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THIRTEENTH BIENNIAL INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON BAROQUE MUSIC SCHOOL OF MUSIC, UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS 2–6 JULY 2008

In recent years the Baroque Conference has tended to alternate between venues in the United Kingdom and in other European countries. This healthy state of affairs has meant that the location of the conference has to a certain extent coloured its direction. 2002 in La Rioja provided a showcase for the newly active musicological scene in the Iberian peninsula; 2006 in Warsaw celebrated the integration of Polish musicology into the new European order, as well as providing a magnificent experience of Polish hospitality. 2008 in Leeds gave international exposure to the important holdings of eighteenth-century English music in the Brotherton (the university) Library. For those unacquainted with Leeds, the grandeur of the Panizzi-style circular reading room and the luxurious setting for the Special Collections will come as a welcome surprise. One could wish that other important collections, such as the Henry Watson Music Library in Manchester, were as well supported and displayed. The conference was organized by Bryan White under the chairmanship of Peter Holman (both University of Leeds). Peter Holman has done much to make Leeds a centre for studies in British music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in general, with an emphasis on the totality of Great Britain and Ireland rather than just London. This stream was therefore the richest one for this conference; however, the majority of these papers related to the seventeenth century and so will not be discussed here. For the transition from Purcell to Handel, Donald Burrows (Open University) explored the orchestrally accompanied music of William Croft (the Brotherton Library has an apparently autograph score, unknown until recently, of Croft’s orchestral anthem ‘O give thanks unto the Lord, for he is gracious’), while Andrew Woolley (University of Leeds) unveiled a new Croft keyboard autograph (c1703). For the larger British sphere, Kerry Houston (Conservatory of Music and Drama at Dublin Institute of Technology) investigated music in Dublin Cathedrals in the age of Dean Swift, and Louis Brouillette (University of Montreal) presented a rare organ manuscript from the Anglican Cathedral of Quebec City, an English counterpart to the rich tradition of French music in Canada that has recently been explored by Élisabeth Gallat-Morin and others. William Babell prompted thoughts on performance, improvisation and composition from Sandra Mangsen (University of Western Ontario), who proposed keyboard arias from The Lady’s Entertainment as authentic recollections of stage performances, and from Alan Howard (University of Manchester), who found evidence of Babell’s improvisatory methods in the instrumental ‘solos’ other than the much-discussed Adagios with their ‘proper Graces’. Stefano Aresi (Università degli Studi di Pavia) outlined the many-layered influences of Porpora in British music, lasting into the nineteenth century. The British theme was summed up by a concert of English baroque sacred music directed by Peter Holman. Handel’s music has usually had at least one full session at this conference, and is of course one of the prime cases of long-term ramifications. Graydon Beeks (Pomona College) sought to define Sir George Smart’s performance style in Messiah from his 1813 conducting score and 1855 ornamentations for Jenny Lind. Otherwise, we had unexpected conclusions about the rhetorical structure of Messiah from Fred Fehleisen (The Juilliard School and Mannes College); an examination of the difficult question of the interdependence of music and drama in the operas, in light of current dramatic theory, from Ivan Ćurković (Sveučilište u Zagrebu/University of Zagreb); and what insights may be derived from the application of semiotic theory to Giulio Cesare from Marjo Suominen (Helsingin yliopisto/University of Helsinki). The conference culminated in a performance of Israel in Egypt in York Minster, with the Yorkshire Bach Choir and Baroque Soloists conducted by Peter Seymour (part of the York Early Music Festival). J. S. Bach has traditionally had strong representation at the Baroque Conference. This time the majority of Bach contributions were provided by Bach Network UK, led by Yo Tomita (Queen’s University Belfast), who described various features of Bach’s notation that have an implication for performance, based on his recent experience of editing Book II of The Well-Tempered Clavier for Henle; and Ruth Tatlow (Stockholms