As a historian engaged with musicology, it seems to me that the discipline is in its golden age. The royal road from the musical past to the musical present built in the first century or so of its academic existence no longer contains all the traffic. But thanks to the earlier efforts at disciplinary definition, musicologists share an enormous amount of knowledge, understand what colleagues are doing and are able to face the challenge of understanding music-making outside of the Western cultures from which the field of musicology – and ethnomusicology – emerged. Rarely has a discipline been so well equipped for the task of deconstructing itself. But deconstruction (of canons, grand narratives and the like) accompanies construction: musicology has built and expanded, adding on more sources and more methods rather than abandoning the old ones. Given this happy state, it seems worthwhile to reconsider some of the cultural work that writing about music did before the discipline cohered in the nineteenth century, so that we can consider from a longer perspective why people tried to ‘discipline’ musical knowledge in the first place.

The passing of pioneering figures – musicians Christopher Hogwood, Frans Brüggen, Gustav Leonhardt and Bruce Haynes, as well as harpsichord builder Martin Skowroneck and flute maker and recording engineer Andreas Glatt – all in the short space of the past couple of years might suggest that early music has reached its end, or at least entered a new phase. As we look back over the past forty-five years since the term ‘early music’ was trademarked in England by Early Music Shop founder Richard Wood, we may well ask if the movement's function and goals remain the same. Early music, which initially rode on the tailcoats of counterculture and actively disparaged the mainstream, has reached a high level of professionalism, and more than anything has become institutionalized. It now forms part of music training in conservatories around the world, as early-instrument orchestras proliferate and opera companies are increasingly turning to pre-romantic opera. For some, the professionalization of early music is an indication of its far-reaching impact, but to others the price paid is only too evident.

Eighteenth-century composers wrote many passages in which a treble line rises from scale degrees 1 or 3 up to 5, while the bass descends chromatically from 1 down to 5. The diverging lines reach an octave by way of an augmented-sixth interval. These passages represent a voice-leading schema analogous to those introduced by Robert O. Gjerdingen in his book Music in the Galant Style. Following Gjerdingen's use of Italian words to refer to some of his schemata, I propose the word ‘Morte’ for this schema and survey its use by musicians, who relied on it not only as an intensely expressive gesture that could effectively enhance the most tragic moments of a work but also as a compositional building-block: an ornate half cadence that they found especially useful in transitional passages and development sections.

The VI Concertos in Seven Parts published by Benjamin Cooke under Alessandro Scarlatti's name in 1740 have long been suspected of being either arrangements or works by a different composer. Close study of the sources, some of which have only recently come to light, shows them to be arrangements of sonate a quattro, four composed by Alessandro Scarlatti and two by his younger brother Francesco. The unacknowledged compiler and arranger of the set was almost certainly Charles Avison, who in addition made a significant compositional intervention. The publication of the concertos formed part of a pioneering strategy on Cooke's part whereby he acquired, and under the protection of a royal privilege engraved, significant works in manuscript owned (but not composed) by individual musicians within his circle. Among the latter was John Christopher Pepusch, whose role in the first publication of Domenico Scarlatti's sonatas k31–42 is described for the first time.

Recent performance projects have called into question the use of the sixteen-foot violone in a wide range of instrumental and concerted vocal works, particularly those by J. S. Bach. In performances of music by Bach and his contemporaries, artists have on occasion opted to exclude sixteen-foot participation in the bass line, often citing terminological issues as a reason. While acknowledging that the use of the term violone in scores and parts from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries is problematic, this article casts doubt on the conclusions reached by these performers and on the scholarly writings underpinning them. A careful examination of instrumental designations employed in autograph parts and scores provides important clues as to the proper employment of a sixteen-foot contrabass instrument in many works. Further illumination on this matter is provided by terminology in contemporary treatises. Analysis of this material shows that the function of the bass line to which the term violone (or any of its regional variants) was assigned was a crucial determining factor in interpreting that part as either an eight- or sixteen-foot bass line. In other words, modern determinations should be made according to whether the designation indicates a non-transposing instrument serving primarily as the bass member of an instrumental choir or a transposing instrument whose main purpose is reinforcing the continuo line at the lower octave.

