The Cambridge History of Musical Performance

This book endeavours to pinpoint the relations between musical, and especially instrumental, practice and the evolving conceptions of pitch systems. It traces the development of ancient melodic notation from reconstructed origins, through various adaptations necessitated by changing musical styles and newly invented instruments, to its final canonical form. It thus emerges how closely ancient harmonic theory depended on the culturally dominant instruments, the lyre and the aulos. These threads are followed down to late antiquity, when details recorded by Ptolemy permit an exceptionally clear view. Dr Hagel discusses the textual and pictorial evidence, introducing mathematical approaches wherever feasible, but also contributes to the interpretation of instruments in the archaeological record and occasionally is able to outline the general features of instruments not directly attested. The book will be indispensable to all those interested in Greek music, technology and performance culture and the general history of musicology.

London, Saturday 6th May, 2023 – Decca Classics is thrilled to announce that The Official Album of the Coronation of Their Majesties King Charles III & Queen Camilla is now available! After an undertaking of immense scale and precision (with 192 microphones in the Abbey and using over 7 miles of cable) the final recording was safely delivered and uploaded to digital streaming platforms across the globe, ready to be enjoyed by the public from this evening, complete with an official photograph from the Coronation ceremony as the album cover.

London, Saturday 6th May, 2023 – Decca Classics is thrilled to announce that The Official Album of the Coronation of Their Majesties King Charles III & Queen Camilla is now available! After an undertaking of immense scale and precision (with 192 microphones in the Abbey and using over 7 miles of cable) the final recording was safely delivered and uploaded to digital streaming platforms across the globe, ready to be enjoyed by the public from this evening, complete with an official photograph from the Coronation ceremony as the album cover.

The Cambridge Companion to the String Quartet: This Companion offers a concise and authoritative survey of the string quartet by eleven chamber music specialists. Its fifteen carefully structured chapters provide coverage of a stimulating range of perspectives previously unavailable in one volume. Various musical and pictorial illustrations and informative appendixes, including a chronology of the most significant works, complete this indispensable guide. Written for all string quartet enthusiasts, this Companion will enrich readers’ understanding of the history of the genre, the context and significance of quartets as cultural phenomena, and the musical, technical and interpretative problems of chamber music performance. It will also enhance their experience of listening to quartets in performance and on recordings.

Conductor John Eliot Gardiner is a leading figure in the historical performance movement, having founded the Monteverdi Choir for performances of Baroque music and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, devoted to music of the 19th century. He is especially noted for performances and recordings of Bach's choral music, and his label, Soli Deo Gloria ("To the Glory of God Only"), takes its name from the small S.D.G. signature Bach affixed to many of his works.