The Office of Compline, sung to plainchant melodies adapted to English words, has become ‘firmly fixed in the Anglican tradition’. Yet, in the absence of a service of Compline in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, this office was once perceived as a niche Anglo-Catholic devotion. The present article examines how sung Compline became a staple of the English choral repertoire by examining six settings composed during the ‘English plainchant revival’ in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Focusing on the editors’ sources, their methods of adapting Latin chant to English words, and the intended audience for each setting, it shows how successive editions remedied deficiencies perceived in earlier versions in the light of developing scholarship of plainchant and the growing popularity of public services of Compline. While earlier settings relied on medieval and contemporary Catholic sources of Latin chant, the latest imitated the contents of previous English editions, a ‘self-referential’ turn indicating that particular English Compline chants were now seen as part of a standard repertoire. The ongoing popularity of the setting attributed to John Arnold and published by the Plainsong & Medieval Music Society in 1929, issued in a second edition in 2005, shows how music for Compline published around the turn of the twentieth century has now become a musical ‘fixture’ in the English choral repertoire.

The social and political upheavals that rock our world are rarely treated in the world of contemporary ‘art music’ composition. Popular music reaches a larger public and seems more at ease in addressing these themes. But is it intrinsically linked with such content in its musical expression, or only through its lyrics? Would art music, for its part, lose its ‘purity’ by abandoning its stance of abstraction in approaching these subjects? This article draws on examples from my works Kein Licht (2017) and Lab.Oratorium (2019). Kein Licht, a ‘Thinkspiel’, imagines a future in which humankind’s appetite for energy consumption has led our species to the verge of extinction. The semi-staged Lab.Oratorium addresses the humanitarian crisis of immigration into Europe. Both works reflect the evolution of traditional genres (opera, oratorio) with theatrical elements.

This article examines Sebastián Durón’s opera La guerra de los gigantes (c. 1701–3) in the context of the early years of the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14) and Philip V’s reign (1701–46), as well as the development of opera in Madrid. It presents three main arguments. First, I argue that the character of Minerva in this opera was intended to symbolise Maria Luisa Gabriela of Savoy (1688–1714), the bride and future queen consort of Spain. The aristocrat who commissioned La guerra de los gigantes sought to portray Maria Luisa not only as an ideal wife and woman but also as a powerful military and political ally to King Philip V during the war. Second, I propose that La guerra de los gigantes is part of a broader ‘theatre of loyalty’ that emerged during the early years of Philip V’s reign and the War of the Spanish Succession. This type of theatre allowed Spanish noblemen, particularly the grandees, to express their allegiance to their new king, gain his favour, and enhance or solidify their power. Finally, I suggest that La guerra de los gigantes represents one of several attempts by the Spanish high nobility to develop the genre of opera in Madrid, at a time when partly sung musical dramas such as the zarzuela were the dominant theatrical forms.

Several collections of lesson books for practising mensural music published in Spain during the eighteenth century, known as canto de órgano, have been overlooked in musicological scholarship. These canto de órgano lessons allowed students to be trained in a wide variety of repertoire, from renaissance polyphony to modern-style monody. This article provides an initial overview of these printed collections and identifies noteworthy parallels with the didactic repertoires of other regions, such as Italian solfeggi. To that end, I present context and different Spanish opinions of the period on the usefulness of solfeggio collections and specific examples of collections that could serve as models of style. I analyse the way in which solfeo was practised, before proposing a classification. In assessing these works against other sources, I suggest that these lesson books were useful not only for the practice of reading music, but also for the cultivation of good taste in interpretation, improvisation and composition.

In the centuries following the Norman Conquest, dependent priories – that is, satellite or daughter houses – of larger abbeys were founded in large numbers in England. Some were dependent on mother houses within England; others were the daughter houses of continental, especially Norman, foundations. Both types have been somewhat neglected in medieval ecclesiastical history, as well as in music history. This article argues that not only did some dependent priories in medieval England support musical life, but also in certain situations they could play host to a remarkably creative culture of musical exchange, production and performance. As a case study, it presents extensive new archival evidence concerning the traffic of people, books and music between the Norman abbey of Lyre and its dependent priories in England, proposing that other musical manuscripts may warrant reconsideration in the light of these findings.

This special issue presents the perspectives of five composers—Hilda Paredes, Andile Khumalo, Marisol Jiménez, Hildegard Westerkamp, and Philippe Manoury—on music and politics today. Originating in the online lecture series ‘Poetics and Politics of Twenty-First-Century Music’, presented in 2021–22 by Universität Bern, McGill University, and Université de Montréal, the articles in this issue expand the composers’ original lectures into statements on the political contexts of their music and the potential of contemporary composition to effect social change. Their works address inequality, discrimination, exploitation, and violence, as well as the global threat of irreversible climate change. Another shared theme is the legacy of colonialism, both as a driving force of these social crises and a continuing challenge for composers who must reckon with Eurocentric attitudes and assumptions. These reflections on the transformative possibilities of musical creation illustrate a wide range of strategies for political engagement and praxis.

The development of computing in Brazil followed a peculiar path, shaping cultural production since the earliest encounters between artists and technology. Beginning in the 1960s, musicians and computer scientists made initial attempts to use computers for artistic purposes, at a time when it was still possible to keep pace with developments in Computer Music in North America and Europe. However, restricted access to foreign technologies and the political context following the 1964 military coup—two deeply interrelated factors—made it unfeasible to establish a national system capable of sustaining continuous production in Music & Computing before the early 1990s. Such development would have required both strong institutional support and freedom of artistic expression, conditions that were not present. This article traces these trajectories through key artistic experiments and public policies related to computing. Rather than offering a comprehensive catalogue, it presents a transversal perspective that highlights the relationship between the formation of the Computer Music field and state policies up to the mid-1980s. By interweaving these parallel narratives—linking cultural practices and political frameworks—the study sheds light on how computer-mediated artistic production contributed to the constitution of Electronic Music in Brazil.

This article presents the recent production and institutional trajectory of Studio PANaroma, one of the leading centres for research and creation in electroacoustic music in Latin America. Over the course of three decades, PANaroma has functioned not only as a multichannel electroacoustic music studio, but also as a pedagogical hub – nurturing new generations of composers through a coherent artistic vision embedded within Brazil’s public university system. This article discusses the studio’s aesthetic orientation and artistic values, as well as the collaborative research strategies currently being developed within SOMNIUM, its newly established research group. Two case studies are presented. The first stems from a recently concluded six-year Thematic Project entitled Harmonicity and Inharmonicity in Instruments of the Percussion/Resonance Family in Interaction with Electronics (2019–2025). This research investigated how the harmonic and inharmonic spectra of percussion instruments can inform both compositional strategies and analytical methodologies. The second case outlines a new line of inquiry still in its early stages, currently in the process of project design and preliminary research. This investigation introduces the concept of Sonoclisis – a neologism coined to describe the acoustic phenomena resulting from the physical coupling of sounding bodies – exploring its implications for both sound-based composition and analysis.

Understandings of musical literacies can embody variance in both concept and practice. Curriculum literacy, where musical concepts are placed alongside musical learning, is an unrecognised skill exhibited by classroom music teachers. Drawing from research on the origins of musical literacy and exploring English secondary schools and music teachers’ programmes of study, this article will explore and theorise the manner in which teachers draw both musical and curriculum literacies together to create engaging classroom environments, which are accessible for pupils. It will argue that this is a critical feature of classroom music education and explore the implications of dualistic literacy practices both in England and internationally and, in turn, discuss the spaces music teachers require in their curriculum design processes.