This chapter challenges the idea that the nineteenth-century association of Wales with ‘song’ is an entirely true representation of Welsh music in that period. While the continuous role of instrumental music dating back to the Middle Ages has a less conspicuous presence in narratives about Welsh music, this should not dilute its importance. While the harp - especially the triple harp - was prominent in popular traditions from the eighteenth century, other instruments were in use in both urban and rural contexts. In concert music, Welsh-born performer-composers such as Brinley Richards (piano) and John Thomas (harp) maintained careers in England while developing international reputations: Richards studied in Paris and published many compositions in Germany, while Thomas toured widely in Europe and Russia. The early years of the twentieth century saw Welsh instrumentalists studying and performing in Hungary and Germany; this was before the professionalisation of Welsh music in the twentieth century and the establishment of the world’s first national youth orchestra in 1945. The chapter is restricted to instruments (along with their repertoires and practices) that had a distinctively Welsh dimension. After its general introduction it comprises three sections: the harp and other string instruments; wind instruments; and twentieth-century manifestations of a distinctive type of instrumental revival.From the 1970s, the revival of folk music in Wales featured an increasing emphasis on instrumental performance, taking inspiration from the revivals in other Celtic countries. Jazz has also made an important - albeit less widely acknowledged - contribution to the range of instrumental music in Wales.

Britten’s primary role was as a composer, but he possessed a unique ability to assemble musicians for performances which was second only to his skill at arranging notes for his compositions. His choices were impeccable in both activities. When he combined these — a specific piece composed for a specific performer — he produced music of startling originality. This chapter contextualises the instrumental music he wrote for each of the Aldeburgh Festivals that he personally directed. The focus is on select performers, many of whom function as subtexts in the music Britten created, and the premiere performances that helped to shape the festival season, including details of the original encounter that lead to the creation of the work and the collaborative process that produced such exceptional music.

Chapter 4 considers the significance of embodied encounters between musicians, listeners and musical instruments. It takes as its focus the experience of touch in musical encounters, charting the sensory intensities and eroticism inherent in fin-de-siècle literary depictions of touching musical instruments and scores and in feeling the transmission of the material touch of music in performance. The chapter examines encounters between bodies and musical instruments in Richard Marsh’s ‘The Violin’, Forster’s ‘Dr Woolacott’ and the anonymous pornographic novel Teleny. Tactile proximity between musician and instrument sees the musical instrument transformed in these texts into a technology for the transmission of touch. The experience of piano playing in Forster’s A Room with a View with Woolf’s The Voyage Out similarly suggests that tactile interaction between the body and the musical instrument allows for marginalized subjects to more fully inhabit a sense of their desiring bodies. Finally, in Vernon Lee’s writing about the archival remains of eighteenth-century music, her sensuous affective connection with the historical past is articulated through a wish for restored tactile contact.

The origins of even familiar objects are frequently mired in mystery. The violin is one such example. Nevertheless, we have recently learned much more about the evolution of the violin over time – specifically, its overall shape and the length of its twin sound-holes. The research yielding this increased understanding focused on the makers of the violin, its so-called luthiers, thus putting behavior prominently into the spotlight. Each of the two studies under consideration proposed provocative parallels between structural changes in the violin and the Law of Natural Selection. But, the more appropriate analysis rests on the Law of Effect shaping the behavior of the luthiers. What is revealed is, first, that increasing the length of the sound-holes amplified the acoustic power of the violin, thus leading luthiers to lengthen the sound-holes; and, second, that the aesthetic tastes of their customers led luthiers to modify the overall shapes of their violins.

Throughout his lifetime, Brahms accompanied dozens of singers in a variety of settings, ranging from huge public halls to his friends’ homes, and conducted many others in choirs. Some of those working relationships were one-offs, arising from the widespread practice of including a set of piano-accompanied songs within most concerts and the expediency and cost-effectiveness of using local talent. Others were deep, enduring partnerships; the timbres and interpretative approaches of those singers are surely ingrained in his vocal music. Overall, Brahms’s singers were generally not part of the international operatic elite associated with Verdi, Bizet and Massenet. Figures like Julius Stockhausen (1826–1906) and Raimund von Zur-Mühlen (1854–1931)were almost exclusively concert singers and, later on, teachers. Most hailed from German-speaking territories, reflecting Brahms’s own concert career.

Throughout his career, Brahms forged significant professional and personal relationships with a variety of instrumentalists, ranging from talented amateurs to highly accomplished professionals. The violinist Joseph Joachim (1831–1907), cellist Robert Hausmann (1852–1909) and clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld (1856–1907) numbered among Brahms’s closest friends. Through their performances and interactions, these men inspired the composer and gave him concrete advice about writing idiomatically for their respective instruments. Because many of their exchanges took place while making music at the homes of friends, we will never know the full extent of the impact that they had on Brahms. Nevertheless, letters, diaries, personal recollections of friends and the few remaining manuscripts revealing Brahms’s creative process, all provide us with a window into the multifaceted nature of their influence.