op, 6 scenes), Berlin, 1961

Die Wiederkehr (ballet, Milloss), Cologne, 1962, rev. as Ricercare, Rome, 1968

La fantarca (TV op, G. Berto), RAI, 1967

Il gabbiano (ballet, 4, Vlad, after A. Chekhov), Siena, Comunale dei Rinnovati, 5 Sept 1968

Il sogno (azione musicale, 2, Vlad, after A. Strindberg), Bergamo, Donizetti, 3 Oct 1973

Incid music, film scores, incl. La beauté du diable (dir. R. Clair), 1950; TV and radio scores

vocal

Choral: Cant. no.1 ‘Dove sei, Elohim?’ (L. Blaga), chorus, orch, 1940–42; Cant. no.2 ‘De profundis’, S, chorus, orch, 1942–6; Cant. no.3 ‘Le ciel est vide’, chorus, orch (Jean Paul, de Nerval), 1952–3; Colinde transilvane, 2 versions, 1957; Lettura di Michelangelo, 1964, rev. as Cadenze michelangiolesche; Piccolo divertimento corale, 1968; Lettura di Lorenzo il Magnifico, 1974; La vespa di Toti (T. Scialoja), boys' vv, insts, 1975–6; Rerum cursus, chorus, orch, 1990; L'arte della variazione I, vocal qt, 14 insts, 1991–2; A sé stesso, cant. (G. Leopardi), Bar, chorus, orch, 1998; L’arte della variazione II, B, chorus, orch, 1999

Solo vocal: Poemi della luce, 1v, pf, 1939; Colinde transilvane, 1v, pf, 1941, arr. chorus, 1957; 3 invocazioni, S, orch/pf, 1948–9; 5 elegie (Bible), 1v, str/pf, 1952; Immer wieder (R.M. Rilke), S, 8 insts, 1965; Cadenze michelangiolesche, T/S, orch, 1967; Ego autem, Bar, org, 1972; 3 liriche di Montale, B, pf, 1976, version for B, orch, 1980; Preludio, recitativo e rilettura di Michelangelo, B, pf, 1981; 3 poesie di Alberto Bevilacqua, S, pf, 1984; La musica degli haiku: le stagioni giapponesi, 70 haiku per Michiko Hirayama, 1v, pf, 1994

instrumental and tape

Orch: Sinfonietta, 1941; Suite, 1941; Suite, 1945 [based on ballet La strada sul caffé]; Sinfonia all’antica, 1947–8; Variazioni concertanti su una serie di 12 note dal Don Giovanni di Mozart, pf, orch, 1955; Musica per archi (Meloritmi), 1955–7; Suite, 1956 [based on ballet La dama delle camelie]; Musica concertata, hp, orch, 1958; Suite, 1961 [based on ballet Die Wiederkehr]; Ode super Chrysaea Phorminx, gui, orch, 1964; Divertimento sinfonico, 1965–7; Musica per archi no.2, 1988; Meditazioni sopra un antico canto russo, cl, insts, 1982; 2 preludi e una fuga, 1994–5; Ricordando le antiche melodie di Romeo e Giulietta, pf, str, 1995

Chbr: Sonatina, fl, pf, 1945; Divertimento, 11 insts, 1948; Str Qt, 1955–7; Serenata, 12 insts, 1959; Improvvisazione su di una melodia, cl, pf, 1970; Il magico flauto di Severino, fl, pf, 1971; Ricordando Valentino Bucchi, 14 insts, 1977; L'arte della fuga, interpretazione strumentale, ww, db, 1984; 6 canoni nei nomi di J.S. Bach e G.F. Handel, 6 ww, 1984; Tetraktys, qt, 1984; Melodia variata, vn, 1989; Sestupla melodia, 11 str, 1993 [last movt. of Suite-Reverie, collab. A. Gentile, E. Morricone, F. Pennisi]; Melodie e squilli, tpt, pf, 1993; Mutazioni, gui, 1996

Pf: early pieces, 1939–40; Studi dodecafonici, 1943, rev. 1957; Variazioni intorno all'ultima mazurka di Chopin, 1964, Sognando il sogno: variazioni su una variazione, 1971; Piccolo lambiccamento sonoro sul morue di Tristan Tzava, 1998

Tape: Ricercare elettronico, 1961

Principal publishers: Ricordi, Suvini Zerboni, Universal

For fuller list of dramatic works see ES

WRITINGS

books

Modernità e tradizione nella musica contemporanea (Turin, 1955) [collected essays]

with A. Piovesan and R. Craft: Le musiche religiose di Igor Strawinsky (Venice, 1957)

Luigi Dallapiccola (Milan, 1957) [Eng.; It. orig. in Storia della dodecafonia]

Storia della dodecafonia (Milan, 1958) [notes on own works, 241–51]

Strawinsky [Turin, 1958, 2/1973; Eng. trans., 1960, enlarged 3/1979)

Percorsi nella musica (Bologna, 1986)

with others: Viaggio al centro della musica (Bologna, 1986)

Introduzione alla civiltà musicale (Bologna, 1988)

Capire la musica e le sue forme (Florence, 1989) [with audio cassette]

essays

‘Busoni's Destiny’, The Score, no.6 (1952), 3–10

‘Elementi metafisici nella poetica dodecafonia’, Il diapason, iii/7–8 (1952), 22–6

‘Moderne Psalmen von Arnold Schönberg’, Melos, xxiv (1957), 252–5

‘Il trascrittore’, Alfredo Casella, ed. F. d'Amico and G.M. Gatti (Milan, 1958), 115–45

‘Forma e struttura nella nuova musica’, RaM, xxix (1959), 219–33

‘Le nuove vie della giovane musica’, RaM, xxxi (1961), 343–66

‘Busoni’, Approdo musicale, no.22 (1966), 7–77

‘Ferruccio Busoni’, ‘Dodecafonia’, ‘Anton Webern’, DEUMM

‘Strawinsky compositore seriale’, NRMI, i (1967), 509–33, 712–43

‘Alcune osservazioni sulla struttura delle opere di Verdi’, Studi verdiani III: Milan 1972, 495–522

‘Gli ultimi anni di Strawinsky’, NRMI, vi (1972), 64–86

‘Forme geometriche e forme organiche in Webern’, Comporre arcano: Palermo 1983, 95–113

‘Rilettura della “Sagra”’, NRMI, xvii (1983), 426–92

‘Wagner e la cultura musicale moderna’, Parole e musica: l'esperienza wagneriana nella cultura tra romanticismo e decadentismo: Venice 1983, 1–31

‘Nei nomi di J.S. Bach e G.F. Handel’, NRMI, xix (1985), 75–93

‘Una pagina di Schoenberg’, Studi musicali, xiv (1985), 171–93

‘L'Italia e le avanguardia europee’, Musica, società e cultura, v: La musica contemporanea (Turin, 1990), 60–76

‘Escordi di Puccini’, Quaderni pucciniani, no.3 (1992), 3–41

‘Genio e regolatezza’, preface to N. Berberova: Aleksandr Borodin (Florence, 1993), 7–21

‘Puccini, Schoenberg e Stravinsky’, Giacomo Puccini: Lucca 1994, 543–77

Many reviews in RaM etc.

For full list of writings on film music see ES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

DEUMM (A. Trudu)

ES (G. Graziosi)

MGG1 (H. Lindlar)

R. Stevenson: ‘An Introduction to the Music of Roman Vlad’, MR, xxii (1961), 124–35

J.S. Weissmann: ‘Roman Vlad: Technique as Inspiration’, The Listener (22 June 1967)

B. Porena: ‘Per un nuovo balletto di R. Vlad’, Chigiana, xxv (1968), 295–304

A. Gentilucci: Guida all'ascolto della musica contemporanea (Milan, 1969), 443f

A.M. Bonisconti: ‘Vlad, Roman’, Rizzoli-Ricordi: Enciclopedia della musica (Milan, 1972), 361–3

R. Zanetti: La musica italiana nel novecento (Busto Arsizio, 1985), 1250–56

‘Roman Vlad’, Autoanalisi dei compositori italiani contemporanei, i, ed. A. Castaldi (Naples, 1992), 42–7

V. Munteanu: Introducerea in opera lui Roman Vlad (Iasi, 1994)

ROBERTA COSTA

Vlad, Ulpiu

(b Zărneşti, 27 Jan 1945). Romanian composer. After taking oboe lessons with Pavel Tornea at the Music Lyceum in Bucharest (1958–64), he studied composition with Vieru at the Bucharest Academy, graduating in 1971, and with Mortari at the Accademia di S Cecilia in Rome (1971–2). Vlad worked at the Bucharest Academy, researching the specific characteristics of Romanian folk music (1971–7), then as a researcher at the Institute of Ethnology and Dialectology (1977–80). After a period as an editor (1980–84) then director (1984–92) at Editura Muzicală, he directed the music department of the ministry of culture (1992–3); in 1993 he became a professor at the Bucharest Academy. His awards include the Enescu Prize (1985) and the Romanian Union of Composers Prize (1991, 1995).

His innovative means of expression derives from his absorption of the harmonic, melodic and rhythmic elements of Romanian folk music. Vlad has explored diverse compositional techniques: quarter tones are employed in the Sonata for oboe and harpsichord (1969); serial and modal procedures interact in As Hardly from Depths (1971); folk-influenced melodic lines are set against dense note clusters in Remembrances (1973); improvisational elements inform the cycle Mosaic (1974–8); folk sources become crystallized in the Symphony no.2 (1984); and controlled aleatory passages are used in Lights in the Sunset (1991).

WORKS

(selective list)

Orch: As Hardly from Depths, vc, pf, orch, 1971, rev. 1981; Dreams I, str, 1972; Remembrances, brass, str, perc, 1973; The Time of Mirrors, chbr orch, 1974; Simfonia brevis ‘Inscriptions in Hearts’, 1978; Sym. no.1 ‘Roads in the Light’, 1979; Dreams II, str, 1982; Sym. no.2 ‘From our Hearts’, 1984; From the Joy of Dreams, str, 1991; Lights in the Sunset, 1991; The Game of Dreams I–II, chbr orch, 1992; Suddenly, Dreams, chbr orch, 1994; The Light of Dreams, 1995; Beyond Dreams, wind, str, kbd, 1996

Mosaic (Ulpiu), cycle, any combination of insts or vv from sym. orch and vocal qt, 1974–8

5–12 insts: Septet, wind qnt + perc, tpt + perc, pf, 1970; Codex Caioni, wind qnt, 1984; Voices of Peace, wind qnt, tape, 1986; Sources, 4 sax + cl, 3 tpt, 3 trbn, pf, perc, 1987; The Joy of Dreams I, fl, str trio, perc, 1990; The Secret of Dreams I, wind qnt, 1992; The Secret of Dreams II, wind qt, hp, 1993; The Joy of Dreams II, fl, cl, str trio, 1994; The Legend of Dreams, fl/ob, cl, vn, vc, pf, perc, 1994; The Secret of Dreams III, wind qnt, pf, perc, 1996

1–4 insts: Thought for Peace, ob, pf, 1967, rev. 1987; The Joy of Peace, fl, ob, cl, 1968, rev. 1986; Sonata, ob, hpd/pf, 1969; Str Qt no.1, 1969; 3 Structures, pf, 1970; Thoughts, fl, hp, 1971; Str Qt no.2 ‘Flowers for Peace’, 1982; Str Trio no.1 ‘The Spring’, 1984; Str Trio no.2 ‘Sunlit Landscape’, 1987; Str Trio no.3 ‘On this Sunny Land’, 1988; Str Trio no.4 ‘The Joy of the Passage’, 1991; The Time of Dreams, fl, cl, pf, perc, 1993; Flash of Dreams, fl, str trio, 1995

Vocal: This is the Earth (E. Frunză), chorus, orch, 1970; The Joy of Achievement: Wedding Songs, chorus, 1988; lieder

BIBLIOGRAPHY

C.D. Georgescu: ‘Ulpiu Vlad’, Muzica, xxx/12 (1980), 10–16

G. Tartler: Melopoetica (Bucharest, 1984)

V. Sandu-Dediu: ‘Ulpiu Vlad: a Composer's Portrait’, Muzica, new ser., iv/4 (1993), 20–37

V. Sandu-Dediu: ‘Compozitorul Ulpiu Vlad la vârsta de 50 ani’, Muzica, new ser., vi/1 (1995), 23–40

OCTAVIAN COSMA

Vladigerov, Aleksandar

(b Sofia, 4 Aug 1933; d Sofia, 15 June 1993). Bulgarian composer and conductor, son of Pancho Vladigerov. He graduated from the State Music Academy in Sofia having studied composition with Parashkev Hadjiev and conducting with Vladi Simeonov; from 1960 continued his studies with Natan Rakhlin, the chief conductor of the Kiev PO. By then his conducting career had already begun with orchestras in Pleven, Plovdiv and Ruse; he subsequently occupied guest positions across Europe as well as in Cuba and Japan. His repertory embraces all eras with an emphasis on 20th-century works; his enthusiasm for the work of Gershwin made him one of the most outstanding interpreters and propagandists of his music in Bulgaria. He orchestrated several of Gershwin's piano compositions and songs. His own works have been performed in Europe and Japan and have been awarded prizes at the World Youth Festival in Warsaw (1955) and the Busoni Competition (1957). Although he worked in most genres, his most popular works are musicals for children. The Sofia Youth Theatre has toured with several of these in the Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Japan, Russia and Yugoslavia. These works combine a lively and delicate musical style (which often employs jazz elements) with witty and inventive plots.

WORKS

Stage: Little Red Riding Hood (children's musical, I. Teofilov, after C. Parrault), 2 nar, solo vv, orch, 1969; The Merry Musicians (comic musical, D. Dimitrov, after Grimm: The Town Musicians of Bremen), 1971; The Wolf and the Seven Kids (comic musical, Dimitrov), 1973

Orch: Rondo concertante, vn, orch, 1958; suites from stage works

Chbr and solo inst: Dilmano, Dilbero, variations, pf, 1951; Poėma, vc, pf, 1953; Toccata, pf, 1955

BIBLIOGRAPHY

V. Dudevska: ‘Noviyat myuzikal na A. Vladigerov i Teatarat na pokazvaneto’ [A new musical by A. Vladigerov and the Presentation Theatre], Balgarska muzika (1975), no.2

S. Pavlov: ‘Aleksandar Vladigerov na 50 goldini’ [Vladigerov is 50], Balgarska muzika (1983), no.6

M. Georgiyev: ‘Detski myuzikal ili …’ [A children's musical or …], Balgarska muzika (1986), no.3

ANDA PALIEVA

Vladigerov, Pancho (Haralanov)

(b Zürich, 13/25 March 1899; d Sofia, 8 Sept 1978). Bulgarian composer. He lived in Shumen, Bulgaria, until 1910 before studying theory with Khristov and the piano with H. Vizner at the private Music School in Sofia (1910–12). He then took private lessons in composition with Paul Juon and the piano with H. Barth (1912–15) and in 1914 enrolled at the Staatliche Akademische Hochschule für Musik in Berlin. There he studied composition with Gernsheim and Georg Schumann and the piano with Leonid Kreutzer at the Akademie der Künste (1915–18, 1920–21). He was awarded the Mendelssohn Prize in 1918. He worked for Max Reinhardt at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin as a composer and conductor (1920–32) before returning to Sofia where he was appointed reader (1932–74) then professor (from 1940) of piano, chamber music and composition at the State Academy of Music. As a pianist and composer he toured Bulgaria (having made his début in 1904) and most other European countries. He is one of the founders of the Bulgarian Contemporary Music Society and was an executive of the Union of Bulgarian Composers.

One of the most important representatives of second generation Bulgarian composers, he underwent a natural creative evolution and formed an individual musical style following the traditions of Rachmaninoff, Richard Strauss and others. He wrote the first instrumental concerto in Bulgarian music, while his 6 Lyric Songs (1917) mark the beginning of many such vocal works in Bulgarian music. In general terms, his music is highly expressive and employs Romantic harmonies.

The year of 1922 is a turning point in Vladigerov's creative evolution towards a national musical style based on the Bulgarian folklore (Bulgarian Rhapsody ‘Vardar’, 1928), while, almost a decade later, Klasichno i Romantichno (‘Classic and Romantic’, 1931) represents an original interpretation of the neo-classical styles of that period and at the same time is notable for its synthesis of Bulgarian and west-European musical traditions. His first significant achievements date from the 1930s with the composition of the opera Tsar Kaloyan (1936) and the First Symphony (1939). In the 1940s he extended his activities as a pianist and teacher and established his own composition school (his students include Konstantin Iliev, Georgy Kostov, Lazar Nikolov and Pencho Stoyanov). This period marks a new development in his work with the appearance of epic-dramatic pieces Deveti Septemvri (‘The Ninth of September’) in 1949 and the Fourth Piano Concerto in 1953. Although the lyrical Legenda za ezeroto (‘Legend of the Lake’) had been written in 1946, this trend becomes even stronger after 1960 with works such as the Fifth Piano Concerto (1963).

Vladigerov is a significant figure in 20th-century music. Influenced by German and Russian music (but also using elements of Bulgarian, Jewish, Romanian and Spanish music), he composed original works reflecting many aspects of early 20th-century music. The Gottfried Herder Prize which he was awarded in 1968 reflects the importance of his work.

WORKS

dramatic and vocal

Stage: Tsar Kaloyan (op, 3, N. Liliev and F. Popova-Mutafova, after Popova-Mutafova: Solunskiyat chudotvorets), op.30, 1936, Sofia National Opera, 1936; Legenda za ezeroto [Legend of the Lake] (ballet, 3), op.40, 1946

Incid music: Caesar and Cleopatra (G.B. Shaw), 1920; Sanna igra [The Dance of Death] (A. Strindberg), 1921; Judith (F. Hebel), 1922; Venetsiyanskiyat targovets [The Merchant of Venice] (W. Shakespeare), 1924; Tebeshireniyat krag [The Chalk Circle] (Klabund), 1925; Yuarets i Maksimiliyan [Juarez and Maximilian] (F. Werfel), 1926; Mnogo shum za nishcho [Much Ado about Nothing] (Shakespeare), 1928; Yusik (O. Dimov), 1929; Dvanaiseta noshch [Twelfth Night] (Shakespeare), 1932; Elenovo Tsarstvo [Deer Kingdom] (G. Raichev), 1934; Vetriloto [The Fan] (C. Goldoni), 1935; Shchastie [Happiness] (O. Vasilev), 1954

Vocal: 6 Lyric Songs (D. Gabe), high v, pf, 1917; Lud Gidiya [Wild Gidiya] (P. Slaveikov), op.5, 1v, pf, 1917, arr. 1v, orch, 1977–8; Na vremena metezhni [Turbulent Days], chorus, 1945; Septemvri 1944 [September 1944], 1945; 4 Songs (N. Liliev), op.67, high v, pf, 1974, arr. 1v, orch; folksong arrs., popular songs

instrumental

Orch: Sym. Legend, op.8, 1919; Vn Conc. no.1, op.11, 1921; Skandinavska syuita ‘Sanna Igra’ [Scandinavian Suite ‘The Dance of Death’], op.13, 1924 [from incid music]; Bulgarian Suite, op.21, 1927; Balgarska rapsodiya ‘Vardar’, 1928 [version of chbr work, op.16, 1922]; Pf Conc. no.1, op.6, 1928; Pf Conc. no.2, op.22, 1930; 7 sinfonichni balgarski tantsa [7 Sym. Bulgarian Dances], op.23, 1931; Zemya [Land], ov., op.27, 1933; Pf Conc. no.3, op.31, 1937; Sym. no.1, op.33, 1939; Epizodi [Episodes], op.36, 1941, rev. as Improvatsiya i tokata, 1942; Horo Stakato [Chain Dance Staccato], 1942, collab. Dinku; 4 sinfonichni rumanski tantsa [4 Sym. Romanian Dances], op.38, 1942; 2 Romanian Sym. Sketches, op.39, 1943; Suite no.1, op.40a, 1947 [from Legenda za Ezeroto (ballet)]; Deveti Septemvri [September 9th], heroic ov., op.45, 1949; Sym. no.2 ‘Maiska’ [May], str, op.44, 1949; Evreiska Poema [Hebrew Poem], op.47, 1951; Pf Conc. no.4, op.48, 1953; Suite no.2, op.40b, 1953 [from Legenda za Ezeroto (ballet)]; Pesen za mira [Song about Peace], dramatic poem, op.52, 1956; Pf Conc. no.5, op.58, 1963; Vn Conc. no.2, op.61, 1968; Lyulinski impresii [Lyulin Impressions], op.63, 1972

Chbr and solo inst: Sonata, vn, pf, op.1, 1914; Trio, pf, vn, vc, op.4, 1916; 2 Improvisations, op.7, vn, pf, 1919; 4 Pieces, op.12, 1921; Balgarska rapsodiya ‘Vardar’, op.16, vn, pf, 1922 [version for orch, 1928]; Burlesque, vn, pf, op.14, 1922; Kontsertno shimi, vn, pf, 1924; 2 Balgaski Parafrazi [2 Bulgarian Paraphrases], op.18, vn, pf, 1925; 2 Pieces, op.20, vn, pf, 1926; Str Qt, op.34, 1940; Concert Fantasy, vc, orch, op.35, 1941; 2 Pieces, vn, pf, 1964

Pf: 4 Pieces, op.2, 1915; Variations, op.3, 1916; 10 impressii, op.9, 1920; 4 Pieces, op.10, 1920; 3 Pieces, op.15, 1922; 6 ekzotichni prelyudii [6 Exotic Preludes], op.17, 1924; Klasichno i romantichno [Classic and Romantic], op.24, 1931; Shumen Miniatures, op.29, 1934; Sonatina konchertante, op.28, 1934; Epizodi [Episodes], op.36, 1941; Akvareli [Aquarelles], op.37, 1942; Kartini [Pictures], op.46, 1950; Suite, op.51, 1954; 3 Pieces, op.53, 1957; 3 Concert Pieces, op.57, 1959; Novelettes, op.59; 1964; 5 harakterni piesi [5 Characteristic Pieces], op.60, 1965; 3 Short Pieces, op.63, 1972; 4 Pieces, op.65, 1973; 5 Silhouettes, op.66, 1974; 5 Poetic Pictures, op.68, 1976; 4 Frescoes, op.69, 1977; 3 Bagatelles, op.70, 1978;

BIBLIOGRAPHY

E. Pavlov: Pancho Vladigerov (Sofia, 1961)

K. Ganev: ‘Klavirnite kontserti na Pancho Vladigerov’ [Vladigerov's piano concertos], Godishnik na Balgarskata Darzhavna Konservatoria, ii (Sofia, 1962), 159–204

B. Starshenov and P. Stoyanov: ‘Pancho Vladigerov’, Balgarska muzika (1966)

S. Kozhuharov: ‘Pancho Vladigerov’, Muzikalni horizonti (1967), no.10, pp.34–8

B. Abrashev: ‘Funktsionalnata zavisimost mezhdu forma i orchestratsiya v tvorchestvoto na Pancho Vladigerov’ [Functional dependency between form and orchestration in Vladigerov's works], Balgarsko muzikoznanie, ii (1973)

B. Abrashev: ‘Improvizatsiya i Tokata’ [Improvisations and Toccata], Balgarsko muzikoznanie, ii (1973)

E. Avramov: Harmoniyata na Pancho Vladigerov [The harmony of Vladigerov] (Sofia, 1976)

S. Lazarov: Pancho Vladigerov i teatara [Vladigerov and the theatre] (Sofia, 1976)

V. Krastev: ‘Pancho Vladigerov’, Profili, i (Sofia, 1976–86)

P. Stoyanov: ‘Kompozitsionni problemi v instrumentalnoto tvorchestvo na Pancho Vladigerov’ [Compositional problems in Vladigerov's works], Balgarska muzika (1979), no.3, pp.11–15

K. Yapova: ‘Kamerno-instrumentalni ansambli v tvorchestvoto na Pancho Vladigerov do 1944 godina’ [Vladigerov's chamber-instrumental ensembles up to 1944], Balgarsko muzikoznanie, xi/1 (1987)

E. Pavlov: Tvorbite na Pancho Vladigerov [The works of Vladigerov] (Sofia, 1989)

IVAN HLEBAROV

Vladimirova, Valeriya.

See Barsova, Valeriya.

Vladïshevskaya, Tat'yana Feodos'yevna

(b Moscow, 3 June 1944). Russian musicologist. She studied at the Moscow Conservatory, graduating in 1970 and taking postgraduate studies until 1973. She took the Kandidat degree in 1976 with a dissertation on the early forms of the art of Old Russian singers, and the doctorate in 1993 with a dissertation on Russian church music from the 11th century to the 17th, for which she studied with Yury Keldïsh. She taught the history of Russian music and musical palaeography at the Moscow Conservatory (1973–89) and subsequently headed the department of Old Russian music at the Andrey Rublyov Museum of Old Russian Art in Moscow. Vladïshevskaya's scholarly interests are concerned with the music of Russia. She has written widely on the church music of Old Russia and its links with Byzantine music, Russian folksongs, the traditions of the Old Believers and choral music of the 18th century.

WRITINGS

Rannïye formï drevnerusskogo pevcheskogo iskusstva [The early forms of the art of Old Russian singers] (CSc diss., Moscow Conservatory, 1973)

‘Partesnïy khorovoy kontsert v ėpokhu barokko’ [The ‘partesnïy’ choral concerto in the Baroque era], Traditsii russkoy muzïkal'noy kul'turï 18 veka (Moscow, 1975), 72–112

‘K voprosu ob izuchenii traditsiy drevnerusskogo pevcheskogo iskusstva’ [On the question of studying the traditions of the Old Russian art of singing], Iz istorii russkoy i sovetskoy muzïki, ed. A.I. Kandinsky, ii (Moscow, 1976), 40–61

‘Pokayannïy stikh “Zryu tya grobe” literature, zhivopisi i muzïke 17 veka’ [The verse of repentance ‘I see thee, o grave’ in 17th-century literature, painting and music], Drevnerusskoye iskusstvo (Moscow, 1981), 14–22

‘Bolgarskiy raspev u staroobryadtsev’ [Bulgarian chant among the Old Believers], Balgarsko muzikoznaniye, i (Sofia, 1982)

‘Arkhaicheskiye traditsii v russkoy muzïke XVIII–XX vekov’ [Archaic traditions in Russian music from the 18th century to the 20th], Sprache, Literatur und Geschichte der Altgläubigen: Heidelberg 1986, 331–47

‘Die Entstehung der russischen Kirchenmusik und ihre Ästhetik zur Zeit der Kiever Rus’, Hermeneia: Zeitschrift für ostkirchliche Kunst, iv/2 (1988), 65–78

‘Bogodukhnovennoye angeloglasnoye peniye v sisteme srednevekovoy muzïkal'noy kul'turï (ėvolyutsiya idei)’ [Singing inspired by God and the voice of angels in the system of musical culture during the Middle Ages (the evolution of an idea)], Mekhanizmï kul'turï, ed. B.A. Uspensky (Moscow, 1990), 116–36

ed.: Muzïkal'naya kul'tura Srednevekov'ya [The musical culture of the Middle Ages] (Moscow, 1991–2) [incl. ‘Azbuchnïye znaki znamennoy notatsii i yeyo semioticheskiye korni’ [Alphabet signs in ‘znamennïy’ notation and its semiotic roots], i, 81–108, 81–108; ‘Otrazheniye russkoy istorii v drevnerusskikh pesnopeniyakh’ [A reflection of Russian history in Old Russian chants], ii, 5–10]

Russkaya tserkovnaya muzïka 11–17 vekov [Russian church music from the 11th century to the 17th] (diss., Moscow Conservatory, 1993)

with G.K. Vagner: Iskusstvo Drevney Rusi [The culture of Old Russia] (Moscow, 1993) [with Eng. summary]

ZIVAR GUSEYNOVA

Vlasenko, Lev (Nikolayevich)

(b Tbilisi, 24 Dec 1928). Russian pianist. His first piano lessons were from his mother, herself a student at the Tbilisi Conservatory. He continued with Georgian pedagogue Anastasia Virsaladze, then from 1948 went to Moscow to follow courses at the Institute for Foreign Languages and at the Moscow Conservatory with Yakov Fliyer. He was forced to break his studies for a year’s army service, but in 1956 he won first prize in the Budapest Liszt Competition, and in 1958 he was runner-up to Van Cliburn in the first Tchaikovsky Piano Competition. Well known for his interpretations of Liszt, Rachmaninoff and Beethoven, Vlasenko is an engaging, if inconsistent, player in other repertory. From 1952 he taught at the Moscow Choral School, then the Gnesin School, and in 1957 took up a teaching post at the Moscow Conservatory, where his pupils have included Mikhail Pletnyov.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

M. Teroganyan: ‘Besedï s masterami’ [Conversations with the Masters], SovM (1981), no.10, pp.92–8 [interview with Vlasenko]

G. Tsïpin: Portretï sovetskikh pianistov (Moscow, 1990), 159–68

DAVID FANNING

Vlasov, Vladimir Aleksandrovich

(b Moscow, 25 Dec/7 Jan 1903; d 7 Sept 1986). Russian composer and conductor. He was a pupil of Catoire, Krïlov, Yampol'sky and Zhilyayev at the Moscow Conservatory (1924–31). Thereafter he was founder and artistic director (1936–42) of the Music and Drama Theatre in Frunze (now Bishkek), and manager and artistic director of the Moscow PO (1942–9). He was made a People’s Artist of the RSFSR and of the Kirghiz SSR. Many of his numerous operas were written in collaboration with Fere and Maldïbayev, with whom he also composed the Kirghiz national anthem.

WORKS

(selective list)

Operatic (first performed at the Frunze State Opera House unless otherwise stated; until 1966 written in collaboration with V. Fere and A. Maldïbayev): Altïn kïz [The Golden Girl] (music drama, D. Bokombayev), 1937, 12 May 1937; Adzhal orduna [Not Death but Life] (op, 3, Yu. Tursubekov), 1938, 26 March 1938; Aychurek [Moon Beauty] (op, 4, Bokombayev, K. Malikov and Tursubekov, after folk epic: Manas), 1939, 15 April 1939; Za schast'ye naroda [For the People’s Happiness] (op, V. Vinnikov), 1941, 1 May 1941; Patriotï [Patriots] (op, Malikov and A. Kuttubayev), 6 Nov 1941; Aldar Kose (operetta), 1943; Manas (op, Malikov and A. Tokombayev), 1944, 3 March 1946, rev. 1966; Sïn naroda [A Son of his People] (op, Vinnikov), 1947, 8 Nov 1947; Na beregakh Issïkh-kulya [On the Banks of Lake Issïk] (op, K. Bayalinov and Vinnikov), 1950, 1 Feb 1951, rev. 1952, 7 Feb 1952; Toktogul (op, 2), 1958, 6 July 1958; Ved'ma [The Witch] (op, after A.P. Chekhov), 1958, TV broadcast, 1961, stage, 1966; Pyat' millionov frankov [5 Million Francs] (operetta, G. Fere, after I. Ilf and Yu. Petrov), 1962, Sverdlovsk, 1965; Za chas do rassveta [An Hour before Dawn] (op), 1969; Zolotaya devushka [The Golden Maiden] (op), 1973

Ballets: several in collab. with V.G. Fere: Anar, 1940, rev. 1951; Selkichek [The Swing] (K. Yantoshev), 1943; Vesna v Ala-Too [Spring in Ala-Too] (P. Abolimov), 1955; Asel (V. Khalinkov and N. Khristonova, after Aytamatov), 1967; Sotvoreniye Ėvï [Eva’s creation], 1968; Printsessa i sapozhnik [Princess and Cobbler], 1970

Cants.: Skazaniye o schast'ye [A Tale of Happiness] (Vinnikov), 1949, collab. Fere, Maldïbayev; K Leninu, 1962; Internatsional, 1968

Inst: Duets, 2 vn, 1931, 1933; Toktogul, sym. poem, orch, 1951; Str Qt [no.1], 1953; Romanian Rhapsody, orch, 1955; Str Qt [no.2], 1955; Suite, folk insts, 1955; Akin poyot o Leninye [Akin Sings of Lenin], orch, 1957; Prazdnichnaya uvertyura [Festival Ov.], orch, 1957; Chitaya Tagora [Reading Tagore], orch, 1958; Vospominaniye ob Albanii [Memories of Albania], 1960; Str Qt [no.3], 1965; 2 vc concs., many works for solo inst with pf

Music for the theatre and cinema, over 100 songs

Principal publishers: Muzgiz, Sovetskiy Kompozitor

BIBLIOGRAPHY

V. Vinogradov: A. Maladïbayev, V. Vlasov, V. Fere (Moscow, 1958)

L. Ginzburg: ‘Obrashchyonnoye k sovremenniku’ [Appeal to the Contemporary], SovM (1973), no.1, pp.28–33

DETLEF GOJOWY

Vleescher.

See Fleischer family.

Vlier

(Flem.).

Fretted box zither of the Low Countries. See Low Countries, §II, 2 and Hommel.

Vlijmen, Jan van

(b Rotterdam, 11 Oct 1935). Dutch composer. He studied the piano, the organ, and, with van Baaren, composition at the Utrecht Conservatory. He was then director of the Amersfoort Music School (1961–5) and lecturer in theory at the Utrecht Conservatory (1965–7). In 1967 he became deputy director of the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, succeeding van Baaren as director three years later, a position he held until 1985; he also continued to teach composition. In 1984 he was appointed director of the Nederlandse Opera, which he left, following disagreements over government funding policy, in 1987. From 1990 to 1997 he was director of the Holland Festival.

During the 1960s van Vlijmen drew attention for his involvement in the turbulent debate about the Dutch cultural establishment. He collaborated on the opera Reconstructie with Louis Andriessen, Schat, Misha Mengelberg and Reinbert de Leeuw (with whom he also later worked on his second opera, Axel). Van Vlijmen’s own development as a composer came initially from the serialism of the Second Viennese School, and soon after from postwar developments, as exemplified in particular by Boulez’s Structures and Stockhausen’s Carré and Gruppen, whose concept of groups is reflected in his Gruppi of 1962. However, van Vlijmen was never a slavish follower of serial thought, and already by the Serenata II for flute and four instrumental groups (1964) classic pointillist textures had given way to almost uninterrupted ebb-and-flow continuity. This is evident too in the Sonata for piano and three instrumental groups (1966), which further exhibits an explicit harmonic rhythm, as essential as the derivation procedures applied to the opening material in the piece.

In Omaggio a Gesualdo (1971) and the Wind Quintet no.2 (1972) a continuing use of serialism is coupled with more overt references to harmonic processes and allusions to tonality. The third part of the wind quintet, for example, displays the use of triads, which are, however, distributed in the texture in such a way that their conventional effect remains barely apparent. In this exploration of tonal–atonal ambivalence, van Vlijmen’s music points in the direction conceptually, though by no means stylistically, of Wagner, whose principle of unendliche Melodie is intriguingly fused with serial methods, cantus firmus technique and harmonic progression in the evening-long four-part Quaterni I–IV (1979–85). Elements of this many-sided approach are also evident in the string quartet Trimurti (1980, rev. 1981), Faithful for solo viola (1984) and the Piano Concerto (1991). In the imposing Inferno (1991–3), a cantata for three instrumental and four vocal groups based on texts by Dante, van Vlijmen achieves a highly personal synthesis of a range of stylistic sources. Richly detailed, the musical language remains a clear and precisely judged amalgam of atonality, serial thinking and non-functional tonality. Despite a capricious and dramatic nature, Inferno is characterized above all by a lyrical and poignant melos which has its parallel in similar works by Dallapiccola Berio and Boulez.

WORKS

(selective list)

Stage: Reconstructie (music theatre, 2 parts, H. Claus and H. Mulish), Amsterdam, Carré, 29 June 1969, collab. L. Andriessen, R. de Leeuw, M. Mengelberg, P. Schat; Axel (op, 3, Mulish, after F. Villiers de l’Isle-Adam), 1975–7, Scheveningen, Circus, 10 June 1977, collab. de Leeuw; Un malheureux vêtu de noir (op, 3, J. Thielemans), Amsterdam, Stadsschouwburg, 16 Nov 1990

Orch and large ens: Gruppi, wind, perc, 1962, rev. 1980; Spostamenti, orch, 1963; Serenata I, 12 insts, perc, 1964, rev. 1967; Serenata II, fl, 4 inst groups, 1964; Sonata, pf, 3 inst groups, 1966; Interpolations, orch, elecs, 1968, rev. 1981; Per diciasette, 17 wind, 1968; Omaggio a Gesualdo, vn, 6 inst groups, 1971; Quaterni I, orch, 1979; Quaterni II (Sonata a tre), vn, hn, pf, orch, 1982; Pf Conc., pf, orch, 1991

Vocal: 3 Morgensternliederen, Mez, pf, 1958; Mythos (P. van Ostayen), Mez, ens, 1963; Quaterni III, IV (E. Pound), S, mixed chorus, orch, 1984, rev. 1985; Such a Day of Sweetness (W.H. Auden), S, orch, 1988; Inferno (cant., Dante), 4 vocal groups, 3 inst groups, 1991–3

Chbr: Str Qt no.1, 1956; Wind Qnt no.1, 1958–9; Costruzione, 2 pf, 1960; Serie per 6 strumenti, pic + fl + a fl, ob + eng hn, cl + b cl, bn, tpt, pf, 1960; Dialogue, cl, pf, 1966; Wind Qnt no.2, 1972; Trimurti, trittico per quartetto di archi, 1980, rev. 1981; Faithful, va, 1984; Nonet, fl, cl, b cl, pf, str qt, db, 1985; Solo II, cl, 1986; Tombeau (Solo III), vc, 1991; Solo IV, a fl, 1994–5; Str Qnt, 1995–6

Arrs.: R. Escher: Summer Rites at Noon, 2 orch, 1984–7; A. Schoenberg: 6 kleine Klavierstücke, op.19, orch, 1993; A. Schoenberg: 2 Balladen, op.12, B, large orch, 1994; A. Zemlinsky: Jane Grey (H. Ammann), Ballade, 5 lieder (R. Dehmel), Bar, large orch, 1994; P. Haas: 4 písně na slova činské poesie [4 Songs on Chin. Poetry], Bar, 15 insts, 1995

Principal publisher: Donemus

BIBLIOGRAPHY

(selective list)

H. Koegler: ‘Gemeinschaftsoper “Reconstruction”’, Musica, xxiii (1969), 464 only

R. Schollum: ‘Serenata II for Flute and Four Groups of Instruments’, Sonorum speculum, no.38 (1969), 12–14

T. Hartsuiker: ‘Jan van Vlijmen: “Omaggio a Gesualdo”’, Sonorum speculum, no.53 (1973), 1–11

W. Markus: ‘Axel or The Rejection of Life’, Key Notes, vi (1977), 19–32

W. Markus: ‘Quaterni: Theses’, Key Notes, xv (1982), 36–47

B. Blanken and R. de Beer: ‘Composers on the Export of their Music: “It’s Important to Try Out your Music on Foreign Ears”’, Key Notes, xvi (1982), 20–6

M. Brandt: ‘De macht van “Quaterni” ligt in de traagheid’, Mens en melodie, xxxix (1984), 387–9; Eng. trans. in Key Notes, xx (1984), 30–1

M. Brandt and J. van Vlijmen: ‘Serialism is Not a Spent Force’, Key Notes, xx/3 (1996)

MAARTEN BRANDT

VMI [Vogtländische Musikinstrumentenfabrik].

See Meinl.

Voboam [Voboame, Vaubouin, Vauban, Vauboyet, Vobuan, Vogeant, Roboam].

French family of guitar makers, active in Paris from 1630 to 1730. René Voboam (c1606–71) was known as a master instrument maker from 1631 onwards. Jacques Prévost was apprenticed to him in 1638, and Dimanche Drouin the following year; at that time he was working at rue St-Honoré. A guitar bearing his name, dated 1641, is preserved in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Three more guitars, made with tortoiseshell and mother-of-pearl, may be attributed to him. One is marked ‘Voboam 1668’ was in the former collection of Maurice Le Roux, Paris; the other two are preserved in the Musée Masséna, Nice, and the RCM, London. By the end of his career he was working at rue Traversière.

(Nicolas) Alexandre (b c1633; d after 1691), son of René, signed his first guitars in 1652. Lütgendorff also listed a theorbo, dated 1661. In 1671 Alexandre married Anne Bourdet, the sister of the harpsichord maker Jacques Bourdet the elder. He worked at rue des Arcis, where he stayed until 1692 (the date of his last signed instrument). Between 1673 and 1679 he signed his instruments ‘Alexandre Voboam Le Jeune’. 11 guitars are known; three others are attributed. Jean (b c1633; d after 1691), also son of René, worked first as a musician. He is first mentioned as a master instrument maker in 1680. Seven guitars bearing his signature, dated between 1676 and 1692, are preserved.

Jean-Baptiste (also known as ‘Jean’; b 1671; d after 1731) worked ‘préau de la foire Saint-Germain’. He was a prominent member of the guild of instrument makers, and signed the inventories taken after the deaths of Nicolas Bertrand (1725) and Pierre Véron (1731). Seven guitars and two viols, signed and dated between 1697 and 1730, are known. His son Jean-Baptiste began an apprenticeship with Jean-Claude Goujon in 1740, but the contract was broken the following year.

Voboam guitars are characteristic of the 17th century. They have five double courses and a flat back, and are built with narrow proportions and parallel bracing from one side to the other of the rose. A plaque on the front of the head bears the signature and date. Very often the binding of the soundboard, fingerboard, head and rose is made of a diagonal pattern of ivory and ebony. The rose is deep and made of several layers of paper stamped out. The bridge is flanked with ebony flowers or moustaches. Though the Voboams built standard instruments (with backs made of strips of cedar, walnut or exotic wood, inlays of ebony and ivory, and sides often made of ebony) they also made more luxurious instruments incorporating tortoiseshell and mother-of-pearl. The designs of the guitars’ heads and their inlay patterns are characteristic to the individual family members. Three instruments are still preserved with their original cases, stamped with coats of arms. Many paintings and engravings from the 17th century, and later works of art by Jean-Antoine Watteau, Jean-Marc Nattier, Jacques-André Portail and Louis de Carmontelle, attest the fame of Voboam guitars among amateurs.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

LütgendorffGL

D.D. Boyden: Catalogue of the Hill Collection of Musical Instruments in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (London, 1969), 44

F. Gétreau: ‘René, Alexandre et Jean Voboam: des facteurs pour “La Guitarre Royalle”’, Instrumentistes et luthiers parisiens: XVIIe–XIXe siècles (Paris, 1988), 50–73

H. Charnassé and S. Milliot: ‘Les Voboam: précisions sur la filiation des célèbres facteurs de guitare’, Recherches sur la musique française classique, xxvii (1991–2), 219–23

M. Benoit, ed.: Dictionnaire de la musique en France aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris, 1992), 730

F. Gétreau: ‘La dynastie des Voboam: nouvelles propositions pour le catalogue de leur oeuvre’, Musique – Images – Instruments, ii (1996), 185–94

FLORENCE GÉTREAU

Vocalese.

A term for the practice of jazz singing in which texts (newly invented) are set to recorded jazz improvisations. The word is a pun on the term ‘vocalise’, combining the ideas of a jazz ‘vocal’ and a private language (indicated by the suffix ‘-ese’). Eddie Jefferson performed vocalese from the 1940s, but the best-known early recordings were made by King Pleasure, including his version of Jefferson’s Moody’s Mood for Love (1952, Prst.), based on a saxophone solo by James Moody, and his own setting of Parker’s Mood (1953, Prst.), using Charlie Parker’s blues improvisation of that title. Other important practitioners of vocalese were Dave Lambert, Annie Ross and, above all, Jon Hendricks, who was extremely inventive in creating texts to capture the feeling of the original solos. In 1957 Lambert, Hendricks and Ross (later Yolande Bavan) formed a vocal trio which attained some commercial success with their vocalese; it disbanded in 1964, but Hendricks continued to create and perform such pieces into the 1980s with a group comprising members of his family. Although the singing of vocalese is most closely associated with the bop style, it was also practised later by such popular singers as the Pointer Sisters and, notably, Joni Mitchell in her version of Charles Mingus’s Goodbye Pork Pie Hat (on the album Mingus, 1979); in 1985 the vocal quartet Manhattan Transfer recorded the album Vocalese (Atl.). See also L. Feather: ‘An Explanation of Vocalese’, Jazz: a Quarterly of American Music, no.3 (1959), 261–7.

J. BRADFORD ROBINSON/R

Vocal horn.

See Ballad horn.

Vocalion.

A type of Reed organ. The instrument was developed by John Baillie-Hamilton [James Baillie Hamilton] (b Scotland, 20 Jan 1837; d London, after 1926), originally in an attempt to combine the sounds of free reeds and strings. A modified instrument in which wires were attached to heavy reed tongues was demonstrated before the Royal Musical Association in 1883, but the wires were deleted from the three-manual vocalion built at William Hill’s factory and shown at the International Inventions Exhibition of 1885 in London. In the same year Hamilton, who appears to have worked briefly with the Canadian organ builder S.R. Warren, exhibited the vocalion in the USA; he began to manufacture such instruments in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1886. Shortly thereafter production was turned over to the New York Church Organ Co., and in 1890 to the piano makers Mason & Risch, who continued manufacture in Worcester. In 1901 the firm was called the Vocalion Organ Co. In 1903 this firm was absorbed by the Aeolian Co., which continued to make vocalions until around 1910. Aeolian had already begun in the 1890s to use vocalion reeds for their ‘Orchestrelle’ player organs. The firm also produced self-playing organettes under the names ‘Syreno’ and ‘Tonsyreno’.

Ranging in size from foot-operated single-manual models to ones with two (or occasionally three) manuals and pedal, the vocalion is basically a reed organ on the pressure principle, but with unusually wide reed tongues. It is therefore somewhat bulkier than the average reed organ, but produces a smoother, more powerful sound. This characteristic made the vocalion, often decorated with a façade of dummy organ pipes, popular for use in small churches in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

J.B. Hamilton: ‘The Vocalion’, PMA, ix (1882–3), 60–63

J.J. Richards: ‘The Vocalion’, The Diapason, lxvi/9 (1975), 5–7, 19

G.D. and D.A. Williams: ‘A Style 20 Vocalion’, The Tracker, xxiv/2 (1980), 16–17

A.W.J.G. Ord-Hume: Harmonium: the History of the Reed Organ and its Makers (Newton Abbot, 1986)

BARBARA OWEN

Vocalise

(Fr.).

A textless vocal exercise or concert piece to be sung to one or more vowels. The vocalise derives from two traditions. One dates from the early 19th century, when it became customary to perform and publish solfeggi and essercizi with piano accompaniment (e.g. Domenico Corri, The Singer's Preceptor, 1810; Manuel García, Traité complet de l’art du chant, 1840–47/R); by the middle of the century there were numerous publications of this kind. The singing instructor Heinrich Panofka, for example, published during his years in Paris five volumes of vocalises. The idea was that with a piano accompaniment even the most mechanical exercises would be performed in a more artistic manner. The other tradition was that of using existing compositions as vocal exercises without words. In 1755 Jean-Antoine Bérard provided, as a supplement to his L’art du chant, 20 compositions by Lully, Rameau and others, selected for the technical problems they offered (‘pour les sons tendres, légers, maniérés, majestueux’ etc.), and he added specific instructions as to how these problems were to be solved. In the 19th century most instruction manuals for the voice included original compositions specially composed for the same purpose: ‘melodies without words, offering the pupil a union of all the difficulties of song’ (García). Unlike the accompanied solfeggi, these were not just exercises but genuine compositions, though they seldom merited performance before an audience.

In 1848 Spohr wrote a Sonatina for voice and piano in which the voice is used very much like a solo instrument (a violin or a flute), but it was not until the early 20th century that leading composers turned in any great number to the vocalise as a concert piece. At first the genre was particularly cultivated in France (Fauré's Vocalise-étude and Ravel's Vocalise-étude en forme de habanera date from 1907), but it soon caught the attention of Italian composers, including Casella, Cilea, Giordano and Respighi. Among the most frequently performed works of this kind are Rachmaninoff's Vocalise op.34 no.14 (1912) and Vaughan Williams's Three Vocalises for soprano and clarinet (1958); the most ambitious are Medtner's Sonate-Vocalise and Suite-Vocalise op.41 (?1922–6). In the second half of the 20th century many composers produced one or two such works: among these are Peter Racine Fricker's Vocalise (1965) and Michael Finnissy's Songs.

The term ‘vocalization’ has been reserved by composers and singing teachers for the singing of vocalises (e.g. in the title of Crescentini's Raccolta di esercizi per il canto all’uso del vocalizzo, c1810), but it is often used in a more general sense for the practice of singing to vowel sounds or with closed lips (see Bocca chiusa and Cantilena (ii)). Vocalization in this sense may be for solo voice, as in Vaughan Williams's Pastoral Symphony, or for chorus, as in Debussy's ‘Sirènes’ from the Nocturnes and Holst's The Planets. To use the word, as some have done, for the melismas of Gregorian chant and the coloratura of 18th-century opera is to dilute its usefulness as a musical term. For a discussion of the technique as applied to jazz, see Vocalese.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L.W. Stickler: Concert Vocalises for Solo Voice: a Selective Study (DMA diss., Indiana U., 1989)

K.S. Chilcote: The Vocalise Art Song (DMA diss., U. of Oregon, 1991)

K.R. DeJardin: The Accompanied Vocalise and its Application to Selected Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Twentieth-Century Songs and Arias (DMA diss., U. of Arizona, 1992)

OWEN JANDER

Vocalization.

The singing of textless vocal exercises. See Vocalise.

Vocal score.

See Score, §1.

Voce

(It.).

Voice. See Singing; Acoustics, §VI and Part (ii).

Voce di petto

(It.: ‘chest voice’; Fr. voix de poitrine).

One of the two primary registers of the singing voice. The voice resonating from the chest is lower in pitch and bigger and darker in sound than that resonating from the head (see Voce di testa). Beginning in the 18th century, singing tutors discussed these registers at length, taking various positions on how to unite the break (passaggio) between them. The increasing use of the chest voice in the higher register to create a more powerful sound was hotly contested in the 18th and 19th centuries (see Voix mixte and Voix sombrée). See Singing.

