In entitling his debut publication of 1617 Affetti musicali, Biagio Marini became the first composer to use the suggestive term affetti in the title of a book consisting entirely of instrumental music. Marini indicated that the book grew out of live music-making among a progressive group of Venetian listeners. Consideration of these social musical…[Read more]

A section of Giovanni Battista Della Porta’s Magia naturalis (1589) celebrates the powers of musical instruments. Most of these powers are rooted in neo-Platonist natural magic: Della Porta explains that the materials of instruments retain their original properties, shaping the body and soul of the listener through their mutual sympathy or a…[Read more]

An essay is presented which explores the work with the exlibris of Zippora Wulff which survives in the collection of the Sing- Akademie: the Wechselgesang der Miijam und Debora by Justin Heinrich Knecht. It mentions that the relationship between ancient poetry and modern music. It mentions that Messias had already been held up by both Jewish and…[Read more]

Marie-Dominique-Joseph Engramelle’s treatise La tonotechnie, ou l’art de noter les cylindres (1775) claimed that automated instruments driven by pinned cylinders would grant listeners direct access to music as the composer conceived it. Standard notation was insufficient, as it did not capture the music’s mouvement – its temporal flexibi…[Read more]

It is well known that the instrumentation of eighteenth-century chamber music was highly flexible; composers
frequently adapted their own works for a variety of instruments, and players often used whatever combinations
they had available. One type of arrangement little used today but attested to in both verbal description
and musical…[Read more]