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Toccata Classics, 2023
The cataclysmic social and political upheaval wrought by the late-eighteenth-and early-nineteenth... more The cataclysmic social and political upheaval wrought by the late-eighteenth-and early-nineteenth-century revolutionary period, combined with the inescapable influence of Enlightenment philosophies, had profound effects upon European sacred music, its principal religious institutions, its repertoire and the many composers who lived and worked in hitherto protected environments. Rome was twice occupied, in 1798-99 and 1808-14, by a French army which arrested two popes (Pius VI and VII), compelled many senior clergy to flee the city and carried out acts of cultural spoliation not seen since the brutal sack of 1527 by the mutinous troops of Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor. The combined effects of these traumas were felt for decades thereafter, although the religious infrastructure of the city came through the Napoleonic era relatively unscathed, at least when compared to other European capitals. Many of the major Roman religious foundations survived, if with drastically altered administrations and reduced financial capabilities-but the golden age of papal artistic patronage and associated micro-courts of prominent cardinals had come to an end. By the mid-1800s Rome, now more of a tourist trap than the longterm home of leading cultural figures, was a shadow of the city it had resembled a century earlier, when it was a magnet for pilgrims, 'grand tourists' , painters, writers, sculptors, theologians, historians and musicians, all thrown together in an invigorating atmosphere articulately described by Martin Cheke: Here are triumphal arches. Here are galleries and pediments peopled with Bernini's gesticulating marble giants. In the distance can be glimpsed the dome of St Peter's, and green mounds where the genius of Ancient Rome meets us amidst its ruins. It is still the Rome of the Renaissance, hardly bigger than a provincial town, a capital
Toccata Classics, 2016
Sleeve notes for Toccata Classics 0300 The Cardinal King First recordings of music by Sebastiano... more Sleeve notes for Toccata Classics 0300 The Cardinal King
First recordings of music by Sebastiano Bolis, maestro di cappella to Cardinal Henry Benedict Stuart at Rome and Frascati, as well as music by Giovanni Battista Costanzi, Giovanni Zamboni and Carlo Tessarini, other composers associated with the Cardinal.
The Consort, 2015
This paper is the first to specifically explore the musical patronage of Cardinal Henry Benedict ... more This paper is the first to specifically explore the musical patronage of Cardinal Henry Benedict Stuart (1725-1807), in the form of an introductory overview, drawing upon copious archive sources in Rome and further afield. It aims to establish Henry as a hitherto overlooked cultural figure in eighteenth-century Rome whose lavish patronage of the arts, especially music, has been largely overlooked by standard cultural histories of the period which deal with Rome. The paper was the springboard for many further projects, including a landmark recording of music by Sebastiano Bolis, Niccolo Jommelli, Giovanni Battista Costanzi and Carlo Tessarini by Cappella Fede on the Toccata Classics label (2016).
Society for Eighteenth-Century Music, 2016
Papers by Peter Leech
Music and Letters, 2016
of written-out solutions to riddle canons. The Burgundian compiler of the Naples VI E 40 manuscri... more of written-out solutions to riddle canons. The Burgundian compiler of the Naples VI E 40 manuscript in the mid-to-late 1470s consistently supplies written solutions (which are labelled tenores ad longum) for all riddle canons in a book that was probably destined for the outstanding choral institution at the court of Naples, where Johannes Tinctoris was in residence. The aesthetic of obscurity seems to have regularly given way already in the early stages of riddle canon’s heyday when scribes felt a greater clarity in the form of written solutions was required for their intended readers. Resolutions in books such as the Naples manuscript or the working out of transformation masses in the early Cappella Sistina choirbooks or Trent Codices point to music operating at one remove from the composer’s and his performers’ sphere of influence. Paths of transmission, local contexts, and function play a greater role in the cultivation or obliteration of musical riddles. Early in her book, Katel...
Tijdschrift Van De Koninklijke Vereniging Voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, 2011
Oxford Music Online, 2001
![Research paper thumbnail of Music for an Academic Defense (Rome, 1617) [Music Review]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/87124129/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](Reviews the book "The Cheque Books of the Chapel Royal: With Additional Material From the Ma... more Reviews the book "The Cheque Books of the Chapel Royal: With Additional Material From the Manuscripts of William Lovegrove and Marmaduke Alford," edited by Andrew Ashbee and John Harley.
