Event overview
John Walsh’s Favourite Songs between Local Markets and European Perspectives (NB start time)
Prof Gesa zur Niesen (Univ of Greifswald) and Dr Berthold Over will be presenting on their current research into the eighteenth-century music publisher John Walsh and his series, 'Favourite Songs'.
For a long time, scholarship about the production and consumption of Walsh editions of 18th-century operatic music (by Handel, Hasse or Johann Christian Bach especially) have been based on the catalogues by Smith, Humphreys, Hunter and Baldwin/Wilson. More recently, Walsh prints have been at the forefront of cultural-historical investigations, whether into the use of performance material in concerts and salon music-making, or as memory objects of opera performances and performers (Burrows, Aspden, Burden). Synthesizing these findings, a planned British-German research project will look systematically into Walsh’s 'Favourite Songs' to answer the following questions: are there any patterns regarding the selection of arias? Who purchased the prints? What is known about the use of Walsh-printed arias in the salon and the concert room? How ought 'Favourite Songs' be contextualized among apposite print music production Hamburg, Paris, or Amsterdam?
In our paper, we will briefly outline our project and initial findings. Berthold Over will focus on the project's shape and phases; Giesa zur Nieden will contextualize the prints from a European perspective. Currently, both aspects are guided by discourses around opera and contemporary views in London about 'style', e.g. from Handel’s 'Catone', 'Orlando' and 'Alcina'. Seemingly, the 'Favourite Song' prints were not only a means to advance, and promulgate, fashions from London music market, but a conduit for a European-wide transmission, taken up also in the editions of Jean-Joseph Vadé and Johann Christian Bach, of music and aesthetic persuasions found among transnational 18th-century composers.
Prof Gesa zur Nieden, born in 1978, teaches musicology at the University of Greifswald and at the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media. Her research and publications focus on the early modern musicians mobility, on spaces and buildings for music, on intermedial dimensions of music and on the reception of Wagner after 1945.
Dr Berthold Over, born in 1964, is a researcher in the project PASTICCIO. Ways of Arranging Attractive Operas at Greifswald University. He previously worked and taught at Mainz University where he was member of projects on musical mobility and migration as well as on Roman cantatas in Handel's times. His research focuses mainly on 17th- and 18th-century music as evident from numerous publications.
Music Research Events are free and open to all
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 24 Nov 2022 | 5:30pm - 6:30pm |
Accessibility
If you are attending an event and need the College to help with any mobility requirements you may have, please contact the event organiser in advance to ensure we can accommodate your needs.
