The Nonet for Winds and Strings follows a four-movement “sonata cycle” design that had become standard in the Classical chamber music tradition by the 1840s: A sonata-form first movement in a fast tempo is followed by a slow movement and an upbeat Scherzo, then a sonata-form finale. Farrenc’s sonata forms demonstrate the influence of her teacher Anton Reicha, whose treatises provide a guide to the informed study of her works. Farrenc’s innovations include continuous development in these movements and colorful harmonic narratives that deviate from later “textbook” explanations of form. Her use of contrapuntal writing, learned variation techniques, and references to familiar pieces from the wind chamber repertoire (Septets by Beethoven and Hummel) demonstrate her compositional mastery. Throughout the Nonet, she writes expertly for the instruments and incorporates playful dialogue and brilliant-style writing for all nine players in every movement. The Nonet became her most popular work, in part, because it balances virtuosity with craftsmanship, and the fun interactions between friends within the ensemble create an atmosphere of learned play for listeners and performers alike.

Chapter 3 reflects upon the sonic landscape within the opera. In a romantic opera, the orchestra is the cementing agent between the separate dramatic forces of the text and the voice as it often serves as an omniscient narrator, detailing to the listener not only the actions of the characters on stage and the external environment but also the unspoken and unseen world of internal thoughts and desires. By listening to the orchestra, the audience can interpret the sounds they hear as reflective of the overall goals of the principal characters on stage. For example, the ominous use of pianissimo timpani paired with bass drum at the start of the orchestral prelude foreshadows for the listener the death of Lucia, as this is the same music heard in the opera’s final scene. The opening sounds of the prelude remind us that this work is indeed a tragedy where death is the prescribed outcome not only for Lucia but also for her lover, Edgardo. Of particular interest in this chapter is the glass harmonica, originally planned by Donizetti to be used in the ‘mad scene’ of Act III but later replaced with the flute. Donizetti’s original intent of using this high-pitched resonant instrument to depict female madness has come back into practice in modern productions of the work. This presents audiences with contemporaneous sounds of horror, violence and mystery commonly found in fantasy and sci-fi films today.

Chapter 4 discusses Act I, where the action occurs outside the walls of Ravenswood Castle. Early in the act, Enrico Ashton tells us of his hatred for the Ravenswood family. And when he finds out that his sister Lucia has fallen in love with Edgardo, the last surviving Ravenswood, Enrico is doubly enraged, for not only is Lucia in love with a mortal enemy but she is also destroying his plans to marry her off to a wealthy benefactor. We also learn in Act I that a ghost appeared to Lucia at the mouth of a fountain. Although we never see or hear the ghost, only what Lucia sings of it in her gothic-tinged cavatina ‘Regnava nel silenzio’ [‘At dead of night’], the ghost nonetheless haunts Lucia to such a degree that the aria’s melody returns in Act III. In addition to Lucia’s cavatina, Chapter 4 also discusses the famous love duet, ‘Verranno a te sull’aure’ [‘On the breeze will come to you my ardent sighs’]. The dramatic potency of this duet is quite profound as it parallels the betrayal of the ghost by her Ravenswood lover to Lucia’s betrayal in Act II. In short, the opening scenes of Act I reveal the power of vengeance and death that will engulf Lucia.

Louise Farrenc grew up in Paris during the Revolutionary period that saw the rise and fall of Napoleon Bonaparte and of different monarchies in France. These political changes impacted the Parisian musical scene and influenced Farrenc’s career and that of her friends and colleagues. Farrenc began her career as a virtuoso pianist-composer writing popular works like sets of variations on opera melodies and folksongs, but at the end of the 1830s, she changed her musical path. In the 1840s, like many composers in Central Europe at the time, she abandoned the virtuoso music of her youth to write chamber music with and without piano as well as three symphonies. She became known as a composer of serious music, an upholder of “German” traditions in France, and critics wrote about her compositions as representing the best new music of France. Her Nonet for Winds and Strings provides a culmination of the work she had done up to that point as a composer and performer devoted to finding a “middle way” between the Classical and Romantic traditions.

