EMA Book Reviews

Colleen Reardon’s engaging and meticulously researched study turns to Siena in the later 17th and early 18th centuries, and the complex social networks that nurtured the performance of some 30 operas presented there between 1669 and 1704 by composers such as Cesti, Scarlatti, Bononcini, and Melani.

The memoirs reveal Ralph Kirkpatrick’s keen and often scathing observations about the harpsichord world, delivered in that unique style all his students remember well.

The scholarship of Michael Marissen has always been characterized by depth of research, fearlessness, and a tendency towards considerable speculation. Those qualities are found in the work under review, a compilation of seven of his essays dealing with religious issues in the music of J. S. Bach.

In Italian Guitar Music of the Seventeenth Century, Lex Eisenhardt makes it clear that the Baroque guitar has some very attractive repertoire that should be regarded as an important piece in the puzzle of 17th-century music.

Music historians traditionally choose from three methodologies to write their books: biographical, stylistic, and chronological. David Wyn Jones, however, tells us “this history takes a different approach, a slice history focusing on three epochs, 1700, 1800 and 1900, a portrait of each period that allows contrasts to emerge and continuities to be articulated.”