About fifty scholars of eighteenth-century music assembled in Austin for a stimulating array of papers given by both established figures and graduate students. Presentations ranged widely in approach and subject matter, including archival reports, an insight into female composers of the period, the early-music movement in the twentieth century, questions of gender and patronage, a reconsideration of musical topics, and an examination of how various strands of aesthetics influenced music in eighteenth-century Europe. The Society for Eighteenth-Century Music prides itself on the outstanding level of work demonstrated by its graduate students, and this conference was no exception.

The conference began with a report on archival work undertaken at the Lobkowicz Library in Nelahozeves Castle, north of Prague. The paper by Kathryn Libin (Vassar College), read by her colleague Alison DeSimone, described the fascinating history of the library, known as ‘Room X’, and the music that was acquired under the Seventh Prince Lobkowicz, Joseph Franz Maximilian. Until now, the collection had not been catalogued, and after the work taken on by Libin and her colleagues, many new works have surfaced and been identified. The goal and future endeavour of this project is eventually to be able to make the works available to the public. Marie Caruso (New York) discussed an unknown collection of twenty minuets for harpsichord by Maria Rosa Coccia, who was a Roman composer of the time and the first woman to achieve the title of maestra di cappella. Caruso offered some theories on why this secular collection of minuets had been discovered (by her) in a Neapolitan convent, San Gregorio Armeno. One possibility is that she was appealing to the potential patronage of Henriette Milano, a Neapolitan aristocrat.

Janet Page (University of Memphis) began the second session on Friday with her paper ‘Time, Space, and Community: Performing Plainchant in the Viennese Convent of St. Laurenz in the Early Eighteenth Century’. As well as detailing the daily life of the nuns at this convent, she shed light on how antiphons, psalms and other chants were to be performed, discussing the instructions on what practices were deemed appropriate to particular spaces. The paper by Stewart Carter (Wake Forest University) discussed the form and style of the Motetti à voce sola, Op. 20, composed by Isabella Leonarda (1620–1704), who was the most prolific woman composer of her era. The last paper of the session was given by Eric Lubarsky (Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester), who argued that ‘fascination with the Eighteenth-Century Woman’ provided support for the early-music movement and harpsichord revival of the early twentieth century. His work demonstrated how both Wanda Landowska and American harpsichordist Francis Pelton-Jones performed and utilized the image of the Eighteenth-Century Woman to promote the aesthetic, social and political values of Art Nouveau.

Friday afternoon's session began with a delightful lecture-recital given by Maria Rose. This featured works by two of the most celebrated, yet now relatively forgotten, piano composers of late eighteenth-century Vienna: Leopold Kozeluch and Johann Nepomuk Hummel. She performed Kozeluch's Sonata in A major Op. 35 No. 2 and Hummel's Sonata in F minor, Op. 20, a well as the first movement of Clementi's Sonata in F minor, Op. 13 No. 6, to demonstrate its influence on the Hummel. Following the recital, in ‘Labouring a Point: What Are Developments Doing?’, W. Dean Sutcliffe (University of Auckland) questioned the function and role of development sections in sonata-form movements. He posited that rather than pleasing through variety, developments may suggest mechanical or obsessive behaviour, often ‘labouring’ a musical point, and he asked how listeners might have been expected to react to such redundancy. Wrapping up the last session for the day was the presentation by Olga Sánchez-Kisielewska (Northwestern University). Her paper investigated the relationship between the Romanesca and the topic of the sacred hymn, contributing to the growing studies of interactions between schemata and musical topics; it was to be awarded the Student Prize at the end of the conference.

