Musical sources from the nineteenth century in Argentina are very scarce. The first challenge, therefore, is to locate these materials across multiple repositories. In the last 15 years, certain state policies have been introduced to unify access to information in digital and non-digital archives. However, the country's economic instability, successive changes of government and the discontinuity of public policies in reference to cultural and educational programmes continue to impede a consistent systematization of collections and catalogues of these repositories. Additionally, it is also necessary to consult other repositories – both public collections, managed by provinces rather than the national government, and private ones that may offer online resources such as catalogues, transcriptions or digitized materials. Much of the musical production in the first half of the nineteenth century occurred within religious contexts, which means that a large part of these sources is located in ecclesiastical repositories that are very difficult to access. Many lack websites, the extent of their holdings remains unknown, and in cases where catalogues do exist, they are often not digitized.

In his operas, Mozart followed contemporary practice by using the clarinet to set the mood for amorous scenes, but he adapted this into a new kind of topic that dramatises his characters’ changing self-knowledge and growing enlightenment. In so doing, he emphasised both their recognition of their true feelings and the political and moral implications for their subsequent actions. This is exemplified in La clemenza di Tito, in which a clarinet (or basset horn) serves as an important soloistic voice whose dialogue with the protagonist illuminates their inner struggles with conflicting emotional, social and political realities as they move towards new understanding.

In 1811, Beethoven opted for ‘Allegretto' for the second movement of his seventh symphony, to which he added the metronome mark crotchet = MM76. Ever since the work's inception, however, this has been mitigated by taking it as ‘Andante'. By investigating the purpose, rationale, and background, this article attempts to clarify why the original tempo made performers, listeners, and commentators uncomfortable. Exploring the tension between what Beethoven prescribed and what is taken to be good musicianship, three historical processes are evaluated: (i) performances of the symphony during Beethoven's lifetime; (ii) the activities by Beethoven’s one-time companion Anton Schindler in the 1830s and 40s; and (iii) a vast landscape of interpretational enterprise from the early nineteenth century to the present day.

Following the historical record, the article inquires into the conundrum of Beethoven's intentions, in pursuit of a broader perspective. The case is made that ‘Allegretto' inhered within it an immediacy of performance and that it expressed a repudiation of romantic aesthetics. It is argued that there are good prudential reasons to do away with ‘Andante', an encrustation of romantic error, and to acknowledge, affirm, and valorize ‘Allegretto’ as a thumbprint of style.

This study examines Luciano Berio's integration of twentieth-century linguistic and semiotic concepts in his works Sinfonia and Coro, focusing on the interplay between sound, meaning, and structure. It highlights Berio's exploration of the unconscious mind and the idea of ‘universality of experience', suggesting that humans may possess an innate musical ability similar to that of language. The article also discusses the concept of the ‘theatre of the mind', where Berio combines musical and textual elements to evoke images or situations for the audience's interpretation. Through an analysis of the third movement of Sinfonia and Coro, the study illustrates how Berio implicitly develops a system of signification that evokes meaning, showcasing both musical and textual productivity, along with the notion of ‘the infinite use of finite means’. This exploration contributes to understanding how twentieth-century linguistics and semiotics can inform contemporary music and signify meaning within it.

Gluck has long been celebrated for his operatic reforms. This article examines the role of the orchestra in Gluck's reformed style. I trace how Gluck's audiences learned new audile techniques in order to understand the role of his instrumental accompaniment. This form of listening posed challenges: some eighteenth-century listeners struggled to understand the role of the orchestra. The ‘naturalness’ so prized in the reformed style was achieved, I argue, by having the orchestra take on a larger role, but one that was rhetorically sublimated to the text. This is naturalised today: from Wagnerian music dramas to contemporary films, orchestral accompaniment often serves as a sonic commentary. The tensions in Gluck's reception, then, point to a seismic shift in the history of listening, showing how audiences came to understand the orchestra as a subtext. Gluck's orchestra offers broader lessons for musicology today, in particular for the burgeoning subfield of timbre studies: the form of ‘orchestral listening’ required for Gluck's operas is a form of timbral listening avant la lettre. While timbre is often invoked in order to escape musicology's traditional disciplinary ideologies, the story of Gluckian operatic drama points to the ways that orchestral listening emerged only through acts of disciplining and restraint.

In this article I bring Henry James's novella The Turn of the Screw, Benjamin Britten and Myfanwy Piper's opera based on the novella, and elements of the 2011 Glyndebourne production of the opera into interaction with theories of the uncanny to wonder about the act of reading. This novella and opera thematize reading in connection with the uncanny and the ghostly, providing an opportunity to pursue what might be at stake and what might be possible when boundaries blur and meaning is put in motion. I begin to explore uncanny reading as a tool to unsettle binary logics and one-to-one mappings. I consider the uncanny as connective tissue between theoretical makings related to identity, relationships, and the potentialities of fiction. And I put these ideas into interactive practice as I self-consciously read this opera, to connect to and challenge normative and oppressive forces, impulses, and systems, including cultural scripts, social power structures, and ways of knowing and interacting.

Western plainsong studies have typically focused on fully notated manuscripts, which provide the most complete witnesses to the repertories that have interested scholars in the field. Recent work, however, has shown that partially notated manuscripts, fragments, and marginalia can yield different kinds of insights into manuscript culture, as well as the uses and functions of musical notation. This article explores how a partially notated manuscript preserving the Old Hispanic rite, Toledo, Cathedral Archive, MS 35–6 (T6), can expand our knowledge of Old Hispanic chant, its scribal practices, manuscript culture, and notation. We identify the specific palaeographical traits and melodic dialects associated with each scribe. On this basis, we hypothesize that scribes used notation for a variety of reasons: to train in singing and writing, to practise writing, to correct particular melodies and notational forms, to preserve particular versions within a variant melodic tradition, and as an aide-memoire. T6 offers new insights into the various ways that the Old Hispanic oral tradition could be supported by writing.

In the Afro-Brazilian music-movement form capoeira, call and response saturates all interactions in live performance events (rodas). In addition to call-and-response song structures, music calls bodies into movement, bodies call to one another, and movements invoke responses from instrumentalists. Yet call and response does more than organize the roda. Demonstrating how antiphony organizes group sociality, the article argues that the music and movement also summon members to assume a range of responsibilities within the group and their lives. These include showing up for trainings and rodas, maintaining instruments, preparing for annual events, and teaching capoeira to younger generations in Bahia's underserved communities. Practitioners frame their ethical commitments to capoeira as compromisso, a concept that implies broad, long-term dedication. Grounding the study in my ethnographic research conducted in Brazil, I bridge Black music scholarship with ethical Africana philosophy to argue that capoeira practitioners use knowledge generated in their music-movement practice to conceive an ethics of compromisso. While the literature on Black musics across the Americas widely acknowledges call and response as a foundational musical mechanism, few ethnographic studies have delved more deeply into the social, ethical, and political potentials of antiphony. The article thus contributes to understandings of how Black music-dance practices generate ethical knowledge and practice through their sounds and movements. As capoeira's antiphony transcends the roda's space-time, it calls practitioners to assume an unending compromisso, making commitments that span generations to continually leverage capoeira's lessons to improve lives in Black communities of backland Bahia.