Voce di testa

(It.: ‘head voice’; Fr. voix de tête).

One of the two primary vocal registers. The voice resonating from the head is higher, lighter and clearer than that resonating from the chest (see Voce di petto). Some 18th-century writers equate the voce di testa with Falsetto. See Singing.

Voce humana

(It.: ‘human voice’).

A tenor oboe in F; see Oboe, §III, 4(ii).

Voces belgicae

(Lat.).

The name used in Nikolaus Gengenbach’s Musica nova, Newe Singekunst, so wol nach der alten Solmisation, als newen Bobisation und Bebisation (Leipzig, 1626), and later in J.G. Walther’s Musicalisches Lexicon (Leipzig, 1732), for the syllables of the solmization system also known as Bocedization.

Voce umana

(It.).

Voci pari, voci mutate

(It.: ‘equal voices’, ‘changed voices’).

Terms applied in the 16th century to vocal compositions in which the total compass of all parts was restricted to a limited range. Voci pari (and its equivalents voix pareilles, voces pares and voces ad aequales) meant that the individual parts of the work so designated shared an equal or nearly equal range, either high (SSAA) or low (ATTB or TTBB). The Italian term ‘voci mutate’ (Lat. voces mutatae) implied that the scoring required mature male voices, usually with nearly equal ranges. In most sources before about 1560, works for low voices far outnumber those for high voices.

Although performance entirely by male voices (without use of falsetto registers) was probably not exceptional in part-music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the majority of compositions actually bearing the designations voci pari or voci mutate appeared between 1530 and 1560. Several printed collections of masses (e.g. 1534², 1542³ and 1544³), motets (e.g. 1534⁶, 1543², 1543⁵, 1549⁶ and 1549⁹) and madrigals (e.g. 1539²³, 1542¹⁹ and Passetto, 1541) have such indications in their titles. Similarly, certain chansons, villottas and settings of the Lamentations were scored for equal voices. The scoring may be a response to local resources, commercial aims or expressive intention. It seems likely, for example, that Placido Falconio’s five books of sacred music designated voci pari were written for the choirs of the monasteries where he worked in mind. The spate of madrigal books with voci pari scoring that appeared around the middle of the century suggests, on the other hand a particular market, perhaps that of all-male academies where commentators like Antonfrancesco Doni claimed madrigal singing was in fashion. And in some works the scoring is clearly intended to be text-expressive, for example in narrative pieces where the voice of the speaker is portrayed in the register to dramatic or humorous effect.

Although the popularity of such compositions, especially of the secular works for low voices, seems to have diminished in the later decades of the 16th century, scoring for voci pari or voci mutate continued to appear in sacred music, notably in the works of Palestrina and Victoria.

16th-century theorists provided fairly consistent guidelines for compositions of equal voices. Aaron (1516) stated that works for voces mutates (‘manly voices … such as sing bass or alto’) should encompass no more than a 15th or a 17th, with specific limits set between F or A and a'. Vicentino (1555) defined a composition à voce mutata as one without soprano, and set the outside limits for the range of such a piece at a 15th or 16th; similar comments for works à voci mutate or à voci pari were made by Zarlino (1558 and 1573). Morley (1597) specified written limits for men’s voices that are virtually identical with those given by Aaron.

A special technique in writing à voce mutata, which provided for alternative performance à voce piena (‘full voice’, i.e. mixed voices), was described by Vicentino and Tigrini (1588). Here the tenor part of a work written à voce mutata may be performed either as written, by a tenor, or an octave higher, by a soprano. Conversely, the soprano part of a work à voce piena could be sung either as written or an octave lower, permitting performance à voce mutata. Several works have directions for this kind of transposition, including Claudin de Sermisy’s Missa sur fantasie (RISM 1534²), two canzone villanesche of Willaert (in 1542¹⁹), and four of Falconio’s books.

The terms à voci pari and à voci mutate were rarely used after the beginning of the 17th century, but the tradition of equal-voice writing has continued to the 20th century. There are numerous examples in choral literature as well as equal-voice compositions for instruments (see Equale).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

P. Aron: Libri tres de institutione harmonica (Bologna, 1516/R1971), 52ff

N. Vicentino: L’antica musica ridotta alla moderna prattica (Rome, 1555/R1959), 84, 92f

G. Zarlino: Le istitutioni harmoniche (Venice, 1558/R1965), 262; (rev. 3/1573/R1964), 323, 418

O. Tigrini: Il compendio della musica (Venice, 1588/R1966), 112ff

T. Morley: A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (London, 1597/R1971), 166; ed. R.A. Harman (London, 1952), 275

F. Jöde, ed.: Geistliche und weltliche Lieder und Gesänge für gleiche Stimmen (Berlin, 1930)

K. Jeppesen: Die mehrstimmige italienische Laude um 1500 (Copenhagen, 1935), 1

O. Kinkeldey: ‘Equal Voices in the A Cappella Period’, Essays on Music in Honor of Archibald Thompson Davison (Cambridge, MA, 1957), 101

H.C. Slim: A Gift of Madrigals and Motets for Henry VIII, i (Chicago, 1972), 122ff

F.J. Carey: ‘Composition for Equal Voices in the Sixteenth Century’, JM, ix (1991), 300–42

FRANK CAREY/R

Vockerodt [Fokkerod], Gottfried

(b Mühlhausen, 24 Sept 1665; d Gotha, 10 Oct 1717). German educationist. He may have been related to the composer and theorist Johann Arnold Fokkerod, who was also from Mühlhausen. In 1685 he received a master’s degree in philosophy from the University of Jena, where he remained to teach classical languages. In 1689 he went to Halle to become Konrektor of the Gymnasium. In 1693 he was invited to become professor of moral philosophy at the university there, but he went instead to Gotha as a teacher at the Fürstenschule and in 1694 became its Rektor. In 1696 he presented a public lecture entitled De falsa mentium intemperatarum medicina. Using the example of three Roman emperors, Caligula, Claudius and Nero, he proposed that their irrationality and despotic characters were the result of excessive infatuation with the arts of theatre, dance and music. Although his remarks were temperate they engendered a violent controversy. He was attacked by J.C. Wentzel (Rektor at Altenburg), Johann Christoph Lorber and especially Johann Beer, who in his Ursus murmurat (Weissenfels, 1697) interpreted his remarks to mean that music education would affect German noblemen as it had Roman emperors and that music should be banned from schools and churches. Vockerodt published a lengthy rejoinder to these criticisms, reprinting large portions of each, as well as the original Latin and his German translation of the oration leading to the dispute, in Missbrauch der freyen Künste, insonderheit der Music. At the heart of the argument lies the collision of Pietists and orthodox Protestants. The most valuable aspect of Vockerodt’s work is the clarity with which he stated the Pietists’ position. While declaring that he was no enemy of music, he left no doubt that he deplored the musical character of most Protestant church services, with their long organ improvisations, instrumental pieces in dance forms and operatic vocal music.

THEORETICAL WORKS

Illustris Gymnasii Gothani summos patronos … ad publicas orationes, De falsa mentium intemperatarum medicina (Gotha, 1696)

Missbrauch der freyen Künste, insonderheit der Music, nebenst abgenöthigter Erörterung der Frage: was nach D. Luthers und anderer evangelischen Theologorum und Politicorum Meinung von Opern und Comödien zu halten sey? (Frankfurt, 1697) [incl. Lat. and Ger. versions of De falsa mentium]

Wiederholtes Zeugnüs der Wahrheit gegen die verderbte Music und Schauspiele Opern, Comödien und dergleichen Eitelkeiten, welche die heutige Welt vor unschuldige Mitteldinge will gehalten wissen (Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1698)

GEORGE J. BUELOW

Vocoder.

An electronic device for analysing and resynthesizing sounds. The original Vocoder (‘voice coder’) was developed by Homer Dudley in 1936 at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, for telephonic applications; it has also proved a valuable tool in speech research and has found applications in electroacoustic music. Speech, music or other sound is analysed by a set of filters, each covering a different band of frequencies, that subdivide the entire audio spectrum; the fundamental frequency of the input is used as the ‘programme’ in a Modulation (ii) process to control the frequency of an audio oscillator (which supplies ‘buzz’) and a noise generator (‘hiss’). The resulting signal is then passed through a second set of filters, each of which is ‘tuned’ by the amount of electrical information received by their counterparts in the first set, recreating the original signal electronically. A telephone line may intervene between the analysis and synthesis sections.

About 1960 a vocoder was incorporated into the Siemens Synthesizer, which probably offered the first opportunity for musicians to use the device. Since around 1970 several manufacturers, including Bode Sound, Moog, Korg, Roland, EMS, Sennheiser, Synton, Eventide and Doepfer, have produced vocoders (some of which are controlled from a keyboard) primarily for use in electronic music studios or in live performances of rock music; the ‘harmonizer’ is a similar device. Such vocoders permit the timbre and articulation of one sound source (usually a voice) to control another. Simpler devices for producing ‘talking (or singing) instruments’, particularly in films, include the Sonovox (c1938) and, from the early 1970s, various ‘voice boxes’ (‘voice tubes’) used in rock music, which impart vocal qualities with the larynx and mouth respectively. The ‘phase vocoder’ (1966) is a software program developed at Bell, which has found a role in computer music since the late 1970s, primarily for time compression or expansion.

In 1937 Dudley and others developed the speech synthesis section of the Vocoder to produce the Voder (‘voice operation demonstrator’), a successor to the keyboard-controlled speaking machines devised from the end of the 18th century onwards. The filters are controlled by two independent five-note keyboards. The right thumb also operates a ‘quiet’ key for fricative consonants and three central ‘stops’ for plosive ones, and there is a pitch-control pedal for inflection; a left-hand wrist-bar switches between ‘buzz’ and ‘hiss’ (also combinable) to give voiced and unvoiced qualities. In 1948 researchers at Bell developed the Visible Speech machine, using Drawn sound in the form of speech ‘notation’ to control the coder section of a Vocoder.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

H. Dudley: ‘Synthesizing Speech’, Bell Laboratories Record, xv (1936), 98–102

H. Dudley, R.R. Riesz and S.S.A. Watkins: ‘A Synthetic Speaker’, Journal of the Franklin Institute, ccxxvii (1939), 739–64; repr. in Speech Synthesis, ed. J.L. Flanagan and L.R. Rabiner (1973)

H. Dudley: ‘The Vocoder Remakes Speech’, Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers, xxviii (1940), 1–47

J.L. Flanagan and L.R. Rabiner, eds.: Speech Synthesis (Stroudsburg, PA, 1973)

T. Rhea: ‘Harald Bode’s Frequency Shifters and Vocoders’, Contemporary Keyboard, vi/2 (1980), 86 only

C. Roads and others: The Computer Music Tutorial (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1996), 148, 444–6, 549, 566–77, 1094–9

HUGH DAVIES

Voctuis [Voctus], Michael.

See Vogt, Michael.

Vodička, Václav.

See Wodiczka, Wenceslaus.

Vodňanský, Jan Campanus.

See Campanus, Jan.

Vodorinski, Anton.

Pseudonym of Ketèlbey, albert w(illiam).

Vodušek, Valens

(b Ljubljana, 29 Jan 1912; d Ljubljana, 8 Feb 1989). Slovenian ethnomusicologist. While studying law at Ljubljana University (LlD 1938) he also studied the piano and conducting at the Ljubljana State Conservatory (1930–36). Self-taught in musicology and ethnomusicology (mainly from the writings of Bartók, Kolessa, Kodály, Wiora and Brăiloiu), he worked as head of the music section at the Ministry of Culture in Slovenia (1946–51) until he joined the Institute for Ethnomusicology in Ljubljana. His work there was interrupted by his appointment as director of Ljubljana Opera (1951–5); on his return he directed the institute until 1972, when it combined with the Institute of Ethnology at the Slovene Academy of Sciences and Arts, and he became a senior research fellow and head of the department for ethno-musicology. He also conducted (1946–51) the Ljubljana Radio Choir (from 1948 the Slovene Philharmonic Choir) and was artistic director (1956–72) of the Slovene Octet (a chamber ensemble of male voices). Vodušek instigated systematic fieldwork in the Slovene ethnic territory. His attempt to establish a method for studying the development of different strata of folk music led him to work on the classification of tunes and the significance of metrical structures; he also worked to prepare a complete critical edition of Slovene folk music.

WRITINGS

‘Bistvo in pomen sloga v glasbi’ [Style in music, its essence and meaning], Novi svet, v (1950), 502, 676

‘Neka zapažanja o baladnim napevima na području Slovenije’ [Some observations about the ballad tunes on the Slovene territory], Yugoslav Folklore Association: Congress V: Zaječar 1958, 109

‘Alpske poskočne pesmi v Sloveniji’ [The Alpine dance quatrains in Slovenia], Yugoslav Folklore Association: Congress VI: Bled 1959, 55–78 [with Eng. summary]

‘Arhaični slovanski peterec–deseterec v slovenski ljudski pesmi’ [The archaic Slavonic pentasyllable–decasyllable in Slovene folksong], Slovenski etnograf, xii (1959), 181

‘The Correlation between Metrical Verse Structure, Rhythmical and Melodic Structure in Folk Song: Summary’, JIFMC, xii (1960), 67–8

‘Anakruza v slovenski ljudski pesmi’ [The anacrusis in Slovene folk-song], Yugoslav Folklore Association: Congress XII: Celje 1965, 303

‘Über den Ursprung eines charakteristischen slowenischen Volksliedrhythmus’, Acta Quinti conventus de ethnographia Alpium orientalium tractantis: Slovenj-Grodec 1967 [Alpes orientales, v (1969)], 151

‘Koroška slovenska ljudska pesem’ [The Carinthian Slovene folksong], Koroški kulturni dnevi, i (1973), 198

‘Tridelni osmerec v slovenskih in drugih slovanskih ljudskih pesmih’ [Triple octosyllabic verse in Slovene and other Slav traditional songs], Traditiones, xiii (1984), 7–34

‘Pentatonika: izhodisce razvoja slovenske ljudske glasbe’ [Pentatonic: roots of traditional Slovene music], Traditiones, xix (1990), 89–98

FOLKSONG EDITIONS

with Z. Kumer, M. Matičetov and B. Merhar: Slovenske ljudske pesmi, i [Slovene folksongs], i (1970)

Voegelin, Fritz

(b Zürich, 19 Sept 1943). Swiss conductor, composer and violinist. He completed diplomas in the violin (Berne Conservatory, 1969) and conducting (Basle Musik-Akademie, 1973), and studied composition with Klaus Huber and Robert Suter; he continued his conducting studies with Hans Swarowsky. After conducting several orchestras in Switzerland, he was appointed artistic director of the National Conservatory of Colombia in 1985. Between 1989 and 1992 he was principal conductor of the Antioquia SO in Medellín (Colombia) and professor of orchestral conducting at the University of Antioquia; he returned to Switzerland in 1992. His numerous awards include first prize in the Colombia National Conservatory composition competition, the composition prize of the City of Berne (1993) and the KIWANIS cultural prize (1997). Not only has his knowledge of the orchestral repertory influenced his orchestration, but it has also conferred upon him a humanist vision that reflects a broad view of the human condition. The great dramas of contemporary life are often visible just beneath the surface of his works. Voegelin’s music is born from a need to say something meaningful, rather than from a need to compose. His quartet, 4 Szenen, in homage to Fritz Zorn’s book Mars, was composed in less than a fortnight, as if it was a pain that needed urgently to be expurgated. This proximity to experience and to creation confers on Voegelin’s works a feeling of the unexpected.

WORKS

(selective list)

published unless otherwise stated

Vocal: Hommage à Hans Arp (H. Arp), Bar, female vv, orch, org, 1978, unpubd; Invocación (A. Mutis), high v, fl, ob, hn, db, org, 1991; Hildegardis de divinis operibus visiones (Hildegard), nar, wind, org, perc, 1993; Zone (G. Apollinaire), Bar, chorus, fl + pic, hn, vn, vc, pf + synth, perc, tape, 1993

Orch: Vc Conc., 1986–7; De profundis, vn, orch, 1993; Ecstatic-Prelude, 1994; … du dernier Monde, 1996; Vivat gaudii brevitas, 1996

Chbr and solo inst: 4 Szenen, str qt, 1980; 3 études, trbn qt, 1983; Nombres, gui, 1986–7; Ephod, vc, pf, 1988; Signos, 2 gui, mand, 2 str sextets, hp, hpd, 1990; Tremblements, gui qt, 1990; Cumbia, cl, pf, 1991; A-Ho-ra (à Arthur Honegger), vn/va, pf, 1992; Distribuitions, ob, hn, pf, 1993; … sin cadenas, cl, vc, pf, 1993; Laberinto, fl, org, 1994; Thebaïs, rec, b fl, gui, vn, vc, perc, synth, 1994; Metoikesis, fl + pic, b cl + db cl, pf, vib, mar, hp, va, 1994

Principal publisher: Editions Bim

BIBLIOGRAPHY

J.-P. Amann: Musique pour une fin de siècle (Yverdon, 1994), 102–107

T. Hirsbrunner: ‘Zorn über unerfülltes Dasein/Rage Over an Unfulfilled Existence’, Dissonanz/Dissonance, no.55 (1997), 4–8 [on Voegelin’s 4 Szenen für Streichquartett in memoriam F.Z.]

JEAN-PIERRE AMANN

Voelckel, Samuel

(b Franconia, c1560; d Bayreuth, after 1617). German composer. He was a member of the Ansbach court chapel at Königsberg from 1583. In 1586 he returned to Ansbach with the musical establishment to serve as an instrumentalist, and by 1602 he had become assistant Kapellmeister. He was not continuously at Ansbach, but spent some time in service at Marburg (1591), Wolfenbüttel (1593) and Kassel (at the end of 1594). He was apparently active in Saxony as well some time later. In 1603 he left Ansbach to become Brandenburg Kapellmeister in Bayreuth with an interim period of service at the Plassenburg, Kulmbach. His few extant works, all from his mature years, belong to the central German tradition, and show a firm grasp of the techniques of the period.

The most gifted of Voelckel’s sons, Christian Theodore, later served as Kapellmeister and composer at the courts of Durlach, Darmstadt and Frankfurt.

WORKS

Braut Tantz … zu hochzeitlichen Ehren des … Herrn Matthaei von Saher (Leipzig, 1613)

Newe teutsche weltliche Gesänglein, 4, 5vv auff Galliarden, Täntz und musikalische Art, benebenst Couranten und Galliarden ohne Text (Nuremberg, 1613)

3 motets for double choir, 8vv: Exaudivit te, Dominus, 1606, D-Dla; Domine, probasti me, 1617, BH; Gaudete filiae, 1617, BH

Dem edlen Weidwerk zu gefalln, 1606, 4vv, Dla

BIBLIOGRAPHY

K. Hartmann: ‘Musikpflege in alt Bayreuth’, Archiv für Geschichte und Altertumskunde von Oberfranken, xxxiii (1934), 1–66

W. Vetter: Das frühdeutsche Lied, i (Münster, 1938), 122

G. Schmidt: Die Musik am Hofe der Markgrafen von Brandenburg-Ansbach (Kassel, 1956)

H. Engel: Die Musikpflege der Philipps-Universität zu Marburg seit 1527 (Marburg, 1957)

M. Ruhnke: Beiträge zu einer Geschichte der deutschen Hofmusik-kollegien im 16. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1963)

ELISABETH NOACK/CLYTUS GOTTWALD

Voet [Voetus], Michael.

See Vogt, Michael.

Vogeant.

See Voboam.

Vogel, Adolph.

American music publisher, partner in the firm of Elkan-Vogel.

Vogel, Charles-Louis-Adolphe

(b Lille, 17 May 1808; d Paris, 11 Sept 1892). French composer, grandson of Johann Christoph Vogel. He first studied in Lille, then in Paris, where his teachers included Kreutzer for the violin and Reicha for composition. His patriotic song Les trois couleurs, written in celebration of the 1830 Revolution and sung by Chollet at the Théâtre des Nouveautés, won immediate fame. Apart from chamber music and numerous songs and romances (which were particularly highly regarded), Vogel devoted himself to the theatre. Though he produced most of his works in Paris, among which Le podestat (1831) achieved a revival, he had considerable popularity outside France: the Koninklijke Franse Opera of The Hague commissioned and produced Le siège de Leyde in 1847 and revived it in 1854; his comic opera Le nid de cigognes was first performed in Baden-Baden (translated into German) in 1858; and La filleule du roi (1875) gained more approval in Brussels than in Paris. His success in the theatre can be attributed to his sense of drama, careful word-setting and attractive melodies. The style of his opéras comiques resembles Herold’s and his instrumental music shows the influence of Hummel.

WORKS

operas

Le podestat (oc, 1, Laffitte), Paris, OC (Ventadour), 16 Dec 1831

Marie Stuart (op, 3), 1833, unperf.

Le siège de Leyde (op, 4, H. Lucas), The Hague, Koninklijke Franse, 4 March 1847

La moissonneuse (drame lyrique, 4, A. Bourgeois and M. Masson), Paris, Lyrique, 3 Sept 1853 (Paris, 1853)

Rompons! (oc, 1, A.-N. Jautard and A. de Jallais), Paris, Bouffes-Parisiens, 21 Sept 1857 (Paris, 1857)

Le nid de cigognes (oc, 1, E. Cormon), in Ger. trans., Baden-Baden, Sept 1858

Gredin et Pigoche (opérette, 1, Masson and G. Fath), Paris, Folies-Marigny, 19 Oct 1866 (Paris, 1867)

La filleule du roi (oc, 3, Cormon and R. Deslandes), Brussels, April 1875 (Paris, 1875)

other works

Le jugement dernier (orat, 1, Burat de Gurgy), 1839

Inst: 2 pf qnts; Qnt, G, 2 vn, 2 va, vc (Paris, n.d.); Vn Sonata; other orch, chbr and pf works

Many songs and romances

FRÉDÉRIC ROBERT

Vogel, (Johannes) Emil (Eduard Bernhard)

(b Wriezen an der Oder, 21 Jan 1859; d Nikolassee, nr Berlin, 18 June 1908). German musicologist. After studying music privately in Dresden and Berlin he was a music history pupil of Spitta and took a degree in philology at the universities of Berlin and Greifswald (1880–83). Subsequently he travelled in Italy on a Prussian government grant as an assistant to F.X. Haberl in his work on an edition of Palestrina; after his return he took the doctorate at the University of Berlin with a dissertation on Monteverdi (1887). From 1893 he was in charge of setting up the Peters music library (Leipzig), of which he became the first librarian (1895), building it into one of the biggest private libraries in Europe, concurrently serving as founder and first editor of the Jahrbuch der Musikbibliothek Peters until ill-health obliged him to retire (1901). In his research Vogel concentrated on Italian music of the 16th and early 17th centuries. His pioneering two-volume bibliography of printed Italian secular music, first revised by Einstein, is still a standard reference work, laying the bibliographical foundation for the scholarly study of the frottola, madrigal and canzonetta. In addition to the title and contents of each volume, he provided a source index of literature as well as of poets, dedicatees, printers and publishers. His dissertation on Monteverdi was for 60 years the standard German source, and was the stimulus for the German editions of Monteverdi’s five-part madrigals, completed after his death by Hugo, Leichentritt and Arnold Mendelssohn. Vogel edited the first music library catalogue of C.F. Peters, and the first seven volumes of the Jahrbuch der Musikbibliothek Peters (1894–1900), in which he also contributed his own research on Bach, Mozart, Gluck, Haydn and Mozart and other subjects.

WRITINGS

Claudio Monteverdi (diss., U. of Berlin, 1887; VMw, iii (1887), 315–450)

‘Marco da Gagliano: zur Geschichte des Florentiner Musiklebens von 1570–1650’, VMw, v (1889), 396–442, 509–68

Die Handschriften nebst den älteren Druckwerken der Musikabteilung der Herzoglichen Bibliothek zu Wolfenbüttel (Wolfenbüttel, 1890)

Bibliothek der gedruckten weltlichen Vocalmusik Italiens, aus den Jahren 1500 bis 1700 (Berlin, 1892/R and 1972) with suppl. by A. Einstein [repr. from Notes, ii–v, 1944–8]; further addns by E. Hilmar and L. Bianconi, AnMc, no.4 (1967), 154–206; no.5 (1968), 295–8; no.9 (1970), 142–202; no.12 (1973), 370–97; further rev. by F. Lesure and C. Sartori as Bibliografia della musica italiana vocale profana pubblicata dal 1500 al 1700 (Pomezia, 1977)

MICHAEL MUSGRAVE

Vogel, Jaroslav

(b Plzeň, 11 Jan 1894; d Prague, 2 Feb 1970). Czech conductor, writer on music and composer. In Prague he studied the violin with Ševčík and composition with Novák; he also studied in Munich (1910–12) and with d’Indy at the Paris Schola Cantorum (1912–13) before working as a répétiteur in Prague (1913–14) and as conductor at the Plzeň opera (1914–15). On concluding his military service he graduated at the Prague Conservatory under Novák (1919) and worked as an opera conductor (1919–23) in Ostrava where, after freelance work in Prague, he became chief conductor (1927–43). Subsequently he was conductor at the National Theatre, Prague (1949–58), and chief conductor of the Brno State Philharmonic (1959–62). Vogel's most successful years as a conductor were in Ostrava, whose musical life he invigorated with performances of Smetana, Janáček and Novák opera cycles, and many contemporary Czech and European works. He also founded and conducted orchestral concerts which attracted the participation of Hindemith, Stravinsky, Prokofiev and others. His own compositions include three operas, of which the one-act comic opera Mistr Jíra was performed in Prague in 1926.

Outside the Czech Republic Vogel is known for his Janáček biography. As a young conductor, he had corresponded with Janáček and in 1948 published a monograph, Janáček dramatík, in which, in addition to Janáček's operas, he examined the dramatic impulse in his other works. Over the next ten years Vogel developed this into a general biography, the first substantial attempt to examine Janáček's oeuvre as a whole, which for over 40 years has remained the standard book on the composer. As a performing artist (the conductor of the first complete recording of Jenůfa) he brought an interest in the practical problems of performing Janáček as well as a warm and evident response to the music. Although not a scholar, Vogel nevertheless presented in his book much of the abundant Czech research of the early 1950s, together with then inaccessible sources such as the memoirs of the composer's widow. His well-informed, highly civilized mind allowed him to see Janáček in a broad European context that has made the work particularly appealing in the West.

WRITINGS

Leoš Janáček dramatík (Prague, 1948)

Leoš Janáček: Leben und Werk (Prague, 1958; Cz. orig., 1963; abridged Eng. trans., 1962, fuller 2/1981 as Leoš Janáček: a Biography, repr. with additions 1997)

‘K zápisu a interpretaci Janáčkova Tarase Bulby’ [The notation and interpretation of Janáček's Taras Bulba], OM, ii (1970), 70–72

‘K zápisu a interpretaci Janáčkovy Sinfoniety’ [The notation and interpretation of Janáček's Sinfonietta], OM, vii (1975), 229–33

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ČSHS [incl. list of works and writings]

J. Schreiber: ‘Ke genesi Janáčkovské monografie Jaroslava Vogla’ [The genesis of Vogel's Janáček monograph], Časopis Slezského musea, ser. B, xix (1970), 43–6

JOHN TYRRELL

Vogel [Fogel], Johann Christoph

(b Nuremberg, bap. 18 March 1756; d Paris, 28 June 1788). German composer, active in France. The son of the violin maker Michael Vogel, and grandfather of Charles-Louis-Adolphe Vogel, he studied with Georg Wilhelm Gruber in Nuremberg and with Joseph Riepel in Regensburg. There is no evidence that he was employed as a musician in the Regensburg Hofkapelle, as some biographers have erroneously stated, confusing him with the oboist Johann Bartholomäus Vogel (d 1782). He moved to Paris in 1776, and entered the service of the Duke of Montmorency and then of the Count of Valentinois as a horn player. He composed a great number of orchestral and chamber works during this period. His oratorio Jephté, performed at the Concert Spirituel in September 1781, received favourable reviews although its harmony was regarded as ‘too complicated and baroque’. Philippe Desriaux, for many years the secretary of Baron von Tschudi, wrote the librettos for both of Vogel’s operas. The first of them, La toison d’or, was written as early as 1781 but was not performed at the Opéra until 5 September 1786. Vogel was an enthusiast for the operas of Gluck, and the work is dedicated to him as ‘législateur de la musique’. Here and there it appears to be a faithful stylistic imitation of Gluck’s two Iphigenia operas, but it displays great mastery in the handling of the orchestra and its arias are particularly lyrical. With 12 performances in all the opera had only limited success since it already seemed old-fashioned and contained no ballet. Around 1786 Vogel began composing his second opera, Démophon. Its posthumous première (at the Opéra on 22 September 1789) was given only after the première of Cherubini’s opera on the same subject. Among the musical qualities of this dramatically powerful work are the variety of recitative forms, the treatment of the woodwind as solo instruments and the harmonic colour of the choruses. The overture, composed in monothematic sonata form, remained popular into the early 19th century, and was incorporated into Gardel’s ballet-pantomime Psyché (1790), which had more than 1000 performances at the Opéra between its première and 1829.

WORKS

printed works published in Paris unless otherwise indicated

stage

La toison d’or (tragédie lyrique, 3, P. Desriaux), Paris, Opéra, 5 Sept 1786 (1787), excerpts, arrs. pubd separately; also perf. as Médée de Colchos, Opéra, 17 June 1788

Démophon (opéra lyrique, 3, Desriaux, after Metastasio), Paris, Opéra, 22 Sept 1789 (1789), excerpts, arrs. pubd separately

other works

Jephté (P.L. Moline), oratorio, 1781

Orch: Sinfonia, D, c1782, D-Rtt, doubtful; 3 syms., D, E, B (c1784); Simphonie concertante, 2 fl, orch (Augsburg? and Paris, 1781); Simphonie concertante, C, cl/ob, bn, orch (c1785); Simphonie concertante, E, 2 hn, orch (1788); Simphonie concertante, E, 2 hn, orch (c1790); Vn Conc. (1782); 3 fl concs. (c1781); 2 ob concs. (c1781), ?D-Rtt; at least 13 cl concs., some pubd; 3 bn concs. (1782)

Chbr: 6 qts, A, B, C, G, D, E, 2 vn, va, vc (1787); 3 qts, F, B, C, bn, vn, va, bc (c1786); 6 qts, D, G, C, f, A, D, fl, vn, va, vc (n.d.); 6 qts, hn, vn, va, bc (?n.d.), mentioned by Fétis; 6 trios, E, C, F, D, A, B, 2 vn, vc (c1779); 6 trios concertants G, E, D, B, A, C, 2 vn, vc (c1780); 6 duos, 2 fl (c1778); 6 duos, 2 bn (n.d.); 6 duos concertants, fl, vn (1782); 3 sonatas, vn, pf (n.d.)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

EitnerQ

FétisB

H. Berlioz: ‘Vogel et ses opéras’, RGMP, v (1838), 435–7, 465–7

A. Vogler: Johann Christoph Vogel (Halle, 1914)

A.L. Ringer: ‘A German Gluckist in Pre-Revolutionary France’, Music in the Classic Period: Essays in Honor of Barry S. Brook (New York, 1985), 221–31

N. Miller: ‘Johann Christoph Vogels Démophon und die Krise der Reformoper’, Aufklärungen: Studien zur deutsch-französischen Musikgeschichte im 18. Jahrhundert, ed. W. Birtel and C.H. Mahling (Heidelberg, 1986), 117–27

K. Strobel: ‘Johann Christoph Vogel – ein Nürnberger in Paris’, Esercizi musicologici, ed. T. Röder (Erlangen, 1994), 189–201

ARNOLD JACOBSHAGEN

Vogel [Vogl], Kajetán [Caetano, Cajetan]

(b Konojedy, nr Litoměřice, c1750; d Prague, 27 Aug 1794). Czech composer and choirmaster. He acquired his basic music education at a school in Konojedy. From 1763 he attended the Jesuit college at Breslau (now Wrocław), where he sang alto and was later an organist. Afterwards he studied theology at Prague, where he joined the Servite order (Ordo Servorum Beatae Mariae Virginis), became a priest and was appointed choirmaster at the monastic church of St Michael (1774). On the abolition of the Servite monastery (1786) he was appointed as a preacher in German at the Trinity Church in Prague. He studied composition with Habermann and the violin with F.A. Ernst, a pupil of Lolli.

Almost all Vogel’s instrumental works listed by Dlabač are lost, but his sacred works were among the most widely disseminated (in manuscript) in Bohemia during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. They have a distinctly secular, high-Classical style, with many dance- and folk-like elements. According to Dlabač his models were Mysliveček, Haydn and Zimmermann. His solemn mass and Te Deum, performed to celebrate the jubilee of the investiture as a priest of the Archbishop of Prague, A.P. Příchovský, in 1781, are reported to have been highly successful. Shortly after the Prague performance of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro, Vogel made three arrangements of this work. Haydn’s ‘Surprise’ Symphony, no.94, survives in the Národní Muzeum at Prague as a work attributed to Vogel (manuscript parts, 1806). Vogel’s only published work is the collection of 17 psalmi et Magnificat ad Vesperas (Munich, 1819).

WORKS

sacred

over 500 MSS, mostly in CZ-Bm, LIT, Pnm, D-Mbs, also in over 60 other sources (see EitnerQ, Kouba, 1969, and Weiss, 1976); for thematic index see Weiss (1977)

17 psalmi et Magnificat ad Vesperas (Munich, 1819)

21 masses; 7 Requiem; motets (offs, grads); 14 Litaniae Lauretanae; 2 Salve regina; vespers; Regina coeli; TeD; 12 stationes; 2 Stabat mater; 4 Tantum ergo; hymns; arias; others

secular

music lost unless otherwise indicated

Concs.: C, hpd, CZ-Pnm; E, hn, Pu; 3 others for hn; 2 for vn; 1 each for cl, fl, ob

Cbr: Qnt, vn, cl, bn, hn, bc, Pu; 6 str qts; 6 qts (divertimentos), hpd/pf, 2 vn, vc; Parthias, wind insts; 3 arrs. of W.A. Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro, for ww sextet CZ-Pnm (inc.), for wind octet, for str qnt Pnm, advertised in Wiener Zeitung (6 June 1787)

Other works: Der Durchmarsch (Spl); minuets, Ger. dances, hpd, Pnm; 3 Orgelfugen, PLa

Doubtful works (all A-ST): Sinfonia, C; Sinfonia Pastoritia, G; Partita, D

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ČSHS

DlabacžKL

EitnerQ

G.J. Dlabacž: Allgemeines historisches Künstler-Lexikon (Prague, 1815/R), iii, 304–5

R. Quoika: Die Musik der Deutschen in Böhmen und Mähren (Berlin, 1956), 90

O.E. Deutsch, ed.: Mozart: die Dokumente seines Lebens (Kassel, 1961, rev. 2/1981 by J.H. Eibl; Eng. trans., 1965, 3/1990, as Mozart: a Documentary Biography)

J. Kouba and others, eds: Průvodce po pramenech k dějinám hudby [Guide to sources of music] (Prague, 1969)

F. Weiss: ‘Cajetan Vogel O.S.M. (vor 1750–1794): ein vergessener böhmischer Kleinmeister des 18. Jahrhunderts’, KJb, lx (1976), 83–8

F. Weiss: ‘Thematisches Verzeichnis der Werke des böhmischen Komponisten Cajatan Vogel O.S.M.’, KJb, lxi–lxii (1977), 107–30

MILAN POŠTOLKA

Vogel, Louis [Ludwig]

(fl Paris, 1781–98). Flautist and violinist, probably of German extraction, as Fétis maintained. Legend has it that he was the son of the Count of Poligny, a nobleman in the service of Louis XVI. A set of three flute solos with violin accompaniment published under the name ‘Comte Vogel’ may be by him. In 1781 he collaborated with his Parisian friend and notorious drinking companion Krasinsky (Ernest-Louis Müller) on a set of flute and violin duos. After a highly successful concert tour of Germany in 1792, he became a flautist in the orchestra of the Théâtre des Variétés (now the Théâtre du Palais-Royal), where he remained until 1798. He published a number of instrumental works, mainly for flute, but probably not as many as his opus series seems to indicate (the large gap is probably a publisher’s error). In 1814 Gerber wrote of him as still living, though he may have confused him with a younger Count of Poligny (b ?c1770), also a flautist. (Choron-FayolleD; EitnerQ; FétisB; GerberNL (‘Vogel’; ‘Poligny’))

WORKS

published Paris, n.d., unless otherwise indicated

Fl concs.: nos.1–3; G, B-Bc

Fl solo: Pots-pourris; airs variés; 3 solos

2 insts: Airs variés en duos, fl, vn/va, op.42; fl duos, opp.2, 8, 19, 23, 35 (London, 1797); 6 Sonatas or duets, 2 fl/vn (London, n.d.); 3 duos in 6 duos concertants … par M^rs Krasinsky et Vogel, fl, vn (1781); 3 solos, fl, vn acc., by Comte Vogel; Sonata, fl, bc, B-Bc, doubtful

Str qt, op.36; Etudes et préludes, op.43

ROGER COTTE

Vogel, Wladimir (Rudolfovich)

(b Moscow, 29 Feb 1896; d Zürich, 19 June 1984). Swiss composer of German and Russian descent. He was influenced at an early age by Skryabin, whom he saw perform in Moscow. As a German national, Vogel was interned during World War I at Birsk in the Urals. In 1918 he moved to Berlin, where he studied window dressing at the Kunstgewerbeschule and composition privately with Tiessen (1919–21). From 1921 to 1924 he attended Busoni’s masterclass in composition at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin; he also became involved in Expressionist circles, joining the Novembergruppe and participating in the activities associated with Herwath Walden’s magazine Der Sturm. Vogel’s compositions, meanwhile, quickly became well known internationally through performances by leading conductors of the time. Between 1929 and 1933 he taught composition and radio-genetic interpretation at the Konservatorium Klindworth-Scharwenka. In the early 1930s Vogel became intensely involved in the workers’ movement, writing articles for Die Welt am Abend and Kampfmusik, setting Weinert’s communist ‘Der heimliche Aufmarsch gegen die Sowjetunion’, among other workers’ songs, and participating in the Kampfgemeinschaft der Arbeitersänger. He later tended to deny this involvement. In 1933 Vogel was forced to leave Germany and moved to Switzerland, where he remained for the rest of his life, other than brief excursions to Strasbourg, Brussels, London and Paris later in the 1930s. Forbidden by the authorities to work in Switzerland, Vogel relied on the support of wealthy patrons and his wife, the writer Aline Valangin, until he obtained citizenship in 1954. During this difficult time he nevertheless was active in the ISCM, taught composition privately, taking part in Scherchen’s ‘Sessions d’études musicales et dramatiques’ in Strasbourg, and even organized the international 12-Tone Music pre-conference in Osilina (1949), attended by Dallapiccola, Malipiero and others. He became an honorary member of the Accademia di S Cecilia in Rome (1958), the Accademia Filarmonica in Rome (1955) and an ordinary member of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin (1959). He was decorated with the Berliner Kunstpreis für Musik (1960), the Musikpreis der Stadt Zürich (1970) and the composer’s prize of the Schweizerischer Tonkünstlerverein (1972). Among his private composition pupils in Switzerland were Rolf Liebermann, Wildberger, Bergman and Rautavaara.

Vogel’s early compositions show the influence of Skryabin and of the German Expressionist circles around his teacher Tiessen. Although he later became a vocal supporter of Busoni’s teachings, Vogel’s works of the 1920s show his revolt against, rather than adoption of, Busoni’s Junge Klassizität. His Komposition für ein und zwei Klaviere (1923), for example, displays a polyphonic density, a filling-out of the chromatic spectrum and a constructivist aesthetic that was foreign to Busoni. In this work, and in the Vier Etüden für Orchester (1930–32), he developed a compositional approach he called ‘ritmica’, a principle of variation based on a constant rhythm. He and his apologists frequently compared these works to constructivist art. He is best known for his use of speech and his innovations with speaking choirs, which have their roots in communist agit-prop, melodrama and in Expressionist music. He produced several moving ‘dramma-oratorios’, among them Wagadus Untergang durch die Eitelkeit (1930) and Thyl Claes, fils de Kolldraeger (Part 1, 1938, 1941; Part 2, 1943–5). In these works he combined dramatic and epic-oratorio elements, divided strictly between spoken text (for the narrative, illustrative and descriptive) and sung words (for lyric expression and the spiritual). He experimented further with word-tone relationships in the Arpiade (1954), in which he distributed Arp’s text between four main groups of the speaking choir, for whom he had developed a unique notation. In the later Flucht (1963–4), he pursued the dramma-oratorio to its ultimate form, combining free-speaking solo voices (actors), rhythmisized solo-speaking voices, vocal soloists, vocal choir, rhythmisized speaking choir, and orchestra.

Vogel first adopted 12-note technique, in a singular fashion, in his Violin Concerto (1937), in the final movement of which he combined a 12-note row with the theme of the overture to Die Zauberflöte. In the 12-note works that immediately followed (e.g. Madrigaux, 1938–9) the row was used melodically. Later, however, he applied 12-note technique in a wider variety of ways. Influenced by architectural principles at least since his first contact with the Bauhaus in 1923, Vogel devoted several of his later works specifically to architectural, pictorial and graphic principles, for example, Inspiré par Jean Arp (1965), Graphique (1976) and Verstrebungen (1977). The works composed in Zürich after 1964 (e.g. Hörformen, 1967) are characterized by their reduced forces, increased transparency, emphasis on tone colour and clarity of form.

WORKS

(selective list)

for complete list see Geering and Ronner (1992)

choral

Wagadus Untergang durch die Eitelkeit (L. Frobenius), S, A, B-Bar, chorus, speaking chorus, 5 sax, 1930; Sturmbezirk Wedding, unison chorus, perc, wind, 1930; Jungpionierenschritt (F. Bönsch), unison chorus, perc, 1931; Madrigaux (A. Valangin), mixed chorus, 1938–9; Thyl Claes, fils de Kolldrager (C. De Coster), 2 pts, S, 2 spkrs, speaking chorus, orch, 1938–45; An die Jugend der Welt (Vogel), chorus, small orch ad lib, 1954; Arpiade (F. Arp), S, speaking chorus, fl, cl, va, vc, pf, 1954; Antigone (incid music, Sophocles, trans. J.C.F. Hölderlin), male speaking chorus, perc, 1955; Jona ging doch nach Ninive (M. Buber), Bar, spkr, speaking chorus, chorus, orch, 1957; Das Lied von der Glocke (F. Schiller), spkr, double speaking chorus, 1959; Meditazione sulla maschera di Amedeo Modigliani (F. Filippini), S, A, T, B, spkr, chorus, orch, 1960; An die akademische Jugend (Vadian, Balbulus), chorus, orch ad lib, 1962; Flucht (dramma-orat, R. Walser), S, A, T, B, 4 spkrs, speaking chorus, orch, 1963–4; Mondträume (Arp), speaking chorus, 1965; Aforismi e pensieri di Leonardo da Vinci, chorus, 1969; Losungen (H. Meier), chorus, db, 1971

other vocal

Man sieht nicht den tiefblauen Himmel (Kalmeer), S, pf, 1913; Die Bekehrte (J.W. von Goethe), S, pf, 1920; 3 Sprechlieder nach August Stramm, B, pf, 1922; Der heimliche Aufmarsch gegen die Sowjetunion (E. Weinert), 1v, chorus, pf, 1930; Sturmbezirk Wedding, 1v, chorus, pf, 1930; Introduktion, Chaconne, Les adieux de Claes, Le supplice de Claes [from Thyl Claes I], S, spkr, orch, 1938–42; 3 liriche sopra poemi di Francesco Chiesa, B, pf, 1941; Chant de midi [from Thyl Claes II], S, orch, 1943–5; In memoriam (R. Vuataz), A, va, hp, timp, 1947; Dal quaderno di Francine Settenne, S, fl, pf, 1952; Goethe Aphorismen, S, str, 1955; Alla memoria di G.B. Pergolesi, T, str, 1958; Worte (Arp), 2 female spkrs, 12 str, 1962; 5 Lieder (N. Sachs), A, str trio, 1966; Schritte (Eliot, J.R. Jimenez, Gsteiger, Wegelin, Spoerry), A, orch, 1968; Gli spaziali (Leonardo da Vinci, J. Verne, H. Meier), 2/3 speakers, 5 solo vv, orch, 1970–71; Friede?… = Pace? (Vogel), Bar, 2 tpt, 2 trbn, str, 1980; Traumgesicht (Meier), Bar, str, 1982; Das Verhör (M.A. Bulgakov), 2 spkrs, str qt, 1983; Rückkehr und Folge (A. Valangin), S, fl, vn, vc, 1984

orchestral

Sinfonia fugata, 1925/8; 4 Etüden: Ritmica funebre, Ritmica scherzosa, Ostinato perpetuo, Ritmica ostinata, 1930–32; Rallye, 1932; Tripartita, 1933; Vn Conc., 1937; 3 Suiten [from Thyl Claes I], 1945; Cortège de noces [from Thyl Claes II], 1946; Orchestersuite [from Thyl Claes II], 1946; Passacaglia, 1945; 7 aspects d’une série de 12 sons, 1949–50; Spiegelungen, 1952; Preludio-Interludio lirico, Postludio, 1954; Vc Conc., 1955; Hörformen I, 1967; Hörformen II, 1967–9; Cantique en forme d’un canon à 4 voix, 1969; Meloformen, str, 1974; In Signum IM, 1976; Verstrebungen, 1977; Pezzo sinfonico, 1979; Colori e movimenti, 1983

chamber and solo instrumental

Nature vivante, pf, 1917–21; Dai tempi più remoti: 3 pezzi, pf, 1922–41, rev. 1968; Komposition für ein und zwei Klaviere, 1/2 pf, 1923; Etude-Toccata, pf, 1926; Variétude, pf, 1931; Epitaffio per Alban Berg, pf, 1936; Ticinella, fl, ob, cl, sax, bn, 1941; 12 variétudes sur une série de douze sons non transposée, vn, fl, pf, vc, 1941–2; Weisser Werktag, film score, fl, cl, vn, vc, 1965; Inspiré par Jean Arp, fl, cl, vn, vc, 1965; Hörformen, pf, str, 1972; Klaviereigene Interpretationsstudie einer variierten Zwölftonfolge, pf, 1972; Analogien, str qt, 1973; 4 Versionen einer Zwölftonfolge, pf, 1973; Abschied, str, 1974; Hörformen, fl, ob, cl, bn, 1974; Meloformen, str, 1974; Monophonie, vn, 1974; Poème, vc, 1974; Terzett, fl, cl, bn, 1975; Graphique, str trio, 1976; Komposition für Kammerorchester, 1976; Qnt, fl, ob, cl, bn, vc, 1976; Erstrebungen, 11 instr, 1978; Per otto strumentisti, 2fl, cl, 2vn, va, 2vc, 1978; Russische Glocken, pf, 1978; Sonances, fl, ob, cl, bn, hn, str qt, 1978; Variationen über Tritonus und Septime, str, 1978; Verso-Inverso, str, perc, 1978; Concertino, fl, str qt, 1979; Kleine Hörformen, fl, pf, 1979; Kleine Hörformen, va, pf, 1979; Contemplazione tra Allegrezza, fl, ob, cl, bn, 1980; Evocation, 2tpt, 2 trbn, 1980; Intervale, pf, 1980; Konzertante Musik, str trio, str 1980; Varianten, pf, 1980; Qnt, fl, cl, str trio, 1981; Reigen, chbr orch, 1981; Zusammenspiel, ob, str trio, 1981; Trio, 3 cl, 1982; Trio, ob, cl, bn, 1982; Klangexpressionen (Bulgakov), str qt, 1983

Principal publishers: Ars viva, Bote & Bock, Eulenberg, Gerig, Isreal Music, Musges (Musiksektion des Sowjetrussischen Staatsverlags), Musikverlag Benno Balan, Ricordi, Suvini Zerboni, Verlag für Arbeiterkultur

MSS in CH-Zz

WRITINGS

Wagadus Untergang durch die Eitelkeit, ed. H.R. Hilty (St Gall, 1961)

Schriften und Aufzeichnungen über Musik, ed. W. Labhart (Zürich, 1977)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

G. Schumacher: ‘Gesungenes und gesprochenes Wort in Werken Wladimir Vogels’, AMw, xxiv (1967), 64–80

H. Oesch: ‘Hommage à Wladimir Vogel’, Zürcher Almanach (Einsiedeln, 1968), 54–8

H.H. Stuckenschmidt: ‘Wladimir Vogel’, Die große Komponisten unseres Jahrhunderts: Deutschland, Mitteleuropa (Munich, 1971), 260–67

K. von Fischer: ‘Wladimir Vogel zum 80. Geburtstag (29. Februar 1976)’, SMz, cxvi (1976), 11–16

W. Labhart: ‘Wladimir Vogel: Konturen eines Mitbegründers der Neuen Musik’, Neujahrsblatt der Allgemeinen Musikgesellschaft in Zürich, clxvi (Zürich, 1982)

M. Seidl and H. Steinbeck, eds.: Schweizer Komponisten unserer Zeit (Winterthur, 1983), 221–3

H. Traber: ‘Exil und innere Emigration: über Karl Amadeus Hartmann und Wladimir Vogel’, Verdrängte Musik: Berliner Komponisten im Exil, eds. H. Traber and E. Weingarten (Berlin, 1987), 165–80

T. Phleps: ‘“Ich war aber nie Parteimitglied”: zum kompositorischen Schaffen Wladimir Vogels um 1930’, BMw, xxxiii (1991), 207–24

M. Geering and P. Ronner, eds.: Wladimir Vogel (1896–1984): Verzeichnis der musikalischen Werke (Winterthur, 1992)

T. Levitz: Teaching New Classicality: Ferruccio Busoni’s Master Class in Composition (Berne, 1996)

TAMARA LEVITZ

Vogeleis, Martin

(b Erstein, 5 June 1861; d Schlettstadt, 11 Aug 1930). Alsatian writer on music. He was ordained in 1885 and taught music at the episcopal seminary in Zillisheim (1886–91). He was chaplain and director of the choir at Grafenstaden (1891–6) and served as a priest in Behlenheim (1896–1906) and Schlettstadt (from 1908). Meanwhile he was able to devote time to studying and editing Alsatian music. His chief publication, Quellen und Bausteine zu einer Geschichte der Musik und des Theaters im Elsass, 500–1800 (Strasbourg, 1911/R), is an extensive, systematic study of its sources and history, and has remained a basic reference tool. He also published a facsimile of the Königshofen Tonary (Graz, 1903) and two collections of Alsatian sacred music, and wrote for periodicals.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A. Schmidlin: ‘Abbé Martin Vogeleis †’, Fünfzig Jahre Elsässischer Caecilienverband: Festschrift zum goldenen Jubiläum der Union Ste Cécile du diocèse de Strasbourg 1882–1932 (Strasbourg, 1932)

M. Metz: ‘Histoire de la musique en Alsace d’après les travaux de Martin Vogeleis’, La musique en Alsace hier et aujourd’hui (Strasbourg, 1970), 123–38

based on MGG1 (xiii, 1888–9) by permission of Bärenreiter

FRANCIS MULLER

Vogelgesang

(Ger.).

