There can be little doubt that the piano was one of Schubert’s instruments of choice, featuring not only in an array of solo pieces but also in chamber music and as an accompaniment to Lieder. Given the popularity of the instrument in Vienna during the early nineteenth century, this is perhaps not surprising. However, very little is known about Schubert’s own instruments, or which specific makers and models he preferred throughout his career. The instruments themselves underwent substantial change during Schubert’s lifetime, with preference moving away from the delicate touch and tone of late eighteenth-century models to the larger compass and more weighty tonal qualities of the instruments of the 1820s and 1830s, in part as a reaction to the demands of composers. By considering Schubert’s connection to specific instrument makers, the unique qualities of Viennese instruments and individual works for pianoforte by Schubert, this paper revisits what is known about the instruments he may have preferred, while also making observations about the connections between his keyboard music and the instruments that were available in early nineteenth-century Vienna.

How do composers discover new sounds with old instruments? This chapter looks at the relationship between composers and instruments, and explores how responding to instrument design and experiementing with performing techniques and physical materials can create radical and exciting new sounds and ideas.

Two forgotten manuscript sources provide new insights on the early history of cello repertory and performance practice in Naples. The first collection, held by the library of the Montecassino Abbey, dates from around 1699 and contains the only two cello sonatas attributed to Giovanni Bononcini, together with the largest set of passacaglias for cello by the Neapolitan virtuoso Gaetano Francone, and the twenty-eight sonatas for two “violas” and elaborations over antiphons by Rocco Greco, a prominent string performer and teacher. This remarkable source presents significant insights on the history, nomenclature, and function of bass violins in Naples and offers new evidence on the practice of continuo realization at the cello. The second source contains the earliest Italian cello method, written around the 1740s by the Neapolitan cellist Francesco Paolo Supriani, and presents examples of elaborate improvisations at the cello. Both sources demonstrate the technical advancement of the Neapolitan cello virtuosi and connect the cello repertory to the partimento practice. The chapter provides entirely new perspectives on the early history of the violoncello and illustrates the emergence of a celebrated generation of Neapolitan cello virtuosi of international repute, such as Francesco Alborea, in the early years of the eighteenth century.

In the nineteenth century, E. T. A. Hoffmann invoked the Magic Flute as an example of restraint in orchestration: despite the opera’s trials and tribulations, the music never descends into bombast. Other critics were underwhelmed by the orchestration, which seems devoid of the instrumental effects promised by the title. This essay argues that the magic of Mozart’s orchestration lies in the ways in which it constructs different relationships with the stage action. Whether it’s the acoustic portraits of characters such as the Three Spirits, the pragmatics (and illusions) of on-stage musical performance, or the musical control of performing bodies by seemingly self-playing instruments, Mozart’s orchestration thematizes relationships between sounds and their sources. This essay puts the instruments of the pit in dialogue with the instruments on stage and, in so doing, illuminates the subtle ways in which Mozart uses the orchestra, as much as his characters, to tell his last story.

During the 1790s, Franz Joseph Gall, a German now practicing medicine in Vienna, came forth with a new way of thinking about the mind and brain. He envisioned the mind having many specialized functions, each dependent on a different part of the brain for its expression. He had a variety of methods for determining these function–structure relationships but relied most heavily on skull features. Bumps and depressions on specific parts of the skull, he reasoned, reflected the growth of the underlying parts. Hence, by studying the heads and crania of humans and animals, one could find separate organs for music, mathematics, and even color perception. Stated differently, a skilled observer could use craniology for probing the mysteries of the mind and understanding the functional organization of the brain. In 1805, Gall left Vienna with his new assistant, Johan Spurzheim, to present his “organology” in various European centers of learning. He never returned. He settled in Paris in 1807, where he lectured and published his books on his ideas. He died there in 1828, still believing in his new science of man, yet knowing that his skull-based assertions were still the most controversial features of his doctrine.

Throughout his lifetime, Brahms accompanied dozens of singers in a variety of settings, ranging from huge public halls to his friends’ homes, and conducted many others in choirs. Some of those working relationships were one-offs, arising from the widespread practice of including a set of piano-accompanied songs within most concerts and the expediency and cost-effectiveness of using local talent. Others were deep, enduring partnerships; the timbres and interpretative approaches of those singers are surely ingrained in his vocal music. Overall, Brahms’s singers were generally not part of the international operatic elite associated with Verdi, Bizet and Massenet. Figures like Julius Stockhausen (1826–1906) and Raimund von Zur-Mühlen (1854–1931)were almost exclusively concert singers and, later on, teachers. Most hailed from German-speaking territories, reflecting Brahms’s own concert career.

During the long nineteenth century, the design of most musical instruments changed considerably. While the late nineteenth-century orchestra may be familiar in terms of size, configuration and instrumental design, musicians of Mozart and Haydn’s era would be forgiven for not immediately recognising the descendants of the instruments that they themselves played. The industrial revolution generated new technologies and ways of manufacturing which impacted upon the musical world. Woodwind instruments gained more keys, brass instruments acquired new valve technology, strings would eventually transition from gut to metal strings, and metal-framed pianos allowed for more stable instruments with a larger pitch and dynamic range. Within individual histories of these instruments, it is difficult to pinpoint when changes were accepted and adopted. Communities (e.g. soloists, orchestral musicians, amateurs) and countries varied enormously.