Songs Without Words: Keyboard Arrangements of Vocal Music in England, 1560-1760

Songs without Words investigates keyboard arrangements of vocal music in England, ca. 1560-1760. The focus is on the domestic performance of music from operas and oratorios in the eighteenth century, and the importance of well-known ballad and dance tunes for earlier composers of both virtuosic and pedagogical arrangements. Teachers, performers, and publishers at the time made little distinction between arranged and newly composed music for the keyboard. The models for these keyboard arrangements made up a shared repertoire, akin to the jazz standards of the twentieth century. In Restoration England, the ballad tradition saw tunes and texts move between oral, manuscript, and printed transmission, and from street to playhouse and back again. In the eighteenth century printed keyboard arrangements aimed at female amateurs aided in the popularization of opera. The relation between arrangements and their models, the reception, and the aesthetics of arrangements are explored in the framing chapters. Sandra Mangsen is Professor Emerita of Music at the University of Western Ontario (London, Canada) and resides in Vermont. She is a professional harpsichordist and holds the doctorate in musicology from Cornell University.