A bird-imitating Organ stop.

Vogelhofer [Vogelmaier], Andreas.

See Ornithoparchus, Andreas.

Vogelorgel

(Ger.).

A type of bird organ. See Bird instruments.

Vogelsang, Johann [Johannes]

(b Lindau; fl c1522–49). German music theorist. He matriculated at Freiburg University in 1522, and from 1549 was a chaplain and schoolmaster in Feldkirch, Vorarlberg. His treatise, Musicae rudimenta (Augsburg, 1542), is a brief Latin didactic work intended to convey the elements of music to schoolboys. The first part, in seven chapters, deals with plainchant (i.e. pitch notation), including notation, keys, solmization, mutations of hexachords, intervals and modes. The music examples, in Hufnagelschrift, are relatively extensive and include interesting four-part settings of psalm tones. The second part, in ten chapters, provides a brief introduction to mensural music (rhythmic notation), including notes, ligatures, rests, dots, mensural relationships and signs, tactus, imperfection, alteration and sesquialtera proportions. Although Vogelsang's treatise is not innovatory in content or approach, it is atypical of its humanist background in that it makes no attempt to cite authority for its assertions. Nine widely dispersed copies are extant.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

R. Federhofer-Königs: ‘Johan(nes) Vogelsang und sein Musiktraktat (1542)’, KJb, xlix (1965), 73–123

T. HERMAN KEAHEY

Vogelstätter, Andreas.

See Ornithoparchus, Andreas.

Vogelweide, Walther von der.

See Walther von der Vogelweide.

Vogl, Caetano.

See Vogel, Kajetán.

Vogl, Heinrich

(b Au, Munich, 15 Jan 1845; d Munich, 21 April 1900). German tenor and composer. He studied with Franz Lachner and made his début in 1865 as Max in Der Freischütz at the Hofoper, Munich, where he was engaged for 35 years. Having already sung Lohengrin (1867) and Tristan (1869), he created the roles of Loge in Das Rheingold (22 September 1869) and Siegmund in Die Walküre (26 June 1870), and at Bayreuth he sang Loge in the first complete Ring cycle (1876). He sang Siegfried in the first Munich performances of Siegfried and Götterdämmerung (1878), Loge and Siegmund in the first Berlin Ring cycle, as well as both Siegfrieds in the second cycle (1881, Viktoriatheater), and Loge and Siegfried in the first London Ring cycle (1882, Her Majesty's Theatre) and accompanied the early part of Angelo Neumann's European Wagner tour (1882). He returned to Bayreuth as Tristan and Parsifal (1886), and made his New York début at the Metropolitan Opera as Lohengrin (1890), also singing Tannhäuser, Tristan, Loge, Siegmund and both Siegfrieds during the season. In Munich he sang in Ritter's Faule Hans (1885), Otello (1888), Benvenuto Cellini (1889), Franchetti's Asrael (1892), Pagliacci (1893), Dalibor (1894), Berlioz’s La prise de Troie and Cornelius’s Der Cid (1895). He sang Baldur at the première of his own opera Der Fremdling (7 May 1899) and made his last appearance as Canio (17 April 1900), four days before his death. Besides Der Fremdling, he published several songs.

Vogl's voice was powerful and his stamina legendary (he sang Loge, Siegmund and both Siegfrieds in some Ring cycles on four consecutive days without apparent strain). During his early years at Munich he was said to lack dramatic ability and understanding (Nohl); Wagner, who refused to accept him as Walther for the first performance of Die Meistersinger in 1868, even referred to him as ‘thoroughly incompetent’ (letter to King Ludwig, 30 March 1868), and Walther remained the only major Wagnerian tenor role that he never sang. Later in his career he was greatly admired as Siegmund, Siegfried and Tristan, and Lilli Lehmann wrote that his Loge ‘has never since been equalled: he was born for the part’.

In 1868 Vogl married the soprano Therese Thoma (b Tutzing, 12 Nov 1845; d Munich, 29 Sept 1921), who as Therese Vogl frequently sang with him, sometimes at his stipulation to managements. She was engaged at the Munich Hofoper in 1866, and the following year sang Ortrud in Lohengrin. In 1869 she sang Isolde (with her husband as Tristan) and Wellgunde in the first Das Rheingold, and she was Sieglinde in the first Die Walküre in 1870. In 1872 she appeared in Cherubini's Médée. She was engaged to sing Sieglinde in the first complete Ring cycle at Bayreuth, but she became pregnant and had to withdraw. She later sang Brünnhilde in the first complete Munich (1878) and London (1882) Ring cycles, but never appeared at Bayreuth. When casting the first performances of Parsifal, Wagner considered that the part of Kundry ‘needs … a vocal energy which I did not think I could demand of her’ (letter to Hermann Levi, 20 May 1882), and consequently neither Vogl nor his wife sang there that year. Though declining vocally, she sang at Munich for another decade and made her farewell performance as Isolde in 1892.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L. Nohl: Neues Skizzenbuch (Munich, 1869)

H. von der Pfordten: Heinrich Vogl (Munich, 1900)

A. Neumann: Erinnerungen an Richard Wagner (Leipzig, 1907; Eng. trans., 1908/R)

L. Lehmann: Mein Weg (Leipzig, 1913, 2/1920; Eng. trans., 1914/R)

E. Newman: The Life of Richard Wagner (London, 1933–47/R)

H. Wagner: 200 Jahre Münchner Theaterchronik 1750–1950 (Munich, 1958, 2/1965)

ELIZABETH FORBES

Vogl, Johann Michael

(b Ennsdorf, nr Steyr, Upper Austria, 10 Aug 1768; d Vienna, 20 Nov 1840). Austrian baritone. Though Vogl's vocal talents were apparent from an early age, he first studied law at the University of Vienna, before being persuaded into a musical career by his schoolboy friend Süssmayr. In May 1794 he joined the company of the Vienna Hofoper, making his solo début the following year in P. Wranitzky's Die gute Mutter. With his fine vocal technique and commanding stage presence, he soon established himself as one of the leading singers of his day and was equally well regarded in both German and Italian opera. Among roles in which he excelled were those of Oreste in Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride, Count Almaviva in Figaro, and Mikéli in Cherubini's Les deux journées. In 1814 he appeared as Pizarro in the première of Beethoven's Fidelio.

Vogl first made Schubert's acquaintance in early 1817, through Franz von Schober. He helped him obtain the commission for Der Zwillingsbrüder in 1820 (in which he himself appeared) and gave many performances of his songs, both at informal gatherings of the Schubert circle, and more widely. In 1821 he gave the first public performance of Erlkönig and, following his retirement from the stage the following year, dedicated himself to promoting Schubert's music. On a personal level, Schubert and Vogl appear to have enjoyed a close relationship, despite the difference in their ages and background. They spent three summer vacations together in Upper Austria (in 1819, 1823 and 1825), and only once had a serious disagreement: over Schober's libretto for Alfonso und Estrella, which Vogl felt to be unworthy of Schubert's talents.

As the composer himself acknowledged, the whole of Vogl's later career revolved around his songs. He played a crucial part in establishing Schubert's reputation, both during his lifetime and posthumously, in particular by demonstrating the songs' suitability for performance in the concert hall as well as in the salon. Vogl's approach to the songs was essentially dramatic and operatic. His own notebooks provide ample evidence of the lavish embellishments with which he was wont to ornament Schubert's melodic lines, a practice for which he was severely castigated by later biographers. In recent years, however, his reputation has been restored: as knowledge of contemporary performing practice has advanced, it has become clear that Vogl was merely following the conventions of his day. Certainly, his interpretations met with Schubert's approval: in September 1825 the composer wrote to his brother Ferdinand, ‘the manner in which Vogl sings, and I accompany him, and the way in which we seem in such a moment to be one, is something quite new and unfamiliar.’

Among Vogl's many first performances were those of Aufenthalt and Die Taubenpost, sung at Schubert's memorial concert in January 1829. He was himself a composer, producing three masses, an offertory and a collection of 15 songs; he also earned some reputation for his public readings of authors as diverse as Epictetus, Thomas à Kempis and Marcus Aurelius.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A. Stadler: ‘Nekrolog auf Johann Michael Vogl’, Warte an der Donau (30 Nov 1840)

E. Bauernfeld: ‘Erinnerungen an Johann Michael Vogl’, Allgemeine Theaterzeitung (4–5 May 1841), 473–4

H. Kreissle von Hellborn: Franz Schubert (Vienna, 1865)

M. Friedländer: ‘Fälschungen in Schubert's Liedern’, VMw, ix (1893), 166–85

O.E. Deutsch: ‘Schuberts Johannes: neue Mitteilungen’, Badener Zeitung (18 Nov 1910)

A. Müller-Guttenbrau: ‘Der erste Schubertsänger’, Neues Wiener Tagblatt (18 Nov 1910)

A. Weiss: Der Schubertsänger Johann Michael Vogl (Vienna, 1915)

T. Bolte: ‘Der Schubertsänger Johann Michael Vogl’, NZM, lxxxii (1915), 353–5

S. Loewy: ‘Der erste, der ein Schubertlied sang’, Neues Wiener Tagblatt (26 Nov 1928)

A. Liess: Johann Michael Vogl: Hofoperist und Schubertsänger (Graz and Cologne, 1954)

O.E. Deutsch: Schubert: Memoirs by his Friends (London, 1958)

F. Hadamowsky: Die Wiener Hoftheater (Vienna, 1966–75)

O. Michtner: Das alte Burgtheater als Opernbühne von der Einführung des deutschen Singspiels (1778) bis zum Tod Kaiser Leopolds II. (1792) (Vienna, 1970)

W. Dürr: ‘Schubert and Johann Michael Vogl: a Reappraisal’, 19CM, iii (1979–80), 126–40

P. Clive: Schubert and his World: a Biographical Dictionary (Oxford, 1997)

EWAN WEST

Vogl, Kajetán.

See Vogel, Kajetán.

Vogl, Therese.

Soprano, wife of Heinrich Vogl.

Vogler, Georg Joseph [Abbé Vogler]

(b Würzburg, 15 June 1749; d Darmstadt, 6 May 1814). German theorist, teacher, keyboard player, organ designer and composer. His theory of harmony influenced 19th-century approaches to music analysis, and he anticipated the Romantic period in his chromatic harmony, colouristic orchestration and melodic borrowings from folk tradition and exotic cultures. His radical concept of organ design aroused widespread interest and controversy; his writings on the reform of sacred music foreshadowed the Cecilian movement.

MARGARET GRAVE

1. Life.

The son of a Würzburg instrument maker, Vogler attended a Jesuit Gymnasium before enrolling in humanistic studies at Würzburg University in 1763. Subsequently he studied common and canon law, first at Würzburg, then at Bamberg. During his student years he composed ballet and theatre music for university performances. In 1770 he obtained a post as almoner at the Mannheim court of Carl Theodor, the Elector Palatine. Politically resourceful, he soon attained prominence in the court’s musical life, secured the elector’s favour, and was granted the financial means to pursue musical study in Italy (from 1773). There he studied briefly with Padre Martini in Bologna and spent a longer period in Padua, where he studied theology and became a disciple of the theorist Francesco Antonio Vallotti. In Rome, he was granted membership in the Accademia dell’Arcadia, and Pope Pius VI named him papal protonotary, chamberlain, and Knight of the Golden Spur.

Vogler returned to the Mannheim court in November 1775 and in this new phase of his career, he acquired the titles of spiritual counsellor and second Kapellmeister. He founded a music school, the Mannheimer Tonschule, and began publishing didactic writings, including the handbook Tonwissenschaft und Tonsezkunst (1776), a compilation of pedagogical materials entitled Kuhrpfälzische Tonschule (1778) and the three-volume series Betrachtungen der Mannheimer Tonschule (1778–81).

Following the removal of the electoral court to Munich in 1778, Vogler remained temporarily at Mannheim. In 1780 he travelled to Paris to win approbation for his theory of harmony from the Académie Royale des Sciences, and during the next three years he had works performed both in Paris and at Versailles. He then went to London (1783), where the Royal Society approved his theoretical system. Summoned to Munich to succeed Andrea Bernasconi as first Kapellmeister in 1784, he remained there only until 1786, when he entered the service of Gustavus III, King of Sweden, as music director and teacher of the crown prince. At Stockholm he resumed his pedagogical work but was also permitted to continue his travels, and in 1792, following the assassination of his royal patron, he set off on a journey that took him to Gibraltar, Cádiz (where he was mistaken for a spy and arrested), Tangier and further into the Mediterranean in search of ancient, orally transmitted traditions of modal singing.

In 1793 Vogler returned to Stockholm, where he retained an official post under Gustavus Adolphus IV until 1799. His subsequent wanderings as a performer, organ designer and teacher included sojourns in Copenhagen (1799–1800), Berlin (1800–01), Prague (1801–2) and Vienna (1802/3–5), where he met Haydn, competed with Beethoven, obtained a commission from Emanuel Schikaneder for the opera Samori, and taught the young Carl Maria von Weber.

After spending two years in Munich, he received a court appointment at Darmstadt in August 1807. There, in 1810, C.M. von Weber returned to his mentor for further instruction and joined a circle of friends that included Meyerbeer, the theorist Gottfried Weber and the Austrian composer Johann Gänsbacher. This group of disciples soon disbanded, but Vogler continued to compose and undertake ambitious projects, including a ‘monument to the science of organ building’, the Triorganon: a huge organ to be equipped with 13 manuals distributed among three separate consoles, which remained unfinished at the time of his death.

2. Teachings.

In his theoretical handbooks, treatises and essays Vogler aimed to apply harmonic principles in terms understandable to amateurs as well as professionals. Inspired by Vallotti’s rationalist methods, he proposed a chain of deductions, leading from elementary harmonic materials to the outermost reaches of modulation and chromatic harmony, as a guide for music instruction and analysis; and to make tangible his theoretical calculations, he devised an eight-string Tonmaass, a latter-day monochord whose fixed bridges furnished string divisions in nine to 16 parts (see illustration).

A key ingredient of his theory was the ‘system of reduction’, first set forth in Tonwissenschaft und Tonsezkunst. Based on Vallotti’s principles of chord structure and inversion (rather than Rameau’s precepts) the method offered a means for determining the functional chord root for any vertical sonority in accordance with contrapuntal context; and in analytical writings from the Betrachtungen to the System für den Fugenbau (written in 1811), Vogler interpreted the concept of reduction broadly to explain the harmonic design of phrases, sections or whole compositions as elaborations of simple, archetypal progressions. His theory permitted chord roots on all degrees of the scale, and in order to represent the function of scale degrees and their triads, he assigned them the roman numerals I–VII. These symbols appear sporadically in Vogler’s early writings (contemporaneously with similar usage by J.P. Kirnberger), but his later publications, especially the analyses of his XXXII préludes (1806) and Davids Buss-Psalm (1807), use roman-numeral analysis to represent the harmonic content of an entire composition.

In Tonwissenschaft und Tonsezkunst, Vogler argued that while remote modulations should be avoided by composers in the interest of tonal unity, they were essential to the church organist’s art of improvisation; and in his Betrachtungen, volume iii, his sample modulations explored a novel and dense chromaticism, involving enharmonic spellings of diminished 7th and augmented 6th chords, to illustrate tonal paths from a given centre to any other major or minor key. The Handbuch zur Harmonielehre offered additional examples and relaxed the earlier injunction against remote modulation in composition. To encompass the complete tonal spectrum, but also to preserve the unique tonal colour of different keys, he advocated an unequal, ‘characteristic’ temperament for the tuning of keyboard instruments. A persuasive mentor, he imparted his theories to younger contemporaries, including Gottfried Weber, J.H. Knecht, V.J.K. Tomášek and Joseph Drechsler, who adapted his ideas in their writings.

Vogler’s work as a critic of musical style and technique is well represented in the Betrachtungen, whose analyses and essays were designed to refine students’ musical tastes and provide them with the skills to judge a composition. Proceeding from the premise that music is an imitative art, he concentrated on works with a text or with depictive content, such as his Singspiel Der Kaufmann von Smyrna (Betrachtungen, ii–iii) and his overture to Shakespeare’s Hamlet (Betrachtungen, i). Yet he also wrote on non-programmatic instrumental music and expounded on analogies between musical form and rhetoric, most extensively in System für den Fugenbau, where he also provided a detailed account of thematic development.

With the aid of published Verbesserungen (improved versions of existing works), Vogler sought to explain how musical knowledge had progressed in the course of the 18th century. His most ambitious project of this type, a revised version of G.B. Pergolesi’s Stabat mater (Betrachtungen, i–iii), underscored a commitment to progress in sacred composition. However, he also wrote of an ideal church music whose unembellished purity was capable of timeless endurance (Betrachtungen, i, 301–4). In Choral-System (1800), he proposed a method of harmonization designed to preserve the modal character of harmonized chorale melodies.

As a theorist of acoustics and organ design, he proposed a Simplification system whose principles – including economy of materials, reliability of wind pressure and acoustical enhancements – were embodied in his Orchestrion, a compact, transportable organ (see Orchestrion, (1)). Initially completed at Rotterdam in 1790, but subject to later modifications, it featured the use of free reeds and exploited the principle of difference tones to eliminate the large and costly pipes otherwise needed to produce low notes. Though deplored by conservative organists, the simplification system was implemented in the renovation of more than 30 church organs, including instruments in Berlin, Munich, Prague and Salzburg.

3. Music.

The scope of Vogler’s musical accomplishment, encompassing sacred vocal works, operas, instrumental ensemble pieces and solo keyboard music, defies generalization. Much of his sacred output adheres to the austerity of texture, rhythm and harmony that he advocated in his writings, but there are also examples of florid vocal style and richly orchestrated textures; and while many of his chorale settings are purely diatonic, at least one group of harmonizations, in Zwölf Choräle (published in 1810 as revisions of harmonizations by J.S. Bach and supplied with commentary by C.M. von Weber), bristles with chromaticism.

Vogler’s work as a theatre composer, variously conservative and innovative, touched on most of the genres and stylistic currents of his time. In the ballet Le rendez-vous de chasse (1772) and the melodrama Lampedo (1779), he explored a language of musical pantomime and dramatic gesture, while the opera Castore e Polluce (1787), replete with choral tableaux, dances and arioso as well as virtuoso arias, represents a synthesis of Italian and French operatic tradition. By contrast, the Swedish opera Gustaf Adolph och Ebba Brahe (1788) forgoes elaborate arias and static tableaux in favour of syllabically rendered dialogue and a fast pace of dramatic action. The late Viennese opera Samori (1804), uniquely rich in melodic, harmonic and instrumental diversity, features exotic and Romantically evocative solo wind colours, musically and dramatically complex ensemble scenes and a remarkable experiment in which a repeated two-word phrase is intoned in a kind of Sprechgesang, halfway between speech and singing.

The surviving symphonies and concertos by Vogler reveal polished craftsmanship and a flair for orchestral colour. He was fond of highlighting wind instruments, and the use of two pairs of horns in complementary keys is a trademark traceable to the early Schuster-Ballet of 1768. Though melodic invention is not one of his recognized strengths, some works, notably in the two Polymelos collections (1791, 1806) and Pièces de clavecin (1798), compensate by adopting exotic melodies, allegedly drawn from African, Chinese, Russian and Scandinavian folk traditions. The latter set, published as a supplement to his Swedish keyboard manual, Clavér-schola, extends from pieces of modest difficulty to showcases for virtuosity whose complex trill and glissando passages anticipate those of Beethoven’s Waldstein Sonata.

Although relatively few of Vogler’s works achieved wide public recognition, some of his music did indeed win immediate, and even enduring, favour. Contemporary accounts record an uncontrollable stampede for tickets to a Copenhagen performance of Hermann von Unna, and a chorus of Furies from Castore e Polluce was regularly incorporated in Munich performances of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Various works were performed in concerts well into the 19th century, and Robert Schumann praised Vogler’s music as late as 1838.

To judge from contemporaries’ accounts, some of Vogler’s most original accomplishments were in the realm of keyboard improvisation rather than notated composition. Although Mozart, hearing him early in his career at Mannheim, condemned him as ‘a trickster pure and simple’ (letter to Leopold Mozart, 18 December 1777), Schubart (p.133) declared that he was ‘one of the foremost organ and harpsichord players in Europe’. Outstandingly successful as a virtuoso organist, he was known for startling sound effects (including low-register note-clusters on the pedalboard) in tone paintings and fantasias on exotic melodies with such titles as Die Spazierfahrt auf dem Rhein vom Donnerwetter unterbrochen, Terrassenlied der Afrikaner and Das jüngste Gericht.

Vogler’s work was seldom free from controversy. He was chided for his eccentricities, and detractors denounced him as a charlatan. He nevertheless enjoyed the admiration of patrons and pupils throughout his career, and in retrospect he stands out as an innovative musical thinker and practitioner. His accomplishments not only added a colourful voice to European musical life of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, but also exerted far-reaching influence on his successors.

WORKS

data approximate; for further information see Schafhäutl and MGG1

G	Vogler: Gegenstände der Betrachtungen, suppls. to Betrachtungen der Mannheimer Tonschule (see Writings)

stage

Der Kaufmann von Smyrna (Spl, 1, C.F. Schwan, after N. Chamfort), Mannheim, Schauspielhaus auf dem Fruchtmarkt, sum. 1771, D-DS (facs. in GOB, viii, 1986), Mbs, OF*, US-Wc, pubd in G ii–iii (1779–81); rev., Mannheim, 20 Feb 1778

Lampedo (melodrama, 1, C.F. Lichtenberg), Darmstadt, Hof, 4/11 July 1779, DS (facs. in GOB, ix, 1986), Mbs

Erwin und Elmire (Spl, 1, J.W. von Goethe), Darmstadt, 12 Dec 1781, DS*

Albert der Dritte von Bayern (Spl, 5, K.T. von Traitteur), Stuttgart, National, Dec 1781 or Munich, Hof, 1781, lost, lib A-Wn, D-Mth, Us-Wc

Ariadne en Naxe (tragedy), c1782, ?unperf., lost, cited in Betrachtungen, iii (1780–81)

Eglé (pastorale, 2), c1782, ?unperf., see Brenet and Betrachtungen, iii (1780–81)

Le patriotisme (grand op), Versailles, 25 March 1783, lost, cited in Handbuch zur Harmonielehre (1802)

La kermesse, ou La foire flamande (oc, 2, J. Patrat), Paris, Opéra-Comique (Favart), 15 Nov 1783, ov. and airs de ballet, pf, vn (Paris, c1783), vs selections in Choix de musique (Paris, 1784)

Castore e Polluce (tragedia lirica, 3, after C.I. Frugoni: I Tintaridi, after P.-J. Bernard: Castor et Pollux), Munich, Hof, 12 Jan 1787, A-Wgm, D-Bsb, DS*, Hs, Mbs, OF; rev. in Ger., Munich, Hof, 16 Jan 1806

Gustaf Adolph och Ebba Brahe (lyric drama, 3, J.H. Kellgren, after Gustavus III), Stockholm, Royal Opera, 24 Jan 1788, DS*, S-Skma, St*, vs ed. in MMS, vii (1973)

Zoroastre (melodrama), 1796, lost, listed in Verzeichniss

Der Koppengeist auf Reisen, oder Rübezahl (Spl, A. von Kotzebue), Breslau, 1802

Samori (heroisch-komische Oper, 2, F.X. Huber), Vienna, an der Wien, 17 May 1804, D-DS, Mbs, OF, vs (Vienna, 1805), new ov., 1811 (Offenbach, 1817); rev., Darmstadt, 30 June 1811

Epimenides (Spl, 1), ?1806, DS, ?unperf.

Der Admiral (Spl, 1), 1810–11, DS, ?unperf.; rev. as Der gewonnene Prozess (Spl, 2), Darmstadt, ?1811, DS*

Prols: Gluck’s Armide, 1787, DS*, S-St; 2 prols to Curland, 1788, lost, listed in Verzeichniss; Gustaf Adolph och Ebba Brahe, 1795, D-DS*, S-St, separate prol ov., D, St

Incid music: Hamlet (W. Shakespeare), ov., 4 entr’actes, pubd in G i (1778–9), iii (1780–81); Der Eremit auf Formentera (Kotzebue), ov., ?1785, D-DS, S-Skma*, used in 1798 for C. Stenborg and others: Eremiten (pasticcio), Sk, St; Athalie (J. Racine), 1786, D-DS*, S-St; Hermann von Unna (A.F. Skjöldebrand), 1795, D-DS*, vs (Leipzig, n.d.); Die Kreutzfahrer (Kotzebue), ov. and 4 nos., ?1802, ov. (Offenbach, c1818), DS; Die Hussiten vor Naumburg (Kotzebue), closing chorus, 1802, Mbs; Die Spanier in Peru, oder Rollas Tod (Kotzebue), chorus and Indian march, 1803, lost, listed in Verzeichniss

Ballets: Schuster-Ballet (frag.), 1768, frag. rev. 1807 in suppl. to Utile dulci (1808); La soirée enchantée, 1771, lost, cited in Utile dulci (1808); Le rendez-vous de chasse, ou Les vendanges interrompues par les chasseurs, 1772, DS*, ed. in RRMCE, xiv (1996), also as Jäger-Ballet, 1777, arr. pf, vn, pubd in G iii (1780–81); Le forgeron villageois, arr. hp/pf (London, n.d.), also as Schmitt-Ballet, 1777, arr. pf, vn, pubd in G iii (1780–81); Jäger-Ballet and Schmitt-Ballet also pubd as Le rendez vous à la chasse and Le maréchal ferrant in Recueil d’airs, hp, vn (Paris, n.d.)

Other lost stage works: Aretius (? incid music), Triumphirend göttliche Vorsichtigkeit, oder Joas (?incid music), both 1766, listed in Verzeichniss as dramas

sacred vocal

only principal sources shown

Masses and mass sections (most for chorus, orch, some with solo vv, 2nd choir, org): Missa pasatorita, D, Missa pastorella, A, 1768, 1767, D-OF*; Mbs*; Missa pastoritia, E, 1775, rev. 1804 (Offenbach, c1824), DS, vs ed. J. Winter (Karlsruhe, 1938); Ky–G–San, G, Cr–San, D, G–Ag, b, D, 2 Ky, D, G, Gl, 4 G, C, D, F, d, 2 Ag, D, e, OF*, G, F, OF, Ky, C, Gl, F, DS*, Ky, D, G, C, San, C, DS, ? all 1775–6; Ky–San, Bb, Gl, OF*, Ag, g, DS, all c1775–8; Requiem, g, 1776, DS*; Deutsche Kirchenmusik (J.H. von Kohlbrenner), a, with org acc. 1777, DS*, (n.p., ?1778), DS, with orch acc. 1778, rev. 1807 in suppl. to Utile dulci (1808); Missa solennis, d, 1784 (Offenbach, c1823); Missa de Quadragesima, F, chorus/(chorus org), 1784 (Offenbach, c1818); Missa de Quadragesima, F, 2 choruses, b insts, org, 1805, based in part on 1784 mass, DS*; Requiem, E, 1809, DS* (Mainz, 1822), vs (Mainz, 1822); 4 Requiem settings, c, d, e, E, OF*; more than 10 other masses, some lost; Ag, g, DS; c40 further partial mass settings and mass movts, most 1775–7, listed in Verzeichniss, ?lost

Other sacred with orch/inst ens (for chorus, some with solo vv, 2nd choir, org): TeD, D, 1775, D-OF*, Mbs (Offenbach, 1827); Beatus vir, F, In exitu Israel, C, Laudate Dominum, B, Laudate pueri, E, Memento Domine David, G, Regina coeli, C, DS*, Mag, C, DS, Confitebar, G, Mag, D, OF*, all c1775–8; Miserere, C, with b insts, org, 1776, DS*, with 2 vn, 2 va, DS*, G iii (178–81), rev., Mbs; Motetto Sancta Maria, A, 1776, OF*, Vesperae chorales, 1776, Bsb* (Speyer, ?1781), also as Psalmi vespertini, Mbs; Die Auferstehung Jesu (orat.), 1777, DS, S-Smf*; Helig är Herren (cant.), C, ?1786, Bsb; Miserere, E, 1789 (Offenbach, 1826); TeD, D, 1797, DS*, as O Gud! vi lofve Dig, S-St*; Serenissimae puerperae sacrum, 1804, D-DS* (Offenbach, 1817); Vesperae de Paschate, 1805, DS*; Laudate Dominum, B, 1808 (Offenbach, 1817), ed., E. Hessel (Heidelberg, 1961); Laetatus sum, G, 1811, Mbs*; Veni Sancte Spiritus, B (Offenbach, 1817); De profundis, f, Dixit Dominus, D, both Bsb*; TeD, A, S-Smf*; at least 37 other works, ? many lost; c10 more pieces for 1v, 2vv, with orch/inst ens, some lost

Other sacred, unacc. or with org/pf/bc (for chorus, some with solo vv, 2nd choir): Ecce panis angelorum, B, G i (1778–9); Davids Buss-Psalm (M. Mendelssohn), a, suppl. to Utile dulci (1807); many in collections such as 24 lateinische Hymnen, 1809/10, D-Mbs*, nos.1–12 pubd as 12 Kirchen Hÿmnen (Munich, n.d.), 12 kleinere Gesangscompositionen, 1810–14, Mbs*; Hymni sex (Leipzig, 1822), as Cantus processionalis, Bsb*; at least 10 other works, some lost; further MS and pubd collns overlapping those listed, esp. in DS, Mbs

Chorale and plainsong harmonizations (various scorings): En jungfru födde et barn i dag, 1796, S-Skma*; 90 chorales, suppl. to Choral-System (Copenhagen, 1800); 12 cantiques, ?1812, D-Mbs*; 14 chorales, 1813, DS; 13 [27] Kirchengesänge, 1813, A-Wn*; others; org accs. to plainsong, incl. Pater noster, Praefatio di SS Trinitate, Praefatio di Beata Maria Virgine, all D-Mbs

secular vocal

only principal sources shown

With orch: Ino (cant., K.W. Ramler), 1779, D-DS; Le dernier morceau de la cantate suédoise, 1786, DS*; Musique til Seraphimer Ordens Dagen, 1795, OF, S-Skma, St; Trichordium und Trias Harmonica (Meissner), 1799 (Offenbach, 1815), vs (Offenbach, 1815); Amore prigionero (P. Metastasio), 1804, D-DS; Carmen seculare una cum psalmodia Vogleri (ode, Horace), 1806, DS; Herr Urian (M. Claudius), ?1808, Mbs; Augusta’s Krone (cant.), 1809, DS*; Die Scala, 1810 (Offenbach, ?1815), vs (Offenbach, c1815); Frohe und fromme Empfindungen, 1813, DS; Dialog zwischen dem Platan und dem Kürbis, 1814, Mbs*; Lied an den Rhein, 1814 (Munich, n.d.); Teutonia, oder Kriegslied, 1814, DS; Auf den 15. Februar, lost, listed by Schafhäutl

Other: more than 15 works for chorus, mainly unacc., most on Ger. texts; numerous arias, rondos, songs, duets, etc. on Ger., It., Fr., Swed. texts; Triumph der kindlichen Liebe (occasional piece), ? with orch, 1764, Tuiskon ist erwacht (declamation), with orch, ?1814, both lost, listed in Verzeichniss

instrumental

only principal sources shown

Syms.: G, 1779, D-DS, Mbs, facs. in The Symphony 1720–1840, ser. C, v (New York, 1983); d, ‘Pariser’, 1782, DS*; C, ‘Satisfactions Sinfonie’, ‘La scala’, 1799, DO* (Offenbach, c1815), rev. 1806 as Baierische national Sinfonie, with addl insts, DS

Kbd, orch: 6 Reichte Clavier Concerten, pubd in G i–ii (1778–80), offprint pubd as 6 concerti facili, op.2; Pf Conc., C, op.8 (Paris, 1782); 2 bks each of 3 pf concs. (Paris, c1784); Variations on Air de Marlborough, pf, orch (Speyer, 1791), ed. in Antiqua, xxxvii (Mainz, 1951); Variations on Ah, que dirais-je maman, pf, orch, ?1807, DS*, Mbs; Variations on Dole vise, pf, orch, DS* (frag.), Mbs, also for vn, orch, DS* (frag.); Pf Conc., B, DS*; at least 5 more pf concs.; Org. Conc., C, US-NH

Other orch: Trauermusik auf Ludwig XVI, 1793, as Begrafnings musik, S-St; Marche de Charles XII auprès de Narva, St; Ov., d, Skma; Polonaise, D, St*; Spanischer Boleras, G, D-OF*; further pieces, incl. at least 2 lost sets of variations, 4 lost concs.

Chbr [thematic index in DTB, xxviii, Jg.xvi (1915)]: 6 trios, pf, vn, vc, op.1 (Mannheim, 1777); Sonata, G, pf, vn, pubd in G i (1778–9); Pf Qt, E, 1778 (Mainz, 1783), also as Notturno en quatuor (Darmstadt, 1796); 2 sets of 3 neue leichte angenehme Clavier Sonaten, pf, vn, G ii (1779–80), offprint pubd as 6 sonate facili, op.3; 12 sonatas, pf, vn, vc, 6 as op.6, 6 as op.7 (Paris, c1782/1783); 6 pièces de musique dans un genre nouveau, pf, fl, vn, va, vc in various combinations, op.4 (Mainz, 1783); Variations, G, pf, str qt, 1788, OF*; Variations on Ali Crokes, pf, str qt, ?c1788, D-OF*; Variations on Wilhelmus van Nassau, pf, str qt (Amsterdam, 1789); Polymelos, pt i (6 pieces), pf, str qt (Speyer, 1791), pt ii lost, announced in Musikalische Korrespondenz (1790); Der eheliche Zwist, sonata, pf, str qt (Leipzig, ?1796), also as La brouillerie entre mari et femme (Paris, ?1796); 5 sets of variations on themes from Samori, pf, vn, vc, all (Vienna, 1804); Polymelos (16 pieces), pf, vn, vc (Munich, 1806), at least 16 more sonatas, pf, vn, and 12 more trios and sonatas, pf, vn, vc, esp. in HR-Dsmb; 4 str qts, ?Mbs; 6 qts, fl, str, ?Dlb, no.1 ed. in DTB, xxvii, Jg.xv (1914); other works, incl. arrs.

Winds: March, C, D-Bsb*; Harmonie-Arie, B, 1804, Musique russe, g, 1814, 2 marches, E, all lost, listed in Verzeichniss; others

Kbd: 112 petits préludes, org/pf, 1766 (Mainz, 1782), ed. J. Dorfmüller (Bonn, 1980); Variations on ov. Der Kaufmann von Smyrna, pf, pubd in G ii (1779–80); 6 Sonatas, 2 pf (Darmstadt, c1794); Pièces de clavecin (15 pieces), pf, suppl. to Clavér-schola (Stockholm, 1798), ed. in RRMCE, xxiv (1986); 32 préludes, org/pf (Munich, 1806), ed. in RRMCE, xxiv (1986); Fugue, org, D, S-Skma; Variations, pf, d, D-Mbs (Schafhäutliana); further pieces incl. arrs.

revisions and reworkings

only principal sources shown

G.B. Pergolesi: Stabat mater, pubd in G i–iii (1778–81); N. Forkel: Variations on God Save the King, pf, suppl. to Verbesserung der Forkel’schen Veränderungen (Frankfurt, 1793); C.P.E. Bach: Heilig, 1809, D-Mbs*; 12 Choräle von Sebastian Bach, umgearbeitet (Leipzig, 1810); G. Meyerbeer: Gott des Weltalls Herr, fugue, suppl. to System für den Fugenbau (Offenbach, c1817); others

WRITINGS

Tonwissenschaft und Tonsezkunst (Mannheim, 1776/R)

Stimmbildungskunst (Mannheim, 1776)

Kuhrpfälzische Tonschule (Mannheim, 1778) [incl. fasc. of music exx.: Gründe der Kuhrpfälzischen Tonschule in Beyspielen]

Betrachtungen der Mannheimer Tonschule, i–iii (Mannheim, 1778–81/R) [series of music and music ex. suppls.: Gegenstände der Betrachtungen, incl. music by Vogler]

Articles in Deutsche Encyclopädie, oder Allgemeines Real-Wörterbuch aller Künste und Wissenschaften, ii–xviii (Frankfurt, 1779–94)

Entwurf eines neuen Wörterbuchs für die Tonschule (Frankfurt, 1780)

‘Ueber die Musik der Oper Rosamunde’, Rheinische Beiträge zur Gelehrsamkeit (1780), 497–514

Essai propre à diriger le goût de ceux qui ne sont pas musiciens (Paris, 1782)

‘Ästhetisch-kritische Zergliederung des wesentlich vierstimmigen Singsatzes des vom H. Musikdirektor Knecht in Musik gesetzten ersten Psalms’, Musikalische Korrespondenz der Teutschen Filarmonischen Gesellschaft (1792), 155–9, 163–4, 314–19, 356–9

‘Bemerkungen über die der Musik vortheilhafteste Bauart eines Musikchors: ein Auszug aus einem Brief des Abt Voglers von Bergen in Norwegen 1792’, Journal von und für Deutschland, ix (1792), 178–81

Verbesserung der Forkel’schen Veränderungen über das englische Volkslied ‘God Save the King’ (Frankfurt, 1793) [incl. suppl. of music and music exx.]

Erste musikalische Preisaustheilung für das Jahr 1791 (Frankfurt, 1794) [incl. music suppl.]

Inledning til harmoniens kännedom (Stockholm, 1794) [incl. fasc. of music exx.]

Clavér-schola (Stockholm, 1798) [incl. fasc. of music exx. and music suppl.: Pièces de clavecin]

Organist-schola (Stockholm, 1798–9) [incl. fasc. of music exx. for vol. i]

Lection til choral-eleven M.H. (Stockholm, 1799) [incl. fasc. of music exx.]

‘Aeusserung über Hrn. Knechts Harmonik’, AMZ, ii (1799–1800), 689–96

Andra lection til choral-eleven M.H. (Stockholm, 1800) [incl. fasc. of music exx.]

Musik-skole (Copenhagen, 1800) [trans. of Inledning til harmoniens kännedom, Clavér-schola and Organist-schola, i; incl. suppl. of music exx. and music]

Choral-System (Copenhagen, 1800) [incl. suppl. of 90 chorales and music exx.]

Data zur Akustik (Leipzig, 1801); also pubd in AMZ, iii (1800–01), 517–25, 533–40, 549–54, 565–71

Handbuch zur Harmonielehre und für den Generalbass (Prague, 1802) [incl. fasc. of music exx.]

Zwei und dreisig Präludien für die Orgel und für das Fortepiano, nebst einer Zergliederung (Munich, 1806) [incl. music suppl.]

Uiber die harmonische Akustik (Tonlehre) und über ihren Einfluss auf alle musikalische Bildungs-Anstalten (Munich, 1806)

Gründliche Anleitung zum Clavierstimmen, für die, welche gutes Gehör haben, nebst einer neuen Anzeige, jedes Saiteninstrument vortheilhaft und richtig zu beziehen (Stuttgart, 1807)

Utile dulci, Vogler’s belehrende musikalische Herausgaben: Zergliederung der musikalischen Bearbeitung des Busspsalmen im Choral-Styl (Munich, 1807) [incl. music suppl.]

Harmonisch-akustische Bemerkungen über den Theater-Bau (MS, c1807, D-DSsa, D 4, Nr. 695)

Utile dulci, A. Voglers belehrende musikalische Herausgaben … enthaltend a) Beantwortung der Frage: Hat die Musik seit 30 Jahren verloren oder gewonnen? b) Aesthetische Zergliederung der voglerischen teutschen Messe (Munich, 1808) [incl. music suppl.]

‘Abt Voglers Vertheidigung seines Simplifications-Systems für den Orgelbau’, Neue fränkische Chronik, iii/50 (1808), 775–80

Über die Oxydazion der schwingenden Metallkörper (MS, 1809, DSsa, D 4, Nr. 695)

Vergleich der Kempeln’schen Sprach-Maschine mit dem, der Menschenstimme täuschend nachahmenden, singbaren Orgel-Register, von dieser Ähnlichkeit ‘ Vox humana’ genannt(MS, 1810, DSsa, D 4, Nr. 695), also pubd as ‘Ueber Sprach- und Gesang-Automaten, ein akustischer Versuch’, Sammlung einiger im Frankfurter Museo vorgetragenen Arbeiten, i (Frankfurt, 1810), 118–30

System für den Fugenbau, als Einleitung zur harmonischen Gesang-Verbindungs-Lehre (Offenbach, c1817) [incl. suppl. of music and music exx.]

Simplifikazions-System für den Orgelbau [described in the preface (1811) to System für den Fugenbau as virtually complete, with pubn projected for that year; apparently lost]

Further writings; see Grave and Grave (1987) and Veit (1990)

BlBLIOGRAPHY

GerberL

GerberNL

Grove0 (P. Corneilson) [incl. further bibliography]

MGG1 (W. Reckziegel)

C.F.D. Schubart: Ideen zu einer Ästhetik der Tonkunst (Vienna, 1806/R)

Verzeichniss der von … Abt G.J. Vogler nachgelassenen … Werke (Darmstadt, 1814)

J. Fröhlich: Biographie des grossen Tonkünstlers Abt Georg Joseph Vogler (Würzburg, 1845)

K.E. von Schafhäutl: Abt Georg Joseph Vogler (Augsburg, 1888/R)

M. Brenet [M. Bobillier]: ‘L’Abbé Vogler à Paris en 1781–83’, Archives historiques, artistiques et littéraires, ii (1891), 150–56

J. Simon: Abt Voglers kompositorisches Wirken mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der romantischen Momente (Berlin, 1904)

E. Rupp: Abbé Vogler als Mensch, Musiker und Orgelbautheoretiker unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des sog. ‘Simplificationssystems’ (Augsburg, 1922)

H. Spies: Abbé Vogler und die von ihm 1805 simplifizierte Orgel von St. Peter in Salzburg (Mainz, 1932, 2/1940)

H. Kelletat: Zur Geschichte der deutschen Orgelmusik in der Frühklassik (Kassel, 1933)

H. Schweiger: ‘Abbé Voglers Simplifikationssystem und seine akustischen Studien’, KJb, xxix (1934), 72–123

H. Schweiger: Abbé G.J. Vogler’s Orgellehre (Vienna, 1938)

H. Kreitz: Abbé Georg Joseph Vogler als Musiktheoretiker (diss., Saarland U., 1957)

D.J. Britton: Abbé Georg Joseph Vogler: his Life and his Theories on Organ Design (DMA diss., Eastman School of Music, 1973)

R. Würtz: Verzeichnis und Ikonographie der Kurpfälzischen Hofmusiker zu Mannheim nebst darstellendem Theaterpersonal, 1723–1803 (Wilhelmshaven, 1975)

F. Grave: ‘Abbé Vogler’s Revision of Pergolesi’s Stabat mater’, JAMS, xxx (1977), 43–71

F. Grave: ‘Abbé Vogler and the Study of Fugue’, Music Theory Spectrum, i (1979), 43–66

F. Grave: ‘Abbé Vogler and the Bach Legacy’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, xiii (1979–80), 119–41

F. Grave: ‘Abbé Vogler’s Theory of Reduction’, CMc, no.29 (1980), 41–69

J. Ludvová: ‘Abbé Vogler a Praha’, HV, xix (1982), 99–121

J. Stevens: ‘Georg Joseph Vogler and the “Second Theme” in Sonata Form’, JM, ii (1983), 278–304

J. Veit: ‘Abt Voglers “Verbesserungen” Bachscher Choräle’, Alte Musik als ästhetische Gegenwart: Bach, Händel, Schütz: Stuttgart 1985, i, 500–12

J. Veit: ‘Voglers Beitrag zur Gattung Melodram vor dem Hintergrund der frühen Mannheimer Melodramaufführungen’, Untersuchungen zu Musikbeziehungen zwischen Mannheim, Böhmen und Mähren im späten 18. und frühen 19. Jahrhundert: Mannheim 1987, 212–32

F. Grave and M. Grave: In Praise of Harmony: the Teachings of Abbé Georg Joseph Vogler (Lincoln, NE, 1987)

H. Jung: ‘“Der pedantisch geniale Abt Vogler”: Musiktheorie und Werkanalyse in der zweiten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts’, Musiktheorie, iii (1988), 99–115

J. Veit: Der junge Carl Maria von Weber: Untersuchungen zum Einfluss Franz Danzis und Abbé Georg Joseph Voglers (Mainz, 1990)

T. Betzwieser: ‘Singspiel in Mannheim: Der Kaufmann von Smyrna von Abbé Vogler’, Mozart und Mannheim: Mannheim 1991, 119–44

J. Veit: ‘Versuch einer vereinfachten Darstellung des Voglerschen “Harmonie-Systems”’, Musiktheorie, vi (1991), 129–49

G.-H. Fischer: ‘Abbé Georg Joseph Vogler: a “Baroque” Muiscal Genius’, Gustav III and the Swedish Stage (Lewiston, NY, 1993), 75–102

E.N. McKay: ‘The Abbé Vogler, Beethoven and the “Waldstein” Sonata’, Beethoven Newsletter, viii (1993), 7–12

Vogler, Johann Caspar

(b Hausen, nr Arnstadt, 23 May 1696; d Weimar, bur. 3 June 1763). German organist and composer. At the age of ten he studied with J.S. Bach in Arnstadt, and later with P.H. Erlebach and Nicolaus Vetter in Rudolstadt. From about 1710 to 1715 he studied again with Bach, this time in Weimar; it was presumably during these years that Bach required him to copy by hand the two livres d'orgue of Jacques Boyvin. From 1715 to 1721 he was organist in Stadtilm and from 19 May 1721 until his death organist of the Weimar court (a post which Bach had held from 1708 to 1717). In late 1729 Vogler applied unsuccessfully for two organ posts in Saxony, at the Nikolaikirche, Leipzig, and Sts Peter und Paul, Görlitz; they were filled by other Bach pupils, Johann Schneider and David Nicolai respectively. Vogler failed his trial in Leipzig because he ‘played too fast and confused the congregation’. It is therefore ironic that in his application to Görlitz he boasted of his ‘swiftness of hand and feet’. In 1735 he was chosen as organist at the Marktkirche in Hanover, but Duke Ernst August refused to let him leave Weimar (just as Duke Wilhelm Ernst had refused to let Bach leave). In consolation the duke appointed Vogler deputy mayor of Weimar; two years later he became mayor.

Vogler is known to have composed a St Mark Passion, but only three works by him have survived. These are all organ chorales, noteworthy for their elaborate style. The setting of Jesu Leiden, Pein und Tod (bwv Anh.57) represents perhaps the most extreme example in the entire organ repertory of an ornamental chorale, attested by the many hemidemisemiquavers and even shorter notes used to embellish the chorale tune. As numerous similarities demonstrate, this work is modelled on Bach's Orgelbüchlein setting of O Mensch, bewein dein Sünde gross bwv622. The two chorales that Vogler published as his Vermischte musikalische Choral-Gedanken (Weimar, 1737; ed. in Incognita organo, xxxvi (Hilversum, 1988)) also betray his teacher's influence. The first, Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele, begins ordinarily enough as a bicinium but concludes with a four-part harmonization whose phrases are separated by toccata-like figuration in demisemiquavers. Vogler's model here was surely Bach's ‘Arnstadt’ chorales bwv715, 722, 726, 729, 732 and 738 – virtually the only other Baroque organ chorales that feature such interludes. The second setting (a partita on Machs mit mir Gott nach deiner Güt) opens with another harmonization of this type and continues with an ornamental movement resembling some of Bach's ‘18’, bwv651–68.