Music and Letters, 2011
if anyone in our time would be able to make a departure from simple doubling that is as expressiv... more if anyone in our time would be able to make a departure from simple doubling that is as expressively pointed as Purcell’s, earlier in that same ode, where Violin I rises independently and ends the line ‘Philander’s soul lies ravish’d in his ear’with a stunning doubling two octaves above the tenor. The happy thing about Wood’s approach is that it leaves room to contemplate such liberties, even though hemight not countenance them himself. Wood acknowledges that, in the 1878 edition, W. H. Cummings had ‘set a formidable standard of scholarship for the newly founded edition’ (p. ix). Yet Cummings also left no means of discerning editorial intervention. In the same respect the old Volume 27 was far from impeccable. By contrast, in the new Volume 1 one always knows where the editor has wielded his pen. There are, nevertheless, a handful of places where I should like to know more. The most extended example is the last seventeen bars of the chorus ‘And in each tract’ from Of old, when heroes thought it base, where the instrumental bass is printed in a smaller font. The editorial policy says (p. xxi) that such notes ‘are shown as editorial even if they are supplied in secondary sources’. In this case the small notes are sometimes independent of the chorus bass, and there are other workable possibilities for such independence. So it would have been good if the Textual Commentary (pp. 143^52) had indicated from which secondary sources this reading comes. The issue has less to do with the privilege accorded to the autograph (though that has sometimes been a contentious aspect of Purcell Society policy) than with the relative authority of secondary sources. The Purcell Society retains some odd, occasionally niggling policies. One is that, while the list of sources is placed between the Preface and the musical scores, the Textual Commentary is at the back; so exploring relationships between score, sources, and editorial decisions is unnecessarily cumbersome. Another debatable practice is that the full score includes a continuo realization. This goads the ambitious reader not to do what is printed, even if the realization is as impeccably stylish and apt as it is in this case. Does a printed realization help sell an edition to a wide audience? I doubt if its absence in the complete critical editions of Bach and Handel has hindered Ba« renreiter’s sales. MARTIN ADAMS Trinity College Dublin
Early Music, 2001
... Charles and Catherine spent the sum-mer of 1662 at Hampton Court, and it was there that JohnE... more ... Charles and Catherine spent the sum-mer of 1662 at Hampton Court, and it was there that JohnEvelyn first heard a Portuguese ... Two musi-cians are mentioned specifically: Pedro Ferreira, the 'Mestre da Capela', and Marcus de Brito, 'Tangedor de Arpa' ('player on the harp'). ...
Early Music, 2011
... Whilst the Italians Fede, Grandi and Sansoni were recent recruits, others, such as Claude Des... more ... Whilst the Italians Fede, Grandi and Sansoni were recent recruits, others, such as Claude Desgranges and Bartolomeo Albrici, had been in ... his keyboard style, described as 'above average for the period', but with 'neither the freshness or the vitality of Purcell's harpsichord pieces ...
Toccata Classics, 2023
The cataclysmic social and political upheaval wrought by the late-eighteenth-and early-nineteenth... more The cataclysmic social and political upheaval wrought by the late-eighteenth-and early-nineteenth-century revolutionary period, combined with the inescapable influence of Enlightenment philosophies, had profound effects upon European sacred music, its principal religious institutions, its repertoire and the many composers who lived and worked in hitherto protected environments. Rome was twice occupied, in 1798-99 and 1808-14, by a French army which arrested two popes (Pius VI and VII), compelled many senior clergy to flee the city and carried out acts of cultural spoliation not seen since the brutal sack of 1527 by the mutinous troops of Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor. The combined effects of these traumas were felt for decades thereafter, although the religious infrastructure of the city came through the Napoleonic era relatively unscathed, at least when compared to other European capitals. Many of the major Roman religious foundations survived, if with drastically altered administrations and reduced financial capabilities-but the golden age of papal artistic patronage and associated micro-courts of prominent cardinals had come to an end. By the mid-1800s Rome, now more of a tourist trap than the longterm home of leading cultural figures, was a shadow of the city it had resembled a century earlier, when it was a magnet for pilgrims, 'grand tourists' , painters, writers, sculptors, theologians, historians and musicians, all thrown together in an invigorating atmosphere articulately described by Martin Cheke: Here are triumphal arches. Here are galleries and pediments peopled with Bernini's gesticulating marble giants. In the distance can be glimpsed the dome of St Peter's, and green mounds where the genius of Ancient Rome meets us amidst its ruins. It is still the Rome of the Renaissance, hardly bigger than a provincial town, a capital
Toccata Classics, 2016
Sleeve notes for Toccata Classics 0300 The Cardinal King First recordings of music by Sebastiano... more Sleeve notes for Toccata Classics 0300 The Cardinal King
First recordings of music by Sebastiano Bolis, maestro di cappella to Cardinal Henry Benedict Stuart at Rome and Frascati, as well as music by Giovanni Battista Costanzi, Giovanni Zamboni and Carlo Tessarini, other composers associated with the Cardinal.
The Consort, 2015
This paper is the first to specifically explore the musical patronage of Cardinal Henry Benedict ... more This paper is the first to specifically explore the musical patronage of Cardinal Henry Benedict Stuart (1725-1807), in the form of an introductory overview, drawing upon copious archive sources in Rome and further afield. It aims to establish Henry as a hitherto overlooked cultural figure in eighteenth-century Rome whose lavish patronage of the arts, especially music, has been largely overlooked by standard cultural histories of the period which deal with Rome. The paper was the springboard for many further projects, including a landmark recording of music by Sebastiano Bolis, Niccolo Jommelli, Giovanni Battista Costanzi and Carlo Tessarini by Cappella Fede on the Toccata Classics label (2016).
