Until a few years ago, my title could have stood without any need for further clarification: serialism, however mistrustfully it might be received in precept or example, was clearly understood to be that method of pitch relationship devised by Schoenberg. The emergence with the post-war generation of methods that treat many other musical properties as equally susceptible to a serial ordering has favoured the relegation of the earlier techniques to a class known variously as twelve-note music, or more elaborately dodecatonicism, or with dubious etymological justification dodecaphony.

‘'TIS Vexatious to have such music neglected.’ Mrs. Pendarves was writing to her sister, Ann Granville. That same evening she was to attend a revival of Handel's Sosarme at the Hay-market Theatre, and she feared another empty house. She was right.

Since that day in 1734, many musicians and musical historians have echoed Mrs. Pen's vexation over the neglect of Handel's operas. Most of them have agreed with her about the excellence of the music; but few have said that its neglect was undeserved. For all his great gifts, we read, the master was working under impossible conditions.

Of the two types of Italian opera, ‘opera seria’ and ‘opera buffa’, that existed in the eighteenth century, opera seria is the one which has received more adverse comments from modern historians. The artificial division of its text and music into arias and recitative, its stereotyped plots, its concert-like and undramatic character, are easily recognised weaknesses. Musicians, moreover, have not only admired Gluck but sympathised with the sentiments expressed in his preface to Alceste and have therefore concluded that the conditions and standards he rebelled against promoted a decidedly inferior art. Perhaps for this reason a comprehensive study of the aria in opera seria has rarely been undertaken.

I would like to begin my paper with a quotation from Sir John Hawkins's History of Music, because it was his short note about the music of Christ's Hospital, which set me off on my present investigation.

‘In this Hospital anno 3 Jac. a free singing school was founded and endowed by Robert Dow, … wherin, as in the College of Dulwich … the children were to be taught pricksong. These, as far as can be recollected, are the only endowments of the kind since the Reformation. At Dulwich the boys are taught musical notes, and are able to chant; but at Christ's Hospital they sing only psalm tunes, and those by ear.’

When I was invited two years ago to read a paper on some subject connected with the research work on which I was then engaged, I felt a certain hesitation about doing so. For I naturally assumed that in the case of Beethoven a good deal of ground must have already been covered by earlier contributors. But on looking up the records of the Royal Musical Association I discovered to my surprise that since 1874, the year of its foundation, only six papers had been read on subjects closely relating to Beethoven (and in one of these he shares the honours with Mozart). Six papers in 88 years! And, what is even more startling, not one has been read since 1927, the centenary of Beethoven's death, that is to say, for the last 35 years. I need hardly add that such an apparent lack of interest in the life and work of this composer prompted me to make some amends, however small, for an indignity amounting almost to lèse-majesté.

The Italian Madrigal style adopted by English composers towards the close of the sixteenth century seems, on the face of it, to have almost eclipsed the native forms of secular vocal music. But although the madrigal and the lute-song account for much of the finest music of the time, the traditional style continued to exist and to develop in the songs of a number of composers who were not wholly committed to the new forms. Since these composers include William Byrd and Orlando Gibbons, we can be sure that the artistic achievements of the style are not negligible and that an understanding of their true nature is vital to our grasp of the period.

The Weimar republic was the outcome of the German Revolution of 1918–19, and the consequent abdication of the Kaiser. It was named after the city in which the first post-war parliament assembled. The choice of Goethe's home town was, of course, intended to have symbolic significance. On the one hand it implied a rejection of the Prussian militarist tradition centred on Berlin, while on the other it was a means of indicating a return to the values of German classical humanism. A corollary to this first session of a democratically elected parliament was the foundation in the same city of the great Bauhaus school. At least in theory, a link was established between constitutional and cultural life.