Formerly known in the Bach literature as the scribe Anonymous 18, Vogler also prepared several copies of his teacher's compositions. His copy of the Prelude and Fughetta in C major bwv870a is especially important in regard to performing practice, since it contains a full set of fingerings.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

FrotscherG

MGG1 (W. Lidke)

H. Löffler: ‘Die Schüler Joh. Seb. Bachs’, BJb 1953, 5–28

Q. Faulkner: J.S. Bach's Keyboard Technique: a Historical Introduction (St Louis, 1984)

H.-J. Schulze: Studien zur Bach-Überlieferung im 18. Jahrhundert (Leipzig, 1984)

V. Horn: ‘French Influence in Bach's Organ Works’, J.S. Bach as Organist: his Instruments, Music, and Performance Practices, ed. G. Stauffer and E. May (Bloomington, IN, 1986), 256–73

P. le Huray: Authenticity in Performance: Eighteenth-Century Case Studies (Cambridge, 1990), 9–12, 18

RUSSELL STINSON

Vogt, Augustus Stephen

(b Washington, ON, 14 Aug 1861; d Toronto, 17 Sept 1926). Canadian organist and conductor. He studied at the New England Conservatory, Boston, and the Leipzig Conservatory under Reinecke and Jadassohn. After returning to Toronto he held an organist’s post, and in 1894 founded the (Toronto) Mendelssohn Choir and conducted it, with a break from 1897 to 1900, until 1917 when he was succeeded by H.A. Fricker. Vogt was principal of the Toronto Conservatory (1913–26) and dean of the music faculty in the university (1919–26). The high reputation of the Mendelssohn Choir was the result of Vogt’s brilliant abilities as a choral trainer. Under him the choir performed a wide repertory in Canada, and made successful appearances in Boston, Buffalo, Chicago, Cleveland and New York. In his memory a Vogt Society was founded in Toronto in 1937; this became the Society for Contemporary Music, which was active until 1945.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

EMC2 (R. Pincoe)

A Responsive Chord: the Story of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, 1894–1969 (Toronto, 1969)

HELMUT KALLMANN

Vogt, (Auguste-Georges-)Gustave

(b Strasbourg, 18 March 1781; d Paris, 20 May 1870). French oboist, teacher and composer. In 1798 he entered the class of François Sallantin at the Paris Conservatoire, and was awarded a premier prix the following year. He may also have studied composition with A. Reicha. Concurrent with his studies he served as second oboist at the Théâtre Montansier, and later he joined the orchestras of the Théâtre Italien (1800–02) and Opéra-Comique (1802–12). In 1809, after travelling to Italy and Austria as a member of Napoléon's musique particulière, he was appointed first oboe at the Opéra-Comique, and adjunct professor at the Conservatoire. He subsequently succeeded Sallantin as both principal oboist at the Opéra (1812–34), and as professeur titulaire at the Conservatoire (1816–53, thence to 1868 on the Comité des Études). Among his students were the leading oboists, oboe makers and future Conservatoire professors of the next generation: H. Brod, A. Vény, A.-M.-R. Barret, C.-L. Triébert, S.-X. Verroust, A.-J. Lavigne, A. Bruyant (who inherited Vogt's compositional output) and C. Colin. Vogt was a member of the Chapelle Royale of Louis XVIII from its establishment in 1814; he was banished for Bonapartist sympathies, but reinstated for the period 1819–30. He was also a founding member of the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire (1828–44), and in 1829 he was awarded the Légion d'Honneur.

As well as being an orchestral musician, Vogt was also active as a soloist. Concert tours took him to Strasbourg (1818), London (1825 and 1828) and Munich and Stuttgart (1830). He performed in a wind quintet with Guilou, Boufil, Henri and Dauprat, and was an active member of the Société Académique des Enfants d'Apollon. In 1823 he was being paid over the standard wage for a principal orchestral musician at the Opéra and by 1830 his combined earnings are said to have amounted to the enormous annual income of 15,000F. Renowned for his virtuosity as much as his singing tone, Vogt was named by Vény the premier hautboïste d'Europe and reviews in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung compared him favourably with other oboists of his day. In 1821 Spohr admired his even tone and correct intonation and three years later Berlioz added his own praise, but not all critics shared their enthusiasm. The reviewer in The Harmonicon found his sound ‘though the true one of the oboe … not pleasing to English ears: we have been accustomed to a fuller and less reedy sound’. Vogt's conservatism has often been criticized. His oboe method discredited the benefit of the additional keys which were introduced around this time on German oboes, however by 1825 he was playing the most advanced oboe available in France. He remained critical of change, and in 1839 opposed the appointment of a teacher of Boehm flute at the Conservatoire due to the anxiety that it might compromise his own position and force him to accept an aesthetic he felt incapable of embracing.

The majority of Vogt's compositions were written either for his own use (concertos, fantaisies on popular operatic themes, chamber music), for pedagogic purposes (an oboe method, c1816–25, probably intended as part of the series of such works used at the Conservatoire, and sight-reading exercises) or pièces de circonstance such as works written for the Duke and Duchess of Berry, with whom Vogt was closely connected.

WORKS

most survive as MSS in F-Pn

vocal

Dans ce temple de deuil (cant.), 1820 [on death of the Duke of Berry]

Laisse-là les plaisirs moderne Babylone, 1820 [on death of the Duke of Berry]

La nouvelle valentine, 1820 [on birth of the Duke of Bordeaux]

Songs: Béthune, 1v, pf/hp, 1819; Lovis, 1v, pf/hp, 1819; Solitude et Mélancolie, 1v, pf/hp, 1819; Le feu!, b, ww

orchestral

oboe and orchestra unless otherwise stated

Concs.: 5 ob concs.: no.1, 1804–10, no.2, 1814–15, no.3, lost, no.4, frag, Adagio cantabile, c1820–25, no.5, 1835–6; Conc., 2 obs, orch, n.d.; Conc., 2 obs/ob, bn, orch, 1839–40

Airs variés: Variations on Mozart's Zauberflöte, eng hn, strs [intro uses Reicha's Scène pour le cor anglais], after 1811; Variations on Méhul's Joseph, 1815; Variations on Martini's Plaisir d'amour, c1818; Variations on Auber's Léocadie, 1824–7; Home, Sweet Home, 1825; Aubade du roi, fantasy on ‘Que le roi vivre’, ob, vc, orch, 1829; Swiss air, 1829–30; Russian theme, after 1830; Pensée à Rossini, ob, cl, orch/pf, 1840; Variations on Dalayrac's Nina, c1841; 3 intro and variations on original themes; Intro, theme and variations, fl, ob, bn, orch, collab. Guillou

Concertino, 1824

6 Solos de concours/concert, no.3, pubd in The Vade Mecum of the Oboist (1958)

chamber

Ob, acc.: Quintet and polonaise, ob, strs; Quartet, ob, vl, va, vc; 3 Trios and Adagio religioso, 2 obs, eng hn; Trio on themes from Rossini's Moïse, ob, vc, pf, collab. Baudiot; Trios, 3 obs; Variations on Boieldieu's La dame blanche, ob, fl, hp, collab. Labarre; Variations on Rossini's Semiramide, ob, bn, pf, c1840; Prière, 3 obs; Prière, 2 obs, vc; Walse, ob, pf; ob duets

Other: Quintet, eng hn, cl, hn, 2 bns, arr. ob, str trio; Nocturne, cl, fl, eng hn, bn; Quartet, eng hn, cl, hn, bn; Andante grazioso, eng hn, pf; Serenade, ww, 1816 [arr. of songs and excerpts from operas for marriage of the Duke of Berry]

Many edns/arrs., incl. works by Carafa, Gossec, Spontini, Zingarelli

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fétis: AMZ, xix (1817), 557; xx (1818), 406–7

L. Spohr: ‘Briefe aus Paris’, AMZ, xxiii (1821), 141; xxvi (1824), 551; xxxxi (1839), 539, 568; xxxxii (1840)

The Harmonicon, iii/1 (1825), 69–70, 117–8 [see also iii/1 (1825), 165; iv/1 (1826), 19, 89, 142, 168]

Revue et gazette musicale de Paris, vi (1839), 511, 565, 587; vii (1840), 391

M. Decourcelle: La société académique des Enfants d'Apollon (1781–1880) (Paris, 1881)

C. Pierre: Le Conservatoire national de musique et de déclamation (Paris, 1900)

J. Tiersot: Lettres de musiciens écrites en français du XVe au XXe siècles, i (Turin, 1924); ii (Paris, 1936)

B. Friedland: ‘Gustave Vogt’s Souvenir Album of Musical Autographs: a Beguiling Glimpse of Musical Paris in the 1840s’, Notes, xxxi (1974–5), 262–77

C.-D. Lehrer: ‘An Introduction to the 16 Oboe Concertos of Gustave Vogt and a Discussion of the 19th-Century Performance Practices Preserved in them’, Journal of the International Double Reed Society, xvi (1988), 19–51

T. Giannini: Great Flute Makers of France: the Lot and Godfroy Families (London, 1993)

G. Burgess: ‘Gustave Vogt (1781–1870) und Konstruktionsmerkmale französischer Oboen im 1. Viertel des 19. Jahrhunderts’, Tibia, i (1994), 14–26

G. Burgess: ‘Le Premier Hautboïste d'Europe’: a Portrait of Gustave Vogt – Nineteenth-Century Oboe Virtuoso, Teacher & Composer (Celle, forthcoming) [with extensive list of works]

GEOFFREY BURGESS

Vogt, Hans

(b Danzig, 14 May 1911; d Metterich, Eifel, 19 May 1992). German composer, conductor and writer on music. He attended Georg Schumann’s composition masterclass at the Prussian Academy of Arts (1929–34), while simultaneously studying at the Berlin Akademie für Kirchen- und Schulmusik (diploma 1934) and Berlin University. He went on to serve as répétiteur at the theatre in Bielefeld (1934), head of opera in Detmold (1935–8) and city music director in Stralsund (1938–44). After military service during World War II, he devoted himself primarily to composition. In 1951 he was appointed to the Städtische Hochschule für Musik at Mannheim (later the Heidelberg-Mannheim Hochschule); he also taught at Heidelberg University. Co-founder of the Gesellschaft für Neue Musik, Mannheim (1963), he served as its director until 1984. His honours include the Düsseldorf Schumann prize (1955), the Prix Reine Elisabeth de Belgique (1961, 1969), the Stuttgart Stamitz prize (1967) and the Premio Città di Trieste (1968); he was also guest of honour at the Villa Massimo, Rome (1978–9).

Vogt’s musical style, which always considered the player as well as the listener, changed little over four decades. While his early works show the influence of Hindemith, Schoenberg and Bartók, he soon focussed on what F.-G. Rössler has described as ‘variational processes with rhythmic and melodic cells’. Layers of meaning and allusion in the vocal works are reflected in their musical textures, particularly in the use of collage, tone clusters and taped material. With the exception of the string quartets, few works duplicate genres or media.

WORKS

(selective list)

Ops: Die Stadt hinter dem Strom (oratorische Oper, 3, H. Kasack), 1953–4, Hamburg radio, 1953; Athenerkomödie (The Metropolitans) (opera giocosa, 1, C. Middleton, after Menander), 1962, Mannheim, 1964, rev. 1987

Orch: Conc. for Orch, 1950, rev. 1953; Rhythmische Suite, str, 1952; Pf Conc., 1955; Conc. for Orch no.2, 1960; Monologe, 1964; Divertimenti, pf, small orch, 1968, rev. 1982; Vc Conc., 1968; Azioni sinfonische (7 pezzi), 1971; Arco trionfale (Festmusik), 1979; Vn Conc., 1981; Sym. ‘Dona nobis pacem’, 1984; Serenade & Tarantella, va, chbr ens, 1986; Tim Finnigan’s Wake, ob, str/pf, 1987; Gestalten–Szenen–Schatten, str, 1988; Aprèslude (G. Benn), Mez ad lib, orch, 1988; … bunte Zonen und glühhelle Pole … , 1992

Sacred vocal: De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine (Ps cxxix), mixed chorus, 1951; Historie der Verkündigung (chbr orat, Bible: Luke), 3 female vv, mixed chorus, 13 solo insts, 1955; Ihr Töchter von Jerusalem, weinet nicht über mich (Bible), T, mixed chorus, perc, 1963; Magnificat, S, mixed chorus, orch, 1966; Requiem, S, B, mixed chorus, perc, 1969; Canticum Simeonis (Bible: Luke), mixed chorus, fl, 1976; Historie vom Propheten Jona (chbr orat, Bible, H. Domin), A, T, mixed chorus, 6 insts, 1979; 3 geistliche Gesänge (Baroque poems), Bar, org, 1981–3

Secular vocal: Masken (H. Kasack), lyric suite, S, str orch, perc, 1956; 4 englische Lieder (C. Fry, W.H. Auden, T.S. Eliot, G.M. Hopkins), S, ob, cl, vn, vc, hp, 1957; Fabeln des Äsop, mixed chorus, cl, db, perc, 1959; Poems from Herman Moon's London Handbook (C. Middletown), 4vv, pf, 1960; Sine nomine (G. Kolmar, H. Kasack), T, mixed chorus, orch, 1964; 3 Madrigale (W.H. Auden), mixed chorus, 1973; Strophen (E. Mörike, P. Tritonius, after Horace), Bar, orch, 1975; 3 deutsche Madrigale, mixed chorus, perc, 1983–9

Chbr and solo inst: Trio, fl, va, hp, 1951, rev. 1989; Qnt, fl, ob, vn, bn, hpd, 1958; Sonata, fl, pf, 1958; Konzertante Sonate, 17 solo insts, 1959; Dialoge, pf trio, 1960; Str Qt no.1, 1960; Musik, 2 pf, 1967; Str Qnt, 1967; Str Trio, 1969–75; Elemente zu einer Sonate, vc, pf, 1973; Giuco degli flauti, 5 fl, perc, 1974; Str Qt no.2, 1975; Antiphonen, ob, org, 1976; Fantasia super ‘Sollt ich meinem Gott nicht singen', 3 tpt, 4 trbn, org, 1976; Sonatina, vn, db, 1976; Str Qt no.3, 1977; Rondo sereno, vc, db, 1980 [arr. vn, va, 1987]; Sonata lirica, vn, pf, 1983; Str Qt no.4, 1984; Movimento, vn, vc, 1985; Str Octet, 1988; Sonata, str qt, 1989; Str Sextet ‘Ballata notturna’, 1990; Sonata, va, hp, 1992

Solo inst: Sonata alla toccata, pf, 1957, rev. 1971; Sonata, pf 4 hands, 1959; Preludio, Presto e Pezzo variato, vc, 1977; 4 Versuche, kbd, 1985; Fantasie über das Magnificat, vn, 1990; La danza, db, 1991; 2 Stücke, org, 1992

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Grove6 (J. Clark) [incl. further bibliography]

KdG (F.-G. Rössler)

F.-G. Rössler: Hans Vogt (Freiburg, 1988)

H. Jung: ‘Musik als Lebensäusserung: zum geistlichen Werk von Hans Vogt’, Musik und Kirche, lxi (1991), 121–37

HERMANN JUNG

Vogt, Martin

(bap. Kulmain, 3 April 1781; d Colmar, 18 April 1854). German organist and composer. He trained as a musician in various Bavarian monasteries, met Abbé Vogler in 1803, and studied with Michael Haydn in Salzburg (1803–4). From 1806 he was active as a musician at the monasteries of Einsiedeln, St Trudpert, Mariastein and St Urban, and briefly in Eschenzweiler in Alsace. In 1812 Vogt became organist at Arlesheim Cathedral. He was appointed music director and cathedral organist of St Gallen in 1823, and occupied the same posts at the cathedral of St Martin in Colmar from 1837 to his death. Over 300 of his compositions have been preserved, and a number appeared in print, usually published by Vogt himself and seldom dated. His organ works, character pieces for divine service that are typical of their time in their melodious and pleasing style, were written not later than his time in St Gallen. His masses and other sacred vocal works were very much to the taste of his time and had quite a wide distribution. However, he is remembered less by his compositions than by an autobiography published shortly before his death, which contains a wealth of anecdotes.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

H. Reinhardt, ed.: M. Vogt: Erinnerungen eines wandernden Musikers (Basle, 1971)

C.E. Hänggi: ‘Martin Vogt’, Musik und Gottesdienst, xlviii (1994), 166–76

DIETER RUCKSTUHL

Vogt, Mauritius [Joannes Georgius]

(b Königshofen im Grabfeld, Bavaria, 30 June 1669; d Mariánská Týnice, nr Kralovice, 17 Aug 1730). Bohemian composer and theorist of German birth. He went to Bohemia with his father, a surveyor, and studied philosophy and theology at Prague. In 1692 he joined the Cistercian monastery at Plasy, where he studied music (possibly under Cardelius). He was ordained priest in 1698. According to his own statement in Conclave, Vogt learnt music in Italy and Germany with several masters (the exact time of these studies, before 1717, is not specified). As a monk at Plasy, he was also active as organist, composer and music director to Countess Marie Gabriela Lažanská at Manětín from about 1711. He visited Göttweig in 1722; in 1724 he became ‘superior’ of the pilgrimage church at Mariánská Týnice and held this post until his death.

Vogt's Vertumnus vanitatis contains 31 arias on Latin meditative texts for solo voice and continuo, in Venetian late Baroque style, using concise da capo form with short introductory passages of quasi-fugal character. Three other arias are included in Vogt's theoretical treatise Conclave thesauri magnae artis musicae as examples to elucidate the aria genre. The Conclave is by no means merely a continuation of Janovka's Clavis ad thesaurum magnae artis musicae (1701, 2/1715), as has been asserted: rather it is conceived historically. Its main contribution is its summary of harmonic theory in 36 rules, and in the final crystallization of the doctrine of affections and figures before Mattheson and Scheibe. An important part of the treatise deals with the organ and organ building. Vogt's Conclave was highly recommended by J.C. Gayer, choirmaster of the metropolitan cathedral of St Vitus at Prague. Vogt was also interested in cartography and historiography; he wrote a history of the Plasy monastery, Tilia Plassensis, containing sporadic mentions of music.

WORKS

In principio thema tene, aria, S, B, bc, modern copy CZ-Pnm; Perfida mundi pax, aria, S, 2 vn, bc, modern copy Pnm; Questi vaghi giovenetti, aria, S, bc: all in Conclave thesauri magnae artis musicae (Prague, 1719)

Vertumnus vanitatis musice in 31 fugis delusus [arias], 1v, hpd, copy dated 1740 Ps, modern copy Pnm

Litaniae lauretanae, G, Bm

3 masses and 27 motets listed in Osek monastery inventory (1720); other works cited in Conclave: lost

theoretical works

Conclave thesauri magnae artis musicae (Prague, 1719)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ČSHS

DlabacžKL

C. Schoenbaum: ‘Die “Opella ecclesiastica” des Joseph Anton Planicky’, AcM, xxv (1953), 39–79, esp. 63

A. Buchner: Hudební sbírka Emiliána Troldy [The music collection of Emilián Trolda] (Prague, 1954)

R. Quoika: ‘P. Mauritius Johann Vogt O. Cist.: ein Orgelbautheoretiker der Barockzeit’, KJb, xli (1957), 79–93

A. Burda: ‘M. Vogt a T.B. Janovka: Vogtov Conclave slíbenym pokracováním Janovkova Clavisu?’ [Vogt's Conclave: the promised continuation of Janovka's Clavisu?], HV, ii (1965), 672–82

J. Sehnal: ‘Pobělohorská doba (1620–1740)’ [The period after the Battle of White Mountain], in J. Černý and others: Hudba v českych dějinách od středověku do nové doby [Music in Czechoslovakian history from the Middle Ages to the moden era] (Prague, 1983, 2/1989), 147–215

MILAN POŠTOLKA

Vogt [Voctuis, Voctus, Voet, Voetus, Voicius, Voigt, Voit], Michael

(b ?Leipzig, 29 Sept 1526; d Torgau, 10 March 1606). German theorist, editor and Kantor. In 1544 he matriculated at Wittenberg University where he was a pupil and supporter of Coclico; he also held a post in the cathedral Kantorei there, serving under Johann Walter (i). In 1549 on the recommendation of Melanchthon he was appointed Kantor in Meissen, succeeding Johann Reusch. Later the same year he left to take up a similar post in Torgau as successor to Johann Walter (i); he retired from this post in 1604.

Vogt’s most important work is the Definitio, divisio musices, et eius subdivisio (Basle, 1557); it is thought to have been reprinted twice in 1575 under different titles: Stoicheoisis harmonica and Systemata seu scala harmonica. Printed on a large sheet and folded at the centre, this presents in schematic form a classification of the whole field of music, together with humanistic poems by Coler, Diaconus, Fabricius, Melanchthon and Siberus, diagrams representing the mathematical ratios of the musical intervals, two short two-part canons and pictorial representations of legendary figures important in music (e.g. Tubal, Pythagoras, Orpheus), each of which is accompanied by two lines of Latin verse (distichs).

The definitions and much of the text are in the Pythagorean mathematical-philosophical tradition, whereby Vogt quoted, often with specific references, various ancient and medieval authorities, notably Proclus, but also Boethius, Cicero, Horace, Nicomachus, Ovid, Plato, Pseudo-Plutarch, Terence and Varro. In the schematic division of music, however, emphasis is placed on mimesis – a type of polyphony that Vogt carefully separated from the usual musica figuralis – which seems to refer to four-part imitative settings of poetic texts where the representation of the expressive character is paramount. Elsewhere, in the explanation of ‘imitatio’ as one of the efficient causes of music, he mentioned Josquin in particular. This modern attitude allies Vogt with other writers associated with Wittenberg at the time, particularly Coclico and Hermann Finck.

Vogt was also editor of a printed anthology of masses by leading contemporary Netherlands composers, Praestantissimorum artificium lectissimae missae, 5, 6vv … e nobilis quibusque atque optimis musarum belarijs … comportatae (Wittenberg, 1568); no complete copy of this survives. In the preface he strongly supported the use of polyphony in church services. The existence of a collection of hymns listed by Fétis has never been confirmed.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

FétisB

MGG1 (G. Pietzsch)

J.A. Müller: Versuch einer vollständigern Geschichte der chursächischen Fürsten- und Landesschule zu Meissen, ii (Leipzig, 1789), 248

O. Taubert: Geschichte der Pflege der Musik in Torgau vom Ausgange des 15. Jahrhunderts bis auf unsere Tage (Torgau, 1868)

R. Eitner: ‘Biographische Notizen’, MMg, ix (1877), 195–8

R. Eitner: ‘Auszüge aus dem “Album Academiae Vitebergensis”’, MMg, x (1878), 54–5

W. Gurlitt: Michael Praetorius (Creuzbergensis): sein Leben und seine Werke (Leipzig, 1915/R), 65

W. Gurlitt: ‘Johannes Walter und die Musik der Reformationszeit’, Luther-Jb, xv (1933), 1–112, esp. 57

M. van Crevel: Adrianus Petit Coclico (The Hague, 1940), 367

G. Pietzsch: ‘Zur Pflege der Musik an den deutschen Universitäten bis zur Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts’, AMf, vii (1942), 90–110, esp. 109; 154–69

R. Jauernig: ‘Ergänzungen und Berichtigungen zu Eitners Quellenlexikon’, Mf, vi (1953), 347–56, esp. 349

F.E. KIRBY

Vogüé Manuscript.

Manuscript in the Wildenstein Collection, New York (without shelf-mark), formerly in the possession of the Marquis of Vogüé. See Sources, MS, §VII, 2.

Voice.

See Singing and Acoustics, §VI.

Voice-exchange

(from Ger. Stimmtausch).

A medieval polyphonic technique (more accurately, phrase-exchange) that involves two voices of equal range in the mutual alternation of phrases; it is easily achieved in two-part counterpoint in contrary motion for equal voices and was therefore widely practised throughout the 12th century (ex.1). Voice-exchange also appears quite often in Notre-Dame polyphony, specifically in passages that are not restricted by a pre-existing tune, e.g. in caudae of Conductus (ex.2), and in the upper voices of organal passages in organa for three or four voices (ex.3). Johannes de Garlandia gave an example of the procedure, which he described as ‘repetitio diverse vocis’, to be encountered ‘in three- and four-part organa, and conductus, and in many other things’.

Voice-exchange was much used by 13th-century English composers in conductus, in organal settings of Alleluias, and in motets, and was a constituent element in the technique known as Rondellus. After 1300 the expansion of the two-voice framework beyond one octave and the consequent gradual separation of voice ranges caused the general abandonment of voice-exchange. The last works which thoroughly exploited the technique, in both strict and varied form, were some two dozen English motets in three and four voices from the first half of the 14th century.

The first use of the German term Stimmtausch seems to occur in an article by Friedrich Ludwig in 1903–4 (SIMG, v, 177–224, esp. 220). Its English equivalent appears to have originated in Handschin’s article on the Summer Canon in 1949 (MD, iii, 55–94, esp. 82).

ERNEST H. SANDERS/PETER M. LEFFERTS

Voice flute.

A Recorder with lowest note in d', a 3rd below the treble instrument.

Voice-leading.

See Part-writing.

Voicing.

The means by which the timbre, attack, loudness etc., of the pipes or strings of keyboard instruments and some non-keyboard wind instruments are given their desired quality and uniformity.

1. Organ pipes.

Without ‘voicing’, it is unlikely that a newly made organ pipe, however accurately formed, would speak at all (save possibly with a rough and irregular sound). A voicer has therefore to make a number of fine manipulations and adjustments to each pipe. In flue pipes (see Organ, §III, 1, esp. fig.16), a basic adjustment concerns the amount of wind that is allowed to issue from the flue or windway. This may be controlled either by increasing or decreasing the size of the toe-hole (a method common since the mid-18th century) or by leaving the toe-hole open and widening or narrowing the flue itself. Both methods are still used, often in combination. Also of importance is the ‘cut-up’ of the mouth (the height of the mouth in relation to its width). A high cut-up yields a smoother, more fundamental tone, while a lower one encourages harmonic development but at a loss of fundamental. Thus flutes are usually cut up on the high side, while strings or quintadenas are on the low side, principals or diapasons being somewhere in between. Wind pressure is a factor in determining the best cut-up, because the cut-ups must be correspondingly higher or lower for a similar sound to be produced from identical pipes on higher or lower wind pressures; the exception to this would be a pipe with an extremely narrow toe-hole, usually in a string-toned stop. It is essential that the plane of the upper lip is parallel to that of the lower lip. If the languid is too low or the upper lip pulled out too far, the pipe is said to be ‘quick’ and in extreme cases will overblow; if the languid is too low or the upper lip pressed in too much, the pipe will be ‘slow’ and in extreme cases will cease speaking. Flutes are generally voiced on the quick side, strings on the slow side, and principals just barely quick enough to overblow or flutter when forced beyond their normal wind pressure. In wooden pipes the block (corresponding to the languid) is immovable, and the adjustments made by the voicer will consist in modifying the height of the upper lip, the position of the cap, the angle and width of the flue and sometimes the angle of the upper lip. Some fine adjustments that affect the tone-colour of flue pipes include arching or ‘skiving’ of the upper lip, changes to the height and bevel of the languid face and ‘nicking’ of the languid edge. Until the end of the 18th century it was customary to blunt or ‘counterface’ the languid edge, which tended to discourage the ‘sizzle’ in the sound of an unnicked or lightly nicked pipe. This practice was in many instances continued into the 19th century and has been revived by some 20th-century builders. A knife-edged languid requires shallow, widely spaced nicking to achieve the same purpose; a small amount is usually necessary to fine regulation, and does not adversely affect articulation or ‘chiff’. Deep, close nicking, however, particularly when done on the lower lip as well as languid, destroys both chiff and harmonic development; this was extensively practised in the early 20th century and is still necessary for modern string-toned pipes. Many larger flue pipes have projections (‘ears’) at the sides of their mouths that help to focus the sound and sometimes need adjustment by the voicer. ‘Beards’ below the ears or ‘rollers’ between them were developed in the 19th century to stabilize the speech of narrow-scaled pipes and are also adjusted by the voicer.

In reed pipes the thickness and curvature of the reed tongue are the major factors determined by the voicer. The tongues are usually of ‘half-hard’ brass (although some tone-colours require soft brass or harder phosphor bronze) and are cut to size by the voicer. Both the width of the tongue and the opening in the shallot affect tone somewhat, but the most critical operation in reed voicing is the curving of the tongue, done with a burnisher on a wood or metal block. Too little curvature will produce weakness or silence; too much will make the attack slow. Pipes of the trumpet type usually speak best when the tongue has a slight extra curvature at its tip. Until the late 19th century it was common to file reed tongues slightly thinner at the end, to improve attack at low wind pressures. High pressures used in the early 20th century necessitated thicker tongues, often weighted (by an amount adjusted by the voicer) at their tip in the lowest two or three octaves. Such tongues produced a smoother, more fundamental tone. The loudness of reed pipes is regulated not on the toe, which is usually fully open, but by adjusting the length of the resonator in conjunction with the vibrating length of the reed tongue. Very fine adjustments are sometimes made to the length by which the shallot projects from the block.

Organ pipes are usually pre-voiced in the builder’s workshop by means of a small organ called a ‘voicing jack’. This device has interchangeable racks to accommodate pipes of various sizes, so that the pipes are within easy reach of the keyboard, with the voicer’s tool shelf above. Racked at the back of the voicing jack is a permanent set of pipes to which the set being voiced can be tuned, since the loudness or softness of the voiced pipe will affect its tuning length. Voiced pipes are placed in the organ while it is set up in the workshop, and further adjustments are made. Final voicing, called ‘finishing’, can take several months for large instruments and is done after the organ is installed.

2. Wind instruments.

As in the case of organ flue pipes, the voicing of recorders concerns the proportions of the windway (flue) and its alignment in relation to the labium. In the finest Baroque instruments, and modern copies of them, the windway is slightly curved and the player’s breath is concentrated on the labium through a fairly narrow channel, giving an intense and slightly reedy quality to the tone. In some mass-produced instruments the voicing is more ‘open’, giving less resistance to the player’s breath; the resulting sound is relatively bland and lacking in overtones.

The term ‘re-voicing’ is used for adjustments to the block or to the ‘roof’ (i.e. the upper surface) of the windway.

3. String instruments.

The voicing of harpsichords and other quilled instruments involves reducing the length, width and particularly the thickness of the quill, plastic or leather plectra so as to arrive at an even touch of the desired lightness and a tone of uniform loudness without any notes having a different timbre from that of their neighbours. Thinning the plectrum reduces the loudness of the tone and lightens the touch; narrowing the plectrum tends to brighten the tone. The voicing and regulation procedure also involves adjusting the point in time at which the plectrum plucks the string as the key is depressed. Usually this is accomplished by adjusting the length of the portion of the jack below the plectrum, in such a way that the plucking order in an instrument with two or more registers is ‘staggered’.

The voicing of pianos involves altering the hardness of the sub-surface felt of the hammers by pricking them with needles of appropriate size once the hammer has been properly shaped with sandpaper or a file. Additional work with a heated iron may also be done to produce a brighter timbre and to achieve a better balance between the densities of the felt on the outside and the inside of the hammer. But the part of the hammer’s surface which actually strikes the string is almost never packed or ironed. The voicing of early pianos (or reproductions) with leather-covered hammers involves similar operations. Also, since the leather is usually glued only to the sides of the hammer, the tone may be made duller by inserting a needle under a layer of leather to stretch it.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

G.A. Audsley: The Art of Organ-Building, ii (New York, 1905/R), 592ff, 623ff

W.B. White: Modern Piano Tuning and Allied Arts (New York, 1917, rev. and enlarged 5/1946 as Piano Tuning and Allied Arts), 190ff

W. Ellerhorst: Handbuch der Orgelkunde (Einsiedeln, 1936/R), 273ff, 315ff

N.A. Bonavia-Hunt and H.W. Homer: The Organ Reed (New York, 1950)

J. Mertin: ‘Thoughts on Determining Cut Up in Flue Pipes’, ISO Information, no.9 (1973), 633–9

L.G. Monette and C. Stevens: Organ Tonal Finishing and Fine Tuning (Baton Rouge, LA, 1981)

E.L. Kottick: The Harpsichord Owner’s Guide (Chapel Hill, NC, 1987), 90ff

L.G. Monette: The Art of Voicing (Kalamazoo, MI, 1992)

P. Pelto: ‘Four Voicing Techniques: Analysing the Perception of Sound’, Organ Yearbook, xxv (1995), 101–22

BARBARA OWEN (1), EDGAR HUNT/FRIEDRICH VON HUENE (2), EDWIN M. RIPIN/JOHN KOSTER (3)

Voicius, Michael.

See Vogt, Michael.

Voicu, Ion

(b Bucharest, 8 Oct 1925; d Bucharest, 24 Feb 1997). Romanian violinist and conductor. After showing talent as a child he was admitted in 1938 to the Bucharest Conservatory, where he studied the violin with George Enacovici; he made his début in a Bucharest radio concert in 1940. While developing his career he studied further with Enescu in 1945, and with Abram Yampol'sky and David Oistrakh at the Moscow Conservatory, 1955–7. He became a soloist of the George Enescu PO of Bucharest from 1949, and toured with the orchestra in western Europe, making his British début in 1963; he was appointed the orchestra’s artistic director from 1973. He formed the Bucharest Chamber Orchestra in 1969. As a soloist he toured North and South America, Africa and Asia as well as various European countries. He played a violin by Antonio Stradivari, and was admired for his wide range of tone, technical skill and sense of structure, although he was criticized for over-indulgence of sentiment (in Tchaikovsky’s concerto). Voicu composed virtuoso pieces for the violin, and his recordings include performances of sonatas by Enescu and Ysaÿe (with Victoria Stefănescu). He gave masterclasses throughout the world and sat on the juries of many international competitions.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

J. Creighton: Discopaedia of the Violin (Toronto, 1974, 2/1994)

M. Campbell: ‘Romanian String Magician’, The Strad, cv (1994), 472–7

V. Cosma: Interpreţi din România (Bucharest, 1996–7)

VIOREL COSMA/R

Voiculescu, Dan

(b Sighişoara, 20 July 1940). Romanian composer. He studied with Toduţă (composition) and Maria Kardaş (piano) at the Cluj Academy (1957–64), Mortari in Venice (1968) and Stockhausen in Cologne (1971–2). Voiculescu became a teacher of composition and counterpoint at the Cluj Academy in 1963; he has taken masterclasses in Braşov, Bitonto (Italy) and Chişinau (Moldova). He gained the doctorate under the supervision of Toduţă with a thesis entitled The Polyphony of the 20th Century in 1983. In his works Voiculescu employs a modal style incorporating elements of Romanian folk music as a basis from which to explore a wide range of harmonic resources. His individual style is at its most striking in his comic chamber opera The Bald Prima Donna (1992–4). His writings include books on Bach's use of fugue and polyphony. Further details are given in V. Cosma: Muzicieni români (1970).

WORKS

(selective list)

Op: The Bald Prima Donna (2 pts, after E. Ionesco), 1992–4

Orch: Sinfonia ostinato, 1963; Viziuni cosmice, 1968; Muzică de coarde, str, 1971; Piese [Pieces], orch, 1973; Suita din Codex Caioni, str, 1996

Vocal: Cant. (A. Russo), Bar, chorus, orch, 1977; lieder, choral works; didactic pieces

Chbr and solo inst: Sonata, ob, pf, 1963; Pf Sonata no.1, 1969; Piccolo Sonata no.1, fl, 1964; Sonata no.2, fl, 1979; Sonata, cl, 1975; Spirale I–III, pf, 1968; pf works

OCTAVIAN COSMA

Voigt, Deborah

(b Chicago, 8 April 1960). American soprano. She studied at California State University and then participated in the Merola Programme of the San Francisco Opera, where she eventually began her career in small roles, her operatic début being as the Voice from Heaven in Don Carlos (1986). In 1988 she won the Pavarotti Voice Competition, and in 1990 both the Rosa Ponselle Gold Medal and the Verdi Competition in Busseto. Voigt made her London début as Elvira in Ernani with the Chelsea Opera Group in 1990. In 1992 she caused a stir in the Stabat mater at a Rossini 200th anniversary concert in Avery Hall, New York, and as Chrysothemis at the Metropolitan. Voigt first sang Ariadne in Boston in 1992, and this was the role of her first appearances in Munich and Vienna. Amelia (Un ballo in maschera) marked her début at Chicago (1993) and at Covent Garden (1995). Among her other Verdi parts are Aida (which she sang in Verona in 1994) and Lady Macbeth, which she first performed in Bologna in 1995. She sang Chrysothemis for her South American début at the Teatro Colón (1995). Other Strauss roles in which she has made her mark include the Empress (Die Frau ohne Schatten) and Helen of Troy (of which she gave a concert performance with Covent Garden in 1998), both of which she has recorded. Her Wagner roles include Elisabeth (which she first sang at San Francisco in 1994), Sieglinde (1996, the Metropolitan), Senta (1996, Vienna) and Elsa (1998, the Metropolitan). Voigt has a voice of generous proportions, easily produced, but her style and acting lack specificity. Of her recordings, her Rezia (Oberon), Cassandra (in Dutoit’s set of Les Troyens), Chrysothemis and Helen of Troy best display the range and power of her voice.

ALAN BLYTH

Voigt, Michael.

See Vogt, Michael.

Voigtländer, Gabriel

(b Reideburg, nr Halle, c1596; d Nykøbing, 22/3 Jan 1643). German composer, trumpeter, singer and poet. The earliest definite information about him is that he served Wallenstein as a trumpeter. By 1626 he was in Lübeck as a civic and military trumpeter and officially became a citizen there on 20 November in that year. After serving Crown Prince Christian of Denmark in both Nykøbing and Copenhagen, he left on 16 December 1632, and the following May was a trumpeter at the wedding of the sister of Duke Friedrich III of Schleswig-Holstein in Gottorf. He apparently entered the duke's service about this time. His salary at Gottorf was more than double that of the court organist, Franz Tunder, and it is possible that he was employed as a singer and poet too. From 1636 until his death he again served Crown Prince Christian of Denmark in Nykøbing as a trumpeter, musician and poet.

Voigtländer published an important collection, Erster Theil Allerhand Oden und Lieder (Sorø, 1642⁸, 5/1664³), consisting of 100 solo songs (93 different melodies). He wrote the words himself, fitting them in every case but one (no.26, which he composed himself in the new recitative style) to pieces by composers of the late 16th and early 17th centuries, among whom Johann Nauwach, Orazio Vecchi and John Dowland have been identified. They are more than simply parodies since Voigtländer reworked the melodic material in ways important to the development of the solo lied. These songs could be accompanied by a wide range of instruments: harpsichord, lute, theorbo, pandora and viola da gamba are mentioned on the title-page. Many tunes, as well as the verses, are popular in tone, including lovers' complaints, drinking-songs, proverbial sayings, parodies and satires. Voigtländer's songbook was certainly one of the most popular and influential of its time. Even before it was published Johann Vierdanck included in his Capricci (1641) a sonata based on the song Als ich einmal Lust bekam, and Hammerschmidt soon set one of his poems in his second set of Oden (1643). Voigtländer's texts and tunes were also used by Johann Rist (Neuer teutscher Parnass, 1652), Adam Krieger (Neue Arien, 2/1676), Christian Clodius (Hymnorum studiosorum pars prima, MS, 1669), C.F. Nicolai (Eyn feyner kleyner Almanach, 1777–8) and Arnim and Brentano (Des Knaben Wunderhorn, 1805–8). Some of his lieder were published as broadsides. Voigtländer also wrote a dedicatory poem for Nicolaus Bleyer's Erster Theil Newer Pavanen … (1642).

A copy of the songbook in the Kongelige Bibliotek, Copenhagen, also contains the so-called Voigtländer tablature, a 17th-century manuscript (ed. H. Glahn, Copenhagen, 1988) which transmits versions of works by Melchior Schildt, Heinrich Scheidemann and J.R. Rabeck, as well as a single anonymous piece. 20 of Voigtländer's lieder were translated into Danish and used by Søren Terkelsen in his Astree Siunge-Choer (Glückstadt, 1648, and later editions). The Danish poet Thomas Kingo reworked songs by both Voigtländer (notably Chrysillis du mit Verdens Guld) and Terkelsen in his Aendelige Siung-Koor (1674; ed. E. Sønderholm, Neumünster, 1976). A selection from Voigtländer's and Terkelsen's collections has been published in a modern edition: Viser fra Voigtländers og Terkelsens samlinger, ed. C. Hatting and N. Krabbe (Copenhagen, 1988).

Two lieder signed ‘G.V.’ appeared in a ballet, Triumphus rationis, performed on 4 August 1640 before the crown prince, further confirming Voigtländer's involvement in all aspects of musical and cultural life at the Danish court.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

KretzschmarG

K. Fischer: ‘Gabriel Voigtländer: ein Dichter und Musiker des 17. Jahrhunderts’, SIMG, xii (1910–11), 17–93

H.J. Moser, ed.: Alte Meister des deutschen Liedes (Leipzig, 1916)

G. Müller: Geschichte des deutschen Liedes vom Zeitalter des Barock bis zur Gegenwart (Munich, 1925/R)

H. Glahn: ‘Gabriel Voigtländer’, DMt, xviii (1943), 217–23

J. Hennings: ‘Neues über Gabriel Voigtländer’, Mf, ii (1949), 214–16

A. Dickinson: Keyboard Tablatures of the Mid-Seventeenth Century in the Royal Library, Copenhagen: Edition and Commentary (diss., North Texas State U., 1973)

H. Schwab: ‘Zur Liedkunst Gabriel Voigtländers’, Weltliches und geistliches Lied des Barock: Lund, Sweden, 1978, 183–207

M.R. Wade: Triumphus nuptialis danicus: German Court Culture and Denmark: the Great Wedding of 1634 (Wiesbaden, 1996)

HORACE FISHBACK/MARA R. WADE

Voigtländer, Lothar

(b Leisnig, Saxony, 3 Sept 1943). German composer. He began his musical career as a member of the Dresden Kreuzchor (1954–62) and went on to study at the Leipzig Hochschule für Musik (1962–8), where his composition teachers included Rolf Reuter, Franz Jung and Fritz Geissler. From 1970 to 1973 he was a ‘master-pupil’ of Günter Kochan at the DDR Academy of Arts. For a time, he served as chorus master and conductor at the Theater der Altmark, Stendal. His earliest compositions are predominantly vocal works in a traditional style; while a student of Kochan, however, he wrote large-scale orchestral pieces (Metamorphosen, 1970; Symphony no.1, 1970) that combine serial structures with aleatory elements. His particular affinity for the organ is reflected in a series of works exploring the timbral and technical potential of the instrument (Orgelspiele, 1978; Chant à la grande cathédrale de Bourges, 1980). A growing preoccupation with electro-acoustic and multimedia projects, such as Guillevic-Recital (1986) for three speakers, graphics and tape, also manifested itself in the radio plays Maikäfer, flieg (1985) and Berlin-Report (1987). During the late 1980s, he returned to purely instrumental composition, writing works in which gestural and emotional creativity are combined with stringent constructivity.

WORKS

(selective list)

vocal

Canto general (orat, P. Neruda), S, 2 choruses, orch, 1973; 4 Minnelieder (O. von Wolkenstein), T, orch, 1977; Am Ende des Regenbogens (various), mixed chorus, 1978–82; Litaneia, motet, solo v, 2 mixed choruses, 1985, rev. 1987; 3 Gesänge (Ketschua-Lyrik), mixed chorus, perc, 1987; Le temps en cause (chbr orat, E. Guillevic), 16 solo vv, chorus, 16 solo insts, 10 brass, hp, perc, 1990; Erwachend … ins offene … lehmgesichtig wir (after E. Arendt), S, orch, 1992

instrumental

Ens: Metamorphosen, orch, 1970; Sym. no.1, orch, 1970; Kammerkonzert, hpd, 13 insts, 1973; Orchestermusik no.1 ‘Memento’, 1976; Concento, fl, vn, orch, 1977; Glücklicher Hiob, chbr ens, 1988; Orchestermusik no.2, 1988; Sym. no.2, hp, orch, 1989; Sym. no.3, org, orch, 1990; HornPlus, 10 insts, 1993

Org: Chant à la Grande Cathédrale Bourges, 1980; Structum no.3, 1983; Solfeggio, 1988; Introitus, 1989; Solfeggio con annotazioni, 1989

electro-acoustic

Radio plays: Danse macabre, 1985; Maikäfer, flieg, 1985; Berlin-Report, 1987; dialogue en cause, 1991

Tape and vv/insts: 3 elektronische Studien (Arendt), 1v, pf, tape, 1975; Variation und Collage, 1v, tape, 1977; Orgel-Spiele, org, perc, tape, 1978; 3 Porträts mit Schatten (F.G. Lorca), 1v, vc, vib, tape, live elecs, 1981; Glockenspiele, 1983; De profundis, 5 perc, tape, 1986; Guillevic-Recital (E. Guillevic), 3 spkr, graphics, tape, 1986, collab. D. Tucholke

Tape: Méditations sur le temps, 1976; Raum-Musik no.2, 1980; Ex voce, 1982; Raum-Musik no.3 ‘Sonic Landscape’, 1982; Poème sonore, 1984; Raum-Musik no.4 ‘Die Musik an ihre Hörer’ (F. Schneider), 1986; Paysage sonore, Où? - wo?, with slide projections, 1988; Raummusik no.5 ‘Le voyage’, 1994; Atemlos, 1995

BIBLIOGRAPHY

KdG (K. Eberl) [incl. writings list and further bibliography]

K.-U. Ziegenrücker: ‘Emotionalität durch Klangcollage – Gedanken zu Lothar Voigtländers “Maikäfer, flieg” (1985)’, MG, xxxix (1989), 179–82

F. Schneider: ‘Aufbruch und Besinnung: Lothar Voigtländer: 3. Sinfonie’, motiv, ii/3 (1991), 69–70

KATHRIN EBERL

Voirin, François Nicolas

(b Mirecourt, 19 Dec 1833; d Paris, 4 June 1885). French bowmaker. After serving his apprenticeship in Mirecourt he worked from 1855 to 1870 for J.-B. Vuillaume in Paris. After briefly returning to Mirecourt he established his own business at 3 rue du Bouloi, Paris, where he worked until his sudden death. He was a prolific maker and his bows were of superb quality; he is generally regarded as the most important bowmaker of the second half of the 19th century.

Voirin’s bows show a radical departure from the predominant Tourte model of the first half of the century. The dimensions of the stick and head are thinner and smaller, and to retain strength he used only the finest Pernambuco possible. He also began the camber directly behind the head; this feature was taken up not only by his pupils Thomassin and Lamy but also Eugène Sartory, Victor and Jules Fétique and E.A. Ouchard among others; he also influenced German makers. Voirin’s early bows, i.e. those made in the Vuillaume workshop and carrying the Vuillaume brand, are somewhat stouter than his later ones. After 1870 his work exhibits a rare elegance of line; the frogs are either regular or sometimes rounded in Vuillaume’s style and the buttons are normally two-banded. In more recent times players have often dismissed Voirin’s bows as being too light; this is most often true of the cello and viola bows with the former ranging in weight from 70 to 75 grams. The violin bows, however, fall largely within the normal range (i.e. 58 to 60 grams) and continue to be in demand.

After his death, Voirin’s widow continued the business for some years, branding his pupils’ work with her husband’s brandmark, f.n. voirin à paris. Most of these bows appear to lack the strength of the originals.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

J. Roda: Bows of the Musical Instruments of the Violin Family (Chicago, 1959)

W.C. Retford: Bows and Bowmakers (London, 1964)

E. Vatelot: Les archets français (Paris, 1976)

CHARLES BEARE/JAAK LIIVOJA-LORIUS

Voit.

German firm of organ builders in Karlsruhe-Durlach. The firm was founded in 1764 by Johann Heinrich Stein (1735–67) of Heidelsheim, and continued by his cousin Georg Markus Stein (1738–94), organ builder to the court of Baden-Durlach; after the latter’s death it passed by marriage into the hands of Johann Volkmar Voit (1772–1806) of Schweinfurt. In 1807 Johann Ludwig Bürgy (1761–1838) of Niederflorstadt married Voit’s widow and ran the workshop until 1835. He was succeeded by his stepson Louis Voit (1802–83) who ran the firm until 1870. It was then taken over by the latter’s sons Heinrich (1834–1914) and Carl (1847–87). After Carl’s death, Heinrich’s sons Emil (1864–1924) and Siegfried (1870–1938) were taken into the firm as partners, and it became known as H. Voit & Söhne. In 1930 Siegfried Voit retired from the business, and the workshops were taken over by their former manager Karl Hess (1879–1943). Under the direction of his widow the firm continued in business until about 1959.

Voit was the leading firm in its field in the former Grand Duchy of Baden, at times employing about 50 staff, and by 1930 it had built more than 1500 organs. It acquired fame beyond the immediate locality through a series of organs built for various concert halls: the Treviris Hall, Trier (1900); the Festhalle, Koblenz (1902); the Rosengarten, Mannheim (1903); the Stadthalle, Heidelberg (1903); the National Hungarian Royal Academy of Music, Budapest (1907); the hôtel particulier du Comte de la Revélière, Paris (1912); the Smetana Hall, Prague (1912); and the Stadthalle, Krefeld (1917).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

S. Kümmerle: Encyklopädie der evangelischen Kirchenmusik, iii (Gütersloh, 1894)

H. Fischer: 100 Jahre Bund deutscher Orgelbaumeister, 1891–1991 (Lauffen, 1991)

E. Wagner and others: Die Voit-Orgel in der Stadthalle Heidelberg (Heidelberg, 1993)

H. Fischer and T. Wohnhaas, eds.: Lexikon süddeutscher Orgelbauer (Wilhelmshaven, 1994)

HERMANN FISCHER

Voit, Michael.

See Vogt, Michael.

Voix

(Fr.).

Voice. See Singing; Acoustics, §VI and Part (ii).

Voix céleste

(Fr.).

Voix de ville.

See Vaudeville.

Voix humaine

(Fr.).

An Organ stop (Vox humana).

Voix mixte

(Fr.: ‘mixed voice’).

A vocal technique involving the blending of the chest and head registers in the middle range, especially in male singers. Manuel García (Traité complet de l’art du chant, Paris 1840–47/R) was the first to define the term, although the practice is described much earlier. Tosi (1723) urged the male singer ‘to leave no Means untried’ to unite the two registers, ‘for if they do not perfectly unite, the Voice will be of divers Registers, and must consequently lose its Beauty’. Although García defines this term as a mixture of the two basic registral mechanisms, he also considers the term ‘improper’ as the actual mixing of mechanisms is physiologically impossible. He argues that the effect was created by the use of a mezzo voce (half voice) in the chest register. See also Voix sombrée.

ELLEN T. HARRIS

Voix sombrée

(Fr.: ‘darkened voice’).

