While there are conflicting and often inconclusive data on attendance at classical music concerts, the data that do exist both in the UK and US suggest that, at best, attendance is holding even with population growth. This chapter contends that changes in attendance are not based on changes in practical considerations or the decline in arts education, but rather on changes in taste and socio‐demographics. An introduction on the audience for classical music provides a context for the later discussion of current attendance patterns. To better understand the relationship of current audiences with that inheritance, the chapter examines recent demographic data on income and education levels of the audience that attends classical concerts. It might be supposed that an association between income, education and attendance might be considered a positive factor, so that as the overall level of education increases and a growing economy provides higher levels of income, attendance should also increase. But a...

The effect of generational change on classical music concert attendance and orchestras' responses in the UK and US

Composers working in England during the period c.1675-c.1705 showed an ongoing fascination with the technique of ground bass, that is, a repeating bass pattern forming the basis of relatively extended pieces of music. This dissertation is the first comprehensive study of such ground-bass movements from the period in question. A particular focus of this dissertation is the research into harmonic and contrapuntal implications and possibilities - some of which can be inferred from contemporary treatises - and their realisation in the actual music, thereby shining a light on the creative processes used by late seventeenth-century composers and on the importance of improvisational techniques during this period. 
The total number of vocal grounds incorporated into the discussion is 166, of which eighty are by Henry Purcell, while six are by Continental composers with no connection to England other than that their music was copied here. A similar overview is much more difficult to give for instrumental grounds, for several reasons: first, different sources of the same 'piece' often give such different 'versions' that these can hardly be called concordances, though it is not always straightforward to draw the line; second, instrumental music from the Continent 'travelled' much more widely than vocal music, not least because of the absence of (non-English) words and associated functional contexts (for example, liturgical); consequently, a much greater number of instrumental grounds from the Continent was copied or published in England, and some of the many anonymous instrumental grounds may also not have been written in England. In other words, despite the geographical focus of the study on England (in reality mainly London and, to a lesser extent, Oxford), music produced here cannot sensibly be studied in isolation. The appendices contain 97 entries for keyboard, representing at least that number of keyboard grounds and chaconnes/passacaglias, as well as 250 for other instruments.
Differences of approach can be discerned not just between different composers, but also between vocal and instrumental styles of writing, as well as different genres and intended functions of music. Instrumental grounds belong to one of two traditions - division grounds or chaconnes - with some pieces relating to both. Vocal music generally makes more use of reharmonisation and interesting phrase structure, or transposes the ground. Particular bass patterns such as the descending tetrachord can sometimes be linked with the text used. A more wideranging discussion of links between music and rhetoric in seventeenth-century writings also reveals a fundamental kinship of these two disciplines in Humanist thinking. Lastly, gradual changes in composers' approaches to the composition of grounds can be understood in light of an increasing understanding of tonality as an important tool with which more large-scale forms and tonal contrasts could be created.

Creative approaches to ground-bass composition in England, c.1675-c.1705

This thesis presents an investigation into the nature and use of the consort organ in English secular instrumental music of the seventeenth century with a view to informing present-day performance practice. Whilst the English string consort repertoire has been widely studied from the perspective of the viol and violin, the role of the organ and organist has remained neglected. This study seeks to redress this through the examination of manuscript sources, contemporary writing and extant instruments to illuminate a variety of performance practice issues. The development and organology of the instrument is considered, focussing particularly on the distinctive methods of construction and voicing that were designed to enhance the instrument’s role in playing with string ensembles. The contexts of chamber music at the court, in domestic establishments, and in theatres, choir schools and music meetings are examined from the perspective of the consort organ. Manuscript sources, contemporary historical sources and the consideration of extant instruments in relation to their original locations and associated repertoire are interrogated for performance practice information. The role of the consort organist, from both a musical and sociological standpoint, is also discussed with reference to contemporary sources. The findings reveal that seventeenth-century usage of the organ differed from present-day practice in relation to a number of key areas including pitch, temperament, registration and expression, and that the organist’s role encompassed a wide range of skills that are rarely explored in modern performances or editorial realisations. The study concludes that a revised approach to the use of the consort organ in present-day performance of the seventeenth-century English consort repertoire is required.

