This paper explores Wagner's early comedic opera, Das Liebesverbot. Though his ‘mature comedy’ Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg has been the focus of much scholarly attention, the composer's first and only other foray into the genre has been much less studied and often outright dismissed. While contemporary scholars have increasingly looked to Wagner's pre-Dutchman operas, they often read them purely in light of his later works; with this examination of his adaptation of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, I offer a consideration of the young composer's work in its own right. After considering issues of textual and cultural adaptation, this paper offers close readings of several passages of the opera, in tandem with parallel scenes from the original play-text, to show how Wagner's transformation of this not-quite-so-comedic comedy into an expression of the carnivalesque reveals an expansive and cosmopolitan artistic and political philosophy during a period during which he was greatly influenced by the authors of the Junges Deutschland movement. Such a reconsideration disrupts the standard conception of a composer who is still often considered, in his own words, the ‘most German being’. Here, we see Wagner at arguably his most cosmopolitan, adapting the work of an English playwright he revered, altering the plot so that it ostensibly aligned with the ideological outlook of his German revolutionary colleagues, and setting it to music of a decidedly French and Italian flavour, all this in a way that still preserves many of the same, seemingly contradictory themes present in the original play.

The Centennial International Exhibition held in Melbourne in 1888 showcased the city's exceptional wealth and cultural aspirations. As part of the exhibition, the visiting English conductor Frederic Hymen Cowen presented 263 orchestral concerts, cultivating a taste for classical music that would sustain a further orchestra, conducted by the English composer G.W.L. Marshall-Hall, that presented several concerts per year from 1892 to 1912. Immigration both before and during that period was a key factor in the urbanization and modernization of Melbourne as well as the success and achievements of Marshall-Hall's orchestra. Yet little is known about individual members and the trajectories of their careers. By examining the lists of members appearing in 19 years’ worth of programmes of the orchestra, this study contributes to the practice of ‘urban musicology’ by providing compelling evidence of the role of immigration in laying the foundation of music performance and performance training in a settler colonial city, and highlights three major steps in the evolution of the profession: the increasing presence in the orchestra of talented and in some cases exceptionally talented Australian-born musicians who were to succeed the older European-born and -trained musicians; the growing participation of women in the orchestra as well as the profession more broadly; and the strengthening of the Musicians’ Union's stranglehold on professional accreditation at the expense of women, amateurs and foreigners.

The aim of this study is to describe the emergence of court and bourgeois salons in the nineteenth-century Principality of Serbia, in the context of the socio-historical circumstances and geopolitical background. A selection of examples of salon gatherings organized in Belgrade from the 1830s to the 1870s show the emergence of a new cultural identity through the coexistence and merging of different cultural models: Western European, Ottoman and Serbian. Starting with the first salons, organized in the 1830s in the home of Tomanija and Jevrem Obrenović, salon gatherings will be viewed through the prism of selected court and bourgeois salons. Special attention is paid to salons in which only women took part. In the period of the construction of the modern Serbian state, these salon gatherings contributed to the emancipation of women and their step from the private to the public sphere of society. In order to more comprehensively understand the role and significance of salon, the multi-layered salon practices are observed, with a focus on (1) analysis of the symbolism of interior decoration and clothing and of the social status of salon guests; (2) a reconstruction of the atmosphere through details of refreshments (food and drink), specific decorations of individual salons and dances performed; (3) analysis of the artistic and intellectual content: music, literature, poetry and science.

This article aims to explain the rise of Western art forms in the musical creation of the Romanian Principalities in the first half of the nineteenth century, as dictated by a particular European political and economic dynamic. I analyse the spread of Western music – usually described as a consequence of the gradual modernization of Romanian society – in terms of the power relations between the European core and a newly integrated periphery at the Eastern border of the continent. To illustrate this change, I discuss Edward Said's concept of orientalism which helps describe the early interactions between Western musicians and professionals and the local music traditions and customs. I then show how these interactions gave the former access to a distinctive musical material used in compositions targeting an expanding European music market. In an age of national struggle in the Romanian Principalities, national music was both a concept and a practice in demand by the local intelligentsia and fostered by composers. However, in addition to this agreement, the concept of national music signalled some significant societal changes that I elucidate by looking at class stratification and the evolution of musical taste. In the final part of the analysis, I draw on dependency theory authors such as Samir Amin and Daniel Chirot to argue that musical life in the first half of the nineteenth century in Wallachia and Moldavia was closely mirroring the economic development of these countries. Thus, I demonstrate that the emergence of the Romanian school of composition must be understood not only at a national level but also within a broader political, economic and social context, defined by the gradual transition to capitalist modes of production and consumption that happened in the first decades of the nineteenth century.

Schubert's interest in Gothicism is explored in numerous songs written between the 1810s and early 1820s and, in recent years, has served as an aesthetic agenda that some scholars have applied to his instrumental music. One notable exception is the ‘Unfinished’ Symphony (D. 759, 1822), a work whose thematic presentation and form have been frequently related to states of terror and horror, but rarely correlated further to Gothicism and never consistently so across the two completed movements. In light of this relative neglect, this article offers a Gothic reading of the symphony, finding correspondence with Gothic signifiers of ghostly hauntings and the ‘problem of closure’, and draws upon relevant literary criticism and psychoanalytic theory. As I show, the concept of psychoanalytic trauma – a concept widely deployed in current literary criticism to scrutinize repetitive patterns such as hauntings and circular temporality in Gothic literature – is especially instructive in terms of helping construct a richer understanding of the symphony.

Some albums entail more than meets the ear. In the Age of Ravel and In the Age of Debussy surround representative works of Maurice Ravel (1875–1937) and Claude Debussy (1862–1918) with contextualizing selections from contemporaries. Compellingly rendered by Ransom Wilson and François Dumont, these discs document six decades of innovation. They also illuminate intriguing connections as well as fascinating contrasts among familiar and unfamiliar works. And each celebrates the art of the French flute. But there's more.

Discussing music in Portugal in the nineteenth century, and the digital resources that the country makes available for musicological research on this historical period, requires, first of all, a clarification about the chronological boundaries that limit this temporal unit. One can naturally understand that the periodization to be adopted should be the most obvious, that is, the one that determines the dates 1801 and 1900 as the beginning and end of the century in question. But it is worth asking whether it would not be more appropriate to define a periodization based on the events that unequivocally determined the panorama of music in Portugal in that century.