A technique of voice production. It was made famous by the singing of Gilbert Duprez during the 1830s. He is said to have carried the chest register up to c''. Duprez (1845) called this technique voix sombre or voix couverte (covered voice). ‘Covering’ involves the darkening of the vowels, for example, from ‘ah’ to ‘uh’, resulting in a physiological change in mechanism first described by the physicians H. Diday and J.-E. Pétrequin in their ‘Mémoire sur une nouvelle espèce de voix chantée’ (Gazette médicale de Paris, viii, 1840, pp. 305, 455) as a lowering of the larynx. Covered tone is used as an expedient to admit more of the head tone into the area of the break between the head and chest voice, allowing these to be better united. When used in the highest register, as by Duprez, the technique produces a sound of great volume and intensity but can be vocally damaging. The voix sombrée became highly controversial as a voice type and was vigorously attacked by Etienne Jean Baptiste (called Stéphan de la Madelaine) in his Oeuvres complétes sur le chant (Paris, 1875, pp.128ff). Duprez himself is reported to have tired easily because of his use of the voix sombrée, and had a short career.

Manuel García (1847) does not discuss voix sombrée as a voice type; rather, he distinguishes between timbre clair and timbre sombre as distinct vocal qualities in both head and chest voice and discusses these in terms of offering ‘the student a throng of resources which permit him appropriately to vary the expression of the voice’. He equated the use of timbre sombre in the chest voice with Voix mixte.

OWEN JANDER/ELLEN T. HARRIS

Vojáček, Hynek (Ignác František) [Voyachek, Ignaty Kasparovich]

(b Zlín, Moravia, 4 Dec 1825; d Tsarskoye Selo [now Pushkin], 27 Jan/9 Feb 1916). Czech musician, active in Russia. He was brought up in Vsetín, where his father obtained a teaching post in 1830, and in Brno, as a chorister of the Augustinian monastery (from 1838). He studied for a year at the University of Vienna (1845–6) and founded a Slavonic student choral society, for which he wrote a large number of male-voice choruses. After working as a music tutor (1846–8) to the family of Count Bethlen in Hermannstadt, Transylvania (now Sibiu, Romania), he returned to Brno, conducting Czech concerts of the Brno Männergesangsverein. He returned to Vienna and in 1852 helped compile a collection of Valachian and Slovak folksongs (he had begun collecting folksongs himself in 1838). In Vienna he got to know the Russian composer Aleksey Fyodorovich L'vov, who obtained a post for him (1853) as music tutor to his sister, the wife of General Samson, in Brest Litovsk (now Brest, Belarus). Vojáček moved to St Petersburg in 1855, working at first as a military bandmaster and then as bassoonist at the Mikhaylovsky Theatre (1857–1907). He also taught theory at the St Petersburg Conservatory (1863–1912) and, during the 1870s, occasionally played and conducted at the Mariinsky Theatre.

Vojáček was important in establishing contacts between Russian and Czech musicians. He helped organize the First Panslavonic Concert in St Petersburg (1861), at which he and Anton Rubinstein conducted Russian, Polish and Czech works (some by Vojáček). He accompanied Balakirev on his visit to Prague in August 1866, taking with him the score of A Life for the Tsar and other Glinka works. During this period he may have introduced Balakirev to the folklore study of B.M. Kulda (whom he knew from Brno), from which Balakirev took three tunes for his Overture on Czech Themes (1867). In 1871 Vojáček and the Czech bass Josef Paleček facilitated the Russian première of Smetana's Bartered Bride at the Mariinsky Theatre. Vojáček was an occasional correspondent on Russian music in Czech periodicals (Lumír, Dalibor, Hudební listy, Moravská orlice) and with individual musicians (41 letters to Janáček survive from between 1905 and 1914). He met Janáček in 1905, during one of his regular summer trips to Moravia (1903–14), and encouraged his interest in Russian music, helping supply his Russian Circle with materials.

Vojáček began composing in 1838, mainly piano music, songs and church music, and from 1845 Valachian folk music elements began to appear in his music. Although he wrote an opera to a Russian text (Tamara, unperformed) and some Russian romances (to texts by A.J. Pukarov and N.A. Nekrasov) his contacts with Russian composers and his long stay in Russia left little trace. In spirit and idiom his works hardly go further than his early patriotic Moravian music and by later years were all but forgotten. In addition to two operas (including the one-act Zajatá, ‘The Woman Captive’, given in Prague in 1869), he wrote two cantatas, marches and dances for piano, six studies for bassoon and piano and ten orchestral preludes.

WRITINGS

‘Du chant populaire de la Bohème’, RMI, xvi (1909), 563–84

BIBLIOGRAPHY

E. Axman: Morava v české hudbě XIX. století [Moravia in Czech music of the 19th century] (Prague, 1920), 31–8 [list of works], 159 [earlier bibliography]

V. Veselý: ‘Dopisy Hynka Vojáčka Leoši Janáčkovi’ [Vojáček's letters to Janáček], Musikologie, ii (1949), 171–92

Paměti [Memoirs] (MS, 1889–99, Zlín, Okresní archív; extract Z mé paměti [From my memoirs], CZ-Bm) [see also HRo, vii (1954), 937 only]

V. Gregor: ‘Hynka Vojáčkovy zápisy polských revolučních zpěv’ [Vojáček’s notation of Polish revolutionary songs], Slezský sborník, lv (1957), 288–93

J. Schánilec: Za slávou [In search of glory] (Prague, 1961), 104–9 [incl. list of works]

V. Gregor: ‘Skladatel Hynek Vojáček a Janáčkovo rusofilství’ [The composer Vojáček and Janáček's Russophilism], Slezský sborník, lx (1962), 89–96 [incl. further bibliography]

L. Fiedlerová: Hynek Vojáček: život a dílo [Vojáček: life and works] (thesis, U. of Brno, 1968)

V. Gregor: ‘Neznámé kapitoly z česko-ruských hudebních styků’ [Unknown chapters in Czech-Russian contacts], HRo, xxviii (1975), 466–9

V. Gregor: Obrozenská hudba na Moravě a ve Slezsku [Music of the National Revival in Moravia and Silesia] (Prague, 1983), 73–80, 121–31

J. Trojan: ‘Hynek Vojáček: vzpomínky hudebníka předbřezného Brna’ [Vojáček: Reminiscences of a musician in pre-March Brno], Vlastivědný věstník moravský, xxxviii (1988), 23–33

JOHN TYRRELL

Vojta, Jan Ignác František

(b ?Czernovicium, c1660; d ?Prague, before 1725). Czech composer. He attended the Jesuit seminary of St Václav in Prague and then studied philosophy at Prague University, where he took the BA on 20 May 1677. After studying medicine there, he qualified as a doctor on 26 June 1684. His text for a Christmas play appeared in print in January 1684 (CZ-Pu; the music is lost), as did the text for his undated cantata Threnodia huius Temporis sive Exul Veritas. Both works are dedicated to the dean of the faculty of medicine, Jan Jakub Václav Dobřenský, a patron of music. Between 1702 and 1705 Vojta was the doctor at the Benedictine monastery in Prague. He was apparently a very good violinist and a skilful composer. There are documentary records, mostly from monastic sources, of some 26 compositions by him, mainly sacred. However, only the following works are known to survive: Threnodia huius Temporis (cantata), A, B, cont, Prague, before 1697 (A-Wn); 3 church cantatas (CZ-Bm); 3 sonatas, cont (A-Wm); and Parthia amabilis, 2 vv, cont (F-Pc).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

C. Schoenbaum: ‘Threnodia huius Temporis’, Sborník prací Filosofické fakulty Brněnské university, xiv (1965), 273–8

JIŘÍ SEHNAL

Vojtěch.

Baptismal name of Adalbert of Prague.

Vojtěch, Ivan

(b Boskovice, 27 Nov 1928). Czech musicologist. He studied first at Brno University under Jan Racek and Bohumír Štědroň (1947–9) while continuing his cello studies at the conservatory, and then at Prague University (1949–51), where he took the doctorate in 1953 with a dissertation on programme music. Before completing his studies he became assistant lecturer in aesthetics at the Prague Academy of Musical Arts (1950–51) and lecturer at the Janáček Academy, Brno, where, with a few short breaks, he taught until 1960. From 1961 until 1975 he was assistant professor of musicology in the music history department of Prague University, where he specialized in 20th-century music. From 1948 he was active as a music organizer and journalist, and as editor and translator of works by Soviet musicologists. Later he abandoned a rigorously Marxist stance and tried to widen his scope to include concepts lying outside Marxism. In the 1960s he was attracted by the writings of T.W. Adorno, whose interpretation of the Second Viennese school he embraced at this time, translating several of Adorno's studies into Czech. In 1967 he became an editor for the Arnold Schoenberg complete edition. From 1969 to 1970 he was chief editor of Hudební rozhledy. In the 1970s and 80s he was subject to political persecution (he was expelled from his job and forbidden to publish in his country). In 1990 he was invited to resume his activities at Prague University and in 1993 he was appointed professor there.

WRITINGS

Vývojové cesty sovětské hudby [Lines of development in Soviet music] (Prague, 1951) [trans. of A.I. Shaverdian, ed.: Puti razvitiya sovetskoy muzïki, Moscow, 1948]

O realismu v hudbě [Realism in music] (Prague, 1952) [trans. of articles by I.V. Nest'yev and Yu.A. Kremlyov]

Dvě studie k otázce obsahu a formě v programní hudbě [Two studies on the question of content and form in programme music] (diss., U. of Prague, 1953)

‘O dosavadní tvorbě Vladimíra Sommra’, Musikologie, iv (1955), 32–86

ed.: Liszt o svých současnících [Liszt's remarks on his contemporaries] (Prague, 1956)

‘Klasické stránky Igora Stravinského’ [Classical aspects of Igor Stravinsky], HRo, x (1957), 588–91

‘Symfonie in B Svatopluka Havelky’, HRo, xii (1959), 54–7

‘Idea-styl-dramaturgie’, ‘Prokovjevovská montáž’, Divadlo, xii (1961), 508, 759

Hudební forma jako proces [Musical form as a process] (Prague, 1964) [trans. of B.V. Asaf'yev: Muzïkal'naya forma kak protsess, Moscow, 1930–47]

‘Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, Alban Berg: unbekannte Briefe an Erwin Schulhoff’, MMC, no.18 (1965), 31–83

‘Der Verein für musikalische Privataufführungen in Prag’, Arnold Schönberg Stadtbibliothek, Vienna, 1974, ed. E. Hilmar (Vienna, 1974) [exhibition catalogue]

ed.: A. Schoenberg: Analisi e pratica musicale: scritti 1909–50 (Turin, 1974)

ed.: Arnold Schoenberg: Gesammelte Schriften (Frankfurt, 1976–)

Komentáře (Prague, 1988)

‘Vertonte Sprache der geistigen Tradition der tschechischen Musik’, Das musikalische Kunstwerk: … Festschrift Carl Dahlhaus, ed. H. Danuser and others (Laaber, 1988), 579–88

‘Zu Schoenbergs Werkbegriff’, Arnold Schönberg, Neuerer der Musik: Duisburg 1993, 71–7

with K. Bösch: ‘Der Briefwechsel zwischen E. Schulhoff und A. Berg’, Schweizer Jb für Musikwissenschaft, xiii–xiv (1993–4), 27–78

Přednášky a studie [Lectures and essays] (Prague, forthcoming)

Archiv des Vereins für musikalische Privataufführung (Prague, forthcoming)

EDITIONS

with C.M. Schmidt: A. Schoenberg: Lieder mit Klavierbegleitung, Ü. Sämtliche Werke, i/2 (Mainz, 1988)

JOSEF BEK

Vojvodina.

See underYugoslavia.

Vokaleinbau

(Ger.: ‘vocal in-building’).

A term used for a device often found in Bach's music (and, less often, in that of his contemporaries) whereby the opening ritornello, or part of it, is repeated during the course of an aria while the singer incorporates new material into it. When the technique is employed in a chorus – as, for example, in bars 98–114 of the opening chorus of Bach's Cantata no.72 – it is usually referred to as ‘Choreinbau’. An analogous procedure is also found in arias and choruses by Classical and pre-Classical composers in which a secondary theme, presented in the tonic as part of the opening ritornello, returns in the dominant or relative key as accompaniment to new material for the singers.

Volánek [Wolanek, Wollaneck, Wollanek], Antonín (Josef Alois) [Anton]

(b Jaroměř, 1 Nov 1761; d Prague, 16 Jan 1817). Czech composer, choirmaster and theatre conductor. He was the son of an organist and cantor at Jaroměř. In Prague, where he married on 3 March 1783, he was appointed violinist at the church of St Voytěch, organist at the church of Sts Petr and Pavel in the Vyšehrad district (in the 1790s) and choirmaster of St Petr at Poříči (from 1 January 1801 to 31 December 1816). He was also a violinist in several Prague theatre orchestras, and served as music director or répétiteur for some. In this capacity he was also active in Leipzig (autumn 1797 to 30 March 1798), Karlsbad (now Karlovy Vary) and Teplice. He conducted the first Prague performance of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (25 October 1792), as well as the first staging of this work in Czech (October 1794).

Volánek was a prolific and popular dance-music composer. He wrote music for the nobility ball of the Prague coronation of Leopold II and Maria Ludovica (1791, performed with a coronation cantata by Leopold Kozeluch), as well as a number of dance sets for other Prague balls (mostly in 1806–7). Of his ballets, pantomimes and divertissements, staged mostly in Prague and Vienna, the one-act comic divertissement Der Steinhauer oder Das nächtliche Rendezvous (1809) appears to have been the most successful, with at least 32 performances up to 1816. There is no substantial stylistic difference between his secular and sacred compositions.

Volánek’s son Ferdinand (b Prague, 15 Jan 1789) was a music copyist, first at the Prague Theatre (1813–16) and later in Vienna, where he met Beethoven (1825).

WORKS

stage

lost, unless otherwise indicated

Die Maskerade im Serail oder Die grosse Löwenjagd (Spl, P. Heimbacher), Prague, Nostitz, 1792

Der Schuster-Feierabend oder Kasperl, die fressende Schildwache (Spl, 3, G.J. Ziegelhauser), Vienna, Landstrasser, 9 Sept 1792

Der Schuster-Feierabend (Spl, K.F. Hensler), Prague, Divadlo u Hibernů, 31 Dec 1793; also perf. Augsburg, 1794, lib pubd

Rudolph der Siegende (ballet, 3, Barchielli), Prague, Nostitz, 17 April 1797

Die Zeichenschule oder Der dumme Bräutigam (Der Zeichenmeister) (ballet, 2, Barchielli), Prague, Nostitz, 1 May 1797

Die Spanier in Amerika (ballet, 1, Barchielli), Prague, Nostitz, 8 May 1797; also perf. Leipzig, 1798, arr. hpd/pf (Leipzig, 1798)

Die Räuber (ballet, 1, Barchielli), Prague, Nostitz, 17 May 1797

Der nächtliche Trommelschläger (ballet, 1, Barchielli), Prague, Nostitz, 31 May 1797

Die eifersüchtige Ehefrau (ballet, 2, Barchielli), Leipzig, Ranstädtertor, 8 Nov 1797

Die Überraschung (Spl, 1, Barchielli, after K.C. Engel), Leipzig, Ranstädtertor, 20 Dec 1797

Zemire und Azor (ballet, 1, Barchielli), Leipzig, Ranstädtertor, 8 Jan 1798

Die Hochzeit auf dem Lande oder Harnns Klachel, dritter Theil (Spl, K.F. Guolfinger von Steinsberg), Prague and Leipzig, 1798, lib pubd

Der Steinhauer oder Das nächtliche Rendezvous (ballet, 1, K. Hampel), Vienna, Leopoldstadt, 18 July 1809

Der lahme Dorfbarbier (ballet, 1, Hampel), Vienna, Leopoldstadt, 8 Aug 1809

Die Judenhochzeit von Nikolsburg (ballet, 1, Hampel), Vienna, Leopoldstadt, 11 Oct 1809

Der Bauernschmaus oder Der lahme Bettler mit geraden Füssen (ballet, 1, Bogner), Vienna, Leopoldstadt, 26 Aug 1812

Harlekins abentheuerliche Zufälle (ballet, 1, J. Brinke), Vienna, Josefstadt, 19 July 1814

Die Fee Florinde oder Die Vermählung des Herrn von Antribée (ballet, 1, Brinke), Vienna, Josefstadt, 26 Sept 1816

Das Dorf-Concert in Tyrol oder Die drey Nebenbuhler (? Das Abendständchen in Tyrol oder Der Quäker) (ballet, 1, G. Uhlich), Ofen, 5 March 1820

Balli: L’amore paterno, hpd/pf, CZ-Pnm; Columbus in America, hpd/pf, Pr, Il tutore ingannato, hpd, Pnm, Die Tyroller, hpd, Pnm

other works

Hapan symphonon Psalma, Das Bild der Wohlthätigkeit (cant, J.A. Pitschmann), Prague, Konvikt Hall, 23 March 1809, text pubd

Sacred: masses, Requiem, offs, grads, arias, TeD, Pange lingua, others, CZ-PLm, Pnm, Psj and elsewhere

Orch: Dances (Ballo) for coronation of Leopold II, Prague, 12 Sept 1791, CZ-Pa, arr. hpd/pf, Pnm; 10 Ländler aus dem Baadsaale, 1806, Pnm; Balli tedeschi, D-Bsb; other contredanses, quadrilles etc. for various insts, CZ-Pnm and elsewhere; syms., lost

Hpd/pf: sonatas, lost; 10 deutsche Taenze nebst Coda (Prague, 1807); 10 Laendler nebst Coda (Prague, 1807); other dances, mostly ländlerische, deutsche, CZ-Pnm and elsewhere

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ČSHS

DlabacžKL

EitnerQ

GerberNL

J.F. von Schönfeld, ed.: Jb der Tonkunst von Wien und Prag (Vienna, 1796/R), 138, 149, 152

C.G. Thomas: Unpartheiische Kritik (Leipzig, 1798)

AMZ, ix (1806–7), 300; xviii (1816), 732

K.M. Pisarowitz: ‘Böhmens erster Ballettkompositeur’, Prager illustrierte Wochenschau, iv (1942), 8 [with bibliography]

J. Němeček: Nástin české hudby xviii. století [Outline of 18th-century Czech music] (Prague, 1955), 250–52, 337

F. Batha: ‘K otázce skladatelů Tučků’ [The Tuček family of composers], Zprávy Bertramky, no.20 (1960), 3

T. Volek: ‘Repertoir pražské Spenglerovy divadelní společnosti v sezóně 1793–94’ [The repertory of the Spengler theatrical troupe of Prague in the 1793–4 season], MMC, no.14 (1960), 5–26 [with Ger. summary]

T. Volek: ‘Die erste Aufführung der “Zauberflöte” in tschechischer Sprache in Prag 1794’, MJb 1967, 387–402

J. Pešková: Collectio ecclesiae březnicensis: catalogus collectionis operum artis musicae (Prague, 1983) [summaries in Eng., Ger.]

Z. Pilková: ‘Doba osvícenského absolutismu (1740–1810)’ [The Age of Enlightenment (1740–1810)], in J. Černý and others: Hudba v českých dějinách: od středověku do nové doby (Prague, 1983, 2/1989), 217–93

MILAN POŠTOLKA

Volans, Kevin

(b Pietermaritzburg, 26 July 1949). South African composer, naturalized Irish. A prodigiously talented pianist at an early age, he studied at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, graduating in 1972; he then went to Europe for postgraduate study at the University of Aberdeen. From 1973 until 1981 he lived in Cologne where he was a pupil of Stockhausen at the Hochschule für Musik and, in 1975–6, his teaching assistant. He also studied music theatre with Kagel, the piano with Aloys Kontarsky, and electronic music with Johannes Fritsch. During this time he was associated with the Neue Einfachheit movement in West Germany. While studying electronic music at the Hoschschule für Musik from 1976 to 1979, Volans made four journeys to South Africa to record diverse kinds of African music for WDR. In 1981 he returned to South Africa for an extended stay to teach composition at the University of Natal, Durban, where he was awarded the DMus in 1985. He then moved to Paris in 1985 and Cork in 1986, working as a freelance composer and occasionally teaching. From 1986 to 1989 he was composer-in-residence at the Queen’s University, Belfast, and in 1992 he was composer-in-residence at Princeton University. He became an Irish citizen in 1995 and lives in Dublin.

In his visits back to South Africa, Volans’s musical perception, which had been finely honed during his study with Stockhausen, focussed upon the formal complexities of traditional styles, which he had previously overlooked. His move to Europe had led him to question his identity: having been raised, as many white South Africans, to view himself as a European, his time in Europe made him realize the extent to which he was an African. As a result in the 1980s he embarked on a series of ‘African paraphrases’ (his own label which he now repudiates) which allowed him to, as he put it, ‘compose my way back to Europe’. The first of these works were Mbira and Matepe and they mark, with their richly flexible sense of rhythm, melody and harmony, the beginning of Volans’s compositional maturity. They draw extensively from musical materials from across sub-Saharan Africa. At the same time, the teaching and music of Feldman became increasingly important to him.

As western European and American interest in ‘world music’ began to rise throughout the 1980s, Volans found himself increasingly popular as an ‘African composer’; the Kronos Quartet’s recording of White Man Sleeps (Nonesuch 79163, 1987) was one of the best-selling classical recordings of 1993. Perhaps as a reaction against this categorization, by the late 1980s Volans began to disavow the influence of African music on some of his earlier pieces, and most of the works from Chevron onwards owe little to direct quotation of African sources. Nevertheless, certain procedures of variation and permutation from his African-inspired works have continued to recur in some of his more recent works, as does a sense of melodic line and rhythmic complexity. Without losing their beguiling musical surface, Volans’s compositions in the 1990s have continued to move away from overt African influences – save for the String Quartet no.5 (‘Dancers on a Plane’) which seems the genre in which he continues to experiment overtly with musical materials and procedures from Africa – towards more abstract issues of form and structure, as in the Piano Concerto, One Hundred Frames and the opera The Man with Footsoles of Wind.

WORKS

dramatic

The Man with Footsoles of Wind (chbr op, R. Clarke, B. Chatwin, A. Rimbaud), London, Almeida, 2 July 1993; Plane-Song (film score, dir. D. May), 1993, BBC2, 1994

dance scores

Ramanujan Notebooks (Str Qt no.4) (choreog. S. Jeyasingh as Correspondences), London, 16 Oct 1990; Chevron (choreog. S. Davies as Signature), 1990, Brighton, Theatre Royal, 1990; Wanting to Tell Stories (choreog. Davies), 1993, Brighton, Gardner Centre, 13 May 1993; Blue, Yellow (choreog. J. Burrows), 1995, BBC2, 28 Dec 1995; Duetti (choreog. J. Burrows as The Stop Quartet), 1995; Ghent, Vooruit, 7 May 1996, collab. M. Fargion [now Twice Two Stop]

orchestral

One Hundred Frames, 1991; Conc., pf, wind, 1995; Vc Conc., 1997; Double vn conc., 1999

chamber

Mbira, 2 hpd, rattles, 1980; Matepe, 2 hpd, rattles, 1980; White Man Sleeps, 2 hpd, b viol, perc, 1982, arr. as Str Qt no.1; Walking Song, fl, hpd/virginal/pf, 4 hand-clappers/finger-clickers, 1984, arr. org, 1984, rev. 1986; Leaping Dance, fiedel, mar, hpd, 1984, arr. 2 pf, arr. wind ens, 1995; She Who Sleeps with a Small Blanket, perc, 1985; Into Darkness, cl, tpt, vn, vc, mar, vib, pf, 1987, rev. 1989; Arr. C. Debussy: L’isle joyeuse, wind ens, 1995; This is How it Is, wind ens, 1995 [from chbr op The Man with Footsoles of Wind]; Untitled, pf, solo, fl, ob, eng hn, 2 cl, 2 bn, 2 hn, 1996; Slow, pf, wind ens, 1996; 5:4, perc, tape, 1997; Asanga, perc, 1997

Str Qts: White Man Sleeps (no.1), 1986; Hunting: Gathering (no.2), 1987; Movt. for Str Qt, 1987; The Songlines (no.3), 1988, rev. 1993; The Ramanujan Notebooks (no.4), 1990, rev. 1994 [concert version of dance score Correspondences]; Dancers on a Plane (no.5), str qt, tape, 1994

Pf: Leaping Dance, 2 pf, 1984; Nine Beginnings, 2 pf, 1976–9, rev. 1985; Kneeling Dance, 2 pf, 1985, rev. 1987, version for 6 pf, 1992; Cicada, 2 pf, 1994; March, pf, 1996

tape

Studies in Zulu History, 1977–9; Kwazulu Summer Landscape, 1979; Cover Him with Grass, 1982; see also chamber [5:4; Str Qt no.5]

WRITINGS

‘Understanding Stockhausen’, Feedback Papers, no.16 (1978), 407–9

‘Bemerkungen zur Musik im südlichen Afrika’, Weltmusik: Vlotho 1979, 66–78

Summer Gardeners: Conversations with Composers (Durban, 1985)

‘A New Note’, Leadership (1986), 79–82

‘Dancing in the Dark’, Circa (1988), 18–20

BIBLIOGRAPHY

P. Klatzow, ed.: Composers in South Africa Today (Cape Town, 1987)

J. Fox: ‘Staging Songlines’, Interview, xviii/12 (1988), 138–9, 199, 202 only

B. Chatwin: ‘The Songlines Quartet’, New York Review of Books (19 Jan 1989)

M. Blake: Review of ‘The Man Who Strides The Wind’, Tempo, no.186 (1993), 52–3

M. Loppert: ‘Volans: The Man Who Strides The Wind’, Opera, xliii (1993), 1102–4

T.D. Taylor: The Voracious Muse: Contemporary Cross-Cultural Musical Borrowings, Culture, and Postmodernism (diss., U. of Michigan, 1993)

D.M. Yaffee: ‘The New Canon: Three New Music Composers Speak Out’, Village Voice (5 Oct 1993)

T.D. Taylor: ‘When We Think about Music and Politics: the Case of Kevin Volans’, PNM, xxxiii (1995), 504–36

TIMOTHY D. TAYLOR

Volbach, Fritz

(b Wipperfürth, 17 Dec 1861; d Wiesbaden, 30 Nov 1940). German conductor, composer and scholar. He began his musical training at the Cologne Conservatory and in 1885 he entered the Königliches Akademisches Institut für Kirchenmusik in Berlin where his teachers included Grell, Loeschhorn and Commer. He joined the staff there in 1887 and also began his career as a choral conductor. From 1891 he conducted in Mainz as director of the Liedertafel and Damengesangverein. In 1907 he became music director of the University of Tübingen and in 1918 settled in Münster as professor at the university and conductor of the municipal orchestra. After his retirement to Wiesbaden in 1930 he continued to compose and write on musical subjects. As a conductor and scholar Volbach was particularly devoted to the works of Handel. While at Mainz he founded the first German Handel festival, an occasion that marked the first use of the Chrysander edition of the composer's works. Volbach's own compositions, written in a conventional late Romantic idiom, include a symphony in the tradition of Bruckner.

WORKS

(selective list)

Op: Die Kunst zu lieben, op.34, 1910

Vocal: Vom Pagen und der Königstochter, solo vv, chorus, orch, 1898; Gutenberg Kantate, op.22, chorus, orch, org, 1900; Raffael, chorus, orch, org, 1903; Am Siegfriedbrunnen, op.31, male chorus, orch, 1907; König Laurins Rosengarten, op.38, Bar, male chorus, orch, 1913; Hymne an Maria, chorus, vn, cel, hp, org, 1922; Die Mette von Marienburg, Tr, S, T, male chorus, orch, org, 1927; Grenzen der Menschheit, male chorus, orch, 1931; lieder

Inst: Ostern, sym. poem, op.16, 1895; Es waren zwei Königskinder, sym. poem, op.21, 1901; Qnt, E, op.24, ob, cl, bn, hn, pf, 1902; Alt-Heidelberg, du feine, sym. poem, op.29, 1904; Sym., b, op.33, 1909; Pf Qnt, d, op.36, 1912, pf pieces

Principal publishers: Breitkopf & Härtel, Hug, Schott

WRITINGS

Lehrbuch der Begleitung des Gregorianischen Gesangs und des deutschen Chorals … (Berlin, 1888)

Georg Friedrich Händel (Berlin, 1898, 2/1907)

Die Praxis der Händel-Aufführung (diss., U. of Bonn, 1899; Charlottenburg, 1899)

Beethoven (Munich, 1905, 2/1929)

Die deutsche Musik im neunzehnten Jahrhundert (Kempten, 1909)

Das moderne Orchester (Leipzig, 1910–13, 2/1919–21)

Die Instrumente des Orchesters: ihr Wesen und ihre Entwicklung (Leipzig, 1913, 2/1921 as vol. ii of Das moderne Orchester)

Erläuterungen zu den Klavier-Sonaten Beethovens (Cologne, 1919, 3/1924)

Handbuch der Musikwissenschaften (Münster, 1926)

Der Chormeister (Mainz, 1931, 2/1936)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

J. Hagemann-Bonn: ‘Fritz Volbach’, Monographien moderner Musiker, iii (Leipzig, 1909), 28–42

G. Schwake: Fritz Volbachs Werke dem Meister zum sechzigsten Geburtstage (Münster, 1921)

F. Volbach: Erlebtes und Erstrebtes (Mainz, 1956) [autobiography]

K. Hortschansky, ed.: Fritz Volbach (1861–1940): Komponist, Dirigent und Musikwissenschaftler (Hagen, 1987)

GEORGE W. LOOMIS

Volckland, Franciscus [Franziskus, Franz]

(b Berlstedt, nr Weimar, 5 June 1696; d Erfurt, 23 Dec 1779). German organ builder. He trained as an organ builder with J.G. Schröter in Erfurt, and became an assistant to the organ builder Lortzing in Ohrdruf. In 1718 he settled in Erfurt, where in 1720 he unsuccessfully sought a privilege as an organ builder. There followed a legal dispute, lasting several years, with Schröter, who felt himself threatened by Volckland’s competition. By 1721, however, he was building organs. At the time of his death he was well-to-do and held in high repute as an organ builder.

Volckland’s productivity was highest between 1725 and 1750. His organ specifications are dominated by an abundance of 8' foundation stops, mixtures (including the third) and copious wooden pipework as well as Zimbelsterns and Glockenspiels. In addition to these typical 18th-century Thuringian features, he also made frequent use of the 4' Hohlflöte in the Pedal division. The majority of Volckland’s organs are of medium size; he did not build large or three-manual instruments. A number of his organs still survive in the area of Erfurt, including Mühlberg (1729), the Cruciskirche, Erfurt (1732–7), Bindersleben (1743), Elxleben, near Arnstadt (1750), and Tröchtelborn (1758–61).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

J. Adlung: Musica mechanica organoedi, ed. J.L. Albrecht (Berlin, 1768/R); ed. C. Mahrenholz (Kassel, 1931)

E. Flade: Lexikon der Orgelbauer des deutschen Sprachgebietes (MS, 1960, D-Bsb)

F. Friedrich: ‘Franciskus Volkland: Organ Builder’, Early Keyboard Studies, vii/3 (1993), 6–8

FELIX FRIEDRICH

Volckmar, Wilhelm (Adam Valentin)

(b Hersfeld, 26 Dec 1812; d Homberg, nr Kassel, 27 Aug 1887). German organist and composer. He studied at the Gymnasium in Rinteln, and in 1835 became music teacher at the teachers' training college in the small town of Homberg, a position he occupied until his death. He was both industrious and successful in this educational field, receiving an honorary doctorate in 1846 and becoming a professor in 1868. He was recognized as an able organist, theorist and teacher, and was highly regarded by Spohr, Hofkapellmeister at Kassel from 1822, and the Weimar circle around Liszt. He wrote useful books on theory, and his editions of organ music, especially by Bach, and instructive works, such as his Orgelschule op.50 (Leipzig, 1861), are also valuable. This ‘Czerny of the organ’ travelled widely as an organ virtuoso and as an adjudicator of organ competitions. His compositions, which are unremarkable, number almost 700, including 36 organ sonatas, organ symphonies, concertos and liturgical pieces, as well as a variety of orchestral and vocal works.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

FrotscherG

H. Gehrig: Wilhelm Volckmar (Homberg, 1888)

S. Kümmerle: Encyklopädie der evangelischen Kirchenmusik (Gütersloh, 1888–95/R) [incl. list of works]

MARTIN WEYER

Volcyr, Nicolas.

See Wollick, Nicolaus.

Volée, Jean de la.

See La Volée, Jean de.

Volek, Jaroslav

(b Trenčín, 15 July 1923; d Prague, 22 Feb 1989). Czech musicologist and aesthetician. He studied composition at the Prague Conservatory (1941–6) and the Prague master class (1946–8) under Šín, Hába and Řídký. He gained his musicological and aesthetic education at the Prague and Bratislava universities (1946–52). An important stimulus for his own creative work came from Jan Mukařovský, the structuralist aesthetician, and through his own contacts with Emil Utitz, a German aesthetician of Jewish extraction who lived in Prague until his death. He took the doctorate in 1952 in Bratislava with a dissertation on theoretical bases of harmony from the viewpoint of scientific philosophy. He then became successively lecturer (1952–7), reader (1957–68) and professor (1968) in the arts faculty of Prague University. He took the CSc degree in 1958 and the DSc degree in 1968, both with works on aesthetics. While a student, Volek was active as a critic, journalist and administrator, and he never abandoned this completely, even later when he concentrated more intensely on academic work. He was chairman of the musicological section of the Czechoslovak Composers’ Union (1967–9), vice-president of the Czechoslovak Society for Aesthetics (1969–71) and editor-in-chief of the journal Estetika (1969–71). From the 1970s his activities, especially lecturing, were restricted for political reasons. Nevertheless, he was allowed to cooperate with the Academy of Sciences, to attend domestic and foreign conferences, and to lecture at universities abroad, especially in Germany. In musicology he directed his interest above all to the theory, aesthetics and semiotics of music; in aesthetics, apart from the general theory of art, he was interested in semiotics, gnoseology and the taxonomy of art. His work made a great contribution to the development of Marxist music criticism.

WRITINGS

‘Jeremiášova Píseň o rodné zemi zblízka’ [Otakar Jeremiáš's Song of the Native Country (structural analysis)], Rytmus, xi (1947), 6

‘Nad partiturou velkého díla’ [The ‘great’ score: an approach to Bartók's style], Rytmus, xi (1947), 41, 57

Teoretické základy harmonie z hľadiska vedeckej filozófie [The theoretical bases of harmony from the viewpoint of scientific philosophy] (diss., U. of Bratislava, 1952; Bratislava, 1954)

O specifičnosti předmětu uměleckého odrazu skutečnosti [Specific quality in the artistic reflection of reality] (CSc diss., U. of Prague, 1958; pubd in L. Tondl and others: Otázky theorie poznání (Prague, 1957), 263–358)

‘Živelná dialektika a její klady i nedostatky v teoretických názorech Leoše Janáčka’ [Natural dialects and their positive and negative aspects in Janáček’s views on theory], Leoš Janáček a soudobá hudba: Brno 1958, 352–8 [with Ger. summary]

‘O metodu a východiska vědecké práce v marxistické estetice’ [Method of and approach to scholarly work in Marxist aesthetics], Filosofický časopis, vii (1959), 416–25

‘Chopin, novátor hudební formy’ [Chopin, innovator of musical forms], HV (1961), no.2, pp.40–85

‘Filosofické předpoklady vědecké metody v hudební teorii’ [Philosophic assumptions of scientific method in music theory], HV (1961), no.1, pp.95–115

Novodobé harmonické systémy z hlediska vědecké filosofie [Contemporary harmonic systems] (Prague, 1961) [with Ger. summary]

‘Hudba na II. celostátní Spartakiádě’ [Music at the second Spartakiad], HV (1962), no.1, pp.53–100

K otázkám předmětu a metod estetiky a obecné teorie umění [The subject and methods of aesthetics and the general theory of art] (Prague, 1963)

‘Typizace jako forma uměleckého zobecnění’ [Characterization as a form of general application in art], Estetika, i (1964), 126–51, 225–51

‘O experimentu v umění a speciálně v hudební tvorbě’ [Experiment in art, particularly in music], HV, ii (1965), 76–91

‘Teorie intonace, její geneze, současný stav a problémy’ [The theory of intonation, its origin, contemporary situation and problems], HV, iii (1966), 284–91

‘Realismus jako problém sdělení o objektivní skutečnosti v umění’ [Realism as a problem of communication of the objective reality in art], Estetika, iv (1967), 41–67

Die Frage der Zahl der Funktion in der traditionellen Harmonik (Prague, 1968)

Základy obecné teorie umění [The bases of general art theory] (DSc diss., U. of Prague, 1968; Prague, 1968)

Kapitoly z dějin estetiky [Chapters from the history of aesthetics] (Prague, 1969)

K antropologické problematice estetiky a obecné teorie umění [Anthropological problems in the aesthetics and general history of art] (Prague, 1970)

‘Otázky taxonomie umění’ [Questions of the taxonomy of art], Estetika, vii (1970), 194–211, 293–307; viii (1971), 19–46, 146–65

‘Hudba jako předmět sdělení’ [Music as an object of communication], HV, ix (1972), 225–36, 304–18

‘Novák: “osová” osobnost české moderní hudby’ [Novák: the pivotal personality of modern Czech music], Národní umělec Vítězslav Novák: studie a vzpomínky k 100. výročí narození, ed. K. Padrta and B. Štědroň (České Budějovice, 1972), 21–42 [with Ger. summary, 273–5]

‘Originalität als semantischer Faktor in der Musik von Leoš Janáček’, Hudba slovanských národů a její vliv na evropskou hudební kulturu: Brno 1978, 127–36

‘Pojem “hudebního myšlení” u Otakara Zicha ve světle současné sémiotiky’ [Otakar Zich's notion of ‘musical language’ in the light of contemporary semiotics], Vědecký odkaz Otakara Zicha: Prague 1979, 53–64

‘Musikstruktur als Zeichen und Musik als Zeichensystem’, Die Zeichen: neue Aspekte der musikalischen Ästhetik II, ed. H.W. Henze (Frankfurt, 1981), 222–55; also in Musica communicatio: Brno XIV 1979, 73–101

‘Problémy definice hudby z hlediska vědeckých disciplín’ [Problems of the definition of music from a scientific viewpoint], HV, xix (1982), 123–43

‘K sémantice zvětšeného kvintakordu v hudební řeči Josefa Suka’ [On the semantics of the augmented triad in the musical language of Josef Suk], OM, xvii (1985), 225–39

Struktura a osobnosti hudby [The structure and figures of music] (Prague, 1988) [collection of essays]

JOSEF BEK

Volek, Tomislav

(b Prague, 11 Oct 1931). Czech musicologist. He graduated from Prague University in 1955 with a dissertation on Ferdinand Heller (later obtaining the doctorate from Olomouc University in 1969) and joined the musicology institute of Prague University as assistant lecturer (1955–64). In 1964 he became a member of the musicology institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague. An outspoken and forthright colleague, he was dismissed in 1976 and allowed to return only in 1990, after the fall of the communist government. In 1997 he was appointed docent at Prague University. His research is chiefly on Czech music of the 18th century, with special emphasis on its European context and on archival studies. He has published important work on the history of Prague theatrical companies and of Italian opera in Prague; Mozart and his two Prague operas is a central preoccupation. He is a frequent reviewer for Hudební věda and other journals on a wide range of topics.

WRITINGS

‘Hudba u Fürstenbergů a Waldsteinů’ [Music at the Fürstenbergs and Waldsteins], MMC, no.6 (1958), 119–35

‘K problému české hudební emigrace v 18. století’ [On the problem of Czech musical emigration in the 18th century], MMC, no.6 (1958), 95–117

‘Pražské muzikantské cechy, městští hudebníci a trubači v druhé polovině 18. století’ [Prague musicians’ guilds, town musicians and trumpet players in the second half of the 18th century], MMC, no.6 (1958), 75–93

‘Über den Ursprung von Mozarts Oper “La Clemenza di Tito”’, MJb 1959, 274–86

‘Repertoir pražské Spenglerovy divadelní společnosti v sezóně 1793 až 1794’ [The repertory of the Prague Spengler theatre company in the 1793–4 season], MMC, no.14 (1960), 5–26

‘Repertoir Nosticovského divadla v Praze z let 1794, 1796–98’ [The repertory of the Nostič theatre 1794, 1796–8], MMC, no.16 (1961), 5–191

with M. Skalická: ‘Antonio Vivaldi a Čechy’, HV, ii (1965), 419–28; Ger. trans. as ‘Vivaldis Beziehungen zu den böhmischen Ländern’, AcM, xxxix (1967), 64–72

‘Czech Music of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, Musica antiqua Europae orientalis I: Bydgoszcz and Toruń 1966, 80–96

‘Obrozenský zájem o českou hudební minulost’ [Interest by the Czech Revival in Czech music of the past], HV, iii (1966), 599–606

‘Die erste Aufführung der “Zauberflöte” in tschechischer Sprache in Prag 1794’, MJb 1967, 387–91

‘První české zpěvohry’ [The first Czech Singspiels], Dějiny českého divadla, i, ed. A. Scherl (Prague, 1968), 331–45, 379–80

Ferdinand Heller (diss., U. of Olomouc, 1969)

with others: Průvodce po pramenech k dějinám hudby [A guide to music-history sources] (Prague, 1969)

‘Hudební klasicismus’ [Musical classicism], Československá vlastivěda, ix/3, ed. M. Očadlík and R. Smetana (Prague, 1971), 107–49

‘Tomáš Baltazar Janovka, představitel české barokní hudební a vzdělanecké tradice’ [Janovka, a representative of the Czech musical Baroque and educational traditions], HV, ix (1972), 344–55

Mozart a Praha [Mozart and Prague] (Prague, 1973)

with S. Jareš: Dějiny české hudby v obrazech [History of Czech music in pictures] (Prague, 1977)

Osobnosti světové hudby [Personalities of world music] (Prague, 1982)

‘L'opera veneziana a Praga nel Settecento’, L’opera italiana a Vienna prima di Metastasio: Venice 1984, 193–206

with J. Macek: ‘Beethoven's Rehearsals at the Lobkowitz's’, MT, cxxvii (1986), 75–80

‘Význam pražské operní tradice pro vznik Mozartovy opery Don Giovanni/Prague Operatic Traditions and Mozart's Don Giovanni’, Mozartův Don Giovanni v Praze/Mozart’s Don Giovanni in Prague, ed. J. Kristek (Prague, 1987), 22–92

with J. Pešková: Mozartův Don Giovanni, State Library of the Czech Republic, 1987 (Prague, 1987) [exhibition catalogue]

‘Hudební ikonografie’, ‘Hudební historiografie’, Hudební věda, ed. V. Lébl and I. Poledňák (Prague, 1988), 627–38, 653–720

with J. Fojtíková: ‘Die Beethoveniana der Lobkowitz-Musiksammlung und ihre Kopisten’, Beiträge zu Biographie und Wirkungsgeschichte Beethovens, ed. S. Brandenburg and M. Guttiérrez-Denhoff (Bonn, 1988), 219–58; Cz. orig., ‘Beethoveniana lobkovické hudební sbírky a jejich kopisté’, HV, xxvi (1989), 240–59

with J. Macek: ‘Beethoven und Fürst Lobkowitz’, Beiträge zu Biographie und Wirkungsgeschichte Beethovens, ed. S. Brandenburg and M. Guttiérrez-Denhoff (Bonn, 1988), 203–17; Cz. orig., ‘Provádění Beethovenových děl v lobkovickém domě’ [Performing Beethoven’s works in the Lobkowitz home], HV, xxvi (1989), 229–38

with J. Macek: ‘Franz Joseph Maximilian Lobkowitz, Musikfreund und Kunstmäzen’, Beiträge zu Biographie und Wirkungsgeschichte Beethovens, ed. S. Brandenburg and M. Guttiérrez-Denhoff (Bonn, 1988), 147–90; Cz. orig., ‘František Josef Maxmilián Lobkovic jako mecenáš’, HV, xxvi (1989), 198–228

‘Die Bedeutung Prags für Zelenkas Leben und Schaffen’, Zelenka-Studien I: Marburg 1991, 17–40

‘Význam pražské operní tradice pro vznik Dona Giovanniho a Tita/Die Bedeutung der Prager Operntradition für Mozarts Opern für Prag’, Mozartovy opery pro Prahu/Mozarts Opern für Prag, ed. V. Ptáčková (Prague, 1991), 21–100

with I. Bittner: Mozartovské stopy v českých a moravských archivech (Prague, 1991; Eng. trans., 1991, as The Mozartiana of Czech and Moravian Archives)

‘Italská opera a další druhy zpívaného divadla’ [Italian opera and other types of sung theatre], Divadlo v Kotcích: nejstarší Pražské městské divadlo, 1739–1783, ed. F. Černý (Prague, 1992), 43–56 [with Ger. summary]

‘Josefina Dušková a Salcburk’, HV, xxxi (1994), 123–34

‘Professor Josef Hutter: oběť dvou totalitních režimů’ [Professor Josef Hutter: victim of two totalitarian regimes], HV, xxxi (1994), 363–72

‘Jan Dismas Zelenka: český skladatel v dobových souvislostech’ [Zelenka: a Czech composer in the context of his times], HV, xxxii (1995), 364–9

BIBLIOGRAPHY

‘Výběrová bibliografie PhDr. Tomislava Volka’, HV, xxix (1992), 276–81

‘Výběrová bibliografie za léta 1992–1996: PhDr. Tomislav Volek’, HV, xxxiv (1997), 364–6

CAMILLO SCHOENBAUM/R

Volk.

German firm of music publishers. It was founded by Arno Volk (b Würzburg, 14 Jan 1914; d Ingelheim, 7 July 1987), who studied music at the University of Cologne, taking the doctorate there in 1943 with a dissertation on Ernst Eichner’s life and works. In 1950 he founded the Arno Volk Verlag in Cologne; it was bought by the Gerig publishing group in 1957, when it became known as the Arno Volk-Verlag Hans Gerig KG; from that year Volk held a leading position with B. Schott’s Söhne in Mainz, becoming chairman of the board of directors in 1974. Since its foundation the Volk-Verlag has concentrated on publishing works on musicology and music education. The firm’s most ambitious project is the series Das Musikwerk, edited by K.G. Fellerer with the collaboration of internationally known musicologists; 48 volumes were produced in the 25 years from 1950, and from 1954 to 1976 some items were issued in English as the Anthology of Music. A series of records associated with the anthology, Opus Musicum, ran from 1972 to 1983. In 1952 the firm began the Beiträge zur Rheinischen Musikgeschichte (over 150 by 1996) and the Veröffentlichungen des Staatlichen Instituts für Musikforschung Preussischer Kulturbesitz (nine volumes by 1980); the periodical Analecta Musicologica and the series Musik-Taschenbücher and Concentus Musicus (publications of the musicological section of the German Historical Institute in Rome, from 1973) are also noteworthy. Among the firm’s performing editions are the series Polyphonia Sacra, choral music based on original texts (French chansons, German lieder, English madrigals, community songs) and solo cantatas of the 17th and 18th centuries. In 1980 Arno Volk sold the firm to Laaber-Verlag.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

K.G. Fellerer: ‘Volk, Arno’, Rheinische Musiker, viii, ed. D. Kämper (Cologne, 1974)

C. Dahlhaus and H. Oesch, eds.: Festschrift für Arno Volk (Cologne, 1974)

RUDOLF LÜCK/R

Völker, Franz

(b Neu-Isenburg, 31 March 1899; d Darmstadt, 4 Dec 1965). German tenor. Discovered by Clemens Krauss, he studied singing at Frankfurt and in 1926 was engaged at the opera there. In 1931 he moved to Vienna, in 1935 to Berlin, and in 1945 to Munich. He also sang at the festivals at Salzburg (from 1931) and Bayreuth (from 1933). After he retired he taught singing at the Musikhochschule in Stuttgart. He sang Florestan and Siegmund at Covent Garden in 1934 and Siegmund again in 1937. Admired particularly as Florestan, Lohengrin and Siegmund, he also had in his prime the flexibility for lighter, more lyrical roles (Ferrando); he appeared with distinction as Max (Der Freischütz) and the Emperor in Die Frau ohne Schatten, and late in his career he was praised for his Othello and Canio.

PETER BRANSCOMBE

Volkert, Franz (Joseph) (i)

(b Vienna, 12 Feb 1778; d Vienna, 22 March 1845). Austrian composer, organist and conductor. Although a score by him for a Don Juan play is recorded for the Theater in der Josefstadt as early as 1798, little is known about his formative years. He was organist at the Piarist church (Maria Treu) in the Josefstadt from 1801 at the latest, and at the Schottenstift from 1806. His name appears in the repertory lists of the Theater in der Leopoldstadt (from c1812) and the Josefstadt theatre (from 1815); he became deputy Kapellmeister to Wenzel Müller at the Leopoldstadt theatre in about 1814. Although he was replaced by Drechsler in 1824, he continued to write for this theatre: well over 100 scores for Singspiels, farces, parodies and pantomimes, some of them very successful in their day. Only Der Eheteufel auf Reisen (1821) seems to have been published in vocal score, though songs from many of the local plays and parodies appeared in printed series. Some of his most popular settings of Meisl (e.g. Der lustige Fritz, Das Gespenst auf der Bastei, Die beiden Spadifankerln) and Gleich (Der Eheteufel, Der alte Geist in der modernen Welt) notched up a large number of performances. He also wrote masses (Therese Rosenbaum sang in one at the Piarist Church on Easter Sunday 1801), organ and piano pieces, and songs.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ADB (A. von Weilen)

GroveO (P. Branscombe) [with full list of stage works]

MGG1 (K.M. Pisarowitz)

WurzbachL

F. Hadamowsky: Das Theater in der Wiener Leopoldstadt 1781–1860 (Vienna, 1934)

A. Bauer: Das Theater in der Josefstadt zu Wien (Vienna, 1957)

O. Biba: ‘Die Pflege der Kirchenmusik in der Piaristenkirche in Wien’, Festschrift 250 Jahre Piaristenpfarre Maria Treu (Vienna, 1969), 41–55

A. Lubin: ‘Salomon Sulzer's Schir Zion, Volume One: a Survey of the Contributors and its Contents’, Musica Judaica, viii (1985–6), 23–44

PETER BRANSCOMBE

Volkert, (Johann) Franz (ii)

(b Friedland [now Frýdlant], Bohemia, 4 Feb 1767; d Königgrätz [now Hradec Králové], 12 March 1831). Bohemian composer and church singer. He has been frequently confused with the Viennese composer of the same name, who was 11 years younger; it is made clear by the manuscript biographical sketches (one dated Königgrätz, 21 August 1826) in the archives of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Vienna, that there was no connection between them. A list of his works is given in MGG1 (K.M. Pisarowitz).