Society for Eighteenth-Century Music, 2016
Music and Letters, 2016
of written-out solutions to riddle canons. The Burgundian compiler of the Naples VI E 40 manuscri... more of written-out solutions to riddle canons. The Burgundian compiler of the Naples VI E 40 manuscript in the mid-to-late 1470s consistently supplies written solutions (which are labelled tenores ad longum) for all riddle canons in a book that was probably destined for the outstanding choral institution at the court of Naples, where Johannes Tinctoris was in residence. The aesthetic of obscurity seems to have regularly given way already in the early stages of riddle canon’s heyday when scribes felt a greater clarity in the form of written solutions was required for their intended readers. Resolutions in books such as the Naples manuscript or the working out of transformation masses in the early Cappella Sistina choirbooks or Trent Codices point to music operating at one remove from the composer’s and his performers’ sphere of influence. Paths of transmission, local contexts, and function play a greater role in the cultivation or obliteration of musical riddles. Early in her book, Katel...
Tijdschrift Van De Koninklijke Vereniging Voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, 2011
Oxford Music Online, 2001
Reviews the book "The Cheque Books of the Chapel Royal: With Additional Material From the Ma... more Reviews the book "The Cheque Books of the Chapel Royal: With Additional Material From the Manuscripts of William Lovegrove and Marmaduke Alford," edited by Andrew Ashbee and John Harley.
Music and Letters, 2011
if anyone in our time would be able to make a departure from simple doubling that is as expressiv... more if anyone in our time would be able to make a departure from simple doubling that is as expressively pointed as Purcell’s, earlier in that same ode, where Violin I rises independently and ends the line ‘Philander’s soul lies ravish’d in his ear’with a stunning doubling two octaves above the tenor. The happy thing about Wood’s approach is that it leaves room to contemplate such liberties, even though hemight not countenance them himself. Wood acknowledges that, in the 1878 edition, W. H. Cummings had ‘set a formidable standard of scholarship for the newly founded edition’ (p. ix). Yet Cummings also left no means of discerning editorial intervention. In the same respect the old Volume 27 was far from impeccable. By contrast, in the new Volume 1 one always knows where the editor has wielded his pen. There are, nevertheless, a handful of places where I should like to know more. The most extended example is the last seventeen bars of the chorus ‘And in each tract’ from Of old, when heroes thought it base, where the instrumental bass is printed in a smaller font. The editorial policy says (p. xxi) that such notes ‘are shown as editorial even if they are supplied in secondary sources’. In this case the small notes are sometimes independent of the chorus bass, and there are other workable possibilities for such independence. So it would have been good if the Textual Commentary (pp. 143^52) had indicated from which secondary sources this reading comes. The issue has less to do with the privilege accorded to the autograph (though that has sometimes been a contentious aspect of Purcell Society policy) than with the relative authority of secondary sources. The Purcell Society retains some odd, occasionally niggling policies. One is that, while the list of sources is placed between the Preface and the musical scores, the Textual Commentary is at the back; so exploring relationships between score, sources, and editorial decisions is unnecessarily cumbersome. Another debatable practice is that the full score includes a continuo realization. This goads the ambitious reader not to do what is printed, even if the realization is as impeccably stylish and apt as it is in this case. Does a printed realization help sell an edition to a wide audience? I doubt if its absence in the complete critical editions of Bach and Handel has hindered Ba« renreiter’s sales. MARTIN ADAMS Trinity College Dublin
Early Music, 2001
... Charles and Catherine spent the sum-mer of 1662 at Hampton Court, and it was there that JohnE... more ... Charles and Catherine spent the sum-mer of 1662 at Hampton Court, and it was there that JohnEvelyn first heard a Portuguese ... Two musi-cians are mentioned specifically: Pedro Ferreira, the 'Mestre da Capela', and Marcus de Brito, 'Tangedor de Arpa' ('player on the harp'). ...
Early Music, 2011
... Whilst the Italians Fede, Grandi and Sansoni were recent recruits, others, such as Claude Des... more ... Whilst the Italians Fede, Grandi and Sansoni were recent recruits, others, such as Claude Desgranges and Bartolomeo Albrici, had been in ... his keyboard style, described as 'above average for the period', but with 'neither the freshness or the vitality of Purcell's harpsichord pieces ...
Eighteenth Century Music, 2010
Early Music, 2009
... (London:The Gerald Coke Handel Foundation ... Hans Joachim Marx contributes a useful study of... more ... (London:The Gerald Coke Handel Foundation ... Hans Joachim Marx contributes a useful study of Handel's years as an apprentice to Reinhard Keiser at the Gänsemarkt Opera in Hamburg between 1703 and 1705, reinforcing the general perception of the extent to which Handel ...