In Les Visions de la nuit dans les campagnes (1851–1853), George Sand responded to the French government’s newly announced project of collecting the ‘popular’ or folk songs of France, with a critique of their methods of collection as perfunctory. Sand was adamant not only about a more rigorous approach to amassing the nation’s folk songs but also about the inclusion of the music with the lyrics, and her concise, insightful critique of archival methods came after nearly two decades of her own occupation with rendering music in her fiction and, more immediately, a decade focused on folk music in many of what are known as her ‘rustic’ novels. In particular, I bring to the fore in this article discussions in Sand’s expansive novel Consuelo; La Comtesse de Rudolstadt (1842–1844) which both insist upon the historical, cultural and personal significance of the preservation of folk music and navigate the tensions of preserving an art form that is fundamentally non-static and ephemeral, in order to articulate the value Sand places on musical sensibility, memory and heritage. I argue that Les Visions de la nuit dans les campagnes stands along with Sand’s fiction as an ardent defense against the loss of the musical heritage of provincial France in the hands of the state’s archivists. This article thus situates George Sand’s investment in the cultural production from the Berry region within the early history of nineteenth-century music ethnography in France, while maintaining Sand’s own understanding of her cultural production as poetic rather than scientific.

If as a performer and Brahms’s close collaborator Joachim promoted the music of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, a process relatively unsympathetic to programme music of the Neudeutsche Schule, as a composer Joachim’s works do not display such an aesthetic stance. His own music, which he dubbed ‘psychological’, was intended to ‘detect and save’, that is faithfully to perceive and record his emotions. As part of this process, Joachim’s Abendglocken, the second of the Drei Stücke, Op. 5, for violin and piano (1853), betrays a striking use of ciphers, taking Robert Schumann’s musical word games to a heightened level and using notational signs such as double bars as framing devices that suggest an intriguing link to the daguerreotypes of early photography.

‘Psychological music’ describes a compositional approach Joachim pursued in the 1850s, when positivism began clashing with the existing idealist philosophy, as demonstrated in the emergence of empirical psychology from philosophy and metaphysics. Enrolled in philosophy at Göttingen University in 1853, Joachim would have encountered psychology from a pre-empirical, phenomenological perspective, which may have initiated his ‘psychological music’. The dedicatee of Abendglocken and the constant subject of his thoughts – and arguably of his music – was Gisela von Arnim (1827–1889), daughter of Bettina von Arnim, with whom he was romantically involved and whose encrypted name – G♯–E–A – provides a valuable key to understanding Abendglocken in particular, and Joachim’s psychological music in general. This article considers the autobiographical, philosophical and cultural influences on Joachim to interpret ‘psychological music’ as it played out in Abendglocken.

William Russell (1777–1813) came from a London family of organists and organ builders. He published two sets of voluntaries: in 1804 and 1812. As well as his liturgical duties at St Anne's Limehouse, and in the Foundling Hospital Chapel, Russell worked as pianist and composer at the Sadler's Wells Theatre; the influence of opera and theatrical music can be strongly felt in some of the voluntaries. He was also particularly interested in the development of the organ itself, and had ‘progressive’ ideas regarding early nineteenth-century organ design.

Russell's music fascinatingly blends, or sometimes simply juxtaposes, several disparate musical influences. He therefore sits at an interesting point in English organ music. This article investigates Russell's own music – its forms, styles and genres – and his use of the instruments available to him. In addition, I will consider the extent to which his style was of the nineteenth century, and looked forward to future developments, of which his pioneering use of the pedals is one significant aspect.

The coming about of a ‘college of organists’ in 1864 reflected a growing desire on the part of a small, but quickly expanding, cohort of organists to be viewed collectively as one of the ‘respectable professions’ such as law or medicine and thereby enjoy the social and material benefits normally accorded to such professional groups. Writing around 1910, Charles W. Pearce captured the dynamic of the 1860s when he observed that the foundation of an association for organists was a manifestation of the ‘desire on the part of the musical profession for some self-established, self-supporting system of self-organization, self-government, and self-examination’. Underlying – and stimulating – the College's search for identity and mission in its early years was a complex and dynamic environment in which new national consensuses were emerging with respect to professional standing, academic status, churchmanship, innovation in organ-building and, more generally, with respect to standards in music making.Following comments on British organists and the environment in which they were working by the 1860s (often characterized by poor pay, insecurity and the perception of low status), this article draws on (1) archival records that have been little scrutinized and (2) relevant periodical literature – in particular The Musical Standard, a newly founded journal edited by figures intimately associated with the fledgling College – to establish the schedule and mechanism of the College's formation and how the institution attempted to organize itself and gain patronage. The article also casts contextual light on this project of professionalization by considering the individuals involved – their backgrounds, connections and motivations – and some of the early activities and the reasons behind them.

