New Zealand Musicological Society

Online Seminars 2026 – #2 and #3

Tuesday, 20 October and 24 November 2026, 6:00pm–7:00pm (NZDT) [4:00–5:00pm, AEDT]

Join us via Zoom to hear NZMS members give live presentations of papers relating to their current research (full abstracts below).

Tuesday, 20 October at 6pm (NZDT) [4pm, AEDT]

Zoom Link: https://uqz.zoom.us/j/82823894864

Tuesday, 24 November at 6pm (NZDT) [4pm, AEDT]

Zoom Link: https://uqz.zoom.us/j/84318774350

Please feel free to forward this information to anyone you think may be interested in attending the sessions.

Abstracts

Antonio Salieri and the Coronation Masses for Leopold II and Franz II – Allan Badley

Habsburg coronations were uniquely complex affairs and were celebrated with corresponding magnificence whether they were imperial coronations in Frankfurt or dynastic coronations in Prague, Preßburg or Buda. These events took place against a background of intense political maneuvring and spectacular public celebration, with processions, balls, operas, fireworks and other activities. While the coronation itself represented the culmination of the process of succession, it was one of two ceremonies that was considered co-equal in status. Imperial coronations were proceeded by an election, the Kaiserwahl, and the dynastic coronations as kings of Hungary and Bohemia by an act of allegiance, the Huldigung. At the heart of both elaborate ceremonies was the celebration of the mass.

Of the two sets of Habsburg coronations that took place in the early 1790s, Leopold II's attracted greater interest from musicologists on account of the presence of Mozart in Frankfurt in 1790 and his commission to compose the coronation opera for Prague in 1791. Franz II's three coronations in 1792 have received rather less attention, and in both cases, the identification of the music performed at the Huldigungen and coronations remains incomplete and little work has been done to establish why certain works may have been chosen and by whom.

This paper argues that Antonio Salieri, as Hofkapellmeister, played a key role in this process and used the opportunities afforded by these two ceremonies to assert the cultural dominance of the Viennese court while the King-Emperor was forced into making political concessions.

Music, Sociability, and Popularity: Maria Szymanowska and Salon Culture in the Early Nineteenth Century – Yiqian (Violet) Wang

Maria Szymanowska (1789–1831) occupied a distinctive position in early nineteenth-century European musical culture. As a pianist and composer active in major cultural centres such as Warsaw, St Petersburg, and Paris, she achieved considerable contemporary popularity, particularly through piano miniatures like Le Murmure. Frequently performed in domestic settings, poetry recitations, and salon gatherings, these works circulated relatively widely throughout Europe during her lifetime. Yet despite her contemporary reputation, Szymanowska has long remained a marginal figure in traditional music historiography. Her music has often been broadly categorised as "salon music" or treated merely as a transitional manifestation of early Romantic style, rather than being examined in terms of the specific cultural practices and social mechanisms through which it originally functioned.

This paper takes Le Murmure as a case study and poses the question: why was this work able to function so effectively within the performance contexts of early nineteenth-century salon culture? Rather than reassessing the artistic value of the piece according to conventional aesthetic criteria, this study focuses on how its musical, performative, and social characteristics enabled it to circulate widely and adapt to different salon practices. Through an examination of its hybrid formal structure, layered pianistic writing, collaborative arrangements, and shifting intertextual relationship with poetry recitation, this paper argues that the success of Le Murmure lay not primarily in intense emotional expression or formal complexity, but in its remarkable adaptability to the salon environment. In this context, music functioned not merely as an isolated artwork but as a medium of sociability, interaction, and cultural practice.

The Value of European Classical Music and Individual Agency in Contemporary China – Elaine Siyin Qian

European Classical Music (ECM) has occupied a significant position in China since the early 20th century. After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, sustained government funding, policies, and institutional support have enabled its continuation and the reproduction of its symbolic prestige. Drawing on interviews with several leading figures in contemporary ECM field in China, including the conductor of the Beijing Union Symphony Orchestra and the founder of Tianyuan Symphony Youth Charity Orchestra, together with participant observation research I conducted from March to August in China this year, I investigate what the contemporary value and significance of ECM in China are, and how and why it never lost its socio-cultural prestige for more than a century. I call attention to the ongoing negotiation that ECM musicians engage in with governmental, institutional, and educational support and practices, and how this manifests the value of a culture in contemporary China.

Amid declining demands for ECM, its training, education, and performance opportunities, largely due to the recent changes in cultural and educational policies, this paper demonstrates how institutions and individual practitioners actively reposition themselves and their practices through navigating the shifting policies, economic and professional conditions, and the new forms of educational programs, business models, repertoire, and audience engagement.

This paper explores changing musical aesthetics between the Restoration and the latter eighteenth century through analysis of the writings of Charles Burney. Together with an enquiry into the genesis of some of Burney's aesthetic ideas from the early British Aestheticians such as Joseph Addison, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Francis Hutcheson, and David Hume, it discusses the implications of these findings for Historically Informed Performance.

Past seminar: Tuesday, 23 June, 6pm–7:30pm

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.