Amidst debates of the early 1880s about the status of women in music, the English organist and scholar Stephen S. Stratton delivered a self-avowed ‘polemical’ paper at the 7 May 1883 meeting of the Musical Association.1 Entitled ‘Woman in Relation to Musical Art’, the talk included a list of women composers ‘drawn from many sources’ and compiled, he said, ‘as evidence that women have been engaged in composition for a longer period of time, and in more branches of the art, than is generally supposed’. Stratton’s ‘list’ consists in 389 names of mostly verifiable historical women dating back to the trobairitz Beatrix, Countess of Dia (twelfth century), each annotated with an approximate date of birth and the genres in which they had composed.2 Where Stratton unearthed this remarkable trove of information he does not say, although as co-author of the then forthcoming British Musical Biography (1897), he may well have been culling pre-existing reference works for information.3

The last years of the nineteenth century saw many high-profile performances in Britain, Europe, and the USA of complex, large-scale musical works composed by women. In 1890, for example, a distinctive four-movement orchestral Serenade by the British composer Ethel Smyth (1858–1944) was performed at the Crystal Palace in London. In 1895 La Montagne, a drame lyrique in four acts and five tableaux by the French composer Augusta Holmès (1847–1903), her fourth opera, was premiered at the Paris Opéra while the ‘Gaelic’ Symphony by the American composer Amy Beach (1867–1944) was first heard in Boston’s Music Hall the following year, 1896. The ‘Gaelic’ Symphony went on to be widely performed in Europe and the United States, and was critically well received, with one reviewer of the premiere praising it as ‘high-reaching, dignified and virile’.1

Chapter 10 surveys the history, the concepts and the institutions of property in premodern India, China, the Near East, Egypt, Greece and Rome. Formal rules of ownership and inheritance formed the basis of all premodern legal regimes and undergirded economic performance (for instance, growth), as has been frequently stressed by New Institutional Economists. The enforcement of property rights reveals a good deal about the diverse economies, environments and cultures of premodern societies. The chapter summarizes the sources for property rights, which are rich and varied; and the control and use of resources occupy a considerable part of private legal documentation in all premodern systems that have yielded written material.

This chapter gives a practical overview of writing for a variety of chamber music scenarios, from the traditional (e.g. string quartet) to the unusual (e.g. tuba trio). It describes how to respond to the existing canon of music for ensemble, as well as being creatively inspired by performers in rehearsal situations.

This chapter considers how notation has been used, questioned, and re-made by composers over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It considers the ideologies behind notation as an interface between composer and performer, and offers some playful examples of notational strategies that invite collaboration with the performer by challenging assumed norms of interpretation and performance.

In this chapter we treat law as inextricably connected to a text. We examine the ways in which laws and other elements of the legal process, including documents, procedural records, and judicial opinions and commentaries, are produced, preserved, transmitted and communicated to various audiences in ancient Greece and Rome, the ancient Near East and Egypt, ancient India and ancient China. We include discussions of when and how texts first emerged in these societies, the materials on which they were written and preserved, and other special features of their written texts, such as language, syntax, degree of precision, and organization and codification. We also examine these aspects of secondary legal texts, including historical accounts and reports, literature, philosophical, religious and other intellectual works, non-legal documents, instructional materials and visual ‘texts’, to see how these contributed to the understanding of law as text.

Chapter 4 surveys a wide range of friendly and hostile interstate relations in ancient societies, where war was often the normal state of affairs. Notwithstanding the numerous conflicts, polities tried in the end, through alliances and diplomatic relations, to establish peaceful relations in view of political stability and economic prosperity. The chapter analyses hospitality rules regarding foreigners, treaties between polities and the establishment of diplomatic relations, which emerged as an international system in the ancient Near East during the mid-fourteenth century bce. An alternative to diplomacy in conflict management, typical of the Greek world, was arbitration and mediation with the help of a third party. In a final section, the chapter outlines how states, when diplomacy failed, started a war procedurally. In conclusion, the chapter argues that, in the absence of an international court, the enforcement of diplomatic rules and treaties was in many ancient societies ensured by the supranational authority of the gods.

Chapter 12 concludes the Cambridge Comparative History of Ancient Law by drawing out a set of fundamental comparisons, both differences and similarities, from the volume’s previous chapters, in addition to offering further reflections on the field of ‘ancient law’ itself. The chapter opens by comparing and contrasting the Cambridge Comparative History of Ancient Law to earlier historiography, underscoring its unique contribution to existing scholarship: developed through collaborative work and drawing upon numerous specialist traditions and technical expertise, across a pan-Eurasian research field. The chapter then moves on to a broader discussion of ‘Mapping the Ancient Legal Cosmos’ and ‘Ordering Ancient Associations’, pinpointing the specific connections between ethics, law and statecraft that can be observed across the ancient source material. The chapter concludes by suggesting several answers to a provocative, but fundamental, question: What is ‘Ancient’ about ‘Ancient Law’?.

This chapter balances practical advice with aesthetic considerations to give an overview of a composer’s numerous roles in writing music for opera, dance, and theatre. The chapter begins with an overview of collaborative techniques and language, before understanding a bit more about how to shape musical ideas both by yourself and then through workshopping and rehearsal processes.

In the first half of the nineteenth century, the Lied provided women composers and performers with an important vehicle for self-expression, a means to assert their creativity and agency at a time when larger, more public forms of artistic expression were less accessible to them. Studying the Lied with reference to the contexts in which it was conceived, performed, and received provides crucial insights into the interpersonal relationships fostered by music-making during this period. Equally important, analysing Lieder with these contexts in mind shows how such relationships were refracted through the prism of song. Both lines of enquiry – one historical, the other analytical – unite in an effort to uncover what Aisling Kenny and Susan Wollenberg have described as the ‘personal stamp’ that female composers and performers placed on the nineteenth-century Lied.1 It is this ‘personal stamp’ – this expression of female creativity and agency – which we understand in this chapter as female subjectivity.

How do composers discover new sounds with old instruments? This chapter looks at the relationship between composers and instruments, and explores how responding to instrument design and experiementing with performing techniques and physical materials can create radical and exciting new sounds and ideas.

This introduction briefly explores the relationship between compositional choice and stylistic expectation or ideology. With new music now a plethora of styles and approaches, how might we understand work that’s happening currently in the context of historical and social influence?

This chapter explores the voice as a complex, expressive instrument. It begins by outlining voice types, techniques, and styles – ranging from opera to musical theatre and popular music –  before looking at the relationship between language and music, and finally exploring the nature of idiomatic vocal writing and so-called extended techniques. The chapter finishes with a nod to the future of vocal music by briefly thinking about the voice in conjunction with electronics.

This chapter is about how a composer can reach their audience. It thinks about marketing in broad terms, understanding the music industry in terms of networks and communities, as well as addressing topics like making and releasing recordings, best practice on social media, building a website and engaging with the press.