English Madrigal Verse 1588-1632 by Edmund H. Fellowes; F. W. Sternfeld; D. Greer; Words toMusic; Papers on English Seventeenth-Century Song Read at a Clark Library Seminar,December 11, 1965 by Vincent Duckles; Franklin B. ZimmermanReview by: Robert DoningtonNotes, Second Series, Vol. 25, No. 4 (Jun., 1969), pp. 723-724Published by: Music Library AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/896628 .

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other researcher is bound to uncover something that the individual has missed.)

Hansell's volume is provided with a twenty-page introduction which gives thumbnail discussions of general style in Hasse's vocal music, the relationship be- tween the cantata and the motet, associ- ated genres such as the feste teatrali, and the subject matter of cantata texts (a droll topic, if ever there was one). This intro- duction is a useful essence of the author's doctoral dissertation (University of Illi- nois, 1966).

This catalogue of Hasse's works for solo voice is an important and welcome con- tribution to the wide effort being made these days to catalogue and attribute the

total repertory of the Italian Baroque cantata. Hansell's basic method is laud- able, having been taken almost entirely from the techniques established by Edwin Hanley in his exemplary study of the cantatas of Alessandro Scarlatti (Yale dis- sertation, 1963, now in the process of revision for publication). Hansell's debt to Hanley is one which is shared by all of us working in this field. More cantata studies along the lines of this Hasse vol- ume need yet to be undertaken, and it is hoped that they will also proceed on Han- ley's fine model.

OWEN JANDER Wellesley College

English Madrigal Verse 1588-1632. By Edmund H. Fellowes. 3d ed., revised and enlarged by F. W. Sternfeld and D. Greer. Oxford: Clarendon Press; U.S.A.: Oxford University Press, New York, 1967. [798 p.; $14.40]

Words to Music; Papers on English Seventeenth-Century Song Read at a Clark Library Seminar, December 11, 1965. By Vincent Duckles and Franklin B. Zimmerman. With an Introduction by Walter H. Rubsamen. Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, 1967. [93 p.; paper]

It is a warm pleasure to welcome the third edition of the Oxford English Mad- rigal Verse, one of the great anthologies of Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Caroline po- etry. E. H. Fellowes, its original editor, here as elsewhere did fine work within certain limits which have since been recognized, without in any way diminish- ing his deserved reputation as a pioneer in recovering both music and poetry from that magnificent period. Any deficiencies in the design and execution of this an- thology have been remedied by the present editors, who are also responsible for some enlargement. This revision and enlarge- ment could not have been entrusted to bet- ter hands. Dr. Sternfeld has so deeply pene- trated the relations of music with poetry in Shakespeare and the Shakespearian age that his touch is of the surest and his knowledge of the widest; he has also, it seems, so well trained his former pupil, David Greer, that he eventually passed to him most of the hard labor with a confidence clearly well justified. The notes at the back include matter apparently from all three, without distinction of

authorship; suffice it to say that they are very good. But if the editing is good, so is the poetry. There can seldom in his- tory have been a body of vocal music, so often great, composed on words so often just as great. Not consistently, of course; but it is a splendid volume.

Apt to the moment comes the contribu- tion from two of our keenest investigators of English song: Vincent Duckles on "English Song and the Challenge of Italian Monody" (a challenging and important topic indeed) and Franklin Zimmerman on "Sound and Sense in Purcell's 'Single Songs'." (And who better than Zimmerman should look into Purcell?) For good meas- ure, there is a witty and informative In- troduction by Walter Rubsamen. Duckles uses for his main illustration, and prints complete in his own editing, Lanier's ex- ceedingly interesting and Italianate Hero and Leander, in effect a solo cantata of much beauty, dating from c.1628-1630. The discussion of this is not only interesting but important. I have regretfully to agree that (p. 17) "the vocal style, which is a kind of impassioned song-speech, is outside the

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experience of most modern trained sing- ers"-but presumably they can be modem- trained into it; meanwhile, historians had better fasten at once on to this able and original demonstration of early and suc- cessful assimilation of Italian monody in England.

There is much more that lies behind Purcell, and especially the Italian and French elements in Purcell, than has yet been properly investigated; and this brings me to Zimmerman, here on the top of his form in a detailed study, illustrated by

many short musical illustrations, of the relations of words to music in songs by Purcell which stand by themselves, as opposed to standing in an operatic or can- tata-like context. This, too, is a study of considerable importance, of which the value depends on the expert knowledge of prosody brought to bear upon the musical situations under discussion-a union of disciplines not very common and extreme- ly suggestive when it is so well achieved.

ROBERT DONINGTON State University of Iowa

The English Chamber Organ. History and Development 1650-1850. By Michael Wilson. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1968. [148 p., 49 plates; $6.95]

That windiest of musical instruments, the organ, seems capable of inspiring man with unbounded enthusiasm or leaving him in a state of complete apathy. Michael Wilson reveals himself as a dedicated en- thusiast who has explored a highly special- ized area of organ building and culture, and the two-hundred year period which he treats must have been a rich one indeed for the small chamber or house organ.

The book is laid out in four sections of highly diverse natures. The first deals with the evolution and design of the English chamber organ and ranges from medieval and Renaissance organ practice to a short paragraph on the care and feeding of exist- ing instruments. Along the way, short sketches of builders "Father" Bernard Smith, Johann Snetzler, and Samuel Green appear, interspersed with side views on the music room of the eighteenth century, as well as architectural-design features of organs, rooms, and buildings.

Section Two takes a step backwards to pre-seventeenth-century organ practices, concerted music, concerto grosso style, Handel, halls, and some information on nineteenth-century builders. Section Three deals with general technical considerations of organ construction.

Section Four, which makes up about two-thirds of the book, contains the meat of Wilson's researches. "Father" Smith, Snetzler, and Green (and a host of others) are again treated-here at greater length -and descriptions of specific organs are included. A glossary of stop names com-

mon to chamber instruments, some com- ments on case design and architectural style, a geographical index of extant or- gans, a small bibliography, and an appen- dix close the book.

This large fourth section is by far the most valuable. Up-to-date scholarship pro- vides some information on every known English organ builder of the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. Some fas- cinating tidbits emerge from the text, e. g., that Muzio Clementi allied himself with a firm of piano and organ builders in Eng- land after his retirement from active musi- cal life on the Continent. But it is the detailed accounting of builders, organs, stops, and compasses and the specific com- ments on color and ensemble which pro- vide the major fascination of the chapter; and in this area Wilson has done his work well. Curiously, Renatus Harris, one of "Father" Smith's greatest rivals and one of the finest English builders of the eighteenth century, is represented only by a fleeting comment ("another, though con- siderably younger, post-Commonwealth immigrant"). Lack of extant chamber in- struments by Harris may account for the omission of greater commentary, though others who built mainly church organs are discussed at length.

The book is laid out somewhat oddly for American readers. On the whole one has the impression that Wilson could not make up his mind whether it was to be aimed primarily at a scholarly audience or should be more popular in tone. For ex-

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