There is a gaping hole in the instrumental chamber-music literature at the Habsburg court of Vienna in the early seventeenth century. Of the composers in the employ of Emperor Ferdinand II, Giovanni Battista Buonamente was the only one to publish instrumental chamber works; but Buonamente's origins were Mantuan and the contents of his publications reflect the influence of the sinfonie, sonatas and dances by the leading Mantuan instrumental music composer Salamone Rossi. The similarities raise various questions. How does the Mantuan-born empress Eleonora impress her musical tastes on the Viennese court? To what extent is the Mantuan exemplar operative in Viennese instrumental music, particularly dances? How do the dance works of both Rossi and Buonamente relate to the incipient suite? And what new evidence can be brought to bear on the ordering of its constituents to form a larger construct?

As printed music became a valuable market commodity in late eighteenth-century England, it became a significant part of debates over the interpretation of the first copyright law (1710). In particular, compositions by Charles Dibdin and John Garth became the focus of several lawsuits filed by the attorney Charles Rennett challenging the traditional interpretation of the clause that granted composers a second 14 years of protection after the first had expired. These suits detail the status of music as intellectual property and offer new information about the businesses of major music-sellers like Longman & Broderip, the Thompsons and John Welcker.

Throughout the nineteenth century, musical instruments were seen as embodiments of a country's distinction, useful in ‘the study of man, the diverse races, and their degree of civilization’. This article, focusing on the illustrated French press between 1870 and 1900, examines popular colonial representations of instruments in the context of the complex racial ideologies and the material as well as ideological struggles underlying imperialism. Images of exotic instruments, I argue, served not only to teach about foreign cultures, but also to shape French perceptions of Africa and Indo-China during imperialist expansion there. As such, they help us to situate ethnomusicology's prehistory within French colonialism.

When Stravinsky composed The Flood in 1961–2, he was already an experienced practitioner of serialism. It is undeniably noteworthy, then, that compositional documents for the work include two diatonic sketches, presumably the earliest versions of a passage from the Prelude. Later serial versions of the passage, which differ significantly from the diatonic sketches, nonetheless retain numerous important features introduced at that initial stage. The existence of the diatonic sketches suggests that even late in his career, Stravinsky harboured diatonic and tonal impulses. Taking into account the audible results of these impulses will contribute substantially to an understanding of his last works.

This article explores the filmic relationship between music, text and image through an intertextual reading of Herzog's two Amazonian films, Aguirre: Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo. When Aguirre and Fitzcarraldo encounter each other in the rainforest, 300 years apart, a complicated interplay of history and legend, truth and fiction, is initiated. Awash with magical occurrence, the forest has its own endlessly repeating soundtrack (written by Popul Vuh). The ability of both explorers to defend themselves from the forest depends on their relationship to this music: Aguirre, the earlier explorer, is deaf to the circular sound and attempts to overlay it with a written account of their journey. Fitzcarraldo, on the other hand, enters the forest equipped with a gramophone that plays Verdi arias; he comes with his own soundtrack. Comparison between the two journeys exposes the conventional uses of text/speech and music/song in film, to reveal music as the predominant driving force behind filmic narrative.

This article explores the theme of self and other in Wolfgang Rihm's music drama Die Eroberung von Mexico. After examining how the vocal distinctions between Montezuma and Cortez serve to dramatize the mutual cultural incomprehension of these two characters, it considers how each of them becomes mentally deranged. Finally, it traces how each figure subsequently searches for a means of communication in the last act. By analysing Rihm's understanding of music as a medium, and by deploying the critical resources offered by Tzvetan Todorov, Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida, this article argues that Die Eroberung makes a significant contribution to understanding the mechanisms by which identities are enacted.

A musical groove is most typically created by a small group of musicians working together, each contributing parts to the whole. Characterizing the knowledge behind such interactive ventures has proved to be challenging. This article attempts to characterize the knowledge basic to grooves first by concentrating on ‘the groove’ as it is practised in soul, rhythm and blues, jazz fusion and various other popular genres, and second by focusing on cognitive knowledge structures called conceptual models. It is argued that musicians rely on such structures to produce grooves, and that listeners make use of similar structures to understand them. Grooves from the music of Eric Clapton, Miles Davis and James Brown are discussed, and conceptual models for each are developed.

A number of authors, including John Covach and especially Edward Macan, have investigated the links between art music and progressive rock. This article builds on and extends such work by positing, defining, discussing and dissecting a hybrid genre I term virtual opera. Exemplified by such albums as The Who's Tommy (1969) and Quadrophenia (1973), Genesis's The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (1974) and Frank Zappa's Joe's Garage (1979), each of which is subjected to detailed examination, virtual operas find their ideal site of performance between the ears of individual listeners, rather than on stage or screen. In each case, the aural and visual dimensions of the albums combine to create multi-layered musico-dramatic narratives, freed from the usual performance constraints associated with either opera or rock.

This article investigates the contribution that musical participation makes to people's lives by reporting on a study carried out at the International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival in August 2001 in Buxton, Derbyshire. The audience are shown to have a strong commitment to the musical genre and its preservation through live performance, whilst the performers are more likely to value membership of their society and the personal satisfaction that comes from successful performance. The festival therefore serves diverse purposes for those who attend it, and raises further questions about the interaction between social, personal and musical experience at events of this kind.