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.

Under what conditions do South American states create regional institutions that consolidate or undermine the liberal international order (LIO)? To address this question, we compare two cases of contestation of the LIO through counter-institutionalization in the domains of migration and election monitoring, both of which are closely related to the LIO’s core political principles. We argue that the variation in the effects of counter-institutionalization—LIO-consolidating in the case of migration and LIO-undermining in the case of election monitoring—results from the interaction of two explanatory factors: the source of dissatisfaction with the LIO’s norms and institutions in a specific domain, and the preferences of the state that exercises regional leadership in support of counter-institutionalization. The article sheds light on the coexistence of liberal and illiberal tendencies in South America’s regionalism and contributes to the debate on the determinants and effects of contestations of the LIO in the Global South.

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.

Investigating speech fluency has, for a long time, been at the core of second language (L2) studies, as fluency is believed to epitomise successful acquisition of L2, characterise effective communication, elucidate the complex process of acquisition, and predict L2 speakers' proficiency. The significance attributed to fluency in these areas explicates the research attention paid to it over the past decades. An important area of development in this regard is L2 assessment in which fluency is recognised as a key underlying construct of spoken language ability by international language tests (e.g., IELTS, TEEP, APTIS) and language benchmarks (e.g., CEFR). Many high-stakes tests of English and other languages include fluency in their rating scales, with the earliest on record tracing back to the 1930s – the College Board's English Competence Examination (1930) in America. Including fluency as a fundamental aspect of speaking ability in the rating scales, rating descriptors, and rater training materials, either as an independent criterion or combined with others (e.g., delivery), has become common practice in language testing over the past decades. What has made assessment of fluency even more appealing to researchers and test providers in recent years is the objectivity and reliability of its measurement and its compatibility with the technological developments in automated assessment of speaking. Fluency is now largely recognised as a construct that can be efficiently and reliably assessed in automated assessment of spoken language ability and used to predict proficiency (de Jong, 2018*; Ginther et al., 2010*; Kang & Johnson, 2021*; Tavakoli et al., 2023).

Comic opera from the first half of the eighteenth century borrowed many of the structural and formal features of the dramma per musica. The arias of early comic opera were almost exclusively set in da capo form, which had become ubiquitous near the end of the seventeenth century. Although commentators and librettists frequently lamented the banality of this inherited convention, it persisted until about 1750, when, over the course of approximately a decade, it was replaced by a much more flexible approach to the formal organization of arias. This article investigates that period of experimentation and identifies the individuals who drove the innovations. I argue that two singers in particular, Francesco Baglioni and Serafina Penna, provided the impetus to break away from da capo form. Their desire for arias that displayed their dramatic and musical abilities to the greatest advantage led the librettist Carlo Goldoni to provide them with textual prompts that required new approaches to musical form. By emphasizing the connection between singers and librettists, I draw attention to the collaborative nature of operatic production. This approach also demonstrates the ways in which musical form, usually considered the purview of the composer, is in fact rooted in the features of the libretto and inspired by the inclinations and abilities of singers.

Music historiography generally describes opera seria as an archetypal genre built on two premises: role typology and the number and placement of arias. Approaches from the perspective of theatre scholarship (Gilles de Van) and musical dramaturgy (Dahlhaus, Bianconi, Feldman, Heller), however, highlight the importance of the constellation of characters and the complementarity of actions in the construction of the drama. Adopting the latter perspective, this article explores the distinctive characteristics of the twenty-six dramas written by Metastasio, considering the singular constellations found in each of them (in terms of status, kinship and emotions) as well as the convenienze teatrali imposed by the business of opera. We show how Metastasio built a twofold dramaturgy in his dramas to meet both the expectations of dramatic literature and the requirements of musical expression of emotions. This explains why the primo uomo (Poro) could be the antagonist of the hero (Alessandro) in Metastasio's Alessandro nell'Indie.

After its launch on 30 November 2022 ChatGPT (or Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer) quickly became the fastest-growing app in history, gaining one hundred million users in just two months. Developed by the US-based artificial-intelligence firm OpenAI, ChatGPT is a free, text-based AI system designed to interact with the user in a conversational way. Capable of answering complex questions with sophistication and of conversing in a breezy and impressively human style, ChatGPT can also generate outputs in a seemingly endless variety of formats, from professional memos to Bob Dylan lyrics, HTML code to screenplays and five-alarm chilli recipes to five-paragraph essays. Its remarkable capability relative to earlier chatbots gave rise to both astonishment and concern in the tech sector. On 22 March 2023 a group of more than one thousand scientists and entrepreneurs published an open letter calling for a six-month moratorium on further human-competitive AI development – a moratorium that was not observed.