Johann Georg Sulzer's Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste (1771–4) exerted considerable influence on late eighteenth-century German musical writers. But for many modern commentators, it typifies the negative attitude to instrumental music characteristic of much Enlightenment rationalism. A reassessment of Sulzer, taking account of his philosophical background in Leibniz, Wolff and Baumgarten, shows that in fact he considered music the first of the fine arts. The arts have an ethical, civilizing role; but while most can affect only people who are already partly civilized, music possesses a special ‘aesthetic force’ which energizes the minds of cognitively passive people or ‘savages’.

Preserved anonymously and without title in Barcelona 1967 is a unique six-voice polyphonic Mass which to a large extent ‘parodies’ Josquin's famous setting of the Marian sequence Inviolata, integra et casta es Maria. It was copied along with other works apparently imported from northern Italy to the court of the duke of Calabria in Valencia in the early 1540s, the supposed provenance of the choirbook, and bears every indication of having been written by a skilled Franco-Flemish hand c.1520–3. More particularly, the counterpoint, richly woven texture and sonority have much in common with music attributed to Philippe Verdelot, especially in works he composed from c.1518 through to his time in Florence up to 1527. This article draws upon several works by Verdelot for stylistic comparison, including an eight-voice Inviolata setting now attributed to him, as well as music by his contemporaries, and also shows how the composer of the Mass was skilled in manipulating Josquin's themes, and contrapuntal textures and structures, thus demonstrating his debt to the master.

The manuscript of Thomas Morell's letter about his collaboration in oratorio writing with Handel, a key document in Handel studies, is in Cambridge University Library, its presence there previously unknown to Handel scholars. Its addressee can be identified as John Nichols, who used its information in his biographical publications, and its date can be narrowed to 1776–81. The letter is printed accurately for the first time, along with the fullest account to date of Morell's character, circumstances, career, abilities and interests, and a reassessment of the position of his letter in our knowledge of Handel.

The avowed inability of nineteenth-century Parisian critics to express in words their impressions of music (whether instrumental or lyric) doubtless has something to do with a more or less general lack of training, but in the case of the works of Meyerbeer it also points to a particular idea of opera. An intense interest in orchestration (outlined here in reviews of Robert le diable, Les Huguenots, Le prophète and L'Africaine; also in Berlioz's Grand traité d'instrumentation et d'orchestration modernes) is articulated in enthusiastic examination of the instruments themselves, and in striking metaphors of science, technology and manufacture. The presence of this gloss on Meyerbeer in otherwise Romantic appreciations (for example Balzac's Gambara) suggests a way of reading opera reception in tune with the urban culture of the period.

To try to understand the vocal styles demanded by the famously exacting Giuseppe Verdi, I consider a wide range of evidence, including the composer's scores and letters, contemporary treatises, reports on performances, and selected early recordings. On the basis of this material, I contend that the vocal styles known and advocated by Verdi differed radically from what is proposed by most modern pedagogues and nearly always heard in opera houses today. An examination of the evidence, as it bears on specific technical and expressive procedures, sheds light on nineteenth-century vocal style, offering novel interpretative possibilities to the modern performer.

A central theme of Nietzsche's Wagner criticism is the theatre and acting. Nietzsche professes a deep suspicion of the ‘herd mentality’ promoted by theatre and the shallowness and persuasive power of the actor. Wagner and Bayreuth, he claims, embody these characteristics in their most intense form, compounding the theatre's worst features with a thoroughly modern set of blind contradictions. But Nietzsche's writings can also embrace theatrical masks and ‘histrionics’, presenting them as the key to a conception of identity as plural, mobile and random. In fact the very form of his writings, with its weave of multiple authorial identities, reinforces this view. This article argues that Nietzsche's anti-Wagnerian rhetoric is a mask that conceals more sympathetic attitudes. While repelled by Wagnerian theatre on many levels, Nietzsche also positions Wagner and the experience of music drama as a model for new definitions of identity.

An abyss separates the research of Mahler from that of social historians on anti-Semitism in fin-de-siècle Austria and Germany. Mahler specialists tend to study the assaults he endured in terms of the centuries-old intolerance. Social historians, however, have pursued a different tack. They trace the liberal thought of the mid-nineteenth century, the legal emancipation of the Jews and its aftermath to the rise of ‘new’ anti-Semitism in the 1870s, centred in Vienna. The reasons why Mahler resigned as director of the Vienna Court Opera involve many more factors and subtleties, even concerning the expression of anti-Semitism. It is on these elements that this article attempts to shed light.

Stephen Sondheim composed a three-movement piano sonata for his thesis in music at Williams College and submitted the two outer movements upon graduation. Sondheim has since been unwilling to publish or disseminate the work, and a college stipulation has prevented reproduction of the thesis. The sonata shows the influences on Sondheim's emerging musical style – predominantly Ravel, Rachmaninov (influences previously established by scholars), Prokofiev and Hindemith (influences less well established) – and demonstrates that his compositional language was significantly developed by the time of his graduation. Similarities abound between the sonata and the mature musicals of the 1970s and beyond. In addition to providing examples from the completed movements – a feat made possible by Sondheim's decision to grant limited permission to reproduce the sonata – the article examines a two-page sketch for the second movement, a manuscript that had remained in Sondheim's sole possession until October 2000.

Rubato has for centuries been linked with the idea of compensating tempo modulation. Despite the wealth of references to this idea in writings by famous performers and teachers over the ages, scholars investigating the idea have so far emphatically dismissed the notion as a myth, or at best a rationalization. In this article, I take as a starting-point these performers' writings, and show that it is scholars rather than performers who have reduced the idea of compensation to an abstract principle. Using Debussy's 1913 piano-roll recordings as examples, I show with the aid of empirical timing data and close listening that compensating rubato is far from a myth in the performance practice of the early twentieth century.