Musical performers and performing processes are relatively new objects of study if we compare them with composers and works, categories that have been at the centre of musicological concerns for a long time: so much so that in a relatively recent publication, An Introduction to Music Studies, ed. J. P. E. Harper-Scott and Jim Samson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), the study of musical performance is presented as a field of renewal for music history and analysis.

Being aware of this development, researchers from the group MECRI (Music in Spain in the Early Modern Era: Composition, Reception and Performance) of the Universidad de La Rioja, in collaboration with the Universitat de Lleida and Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya (ESMUC), organized this conference with a focus on Iberian music of the eighteenth century, putting together research papers with brief concerts interspersed between them. According to the conference directors, Màrius Bernardó (Universitat de Lleida), Josep Borràs (ESMUC) and Miguel Ángel Marín (Universidad de La Rioja), these concerts had the purpose of illustrating the studied repertoire, taking advantage of the important presence of music performers at the host institution, and above all giving space to ‘performative research’, allowing a dialogue to take place between this and musicology.

The opening lecture was given by Hermann Danuser (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), who reflected on the concepts of execution, interpretation and performance in music from a historical perspective. Among other aspects, Danuser pointed out that the application of the term interpretation to performance was forged in Germany in the mid-nineteenth century. Not by chance, this coincided with the rise of musical historicism, which led to the widespread performance of past musical repertory, sometimes written down using unfamiliar forms of notation. As the execution of music thus became a problem, the concept of interpretation, traditionally understood as a ‘hermeneutic exegesis’, started to get mixed up with musical practice.

The idea of musical performance as a potential problem represented an ideal starting-point for the following sessions. Some of them had a strong thematic cohesion, while others dealt with more diverse subjects. Among the first category we can include Session No. 2, dedicated to the reception of music in the light of different contexts of production. Nuno Mendes (Universidad de Salamanca) reviewed some pieces for violin that had been copied for organ in Spanish manuscripts, concluding that they possibly had an educational purpose; Marc Heilbron (ESMUC) discussed the first production of Mozart's Così fan tutte in Barcelona (1798), highlighting the important part played by the singers in the process of reception (among other things, the leading singers could reject certain arias that they didn't like); and António Jorge Marques (Universidade Nova de Lisboa) revisited the history of Marcos Portugal's Te Deum, showing that some versions that were played during nineteenth century were as popular as, or even more popular than, the original.

The third session was the first to merge musicology and musical performance, presenting a reconstruction of ‘alternatim’ practice. After an informed statement by Juan Carlos Asensio (ESMUC), Josep Borràs on dulcian and Javier Artigas (Conservatorio Superior de Música de Murcia) on organ played some instrumental verses from the late eighteenth century that were composed to alternate with psalm intonations. Session No. 6 was dedicated to arrangements. Elena Pons Capdevila (Royal Holloway, University of London), after noting how the arrangement represents a challenge for traditional notions of work and author, made reference to two Catalonian manuscripts for keyboard from the late eighteenth century that include arrangements of symphonic and chamber repertoire. Then Lluís Bertran (Universidad de La Rioja) re-examined the history of the Lamentos by composer Pere Joan Llonell, which were repeatedly arranged and played during the nineteenth century – something common to a number of case-studies presented at the conference.

Meanwhile, in Session No. 7, José Reche (ESMUC) and Oriol Garcia-Molsosa (Conservatori de Grau Professional Josep Maria Ruera de Granollers) examined musical academies and instrument makers in Barcelona around 1790, based on two main sources: a diary written by the Barón de Maldá that provides insights into everyday musical practices of the time, and a clarinet made by Salvador Xuriach that is preserved at the Museo de la Música in Barcelona and offers relevant information about performance and repertoire. The following session tackled problems related to the performance of late eighteenth-century Madrilenian sonatas for violin. Ana Lombardía (Universidad de La Rioja) pointed out the importance of treatises by Pablo Minguet (c1753), José Herrando (1757) and Fernando Ferandiere (1771) as sources for the study of accompaniment, bowings and other aspects of performance. After a reflection made by Emilio Moreno (ESMUC) on this topic, Josep Martínez-Reinoso (Universidad de La Rioja) analysed – and demonstrated on the violin – some of the ‘Adagios glosados’ by Gaetano Brunetti, which include cadences that were written out by the composer and constitute a valuable source for the improvising practice of that period.

