The four Piano Sonatas by W. A. Mozart with freely composed additional accompaniment for a Second Piano by Edvard Grieg (EG 113) were first published in 1879–80 but were not heard by English concertgoers until 5 March 1890, when both Agathe Backer-Grøndahl and Anton Hartvigson opened separate recitals in London with Grieg's version of the Fantasy in C minor K475, the latter following it with the Sonata in F major K533/494. This coincidence is noteworthy not only because Grieg's additions appeared to flaunt the prevailing expectation of fidelity to classical works, but also because Mozart's solo keyboard music was rarely included in professional recitals. Focusing on Backer-Grøndahl and Hartvigson's concerts, this article considers Grieg's additions not merely as ‘arrangements’ but also as a performance practice subject to a range of interpretations by recitalists and different sections of the audience. The article begins by placing the transformation of the additions from teaching aids into concert repertoire in the context of similar supplements to classic works and concurrent attitudes to Mozart's piano music. The next section examines the mixed reception of Backer-Grøndahl and Hartvigson's recitals, situating this within contemporary debates about the role of fidelity in modern performances of historic works and its relationship with dominant conceptions of musical taste. While critics condemned the use of Grieg's additions, several disdainfully noted that they were well received by the rest of the audience. The final section attempts to account for this discrepancy by considering the widespread perception of Grieg's additions as Norwegian ‘national music’, a popular genre of exoticist parlour music that critics disparagingly associated with a mass audience of young, female players and considered inferior to ‘international’ classics. The article concludes by reflecting on how these factors might have informed Backer-Grøndahl's decision to perform Mozart's music with Grieg's additions.

On 24 December 1871, Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Aida premiered in Cairo’s Khedivial Opera House. The Khedive of Egypt, Ismail, had commissioned Verdi to compose the opera as part of a larger program of urban renewal that had peaked with the Suez Canal’s inauguration in November 1869. Wide boulevards, landscaped gardens, and luxury hotels of iron, steel, and the improved glass of the nineteenth-century modernized sections of Cairo and Alexandria. In anticipation of the many guests who planned to attend the canal’s inauguration, Ismail funded the construction of a road leading directly from Cairo to the pyramids and patronized the construction of a Khedivial Opera House.1

Challenging China’s official history since the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949 is uncommon among Chinese theatre makers in the twenty-first century. Given the stringent rules that severely limit artistic expression, such attempts are rare and, aesthetically, noticeably obscure. Director Wang Chong (b. 1982) and his collective Théâtre du Rêve Expérimental nevertheless embark on an audacious journey of deconstructing and reassembling some of China’s most taboo historical moments in their productions The Warfare of Landmine 2.0 (Dileizhan 2.0, 2013) and Lu Xun (Da xiansheng, 2016). Wang’s critical reconfiguration of deliberately forgotten violent events from the Maoist and post-Maoist eras is articulated onstage through the intermediation of far more visible and “stage-safe” historical moments that predate Maoist China. While obscuring the direct messages of the performances, Wang’s cunning technique of contesting Beijing’s memory of politically sensitive events manages to unearth “hidden” violent moments of which many Chinese youth today may be completely oblivious.

The Lenin Memorial mass meeting, organized by the newly formed National Council of American–Soviet Friendship (NCASF) and featuring scenes from the Soviet play adapted and directed for the Theatre Guild, followed quickly on the heels of a similar mass meeting and rally, “Salute to Our Russian Ally,” staged at Madison Square Garden on 1 November 1942 and attended by twenty thousand supporters. Both events presented speeches by American political, military, and arts leaders and Soviet dignitaries, along with theatrical scenes and musical performances. The rallies concluded when the crowd had been effectively emotionally aroused and asked to stand for the playing of the national anthems of the United States and the USSR. The crowd was asked to approve statements on US–Soviet cooperation and peace to send to President Roosevelt and General Stalin, and it apparently roared back to the stage its approval.

This article draws upon archival documents from Mexico's Nationalist Campaign to argue that the rise of radio, advertising, and consumer culture significantly shaped Mexican musical nationalism in the early 1930s. The Nationalist Campaign, led by Rafael Melgar, sought to promote the consumption of national products as a patriotic act to secure the nation's future amid the growing economic dominance of the United States during the interwar period. The campaign utilized radio broadcasts of speeches, slogans, and national music concerts to publicize a unified brand of national identity, aligning with the needs of modernizing the state economy and centralizing political authority through the newly formed PNR (Partido Nacional Revolucionario). This research seeks to explore the role of media, popular music, and consumer culture as an alternative track to Mexican musical nationalism, which has primarily been studied through art music.

Hanns Eisler’s Kampfmusik, his revolutionary music for the working class, is famous for its rhythmic energy. Its steady beat has been understood as a legacy of the military march. I argue that this ‘Eisler Bass’ was instead ‘refunctioned’ from interwar German jazz. Using jazz pedagogical manuals to demonstrate how Eisler adapted the steady beat, I position Eisler’s writings and music within discourses of rhythm and rationalized factory labour. While this was central to Eisler’s political ambitions, it also led to his music participating in a larger practice of erasure of racial difference typical of the German Communist Party.

The music written for submission to the music degrees of English universities during the nineteenth century forms a significant body of works which, while important, present challenges for the historian, music analyst, and performer. Changes to the nature of music degrees, including the compositional exercises, during the nineteenth century received a mixed reception, which illustrates concerns over the separation of the ‘academic’ and ‘aesthetic’ elements of music, as well as deeper anxieties about the state and status of English music and composition. This paper examines in detail a small selection of exercises by William Crotch, F. A. G. Ouseley, and William Pole, considering the contextual and ontological problems raised by the works in light of the changing nature of music histories, narratives, and values.

The name of James William Windsor (1779–1853) is not widely known in scholarly circles today; yet as a pianist, organist and all-round music director, he was instrumental in guiding the musical world of Bath through a turbulent period of economic decline and societal change over the course of a career that spanned nearly six decades. Much of what may be discovered about his activities is gleaned from his large and important music collection, bequeathed to the Royal College of Music (RCM) in 1890 by his eldest daughter, Elizabeth (1805–1890). This collection of printed and manuscript music reveals much about its former owner's interests, activities and friendships, and many of its most significant items lend value to modern editions and musicological research. Of particular relevance to this study is Windsor's own transcription of Bach's Das wohltemperirte Clavier (RCM MS 743, dated 1801), identified by Yo Tomita as being both textually unique and the second earliest known complete English source of this work.

While examining diverse archival sources relating to eighteenth-century Italian opera, I have come across references to the practice of singers, composers and theatre agents exchanging information about ‘corde’, ‘tuoni’, ‘virtuoso di cantabile’ and ‘abbilità’. To what were they referring with these words? In this essay, I show that the notes that singers were able to produce were termed ‘corde’ or ‘tuoni’; and that the quality of their voices, including their virtuoso singing capabilities, was designated by the expressions ‘virtuoso di cantabile’ and ‘abbilità’. Additionally, I show that this information was sent by mail to facilitate a composer's work in absentia.