Haydn's ‘recomposition’ of the recapitulation is well known, but this article proposes, against received wisdom, that Haydn composed as though following a rule in the recapitulations of fast sonata-form movements from the 1770s onwards. The article extends William E. Caplin's functional theory to the Haydn recapitulation in order to revive the ‘sonata principle’, restated and limited to fast movements in Haydn's instrumental cycles. It then lays out a typology of Haydn's recapitulatory strategies that unfold within the constraints of the sonata principle.

This article reveals the source for two major themes in Madama Butterfly – one associated with Butterfly herself, the other with her patrimony. The assumption has been that Puccini based these themes on Japanese melodies, but his source was actually a Swiss music box playing Chinese tunes. Specific moments in the opera indicate that Puccini was aware of the titles of these tunes. The sound of music boxes in Butterfly and Turandot suggests previously unnoticed connections between these operas. The music-box melodies may be traced to Fritz Bovet's transcriptions. Puccini encountered ‘Jasmine Flower’ on these boxes, and in Turandot reaffirmed its status as the token of Chinese music.

Studies of the Spanish Republican exile, both musicological and otherwise, have often worked under the assumption that the exiles were disconnected from Francoist Spain and were thus unable to contribute in any way to the musical life of their home country. This article re-examines these assumptions by analysing a hitherto unexplored corpus of correspondence between two exiled musicians, Julián Bautista and Adolfo Salazar, and other musicians who had stayed in Francoist Spain. Such correspondence suggests that the exiles could, and indeed did, contribute to Spanish musical life under Francoism in a variety of ways.

Comics have become a significant part of modern popular culture. This article examines the ways in which music is involved with comics, and develops methods for analysing musical moments in comic books. The output of the writer Alan Moore (b. 1953) is used as the domain for examining music and comics. This popular author's works are notable for their sophisticated use of music and their interaction with wider musical culture. Using case studies from the comic books V for Vendetta (1982–9), Watchmen (1986–7) and the second and third volumes of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2002–12), the article demonstrates that the comic can be a musically significant medium (even to the point of becoming a piece of virtual musical theatre), and argues that music in comics serves to encourage readers to engage in hermeneutic criticism of musical and musical-literary texts.

The appearance of a ghost in Alfred Brendel's poem ‘Brahms II’, set by Thomas Adès for baritone and orchestra in 2001, is not the first time Brahms the composer has been discussed with reference to the supernatural. In order to provide a hermeneutic interpretation of Adès's Brahms, op. 21, and an explanation of why Brahms continues to haunt composers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, this article draws on Derrida's notion of hauntology, exploring notions of the uncanny, late Brahms and Schoenberg's ‘Brahms the Progressive’.