PETER BRANSCOMBE

Volkmann, (Friedrich) Robert

(b Lommatzsch, nr Dresden, 6 April 1815; d Budapest, 29 Oct 1883). German composer. His father, a Kantor and teacher in Lommatzsch, taught him the piano and the organ. At the age of 17 he entered the Gymnasium in Freiberg, Saxony, and studied music with A.F. Anacker. In 1836 he went to Leipzig, where he studied composition with C.F. Becker; there he also met Schumann and attended many of Mendelssohn's Gewandhaus concerts: both composers had considerable influence on his stylistic development.

Volkmann settled in Budapest in 1841, where, except for a period of three and a half years in Vienna (1854–8), he spent the rest of his life. He became a prominent musical figure, frequently meeting famous musicians who visited the city. Although he never learnt Hungarian, he was sympathetic to the growing spirit of Hungarian nationalism, and in 1875 he was appointed to the faculty of the newly founded National Hungarian Royal Academy of Music, serving with Liszt and Erkel.

Volkmann composed in practically all genres, but his several attempts at opera and oratorio were left unfinished. On the whole the vocal works are simple and folklike and are less significant than the instrumental music, which occupies the greater part of his output. Many works, such as the symphonies and string quartets, adhere closely to Classical models; others, particularly the String Serenade no.3, the Cello Concerto, the Overture to Shakespeare's Richard III and the B minor Piano Trio, reveal formal structures which might seem to link Volkmann with the New German School. The Trio was championed by Liszt, to whom it was dedicated, and admired by Bülow and Wagner. Among the piano works are several excellent collections of character-pieces for children; the best and most difficult solo piano work is a set of variations on the theme of Handel's The Harmonious Blacksmith. Volkmann's harmony is generally conservative and his thematic material is often nondescript; but rhythmically his music is somewhat more interesting, with its changing metres and shifting accents, at times making use of Hungarian folk rhythms.

His grand-nephew, Hans Volkmann (b Bischofswerda, 29 April 1875; d Dresden, 26 Dec 1946), a musicologist, studied in Munich and Berlin and taught in Dresden. His most significant writings are the monographs on Robert Volkmann and the two-volume study Emanuele d'Astorga (Leipzig, 1911–19).

WORKS

Sacred vocal: Off, S, chorus, orch; 2 masses, male vv; 6 choruses, 3 with pf acc., 3 unacc.; 2 songs, 1v, orch

Secular vocal: 29 partsongs, 7 for mixed chorus, 18 for male chorus, 3 for female/children's chorus, 1 for female/children's chorus, pf/hmn acc.; 6 songs, 2vv, pf; 2 arias, 1v, orch; 3 songs, 1v, vc, pf; 37 songs, 1v, pf

Orch: 2 syms.; 4 ovs.; 3 serenades, str; Vc Conc.; Concert Piece, pf, orch; incid music

Chbr and pf: 6 str qts; 2 pf trios; 2 sonatas, vn, pf; 2 sonatinas, vn, pf; shorter works, vn, pf and vc, pf; Sonatina, pf 4 hands; Sonata, 2 variation sets, pf solo; numerous character-pieces, pf solo and pf 4 hands

BIBLIOGRAPHY

H. Volkmann: Robert Volkmann: sein Leben und seine Werke (Leipzig, 1903)

H. Volkmann: Robert Volkmann (Leipzig, 1915, 2/1922)

H. Volkmann, ed.: Briefe von Robert Volkmann (Leipzig, 1917)

H. Volkmann: Thematisches Verzeichnis der Werke von Robert Volkmann (Dresden, 1937)

T.M. Brawley: The Instrumental Works of Robert Volkmann (diss., Northwestern U., 1975)

W. Hopkins: ‘The Solo Piano Works of Robert Volkmann (1815–1883)’, Music East and West: Essays in Honor of Walter Kaufmann, ed. T. Noblitt (New York, 1981), 327–38

C. Krischke: Untersuchungen zu den Streichquartetten von Robert Volkmann (1815–1883): ein Komponist zwischen Schumann und Brahms (Frankfurt, 1996)

THOMAS M. BRAWLEY

Volkonsky, Andrey Mikhaylovich

(b Geneva, 14 Feb 1933). Russian composer and harpsichordist. Volkonsky is descended from a famous noble Russian family who had emigrated to Switzerland before moving to Paris in 1945. There he received lessons from Nadia Boulanger (composition) and Dinu Lipatti (piano), but these were interrupted when the family returned to the Soviet Union in 1947. He was enrolled in the Music School at Tambov and in 1950 entered the Moscow Conservatory as a composition pupil of Shaporin. Three years later his Concerto for Orchestra was received favourably but, a week after that event, he was expelled from the conservatory, having been denounced by another student for possessing scores by Schoenberg and Stravinsky. He then allied himself with the nascent Baroque movement in Russia, spearheaded by Rudolf Barshay and the Chamber Orchestra of Moscow. His Piano Quintet (1954–5) also received largely favourable comment, but Lina Polyakova, reviewing the work in Sovetskaya muzïka, ‘resented the excessive complexity of writing and thought’ in the third movement, a passacaglia. Volkonsky had meanwhile become acquainted with Filip Herschkowitz; he soon wrote what was probably the first serial (in the Schoenbergian sense) work in Russia – Musica stricta (1956). The work was dedicated to and first performed by Marina Yudina. The pointilliste and Webernian aesthetic of his following works – including Two Japanese Songs and Serenade for an Insect – was totally new to Soviet ears, as was the complexity of techniques to his composer colleagues: in Les plaintes de Shchaza a series of eight notes undergoes eight inversions. But his proud ignorance of official policy irritated the ideologues, and Khrennikov and Kabalevsky in particular: by 1964, performance of Volkonsky's music was in practice banned. The Itinerant Concerto (1963–7) remained unperformed until 1989, when it was heard in the first Festival' Alternativa organized by his friends Mark Pekarsky and Alexey Lyubimov. The career of the young conductor Igor' Blazhkov, who had given the première of Les plaintes de Shchaza in Leningrad, was reduced to nothing while Boulez went on to conduct the work in London and Berlin in 1967. Replica, a music theatre work of 1970, is an incisive satire on the current orthodox Soviet view of the Western avant garde. Volkonsky, meanwhile, had founded the Madrigal Ensemble, specializing in Renaissance music that was practically unknown in the Soviet Union, but this foray into other realms clearly did not provide a satisfying enough alternative to active musical life as a composer: he emigrated to France in 1973 where he continued to work as an interpreter of early music and as a composer. His later works, such as Immobile, Psaume 148 and Was noch lebt… demonstrate the increasing refinement and sensitivity of his writing. An enthusiastic, cultured and talented musician, Volkonsky reckoned that his career in Russia had been dogged by the jealousy, servility and mediocrity of others. But arriving in Western Europe he found an organization of power and silence which, with the exception of Germany, was not so different from the one he had known in Russia, with aesthetic ideology replacing the political. Highly sceptical, he devoted himself to the Belaieff Foundation and its work in supporting young and impoverished musicians, and also to the writing of a vast treatise on the basis of different methods of temperament, that in Russia is used by those involved in the renewal of early music.

WORKS

(selective list)

titles given in Eng. where original is unavailable

Pf Sonata, 1949; Str Trio, 1950–51; Rus' (cant., after N. Gogol: Dead Souls), 1952; Obraz mira [The vision of the world], cant., Mez, chorus, org, orch, 1952; Conc. for Orch, 1953; Serenade, orch, 1953; Capriccio, orch, 1953–4; Pf Qnt, 1954–5; Str Qt no.1, op.5, 1955; Musica stricta, pf, 1956; Music for 12 Insts, 1957; Str Qt no.2, 1958; Serenade for an Insect, chbr orch, 1958; 2 Japanese Songs, children's chorus, elec insts, 1958

Va Sonata, 1955–6; Mirror Suite (Lorca), 1v, fl, gui, perc, chbr org, vn, 1960; Les plaintes de Shchaza, S, eng hn, perc, hpd, vn, va, 1961; Game for Three, fl, vn, hpd, 1962; Jam Session, 3 inst groups, 1962; Itinerant Conc. (Khayyam), 1v, fl, perc, vn, str, 1963–7; Les mailles du temps, 3 inst groups, 1969; Replica, music-theatre, vv, insts, 1970; Immobile, pf, orch, 1977–8; Lied, 4vv, ?1979; Was noch lebt… (J. Bobrowski), song cycle, Mez, str trio, ?1985; Psaume 148, 3vv/chorus, org, timp, 1988–9; Perekryostok [Crossroads] synth, pf, ob, 2 bn, 2 hn vn, db, 1992

music for radio, drama theatre and films

WRITINGS

‘Optimisticheskaya tragediya’, SovM (1954), no.4, p.25

‘Moscow Music Congress’, Time (15 April 1957), 59

Osnovy Temperatsii [The Foundations of Temperament] (Moscow, 1998)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

M. Sabinina: ‘Fortepianny kvintet Andreya Volkonskogo’ [The piano quintet of Andrey Volkonsky], SovM (1956), no.6, pp.20–24

L. Zhirov: ‘Udacha molodogo kompozitora’, Sovm (1959), no.2, p.125

‘Na konsertse M. Yudinoy’ [at Yudina’s concert], SovM (1961), no.7, pp.89–90

P. Moor: ‘In Russia, Music for May Day’, Musical America, xv (1965), 121

P. Moor: ‘The Russian Winter’, Musical America, xv (1965), 86

Yu. Kholopov: ‘O zhizne i muzyke Andreya Volkonskogo’ [The Life and Music of Andrey Volkonsky], Muzyka iz byvshego SSSR, ed. V. Tsenova (Moscow, 1994), 5–23

F. Lemaire: La musique du XXe siècle en Russie et dans les anciennes Républiques soviétiques (Paris, 1994)

FRANS C. LEMAIRE

Volkov, Kirill Yevgen'yevich

(b Moscow, 3 Dec 1943). Russian composer. At the Music School attached to the Moscow Conservatory Volkov studied composition with Grigory Frid and Pirumov, and the cello with Aleksandr Yegorov; subsequently, he graduated from the composition class of Khachaturian at the Moscow Conservatory (1967) and completed his postgraduate studies in 1969. He taught orchestration at the conservatory and composition at the Gnesin Pedagogical Institute of Music (1969–88); in 1988 he became head of composition at the institute (now the Russian Academy of Music). He was named Honoured Representative of the Arts of Russia in 1987.

Volkov was drawn towards folklore and making arrangements of folksongs from an early stage. Subsequently, he has written regularly for the bayan, the accordion and the Russian folk instrument orchestra. Volkov's penchant for transcribing folk material was developed in his operas, which tell of a woman's endurance and the sacrifice of love against a background of Russian peasant life. The composer's first notable success was the opera Muzhitskiy skaz (‘A Peasant's Tale’), which was produced for Moscow television in 1971.

Volkov attained wide recognition in the 1970s and 80s when his music was performed in the USSR and in western Europe. His concert pictures Andrey Rublyov were commissioned by the orchestra of Halle (former DDR) and first performed there on 20 September 1971; his Concerto for Orchestra was also performed in Halle in 1975. The opera A Peasant's Tale was staged in Berlin, Halle, Dresden and Dessau between 1975 and 1980.

From the mid-1980s choral music has been central to the composer's output. Indicative of his enthusiasm for Old Russian themes, a group of works are inspired by the lives of the Christian saints. Other characters are imbued with the heroism of contemporary life through the works of the Russian writers Rasputin and Rubtsov. Stylistically, the music shows influences of Myaskovsky, Prokofiev and Shaporin. From the late 1980s Volkov's interest in Russian chant has intensified. The composer's quest for an ethical ideal and moral perfection through the images of Holy Russia is accompanied by a stylistic rapprochement (in terms of expression, texture and spirit) with forms of monody dating from the Middle Ages.

WORKS

(selective list)

stage

Ops: Muzhitskiy skaz [A Peasant's Tale] (3, V. Kovda and Yu. Entin, after L. Seyfullina), 1969–70; Nash Gaydar [Our Gaydar] (2, S. Bogomazov), 1977; Zhivi i pomni [Live and Remember] (2, N. Kuznetsov, after V. Rasputin), 1982; Volïshchik iz Strakonits [The Bagpiper from Strakontsï] (2, N. Voronov, after I. Kaetan Tïl), 1984; Tyorkin, Tyorkin … (2, Volkov, after A. Tvardovsky), 1985

Ballet: Doktor Zhivago (2, K. Ural'sky, after B.L. Pasternak); other ballet suites

vocal

Vocal-orch:Sym. no.1 (trad. Russ.), Mez, orch, 1969; Ladoga (V. Semernin), song cycle, Mez, orch of Russ. folk insts, 1970Choral:Tikhaya moya rodina [My Calm Homeland] (cant., 4, N. Rubtsov), chorus, 1984; Slovo [The Word] (cant., 4, Lay of Igor's Campaign (Russ. 12th century)), chorus, 1985; Avvakum (choral mystery, 15, Life of Archpriest Avvakum), S, T, Bar, nar, chorus, 1989; Videniye na kholme [Apparition on the Hill] (cant., 3, Rubtsov), chorus, 1989; Conc., vc, chorus (Orthodox texts), 1996; Troparions for Sts Spiridon Trimifunt and Georgy Pobedonosets (Old Russ. trad. texts), chorus, 1996; choral music for filmsOther vocal:Song Cycle (poems of E. Meželaitis), T, pf, 1963; Russ. Folk Songs, Mez, pf, 1963–7; children's songs

instrumental

Orch:Kontsert-kartinï ‘Andrey Rublyov’ [Concert Pictures], 5 solo ww, orch 1970; Sym. no.2, 1971; Plïvyot lebed' [A Swan is Gliding], suite, orch of Russ. folk insts, 1971; Conc., prepared-selection bayan, chbr orch, 1972; Conc. for Orch, 1974Chbr:Sonata, vn, vc, 1955; Sonata diptych, vc, org, hpd, 1972; Sonatina impromptu, vn, pf, 1972; Concertino, bn, pf, 1974; Russkiye goroda [Russian Towns], suite, 4 hps, 1975; Qnt, fl, ob, cl, bn, hn, 1977; Stikhira Ioanna Groznogo [Stikhira of Ivan the Terrible], vc, bayan, 1994

Solo pieces for pf, bayan, prepared-selection bayan, org, accdn, vc, gui

Incid music for theatre, television and radio productions

Principal publishers: Sovetskiy kompozitor, Muzïka (Moscow)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A. Ivashkin: ‘Raznoobraznïye resheniya’ [Various solutions], SovM (1973), no.6, p.43 [Kontsert-Kartinï for orchestra]

V. Zolotaryov: ‘Zametki o dvukh kontsertakh dlya bayana’ [Notes about two concertos for bayan], SovM (1974), no.6, p.48

N. Ziv: ‘Kirill Volkov’, Kompozitorï Moskvï, i (Moscow, 1976), 49–68

P. Bely: ‘Neskol'ko ėskizov k portretu’ [A few sketches for a portrait], SovM (1983), no.7, pp.23–9

N. Ziv: ‘Proniknoveniye v su'dbï chelovechkiye’ [Peering into people's fates], Muzïka Rossii, vii (1988), 137–46 [the opera Zhivi i pomni]

N. Ziv: ‘Kirill Volkov’, Muzïka Rossii, ix (1991), 121–30

YURY IVANOVICH PAISOV

Volkov, Solomon (Moiseyevich)

(b Ura-Tyube, nr Leninabad [now Khodzent], Tajikistan, 17 April 1944). Russian musicologist and cultural historian, naturalized American. He graduated from the Leningrad Conservatory, where he studied the violin (1962–7) and did postgraduate work in musicology (1967–71). He published his first articles in the newspaper Rīgas Balss in 1959; these were followed by nearly 300 other articles in Soviet periodicals and collections (1959–75), as well as his book Young Composers of Leningrad (1971), with a preface by Shostakovich. Volkov was an early champion of nonconformist composers, such as Arvo Pärt and Giya Kancheli, and of the Soviet rock-and-roll movement. He wrote the libretto for the first Soviet rock opera, Vai tur ir kāds? (‘Is Anybody There?’, after Saroyan; music by Imants Kalniņš, 1971) and, as artistic director of the Leningrad Experimental Studio of Chamber Opera (1965–70), staged such works as Veniamin Fleishmann's Skripka Rotshil'da (‘Rothschild's Violin’; completed by Shostakovich) for the first time. In 1972 Volkov became a member of the Composers' Union and a senior editor of Sovetskaya muzïka. After emigrating to the USA in June 1976, he became a research associate at the Russian Institute of Columbia University, contributed articles to numerous Western periodicals and completed additional books.

Volkov is best known as the editor of Testimony, the memoirs that, he claims, Shostakovich related to him during dozens of meetings (1971–4). Testimony changed the perception of Shostakovich's life and work dramatically and influenced innumerable performances of his music. Although the authenticity of these reminiscences has been vigorously contested by the Soviet authorities and some scholars, evidence that has come to light since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, including endorsements from Shostakovich's children, seems to corroborate Testimony and vindicate Volkov (see A.B. Ho and D. Feofanov, eds.: Shostakovich Reconsidered, London, 1998). Testimony belongs to the great tradition of Russian musical memoirs, such as those by Glinka, Rimsky-Korsakov, Prokofiev and Stravinsky. It also set a standard for the budding genre of politically charged memoirs during the Soviet era. At a time when the Soviets tried to eradicate any notion of continuity and tradition in culture, Volkov collected reminiscences of Russian emigrés in the USA (Nathan Milstein, Vladimir Horowitz, Joseph Brodsky and Sergey Dovlatov), preserving and presenting them not only as a part of Russian cultural expression (then a heretical position), but also as a distinctive Russian-American phenomenon. In St. Petersburg: a Cultural History (1995), the first comprehensive investigation of this topic in any language, Volkov also stresses the importance of contributions by Russian-Americans (notably George Balanchine, Brodsky, Vladimir Nabokov and Stravinsky).

WRITINGS

Molodïe kompozitorï Leningrada [Young composers of Leningrad] (Leningrad, 1971)

‘Vospominaniye o “Leningradskoy vesne”’ [Remembrance of the ‘Leningrad Spring’], SovM (1974), no.1, pp.14–22

‘Principi fondamentali della regia musicale di Mejerchol'd’, NRMI, x (1976), 384–96

‘Musica come dissenso: tentativo di analisi sociologica’, Musica e politica, ed. M. Messinis and P. Scarnecchia (Venice, 1977), 275–81

‘The “New Folkloristic Wave” in Contemporary Soviet Music as a Sociological Phenomenon’, IMSCR XII: Berkeley 1977, 49–51

‘Dmitri Shostakovitch and “Tea for Two”’, MQ, lxiv (1978), 223–38

ed.: Testimony: the Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich (New York, 1979/R)

‘O neizbezhnoy vstreche: Shostakovich i Dostoyevsky’ [On the inevitable meeting: Shostakovich and Dostoyevsky], Rossiya/Russia: studi e ricerche, iv, ed. V. Strada (Turin, 1980), 199–222

‘Scissors and Music: Music Censorship in the Soviet Union’, Keynote (1983), 14–18

Balanchine's Tchaikovsky: Conversations with Balanchine on his Life, Ballet and Music (New York, 1985)

‘Yevgeny Mravinsky: Leningrad's Master Builder’, Keynote (1988), 14–16

with N. Milstein: From Russia to the West: the Musical Memoirs and Reminiscences of Nathan Milstein (New York, 1990)

‘Vozvrashcheniye traditsii: simvolika Rostropovicha’ [The return of tradition: Rostropovich's symbolism], Znamya (1990), no.1, pp.220–26

St. Petersburg: a Cultural History (New York, 1995)

Conversations with Joseph Brodsky (New York, 1998)

ALLAN B. HO

Volkstümliches Lied

(Ger.).

The name frequently given to the 18th-century lied before Schubert, yet erroneously applied to the genre before the last quarter of that century. Indeed, to associate the rise of the 18th-century lied in the 1740s with the interest shown during the latter part of the century with either real or pseudo-folk poetry and music is to obscure the genre’s allegiance to the burgeoning neo-classical aesthetic that in time would lead to a rejection of the Baroque in favour of musical classicism. As commentators from the 1740s onwards agreed, composers of the lied were to strive toward all things ‘natürlich’ and ‘einfältig’ (natural and artless). Only later, following James Macpherson’s 1760 Ossian ‘translations’ and Bishop Thomas Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765), did Johann Gottfried Herder issue his poetry collection Volkslieder (1778–9). Inspired by the latter, the true moving forces of ‘folklike’ songs would appear to be J.P.A. Schulz, in his Lieder im Volkston (i, 1782; ii, 1785; iii, 1790), and then J.F. Reichardt, who in 1782 wrote a short article ‘Volkslieder’ for the Musikalisches Kunstmagazin. Yet another writer who took up the topic was Gottfried August Bürger, who in his Herzensausguss über Volkspoesie (1776) admonished German poets to embrace folk poetry as a means of expressing true German values as well as cultural identity. Despite the ubiquity of the term Volkstümliches lied in musicological writings of the 20th century, and of ‘im Volkston’ as an expressive indication in music of the 19th century, the former term, especially, should be used with care.

See also Lied, §III.

JAMES PARSONS

Vollaerts, Jan W(ilhelmus) A(ntonius)

(b Haarlem, 5 Feb 1901; d Amsterdam, 1 Sept 1956). Dutch musicologist. He began studying at the diocesan minor seminary of Hageveld at Voorhout near Leiden in 1915, and later transferred to the nearby theological seminary of Warmond; in 1924 he entered the Jesuit order and attended Berchmans College at Oudenbosch and Katwijk College, The Hague. On 21 December 1929 he was ordained and began teaching music at St Canisius College, Nijmegen. He served both as director of the Nederlandsche R.K. Kerkmuziekschool of St Caecilia and as editor of the church music periodical Sint Gregorius-blad in Utrecht (1949–53); thereafter until his death he was director of the Schola Carolina (the school of late vocations), and conductor of the orchestra and choir at St Ignatius College, Amsterdam. His many articles and the courses he gave showed Vollaerts’s interest in the palaeography of medieval Gregorian chant notation, particularly the problem of rhythmic interpretation. In his major work, Rhythmic Proportions (1958), he set out to reconstruct the original rhythm of medieval chant, which he believed had perished by the year 1000. The heritage of this practice, he contended, can be traced back to the rhythmic systems used in the music of the early liturgies of the Greeks, Armenians, Syrians, Chaldees and Copts. He held that the notation in those few Western manuscripts with rhythmic indications (e.g. D-BAs liturg.6, F-CHRm 47, CH-E 121 and SGs 339, 359 and 390–91) was defective, and that their rhythmic signs represented mere graphic conventions without rhythmic meaning. Vollaerts was a mensuralist; the metrical relationships between notes of long and short durations in his transcriptions follow a 2:1 proportional scheme. Unlike other mensuralists, such as Houdard, Dechevrens, Peter Wagner, Fleischer and Bernoulli, who systematically assigned various fixed metrical values to neumes, Vollaerts sought to establish general rhythmic principles and rules. He placed far less emphasis on the St Gallen sources than did other mensuralists and the equalists of the Solesmes school, and considered the Messine notation in an early 10th-century gradual (F-LA 239) to be particularly valuable because the rhythmic indications used by the notator were so coherent and consistent. He also relied heavily on the Aquitanian notation in part of a troper (F-Pn lat.1118) and several Nonantolan fragments from north Italy to support his theories.

WRITINGS

Het gregoriaansche rhythme volgens Dom Mocquereau en Dom Jeannin (Malmberg, 1931)

Rythme grégorien et théoriciens médiévaux (Paris, 1932)

Rhythmic Proportions in Early Medieval Ecclesiastical Chant (Leiden, 1958, 2/1960) [incl. Vollaerts’s biography, p.ix, and list of writings and compositions, p.237–40]

JOHN A. EMERSON/KEES VELLEKOOP

Vollerthun, Georg

(b Fürstenau, Danzig, 29 Sept 1876; d Straussberg bei Berlin, 15 Sept 1945). German composer, teacher and conductor. He studied in Berlin with Tappert, Radecke and Gernsheim before becoming a theatre conductor in Prague, Berlin, Barmen and Mainz. From 1908 to 1910 he was in Paris, returning to Berlin where he taught singing before the war. After 1918 he retired from teaching until 1933 when the Nazis enforced a reorganization of the Berlin Hochschule für Musik and appointed him teacher of lieder interpretation and score reading, a post he was forced to relinquish in 1936 after a homosexual indiscretion.

Vollerthun sprang to prominence during the final years of the Weimar Republic when, as a staunch anti-modernist, he joined the Berlin section of the Kampfbund für Deutsche Kultur in order to promote National Socialist cultural policies. He earned much praise in the conservative musical press for his conventional songs and for his neo-Wagnerian Island-Saga (1924), regarded by many to be one of the purest forms of Nordic opera. Hitler apparently admired his third opera Der Freikorporal (1931) for its spirited inclusion of some of his favourite march motifs, which are employed in a rather banal manner to represent the confronting forces of Friedrich Wilhelm I and August the Strong of Saxony. That the librettist of this particular opera was of Jewish origin seems to have been of little consequence, as the opera received several performances, including a run at the Städtische Oper in Berlin under Schillings, during the early years of the Nazi regime.

WORKS

(selective list)

Ops: Veede (Musikdrama, 2, G. Kiesau), Kassel, 1916; Island-Saga (Musiktragödie, 3, B. Tiersch), Munich, National, 1925; Der Freikorporal (3, R. Lothar, after G. Freytag), Hanover, 1931; Das königliche Opfer (3, O. Schrenk), Hanover, 1942; Des Königs Page (Schrenk, after C.F. Meyer), unperf.

Lieder, opp.2, 11, 16, 19

Other vocal: 3 Liederkreis (A. Miegel), op.20, Mez, orch, 1927; 4 Lieder der Anmut, op.24, v, pf, 1932; Lieder der Andacht, op.31, 1936; Prooeminion (J.W. von Goethe), op.23, mixed choir unacc., 1932; Lob Gottes und der Musik (cant., W. Vesper, C. Becker), op.30, chorus, fl, vn, org/pf, 1937; Deutsches Liederspiel (Miegel, Liliencron, Anacker, Lange), op.32, male/mixed choir, 1938

Other works: Alt-Danzig Suite, op.25, orch, 1938; Barock-Suite, op.29, pf, 1936

Principal publishers: Bote & Bock, Fürstner

BIBLIOGRAPHY

R.C. Müschler: ‘Georg Vollerthun’, ZfM, Jg.100 (1933), 989–92

G. Vollerthun: ‘Meine Absichten in die Oper’, ZfM, Jg.100 (1933), 844–5

E. Krieger: Georg Vollerthun, ein ostdeutscher Komponist (Berlin, 1942)

C. Niessen: Die deutsche Oper der Gegenwart (Regensburg, 1944)

ERIK LEVI

Volles Werk.

A 17th-century German term for Full organ.

Vollkommene Kadenz

(Ger.).

See Perfect cadence.

Volodos, Arcadi

(b Leningrad, 24 Feb 1972). Russian pianist. The son of professional singers, he began his musical studies at the Leningrad Conservatory, where he concentrated first on singing and then on conducting. It was not until he entered the Moscow Conservatory at the age of 16, when his extraordinary pianistic gifts were recognized by his piano teacher there, Galina Eguizarovo (who also taught Radu Lupu), that he dedicated himself to the piano. At the age of 21 Volodos moved to Paris and studied with Jacques Rouvier at the Conservatoire, before studying with Dmitri Bashkirov in Madrid. Volodos's first recording (for Sony Classical), traversing a range of piano transcriptions including his own witty and irreverent treatment of Mozart's ‘Rondo alla Turca’, dazzles with its effortless virtuosity; this disc also includes two arrangements by Horowitz memorized from Horowitz's own recordings (they were never originally written down). In his own arrangements of Rachmaninoff songs and Feinberg's transcription of the Largo from Bach's Trio Sonata no.5 (bwv529) Volodos also demonstrates an ear of rare refinement for sonority, colour and voicing. Indeed, it is his control of sonority, the varied quality of his sound and care for ravishing details that links him with the great tradition of Romantic pianism. His second recording, of his Carnegie Hall début (21 October 1998), contrasts further virtuoso display pieces with mature readings of Skryabin (Piano Sonata no.10) and Schumann (Bunte Blätter). One of the most exciting pianists of his generation, Volodos stands out among his peers for his potent combination of an extraordinary pianistic mechanism with a daring musical imagination.

TIM PARRY

Vologda.

City in north-west Russia, first mentioned in 1147. Right up to the 20th century music in Vologda and the adjoining territory continued in its old patterns of church music, folklore and music associated with town life or the lives of the landed gentry, of which the most thoroughly researched is folklore. The collection and study of folk material was begun in the 17th century by the priest Richard James, a member of the English embassy headed by Duddlie Diggs, and ethnomusicological studies were vigorously pursued in the 19th and 20th centuries. As to church music, by the end of the 19th century Vologda had 47 churches, two monasteries, a seminary, an ecclesiastical school and a diocesan women’s school, but there are no special studies of Russian Orthodoxy in the Vologda lands, and music on the country estates and in the town has received scant attention.

Modern musical life is centred on the Philharmonia, founded in 1944, which organizes concerts in the town and region with local and invited artists, and which has a small concert hall with superb acoustics, formerly the house of the Dvoryanskoye Sobraniye (Noble Assembly). Choral music occupies a leading place. The male choir Khorovaya Akademiya (Choral Academy) works under the aegis of the Philharmonia, and has appeared successfully in Europe and America; its repertory consists primarily of Russian Orthodox music. The town also has seven choirs attached to functioning Orthodox churches (from five to 20 members in each), the chorus of the Spaso-Prilutsk Monastery (up to ten members), and about ten amateur choirs, of which the Gorodskaya Akademicheskaya Khorovaya Kapella (Town Academic Choral Cappella, founded in 1968) and the chamber choir Soglasiye (Concord, founded in 1991 and in 1995 appointed the main public organization responsible for amateur choral singing) are close to a professional level.

The oldest music school is the Vologda Music School (founded in 1919), which has four orchestras (a chamber orchestra, a folk orchestra, a wind band and a jazz orchestra), as well as an ensemble of violinists and a mixed choir. In 1976 a faculty was opened at the Vologda Pedagogical University to train music teachers for middle general schools. There are also five music schools in the town providing a comprehensive musical education at beginners’ level, and a special school for particularly gifted children, where the free training is directed towards their acquiring a profession in music. An important link in musical education is the Children’s Musical Theatre Studio (opened in 1991), whose aim is to provide a comprehensive artistic education by having children put on musical productions. The boys’ choir and the ballet studio (The Firebird is among the works staged by the latter) have acquired an independent status. Interesting premières are staged annually by the ballet studio of the Dvorets Kul'turï Zheleznodorozhnikov (Railway Workers’ Palace of Culture), which was founded in 1958 and has produced ballets on Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony and Verdi’s Requiem. The town has a factory, Nota, which makes bayans and accordions.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

F. Lagovsky: Narodnïye pesni Kostromskoy, Vologodskoy, Novgorodskoy i Yaroslavskoy guberniy [Folksongs of the Kostoma, Vologda, Novgorod and Yaroslav provinces] (Cherepovets, 1877)

F.M. Istomin and S.M. Lyapunov, eds.: Pesni russkogo naroda, sobranï v guberniyakh Vologodskoy, Vyatskoy, Kostromskoy v 1883 g. [Songs of the Russian people, collected in the provinces of Vologda, Vyatka and Kostroma in 1883] (St Petersburg, 1889)

F. Lagovsky: Narodnïye pesni Kostromskoy, Vologodskoy, Novgorodskoy i Yaroslavskoy guberniy [Folksongs of the Kostroma, Vologda, Novgorod and Yaroslav provinces], ii (Kostroma, 1923)

E.V. Gippius and Z.V. Eval'd, eds.: Narodnïye pesni Vologodskoy oblasti [Folksongs of the Vologda district] (Leningrad, 1938)

V.V. Gura, ed.: Skazki, pesni i chastushki Vologodskoy oblasti [Fairy tales, songs and chastushki of the Vologda district] (Severo-Zapadnyy, 1965)

M. Bonfel'd, ed.: Russkiye narodnïye pesni Vologodskoy oblasti [Russian folksongs of the Vologda district] (Severo-Zapadnyy, 1973)

E. Kirillova: Muzïkal'naya zhizn' Vologodskoy obalsti (1917–1982 gg.): bibliograficheskiy ukazatel' [The musical life of the Vologda district: bibliographical index] (Vologda, 1986)

R. Balakshin: Imenoslov, znamenitïye lyudi v Vologde: bibliograficheskiy ukazatel' [Glossary of famous people in Vologda: bibliographical index] (Vologda, 1994)

MORIS SHLYOMOVICH BONFEL'D

Voloshinov, Viktor Vladimirovich

(b Kiev, 4/17 Oct 1905; d 21 Oct 1960). Russian composer and teacher. He studied composition with A.N. Butskoy at the Lysenko Institute in Kiev (1924–5) before entering the Leningrad Conservatory where he attended the classes of M. Chernov and Shcherbachyov, completing postgraduate work with the latter in 1932. He taught theory in Leningrad music colleges from 1927, and in 1932 he started teaching composition at the conservatory (from 1935 as senior lecturer and from 1952 as professor). He gained his Kandidat degree in 1947 for his dissertation Printsipï garmonizatsii russkoy narodnoy pesni v svyazi s osobennostyami yevo ladovogo stroyeniya (‘The principles of harmonization of Russian folksong in connection with the characteristics of its modal structure’). After Shostakovich and Shcherbachyov were denounced in 1948, Voloshinov was appointed head of the composition department and under conditions of severe ideological pressure, he managed to withstand party dictates and preserve the high creative and academic principles of the conservatory. His pupils included Akbarov, A. Chernov, V.P. Chistyakov and Tishchenko.

WORKS

(selective list)

Stage: Slava [Glory] (op, V. Gusev), 1938; Sil'neye smerti [Stronger than Death] (op, Yu. Kalganov), 1943; Dzhazair (ballet), 1944; about 20 incid music pieces

Orch: March, 1932; Khorovod [Round Dance], Russ. folk orch, 1935; Uzbekskaya syuita [An Uzbek Suite], 1944; Arkticheskaya simfoniya [An Arctic Sym.], 1949, unfinished

Choral: Kolyada [New Year's Deity] (V. Bryusov), solo vv, chorus, orch, 1924; Pesni: detskiye, pionyorskiye, komsomol'skiye, krasnoarmeyskiye [Songs for Children, Pioneers, the Communist Youth League and the Red Army] (S. Tret'yakov and others), 1928–60; 2 khora [2 Choruses] (A.S. Pushkin), 1937; 4 khora (I. Utkin), 1959

Chbr and solo inst: Marsh kukol [Dolls' March], pf, 1925; Poėma, pf, 1925; Ariya, pf, 1926; Pf Sonata no.1, 1926; Sonatina, fl, bn, pf, 1927; Syuita, pf, 1928; Pf Sonata no.2, 1929; Plyasovaya [Dance Song], pf, 1929; Conc., vn, org, 1933, rev. 1954; Str Qt, 1934, rev. 1958; Ballada, pf, 1936; Pokhodnïy marsh [Field March], pf, 1944; March, cl, pf, 1947; Romance, cl, pf, 1947; Romance, vn, pf, 1950; Sonata, vn, pf, 1950

Songs: Svetlïy mir [The Bright World] (children's songs, A. Blok and K. Bal'mont), 1924; Kitayskiye teni [Chinese Shadows] (5 lyrical songs, Chin. poets), 1925; Sten'ka Razin, (suite, V. Kamensky), spkr, pf, 1928; Na zapade [In the West] (song cycle, Soviet and Western poets), 1932; Kirovu ‘Kak belïy zimniy den'’ [To Kirov ‘Like a White Winter's Day’] (S. Kirsanov), 1v, pf, 1934; 4 liricheskikh prelyudii [4 Lyrical Preludes] (Sappho, Li Tai Po), female v, pf, 1934; Ne stalo smeyushchegosya Kirova [The Laughing Kirov is no More] (Ya. Loptsi), 1v, pf, 1934; Otvaga [Courage] (4 songs, J.W. von Goethe, H. Heine), 1v, pf, 1935; 8 romansov (M. Lermontov), 1v, pf, 1940; Russkiy chelovek [The Russian Person] (song cycle, S. Vasil'yev, N. Gribachyov), 1950; Slova lyubvi [Words of Love] (song cycle, Gribachyov), 1955

WRITINGS

with A. Groman-Solovtsov: ‘Bėtkhoven v ispolnenii dvukh germanskikh dirizhyorov: O. Frida i Ye. Yokhum’ [Beethoven as performed by two German conductors: Fried and Jochum], Za proletarskuyu muzïku (1932), nos.4–5

‘Moya rabota nad liricheskoy pesney’ [My work on the lyrical song], Muzïkal'naya samodeyatel'nost' (1934), no.6

‘Tvorchestvo molodïkh’ [The creative work of the young], Vecherniy Leningrad (30 Sept 1953)

‘O podgotovke kompozitorov v RSFSR’ [The training of composers in the RSFSR], SovM (1958), no.8, pp.31–7

BIBLIOGRAPHY

‘V.V. Voloshinov’, Sovetskaya kul'tura (1 Dec 1960) [obituary]

I. Gusin: Viktor Vladimirovich Voloshinov: ocherk zhizni i tvorchestva [Voloshinov: an outline of his life and creative work] (Leningrad, 1962), 88

B. Tishchenko: ‘O moyom uchitele’ [About my teacher], SovM (1963), no.11, pp.54–8

A. Dmitriyev: ‘Concerto for violin and organ by V.V. Voloshinov’, Issledovaniya, Stat'i, Nablyudeniya (Leningrad, 1989), 122–8

IOSIF GENRIKHOVICH RAYSKIN

Volpe [Rovettino, Rovetta, Ruettino], Giovanni Battista

(b Venice, ?c1620; d Venice, late 1691). Italian organist and composer. He was the nephew of Giovanni Rovetta and is sometimes referred to as ‘Rovettino’ or ‘Ruettino’ and in documentary sources as ‘G.B. Rovetta’, though Volpe was his family name. He rose through the musical ranks at the basilica of S Marco, Venice, to become maestro di cappella in August 1690. He was first retained in 1645 to play one of the basilica’s two positive organs. He substituted at the second principal organ during Cavalli’s absence, 1660–62, and served as official second organist from January 1665 until January 1678, when he was named first organist. He was also a priest and held various clerical positions at S Marco. He was associated too with the orphanage-conservatory of the Mendicanti and the S Cecilia Society (a musicians’ fraternity). Reports that he taught Benedetto Marcello are unlikely to be true. He was noted as a harpsichord player and in 1675 appears to have been the first S Marco musician regularly engaged to play the instrument, described as a spinetta, for lessons during Holy Week. His treatise Il prattico al cembalo, admired by Francesco Gasparini, cannot now be traced.

Volpe composed the music for three operas – La costanza di Rosimonda (Venice, 1659; Milan, 1675), Gli amori di Apollo e di Leucotoe (Venice, 1663; score in I-Vnm; excerpt in Rosand, 665–7) and La Rosilena (Venice, 1664) – all to librettos by Aureli and all originally presented at the Teatro di SS Giovanni e Paolo. He has sometimes also been credited with Argiope (Venice, 1649), otherwise attributed to Rovetta and Leardini, and in 1665 he was entrusted with conducting rehearsals of Antonio Cesti’s Tito. He also brought out, no later than 1649, a volume of eight-part Vesperi, now lost. Motets by him appeared in Bartolomeo Marcesso’s Sacra corona (1656) and Marino Silvani’s Sacri concerti (1668). He oversaw the publication of madrigals (op.9, 1646) and motets (op.10, 1647) by Rovetta. Volpe was similarly instrumental in arranging the reprinting by Phalèse of Rovetta’s Manipule e messe musicus (op.10) and Bicinia sacra (op.3, duets only) in 1648 and Gemma musicalis (the remainder of op.3) in 1649. In the dedication of Rovetta’s op.10, Volpe praised performances of Cavalli’s music for their texts, singing and accompaniment.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

CaffiS

F. Gasparini: Il armonico pratico al cimbalo (Venice, 1708/R)

F.T. Arnold: The Art of Accompaniment from a Thorough-Bass (London, 1931/R)

E. Selfridge-Field: Venetian Instrumental Music from Gabrieli to Vivaldi (Oxford, 1975, 3/1994)

E. Rosand: Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice (Berkeley, 1991)

E. Selfridge-Field: ‘Rovetta’s Music for Holy Week’, La cappella musicale di San Marco nell’età moderna: Venice 1994, 401–41

ELEANOR SELFRIDGE-FIELD

Volpe, Lelio della.

See Della Volpe, Lelio.

Volpi, Giacomo.

See Lauri-Volpi, Giacomo.

Volta (i) [lavolta, levolto]

(It.: ‘turn’; Fr., Ger. Volte).

A dance of Provençal origin popular at court from about 1550 to 1650. It was unique among court dances of the period in that the couples danced in close embrace, and it was known in France from at least the time of Henri II (1547–59). From the memoirs of Marguerite de Valois (see Michaud and Poujoilat) it is known that ‘les Provençales’ danced ‘la volte avec les timballes [cymbals]’. Arbeau provided the only written description of the dance (Orchésographie, 1588) and spoke of it as ‘coming into fashion’. It reached its peak of popularity during the reign of Henri IV (1589–1610), but his prudish son Louis XIII (1610–13) banned it from court, probably because of its suggestive movements (Arbeau left it to others to judge ‘whether in the Volte both honour and health are not concerned and threatened’). This may have precipitated its decline and it was last mentioned as a contemporary dance by Mersenne in 1636.

The volta was also popular outside France and many examples appeared in German and English sources around 1600. Engravings of wedding dances, made by Heinrich Aldegrever of Westphalia as early as 1538, show some of the characteristic movements of the volta, and at Penshurst Place, Kent, there is a celebrated painting depicting the volta, probably rather earlier than Arbeau's description.

Cesare Negri's Nuove inventioni di balli (1604) contains a description of a dance entitled ‘La nizzarda’, the steps of which have much in common with the volta. Arbeau called the volta a kind of galliard, which it resembles in fitting energetic and even violent movements into a rather slow beat in triple time. In spite of the vigorous character of the dance, the music must be taken at a steady speed, with much the same swinging lilt as the galliard though not quite as slowly. The characteristic feature of the dance, from which its name derived, is a series of three-quarter turns, partly executed with a high jump by each partner and partly in the following, still more exhilarating manner: the gentleman throws his left arm round the lady's back, clasping her round her waist; with his right hand placed firmly beneath her busk, and his left thigh pushing her forward, he helps her with a powerful thrust to rise into the air. If this thrust and her spring are timed to perfection, she will rise with surprising ease to a remarkable altitude, while both partners turn rapidly; but it is evident that any disposition to hurry the music can lead only to catastrophe.

The music for the volta is commonly written with six crotchets in a bar, but should be taken as a simple 3/4, with each bar mentally divided into two. The reason for this notation is that the dance itself falls into units of two bars of 3/4 time, as is also the case with the galliard, usually written in 3/2 time. As with many of the older dances, the term was originally applied to a single-line melody, such as the one in the III. livre d'airs de cour et de différents auteurs (1619¹⁰; ex.1). Voltas appeared in arrangements for lute, keyboard and ensembles. Adrian Le Roy included in his Instruction (1568) a lute arrangement of one of the earliest surviving Provençal melodies called ‘La volte’, which appeared in Jean d'Estrée's Tiers livre de danseries (1559), and the Italian lute tablatures of G.C. Barbetta (1585) and G.A. Terzi (1599) also include examples. Michael Praetorius's Terpsichore (1612) includes 48 voltas and Robert Ballard's first and second books (1611 and 1614) contain seven. The Dolmetsch family possess a lute manuscript of about 1610 which contains 27 voltas, but in the entire Fitzwilliam Virginal Book there are only two examples, neither elaborately treated; one is by Morley, the other by Byrd (ex.2). Although the early 17th-century volta appeared occasionally as the last movement of an ensemble suite (e.g. Thomas Simpson’s Opusculum newer Pavanen, 1610), unlike many court dances of the Renaissance and later it apparently did not develop into a more or less independent instrumental form during its declining vogue in the ballroom. By the middle of the century it appeared only seldom; Louis Couperin's keyboard compositions, for example, include only one volta.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

MersenneHU

MGG1 (‘Volte’; D. Heartz)

T. Arbeau: Orchésographie (Langres, 1588/R, 2/1589/R; Eng. trans., 1948, 2/1967)

J.F. Michaud and J. Poujoilat: Nouvelle collection des mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de France depuis le XIIIe siècle jusqu'à la fin du XVIIIe, x (Paris, 1838), 403 [memoirs of Marguerite de Valois]

F. de Ménil: Histoire de la danse à travers les âges (Paris, 1905), 167–8

C. Sachs: Eine Weltgeschichte des Tanzes (Berlin, 1933; Eng. trans., 1937/R)

V. Alford: ‘Notes on Three Provençal Dances’, JEFDSS, iv (1940–45), 67–76

M. Dolmetsch: Dances of England and France from 1450–1600 (London, 1949/R)

ROBERT DONINGTON

Volta (ii)

(It.).

In the Italian poetic forms of the 13th–15th-century Ballata and the 16th-century Barzelletta, a couplet or quatrain at the end of the stanza similar in structure to the ripresa; the last line of the volta always rhymes with the first line of the ripresa, so that it acts as a bridge to the return of the refrain.

Volta (iii)

(It.: ‘time’).

The indications ‘prima volta’ and ‘seconda volta’ are used, particularly at the ends of repeated sections, to instruct the performer that the bars so marked are to be played only the first or the second time through; they are often abbreviated to 1ma and 2da or to 1 and 2.

Voltage control

(Fr. commande par tension; Ger. Spannungssteuerung; It. controllo di tensione).

In electronic music, a means by which the functions of certain electronic devices may be controlled by the application of external voltages. A change in the voltage applied results in a proportional change in the behaviour of the signal-producing or processing device that is being controlled. Theoretically any function of such a device that can be controlled manually (for instance, by turning a knob) can be made to respond to applied voltages. In practice the most usual applications are to be found in the voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) and the voltage-controlled amplifier (VCA), in which respectively frequency and amplitude may be controlled by an external voltage. The range of voltages used in musical applications of voltage control is normally quite small: in the case of the voltage-controlled oscillator it is typical to find a ratio of one volt per octave. The lack of a global standard for voltage ratios, however, meant that it was often impossible to create such links between devices from different manufacturers.

One of the first pioneers of electronic music to appreciate the importance of the principle of voltage control was the Canadian inventor Hugh Le Caine. His ‘electronic sackbut’, completed in 1948, incorporated a VCO; in 1955 he designed a multichannel tape recorder whose speed could be varied by control voltages operated from a three-octave keyboard or a ribbon controller. In the USA Harald Bode made limited applications of voltage control in a modular ‘signal processor’ or sound synthesizer constructed in 1959–60, which in turn influenced Robert A. Moog when he began experimenting in 1964 with what was to become, at the end of that year, the first commercially manufactured analogue synthesizer. In 1962 Donald Buchla constructed independently several voltage-controlled modules, from which the Buchla synthesizer was developed.

The principle of voltage control is central to the operation of analogue (especially modular) synthesizers, many of whose component devices are voltage-controllable. Thus a device may be used to control one or more others, which in turn may control further devices. To take a simple example, a low-frequency oscillator (that is, one producing frequencies below the audible spectrum) may be used as the source of a varying voltage to control another oscillator that operates within the audio spectrum; the frequency of the latter oscillator tracks the waveshape of the former, producing an audible variation in pitch (or, if applied to its amplitude, as a vibrato). This kind of automated frequency control led to the development of the sequencer, a device designed to deliver sequences of control voltages. Any piece of equipment capable of delivering a variable voltage within an appropriate range could be used as the controller of voltage-controlled devices, leading to a proliferation of control equipment employing many different principles of interaction between the user and the electronic circuitry.

Keyboards and ribbon controllers were available with the first analogue synthesizers. A synthesizer keyboard is generally of conventional design; to each key is assigned a voltage from a pre-set range of voltages divided into equal fractional steps, which can often be increased or decreased by the user, so that any desired interval steps (including microtones) can be delivered to a voltage-controlled oscillator. Some keyboards can deliver a second control voltage by means of a circuit that tracks the speed of the key as it is depressed. Typically this is sent to a voltage-controlled amplifier, so that a faster stroke gives a louder sound. However, the decision as to what is controlled by what is normally the choice of the user: the second control voltage could as easily control a second oscillator or a voltage-controlled filter. In other keyboards, pressure on the keybed or lateral movement of the key provides further sources of control voltages.

The glide strip or ribbon controller consists of a contact strip (usually of metal) placed above a strip of electrically resistive material. A single contact, made by pressing the finger down on the ribbon, causes a certain voltage to be sent to the receiving device, and the signal continues until the contact is broken by lifting the finger. By sliding the finger along the strip, continuous transitions between control voltages may be effected, resulting in glissandos if the output is sent to a voltage-controlled oscillator. Later control devices included the joystick, which simultaneously controls two voltage outputs, touch-plates, which deliver voltages proportional to the degree of capacitance between the performer and the plate, and photoelectric cells, the action of which is dependent upon the amount of light falling on them. External signals, such as those created by an acoustic musical instrument, can be converted into control voltages by means of an envelope follower or a frequency-to-voltage converter. A random voltage source, externally triggered, delivers unpredictable voltages from a source of white or pink noise. More unusual sources of control voltages have been tapped, for example the earth’s magnetic field (by Charles Dodge), and the alpha waves of the brain (by David Rosenboom and others), gathered by means of electrodes attached to the scalp.