Chapter 2 places Lucia within the context of bel canto opera in the first half of the nineteenth century and discusses the dramaturgy, voice types and fixed vocal forms that are often found in this style of opera. In addition, going beyond the mere definition of ‘beautifully sung’, Chapter 2 argues that bel canto reflects an operatic work where the singer’s vocal agility (i.e., their coloratura) is the main vehicle that defines the character’s dramatic persona and climactic journey, from an unfortunate individual who, at first glance, is powerless to change their situation, to a fully rounded character with a certain heroic potential. Lucia is unique in this regard owing to the main character’s ability to shape-shift from a quiet and somewhat naïve lover and dutiful daughter to a murderer and usurper of family values. This malleability between a tasteful showpiece for the female voice and a tragic tour-de-force is one of the main factors that keeps Lucia in the repertoire today. Such versatility places Donizetti’s opera more in line with the psychologically rich and often violent works of Verdi and Puccini at the end of the century rather than the operatic works of the 1830s.

Salvadore Cammarano’s libretto is based on the historical novel The Bride of Lammermoor by Walter Scott and thus invites us to examine the real-life sources for Scott’s published work. In addition, as the Scott work was published in 1819, it follows on the heels of the more famous novel by Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus in 1818. Shelley’s gothic novel reveals a similar fascination with the sociopolitical environment of the early Enlightenment, as well as the spectres of madness, murder and the private lives of individuals caught up in vengeful forces beyond their control. Beyond the literary sources for the libretto, the opera also bears witness to the use of medical knowledge in defining the appearance and sound of a mentally ill young woman who has succumbed to hysteria. According to medical treatises of the time, hysteria was a disease that bore physical and emotional symptoms, the severity of which could be diagnosed with the relatively new invention of the stethoscope (1816). As Donizetti’s work premiered during a time of heightened listening, whereby audiences sought to hear within the notes of the music the inner world of the composer or the performer, the sound of pain or latent disease was now understood to reflect a lexicon of medically understood sounds that reveal themselves to the careful listener.

Chapter 5 discusses the events of Act II, which begins with Enrico alone in his study and ends with Lucia signing a marriage contract to marry Arturo, the only one who has the power to rekindle the Ashton family fortune. The dramatic pacing of this act quickens from one scene to the next, culminating in a spectacular finale. The main vocal number of the finale is the celebrated sextet, ‘Chi me frena in tal momento?’ [‘Who stops me at this moment?’], a slow vocal number that presents the sentiments of all the principal characters following the sudden arrival of Edgardo at the nuptial agreement ceremony. Donizetti builds the emotional energy of this finale into a musical maelstrom, all centred on the life of a young woman at her wit’s end. Perhaps this is the reason why the music of the sextet appeared in films more often than any other number in the score – a quintessential Italian vocal number in the midst of a cantabile–cabaletta format, with duelling melodies that tug at the emotional heartstrings of the listener.

Every composer makes distinct emotional, intellectual, and somatic demands on performers. These demands are written into the notes, asking our bodies to take particular shapes and execute specific, sometimes unique, actions, and our minds to understand particular ways of organising sound. I will suggest that our habits of thought regarding these demands are profoundly shaped by cultural constructions of the figure of the composer, as well as by more palpable influences such as current performance practices and lineages of teaching. Some of these habits of thought – especially ways of analysing the notes or understanding how a work fits into an oeuvre – are consciously learned and deployed. Some are less consciously absorbed from the conventional wisdom that attaches to composers concerning their biographies, characters, or the characteristics of their music.

It is the winter of 2021. Like many parents around the world, I have donned the new hat of home-school administrator. My children are high-school age, so they resist oversight (as expected), but I have come to see that they do not need much (who knew?). My role is simply to find suitable remote-learning resources. Again, I am pleasantly surprised, and relieved: high-school level art history, for example, seems to be an especially engaging subject online, given the potential for abundant accurately coloured images, flexible user interfaces, and up-to-date critical content. This happy realisation hits me as I notice that the unfamiliar hat has slipped off the side of my head: I am no longer surveying the resources for the kids’ sakes, but rather I am absorbed, of my own accord, in a lesson on Fauvism.