The third annual Musicking Conference, hosted by the University of Oregon, brought together scholars, musicians and the local community for a series of twenty-three events over five days. Musicking's mission is to offer a broad community a variety of experiences in music, including scholarly papers, performances, community education programmes and a showcase of University of Oregon undergraduate and graduate research. This year's theme, ‘Cultural Considerations’, encouraged submissions that interpreted ‘historical performance practice’, broadly defined, from various cultural perspectives. The resulting conference was diverse in its offerings, exploring topics ranging from the medieval period to the nineteenth century. Here I will focus on those aspects of the conference devoted to eighteenth-century music.

Addressing the concept of ‘musicking’, Charles Mueller (Western Oregon University) examined the historical performance-practice movement from the perspective of postmodern theory. Mueller placed the musicological writings of John Butt (Playing with History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)), Lawrence Kramer (Classical Music and Postmodern Knowledge (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995)) and Christopher Small (Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1998)) in relation to one another and to the postmodern theories of Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes. He considered what the blanket term ‘early music’ signifies and reinforces in the modern age of media consumption, tracing its treatment by the above-named musicologists and ultimately concluding that ‘early music’ reveals more to us about the present day than it does about the past it attempts to recreate.

A panel entitled ‘In Search of . . .’ paired two papers considering eighteenth-century amateur music performance. My paper (Kimary Fick, Oregon State University), on ‘Aesthetics and the Amateur Keyboardist: Historical Approaches to Character and Expression in the Music of C. P. E. Bach’, examined primary sources aimed at amateur readers with an eye toward clarifying the aesthetics of musical expression. I discussed the influence of philosophy on musical performance and writers’ emphasis on a piece's character as a means to expressive performance, suggesting a psychological approach to interpretation. Analyses of two representative works by C. P. E. Bach, the Rondo in C major, Wq56.1/h260, and the Fantasia in F sharp minor, Wq67/h300, attempted to harness their psychological characters for modern interpretation. Cameron Steuart (University of Georgia) challenged the currently accepted view that the contrasting approaches to improvised ornamentation in Giuseppe Tartini's Trattato di musica secondo la vera scienza dell'armoni (1754) and Leopold Mozart's Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule (1756) reflect differing aesthetics on the part of the authors. Steuart instead suggested that Tartini, whose treatise circulated only in manuscript, describes the art of ornamentation as practised by professional musicians, whereas Mozart's book addresses ornamentation with the needs of amateurs in mind. Drawing on primary source evidence, Steuart additionally proposed that Tartini's and Mozart's personal approaches to ornamentation may have been similar.

One session was devoted to Mozart, with particular reference to his Requiem in D minor, k626, which was performed to conclude the conference. On a different note, though, in a paper entitled ‘Robert Levin's Fantasy on Themes by W. A. Mozart, October 29, 2012: Music Theory and Analysis in the Study of Historical Improvisation’, Gilad Rabinovitch (Georgia State University) sought to tease out a method for reconstructing historical improvisation by analysing a performance by one of the foremost modern-day interpreters of Mozart. Rabinovitch recognized motivic connections across the improvisation, which had been inspired by audience suggestions of incorporating the second movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto in A major k488 and the aria ‘Deh vieni, non tardar’ from his Le nozze di Figaro, k492, both in the same key. He drew on Robert Gjerdingen's schema theory and attempted to account for a perceived long-term plan in the improvisation, an idea that was denied by Levin himself in an interview with the author. Ultimately, Rabinovitch concluded that Levin, as an ‘elite expert’, had the training, comprehensive knowledge of Mozart's music and intimate familiarity with musical styles of the eighteenth century to enable him to create a ‘masterpiece’ of improvised performance. David Threasher (Royal College of Music) also considered a singular performance, Benjamin Britten conducting Mozart's Requiem. He examined Britten's use of the Süssmayr and Eybler completions as well as Mozart's influence on Britten's own orchestration practice. Finally, a paper by Erick Arenas (San Francisco Conservatory of Music), ‘The Liturgical Mozart Requiem: Complexities of Performance Context and Critical Reception Between the Church and Concert Hall’, traced the history of concert performances of the Requiem shortly after the composer's death and identified the liturgical context for requiem masses in Vienna and Salzburg. Arenas concluded that the overlapping histories of liturgical and concert performances of Mozart's Requiem are mutually enriching.

The conference offered attendees many performances, including a ‘Lunchbox’ series featuring guest artists and evening concerts by University of Oregon staff and students. A concert by traverso player Kim Pineda (Sam Houston State University), entitled ‘The Dilettante and the Professional: Differences in Composition, Style and Performance Expectations in the Eighteenth Century’, provided a superbly performed set of works for flute by Michel Blavet, Johann Joachim Quantz and Jacques-Martin Hotteterre, demonstrating the composers’ differing pedagogical approaches to music for amateurs. Harpsichordist Saale Fischer (Eesti Muusika- ja Teatriakadeemia / Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre) offered another Lunchbox concert in which she combined J. S. Bach's Suite in A minor, bwv818a, with Jacques Champion de Chambonnières's Pièces in A minor, alternating movements by both composers to contrast Bach's assumed French style with that of the seventeenth-century composer. A particularly appealing performance was a recitation of eighteenth-century translations of Dante's Inferno in French, Dutch and German, together with a reading of poetry in eighteenth-century Ottoman Turkish. An instructional baroque dance session by Tamara Caulkins introduced the local community (children included) to the dance steps, accompanied by a small string and continuo ensemble.

The conference's featured guest artist, Peter Van Heyghen, gave two extended lectures and directed the conference-closing performance of Mozart's Requiem. Van Heyghen's lectures emphasized performance considerations in early music, the first focusing on Renaissance vocal music and the second on conducting, or directing, eighteenth-century music. In the latter, ‘Conducting Early Music: (Re-)Defining Historically Informed Practices and Responsibilities’, Van Heyghen traced a history of ensemble directing based on iconography, performance accounts and treatises. This investigation, informing Van Heyghen's own work as an early-music director, considered issues such as the beating of time (audibly or visually), the use of a baton, ensemble set-up and the role and duties of the ensemble leader in opera, sacred music and orchestral music. Particularly relevant to the performance of Mozart's Requiem by the University of Oregon Symphony and Chamber Choir was the issue of ensemble set-up. Van Heyghen's primary concern here was the location of the choir in relation to the orchestra. Tracing the history of concert performances of liturgical and sacred works from the eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries, he identified practices that are now lost in modern performances: placing the choir in front of the orchestra and using two directors (a lead conductor in front of the orchestra and a secondary conductor in front of the choir). While the orchestra in this performance was unfortunately not using historical instruments, tuning or temperament, I found the placement of the choir convincing, achieving its purpose, according to Van Heyghen, to ‘put the words first’, as was necessary in eighteenth-century sacred and liturgical music.

The conference's diversity in terms of papers and events, presented by both scholars and performers, made it quite appealing and enjoyable. It is my hope that future Musicking Conferences will continue to probe issues of historical performance practice from a variety of viewpoints. Because the conference is generously supported by numerous foundations, it is free and open to the public, facilitating its goal of a broadly stimulating and educational ‘Musicking’.