The history of Venice unfolded in continuous economic, political and artistic contact with different cultures. Its geographic position and its natural opening to the sea placed the city on the border between East and West, allowing the Serenissima to develop commercial and political relationships with the Near and Far East, and to establish itself as a centre of diplomacy. The cosmopolitan character of the Serenissima was known throughout Europe and travel reports comment on Venice’s unusual ethnic variety: ‘Greeks, Levantines, Turks, Arabs, Persians, Ethiopians, Slavs, Indians, Syrians, Egyptians and others’ cohabited with Venetians and citizens from the Italian peninsula and other European countries. The influence of Islamic art on Venice is still visible today in the architecture of the city, and its centuries-old fascination with the East, especially the Ottoman Empire, emerges through a variety of writings on Turkish history, language and culture published throughout the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Legislation tended to protect Venice’s economic interests and granted Turkish merchants protection and freedom of faith. The relatively liberal attitude that characterised Venice’s domestic and foreign policies, however, coexisted with general feelings of suspicion, fear and hatred towards the Turks. Trade with the East brought wealth and power, but wars with the Ottoman Empire eventually led to the economic decline of the Serenissima during the second half of the seventeenth century and the loss of its central role in European politics.

These contrasting attitudes of the Venetian republic towards the East, and more specifically towards the Turks, filter through contemporary legal, diplomatic and historical writings, poetry, novels and operatic representations. This web of texts can provide insights into how the historical and cultural context of the Republic (of which opera is a part) shapes and is in turn shaped by these writings, exposing more general processes and structures by which a particular culture makes sense of the world.

While studies in music history inevitably revolve around musical works, the concept of the ‘musical work’ itself remains as elusive as it is pervasive. The term suggests a range of assumptions about the composer’s agency and aesthetic goals, and about the dissemination or influence of the composition. Philosophers and music scholars have argued that around 1800 the musical work had been conceptualised in its most elaborate, discrete form, crystallising as a specific set of regulative practices in musical production and reception, against which modern and postmodern composers would have to battle. What constitutes the musical work so defined, and why it held sway during the nineteenth century, has become a subject of lively debate.

The musical work, however, existed as both artefact and concept for many centuries before 1800. This was the starting point for Reinhard Strohm’s seminal re-evaluation of the historiography and ontology of the work-concept in his article ‘Looking Back at Ourselves: The Problem with the Musical Work- Concept’. Strohm argued against the commonly held view that around 1800 the paradigm of the work-concept had changed dramatically. Examining twentieth-century theorising about the musical work, Strohm showed how it resulted from the methodologies and biases peculiar to the authors and their era. Most importantly, he collapsed the argument for a watershed in Western art music marked by the emergence of a regulative work-concept. He drew attention to discussions about the musical work reaching back to the fifteenth century and insisted that the conceptualisation of the musical work as such was part of a long-standing discourse that continually revisited basic themes: the unparalleled skill of creative artists, the impulse to memorialise their output, and the tension between artistic expression and social function. On this last point Strohm challenged reigning opinion by emphasising that an otherwise autonomous musical work could be integrated with social and cultural practices.

The essays in this volume build on Strohm’s argument by demonstrating how social and cultural practices generate different conceptualisations of the musical work at different times and in different places. As such, this collection shifts the debate about the work-concept from the ontological plane onto the historical.

Like many fruitful partnerships, our collaboration on this project began over lunch. Conversation turned to our respective experiences working with Reinhard Strohm, whose doctoral supervision we had sought because of his unparalleled command of the European musical canon, his influential rethinking, particularly of dramma per musica, and his insights into critical theory and the philosophy of history. In the course of our doctoral studies we had each discovered in Reinhard not only great enthusiasm for our work but also a startling humbleness about his own knowledge. Reinhard’s respect for the irreducible complexity of the past is informed by his extraordinarily broad and penetrating view of its musical, historical and intellectual terrains, and gives him a flexibility of approach, a delight in findings, and a curiosity about new historical perspectives that supported and inspired us in equal measure.

This collection, published to mark his 65th birthday, attests therefore both to Reinhard Strohm’s scholarly achievements and to the creative power of his thinking. To bring this testimonial into being required generosity, patience and hard work from many quarters.

All the authors who contributed to the volume deserve recognition for the enthusiasm with which they welcomed this initiative and for their prompt replies to our sometimes onerous requests. Many other colleagues and friends have also answered our call with generosity and contributed to the success of this volume with their support, advice and specialist knowledge. Our heartfelt thanks go to Irene Auerbach, Francesco Fanna, Michael Fend, Malcolm Gerratt, Lowell Lindgren, Owen Rees, Susan Wollenberg, and to all our specialist readers: Mario Armellini, Suzanne Aspden, Lorenzo Bianconi, Bonnie Blackburn, Federico Celestini, David Charlton, Teresa Chirico, Alessandro Di Profio, Laurence Dreyfus, Peter Franklin, Simon Keefe, Rainer Kleinertz, Huub van der Linden, Alexander Lingas, Pierluigi Petrobelli, Owen Rees, Angela Romagnoli, David Schulenberg, Vassilis Vavoulis and Adrienne Ward. David Burn generously put his many talents as reader, translator and language editor at the service of the project, and Bonnie Blackburn was a key source of advice and an exemplary copy-editor. Working with such a responsive, professional and dedicated team of scholars has been edifying as well as rewarding.