It was as a boy of twelve or thirteen that I played the harpsichord for the first time. My early experiences of ensemble playing with the instrument took place with my contemporaries, but primarily with my Dutch teacher at secondary school and his wife, Mr and Mrs Meijer. Both were amateur recorder players, and as a young amateur harpsichordist I would accompany them. At first I would diligently play the realized basso-continuo parts, such as the ones often found in twentieth-century editions. Sometimes it was clear that one could make changes to what was in the realizations, informed by one's own insights, but my insights were not formed at that stage and I did not know where to begin. Very soon I found these realized parts boring. One day, while drinking a glass of wine (one of my first), Mr Meijer asked me, ‘Have you noticed that under the realized part, there are often figures noted down? Do you dare to play from them?’. After many wrong chords, but in the company of kind people who had also made mistakes themselves, I began to understand the system of figures a little. We played together every Saturday, and very soon I found it more pleasant to play without the chordal realizations. Then one fine Saturday afternoon, I sat down at the harpsichord to find that Mr or Mrs Meijer had taped over the right hand of the realized continuo part with an empty staff! There was no more escaping it now: I was dragged back to the bass line and the figures. After many further Saturday afternoon sessions, the results became more acceptable.

Haydn's D major cello concerto has traditionally been associated with Anton Kraft, a performer in Haydn's orchestra at Eszterháza during the 1780s. Before Haydn's autograph came to light in the 1950s, many authorities had accepted apparent evidence that Kraft was the concerto's composer. Even after the autograph's rediscovery, the seeming connection of the concerto with Kraft appeared so compelling that it was widely assumed he participated in the compositional process. This article demonstrates that Kraft's connection with the concerto was actually fabricated in the 1830s. Contemporary reports show that the concerto was in fact composed for the distinguished virtuoso James Cervetto, who performed it in London in 1784. Both the distinctive characteristics of the concerto, often regarded by commentators as indications of compositional weakness, and also its exceptional technical challenges are here interpreted as responses to Cervetto's singular musical temperament and exceptional proficiency, communicated to Haydn through the commission.

The Jeffersonian rise to power in 1801 ushered in sweeping political changes for the United States of America. It also focused attention on the newly established United States Marine Corps, as a group of hostile Congressmen sought to audit the service, dismiss many of its officers and do away with the executive function of its commandant. But Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) was also a supporter of the new capital's growing cultural life, and no organization better defined the connection between music and the federal government than the United States Marine Band. While this ensemble was not officially authorized by Congress until 1861, Commandant William Ward Burrows had already transformed his small group of sanctioned field musicians into an ensemble that could provide ceremonial and entertainment music for Washington, DC. This article traces the earliest history of the Marine Band, documents its development from eighteenth-century signalling traditions and suggests the ways in which its presence in the capital helped to stem the growing Republican tide against the Marine Corps itself.

Although the circulation and revision of Italian opera librettos is a well-known aspect of musical life in eighteenth-century Europe, the practice has hardly been touched upon with regard to the Italian oratorio of the same period. Librettist Apostolo Zeno (1668–1750) worked in and theorized about both genres, yet his involvement with the oratorio has been little studied. This article addresses three editions of an oratorio libretto by Domenico Canavese. Following versions for Florence (1712) and Pistoia (1714), a third appeared in 1726 in conjunction with a Lenten performance at the Imperial Court Chapel in Vienna. An annotated copy of the 1712 edition from Zeno's library shows that he revised the text for the Viennese performance. His textual changes – some small, some radical – reveal practical, stylistic and dramaturgical concerns. A comparison of the annotated copy with the printed libretto for the 1726 performance and the principal musical source for the new setting by Giuseppe Porsile shows that Zeno's revisions were scrupulously followed.

Johann David Heinichen's treatise Der General-Bass in der Composition (Dresden, 1728) is the most comprehensive study of thoroughbass ever written, yet it has been continually overshadowed in historical accounts by works published in the same decade by Jean-Philippe Rameau (Traité de l'Harmonie) and J. J. Fux (Gradus ad Parnassum). Despite Heinichen's nuanced treatment of a wide variety of musical subjects, Der General-Bass has yet to receive wide acclaim, in large part because it lacks a reductive pedagogical framework that can rival Rameau's basse fondamentale or Fux's species in simplicity and immediate appeal. Yet fortunately, the ‘partimento renaissance’ of the last decade has brought renewed scholarly attention to the centrality of thoroughbass is the only acceptable break in eighteenth-century music-making. Thus the time is ripe for a reappraisal of Heinichen's monumental work. On at least one occasion, Heinichen does indeed outline a pedagogical method of eminent simplicity: his four-step instruction in how to improvise a prelude at the keyboard. According to Heinichen, this method, which seems to be completely unknown today, is to be understood not only as instruction in improvising, but also as training for beginning composers. In explicating the pedagogy of one of eighteenth-century Europe's leading composer-theorists, this article contributes to both the historically informed analysis and the practical teaching of baroque music today.

Musicological literature devoted to the life and works of Gregor Joseph Werner (1693–1766) has remained very limited. Researchers have usually been motivated to discover more about him for two reasons: the fact that from 1728 he was Kapellmeister at the court of the Esterházy princes in Eisenstadt, and that while there he met and worked with the great Joseph Haydn. It is no exaggeration to claim that Werner is usually mentioned only because of this association: he has found his way into music history on account of his connection with Haydn. However, this approach leaves too much room for a superficial assessment of Werner's achievements as a composer. Haydn valued his music and commented on it favourably. His private music collection included Werner's Good Friday oratorios and arrangements of the Lamentations of Jeremiah. In a striking testament to the respect he had for Werner's music, Haydn also arranged six of Werner's fugues for string quartet, writing his own musical introductions, and published them with Artaria in Vienna in 1804 as VI Fugen in Quartetten auf zwey Violin, Viola und Violonzell von G. J. Werner Weyland Kapelmeister S. D. des Fürsten N. Esterházy etc. / Aus besonderer Achtung gegen diesen berühmten Meister nun herausgegeben von dessen Nachfolger J. Haydn, a volume dedicated to Prince Nicholas Esterházy II.