Musical Creativity in Restoration England

Abstract

Musical Creativity in Restoration England is the first comprehensive investigation of approaches to creating music in late seventeenth-century England. Understanding creativity during this period is particularly challenging because many of our basic assumptions about composition – such as concepts of originality, inspiration and genius – were not yet fully developed. In adopting a new methodology that takes into account the historical contexts in which sources were produced, Rebecca Herissone challenges current assumptions about compositional processes and offers new interpretations of the relationships between notation, performance, improvisation and musical memory. She uncovers a creative culture that was predominantly communal, and reveals several distinct approaches to composition, determined not by individuals, but by the practical function of the music. Herissone's new and original interpretations pose a fundamental challenge to our preconceptions about what it meant to be a composer in the seventeenth century and raise broader questions about the interpretation of early modern notation.

‘Yong Beginners, Who Live in the Countrey’: John Playford and the Printed Music Market in Seventeenth-Century England

“…The customer base for printed music books in seventeenth-century England must have been small and, of course, not all levels of musical society were reliant on print, with the continuing tradition of scribal networks and recreational music based on oral transmission still playing a significant role in the cultural lives of the majority. 48 Evidence of the amateur clientele of Playford's printed stock chiefly comes from the prefatory material of the books themselves as well as a few contemporary source references. The placement of the Playford business and the music shop of John Carr around the Inns of Court was an ideal location for attracting the young gentlemen students.…”

AlanHoward, Compositional Artifice in the Music of Henry Purcell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). xxii + 292 pp. £90.00 (hb.). ISBN 9781107006669.

“…Recent years have seen the publication of several important monographs exemplifying historically informed analytical approaches to Henry Purcell's music, notably Rebecca Herissone's Musical Creativity in Restoration England (2013) and Alon Schab's The Sonatas of Henry Purcell: Rhetoric and Reversal (2018). Alan Howard's contribution not only continues this lineage but breaks new ground by situating detailed and well‐presented analyses of Purcell's compositional technique within the wider context of late seventeenth‐century English discourse on aesthetics and on the role of rhetoric.…”

O caminho para a emulação: Francesco Geminiani e a consolidação do estilo inglês no século XVIII (1714-1762)

“…Todas essas composições compartilham uma linguagem contrapontística bem desenvolvida, além do afeto carregado de nobreza e austeridade (grave). Trata-se de obras escritas em um estilo sofisticado, contrapontisticamente bem desenvolvido e condizente com o virtuosismo composicional mencionado por Herissone (2018). Conforme a musicóloga, o deleite não resulta da exibição de técnicas instrumentais, mas da percepção e apreciação dos caminhos criativos.…”