E’ lecito ai poeti alterar le favole: The story of Dido according to Giovan Battista Busenello

The aim of this paper is to analyze the rewriting of Dido’s myth by Giovan Battista Busenello, the librettist of the first opera named after the queen of Carthage. The imposing regality of Dido and the highly dramatic tension of the Aeneid are absent in Busenello’s libretto. Interestingly, if in the fourth book of the Virgilian poem Dido kills herself with Aeneas’ sword, in the final act of the opera she marries Iarbas, king of Gaetulians. Poignantly, in her only aria Dido sings her rejection of Iarbas’ advances, instead of her death wish or her sorrow for Aeneas’ departure. The tragic éthos we expect of Dido surfaces in two other characters in the opera, Hecuba and Cassandra, specifically through their laments. The basso lines of their laments call to mind the formal archetype at the heart of the famous Dido’s lament, Dido’s aria in Dido and Eneas, composed by Henry Purcell forty-eight years after the Didone. In that way, Hecuba and Cassandra constitute the actual tragic characters in the Didone, while, conversely, Dido is granted a happy ending, a deviation from the source just as peculiar as its author.

World Soul

The concept of the world soul is difficult to understand in large part because over the course of history it has been invoked to very different ends and within the frameworks of very different philosophical systems, with very different concepts of the world soul emerging as a result. This volume brings together eleven chapters by leading philosophers in their respective fields that collectively explore the various ways in which this concept has been understood and employed, covering the following philosophical areas: Platonism, Stoicism, Medieval, Indian (Vedāntic), Kabbalah, Renaissance, Early Modern, German Romanticism, German Idealism, American Transcendentalism, and contemporary quantum mechanics and panpsychism theories. In addition, short reflections illuminate the impact the concept of the world soul has had on a small selection of areas outside of philosophy: harmony, biology (spontaneous generation), the music of Henry Purcell, psychoanalysis, and Gaia theories.

Performing Ornaments in English Harpsichord Music. Part I

The article deals with the problems of interpreting English ornaments (embellishments, graces) of the second half of the 17th century in the process of their evolution. The authors consistently analyze the recommendations of the early English musicians Edward Bevin, Christopher Simpson, Matthew Locke, John Playford, and Henry Purcell. Emphasis in this study is allotted to the first ever published in England full table of ornaments with their execution written by Christopher Simpson in his The Division-Violist (London, 1659). Detailed consideration here is given to the ornament named “Shaked Beat”. It should be noted that the first full table “Marques des Agréments et leur signification” in France was enclosed only in D’Anglebert’s Pièces de Clavecin (c1689). For comparison, recommendations of the performance of ornaments are provided by some Italian, German and French composers and theorists of this time, such as Emilio del Cavalieri, Guillaume-Gabriel Nivers, Jean Rousseau, Gilles Jullien, Étienne Loulié and Johann Gottfried Walther. A critical revision of scholarly publications on the problems of this study beginning from Edward Dannreuther and Arnold Dolmetsch to the present time has been carried out. Serious inaccuracies were found in the works of modern researchers and in reference and encyclopedic publications, including The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart.

Purcell performances in Palestine under the British Mandate

Palestine, from the end of World War I to the foundation of the state of Israel, had a vibrant concert scene led partly by local musicians (and from 1933 onwards, by an elite of leading performers and composers who fled from Europe), and partly by the cultural institutions of the British Mandate, including the Palestine Broadcasting Service. While the collaborations between these two forces often yielded inspired musical results, each had its own agendas and priorities. The music of Henry Purcell was perceived as a cultural asset of the British and, as such, its performance became the platform for tacit negotiation of local musical identity, as well as a means to communicate with the British administration. The present study examines how Purcell’s music was treated in Palestine, which works by Purcell were performed, which scores and editions were available to local musicians, how the 250th anniversary of his death (1945) was commemorated, what motivated musicians to perform Purcell in concert, and what happened to the performance of Purcell’s music in Israel after Britain withdrew its forces from Palestine in 1948.

The Edge of Satire

In this chapter, Peter Robinson identifies the edge where satire most sharply cuts and where, simultaneously, it may stop being satire. Responding to remarks of Jackson Bate’s on Johnson as a satirist manqué, an analysis of ‘On the Death of Dr. Robert Levet’ and other poems explores varieties of ways in which mortality in a Christian context displaces grounds for judgement, yet occasions criticism of literary pretension, the limits of friendship, and self-interest in the professional care of others. By contrast, a passage from Dryden’s ‘An Ode, on the Death of Mr. Henry Purcell’ rebukes the musician’s rivals so as to underline his loss to the world. Yet such a rebuke is edgeless to the extent that the rivalry it pinpoints has been nullified by the greater man’s demise. Thus, among relevant post-mortem and other effects here is the role death plays as a satirist of the impulse to satire.