The ninth session analysed the recovery of eighteenth-century Spanish music during the first half of the twentieth century. María Cáceres (Universität Bern) outlined the role of the musicologist José Subirá in promoting that repertory, showing that by that time, there had been a turn in musicology that put the performer in the limelight, in part for ideological reasons (performers represented the ‘labourers’ of music). Liz Mary Díaz-Pérez (Instituto Superior de Arte de Cuba and Universidad de Valladolid), Emma García Gutiérrez (Sociedad General de Autores y Editores) and Sonia Gonzalo-Delgado (Universidad de Zaragoza) analysed the contribution of Joaquín Nin to the establishment of the ‘historical concert’ in Havana and the recovery of Domenico Scarlatti and Antonio Soler's works; and Ricardo de la Torre (Ada, Oklahoma) re-examined the first performances of this music based on documents and recordings.

Session No. 10 was dedicated to the use of viola in the Royal Chapel of Madrid. Judith Ortega (Instituto Complutense de Ciencias Musicales) presented a detailed paper on the ‘competition sonatas’ (sonatas de oposición) used in the late eighteenth century to evaluate applicants for the post of chapel violist. Despite the fact that these sonatas were meant for sightreading, they covered all the technical resources needed to play the instrument at that time. Ortega's exposition was followed by some clear-headed reflections made by the viola player Luis Magín (Conservatorio Superior de Música Eduardo Martínez Torner) and the guitarist Rubén Abel (Conservatorio Superior de Música Eduardo Martínez Torner), who concluded the session with a beautiful performance of two of these sonatas.

Recordings formed the subject of the eleventh session. Javier Marín (Universidad de Jaén) analysed tendencies in the performance of Latin American colonial music during recent decades, while Pablo Rodríguez (Universidad de La Rioja) highlighted the contribution of the group Al ayre español to the recovery of the Spanish music of the period. Then I (Alejandro Vera, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile) analysed four recorded versions of Santiago de Murcia's Fandango, coinciding with Javier Marín in questioning the performances that merge eighteenth-century music with present oral traditions, particularly for their claims to recover an ‘authentic’ form of performance while they actually mirror the current ‘world music’ industry, with its commercial aims and striking contradictions. (These issues are discussed by Henry Stobart in ‘World Musics’, in An Introduction to Music Studies, 97–118.)

While the rest of the sessions had less thematic unity, they included contributions of great interest. In the first session Elsa Fonseca (Universidad de Salamanca) drew attention to the progressive replacement of Amati violins by those of Stradivari and Guarnieri at the court of Carlos IV, owing to the search of a louder sound; Álvaro Torrente (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) presented a risky but plausible reconstruction of a seventeenth-century sarabande whose music has not been preserved; and Thomas Schmitt (Universidad de La Rioja) pointed to some distinctive features about the fingering of late eighteenth-century guitar music, which, unlike current practice, aimed to take advantage of the different strengths of the fingers.

In Session No. 4 Laura Pallàs (ESMUC) analysed a keyboard manuscript that had been copied around 1813, identifying items that were clearly for the organ, and others – apparently later – that were meant for the piano. The paper by Joseba Berrocal (Universidad de Zaragoza) then discussed some distinctive features to musical performance in Madrid around 1700, such as the possible use of transposing flutes and a five-string double bass (violón). Eighteenth-century violoncello methods were the concern of Guillermo Turina (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), who evaluated the information they supply about performance, for example the practice of playing chords when accompanying recitatives.

Cristina Fernandes (Universidade de Évora) began the fifth session by investigating the long survival of the Office of the Dead written by the Neapolitan composer David Perez, a piece that was played and arranged for more than a century after its publication in London in 1774; Jorge Gil (Real Conservatorio Superior de Música de Madrid) presented new discoveries about the presence of clarinets in Madrid bands and at the Teatro de los Caños del Peral, where it acquired a growing importance, especially in Lent concerts; and Miguel Simarro (ESMUC) analysed the relationship between the act of copying music and the different forms of writing down articulations found in Spanish string quartets of the eighteenth century, showing that they do not necessarily imply different musical meanings.

Among the several concerts held during the conference, those that stand out were the one given on the pianoforte by Roger Illa (ESMUC), who interpreted four Domenico Scarlatti sonatas according to the version edited by Muzio Clementi in late eighteenth century; Thomas Schmitt's recital on six-string guitar, usefully illustrating the distinctive aspects of fingering that he had treated in his paper; the arias of Torres and Literes performed by mezzo-soprano Lucinda Gerhardt (ESMUC) and an instrumental group; and the ‘musical academy’ that took place in the Sala del Collegi de l’Art Major de la Seda, Casa del Gremi de Velers, performed by some of the teachers and students of ESMUC. Although the extent to which these concerts took real account of performance research in an archetypal sense (that is, in the way it is understood by scholars such as Graeme Sullivan in his Art Practice as Research: Inquiry in the Visual Arts (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2005)) may be debatable, it is unquestionable that they helped to give rise to a fruitful dialogue between musicology and musical performance.