The Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music

Volume 5 (1999) No. 1

Briefly noted

Bruce Gustafson,* Reviews Editor

The materials listed below were submitted for review and are likely to be of interest to readers of JSCM, but because they do not relate primarily to seventeenth-century music or are re-issues of previously available works they will not receive full reviews.

1. Books

2. Editions

3. Compact Discs

1. BOOKS

1.1 Companion to Baroque Music. Compiled and edited by Julie Anne Sadie. Foreword by Christopher Hogwood. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998 (originally published by Schirmer Books, 1991). [xviii, 549 pp. ISBN 0-520-21414-5 $24.95.]

This is an unrevised paperback reprint of the 1991 work. The main section of the book, "Places and People" (350 pages), is divided by national school: Italy, France, Northern Europe, Central Europe, The British Isles, The Low Countries, and The Iberian Peninsula and Its New World Colonies. Each national section begins with an essay on a particular topic and is followed by a biographical dictionary. The essays are by Julie Anne Sadie, Geoffrey Webber. Susan Wollenberg, Peter Holman, Albert Dunning, and Louise K. Stein. Six further essays and a "Chronology" complete the book with sections on "Baroque Forces and Forms (Nigel Rogers, Jeremy Montagu, and Sandra Mangsen) and "Performing Practice Issues (Howard Schott, David Fuller, and Stanley Sadie).

1.2 Hexachords in Late-Renaissance Music. By Lionel Pike. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998. [ISBN 1-8592-455-8. $84.95.]

The focus of this book is music from Willaert through Tomkins, essentially the last two-thirds of the sixteenth century. The material is divided into five chapters: "Voces Musicales" I and II, "Emulation and Parody" I and II, and "Sorrow and Secularism."

1.3 Creative Responses to Bach from Mozart to Hindemith. Edited by Michael Marissen. Bach Perspectives, 3. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998. [ISBN 0-8032-1048-5. $55.]

This collection contains six essays: "Bach's Posthumous Role in Music History" by Ludwig Finscher; "Bach among the Theorists" by Thomas Christensen; "Bach and Mozart's Artistic Maturity" by Robert L. Marshall; "Bachian Affinities in Beethoven" by William Kinderman; "Bach, Brahms, and the Emergence of Musical Modernism" by Walter Frisch; and "Hindemith, Bach, and the Melancholy of Obligation" by Stephen Hinton.

1.4 Jean-Baptiste-Charles de la Rousselière, Traitté des languettes impérialles pour la perfection du clavecin (Paris, 1679). Geneva: Minkoff, 1972. [149, 3 pp. ISBN 2-8266-0353-1. FS 45 ($30).]

This 1972 facsimile is now again in print. The seventeen chapters discuss matters as far afield as music in ancient Greece and the nature of invention, one way or another relating them to his new design for harpsichord plectra. Frank Hubbard summarized the book as follows: "De la Rousselière's treatise on the subject contained one hundred forty-nine pages, but the author avoided grappling with his subject with almost uncanny skill. He never properly described the Languette Impériale." (note 1)

1.5 Denis Delair, Traité d'accompagnement pour le théorbe et le clavessin (Paris, 1690). Nicolas Fleury, Méthode pour apprendre facilement à toucher le théorbe sur la basse-continue (Paris, 1660). Geneva: Minkoff, 1972. [61, 40 pp. ISBN 2-8266-0324-8. FS 55 ($38).]

This facsimile edition, long unavailable, has been re-issued. It presents the two figured-bass treatises without modern introduction or interventions other than those of preparing the modern plates. The Delair work is also now available in an annotated translation by Charlotte Mattax. (note 2)

2. EDITIONS

2.1 Gottlieb Nittauff. Samtliga orgelverk / Complete Organ Works. Edited by John Sheridan. Bibliotheca Organi Sueciæ, 2. Stockholm: Runa Nototext, 1998 (c1996). [ix, 23 pp. ISMN M-706864-02-1. 160 Krona ($21).]

The Stockholm composer Gottlieb Nittauff, born the same year as J.S. Bach, left nine organ works, seven of which are dated 1711. All are titled "Preludium," one specifying two keyboards and one specifying the use of pedals. One of these brief works ( No. 8) has a separate fugue, and one is sub-titled "Toccata." The edition is based on organ tablatures in the University of Lund Library (Wenster G 27, G 42, and N 7).

3. COMPACT DISCS

3.1 War of Love.Bimbetta (Sonja Rasmussen, Allison Zelles, Andrea Fullington, sopranos; Katherine Shao, harpsichord; Shelley Taylor, 'cello). d'Note, 1997. [DND 1023.]

Produced by Paul Hillier, this CD uses music by d'India, Purcell, Monteverdi, Strozzi, Frescobaldi, Gabrielli, Peri/Amos, and Lanier. The performers frame the pieces with modern background noise, dialogue, poems, and compositions. An unattributed quotation in the brochure characterizes their performances as "a blend of cabaret, commedia dell'arte, and MTV Unplugged."