The Australian's Society Bride Margaret Way

The Moravian-born multi-instrumentalist and composer Gottfried Finger is often found in the footnotes in modern music histories, yet during his lifetime few other composers could boast of the number of firsts and career milestones. In a varied and active career spanning more than half a century, he crossed paths with some of the leading composers of his day (Biber, Purcell, Telemann, Silvius Leopold Weiss and perhaps François Couperin, to name just a few).

The name 'Chandos anthems' is most frequently associated with Handel, but he was not the first, nor the last, composer in the extravagant household of James Brydges, the Duke of Chandos from 1719. Working concurrently with Handel at Cannons was the Berlin native, Johann Christoph Pepusch'snearly 20 years Handel's seniora who took over as Director of Music by early 1719 whereupon he adopted a distinctly Venetian approach to sacred music, in the manner of Lotti and Vivaldi.

The Harmonious Society of Tickle-Fiddle Gentlemen takes its name from the original ensemble that gave London's first public concerts, from 1678, and which continued to meet well into the middle of the eighteenth century. The members of the group are leading figures on the period instrument scene in the UK and Europe, offering programmes that draw on recent and original research. They have been described on BBC Radio 3 as 'purveyors of exhilarating and uplifting music'.

Born in Brussels in 2020, The WIG Society (TWS) has rapidly grown into one of the most exciting musical ensembles on the European Early Music scene. As a rising ensemble within the EEEmerging+ programme, TWS has developed an original approach to the chamber music of the galant and classical period. Their playing highlights the lavish, extravagant, and witty elements of a repertoire principally designed to entertain an aristocratic society on the decline. They re-imagine rococo ballrooms and salons as contemporary dance floors, Haydn as the Beyoncé of the 1770s.

This book is about innovation, reflection and inclusion. Cultural innovation is something real that tops up social and technological innovation by providing the reflective society with spaces of exchange in which citizens engage in the process of sharing their experiences while appropriating common goods content. We are talking of public spaces such as universities, academies, libraries, museums, science-centres, but also of any place in which co-creation activities may occur.