In the early 1980s the American composer Morton Subotnick developed a system of control voltages in which amplitude-modulated oscillator tones were pre-recorded on tape (normally three to each track). During performance or recording, the voltage-control information was extracted by band-pass filters and envelope followers and relayed to the appropriate sound modules. In this way, several control voltages could be applied concurrently. This system, called ‘ghost electronics’ because only the effects, and not the sounds, of the pre-recorded tracks are heard, was used both for tape compositions (for instance the Butterfly series) and live electronic pieces. Voltage control provided composers and performers with many means of controlling their electro-acoustic sound material. The greater precision of control permitted by digital technology led to the development of a wider diversity of controller interfaces for composition and performance. Moog’s Big Briar company has mainly concentrated on this area, which is also featured in some non-commercial digital synthesizers. Voltage control has been superseded by MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface), introduced in 1983, a far more wide-ranging digital system that can be applied to all MIDI-equipped devices, regardless of manufacturer.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

H. Bode: ‘A New Tool for the Exploration of Unknown Electronic Music Instrument Performances’, Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, ix/4 (1961), 264–6

H. Le Caine: ‘A Tape Recorder for Use in Electronic Music Studios and Related Equipment’, JMT, vii/1 (1963), 83–97

R.A. Moog: ‘Voltage-Controlled Electronic Music Modules’, Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, xiii/3 (1965), 200–06

S. Tempelaars: ‘Voltage Control in the Utrecht University Studio’, Electronic Music Reports, no.1 (1969), 68–77

D. Johnson: ‘A Voltage-Controlled Sequencer’, Electronic Music Reports, no.4 (1971), 119–28

A. Strange: Electronic Music: Systems, Techniques and Controls (Dubuque, IA, 1972, 2/1983)

J. Chadabe: ‘The Voltage-Controlled Synthesizer’, The Development and Practice of Electronic Music, ed. J.H. Appleton and R.C. Perera (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1975), 138–88

H.S. Howe: Electronic Music Synthesis: Concepts, Facilities, Techniques (New York, 1975)

F.L. McCarty: ‘Electronic Music Systems: Structure, Control, Product’, PNM, xiii/2 (1975), 98–125

C.A.G.M. Tempelaars: Sound Signal Processing (Utrecht, 1977)

RICHARD ORTON/HUGH DAVIES

Volte

(Fr., Ger.).

See Volta (i).

Volti subito

(It.: ‘turn [the page] immediately’).

A direction found particularly where the player might suppose that the piece finished at the end of the page. It is usually abbreviated to V.S. J.S. Bach used the macaronic form volti cito (cito, Lat.: ‘quickly’) in, for instance, the Anna Magdalena book. The correct Latin form, which is also occasionally found, is verte.

Voltz, Hans.

See Folz, Hans.

Voluda, Ginés de.

See Boluda, Ginés de.

Volumier [Woulmyer], Jean Baptiste

(b ?Spain, c1670; d Dresden, 7 Oct 1728). Flemish violinist and composer. He was educated at the French court, and in 1692 became a violinist in the Elector of Brandenburg's court chapel in Berlin, where he was soon appointed Konzertmeister and given charge of dance and ballet music. As court dancing-master he was required to compose music for various ballets; he or C.F. Rieck composed Florens Frühlingsfest (1696), and he provided the entrances, dances and arias in the marriage opera of the crown prince Friedrich Wilhelm I in 1706, Der Sieg der Schönheit über die Helden (the remainder was written by Finger and Stricker). In neither case does the music survive, although the texts by the court poet Johann von Besser were published (Leipzig, 1732). Volumier was dismissed in 1708 after a dispute and entered the service of the Saxon court at Dresden, where in 1709 he was appointed Konzertmeister. He introduced there, as he had at Berlin, the French style of performance, to suit the fondness for French culture at the court. Volumier built up an orchestra of French profile, dividing the strings in to six parts (playing with uniform bowing) and using flutes instead of recorders, oboes instead of cornetts, and bassoons and horns. Under his direction the development of the Dresden chapel reached a new peak and the golden age of the Dresden violin school began. Veracini and Pisendel contributed to this improvement; the latter succeeded Volumier and raised the standard of the orchestra's performance still further, now, after an Italian increase in the orchestra, cultivating an amalgamation of French, Italian and German style elements, the so-called mixed or German style. Quantz stated in his autobiography (in F.W. Marpurg: Historisch-kritische Beiträge, i, Berlin, 1754/R) that he never heard an orchestra better than the Dresden one under Volumier. Volumier was an excellent violinist, and a friend of Bach's; he initiated the competition between Bach and Louis Marchand (from which Marchand withdrew). None of his music survives; his many ballets and his violin works were mostly destroyed during the Prussian bombardment of Dresden in 1760.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

FürstenauG

MatthesonGEP

MoserGV

J.A. Hiller: Lebensbeschreibungen berühmter Musikgelehrtern und Tonkünstler neuerer Zeit, i (Leipzig, 1784/R)

C. Sachs: Musik und Oper am kurbrandenburgischen Hofe (Berlin, 1910/R)

H. Schnoor: Dresden: vierhundert Jahre deutsche Musikkultur, ed. E. Bunkowsky (Dresden, 1948)

O. Landmann: Dresden, Johann Georg Pisendel und der ‘deutsche Geschmack’ (Blackenburg, 1981), 23–4

DIETER HÄRTWIG

Voluntary.

A freely composed or improvised piece, usually for the organ in the context of a church service. The term is occasionally met with outside the church, as for example when Burney extemporized at the harpsichord before a distinguished audience in Venice: ‘I played a Voluntary, for I could neither see, nor remember anything, I was so frightened’ (Dr Burney's Musical Tours in Europe, ed. P.A. Scholes, London, 1959, i, p.135). In his remarks about improvisation Roger North discussed the aptitudes necessary in an organist who would create such a piece and the chief characteristics of the style. In the Anglican church the voluntary has been played at the Offertory (at which point before the Commonwealth the choral part of the Communion service often ended) and after the psalms or the second lesson at Matins and Evensong, as well as before and after the service, as is usual today.

As a musical term the word ‘voluntary’ is imprecise. At various times it has overlapped with ‘verse’, ‘fancy’ and ‘fugue’ as well as with less frequently used terms. The word ‘verse’, indicating a short organ piece, is derived from the custom whereby the organ provided a substitute for the chant in the Latin rite, playing the odd-numbered verses of a hymn or other item in alternation with the choir (see Organ hymn). There is no necessary formal distinction between the voluntaries and verses of Thomas Tomkins and John Blow, for example, although ‘voluntary’ was generally adopted for works in two or more sections. ‘Fancy’ is an anglicization of the Italian ‘fantasia’; it too was used by Tomkins interchangeably with voluntary and ‘verse’. The word ‘fugue’ (or ‘fuge’) is found in copies of some works of Blow and his contemporaries. They are of course fugal in character; but they are highly irregular, and the term, then and later, did not exclude the possibility of an independent prelude (the expression ‘prelude and fugue’ seems to have been unknown). The word appears on the title-pages of publications by Philip Hart (1704), Thomas Roseingrave (1728, 1750), Handel (1735), Burney (c1790) and others, sometimes as an alternative to ‘voluntary’.

The first piece to be called a ‘voluntary’ is a short movement in the Mulliner Book (c1550–75) by Richard Alwood (MB, i, 1966, no.17). It is freely composed and semifugal in style; but it is not unique in these respects. An untitled piece in a contemporary manuscript (GB-Och 1034A) by John Ambrose, for example, displays similar characteristics. From the so-called golden age of English keyboard music we may cite Byrd and Weelkes, as well as Tomkins, as composers of voluntaries in a fugal style. Gibbons preferred the term ‘fantasia’ or ‘fancy’ and applied it to a work (MB, xx, 1962, no.7) in which the two manuals of the early 17th-century English organ were exploited, apparently for the first time. The main fugal entries are on the little (or ‘Chair’) organ; but from time to time an entry appears on the Great organ in the left hand and is developed rather in the manner of a solo on the division viol. Towards the end both hands play together on the Great. It is surprising that so few double voluntaries (as the form came to be known) have come down to us from the first half of the 17th century. The only other surviving examples are three by John Lugge and one by Richard Portman.

Matthew Locke published seven voluntaries in Melothesia (1673). No.7 is a double voluntary in which a solo for the right hand appears for the first time. Nos.2 and 3 are introductions and fugues, the introduction itself being fugal in the latter. Most of Blow's voluntaries are slow or quick fugues. Purcell's voluntaries in G major and D minor both end with fast italianate fugal movements, the first after a rhapsodic introduction, the second after a slow fugue and a free middle section. The voluntary on the ‘Old Hundredth’ by Blow or Purcell is an unusual English example of chorale variation.

William Croft's 13 voluntaries are more straightforward in rhythm and texture than those of some of his contemporaries, such as Barrett and Hart. Roseingrave represents a continuation of Hart's idiom modified by a certain Handelian influence, while Croft's manner was perpetuated by Greene and Stanley. Greene established the form of the slow introduction followed by an Allegro which was either fugal or in concerto style (his published voluntaries have also been attributed to Boyce, but this is unlikely: Boyce himself composed a distinguished set, published posthumously). The majority of 18th-century voluntaries are in two movements, but many are in four, while Stanley contributed a three-movement work (op.5 no.8) in Italian concerto style. Among other 18th-century composers the names of Travers, Bennett, Walond, Burney, John Alcock the elder and Dupuis stand out. Early 19th-century composers include William Russell, Samuel Wesley and Thomas Adams. The term has often been used since then, but with no special implication beyond that of suitability for service use.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

R. North: ‘The Excellent Art of Voluntary’, Roger North on Music, ed. J. Wilson (London, 1959), 133–45

J. Caldwell: English Keyboard Music before the Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1973/R)

F. Routh: Early English Organ Music from the Middle Ages to 1837 (London, 1973)

N. Temperley: The Music of the English Parish Church (Cambridge, 1979)

B. Cooper: English Solo Keyboard Music of the Middle and Late Baroque (New York, 1989)

G. Cox: Organ Music in Restoration England: a Study of Sources, Styles, and Influences (New York, 1989)

JOHN CALDWELL

Vomáčka, Boleslav

(b Mladá Boleslav, 28 June 1887; d Prague, 1 March 1965). Czech composer and critic. He studied the organ (1906–9), composition with Novák (1909–10) and singing with Josef Krummer at the Prague Conservatory, concurrently studying law at the university (doctorate 1913). Thereafter he worked successively as a solicitor, a judge and a civil servant: he headed a department at the Ministry of Social Security after World War II, and he also fulfilled various functions in the Ministry of Education, Science and Arts and the Ministry of Culture. He wrote a great deal of music criticism for such journals as Hudební revue, Listy hudební matice, Tempo, Hudební rozhledy and Auftakt; his essays include a series on outstanding Czech musicians of the 20th century. As a member of numerous music organizations he had a wide influence on Czech musical life; he was an honorary member of several choral associations, and he received the title Artist of Merit (1955) and the Order of Work (1957). After World War I Vomáčka was in the vanguard of Czech music, achieving great success in songs and choral pieces whose melodic lines were rooted in folk patterns, while his instrumental music showed a bold handling of dissonance and unusual brevity. Later he abandoned his avant-garde position, and after World War II his music became extremely clear and simple. One of his most important compositions is the opera Vodník (‘The Watersprite’), which borrows from the folksong tradition.

WORKS

(selective list)

vocal

Ops: Vodník [The Watersprite], op.29 (4, after K.J. Erben, A. Wenig), 1934–7, Prague, National, 17 Dec 1937; Boleslav I, op.61 (4, Vomáčka, after M. Jaris), 1953–5, Prague, National, 8 March 1957; Čekanky, op.62 (3, Vomáčka, after F.X. Svobody), 1939, 1956–7, unperf.

Cants.: Romance svatojiřská [St George Romance] (S. Hanuš), op.12, 1920, 1943; Živí mrtvým [The Living and the Dead] (Hanuš), op.16, 1927–8; Mládí [Youth] (A. Sova), op.20, 1914–16, 1930; Strážce majáku [The Lighthousekeeper] (J. Wolker), op.24, 1931–3; Prapor míru nad Duklou [The Banner of Peace over Dukla] (J. Moucha), op.55, 1951; Bojka partyzánka [The Guerrilla Struggle], op.56, 1952

Several song cycles, most with pf/orch; numerous choral pieces

instrumental

Orch: Ciaconna, op.5, 1910: Sym., F, op.47, 1945; Dukla, op.50, ov., 1948; Idylka, op.54, str, 1906–7; Estrádní suita, op.59, 1909–45; Fanfáry míru [Peace Fanfares], op.69, tpt, orch, 1960

Chbr: Sonata, op.3, vn, pf, 1912; Duo, op.14, vn, vc, 1925–7; Sonatina, op.31c, 2 vn, 1936, arr. as op.31b, vn, va, arr. as Kvartetino, op.31a, str qt, 1941; Nokturno, Selanka, op.53, vn, pf, 1907; Nonet, op.64, 1957; Str Qt, op.66, 1959; hp pieces

Pf: Hledání [The Quest], op.4, 1913; Intermezzi, op.6, 1915–17; Sonata, op.7, 1917; Z války [From the War], op.15, 1916–20; Obnovené obrazy [Renewed Pictures], op.28, 1907, rev. 1910, 1939; Sonata quasi fantasia, op.40, 1942; other pieces

Principal publisher: Hudební Matice

WRITINGS

Josef Suk (Prague, 1922)

Stanislav Suda (Prague, 1933)

Sukova sborová tvorba [Suk’s choral works] (Prague, 1935)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ČSHS

H. Doležil: Boleslav Vomáčka: pohled na dílo a život [Vomáčka: life and works] (Prague, 1941)

J. Bachtík: ‘Životní jubileum Boleslava Vomáčky’ [Vomáčka’s jubilee], HRo, xv (1962), 454–5

MILAN KUNA

Vom [von] Berg, Johann.

See Berg, Johann vom.

Vom Brandt [Brant], Jobst.

See Brandt, Jobst vom.

Vom Perg, Johann.

See Berg, Johann vom.

Von Arnim, Bettina [Elisabeth].

See Arnim, Bettine von.

Von Hagen, P(eter) A(lbrecht).

See Hagen, p. a. von.

Von Huy, Martin.

See Peudargent, Martin.

Vonk, Hans

(b Amsterdam, 18 June 1942). Dutch conductor. He studied the piano and conducting at the Amsterdam Conservatory and began his conducting career in 1966 with the Netherlands National Ballet. He had appointments with the Concertgebouw and the Netherlands Radio PO (1973–9), during which he made his début at the Netherlands Opera with Fortner’s Don Perlimplin (1971). From 1976–9 he was also associate conductor of the RPO in London. His American opera début was at San Diego in 1979 with La traviata. He was music director of the Netherlands Opera from 1976 to 1985; he then became principal conductor of the Dresden Staatskapelle and artistic director of the Staatsoper at the reopened Semper Oper, Dresden. A recording of his performance there of Der Rosenkavalier (1985) was much praised for its lively spirit and superb orchestral playing. Vonk remained at Dresden until 1990, and in 1991 became chief conductor of WDR, Cologne (Cologne Radio Orchestra). Vonk’s work in other European centres has included conducting a revival of Jommelli’s Fetonte at La Scala in 1988. In 1996 he became conductor of the St Louis SO. His recordings include works by Dutch composers, notably Diepenbrock, Henkemans and Zweers.

NOËL GOODWIN

Von Ramm, Andrea

(b Pärnu, Estonia, 8 Sept 1928; d Munich, 30 Nov 1999). German singer. After study with Margarethe von Winterfeldt in Freiburg and Adelaide Saraceni in Milan, she began her career in oratorio before becoming a co-founder of the Studio der frühen Musik in Munich in 1960. In 15 years of intensive performance with the lutenist Thomas Binkley, the string player Sterling Jones and various tenors, she covered a broad repertory from early monophony to the Renaissance, documented in many recordings. From 1972 to 1978 she taught at the Schola Cantorum in Basle, and she also taught phonetics and recitation at Basle University for 12 years. Meanwhile she focussed her concert work on the broader concept of Wortmusik (music in words), ranging from medieval poetry through early Baroque monody to contemporary music, sometimes to her own texts. Her singing displayed virtuoso technique, control of vibrato, flexibility, stylistic differentiation and a wide range that reached from mezzo-soprano into the tenor register. In early music her innovatory interpretations were decisive in making the repertory known to a wider public and had a major influence on many younger singers.

DAGMAR HOFFMANN-AXTHELM

Von Seckendorff, Karl Siegmund.

See Seckendorff, karl siegmund von.

Von Stade, Frederica

(b Somerville, NJ, 1 June 1945). American mezzo-soprano. She studied at the Mannes School, New York, making her début at the Metropolitan in 1970 as the Third Boy in Die Zauberflöte; later roles there included Suzuki, Lola (Cavalleria rusticana), Stéphano (Roméo et Juliette) and Nicklausse. At Santa Fe she sang Cherubino, Zerlina and Mélisande, and created Maria in Villa-Lobos’s Yerma (1971). A spirited Cherubino, notably at the Paris Opéra and Glyndebourne (both 1973) and at Salzburg (1974–5), she was also admired as Octavian. She made her Covent Garden début in 1975 as Rosina and returned in 1985 as Ellen (La donna del lago). Her repertory included Mozart’s Sextus, Idamantes, Dorabella, Cenerentola (of which she made an outstanding video recording from La Scala in 1981), Adalgisa, Charlotte, Monteverdi’s Penelope, Hänsel, and the Composer (Ariadne). In 1974 she created Nina in Pasatieri’s The Seagull at Houston, and in 1988 created Tina in Argento’s The Aspern Papers at Dallas. In 2000 she was an admired Hanna (Die lustige Luiture) at the Metropolitan. Her musicianship and personal charm are evident in her many recordings, not only of her principal roles (notably Cherubino, Charlotte, Hänsel and Mélisande) but also in mélodies, of which she is a gifted interpreter.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

G. Moshvon: ‘Frederica Von Stade’, Opera, xxxi (1980), 31–4

HAROLD ROSENTHAL/ALAN BLYTH

Von Tilzer [Gumm], Albert

(b Indianapolis, IN, 29 March 1878; d Los Angeles, 1 Oct 1956). American songwriter and publisher, brother of Harry Von Tilzer. He adopted his brother’s pseudonym in 1899. He taught himself the piano, and became a pianist and arranger in Chicago for the publishing firm of Shapiro, Bernstein & Von Tilzer. In 1900 he went to New York, where he directed a vaudeville company before joining his brother’s newly established publishing house as an arranger; in 1903 he formed the York Music Co. with another brother, Jack Von Tilzer. He wrote some of the most popular songs of the early 20th century, including Teasing (1904), Take me out to the ball game (1908), Kentucky Sue (1912), and I’ll be with you in apple blossom time (1920). He contributed songs to a number of films and also wrote works for Broadway, including the popular musical comedies Honey Girl (1920) and The Gingham Girl (1922). Typical of early 20th-century Tin Pan Alley, Von Tilzer’s songs have deceptively simple melodies and harmonies, and incorporate dance rhythms and slang idioms that were popular at the time; many have become standards.

WORKS

(selective list)

Stage (all musical comedies first performed in New York; where different, writers shown as: lyricist; book author): The Happiest Night of his Life (S. Rosenfeld; J. McCree), 20 Feb 1911; Honey Girl (N. Fleeson; E. Clark), 3 May 1920; The Gingham Girl (Fleeson), 28 Aug 1922 [incl. As Long as I have You]; Adrienne (A.S. Brown), 28 May 1923; Bye, Bye, Bonnie (B. Dudley; L. Simon), 13 Jan 1927

Films (including one or more songs by Von Tilzer): Birth of a Nation, 1930; Rainbow over Broadway, 1933; Gift of Gab, 1934; Here Comes the Band, 1935; Sing me a Love Song, 1936; Rawhide, 1938; Sundown on the Prairie, 1939; The Naughty Nineties, 1945; Skirts Ahoy, 1952

Songs: Teasing (C. Mack) (1904); Honey Boy (J. Norworth) (1907); Take me out to the ball game (Norworth) (1908); Put your arms around me, honey (J. McCree) (1910); I’m the lonesomest gal in town (L. Brown) (1912); Kentucky Sue (Brown) (1912); Oh, how she could yacki hacki wicki wacki woo (S. Murphy and C. McCarron) (1916); I may be gone a long, long time (Brown) (1917); Oh, by Jingo (Brown) (1919); I used to love you (Brown) (1920); I’ll be with you in apple blossom time (Fleeson) (1920)

Principal publishers: Broadway Music, York Music

BIBLIOGRAPHY

E.M. Wickes: Writing the Popular Song (Springfield, MA, 1916)

S. Spaeth: A History of Popular Music in America (New York, 1948)

D. Ewen: Popular American Composers (New York, 1962; suppl., 1972)

W. Craig: Sweet and Lowdown (Metuchen, NJ, 1978)

K.A. Kanter: The Jews on Tin Pan Alley: the Jewish Contribution to American Popular Music, 1830–1940 (Cincinnati and New York, 1982)

D. Ewen: American Songwriters (New York, 1987)

DEANE L. ROOT

Von Tilzer, Harry [Gumm, Harold]

(b Detroit, 8 July 1872; d New York, 10 Jan 1946). American songwriter, publisher and performer. He added ‘Von’ to his mother’s maiden name and used this as a professional pseudonym. He worked in a circus and medicine show as a singer and tumbler and published his first song in 1892 (I love you both). In the same year he went to New York, where he performed his songs in vaudeville. The success of My Old New Hampshire Home (1898) was such that he was made a partner in the publishing firm Shapiro, Bernstein & Co., for whom he then wrote A Bird in a Gilded Cage (1900); he worked for the firm as a song plugger. In 1902 he founded the Harry Von Tilzer Music Co., which became one of the most successful American popular-music publishers in the early 20th century, earning him the nickname ‘the Man who Launched a Thousand Hits’. Von Tilzer engaged Irving Berlin as a song plugger, issued George Gershwin’s first song and is reputed to have published about 2000 of his own songs, including Down where the Wurzburger Flows (1902), I want a girl just like the girl that married dear old dad (1911), When my Baby Smiles at Me (1920), and many other sentimental and moralistic ballads. He also wrote ‘coon’ songs for blackface minstrel and vaudeville acts. He may have been responsible for the invention of the name ‘Tin Pan Alley’ in about 1903, when a journalist noticed that he had stuffed paper between the strings of his office’s upright piano to produce a more percussive sound. Von Tilzer was one of few publishers in the late 1920s to remain independent of the radio and cinema companies that bought up music firms and their songwriting staffs. He wrote an introduction to E.M. Wickes’s manual Writing the Popular Song (Springfield, MA, 1916), giving a brief philosophy of the profession.

Von Tilzer’s brothers were also involved in music publishing and adopted his pseudonym: Julie Von Tilzer was a manager of Remick’s and later president of the Harry Von Tilzer Music Co.; Will Von Tilzer was a lyricist and head of Broadway Music Co.; Jack Von Tilzer was a co-founder and director of the York Music Co. together with Albert Von Tilzer, who was also a successful songwriter.

WORKS

(selective list)

Stage (where different, writers shown as: lyricist; book author): The Fisher Maiden (comic op, A.J. Lamb), New York, 5 Oct 1903; The Jolly Baron, or The Miller’s Daughter (musical comedy, Lamb; A. Burkhardt and A. Hoffman), 1904 (New York, 1904); Heigh Ho (revue, D. Singer and L. Donnelly), 1905 (New York, 1929); The Kissing Girl (comic op, V.P. Bryan; S. Stange), Chicago, 25 Oct 1909

c2000 songs, incl. I love you both (1892); My Old New Hampshire Home (A.B. Sterling) (1898); I’d leave my happy home for you (W.A. Heelan) (1899); A Bird in a Gilded Cage (Lamb) (1900); Down where the Wurzburger Flows (Bryan) (1902); In the Sweet Bye and Bye (Bryan) (1902); The Mansion of Aching Hearts (Lamb) (1902); On a Sunday Afternoon (Sterling) (1902); Please go ’way and let me sleep (H. Von Tilzer) (1902); Wait ’til the sun shines, Nellie (Sterling) (1905); Where the Morning Glories Twine (Lamb) (1905); I want a girl just like the girl that married dear old dad (W. Dillon) (1911); They always pick on me (S. Murphy) (1911); In the Evening by the Moonlight (Sterling) (1912); A Little Bunch of Shamrocks (W. Jerome, Sterling) (1913); When my Baby Smiles at Me (Sterling) (1920); Just Around the Corner (D. Singer) (1925)

MSS in US–Dp

Principal publisher: Von Tilzer

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Goldberg: Tin Pan Alley: a Chronicle of the American Popular Music Racket (New York, 1930/R)

S. Spaeth: A History of Popular Music in America (New York, 1948)

D. Ewen: Popular American Composers (New York, 1962, suppl. 1972)

D. Ewen: The Life and Death of Tin Pan Alley (New York, 1964)

K.A. Kanter: The Jews on Tin Pan Alley: the Jewish Contribution to American Popular Music, 1830–1940 (Cincinnati and New York, 1982)

D. Ewen: American Songwriters (1987)

DEANE L. ROOT

Von Toesky, Johann Baptist.

See Toeschi family.

Voorberg, Marinus

(b Hook of Holland, 7 May 1920; d Hilversum, 29 July 1985). Dutch conductor. He studied the piano and the organ at The Hague Conservatory, graduating in 1940. He first appeared in public as a pianist when he was ten, and he later toured Europe, Israel, India and Indonesia. From 1950 to 1952 he studied choral conducting in Italy, and in 1952 became conductor of the NCRV Vocal Ensemble (later the Netherlands Vocal Ensemble), remaining in the post until the choir ceased to exist in 1978. He was also appointed conductor of the Amsterdam Chamber Orchestra and appeared at festivals with both these ensembles, and as a guest conductor. With his choir, apart from the traditional a cappella repertory, he specialized in avant-garde music and introduced many works by Dutch and foreign composers, such as Ton de Leeuw, Antoniou, Tona Scherchen and others. Voorberg made several recordings and in 1970 he was awarded the Edison Prize for his recording of madrigals and responsories by Monteverdi. He was conductor of the Stuttgart Radio Choir, 1975–1981, in addition to his Dutch appointment. In 1971 he was made a Knight of the Order of Oranje Nassau.

TRUUS DE LEUR

Voormolen, Alexander (Nicolaas)

(b Rotterdam, 3 March 1895; d Leidschendam, 12 Nov 1980). Dutch composer. He studied composition in Utrecht with Johan Wagenaar and with Willem and Martinus. In 1916, on the recommendation of Rhené Baton (who conducted his overture to Maeterlinck’s La mort de Tintagiles at The Hague in 1916), he went to Paris, where he worked with Roussel and became close to Ravel, Casella, Delius and Florent Schmitt. He returned to settle in the Netherlands in 1920, first in Veere and moved to The Hague in 1923. For many years he was music critic for the Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant, and then from 1938 to 1955 he was librarian of the Conservatory of The Hague.

Voormolen’s first works (those from the years 1915–25) show a chromatic harmonic style influenced by Debussy, Ravel and Delius, and also an early return to Baroque forms. In addition, after 1919 he drew increasingly on Dutch folksong, as in the piano suite Tableaux des Pays-Bas (1919, 1924). In the 1920s Voormolen searched for a more individual, typically Dutch style, one that was permeated with old tunes, the sound of the Dutch carillon, and that evoked the atmosphere and elegance of the Dutch Baroque. This resulted in such popular scores as the Baron Hop suites (1924, 1931), the orchestral variations De drie ruitertjes (1927), the concertos for one or two oboes (1938) and the symphonic poems Een zomerlied (1928), Arethuza (1947) and Eline (1957).

WORKS

(selective list)

orchestral

La mort de Tintagiles, ov., 1913; 2 Baron Hop suites, 1923, 1931; Variations on ‘De drie ruitertjes’, 1927; Een zomerlied, 1928; 2-Ob Conc., 1933; Ob. Conc., 1938; Kleine Haagse suite, chbr orch, 1939; Sinfonia, 1939; Pastorale, ob, str, 1940; Arethuza, 1947; Conc., 2 pf, str, 1950; Spiegel-suite, chbr orch, 1950; Sinfonia concertante, cl, hn, str, 1951; Eline, 1957; Chaconne and Fugue, 1958

chamber and instrumental

For 2–4 insts: Pf Trio, 1920; Sonata, vn, pf, 1920; Suite, vc, pf, 1920; Sicilienne et rigaudon, vn, pf, 1923; Divertissement, vc, pf, 1925; Romance, vc, pf, 1927; Sonata no.2, vn, pf, 1934; Str Qt no.2, 1942; Sonata, va, pf, 1953

Pf: Suite no.1, 1918; Tableaux des Pays-Bas, 2 vols., 1919, 1924; Le souper clandestin, 1922; Scène et danse érotique, 1923; Livre des enfants, 2 vols., 1924, 1925; Berceuse, 1927; Sonata, 1944; Eline, nocturne, 1951; Domanda e risposta, 1954

Hpd: Suite, 1924

vocal

Choral: 3 nederlandse gedichten, male vv, 1948; Wanderers Nachtlied (J.W. von Goethe), 1950; Aux baigneurs, chorus, 1967

Songs for 1v, pf: 2 moralités (C. Perrault), 1919; 3 liederen van Isoude (P.C. Boutens), 1921; In den nacht (Boutens), 1921; 3 poèmes (R. Chalupt), 1921; 3 gedichten (J. Luyken), 1932; 4 Oud-Nederlandse gedichten, 1932; 3 poèmes (H. de Régnier), 1938; 5 Nederlandse gedichten, 1947; 3 Rilke-Lieder, 1948; 3 Songs on British Verse, 1948; Canzonetta (Voormolen), 1950; Obsession (Voormolen), 1952; L’élue d’Amsterdam (Voormolen), 1964: Madrigal, 1969; Ave Maria, 1973

Other solo vocal works: Beatrijs (Boutens), spkr, pf, 1921; La sirène, 1v, orch, 1949

Principal publishers: Alsbach, Donemus, Rouart

BIBLIOGRAPHY

E. Reeser: ‘Alexander Voormolen’, Sonorum speculum, no.22 (1965), 1–11; no.23, 18–25

P.-J. Wagemans: ‘Alexander Voormolen – from International Avantgarde to Hague Conservatism’, Key Notes, xv (1982), 14–23

JOS WOUTERS/LEO SAMAMA

Vopa, Giovanni Donato

(b ?Bari; fl c1585). Italian composer. He was one of a small circle of composers gathered around Stefano Felis during the latter's period as maestro di cappella at Bari Cathedral. He is represented in Felis's Primo libro de madrigali a cinque voci (R/Venice, 1585, ?lost formerly in PL-GD) by a setting of Voi piagge e verdi prati, and both composers together with Giovanni Battista Pace, another of Felis's pupils, produced a volume of madrigals jointly in 1585 (RISM 1585³⁰). The seven pieces that Vopa contributed to the book are florid, nimble examples of the light canzonetta style, providing a foil to the more contrapuntal, retrospective writing of Pace. The dedications of both publications suggest that they are the products of a small musical academy that met at the house of Paolo Grillo, a Genoese nobleman who lived in Bari.

IAIN FENLON

Vopelius, Gottfried

(b Herwigsdorf, nr Zittau, 28 Jan 1645; d Leipzig, 3 Feb 1715). German music editor and composer. He attended the Gymnasium in Zittau and showed such promise that in due course he was promoted choir leader. He later studied at Leipzig University. On 3 July 1671 he was appointed collaborator ultimus at the Nikolaischule at Leipzig, and on 31 March 1677 he became Kantor there and at the Nikolaikirche. He taught syntax, Latin etymology, prosody, Greek Testament and geography as well as music, and he also supervised Bible reading and poetry exercises. He remained there until his death, in spite of the comment in a visitation of 1712 that he had become an embarrassment to the institution. He published Neu Leipziger Gesangbuch, von den schönsten und besten Liedern verfasset … mit 4. 5. bis 6. Stimmen, deren Melodeyen theils aus Johann Herman Scheins Cantional, und andern guten Autoribus zusammen getragen, theils aber selbsten componiret (Leipzig, 1682). This compendium, comprising 1104 pages and important for the study of church music in Leipzig in the later 17th century, contains 55 pieces for solo voice, two in three parts, 241 in four, 14 in five and four in six, as well as two Passions (after Johann Walter (i)) and a Resurrection history (after Scandello); there are also 113 items of which only the texts are given. Where necessary, Latin and German texts are both printed. Among the composers represented are Joachim a Burck, Johannes Crüger, Demantius, Melchior Franck, Hammerschmidt, Tobias Michael, Michael Praetorius, Rosenmüller, Schelle, Heinrich Schütz and Schein, whose Cantional (1627), from which 96 pieces were taken, was the mainstay of the collection. Vopelius included three pieces of his own, among them the chorale aria Also hat Gott die Welt geliebt, which Bach used (bwv68). An interesting development of a theme of Vopelius by Rosenmüller is given by Moser.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

WinterfeldEK, ii

H. Koch: ‘Gottfried Vopelius, Nikolai-Kantor zu Leipzig (1645–1715)’, Aus der Geschichte der Familie Vopelius: familiengeschichtliche Blätter, ed. B. Vopelius (Jena, 1935)

H.J. Moser: Die evangelische Kirchenmusik in Deutschland (Berlin, 1954), 154

J. Grimm: Das ‘Neu Leipziger Gesangbuch’ des Gottfried Vopelius, Leipzig 1682: Untersuchungen zur Klärung seiner geschichtlichen Stellung (Berlin, 1969)

PERCY M. YOUNG

Vorberg, Gregor

(b Lauban [now Lubań, Poland]; d Trautenau [now Trutnov, Czech Republic]; fl 1579–94). German theologian and composer. He enrolled at Leipzig University in 1579. After completing his studies he became a master at the Gymnasium in Thorn where he remained until 1593. He was ordained at Frankfurt an der Oder in 1594, subsequently becoming the Lutheran minister in Trautenau, Bohemia. A mass for six voices, Missa Domine, quando veneris, survives in manuscript (Pl–WRu). Another mass and several motets are included in tablature in Vienna (A–Wm).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

R. Jauernig: ‘Ergänzungen und Berichtigungen zu Eitners Quellenlexikon für Musiker und Musikgelehrk des 16. Jahrhunderts’, Mf, vi (1953), 347–56, esp. 350

H.J. Moser: Die Musik im frühevangelischen Österreich (Kassel, 1954)

R. Quoika: Die Musik der Deutschen in Böhmen und Mähren (Berlin, 1956)

L. Schierning: Die Überlieferung der deutschen Orgel- und Klaviermusik aus der ersten Hälfte des 17. Jahrhunderts (Kassel, 1961)

WALTER BLANKENBURG

Vordergrund

(Ger.).

See Foreground. See also Layer.

Vordersatz

(Ger.).

Antecedent phrase. See Antecedent and consequent.

Vorhalt

(Ger.).

See Suspension.

Vorimitation

(Ger.: ‘prior imitation’).

The process whereby a principal theme, stated in long note values in one part of a polyphonic texture, is anticipated by an imitative section in the other parts, usually based on a rhythmic diminution of the theme. In certain of Bach’s chorale preludes, for instance (e.g. Vor deinen Thron tret’ ich bwv668), a Vorimitation of each line of the chorale melody precedes the section of which that line is the dominating part.

Voříšek, Jan Václav (Hugo) [Worzischek, Johann Hugo]

(b Vamberk, north-east Bohemia, 11 May 1791; d Vienna, 19 Nov 1825). Bohemian composer, pianist and organist.

KENNETH DeLONG

1. Life.

He was the youngest son of Václav František Voříšek (1749–1815), a schoolmaster in Vamberk and choirmaster and organist of the local church. The eldest son, František (1785–1843), a priest, was also musical, and the two daughters, Eleonora and Anna, played the piano. Of the composer's mother, Rozálie, little is known other than her maiden name (Matiášová) and the date of her death (1807). From the age of three Jan Václav was taught the piano and singing by his father, a stern and severe man; he later studied the organ and the violin and began to compose. By the age of seven he deputized as organist for a neighbouring church and in his youth he toured on foot throughout Bohemia as a pianist. On these journeys he travelled as far as Prague, where his repertory included at least one Mozart piano concerto, as well as his own youthful compositions. None of these early works is extant.

Capturing the attention of the Countess Rozina Kolowrat-Libstejnsky, owner of the Vamberk estate, Voříšek moved in October 1802 to Prague, where under the patronage of the countess he attended the classical Jesuit Gymnasium in the Malá Strana district; he completed his elementary education and in 1806 embarked on his secondary education there. He served as the school organist and composed music to Latin texts. During this period he made a manuscript collection of organ works, part of which is extant.

From 1810 to 1813 Voříšek studied philosophy, aesthetics and mathematics at the University of Prague; he later switched to law but did not graduate. During those years he developed a local reputation as a pianist, performing J.L. Dussek's Piano Sonata in A (‘Le retour à Paris’) to great acclaim. He was also active as a composer, producing a set of 12 German dances, a song, Nevinnost, to a Czech text by Václav Hanka, and a long piano march in honour of the death of the General Moreau (1813).

The essential thrust of Voříšek's musical personality was established during his university years. Three elements appear to have been decisive: his studies with Václav Tomášek; his involvement with the music of J.S. Bach; and the music of Beethoven. Voříšek began to study with Tomášek about 1804, apparently free of charge. Tomášek was impressed by his talent and made a special note to that effect in his diary (‘Grosses Talentumsonst’). At first lessons were limited to the piano; later he studied harmony and composition. These lessons must have been brief, for in later years Voříšek is reported to have remarked, ‘unfortunately, we only got as far as the 7th chord’. (Tomášek's notes towards a course in harmony, preserved in the Czech National Museum, indeed do break off after the introduction of the 7th chord.) Although short-lived, his studies with Tomášek were of crucial importance and for the remainder of his life Voříšek considered himself to be Tomášek's student.

About 1812 Voříšek's compositions began to appear in print. These included the German dances and the funeral march. He also composed and had performed his first cantata, Gefühle des Dankes, a farewell to one of his teachers. It was during Voříšek's later years in Prague that Tomášek began to compose the piano eclogues, rhapsodies and dithyrambs upon which his reputation as a composer largely rests. Voříšek's 12 Rhapsodies op.1 were begun at this time (about 1813) and were modelled on Tomášek's similarly titled works. With the Rhapsodies, Voříšek established an idiom for his own lyrical piano pieces from which he never substantially deviated.

During his studies with Tomášek Voříšek came to know and admire the keyboard works of Bach, especially the preludes and fugues of Das wohltemperirte Clavier. He also admired the music of Beethoven, whose ‘Eroica’ Symphony was performed in Prague in 1806. According to Tomášek's autobiography Voříšek visited Beethoven several times when he was in Vienna (about 1814), and Beethoven commented favourably to Tomášek about some of Voříšek's Rhapsodies.

On the advice of J.N. Zizius, a Bohemian-born, music-loving professor of statistics at the University of Vienna, Voříšek moved to Vienna in autumn 1813, ostensibly to complete his law studies there but also in order to have a wider avenue for his musical development. He enrolled in the law faculty, but his attention was soon drawn towards a musical career and for a time his legal studies lapsed. He was active as a pianist and as a violinist, and gradually developed a reputation as one of the finest keyboard players in the city. A rival of Moscheles and Meyerbeer, he was known for his virtuoso technique, his sensitive musicianship and, especially, for his extemporization. The height of his fame was during the early 1820s when he was described by the Wiener Zeitung (1822) as ‘our pre-eminent master of the piano’.

His first appearances in Vienna as a pianist were at the soirées held by Zizius. There he met Beethoven and others who were to influence the direction of his career. These included Joseph and Ignaz Sonnleithner and Raphael Kiesewetter, all of whom held their own private concerts at which Voříšek became a regular performer. In the 1820s he established his own semi-private Sunday string quartet concerts, at which he performed the works of Mozart, Haydn, Hummel and Onslow.

Through Zizius and Kiesewetter, both founder-members of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Voříšek became associated with the society, appearing first as a pianist in Hummel's fashionably virtuoso Rondo brillant in A major (op.56) for piano and orchestra at the initial concert of December 1815. In 1818, on the recommendation of Kiesewetter, he became assistant conductor of the society's orchestral concerts and in 1819 a principal conductor and member of the advisory council. He conducted the orchestra twice in 1819, including performances of Beethoven's Second Symphony and an overture by Tomášek. He also remained active as a performer there, appearing regularly at the Thursday evening chamber concerts, playing his own works. His only symphony was composed for the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde concerts and was first performed in 1823. In 1825 he was formally elected to membership of the society, at the same time as Schubert.

Through Zizius, Voříšek made the acquaintance of Hummel (a regular participant at Zizius's salon concerts), towards whose music and approach to piano playing he was strongly drawn. He probably studied with Hummel, and when Hummel left Vienna in 1816, he gave Voříšek his class of piano students. About 1817 Voříšek was invited to become a regular performing member of Kiesewetter's Historische Hauskonzerte, initially sharing the duties of continuo player and choirmaster with Franz Gebauer. When Gebauer founded his own concerts spirituels in 1819, Voříšek became the conductor of Kiesewetter's concerts, a position he held with distinction until his final illness. Voříšek was known for his fluent figured-bass performance and his sensitivity to and knowledge of historical styles.

It was in this context that Voříšek probably met Aloys Fuchs (a bass in Kiesewetter's choir), who became the principal collector of his manuscripts and his first biographer. Despite his successes, Voříšek returned to his legal studies with a view to obtaining a civil service position. He completed his law degree and on 4 May 1822 was appointed a clerk in the maritime division of the Imperial War Department, probably through the influence of Kiesewetter. Previously, in 1818, he had applied for the position of court organist but had been refused. On the death of the assistant organist, Johann Henneberg, in November 1822, Voříšek successfully competed for the position, defeating seven other notable musicians (including Ferdinand Schubert and Simon Sechter) in an examination that included improvisation, figured bass and fugue. He was appointed on 10 January 1823 and promptly resigned from the civil service. In July 1823, Václav Růžíčka, the principal court organist, died and in August Voříšek assumed the position with a salary of 800 florins.

The period 1818 to 1823 was Voříšek's most active time as a composer. He completed the 12 Rhapsodies, op.1 (1818) and six Impromptus op.7 for the piano (1820), the Violin Sonata op.5 (1819), the Symphony in D (1823) and fashionable virtuoso works for piano and orchestra. After his appointment to the court chapel, he began to compose sacred choral works, including a Mass in B.

Never physically strong, Voříšek appears to have suffered seriously from tuberculosis about 1820 and went to Carlsbad for a cure. In 1823 his health began to deteriorate again and in the summer of 1824 he went to Graz to recover. While in Graz he was made a member of the Steiermärkischer Musikverein. On his return to Vienna in autumn 1824, his illness became much worse and he was forced to relinquish his duties as court organist in January 1825. During this time he composed his last important work, the Mass in B, finishing it in January 1825. After a long illness, he died on 19 November that year.

Fuchs's description of Voříšek is worth noting: ‘Voříšek was small and slender and would have been visually unremarkable were it not for his intellectually alert, unusually bright blue eyes and pleasant round face. He was sanguine, cheerful, heartily friendly, and unassuming towards everyone’. At his funeral, Court Dietrichstein, director of the court music, observed: ‘Art thus loses a noteworthy, pre-eminent composer; the court chapel, perhaps, the first among living organists.’ Voříšek was buried in the Währing cemetery (now the Franz Schubert Park).

Voříšek, Jan Václav

2. Works.

Although he was born in Bohemia, Voříšek's music bears hardly a trace of what was later considered to be Czech national style. Well versed in Viennese classicism, he was among the last of the many Bohemian émigrés of his time to compose in the internationalized late-Classical style associated with Vienna. Voříšek's music provides a remarkably accurate picture of the musical trends prevalent in Biedermeier Vienna, especially during the decade 1815–25. His early piano pieces were completed shortly after he moved to Vienna in 1813; they (including the 12 Rhapsodies, begun about the same time) demonstrate post-Classical thematic styles and keyboard virtuosity that also characterize the piano music of Hummel, Moscheles and Spohr. With his teacher Tomášek, Voříšek was among the first to cultivate the genre of the piano miniature. His Impromptus op.7 (published 1821) continue a line of development established in Tomášek's earlier sets of eclogues (1807–17) and contain delicate pastoral moods. They are in ternary form, their internal harmonic and thematic make-up derived from the Classical minuet and trio. In their mixture of Classical shaping and proto-Romantic feeling, they are transitional works in the evolution of the Romantic ternary-form lyric piano piece.

Because Voříšek's impromptus predate Schubert's more famous ones by several years, it is customary (following Kahl) to ascribe to Voříšek (and Tomášek) an important role in stimulating Schubert's cultivation of the genre. Manuscript evidence shows, however, that neither Voříšek nor Schubert used the title ‘impromptu’, in both cases it was the choice of the publishers. Any connection that may exist is therefore more likely to be the composers' need to satisfy their publishers' desire for easily accessible trifles than any direct musical influence.

Compared to the short piano pieces, Voříšek's single three-movement Sonata in B minor (published in 1825) is more Classical in style. The two single-movement works with programmatic titles, Le plaisir and Le désir (both c1819) and bravura pieces such as the Fantasie in C (op.12) are stylistically post-Classical and similar to Hummel's music of the same period. Voříšek's comparatively few songs are closer to the aria-inflected Viennese songs of the early part of the 19th century than to those of Schubert. Among them is An Sie, a multi-sectioned scena, and Liebe (c1815), which had some currency in its day.

Voříšek contributed to the development of the brillante style of piano music with accompanying ensemble that emerged in Vienna after 1815. Here he continued along a path blazed by Hummel and Moscheles, both of whom were active in Vienna during Voříšek's time. These works, including the Variations brillants (op.6), the Variations di bravura (op.14) and the Introduction et rondo brillant (all for piano and orchestra), consist of single-movement allegros preceded by slow introductions. Containing extremely rapid right-hand figurations and favouring the upper reaches of the keyboard, they are fearsomely difficult and attest to Voříšek's prowess as a pianist.

Apart from the solo piano works, Voříšek's most important compositions are his chamber and symphonic music and, to a lesser extent, his church music. These works, all in traditional forms, include the Symphony and the Violin Sonata, both of which resemble early Beethoven in their dynamism and harmonic idiom, and in their imaginative handling of period structure. The Mass in B is finely constructed, with attractive solos and contrapuntal choruses; fitting effortlessly into the tradition of Viennese Hofkapelle music, it takes Mozart's final church works or Hummel's Mass in B as its point of departure. It was performed annually at the Hofkapelle between 1830 and 1860 and intermittently until the early 20th century.

More generally, Voříšek's music expresses a Biedermeier sensibility. Its attractive melodic surface, piquant touches of harmony, graceful, decorative figurations and, above all, its evocation of the music of the recent past (especially Mozart, Haydn and early Beethoven) appealed to the middle-class public of the time. Like the music of Hummel and Moscheles, however, it fell out of fashion with the advent of the Romantic idiom of the 1830s.