In the first session of the Saturday, Kim Pineda (Eugene, Orgeon) demonstrated that sacred parodies from a manuscript entitled ‘Nouvelles Poésies spirituelles et morales’, copied in Paris in 1736 and now known as the Ursuline Manuscript, and the influence of Ursuline nuns in eighteenth-century New Orleans provided a spiritual and musical tether to old France. Drew Edward Davies (Northwestern University) explored eighteenth-century contrafacts preserved in Latin American cathedral archives and, using Mikhail Bahktin's literary concepts, argued that, far from representing random emendations to music manuscripts, these contrafacts show remarkable expressive continuity with their models. The latter half of the morning was dedicated to the theme of ‘Patronage and Patriotism’, beginning with Lily Kass (University of Pennsylvania), who examined the political implications of expressing British patriotism through Italian operatic style, with particular emphasis on the Italian singer Brigida Giorgi Banti and her performances of ‘God Save the King’ and ‘Rule Britannia’. The catch and glee repertoire associated with the Gentlemen's Catch Club in London in the second half of the eighteenth century was the topic of the paper by Bethany Cencer (Stony Brook University). She argued that although women were typically excluded from catch-club participation, they became an important audience for club-sponsored publications and ‘Ladies’ Night’ concerts, as well as participating in mixed-gender public performances. In ‘Hymnes patriotiques and the “Marzeillesa”: The Impact of French Revolutionary Festivals in the Basses-Pyrénées, 1789–1800’, Maria Josefa Velasco (University of Chicago) questioned how musical practices advanced particular Revolutionary ideologies in the Basque towns of Bayonne and Pau and surrounding villages, and how different types of music and musicians were in conflict with one another in this region.

The Saturday afternoon session began with a presentation by Matteo Magarotto (University of Cincinnati) that explored the eighteenth-century usage of the terms ‘der gute Sa[t]z und die Ordnung, il filo’ that Leopold Mozart used in the famous letter to his son of 1778, ultimately demonstrating that Leopold's principles and Wolfgang's practice reflected a conflict between conservative and progressive trends in Enlightenment aesthetics. The subject of the paper by Kimary Fick (University of North Texas) was ‘Music for Social Pleasure: The Aesthetics of Hausmusik in the North German Enlightenment’, which included consideration of serial music publications meant for performance by a group, such as Musikalisches Allerley von verschiedenen Tonkünstlern (1761–1763), published by Friedrich Wilhelm Birnstiel. The aesthetic connection between Jean-Jacques Rousseau and German composer Johann Hiller was the topic of the paper by Adam Schoaff (University of Cincinnati). He demonstrated that Hiller's adoption or rejection of Rousseau's musical prescriptions displayed the ever-present role of the philosophe’s aesthetics in the rebirth of German opera. The final session of the day was a panel on the works of Vivaldi, and Nicholas Lockey (Sam Houston State University) discussed the ways that the composer's treatment of the seasons in Le quattro stagioni departs radically from previous traditions, emphasizing the manner in which he juxtaposed contrasting textures to impart a sense of the sublime power of nature. The day concluded with Ireri Chavez-Barcenas (Princeton University), whose paper demonstrated that early modern Venetian narratives about ancient Mexico and its conquest led to reassessment of the iconic figure of Aztec ruler Moctezuma II while further generating an ambiguous stance toward Spanish imperialism. This notion was explored in the context of Vivaldi's 1733 opera performed at the Teatro San Angelo, Motezuma.

On the Saturday evening delegates were treated to a concert given by La Follia Austin Baroque, who consist of director and keyboard player Keith Womer, violinist Jonathan Godfrey, flautist Marcus McGuff, soprano Joan Ely Carlson and Scott Horton on lute and guitar. On the theme of ‘American Roots: An Evening Concert at Jefferson's Monticello’, the performers had cleverly devised a sort of chronological conspectus of music that Jefferson did play or could have played himself on his violin or may have encountered at various stages of his life. This meant a programme that ranged from traditional Irish and Scottish jigs to trio sonatas by Corelli and Carlo Campioni (1720–1788) to songs by the likes of Arne and Purcell, as well as arias by Grétry and Piccinni that Jefferson could have heard performed on the Parisian operatic stage.

The final session, on Sunday morning, began with Erica Levenson (Cornell University), who focused on the adaptation of French theatrical and musical traditions for the London stage in the period after French actors, musicians and dancers had been driven from their native fairground theatres in 1718 by rampant censorship. Anna Parkitna (Stony Brook University) investigated the circumstances surrounding the expansion of Polish adaptations of German operas in eighteenth-century Warsaw and explored the contribution of those works to the creation and strengthening of national operatic traditions. My paper (Sarah Bushey, University of Florida) identified musical and visual features used to connote the ‘supernatural exotic’ in Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie (1733), examining the similarities between the topic of ‘ombra’ and those musical features that accompany what Ralph Locke has identified as musical exoticism. Indeed, several papers over the course of the conference dealt with the problems that arise when discussing musical topics or styles and how separate or distinct these topics really are from one another.

One can only thank all of the participants in the conference for such fascinating and thoughtful papers. The next biennial meeting of the Society for Eighteenth-Century Music will be held in Tallahassee, Florida, in 2018.