'A Holding, Uniting-Constant Friend': The Organ in Seventeenth-Century English Domestic Music

Introduction 1. Imagery 2. Who owned a gittern? 3. The gittern trade 4. 'An instruction to the Gitterne' 5. Sounding strings 6. The gittern and Tudor song 7. Thomas Whythorne: the autobiography of a Tudor guitarist Conclusion Appendices: Appendix A. The terms 'gittern' and 'cittern' Appendix B. References to gitterns from 1542-1605 Appendix C. The probate inventory of Dennys Bucke (1584) Appendix D. Octave strings on the fourth and third course Appendix E. The fiddle tunings of Jerome of Moravia, swept strings and the guitar Appendix F. The mandore and the wire-strung gittern Appendix G. The ethos of the guitar in sixteenth-century France Appendix H. Raphe Bowle.

The Guitar in Tudor England: A Social and Musical History

"This research was funded by “Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia” (FCT,
Portugal) through the Ph.D. grant with reference SFRH/BD/43686/2008, and was co-financed by the European Social Fund (Fundo Social Europeu) within the program
POPH - QREN - Tipologia 4.1 - Formacao Avancada” and by national funds from the
MEC." -- page x

The trombone in Portugal before 1850

Preface Acknowledgements 1. Introduction: manuscript sources and Purcell's music 2. Fitzwilliam Museum Music MS 88 and three principal concordances 3. British Library Additional MS 30930 and its repertories 4. British Library Royal Music 20.h.8 and its repertories 5. Performing materials from the London sacred establishments and other sacred sources 6. Music for the theatre 7. Vocal, keyboard and instrumental music Appendix 1. Identified copyists and early owners Appendix 2. Unidentified copyists Bibliography Indexes.

Purcell Manuscripts: The Principal Musical Sources

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/notes/v057/57.1shay.pdf

A Biographical Dictionary of English Court Musicians, 1485-1714 (review)

struct the prehistory or genesis for numerous compositions.' Although he went on to show just how much can be discovered about Renaissance compositional process through careful manuscript study, Brown's general point is well taken: it has proved exceedingly difficult, at least until quite recently, for Renaissance specialists to discuss in any detailed manner compositional process and creative development. The situation is not much better for those who work with 17th-century music: sketches and even revised drafts are relatively rare items. Students of Henry Purcell's music are thus fortunate to have for their study autograph or authoritative copies of his original and revised settings of the funeral sentences from the Anglican burial service. These telling revisions, stemming from an early phase of Purcell's career, represent some of the best evidence we have to help illumine the rather dark and imprecise picture of the beginnings of his musical development. Over the last 20 years or so several scholars have discussed Purcell's revisions with various goals in mind: Katherine Rohrer in her 1980 dissertation noted that Purcell's method of text-setting became increasingly sophisticated by the time of the second version;3 Robert Manning in a 1982 article made a brief overview of revisions in Purcell's anthems, including those made to the funeral sentences, in an attempt to illustrate the composer's 'sensitive musical discrimination';4 and Robert Ford in a 1986 article (billed in part as a response to Manning's work) provided new information on an intermediary version of the funeral sentences (showing that there were really two stages of revision and thus three versions).5 The revised volume of the Purcell Society edition containing the funeral sentences (in two versions) appeared in 1988.6 And the boom in Purcell scholarship in connection with the 1995 tercentenary brought forth several new discussions of this music,7 including Bruce Wood's intriguing suggestions on its origins (more on this below),8 and two new editions (both from Oxford University Press) from Christopher Hogwood (the first edition to contain all three versions)9 and Bruce Wood.'o It would seem little remained to be said about these

Purcell's revisions to the funeral sentences revisited

The Rise of Musical Classics in Eighteenth-Century England: A Study in Canon, Ritual, and Ideology

