The passing of pioneering figures – musicians Christopher Hogwood, Frans Brüggen, Gustav Leonhardt and Bruce Haynes, as well as harpsichord builder Martin Skowroneck and flute maker and recording engineer Andreas Glatt – all in the short space of the past couple of years might suggest that early music has reached its end, or at least entered a new phase. As we look back over the past forty-five years since the term ‘early music’ was trademarked in England by Early Music Shop founder Richard Wood, we may well ask if the movement's function and goals remain the same. Early music, which initially rode on the tailcoats of counterculture and actively disparaged the mainstream, has reached a high level of professionalism, and more than anything has become institutionalized. It now forms part of music training in conservatories around the world, as early-instrument orchestras proliferate and opera companies are increasingly turning to pre-romantic opera. For some, the professionalization of early music is an indication of its far-reaching impact, but to others the price paid is only too evident.

Eighteenth-century composers wrote many passages in which a treble line rises from scale degrees 1 or 3 up to 5, while the bass descends chromatically from 1 down to 5. The diverging lines reach an octave by way of an augmented-sixth interval. These passages represent a voice-leading schema analogous to those introduced by Robert O. Gjerdingen in his book Music in the Galant Style. Following Gjerdingen's use of Italian words to refer to some of his schemata, I propose the word ‘Morte’ for this schema and survey its use by musicians, who relied on it not only as an intensely expressive gesture that could effectively enhance the most tragic moments of a work but also as a compositional building-block: an ornate half cadence that they found especially useful in transitional passages and development sections.

This article deals with the circulation of instrumental music between Spain and the New World at the end of the eighteenth century, focusing on Madrid, Mexico City and Lima as main urban centres. By analysing archival documents preserved in these cities, I intend to show that the baroque guitar music composed and copied in Madrid was also intended to be a commercial concern in Latin America (particularly in Mexico City and Lima), and that its cultivation in the New World lasted for a long time, even through to the beginning of the nineteenth century, thus coexisting with music by Johann Christian Bach, Boccherini, Cannabich, Haydn and other ‘modern’ composers. These assertions are reinforced through an examination of two musical manuscripts copied in Lima around 1800, which also shows some of the changes undergone by the repertory during its complex process of reception. I conclude by suggesting that, in the light of all this, a linear and evolutionary view of music history, according to which new repertories replace older ones, should be reconsidered.

Early in 1719 plans were advanced for establishing a company by the name of the Royal Academy of Music for the purpose of performing ‘Operas on the English Theatre, in greater perfection than they have hitherto been represented, either in this or any other Country’. In May George I ordered the organizers to ‘prepare a Bill for Our Royal Signature’ to incorporate the Academy by letters patents, and he granted the company £1,000 a year for seven years. The official royal charter establishing the Academy for twenty-one years is dated 27 July 1719. In addition to the Governor of the company (always to be the Lord Chamberlain), the original fourteen directors of the company can be identified from the minutes of the first meetings in November and December. By the time the Academy produced its first opera, Giovanni Porta's Numitore (2 April 1720), the composition of the board of directors had shifted (as indicated in the printed libretto), and seven were new. One of these was John Percival, later 1st Earl of Egmont.

A mystery surrounds the identity of Handel's librettist for the 1749 Covent Garden oratorios Solomon (hwv67) and Susanna (hwv66). There are no known contemporary references to the texts’ authorship, whether in wordbooks (published by Tonson and Draper), the composer's autograph, printed scores (published by Walsh), press reports, financial records, correspondence or diaries. Indeed, there is very little contemporary comment of any sort relating to these two works, although we do know that they were profitable in so far as Handel had banked £300 after the first performance of Solomon and some £577 after performances of Susanna.

On 16 March 1736 Giovanni Battista Pergolesi died from consumption at age twenty-six in the Franciscan monastery of Pozzuoli near Naples, leaving a considerable number of compositions in all genres: stage works, cantatas, instrumental music and sacred music. On account of the success these compositions had enjoyed in Italy during his life, and the extraordinary fame they achieved in the rest of Europe after his death, a multitude of works bearing his name continued to be disseminated, many of which had little, if any, connection with Pergolesi himself. This phenomenon invites us to question what mechanisms are at work when a piece of music is misattributed, for if spurious or doubtful works can be classified according to their origin, then the identification of recurring patterns may help disentangle similar cases. This essay aims to classify the origins of misattributed sacred works from the first decades of Pergolesi's posthumous reception.

On 25 January 2015 the final concert of the Resonance Early Music Festival was performed before an enthusiastic audience in the Vienna Konzerthaus. As a fitting close to the series Alessandro Quarta conducted the Concerto Romano and five singers representing the four seasons and Jove in a stunning performance of Alessandro Scarlatti's 1716 serenata La Gloria di Primavera (‘Nato è già l’austricao sole’). First heard at Naples in celebration of the birth of the Habsburg Archduke Leopold, it was performed on the evening of 19 May 1716, in the palace of Don Nicola Gaetano d’Aragona according to the libretto printed by Michele-Luigi Muzio at Naples in 1716.

Early-music performances were a rarity in Malta until a few years ago. Slowly, over the years, harpsichords started to appear in concerts and a retired doctor began to build clavichords. During a series of fundraising concerts for the restoration of one of Valletta's oldest churches, a male-voice choir was formed to sing renaissance polyphony. This fervent activity led a local artist, Kenneth Zammit Tabona, to dream of a baroque music festival in the island's capital, Valletta. January 2013 saw the first Valletta International Baroque Festival, with concerts held in several of Valletta's baroque edifices, including the magnificent Manoel Theatre (built in 1731 and one of the oldest working theatres in Europe) and the awe-inspiring St John's Co-Cathedral, the church of the Knights of Malta. The first year was a resounding success and augured well for the future, as was confirmed in the second year of the festival.