The Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music

Items appearing in JSCM may be saved and stored in electronic or paper form and may be shared among individuals for all non-commercial purposes. For a summary of the Journal's open-access license, see the footer to the homepage, https://sscm-jscm.org. Commercial redistribution of an item published in JSCM requires prior, written permission from the Editor-in-Chief, and must include the following information:

This item appeared in the Journal of Seventeenth Century Music (https://sscm-jscm.org/) [volume, no. (year)], under a CC BY-NC-ND license, and it is republished here with permission.

Libraries may archive complete issues or selected articles for public access, in electronic or paper form, so long as no access fee is charged. Exceptions to this requirement must be approved in writing by the Editor-in-Chief of JSCM.

Citations of information published in JSCM should include the paragraph number and the URL. The content of an article in JSCM is stable once it is published (although subsequent communications about it are noted and linked at the end of the original article); therefore, the date of access is optional in a citation.

We offer the following as a model:

Noel O’Regan, “Asprilio Pacelli, Ludovico da Viadana and the Origins of the Roman Concerto Ecclesiastico,” Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music 6, no. 1 (2000): par. 4.3, https://sscm-jscm.org/v6/no1/oregan.html.

ISSN: 1089-747X

Volume 9 (2003) No. 1

Barbara Russano Hanning

Ai Lettori,

This issue of the JSCM is dedicated in gratitude to the memory of our friend and mentor Claude V. Palisca, who passed away on January 11, 2001, after having graced with his presence and participation the conference that occasioned these papers at the University of Illinois the previous October, and before they could appear in print. Those who attended the conference are enormously thankful to have shared that time with him—for some of us it was to be the last time we saw him—and immensely consoled by the thought that he was as cheerful as ever and appeared to be in good health. As the host and organizer, John Walter Hill, said in his opening remarks, we were especially fortunate to have one of the most eminent scholars in musicology ever to be associated with the problems of early opera and monody “represented by himself” at the conference commemorating the 400th anniversary of the beginnings of the genre in 1600—as opposed to other important scholars in the field, no longer with us, who were represented only by their work or by their students. In retrospect, we realize that, by “representing himself,” Claude was also leaving us a deeply personal as well as intellectual legacy; for his rappresentazione of himself on that occasion as well as on countless others was invariably of someone incomparably content with life and learning, genuinely committed to the profession of teaching, and unabashedly seduced by the lure of scholarship. At the same time, his stile recitativo was full of wit and whimsy, of concern for and appreciation of others, and of a certain courtly air that combined humility with sprezzatura. We will miss him; but we are all the richer for his exemplary discourse, both written and oral, and we’ll remember with pleasure his inspiring appearances on the scena dell’età nostra and the lessons he taught us, both literally and figuratively, about “in armonia favellare.” I daresay he would have wanted to leave us with Jacopo Peri’s valedictory phrase echoing in our ears…

E vivete lieti.