The thirty-seven music manuscripts comprising the Filmer Collection at Yale University, nearly all of English provenance, suggest that a lively musical culture existed in the homes of the Filmers of Kent, England, in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. In a 1978 study in Notes, Robert Ford provided an overview of the collection, [1] and various Filmer manuscripts have subsequently been studied by Curtis Price, [2] Carl Schmidt, [3] Peter Holman, [4] and Ford himself. [5] My own interest in this collection developed in the process of writing a book with Robert Thompson about the manuscript sources for Henry Purcell's music. [6] I was especially drawn to some intriguing phrases in Ford's original study: for instance, in describing Filmer 21, a fragment from a Canterbury Cathedral partbook, Ford mentions the presence of a "seldom-encountered Purcell anthem" (this later proving to be only the second extant source for The Lord is King and Hath Put on Clorious Apparel), [7] and he notes that Filmer 8, a n instrumental bass partbook, includes a "suite of theater music by Henry Purcell. Aside from the Overture, these Purcell pieces are not known elsewhere." [8] This suite, which includes five unique basses not previously published or evaluated for their authenticity, is the focus of the present essay, but some general comments on the Filmer Collection are in order before proceeding to a description of the individual source and the music. THE FILMER COLLECTION AT YALE UNIVERSITY The booksellers Mellor & Balley of Anglesey, Wales, offered the Filmer music collection to Yale University in 1945, nearly thirty years after the death, in 1916, of Sir Robert Filmer, the last of a line of baronets. [9] Hugh Mellor records something of the recent history of the collection in his second letter to Donald Wing, then associate university librarian and head of accessions at Yale: Sir Robert Filmer--the last I understand of his line, died some little time ago and his Trustees sent the family library ... to Sotheby's where [it was] sold on Oct. 1st [1945]. There was no music sold there. His family deeds &c. he had left to Maidstone Public Library, near where the family lived for many generations. On going through the boxes, the librarian found one box not containing deeds, but this music. The trustees, wishing to settle affairs quickly, did not send it to Sotheby's but offered it to a dealer in London. Although out of his line, he bought it at the beginning of Oct. Not knowing much about it, he first called in someone from the British Museum and asked them [pounds]2,000 for the collection. Naturally, with their enormous collection it was of no interest to them but they wanted to buy two items. The dealer would not "split" the items and wrote to me-as one interested, as he knew, in old music. I sent a friend to make a preliminary examination and the rest you know. [10] The "rest" is that Mellor must have purchased the collection almost immediately for substantially less than [pounds]2000, because by the end of October he offered it to Yale for [pounds]900, a seemingly reasonable price considering that the collection included not only the thirty-seven manuscript items but several early madrigal prints as well.[11] The transaction was concluded in April 1946. Several inscriptions in the manuscripts can be connected with individual members of the Filmer family (see appendix 1), [12] and the serious pursuit of music seems to have been a long-standing Filmer tradition, going back at least to the time of Sir Edward Filmer, who was Sheriff of Kent, founder of the Filmer estate in East Sutton, Kent (acquiring it by marriage), and translator of French Court-Aires: With their Ditties Englished, published in 1629, [13] the year of his death. Several of the earliest items in the Filmer Collection, as it now stands, probably reflect the musical activities of Sir Edward. [14] Sir Edward's son Sir Robert, a prominent royalist during the Civil War (he was imprisoned for a time at nearby Leeds Castle), [15] wrote several tracts on political philosophy, most often remembered today in connection with the attacks of John Locke, though Filmer's Patriarcha, published posthumously in 1680, became a "mainstay of Tory argument against the exclusion of [James II] from the succession. …

Robert Shay

Papers

Purcell Manuscripts: The Principal Musical Sources

A Biographical Dictionary of English Court Musicians, 1485-1714 (review)

Purcell's revisions to the funeral sentences revisited

The Rise of Musical Classics in Eighteenth-Century England: A Study in Canon, Ritual, and Ideology

Bass Parts to an Unknown Purcell Suite at Yale