This article deals with the circulation of instrumental music between Spain and the New World at the end of the eighteenth century, focusing on Madrid, Mexico City and Lima as main urban centres. By analysing archival documents preserved in these cities, I intend to show that the baroque guitar music composed and copied in Madrid was also intended to be a commercial concern in Latin America (particularly in Mexico City and Lima), and that its cultivation in the New World lasted for a long time, even through to the beginning of the nineteenth century, thus coexisting with music by Johann Christian Bach, Boccherini, Cannabich, Haydn and other ‘modern’ composers. These assertions are reinforced through an examination of two musical manuscripts copied in Lima around 1800, which also shows some of the changes undergone by the repertory during its complex process of reception. I conclude by suggesting that, in the light of all this, a linear and evolutionary view of music history, according to which new repertories replace older ones, should be reconsidered.

The plagal cadence has long been a significant concept within musical discourse, but that discourse contains no convincing explanation of why the progression should be characterized as ‘plagal’. This article elucidates the meaning of the term ‘plagal cadence’ by examining its introduction into a mid-eighteenth-century Parisian debate over the nature of what would come to be called tonality instigated by Charles-Henri de Blainville's proposal of the ‘mixed mode’, a supplement to the major and minor modes. Owing to the properties of his new mode's scale, which corresponds to the Phrygian mode, Blainville identified the plagal cadence as the proper conclusion for pieces in the mixed mode. Curiously, although Blainville's work appears to contain the first published articulation of the term, he employs it as if his readers were already familiar with the ‘plagal cadence’. This article explains that oddity, finding that Blainville misread earlier accounts of plainchant as saying that plagal modes were characterized by the interval of the descending fourth. In conclusion, consideration of the controversy regarding the mixed mode and plagal cadence reveals that those historical disagreements bear striking similarities to current debates over the significance and function of the plagal cadence in theories of harmony.

Early in 1719 plans were advanced for establishing a company by the name of the Royal Academy of Music for the purpose of performing ‘Operas on the English Theatre, in greater perfection than they have hitherto been represented, either in this or any other Country’. In May George I ordered the organizers to ‘prepare a Bill for Our Royal Signature’ to incorporate the Academy by letters patents, and he granted the company £1,000 a year for seven years. The official royal charter establishing the Academy for twenty-one years is dated 27 July 1719. In addition to the Governor of the company (always to be the Lord Chamberlain), the original fourteen directors of the company can be identified from the minutes of the first meetings in November and December. By the time the Academy produced its first opera, Giovanni Porta's Numitore (2 April 1720), the composition of the board of directors had shifted (as indicated in the printed libretto), and seven were new. One of these was John Percival, later 1st Earl of Egmont.

A mystery surrounds the identity of Handel's librettist for the 1749 Covent Garden oratorios Solomon (hwv67) and Susanna (hwv66). There are no known contemporary references to the texts’ authorship, whether in wordbooks (published by Tonson and Draper), the composer's autograph, printed scores (published by Walsh), press reports, financial records, correspondence or diaries. Indeed, there is very little contemporary comment of any sort relating to these two works, although we do know that they were profitable in so far as Handel had banked £300 after the first performance of Solomon and some £577 after performances of Susanna.

On 16 March 1736 Giovanni Battista Pergolesi died from consumption at age twenty-six in the Franciscan monastery of Pozzuoli near Naples, leaving a considerable number of compositions in all genres: stage works, cantatas, instrumental music and sacred music. On account of the success these compositions had enjoyed in Italy during his life, and the extraordinary fame they achieved in the rest of Europe after his death, a multitude of works bearing his name continued to be disseminated, many of which had little, if any, connection with Pergolesi himself. This phenomenon invites us to question what mechanisms are at work when a piece of music is misattributed, for if spurious or doubtful works can be classified according to their origin, then the identification of recurring patterns may help disentangle similar cases. This essay aims to classify the origins of misattributed sacred works from the first decades of Pergolesi's posthumous reception.