Fromental Halévy’s five-act grand opera La Reine de Chypre premiered in Paris in 1841. Many critics viewed the work as a great success and seen as a true rival to La Juive (1835). Wagner, who was in Paris at the time, even went so far as to claim the composition ‘a new step forward’ in the world of opera, evidenced in the many review articles and publications he wrote about the work. This article attempts to uncover what Wagner admired about Halévy’s composition, especially within the context of the German composer’s ‘artistic exile’ in France (1839–1842) and the completion of a new dramatic conception of German romantic opera in Der Fliegende Holländer (1843). The connections between the two works are explored, revealing an affinity for the exile and the desire for redemption.

The Viennese premieres of Dukas’s Ariane et Barbe-bleue and Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande in 1908 and 1911 occurred over a decade after Maeterlinck’s literary style and Fernand Khnopff’s paintings were praised by Secessionist critics, including Hermann Bahr and Ludwig Hevesi. In Vienna, fin-de-siècle discourse treats impressionism and symbolism as aesthetic outgrowths of Ernst Mach’s notion of ‘antimetaphysical’ modes of existence. This article explores the broader Viennese reception of symbolism and its influence on music criticism, which predominantly contends that Debussy and Dukas divert from Wagnerian techniques by cultivating Klangempfindungen (acoustical sensations) and anti-thematic symphonic approaches to generate musical equivalents to the poetic and painterly incitation of psychophysical stimuli. Julius Korngold and other prominent music critics, some of whom were Debussy’s and Dukas’s exact contemporaries, describe how symbolist compositional syntax emerges as a musical terrain that produces a stark contrast between the suspension of latency and frenetic episodes. Symbolist composers accentuate this contrast to increase sensitivity to a literary device at the core of Maeterlinck’s art: the protagonists’ fixation on environmental conditions and changes, descriptive imagery that apprises audiences of their emotional state.

In the English mid-nineteenth century, organist-composers sought an idealistic course that created an alliance between the unimpeachable musical language of the Classical era and the much celebrated ‘Victorian’ organ. As a result, we witness the birth of a new musical genre with the ‘English organ sonata’ that was to provide a model for organ composition into the twentieth century. However, the works in question were not merely pastiche compositions, despite some bold illusions, but rather pieces based on revered models, restyled for an age that was familiar with transcriptions of orchestral repertoire on the organ. Further, the English organist-composers adhered to both an old model in a continuance of the ‘lesson-sonata’ tradition as well as developing a new one, here styled the ‘portfolio sonata’ whereby the purpose of the sonata would serve multiple ends. In an age of prestige and betterment, the sonatas that emerged were a testament to a profession that was determined to be seen anew.

The article describes the evolution of the English organ under the influence of changes in musical style and liturgical practice between 1830 and 1870. A preliminary discussion of the Georgian organ and the performance conventions of its players provides a benchmark against which to measure the ensuing changes. S.S. Wesley is taken as a case study with reference to changes made to the Hereford Cathedral organ in 1832; it is argued that these reflect Wesley's musical priorities, a point that is further illustrated by a consideration of the registration markings found in the original manuscripts of ‘The Wilderness’ (1832) and ‘Blessed be the God and Father’ (1834). They also demonstrate an innovative use of the pedals.In the following section the influence of Mendelssohn is discussed. His performances of Bach in England during the 1830s and 1840s promoted a radical change is organ design and performance practice; the C-compass organs with German pedal divisions built by (among others) William Hill were ideal instruments both for Bach's organ music and for Mendelssohn's own organ sonatas which combined classical form with a romantic sensibility.The concluding section reviews developments in the years 1850–70. It considers changes in console design and the growing taste for orchestral registers, even in church organs. Choral accompaniments also became more orchestral in character, and a number of representative examples from Ouseley's Special Anthems (1861, 1866) are discussed. Liturgical changes after 1850 are also considered, together with their impact on the role of the organ in worship.

While organs had been built in the United States since the eighteenth century, until the middle of the nineteenth century what passed as an ‘organ concert’ consisted of a mélange of transcriptions from choral music and simple improvisations, interspersed with choral music and vocal solos. As larger organs began to appear by the middle of the nineteenth century, solo organ recitals by players such as George W. Morgan were occasionally performed. In the 1850s Americans such as Dudley Buck and John K. Paine travelled to Germany to study organ performance and composition, and others followed. The opening of a large organ in Boston's Music Hall in 1863 and the building of large churches in the post-war period gave impetus to public organ recitals, which along with compositions by Bach, Mendelssohn, Rinck and Batiste etc. usually included transcriptions from operas and orchestral works, and compositions by the performers. At first, the emphasis was on Germanic music, but as the second half of the century progressed and more organists were studying abroad, works by British and French composers began to appear. By the end of the century the emphasis had become strongly French, particularly after the concert tours of Parisian virtuoso Alexandre Guilmant, and America's first true concert organist, Clarence Eddy, began making tours to European countries. By this time many large organs had been built for concert halls, cathedrals, colleges, and urban churches, providing excellent venues for solo organ recitals as the twentieth century opened.