Burney is recognised as the great musical writer of his day. This is a facsimile reprint of the first edition in 1771.

A glittering cultural tour of Europe's major capitals during a period of intense musical change. This volume continues the study of the eighteenth century begun in Haydn, Mozart, and the Viennese School 1740–1780 (1995) by focusing on the capital cities other than Vienna that were most important in the creation and diffusion of new music. It tells of events in Naples, where Vinci and Pergolesi went beyond their pre-1720 models to cultivate opera in a simpler, more direct manner, soon after christened the galant style. No less central was Venice, where Vivaldi perfected the concerto, on which were patterned the early symphonies and the newer kind of sonata. Dresden profited first from all these achievements and became, under Hasse's direction, the foremost center of Italian opera in Germany. Mannheim with its great orchestra did much to shape the modern symphony. A few years later, Paris became paramount, especially for its Opéra-Comique; during the 1770s the Opéra provided Gluck with a stage on which to cap his long international career. The book concludes with a description of Christian Bach in London, Paisiello in Saint Petersburg, and Boccherini in Madrid. This long-awaited book offers a view of eighteenth-century music that is broad and innovative while remaining sensitive to the values of those times and places. One comes away from it with an understanding of the European context behind the triumphs of Haydn and Mozart. Lavishly illustrated with music examples and reproductions, both in black-and-white and color, this master study will be of inestimable importance to scholars, cultural historians, performers, and all music lovers.

A unique look at the career of a little-known contemporary of Haydn and Mozart, presented against a fascinating background of court musical life in late eighteenth-century Germany.

This volume of letters by Charles Burney, the first to be published since 1991, runs from 1794 to 10 January 1800, beginning with his recovery from a debilitating attack of rheumatism, continuing with the death of his wife in 1796, and ending with the shocking death of his daughter Susanna. Certain leitmotifs, typical of Burney's concerns, stand out throughout the volume: his trepidation over the war with France and its effect on domestic politics, his exhausting social life, his travels, and his publication of the memoirs of the poet and lyricist Metastasio. A staunch monarchist and a self-confessed 'allarmist', Burney is haunted 'day and night' by the French Revolution and the threat that Republican France poses to 'religion, morals, liberty, property, & life'. He frets frequently over those he considers to be domestic Jacobins, a word he uses forty-seven times in the course of the volume to describe anyone whose politics differ from his own conservative values. Although Burney turns sixty-eight in April 1794, in this volume he barely slows down his habitual hectic pace of teaching and publishing. In the summer of 1795, he publishes his final book, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Abate Pietro Metastasio, despite a hectic social life that sees him hobnobbing with the elite in society and politics and a love of travel that takes him to the homes of friends in Hampshire and Cheshire and into his past on a nostalgic visit to Shrewsbury, his childhood home.

This book demonstrates the cultivation of instrumental genres by Neapolitan musicians and its significant stature at the royal court. Drawing on archival documents and musical sources, it paints a compelling history of local instrumental music culture and contributes to a wider ethnographic portrait of Naples in the late eighteenth-century.

First published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

During the late eighteenth century, a musical–cultural phenomenon swept the globe. The English square piano—invented in the early 1760s by an entrepreneurial German guitar maker in London—not only became an indispensable part of social life, but also inspired the creation of an expressive and scintillating repertoire. Square pianos reinforced music as life’s counterpoint, and were played by royalty, by musicians of the highest calibre and by aspiring amateurs alike. On Sunday, 13 May 1787, a square piano departed from Portsmouth on board the Sirius, the flagship of the First Fleet, bound for Botany Bay. Who made the First Fleet piano, and when was it made? Who owned it? Who played it, and who listened? What music did the instrument sound out, and within what contexts was its voice heard? What became of the First Fleet piano after its arrival on antipodean soil, and who played a part in the instrument’s subsequent history? Two extant instruments contend for the title ‘First Fleet piano’; which of these made the epic journey to Botany Bay in 1787–88? The First Fleet Piano: A Musician’s View answers these questions, and provides tantalising glimpses of social and cultural life both in Georgian England and in the early colony at Sydney Cove. The First Fleet piano is placed within the musical and social contexts for which it was created, and narratives of the individuals whose lives have been touched by the instrument are woven together into an account of the First Fleet piano’s conjunction with the forces of history. View ‘The First Fleet Piano: Volume Two Appendices’. Note: Volume 1 and 2 are sold as a set ($180 for both) and cannot be purchased separately.