Voříšek, Jan Václav

WORKS

(selective list)

principal MS collection in A-Wgm; other MSS in A-GÖ, Wn, CZ-Pr, Pu, D-Bsb

works with opus numbers published in Vienna

choral and vocal ensemble

Sacred: Mass, B, 1824–5, ed. in MAB, 2nd ser., xiv (in preparation), CZ-Pr; Benedictus es, grad, F, 1824, Pr; Mentis opressae, off, g, 1824, Pr; Quoniam iniquitatem cognosco, off, c1825, A-Wgm

Secular: Gefühle des Dankes (cant.), 1812, GÖ; Gott im Frühling (J.P. Uz), 4 solo vv, op.13, 1817 (1823); Secundiz-Cantate, c1824, Wgm; Duet, S, T, pf, op.26, c1825, Wn

songs

for 1 voice and piano

Nevinnost (V. Hanka) (Prague, c1813); Die Freundschaft (A.J. Schmid) (1820)

3 Lieder, op.10, 1815 (1824): l Die Abschiedsträne, 2 Das arme Röschen, 3 Eintrit ins Jünglingsalter; no.1 ed. M. Poštolka and O. Pulkert, Písně (Prague, 1961–2)

Liebe (C. Müchler), op.15, c1815 (1824); ed. M. Poštolka and O. Pulkert, Písně (Prague, 1961–2)

3 Gedichte, op.21, 1815 (1825): 1 An Sie, 2 Der Frühlingsregen, 3 Das Täubchen; no.1 ed. M. Poštolka and O. Pulkert, Písně (Prague, 1961–2)

In Träume (L. Schneider), 1815, A-Wn; Maus und Mädchen, 1815; Advocaten-Liebeswerbung, c1815, Wn; Ferne Liebe, ? c1815; So lebt den Wohl, 1817; 6 arietti (P. Metastasio), c1817; Ermunterung (Salis), Wn; Gesang einer Najade, GÖ

orchestral

Pf, orch: Variations di bravura, B, op.14, c1820 (1823); Variations brillantes on the Fr. song ‘La sentinelle’, C, op.6, 1818 (1824) [also for 2 pf (1820) and pf, str qt (1824)]; Rondo espagnol, d, op.17, c1822 (1824); Introduction et rondeau brillant, D, op.22, 1817 (1826)

Other works: Sym., D, 1823 (1825), ed. F. Bartoš (Prague, 1957), ed. in MAB, xxxiv (1965); Grand rondeau concertant, D, pf, vn, vc, orch, op.25, 1820 (1826)

chamber and solo piano

Chbr: Rondo über den beliebten Bolero, E, vc/vn, pf, op.2, 1818 (1819); Vn Sonata, G, op.5, 1819 (1820), ed. in MAB, xxx (1956); Rondo, A, vn/vc, pf, op.8, c1819 (1821), ed. V. Helfert, Staří Čeští Mistři (Prague, 1933); Variations, d, vc, pf, op.9, c1820 (1822); Rondo, A, str qt, op.11 (1822); Ov., c, 2 pf, op.16 (1824), ed. O. Zuckerová (Kassel, 1971)

Pf solo: [12] Deutsche Tänze (Prague, 1813); Leichenfeier auf den Tod des Generals Moreau (Prague, c1813); Impromptu, B (Vienna, 1817), ed. in MAB, lii (1961), ed. D. Zahn (Munich, 1971); 12 Rhapsodies, op.1, 1813–18 (1818), ed. in MAB, lxxviii–lxxix (1978–9); Stammbuchblatt, A, 1817, ed. in MAB, lii (1961); Le désir, op.3, c1819 and Le plaisir, op.4, c1819, both ed. in MAB, lii (1961); [6] Impromptus, op.7, 1820 (1821), ed. in MAB, i (1934), ed. D. Zahn (Munich, 1971); Fantasie, C, op.12, 1817/c1821 (1822), ed. in MAB, xx (1954), ed. D. Zahn (Munich, 1971); [3] Deutsche Tänze (Vienna, 1823); 3 Etudes (Vienna, 1823); 2 rondeaux mignons, G, C, op.18 (1824), ed. in MAB, lii (1961); Eclogue, C, c1824, Impromptu, F (1824), both ed. in MAB, lii (1961); Variation on a theme of Diabelli (Vienna, 1824); Theme and Variations, B, op.19, 1822 (1825), ed. in MAB, lii (1961), ed. D. Zahn (Munich, 1971); Sonata, b, op.20, 1820/24 (1825), ed. in MAB, iv (1949, rev. 2/1986), ed. D. Zahn (Munich, 1971)

Voříšek, Jan Václav

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A. Fuchs: ‘Notizen über Joh. Hugo Worzischek, k.k. ersten Hoforganisten’, Monatbericht der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (1829), 148–60

W. Kahl: ‘Das lyrische Klavierstück Schuberts und seiner Vorgänger seit 1810’, AMw, iii (1921), 99–122

K. Hůlka: ‘J.H. Voříšek’, Cyrill, xlvii (1921), 54–9, 70–72, 88–90; xlvii (1922), 20–23

O. Loulova: ‘Pražská léta Jana Václava Voříška’ [Voříšek's Prague years], Zpŕavy Bertramky (1961), 10–15 [commemorative issue celebrating the 40th year of the Mozartova obce]

A. Simpson: ‘A Profile of Jan Václav Voříšek’, PRMA, xcvii (1970–71), 125–32

B. Küfhaberová: ‘Voříšek's Wiener Autograph’, SPFFBU, H15 (1980), 79–83

K.G. DeLong: The Solo Piano Music of J.V. Voříšek (diss., Stanford U., 1982)

V. Kyas: ‘Skladatel a pianista J.H. Voříšek v zrcadle dobových kritik’ [The composer and pianist Voříšek in the mirror of contemporary criticism], OM, xviii (1986), 227–39

K.G. DeLong: ‘J.V. Voříšek and the Fantasy’, Janáček and Czech Music: St Louis 1988, 191–214

V. Kyas: ‘Vztah J.H. Voříšek a jeho žáků k tvorbě J.L. Dusíka’ [The relationship of Voříšek and his students upon the works of J.L. Dusík], CMm, lxxiii (1988), 209–17

O. Zuckerová: ‘Nové poznatky o J.H. Voříškovi’ [New discoveries about Voříšek], HV, xxv (1988), 230–37

V. Kyas: ‘Jan Hugo Voříšek's Secondiz-Cantate’, SPFFBU, H23–4 (1988), 43–5

K.G. DeLong: ‘The Piano Rhapsodies of J.V. Voříšek’, Journal of the American Liszt Society, no.26 (1989), 12–28

V. Kyas: ‘Co víme o Voříškových chrámových skladbách’ [What is known about Voříšek's church compositions], OM, xxi (1989), 225–8

V. Kyas: ‘Jan Hugo Voříšek, Franz Schubert, a Vídeň jejich doby’ [Voříšek, Schubert and the Vienna of their time], OM, xxi (1989), 5–19

J. Berkovec: ‘Voříškova mše B dur’ [Voříšek's Mass in B], HV, xxvii (1990), 127–39

V. Kyas: ‘Nové poznatky o Janu Hugovi Voříškovi’ [New discoveries regarding Voříšek], CMm, lxxv (1990), 205–22

A. Vlček: K otázce rodových vztahů Jana Václava Huga Voříška a k osudům skladeb bratří Voříšku ve východních Čechách [On the genealogical tree of Voříšek, with some remarks on the works of the Voříšek brothers in Bohemia], HV, xxviii (1991), 231–41

O. Zuckerová: Jan Hugo Voříšek (1791–1825) [thematic catalogue] (Prague, forthcoming)

Vorlová, Sláva [Johnová, Miroslava]

(b Náchod, 15 March 1894; d Prague, 24 Aug 1973). Czech composer. She studied singing at the Vienna Conservatory and took private lessons with Vítězslav Novák (composition) and Václav Stěpán (piano). She passed the state examinations in 1918, but discontinued composing until 1932; the following year she wrote her op.1 string quartet, which was given its première by the Ondříček Quartet. Its success encouraged her to continue her studies with František Maxian (piano) and Jaroslav Řídký (composition). After World War II she graduated from Řídký’s class at the Prague Conservatory (1948) with Symphony JM op.18, dedicated to Jan Masaryk. Some works written during the war, such as the cantata Maličká země (‘Little Country’), contributed to the Czech war resistance; at the same time her chamber works gained recognition in Europe.

To avoid the frustration imposed by doctrinal mass culture after the communist regime took power in the 1950s, she turned to folksongs and historical themes in her works, as in the operas Zlaté ptáče (‘The Golden Bird’, 1949–50), Rozmarýnka (1952–3) and Náchodská kasace (‘Náchod Cassation’, 1955). She also wrote works in a jazz style (under the pseudonym Mira Cord) in an attempt to earn money, but they were never performed. She was the first modern Czech composer to employ the trumpet and bass clarinet as solo instruments in concertos. Her late works employ modernist techniques without sacrificing sonority and melodic charm; beginning with Bhukhar (‘Feverish Birds’, 1965), Vorlová devised her own numerological method for serial music, producing some of her best works.

WORKS

(selective list)

Stage: Zlaté ptáče [The Golden Bird] (fairy-tale op, prol, 6 scenes, V.H. Roklan), op.27, 1949–50; Rozmarýnka (folk op, Roklan, after V. Hálek), op.30, 1952–3; Náchodská kasace [Náchod Cassation] (historical op, Roklan, after A. Jirásek), op.37, 1955; Dva světy [Two Worlds] (1, Roklan, after B.V. Ron), op.45, 1958

Orch: Sym. JM, op.18, 1947–8; Božena Němcová, op.24, suite, 1950–51; Symfonická předehra FOK [Sym. Prelude FOK], op.25, 1951; Pastorální koncert, E, op.28, ob, orch, 1952; 3 české tance, op.29, 1952–3; Tpt Conc., a, op.31, 1953; Slovácký Conc., op.35, va, orch, 1954; Doudlebské tance [Dances from Doudleby], op.36, 1953–4; Cl Conc., d, op.41, 1957; Duryňské tance [Dances from Thuringia], op.44, 1957; Fl Conc., b, op.48, 1959; Conc., op.50, b cl, str, 1961; Kybernetické studie, op.56, 1962; Double Conc., op.59, ob, hp, orch, 1963; Dedikace [Dedication], op.64, 1965; Bhukhar [Feverish Birds], op.67, 1965; Model Kinetic, op.69, ballet, 1966–7; Chbr Conc., op.74, db, str, 1968; Korelace [Correlation], op.75, b cl, pf, str, 1968; Polarizace [Polarization], op.84, hp, wind, perc, 1970; Emergence, op.92, vn, orch, 1973

Vocal: Maličká země [Little Country] (cant., Vorlová), op.7, solo vv, chorus, orch, 1941–2; Bílá oblaka [White Clouds] (Vorlová), op.8, female chorus, orch, 1942–3; Stesk [Longing] (O. Scheinpflugová), op.13, 1v, pf, 1946; Zpěvy Gondwany [Songs of Gondwana] (Roklan), op.19, solo vv, chorus, orch, 1948–9; Tango cantabile (Roklan), op.23, 1v, orch, 1951; My lidé dvacátého století [We People of the 20th Century] (Roklan), op.46, chorus, children’s chorus, orch, 1959; Magellan vesmíru [Magellan of the Universe] (‘modern orat’, Roklan), op.49, solo vv, mixed chorus, children’s chorus, orch, 1960

Chbr and solo inst: Bezkydy Str Qt, op.1, 1933; Str Qt, op.5, 1939; Nonet, op.10, 1944; 5 Bagatelles, op.15, vc, pf, 1947; Str Qt, op.22, 1950; Šarády [Puzzles], op.32, 2 pf, 1953, orchd as op.32b, 1956; Fantazie na české lidové téma [Fantasy on a Czech Folksong], op.33, va, 1953; Pantumy [Pantoumes], op.47, hp, 1959; Miniatury, op.55, b cl, pf, 1962; Serenata desta, op.58, fl, b cl, pf, 1962; Dessins tetraharpes, op.60, 4 hp, 1963; Sonata lirica da tre, op.62, vn, va, gui, 1964; Droleries basclarinettiques, op.63, b cl, 1964; Il fauno danzante, op.66, b cl, 1965; 6 pro 5, op.71, brass qnt, 1967; Colloquii, op.82, 4 fl dolce, 1969; Efemeridy, op.83, cimb, 1969; Imanence, op.88, fl, b cl, pf, perc, 1971; educational music

Principal publishers: Czech Music Fund, Panton

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ČSHS

J. Vacková: ‘Maličká země S. Vorlové’, Tempo [Prague], xx (1947–8), 133–8

E. Pensdorfová: ‘Na památku statečné ženyskladatelky’ [In Memory of a Brave Woman Composer], HRo, xxvi (1973), 463–4

V.H. Roklan: ‘Konfese Slávy Vorlové’, OM, v (1973), 155

A.I. Cohen: International Encyclopedia of Women Composers (New York, 1981, 2/1987)

A. Šerých: Sláva Vorlová (Prague, forthcoming)

ANNA ŠERÝCH

Vorobchievici, Isidor

(b Czernowitz [now Chernovtsy], 18 May 1836; d Czernowitz, 18 Sept 1903). Romanian composer, teacher and writer. After studying with Krenn at the Vienna Music Academy, he taught music in the Romanian schools of Czernowitz. He wrote a handbook of harmony (1869, the first of its kind in Romanian) and a textbook of music theory (in German, 1871); both were intended for teachers and amateurs alike. His choral works, folk pieces and patriotic songs were written for schools and the many amateur music societies, which came to represent after 1830 an important national artistic movement. Taking some ideas from folk music and from old Romanian church chant, Vorobchievici used modal techniques in much of his work. As a writer he is known particularly for a study of Romanian music; his articles, poetry, dramas and editorial work also played an important part in the cultural development of Romania. Among his pupils were Eusebius Mandyczewski, Ciprian Porumbescu and Tudor Flondor.

WORKS

(selective list)

many MSS in RO-Ba

Choral: Imnele Sf Liturghii a Sf Ioan Gură-de-Aur [Hymns from the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom], male vv, 1869; Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, 3vv, 1881; Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, mixed vv, 1887; Ştefan-Vodă şi codrul [Prince Stefan and the forest] (V. Alecsandri), ballad; Ştefan-Vodă şi şoimul [Prince Stefan and the falcon] (Alecsandri), ballad; Mănăstirea Putna [Putna monastery] (Alecsandri), ballad; songs

Vocal: Flori din Bucovina [Flowers of Bukovina], 8 Romanian songs, 1v, pf, 1889; other songs

WRITINGS

Manual de armonia musicală (Czernowitz, 1869)

Kurze allgemeine Musiklehre für Schule und Haus (Czernowitz, 1871)

‘Die österreichisch-ungarische Monarchie in Wort und Bild’, Bukovina, xx (1899), 363–74

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A. Hřimaly: 30 Jahre Musik in der Bukovina: erinnerungen aus dem Jahre 1874–1904 (Czernowitz, 1904)

M.G. Posluşnicu: Istoria muzicii la Români (Bucharest, 1928), 491

I. Vicoveanu: ‘Pagini din istoria muzicii: Isidor Vorobchievici’, Muzica, x/2 (1960), 35

V. Cosma: Muzicieni români: lexicon (Bucharest, 1970) [incl. list of works]

ROMEO GHIRCOIAŞIU

Vorob'yova, Anna Yakovlevna.

See Petrova, Anna Yakovlevna.

Vorschlag

(Ger.).

See Appoggiatura. See also Non-harmonic note and Ornaments (esp. §8).

Vorspiel (i)

(Ger.).

Prelude. The term appears frequently in German operatic scores from Wagner’s Lohengrin (1846–8) onwards. Following Wagner’s prescriptions in Oper und Drama, the Vorspiel was invariably linked closely with the musical and dramatic events of the opera. The two that function as symphonic prologues to the first and third acts of Die Walküre, for instance, depict respectively the storm that drives Siegmund to seek shelter in Hunding’s hut and the ride of the Valkyries before their assembly. The Vorspiel was not necessarily purely orchestral, however. That to Act 1 of Götterdämmerung embraces the Norns’ scene, Siegfried and Brünnhilde’s duet and the Rhine Journey. This structure was probably influenced by the opening of Marschner’s Hans Heiling (1833), where the Vorspiel, consisting of choruses flanking a solo for Heiling, precedes the overture. The term is also used of preludes in general (e.g. Choralvorspiel, denoting a chorale prelude).

MICHAEL TILMOUTH/R

Vorspiel (ii)

(Ger.).

Performance. In this sense the word derives from the verb vorspielen, meaning ‘to perform (in public)’ or ‘to audition’.

MICHAEL TILMOUTH/R

Vortakt

(Ger.).

See Upbeat.

Vos [Voz], Laurent de

(b Antwerp, 1533; d Cambrai, Jan 1580). Flemish composer, brother of the painter Marten de Vos the elder. After spending his early years at the cathedral in Antwerp, in 1566 he was director of music and master of the children at Cambrai Cathedral. At Cambrai in 1580 Vos composed a motet for a large choir in which the text was chosen from the psalms in such a manner as to describe the banishment of Archbishop Louis de Berlaymont, the usurpation of Baron d'Inchy, his iniquities, the murder of citizens, the vain hope of release through the Duc d'Alençon, and the probability that the reign of the wicked would be brief. The motet was performed after Vespers in the presence of d'Inchy, who seized Vos and, despite his clerical status, had him hanged without a trial.

Vos's Chansons à 4, 5, parties et un dialogue à 8 parties (Douai, 1603) contains 30 works, and the five-part motet Comeditis carnes and its second part Non Moyses dedit is no.29 in Florilegium sacrarum cantionum (RISM 1609¹).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

MGG1 (A. vander Linden)

Vander StraetenMPB, i, ii

C.A. Lefebvre: ‘Biographie cambrésienne: Laurent Vos, chef de la maîtrise des enfants de choeur, 1579–1580’, Mémoires de la Société d'émulation de Cambrai, xxv/1 (1857), 51–64

LAVERN J. WAGNER

Voss, Friedrich

(b Halberstadt, 12 Dec 1930). German composer and pianist. He studied the piano and composition at the Hochschule für Musik, Berlin (1949–54), and continued to live in Berlin as a freelance composer until 1969, when he moved to the Black Forest. In 1955 his Concerto da camera won first prize in the Munich Chamber Orchestra Competition. Among other awards, he has received the Stuttgart Music Prize (1960), the Düsseldorf Schumann Prize (1962) and, on two occasions, the German Rome Prize (1964–5, 1977). His orchestral works have received first performances from the Berlin PO and the Berlin RSO, under Karajan and Maazel among other conductors; his music has also been performed in the USA, Latin America, Japan and Australia. With its extended tonality and strong links to tradition, Voss’s musical language seeks immediate communication with the listener, renouncing structural devices as ends in themselves.

WORKS

(selective list)

Op: Leonce und Lena (comic op, 2, G. Büchner), 1970–1, 1977–9

Ballet: Die Nachtigall und die Rose (G. Furtwängler, after O. Wilde), 1961, Oberhausen, 5 Jan 1962

Orch: Conc. da camera, str, 1953; Sym. Suite, 1954; Phantasie, str, 1956; Résonances, 12 poems, chbr orch, 1957; Sym. no.1, 1958–9; Epitaph, str, 1960; Variations, wind, timp, 1960; Tragische Ouvertüre, str, 1961; Vn Conc. no.1, 1962; Sym. no.2, 1962–3; Concertino, vc, str, 1964–5; Sinfonia humana (Sym. no.3), 1966–7; Hamlet Ov., 1968–9; Dithyrambus über ein Motiv von Beethoven, 1969; Sym. no.4, 1972–6; Metamorphose, 1978–9; Concertino, org, str, timp, 1981–2; Vc Conc., 1983–4; Vn Conc. no.2, 1985–7; Sym. no.5, 1991–7

Chbr and solo inst: Music for Fl, 1952; Notturno, ob, hp, 1956; Pf Trio, 1957; Serenade, fl, vn, hp, 1959; Str Qt no.1, 1960; Pan exzentrisch, Phantasie, fl, pf, 1961, arr. fl, orch, 1962, rev. fl, chbr orch, 1964, rev. fl, str, 1971; Variations, vc, 1962–3; Variations, va, 1962–3; Toccata, org, 1965; Capriccioso, fl, wind qt, 1965; Variations, fl, 1967; Partita cromatica, org, 1968; Sonata, vn, 1968; Str Qt no.2, 1969–70; Capriccio ‘Seboniana’, fl, 1974; Str Qt no.3, 1980–81; Str Qt no.4, 1990

Choral: Noch aber rauchen die Ruinen der Tage, unacc. cycle, 1964; Ps c, mixed chorus, 1976–7; Psalm-Kantate, solo vv, chorus, str, 1986

Principal publisher: Breitkopf & Härtel

JOSEPH CLARK/R

Voss, Johann Heinrich

(b Sommersdorf, Mecklenburg, 20 Feb 1751; d Heidelberg, 29 March 1826). German poet. The son of a farmer, he studied theology and later philology at Göttingen University (1772–5), where he became a member of the ‘Göttinger Hainbund’, a literary circle led by H.C. Boie. Voss frequently contributed poetry to Boie’s journal, the Musenalmanach, and from 1775 to 1800 was its editor. During these years he also served as headmaster at schools in Otterndorf (1778) and Eutin (1782). In 1802 he went to Jena to improve his health; three years later he was appointed to the faculty of Heidelberg University to teach classical philology. He remained in Heidelberg until his death.

Voss is best known for his German translations of Homer, Virgil, Horace, Ovid and (with the help of his two sons) Shakespeare. His chief contribution to music is his lyric poetry, which was frequently set by 18th-century composers including C.P.E. Bach, J.F. Reichardt and J.A.P. Schulz; many of these settings were published in the Musenalmanach. His correspondence with Schulz shows their shared aim of a folklike style in lied composition. Although this ideal fell from fashion in the 19th century, Voss’s lieder were still occasionally set (by, among others, Mendelssohn, Weber and Brahms).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

H.E.G. Paulus: Lebens- und Todeskunden über Johann Heinrich Voss (Heidelberg, 1826)

H. Grantzow: Geschichte des Göttinger und des Vossischen Musenalmanachs (Berlin, 1909)

K. Goedeke and others: Grundriss zur Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung aus den Quellen, iv/1 (Dresden, 3/1916/R), 1056 [incl. comprehensive bibliography and list of works]

H. Gottwaldt and G. Hahne, eds.: Briefwechsel zwischen Johann Abraham Peter Schulz und Johann Heinrich Voss (Kassel, 1960)

G. Hahne: ‘Johann Heinrich Voss’ Versuch einer Gesamtausgabe der Lieder Johann Abraham Peter Schulz’’, Mf, xx (1967), 176–81

M.-M. Langner: Brahms und seine schleswig-holsteinischen Dichter: Klaus Groth, Friedrich Hebbel, Detlev von Liliencron, Theordor Storm, Johann Heinrich Voss (Heide, 1990)

RAYMOND A. BARR

Vossius [Voss], Gerhard Johann

(b nr Heidelberg, 1577; d Amsterdam, 19 March 1649). Dutch polymath and writer on music of German birth. He received a master’s degree and a doctorate from the University of Leiden. He became rector of the grammar school at Dordrecht in 1600 and director of the theological college at Leiden in 1615 but in 1619 he was suspended as an Arminian. He held professorships at the University of Leiden and at the newly established Athenaeum Illustre, Amsterdam. When he was in England in 1629 Charles I granted him a private audience in recognition of his learning.

Vossius wrote many theological, philological and historical works, a complete edition of which was published in six volumes over 40 years after his death (Amsterdam, 1695–1701). Five of his works (all published at Amsterdam) contain observations on music: De theologia gentili (1642); De artis poeticae natura et constitutione (1647); Institutiones poeticae (1647); De artium et scientiarum natura et constitutione (1650); and Etymologicon linguae latinae (1662). He also wrote a Carmen panegyricum in elegiac couplets referring to figures in classical mythology as a commendatory poem prefacing Henderick Speuy’s De psalmen Davids (Dordrecht, 1610; facs. of the poem in Psalm Preludes for Organ or Harpsichord, ed. F. Noske, Amsterdam and Philadelphia, 1962; also repr. by Dekker).

Vossius’s son Isaac (b Leiden, 1618; d Windsor, 21 Feb 1689) settled in England in 1670, moving extensively in court and intellectual circles. On 12 May 1673 he was installed as a canon of St George’s Chapel, Windsor. In that year he wrote a paper, De poematum cantu et viribus rhythmi, discussing music, like his father, mainly from a philological point of view. His work still influenced a number of musicians in the 18th century, among them Bach.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ADB (T. Koldewey)

NNBW (S.G. de Vries)

H. Tollius: Oratio in obitum incomparabilis et illustrissimi viri G. J. Vossii (Amsterdam, 1649)

W. Serauky: ‘Die Affekten-Metrik des Isaac Vossius im ihrem Einfluss auf Joh. Kuhnau und Joh. Seb. Bach’, Festschrift Max Schneider zum achtzigsten geburtstage, ed. W. Vetter (Leipzig, 1955), 105–13

H.N. Davis: ‘Dryden and Vossius: a reconsideration’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute, xxix (1966), 282–310

H. Hüschen: ‘Der Polyhistor Gerhard Johann Vossius (1577–1649) als Musikschriftsteller’, Festschrift für Walter Wiora, ed. L. Finscher and C.-H. Mahling (Kassel, 1967), 182–90

C.S.M. Rademaker: Gerardus Joannes Vossius (1577–1649) (Zwolle, 1967)

A.M.M. Dekker: ‘Een onopgemerkt Latijns gedicht van Gerardus Joannes Vossius’, Hermeneus, xliv (1972–3), 236–45

HEINRICH HÜSCHEN

Vostřák, Zbyněk

(b Prague, 10 June 1920; d Strakonice, 4 Aug 1985). Czech composer and conductor. He studied conducting with Dědeček at the Prague Conservatory (1939–43), taking composition lessons with Karel at the same time. From 1943 to 1945 he was a member of the Prague RSO, then a professor at the conservatory (1945–8) and head of the Orchestral Association (1946–7). Thereafter he devoted himself principally to composition, although he conducted occasionally for Prague radio and for the National Theatre, Prague. For the 1959–60 season he directed the Ústí nad Labem opera company. Between 1963 and 1973 he conducted Musica Viva Pragensis, an ensemble specializing in new music. A talent for composition was apparent in his youth, when he wrote spontaneously in an idyllic romantic style, sometimes with neo-classical and wider influences. He continued in this manner until the late 1950s; then, as with many other Czech composers, the contact with Webern's works brought about a profound change in his music. His first 12-note and serial chamber pieces were written in 1962. Shortly thereafter he became acquainted with the work of Boulez, Cage, Stockhausen and Varèse, and from 1966 his output progressed under these influences.

WORKS

(selective list)

Stage: Rohovín Čtverrohý (comic op, J. Bachtík, after V.K. Klicpera), op.12, Olomouc, 3 July 1949; Filosofská historie (ballet, J. Rey, after A. Jirásek), op.13, Prague, 9 July 1949; Viktorka (ballet, J. Rey, after B. Němcová), op.16, Prague, 30 June 1950; Králův mincmistr [Master of the King's Mint] (op, after J.K. Tyl), op.18, Prague, 25 Feb 1955; Sněhurka [Snow White] (ballet, J. Rey), Prague, 17 May 1956; Pražské nokturno [Prague Nocturno] (op, J. Wenig, after F. Kubka), Ústí nad Labem, 20 Feb 1960; Rozbitý džbán [The Broken Jug] (op, K. Jernek, after H. von Kleist), op.25, Prague, 8 Nov 1963

Vocal: 3 Sonnets, op.33 (W. Shakespeare), B, chbr orch, 1963; Cant., op.34 (F. Kafka), chorus, wind, perc, 1964

Orch: Zrození měsíce [The Birth of the Moon], op.39, chbr orch, 1966; Kyvadlo času [The Pendulum of Time], op.40, vc, 4 ens, elec org, 1967; Metahudba [Meta-music], op.43, 1968; Tajemství elipsy [The Secret of the Ellipse], op.44, 1970; Katedrála [Cathedral], op.61, 1979–80; Sinfonia, op.63, chorus, orch, 1981–2; The Crystals, op.65, eng hn, str, perc, 1983; Vítězná perla [The Victorious Pearl], op.66, pf, orch, 1984

Chbr and soli inst: Kontrasty, op.27, str qt, 1961; 3 Essays, op.31, pf, 1962; Afekty, op.32, 7 insts, 1963; Elementy, op.35, str qt, 1964; Kosmogonia, op.38, str qt, 1965; Tao, op.41, 9 players, 1967; Transformation I, op.47, chbr ens, tape, 1972; The Pretty Miller's Wife, op.48, wind qnt, 1973; Posledni večere [The Last Supper], op.59, str qt, 1979; Tajemství růže [Secret of the Rose], op.67, brass qnt, org, perc, 1984–5

Tape: Váhy světla [The Scales of Light], 1967; Dvě ohniska [2 Focuses], 1969; Telepatie, 1970; The Cold Cut, 1972; Jedno ve všem [One in 11], 1973; Transformation II, 1974

Principal publishers: Český hudební fond, Dilia, Gerig, Supraphon, Universal

BIBLIOGRAPHY

J. Volek: ‘Králův mincmistr na Národním divadle’ [Master of the King's Mint at the National Theatre], HRo, viii (1955), 343–6

P. Eckstein: ‘Premiéra Vostřákova Pražského Nokturna’, HRo, xiii (1960), 246–7

J. Volek: ‘Krystalizace!’, HRo, xv (1962), 914 only

J. Bajer: ‘Rozbitý džbán v Disku’ [The Broken Jug in Disk], HRo, xvii (1964), 22 only

V. Lébl and L. Mokrý: ‘O současném stavu nových skladebných směrů u nás’ [The present state of new compositional trends in Czechoslovakia], Nové cesty hudby (Prague, 1964), 21–6

E. Herzog: ‘Tři sonety ze Shakespeara’, SH, x (1966), 34–6

D. Pandula: ‘Zbyněk Vostřák: ein tschechischer Komponist der Avantgarde’, Das Orchester, xxiii/11 (1976), 716–20

M. Pudlák: Idea a tvář v hudbě Zbyňka Vostřáka [Idea and image in the music of Z. Vostřák] (diss., Charles U., Prague, 1994)

JOSEF BEK

Votey, Edwin Scott

(b 1856; d Summit, NJ, 21 Jan 1931). American organ builder. He received his earliest training in the Estey reed organ factory. In 1883, in partnership with William R. Farrand (1854–1930), he purchased the Whitney Organ Co. of Detroit (a maker of reed organs), and in 1887 the firm began building pipe organs under the name of Farrand & Votey. In 1893 Farrand & Votey purchased the business and patents of the Roosevelt firm of New York, and that year built one of their largest instruments for the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Other notable instruments included those in the Aeolian Hall, New York (1893), St Ignatius, San Francisco (1896), and the residence of Andrew Carnegie, New York (1900). Votey patented many improvements in organ mechanism, and in 1895 he invented the pianola, an exterior automatic piano-playing device which was one of the first of its kind. A patent was applied for in 1897 and issued in 1900. In 1897 Farrand & Votey merged with Aeolian of Garwood, New Jersey, although they continued to work around Detroit. Reed organs were made under the Farrand name, pipe organs under the Votey name, and pianolas were manufactured in quantity for Aeolian. After the turn of the century Votey turned his attention increasingly to the improvement of player piano mechanisms, and in 1901 sold his organ interests to George S. Hutchings of Boston, who reorganized his own firm under the name of Hutchings–Votey. Votey remained with Aeolian, however, becoming the firm's first vice-president in 1916.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A. Dolge: Pianos and their Makers (Covina, CA, 1911/R)

‘Edwin S. Votey’, American Organist, xiv/3 (1931), 148 only, 152 only

O. Ochse: The History of the Organ in the United States (Bloomington, IN, 1975)

BARBARA OWEN

Votive ritual

(from Lat. votum: ‘vow’, ‘prayer’).

Devotional ritual with a restricted or private intention. In the Latin rite votive ritual is regarded as a class apart from the texts and chant prescribed for the calendar of church festivals because it can be performed at any time and, following the appropriate formalities, in any place. It includes not only antiphons and masses, but also Offices, processional chant, psalms without antiphons, litanies and prayers. Votive material often appears as a supplement towards the end of books for Mass and Office or in individual books, such as collections of masses or books of Hours, but it may be interleaved with similar but non-votive material, as in the case of votive Offices. Its history intersects with that of the private Mass.

1. Votive ritual and liturgy.

The extent to which votive ritual is liturgy is unclear, and has changed with time. The term ‘liturgy’ was applied in Christian antiquity to official (in the East, priestly) or communal worship, as opposed to private devotion. Later definitions of the word, for instance, the use in the 16th century in titles of collections describing the Church’s worship, do not allow the inclusion of Offices for the Dead or other commemorative prayer read as liturgy by a private individual for personal intercession.

The increasing prominence throughout the Middle Ages of commemorations for the dead and other intercessory rituals (such as masses tied to indulgences) corresponded to the introduction on the Continent of the Celtic practice of tariff-penances, the granting of indulgences (beginning in the 11th century) and the newly recognized idea of the existence of purgatory, changes that prompted further increases in the numbers and types of such ‘non-liturgical’ devotions. At the same time, congregational participation in official worship disappeared as priests began to act as deputies, and perhaps as a consequence individuals came to shape their local rites by way of bequests for new celebrations whose content was not always regulated by religious authorities. Votive ritual did not need to include more than a single text, such as a litany or prayer. It could be performed by a single person (not necessarily a priest, as only the Mass included the Eucharist); individual priests celebrated votive masses throughout the Middle Ages.

2. History.

The oldest votive devotions are those for the dead, and are attested from the 2nd century onwards. Pope Gregory I provided the first known reference to a series of (30) Masses for the Dead (PL, lxxvii, 416–21). Numerous different prayers for votive masses are included in the Leonine and Gelasian sacramentaries as well as in early lectionaries. Other prayers are in Benedict of Aniane’s supplement to Hadrian’s sacramentary, and in a supplement prepared by Alcuin for the abbey of St Martin in Tours. The prayers attributed to both Benedict and Alcuin contain older material (Deshusses, 1971 and 1972); Alcuin’s prayers include the first known cycle for the days of the week, which is found with a Requiem Mass attributed to him in the Sacramentary of Trent (I-TRmf). It is possible that sung votive Mass Ordinaries and Propers were used alongside the prayers, but the sources for this material are only from the 10th century.

Votive antiphons, psalms and Offices are attested from the 9th century. Antiphon texts are found at the end of 9th-century graduals from Compiègne (F-Pn lat.17436), Senlis (Psg 111) and Corbie (Pn lat.12050). Neumed votive processional antiphons are found in the 10th–11th-century manuscript CH-E 121. By the end of the 9th century a Saturday Marian Office was used in some continental monasteries. The small Office of the Virgin (officium parvum), used if there was no feast with nine lessons, dates from the 10th century; it was included in the reformed breviary of the papal chapel by Innocent III in 1215. In the 13th century it was adopted by the Franciscans and then by the Third Order; it is found in many late-medieval books of Hours and remained in the Roman breviary until 1960. Other Marian Offices are known to have been established in the 11th century. Commemorative Offices of the Virgin, patron saints and relics were celebrated from the 12th century. By about 1200 the Cistercians had established their own formulary for a full Office with Vespers and Matins.

13th-century France, and Paris in particular, witnessed the greatest proliferation of votive Offices and antiphons. The best-known antiphons introduced at this time were the four for the Virgin: Alma redemptoris mater, Ave regina caelorum, Regina caeli and Salve regina, each of different origin (see Antiphon, §5(v)). The association of the oldest, the Salve regina, with commemorations for the dead dates back to one of the earliest manuscript sources, the pontifical F-Pn lat.944 (Aurillac, 12th century). Marian antiphons were sung as part of the burial ritual in the later Middle Ages as well, but they were sung customarily at the close of Compline. In the 13th century Hours of the Holy Ghost, Holy Cross, Trinity, St John the Baptist, St Catherine and the Passion of Christ came to complement the Marian Office and Office of the Dead.

Weekly cycles of votive masses and antiphons gained currency in the 14th and 15th centuries. There was a tendency to associate some masses with particular days; Requiems (generally performed on Mondays) and masses for the Virgin (Saturdays) were the most frequently celebrated. Many benefactors requested votive masses for the Virgin to be replaced by Requiems after their death. Masses for the Virgin and for the Holy Ghost are also known to have been sung with Requiems at state funerals. Cycles of votive antiphons, sung every evening after Vespers or Compline, may have consisted only of Marian antiphons, or of a series of different antiphons (such as those for the Dead, All Saints, the relics and so on). Also known were antiphons for the Holy Ghost, patron saints, and, in England especially, for Christ. Votive devotions reached the height of their popularity in the 15th and early 16th centuries, when extraordinary salutary powers were attributed to them and indulgences granted to those who heard them. Persons with sufficient means founded votive rituals to benefit them after their death, and confraternities, guilds and other corporations were also prominent among founders.

Post-Tridentine reforms sought to control the number and kinds of votive masses, and to regulate their celebration, as is evident from the new Roman Missal of 1570. Subsequent reformed editions, among them the Liber usualis, include votive material; the Codex rubricarum of 1960 revised the 1570 regulations on votive masses.

3. Texts, chant and use.

The texts and chant of votive material may change with the season of the Church’s year. By the high Middle Ages votive masses and Offices prescribed alternative material for the changing seasons, or at least for Lent and Easter. The Marian votive Mass was the most richly supplied, with four sets of Propers, whereas non-Marian votive masses provided a tract to replace the alleluia during Lent. Propers for the Mass and Office for the Dead did not change according to the seasons of the Church’s year.

Votive antiphons were sung without accompanying psalms or canticles. Their texts were drawn mostly from the antiphoner, processional and sequentiary, but after 1350 they were taken from devotional texts in books of Hours and prayer books. Votive antiphons were customarily followed by a versicle and collect; they were sung at the end of Matins, Lauds, Vespers or Compline, or were used in procession. English anthems (i.e. votive antiphons) concluded Lauds or the Lady Mass from the 15th century onwards, and were sung in the Anglican tradition at the end of Matins or Evensong in later centuries.

4. Polyphony.

Despite the fact that Masses and Offices for the Dead are the oldest of the votive rites, early polyphonic settings are rare. The earliest known setting of the Mass and the Office was by Du Fay, but this does not survive, and Ockeghem’s setting is the earliest to be extant. Polyphonic settings of the Requiem proliferated throughout Europe in the 16th century, but the Office was set most often by later Spanish composers, who also set individual responsories. Victoria set the entire Office for the Dead, as did Lassus, who even set the lessons (see also Requiem Mass, §2).

Many polyphonic settings of Marian Ordinaries survive, but often circumstantial evidence alone helps to distinguish votive polyphony from that for Marian feasts, since the rubrics in early kyriales do not make the distinction. Complete plainchant Ordinaries with the ambiguous rubric ‘for Marian feasts’ are known from 13th-century kyriales; it is not clear whether the same chants were used for the Saturday Marian Mass that was held at the high altar and in prominent side chapels in many churches by this time. In any case, this ‘Lady Mass’ was certainly the most important from a musical point of view, since it was the first to attract a complete setting of its Ordinary, that by Machaut. Early polyphonic settings probably include the mainly troped Marian Ordinaries in the 13th-century manuscript ‘W₁’ (D-W 677) and certainly include the early 14th-century Tournai Mass. Polyphonic Marian votive Propers are represented in the plenary mass by Reginaldus Libert and by the many settings of the introit Salve sancta parens from the 13th century onwards, as well as later settings of different introit texts by Binchois, Brassart, Arnold de Lantins and others. The earliest polyphonic settings of offertories and communions, from the 15th century, are also for the Marian votive Mass. Unfortunately, scholars have not attempted to distinguish polyphony for Marian feasts from that for votive Marian devotions; it seems possible, for instance, that Monteverdi’s vespers setting of 1610 could have been used in votive devotion, as it does not fit the mould for a single Marian feast.

Votive Marian antiphons were used in polyphonic compositions beginning in the 13th century, as cantus firmi or borrowed texts; antiphons for other saints, the peace and Christ were set to polyphony in the 15th century and later. Beginning in the 15th century, antiphon texts were set with little or no reference to the plainchant melody. Such settings appeared first in England, and then, around 1420, on the Continent: early continental settings include Binchois’ Ave regina celorum, Arnold de Lantins’ Tota pulchra esand O pulcherrima mulierum and Hymbert de Salinis’s Salve regina. After the late 15th century the chant was frequently omitted and the texts were set freely; the Eton Choirbook and GB-Lbl Harl.1709 contain many such polyphonic votive antiphons.

Non-Marian masses and cycles of votive masses were set to polyphony beginning in the 15th century. Polyphonic votive cycles were founded by Duke Jean of Berry (1405), Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy (1432) and Duke René of Anjou (1436); polyphony for Philip’s votive cycle is probably in I-TRmp 88 (masses for the Holy Ghost, Trinity, St Andrew, the Holy Cross, the Angels and the Virgin Mary). Byrd’s Gradualia includes Saturday Lady Masses for a whole year, hymns for Marian Vespers and a votive Mass of the Blessed Sacrament. Compère’s Officium de Cruce is probably votive (masses for the Holy Cross by Regis (lost) and La Rue are known, but may have been sung on feast days), as are the other items published by Petrucci in his motet collection of 1503 (RISM 1503¹), including Weerbeke’s motet cycles for the Virgin and the Holy Ghost.

Beginning with Josquin, polyphonic settings of texts in books of Hours proliferate. These settings include psalm-motets (whose musical form places them outside the daily Office and in a votive context), the penitential psalms and litanies. Lassus’s setting of the penitential psalms, which was restricted for private use, was copied into the most lavish choirbook of the Munich court library (D-Mbs A), a book whose illuminations are similar to those in a book of Hours. The Marian text Te matrem Dei laudamus and other prayers found in books of Hours, such as the sequence Stabat mater, were also set to polyphony; settings of the Marian Litany of Loreto are of a slightly later date.

Although the setting of votive polyphony declined dramatically after the Renaissance, settings of Marian antiphons by composers such as Handel, Haydn and Liszt are known; few votive mass settings have appeared, but there have been isolated settings of masses in tempore belli and for peace.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

HarrisonMMB

StrohmM

StrohmR, 270–87

M. Righetti: Manuale di storia liturgica, ii–iii (Milan, 1946–8, 3/1966–9)

J. Jungmann: Missarum sollemnia: eine genetische Erklärung der römischen Messe (Vienna, 1948, 5/1962; Eng. trans. as The Mass of the Roman Rite, 1951–5/R)

S.J.P. Van Dijk and J.H. Walker: The Origins of the Roman Liturgy: the Liturgy of the Papal Court and the Franciscan Order in the Thirteenth Century (London, 1960)

O. Nussbaum: Kloster, Priestermönch und Privatmesse: ihr Verhältnis im Westen, von den Anfängen bis zum hohen Mittelalter (Bonn, 1961)

B. Blackburn: ‘Te matrem Dei laudamus: a Study in the Musical Veneration of Mary’, MQ, liii (1967), 53–76

M. Lütolf, ed.: Die mehrstimmigen Ordinarium Missae-Sätze vom ausgehenden 11. bis zur Wende des 13. zum 14. Jahrhundert (Berne, 1970)

G. Reese: ‘The Polyphonic “Missa de Beata Virgine” as a Genre: the Background of Josquin’s Lady Mass’, Josquin des Prez: New York 1971, 589–98

J. Deshusses: Le sacramentaire grégorien, i–ii (Fribourg, 1971–9, 2/1988)

J. Deshusses: ‘Les messes d’Alcuin’, Archiv für Liturgiewissenschaft, xiv (1972), 7–41

R. Bowers: Choral Institutions within the English Church: their Constitution and Development, 1340–1500 (diss., U. of East Anglia, 1975)

S. Burstyn: ‘Early 15th-Century Polyphonic Settings of Song of Songs Antiphons’, AcM, xlix (1977), 200–27

C.M. Wright: ‘Performance Practices at the Cathedral of Cambrai 1475–1550’, MQ, lxiv (1978), 295–328, esp. 300–05

A. Hughes: Medieval Manuscripts for Mass and Office: a Guide to their Organization and Terminology (Toronto, 1982)

K.K. Forney: ‘Music, Ritual and Patronage at the Church of Our Lady, Antwerp’, EMH, vii (1987), 1–57

B.H. Haggh: Music, Liturgy, and Ceremony in Brussels, 1350–1500 (diss., U. of Illinois, 1988), 354–421

R.C. Wegman: ‘Music and Musicians at the Guild of Our Lady in Bergen op Zoom, c. 1470–1510’, EMH, ix (1989), 175–250

C. Wright: Music and Ceremony at Notre Dame of Paris, 500–1500 (Cambridge, 1989), 128–39

M. Rubin: Corpus Christi: the Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge, 1991)

K. Ottosen: The Responsories and Versicles of the Latin Office for the Dead (Aarhus, 1993), 29–49

S.E. Roper: Medieval English Benedictine Liturgy: Studies in the Formation, Structure, and Content of the Monastic Votive Office, c.950–1540 (New York, 1993)

R. Steiner: ‘Marian Antiphons at Cluny and Lewes’, Music in the Medieval English Liturgy, ed. S. Rankin and D. Hiley (Oxford, 1993), 175–204

R. Baltzer: ‘The Little Office of the Virgin and Mary’s Role at Paris’, The Divine Office in the Latin Middle Ages: Methodology and Source Studies, Regional Developments, Hagiography, ed. M. Fassler and R. Baltzer (New York, 2000) [Steiner Fs]

BARBARA H. HAGGH

Vötter, Romanus.

Composer of 30 melodies in the Mirantische Maul-Trummel by Laurentius von Schnüffis.

Vötterle, Karl

(b Augsburg, 12 April 1903; d Kassel, 29 Oct 1975). German music publisher. He had no formal academic training. A crucial factor in his development was his joining the ‘Wandervogel’ at the age of 11, where his love for folksong was aroused. His spontaneous enthusiasm for ‘natural’ music led in 1923 to his meeting with Walther Hensel, with whom he jointly founded the Finkensteiner Bund, an association of singers; it also spurred him to embark on publishing ventures in connection with the revival movements in German musicology, at first particularly in association with Gurlitt and his pupils. This activity grew into the Bärenreiter-Verlag, set up by Vötterle at Augsburg in 1924 and since 1927 based at Kassel. His many pioneering activities, which gave him a world-wide status in the music trade, reflected and made a significant contribution to important periods of German musicology: in the 1920s, when old music was revived; after the war, when musical interests widened and complete editions were begun and a reappraisal of 19th-century music was made; and, more recently, when a cautious probing of modern music was undertaken.

Vötterle was founder and president of the Internationale Heinrich Schütz-Gesellschaft and an honorary member of many other societies, notably the German Association of Music Publishers and the Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum. He received honorary doctorates from Kiel and Leipzig universities in 1953, and was made an honorary senator of Marburg University in 1968. Among his many awards are the Bundesverdienstkreuz Erster Klasse, the Grosse Silberne Ehrenzeichen of the Austrian Republic and the Golden Medal of Czechoslovakia.

WRITINGS

Haus unterm Stern (Kassel, 1949, 4/1969)

‘Begegnung mit der Musikwissenschaft’, Festskrift Jens Peter Larsen, ed. N. Schiørring, H. Glahn and C.E. Hatting (Copenhagen, 1972), 391–9

Zur Situation des deutschen Musikverlegers (Bonn, 1973)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

R. Baum and W. Rehm, eds.: Musik und Verlag: Karl Vötterle zum 65. Geburtstag (Kassel, 1968) [contains list of writings and editorial activities, p.595]

K. Vötterle: ‘Mein Lebensweg’, Haus unterm Stern: ein Verleger erzählt (Kassel, 4/1969), 321

W. Blankenburg: ‘D. Dr.h.c. Karl Vötterle zur Vollendung des 70. Lebensjahres’, Musik und Kirche, xliii (1973), 57–8

A.M. Gottschick, ed.: Bärenreiter-Chronik: die ersten 50 Jahre, 1923–1973 (Kassel, 1973)

Obituaries: Mf, xxviii (1975), 489; SMz, cxv (1975), 340

L. Finscher: ‘Karl Vötterle †’, Mf, xxix (1976), 5–6

HANS HEINRICH EGGEBRECHT

Votto, Antonino

(b Piacenza, 30 Oct 1896; d Milan, 9 Sept 1985). Italian conductor. He studied at the Naples Conservatory and made his conducting début in 1923 with Manon Lescaut at La Scala, Milan, where he was engaged as répétiteur and assistant conductor to Toscanini. He first appeared at Covent Garden in 1924, conducting Pagliacci and Madama Butterfly, and was soon admired as one of the finest conductors of Italian opera in major centres in Italy, as well as touring elsewhere in Europe and appearing at the Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires. From 1948 he worked mainly at La Scala, and for over 20 years (until 1967) was a respected teacher at the Milan Conservatory.

During the 1950s Votto conducted several of the spectacular productions at La Scala, mounted for Callas by Visconti, Salvini and Wallmann, including Spontini’s La vestale (1954), Norma (1955) and La sonnambula (1957), and the Florence production of Don Carlos (1956). Norma and Andrea Chénier (also with Callas) were recorded from live Scala performances in 1955; his other recordings with Callas included Un ballo in maschera and La bohème (both 1956), La sonnambula (1957) and La Gioconda (1959). Other live recordings from La Scala were Cavalleria rusticana with Simionato (1955) and Boito’s Mefistofele with Siepi (1957). Votto made his American début only in 1960, at the Chicago Lyric Opera, with Aida and Don Carlos.

CLAUDIO CASINI, NOËL GOODWIN

Vounderlich, Jean-Georges.

See Wunderlich, Jean-Georges.

Vowles, William Gibbons

(b Bristol, 1826; d Churchill, Somerset, 25 Feb 1912). English organ builder. He was trained by Joseph Munday, whose business was founded by John Smith in 1814. In 1856 Vowles founded the Bristol firm of W.G. Vowles Ltd. His early work included the rebuilding of the organs of Bristol Cathedral (1861) and St Mary Redcliffe (1867). In 1860 the firm moved from Castle Street to extensive premises in St James's Square and developed factory production methods. After his retirement in 1908 the firm became a limited company, whose catalogue of that year offered a range of 17 standard specifications from one to three manuals and gave details of 510 instruments supplied to locations principally in Bristol, Gloucestershire, Somerset and South Wales. Some organs were exported to South Africa, India and the West Indies. On 29th March 1924 the factory was destroyed by fire; the firm suffered further damage during the war and was eventually absorbed by J.W. Walker & Sons in 1959. For further information, see ‘Messrs. Vowles’ Organ Works’, Work in Bristol: a Series of Sketches of the Chief Manufactories of the City (Bristol, 1883), 162–77.

CHRISTOPHER KENT

Vox.

American record company. It was founded in New York in 1945 by George H. Mendelssohn. Recording began in New York with 78 r.p.m. discs, issued on vinyl as well as on shellac. In 1946 the owner moved to Paris and associated his firm with French Polydor. In July of that year Klemperer conducted his first recordings in 15 years for these labels, joined by Eugène Bigot, Anatole Fistoulari, Paul Paray and Manuel Rosenthal. The company was early in adopting the LP format, in mid-1949. Vox parted from Polydor in 1950 and became associated with Pathé, whose recordings appeared on Vox until early 1954. Vox began to record in Vienna in early 1950, using the facilities of the Vienna SO, and later in Stuttgart and Milan. After 1952 the Vienna SO continued to record for Vox pseudonymously. Ferdinand Grossmann, Rudolf Moralt and Clemens Krauss were Vox's first conductors in Vienna; in 1951 Klemperer made a renowned group of recordings with the orchestra. In 1952 Jascha Horenstein began a long series of recordings for the label, including versions of then rarely heard symphonies by Bruckner and Mahler. Pianists included Guiomar Novaës, Alexander Borovsky, Alfred Brendel, Vlado Perlemuter and Ingrid Haebler (in a series of Mozart concertos); violinists included Ivry Gitlis and Aaron Rosand. Vox issued the first stereo discs in June 1958, then launched its Vox Box series, usually of three discs at a reduced price, with complete sets of works in most categories of the Baroque, Classical and Romantic repertories. After promoting the revival of Baroque music, Vox took up the cause of obscure 19th-century composers. A low-priced label, Turnabout, was added in 1965 and a mid-priced one, Candide, in 1968. Vox made the first recordings of Zubin Mehta and Leonard Slatkin, among others. From 1975 the company engaged numerous American orchestras, including the Utah SO, Minnesota Orchestra, St Louis SO and others. Mendelssohn sold the company to Moss Music Group in 1978; it passed to Pickwick in 1988 and to Essex Entertainment in 1989. The firm made the transition to compact disc and continues to produce new recordings.

JEROME F. WEBER

Vox angelica

(Lat.).

Vox humana (i)

(Lat.: ‘human voice’).

A tenor oboe in F. See Oboe, §III, 4(ii).

Vox humana (ii) (Lat.: ‘human voice’).