New Zealand Musicological Society

New Zealand Musicological Society Online Seminar – ‘Conference Catch-Ups’

Tuesday, 23 June, 6pm–7:30pm

Not travelling to a conference this winter? Stay warm, pour yourself a cup of tea (or a glass of wine) and join us via Zoom to hear three NZMS members give live presentations of their recent and upcoming conference papers (full abstracts below). We’d love your company.

Tuesday, 23 June at 6pm (NZST) on Zoom

The next New Zealand Musicological Society conference won’t be until mid-2027, so we’re planning another online session to be held later in 2026 (date tbd). Do let us know if you’d be interested in a giving a research paper then – it doesn’t need to be a paper intended for a conference! E-mail NZMS President, Sam Owens at s.owens@uq.edu.au.

We’d particularly like to encourage postgraduate students to consider presenting – but everyone’s welcome. And please forward this message to anyone you think may be interested in attending the session and/or presenting in the future.

Abstracts

Lost in Translation: The Genesis of Francesco Geminiani’s Treatises – Peter Walls

The genesis of The Art of Playing on the Violin (1751) is straightforward (and chronologically compressed). A Treatise of Good Taste (1749) gives a preview of one key section while the Lucca manuscript captures a mid-point between the two treatises. L’Art de jouer le Violon (1752) is essentially a close translation of the English version. Noting incongruities in both the English and French versions and relying (perhaps too strongly) on Avison’s assertion that Geminiani was fluent in all European languages, I saw little need in my Introduction to Volume 13 of the Geminiani Opera Omnia to assume an Italian-language draft.

Since the publication of Volume 13, I have been looking afresh at these same questions in relation to Geminiani’s other treatises. The gestation period for Guida Armonica covers at least fifteen years. Geminiani provided Louis-Bertrand Castel with a manuscript for the peer-review published in 1741, that, in Sir John Hawkins’ words, Geminiani then ‘got translated into English.’ The eventual publication in 1756 of the Dictionaire Harmonique with parallel French and Dutch texts was soon followed by the English-language Guida Armonica. The texts of these two publications differ significantly. Each has independent prefatory material. Where paragraphs align, the English version reads like a free paraphrase of the French|Dutch version. While the music examples are identical, it seems unlikely that there is a direct link to a common source for the text, whether in Italian or any other language.

The French texts of L’Art de bien accompagner (1754, Part 1 only) and L’Arte d’accompagnere (1756) are so different from each other in content and linguistic style that they cannot derive from a common source. (‘Back translating’ from each into Italian produces quite different results.) The English Art of Accompaniment (1756) is essentially a close translation of L’Arte, but with some independent material and the occasional incorporation of elements from the first French text.

There are, in fact, self-sufficient Italian-language abridged manuscripts of both the Guida and Accompaniment treatises. Though not in Geminiani’s hand, these might have looked (much like the Lucca manuscript of APV) like a copy of an incomplete draft were it not that, in each case, there is internal evidence that they follow rather than precede the published versions.

The two versions of the accompaniment treatise and the Dictionaire Harmonique|Guida Armonica pairing suggest that the essential common source, the anchor for each of these projects, was the music examples themselves. The commentary on these, however, was subjected to the incessant revision and second thoughts so evident in works like the Op. 2 and Op. 3 Concertos. Whether or not Geminiani was assisted in rendering his commentary into Dutch, French and English, we see that whenever he returned to his music examples different features seem to have struck him as important. The languages tell us more about the intended audience than Geminiani’s linguistic preferences. They are, too, an indication of Geminiani’s shifting stylistic allegiances.

From the Stage to the Drawing Room: Arrangements of Weber’s Operas in Nineteenth-Century Britain – Sam Girling

Following its London premiere on 22 July 1824, Carl Maria von Weber’s opera Der Freischütz was met with immense enthusiasm, inspiring numerous adaptations and performances across several London theatres. As Christina Fuhrmann observes, the opera’s success – and the subsequent commissioning of Oberon – marked a pivotal moment in operatic adaptation in London, bridging domestic and foreign tastes while fostering the direct involvement of continental composers in the city’s theatrical scene. A crucial yet often overlooked dimension of this development lies in the creation and dissemination of piano and chamber arrangements of Weber’s operas. These arrangements served as vital publicity tools, extending the reach of the works beyond the theatre and into the domestic sphere, while tapping into London’s competitive and lucrative publishing market.

I examine how such arrangements – ranging from solo and four-hand piano versions to string quartet, septet, and wind ensemble reductions – were adapted in terms of language, setting, and plot to suit British audiences. Some condense Weber’s operas in their entirety; others focus on overtures or highlight popular numbers such as the ‘Huntsmen’s Chorus’ or Agathe’s arias. By engaging with themes of folklore, the supernatural, and Romantic nature imagery, these adaptations not only reflected prevailing British tastes but also embedded Weber’s evocative sound world within the cultural consciousness of the middle class.

Treating these arrangements as forms of musical translation – simultaneously reproductive, creative, and transformative – this paper explores how they mediated between stage and drawing room, performance and print, and national and transnational musical identities in early nineteenth-century Britain.

Lessons by Correspondence: Nathalie Dolmetsch, Mona Castle and the Viola da Gamba in 1940s New Zealand – Samantha Owens

In 1978, when summing up the achievements of the Viola da Gamba Society of Great Britain’s first thirty years, Gordon Dodd noted that the London-based organisation enjoyed the support of “a wide circle of makers, players, scholars and music editors.” Among the most far-flung of those members were undoubtedly the siblings Mona (1899–1976) and Ronald Castle (1907–1984), both pharmacists based in Wellington, New Zealand. Pioneers of the early music movement in Australasia, the Castles purchased a number of instruments from Arnold Dolmetsch Ltd, including a bass viol by English luthier Thomas Cole (now in the Auckland War Memorial Museum – Tāmaki Paenga Hira). Yet, according to a later report, when the viol arrived in early 1947, “Miss Castle and her brother found they could not play it without lessons.” The solution to their problem came in the form of Nathalie Dolmetsch (1905–1989), “one of the best players of the instruments now in England, who agreed to send out correspondence lessons. So successful was the course that the lessons have been published as a ‘tutor’.”

The twelve typewritten ‘Lessons’ sent to Wellington – the basis of Dolmetsch’s influential Twelve Lessons on the Viola da Gamba (London, 1950) – survive in the Castle Family: Papers (Wellington, Alexander Turnbull Library). Featuring additional manuscript annotations, alongside hand-drawn illustrations and musical examples, these documents were accompanied by a series of letters and postcards sent by Dolmetsch to Mona Castle between August 1947 and June 1949, which provided further detailed advice on mastering the viol, together with information of a more personal nature. Through a close reading of these primary sources – including a comparison of the lessons sent to Mona Castle with the version published in 1950 – this paper contributes to current understandings of the international revival of the viola da gamba around the mid-twentieth century.