Creating new works combining live musicians with new technologies provides both opportunities and challenges. The Cyborg Soloists research project has commissioned and managed the creation of 46 new works of this type, assembling teams of composers, performers, researchers and technology partners from industry. The majority of these collaborations have been smooth-running and fruitful, but a few have demonstrated complications. This article critically evaluates collaborative methods and methodologies used in the project so far, presenting five case studies involving different types of collaborative work, and exploring the range of professional relationships, the need for different types of expertise within the team and the way technology can act as both a creative catalyst and a source of creative resistance. The conclusions are intended as a toolkit – pragmatic guidelines to inform future practice – and are aimed at artists, technological collaborators, and commissioners and organisations who facilitate these types of creative collaborations.

This article considers the possibility that the emphasis we place on composers developing an artistic voice might be unhelpful for making good pieces. I look at what constitutes an artistic voice and consider pros and cons for having a voice. As an alternative I examine strengths and weaknesses for being a capricious composer, which I define as a willingness to explore different compositional avenues without concern for constructing a consistent body of work. My objective is not to discredit composers who have a strong voice, but rather to loosen the grip of the single-voiced model that dominates the value system of new music.

Using evidence of the quality of vellum, fascicle structure, scribal hands and illustrations, this article argues that the first fascicle of the music portion of Oxford, Balliol College, 173A (fols. 74–81) is a self-standing booklet, perhaps created to teach a scribe the basics of music theory and how to arrange text while leaving space for illustrations or examples. A new fascicle structure of the gathering is proposed that accounts for a previously unrecognised missing folio. An analysis of the contents of the gathering demonstrates that the theory booklet is a compilatio, with portions of the Musica disciplina (or it sources) acting as a frame to start and end the booklet, with other works (Pseudo-Jerome, Isidore of Seville and Cassiodorus) inserted in between. The final folios are completed with a number of small tractatuli, including the brief dialogue Diapason quid est? The contents of both the booklet and the entire music codex are closely paralleled in one of the smaller manuscripts collected into Oxford, St John's College 188 and also Cambridge, Trinity College R.15.22. While it will be ever easier to study digital images of manuscripts and to create critical editions of well-defined texts, this article argues for the continuing importance of codicological study of manuscripts in situ to coordinate the placements of texts within the structure of codices.

The motets in the fourteenth-century liturgical manuscript Oxford, Bodleian, lat. liturg. e. 42 have, despite some sidelong glances, not been the subject of any concentrated study since F. Alberto Gallo introduced them in 1970. This article proposes a date for the copying of these motets in the first few decades of the fourteenth century and demonstrates that they have much to add to ongoing debates about stylistic and notational change between the Ars Antiqua and Ars Nova styles. First, they underline the importance of considering polyphony within the context of the whole book that transmits it: e. 42's motets work together with its monophonic chant to emphasise a set of feasts which were particularly important for the compilers of this manuscript within their institutional context. Second, these motets act as an important reminder that narratives of fourteenth-century stylistic change must be heterogeneous: the wide-ranging mix of musical styles found in the motets of e. 42 add to an emerging picture of early fourteenth-century Ars Antiqua collections in which such stylistic eclecticism is a common feature. Third, e. 42's notation and its connections to that of other manuscripts enrich and complicate narratives of notational change in this period. Parallels for e. 42's ligature use can be found in a temporally and geographically diverse set of manuscripts. Its notation of semibreves, however, resembles that of a smaller group of manuscripts from the early fourteenth century and provides an important witness for the changes to semibreve rhythm at that time.

The recent new edition of Helmut Lachenmann's Salut für Caudwell (1977) published in Breitkopf & Härtel (2020) by guitarist-researcher Seth Josel has renewed public attention on this seminal work from contemporary guitar literature. As a performer myself, I first performed the piece in 2008 (its Chilean premiere) and have recently premiered the new edition. Performing this piece in a concert situation is always a big event for both performers and listeners; the score seems to age well and its multivalence urges a rethink about how to approach it today. The purpose of this article is threefold: to consider the contribution of the new edition, to examine the relation of notation and performance through the analysis of selected recordings and to interrogate the possible futures for Salut, given recent developments in research into contemporary performing practice.

This article argues that “crossover”– a recording artist's movement across the racialized boundaries of commercial music genres and the attainment of a broader consumer base– is central to the history and production logic of the U.S. commercial dance industry. By framing the televised variety show The Jacksons (1976–1977) as a formative production experience for Michael and Janet Jackson and situating it within a genealogy of popular dance on commercial television, I examine how racial and class signifiers were used to appeal to different demographics, highlighting the historical lineages and capitalist foundations of the U.S. commercial dance industry.