Several collections of lesson books for practising mensural music published in Spain during the eighteenth century, known as canto de órgano, have been overlooked in musicological scholarship. These canto de órgano lessons allowed students to be trained in a wide variety of repertoire, from renaissance polyphony to modern-style monody. This article provides an initial overview of these printed collections and identifies noteworthy parallels with the didactic repertoires of other regions, such as Italian solfeggi. To that end, I present context and different Spanish opinions of the period on the usefulness of solfeggio collections and specific examples of collections that could serve as models of style. I analyse the way in which solfeo was practised, before proposing a classification. In assessing these works against other sources, I suggest that these lesson books were useful not only for the practice of reading music, but also for the cultivation of good taste in interpretation, improvisation and composition.

Much of economics is dedicated to studying conflicts of interest. What is less well studied is the question of how to make sense of conflicts of interest involving non-individuals like social institutions or social collectives. However, the latter is very important, too: from the occurrence of institutional corruption to the creation of workplaces with much internal conflict, understanding clashes between the interests of individuals and non-individuals is an important social phenomenon. How, though, can this phenomenon be studied? What, exactly, are the ‘interests’ of social institutions or collectives? To make progress with this, this paper uses recent work in social functionalism to develop a theory of cooperation and conflict involving non-individualist social entities. To make the discussion precise, the paper focuses on principal/agent problems (though it is not restricted to the latter). The paper ends by applying this theory to cases of internal conflicts in social collectives.

Poorer language ability is a known risk factor for elevated depressive symptoms. However, the cognitive mechanisms underlying this association remain underexplored. Utilizing data from a comprehensive pre-birth cohort in Singapore (N = 473; 49.9% boys; 57.3% Chinese, 27.9% Malay, 14.8% Indian), the present study examined whether (i) self-concept domains mediate the association between early language ability and depressive symptoms during preadolescence, and (ii) these indirect pathways differ by child sex. Children’s early language ability was assessed at ages 2 and 4 using standardized assessments of vocabulary and phonological processing. Self-concept and depressive symptoms were measured at ages 8.5 and 10, respectively. Results indicated that the domain of behavioral adjustment mediated the relationship between early language ability and subsequent depressive symptoms for girls (β = −0.07, 95% CI [−0.15, −0.01]), whereas happiness and satisfaction served as a key mediator for boys (β = −0.12, 95% CI [−0.24, −0.03]). After accounting for these mediators, there was no direct association between early language ability and depressive symptoms. These findings highlight potential sex-specific mechanisms through which early language ability is prospectively associated with depressive symptoms. Future research is necessary to determine whether enhancing self-concept can mitigate depressive symptoms in children with early language difficulties.