Since the formal establishment of the Society for Eighteenth-Century Music in 2001 the group has grown steadily, continually embracing new perspectives in its biennial conferences and sponsoring collaborative projects with other scholarly organizations. The 2010 meeting offered a broad overview of eighteenth-century studies ranging from the familiar (J. S., W. F. and C. P. E. Bach, Vinci, Handel, Joseph and Michael Haydn, Paisiello and Mozart) to the unfortunately overlooked (Graupner, Endler, Agrell, Campra, Hoffmann and Attwood).

The first day of papers, comprised of four sessions, featured a balance of instrumental and theatrical genres and numerous points of contact between contextual studies and detailed analyses of specific works. The opening session, entitled ‘Genres and Developments: Narrative, Connections, Topoi’, was initiated by Pierpaolo Polzonetti (University of Notre Dame) and his detailed reading of Ovid's Metamorphoses as a narrative model for Haydn's instrumental music, especially the String Quartet Op. 74 No. 2. The careful music analysis concentrated on large-scale organization and unfolding thematic transformations, positing not a programme for this work, but rather a narrative technique. In the meticulously researched and illustrated second paper, Joanna Cobb Biermann (University of Alabama) questioned the notion that the Italian sinfonia was a fundamental source for later symphonic developments in the eighteenth century. Focusing on the Darmstadt Kapellmeister Graupner, his deputy Engler and on Agrell, the Kapellmeister in Kassel, Biermann demonstrated the continuing development of the suite-symphony in German lands, emphasizing formal changes and idiomatic solo writing for brass and winds, generally not seen in the Italian genre. Along similar lines, Sterling Murray (West Chester University) presented a thought-provoking consideration of the instrumental romanza, exemplified in the works of Antonio Rosetti, the Kapellmeister at the Wallerstein court of Bavaria. With reference to Rosetti's extant romances, fifty-five in all, Murray outlined the main characteristics of this genre based on an in-depth analysis of style, form, character and aesthetic intent.

The second session was devoted to Handel and the latter stage of his career in London, which continued to bridge the stage and concert hall. Andrew Shyrock (Boston University) opened the session with a philological consideration of the role of the messenger in Handel's dramatic works of the mid-1740s, positing a new dramatic archetype in the composer's oeuvre (through linguistic analyses, consideration of the musical settings and Handel's specific revisions). Joseph Darby (Keene State College) revisited the programming of Handel's Twelve Grand Concertos. Through numerous archival sources (newspapers, manuscripts and word books), Darby detailed Handel's practice of aligning specific concertos and oratorios, demonstrating that the concertos were an important element in Handel's concert programming, not simply intermissions or enticements.

Conference participants were treated to a post-lunch performance by the Grenser Trio (Ed Matthew, historical clarinet, Dongsok Shin, fortepiano, and Carlene Stober, cello). Their programme offered direct links to the conference, featuring three romances by Rosetti along with the composer's Sonata in G major for Piano. Beethoven's Seven Variations on ‘Bei Männern welche Liebe fühlen’, WoO 46, and the Trio in B flat major were balanced by Jean Xavier Lefèvre's Clarinet Sonata No. 4, making for a delightful afternoon of eighteenth-century music.

The third session on Friday afternoon was devoted to the theme of ‘Contrasts and Transformations’, returning the focus to instrumental genres. David Schulenberg (Wagner College) presented detailed readings of compositions and sketches by W. F. and C. P. E. Bach and made apt distinctions between the renowned offspring of the Leipzig Cantor. Of particular interest was Friedemann's ‘theatrical, virtuoso approach’ and debt to Hasse; the audience was also treated to Schulenberg's considerable skills at the fortepiano when illustrating the pieces under discussion. Charles Gower Price (West Chester University) discussed another undervalued keyboardist of the eighteenth century, William Babell, and his transcriptions of two arias from Handel's Rinaldo, ‘Lascia ch’io pianga' and ‘Vo’ far guerra'. Peter Heckl (Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst, Graz) concluded the session by examining Joseph Heidenreich's adaptation for winds of Mozart's Quintet for Horns and Strings, k407. Heckl was able to establish that Heidenreich's two arrangements were the earliest adaptations of Mozart's quintet and therefore provide fresh insights into the lost original composition. The final session of the day returned to stage genres and the city of Naples. The significant discovery of a new scene from Vinci's intermezzo Albino e Plautilla was presented by Keith Johnston (University of Toronto). After establishing the source for Saddumene's libretto as Molière's Le bourgeois gentilhomme, Johnston identified a selection of comic topoi and Vinci's sensitivity and expertise in rendering them musically. My presentation (Anthony R. DelDonna, Georgetown University) focused on the Paisiello/Lorenzi/Galiani collaboration on Socrate immaginario (1775) as an expression of the continuing fascination with and academic study of classical society and culture that pervaded southern Italy at the end of the century.

The second day of the conference began with a new initiative by the Society: doctoral candidates presented their projects in brief and posed questions to the scholars in attendance on issues that they confronted in the course of their research. The first formal session of the day subsequently focused on ‘Venue and Context in French and Italian Opera’. Anita Hardemann (University of Western Ontario) provided a portrait of the cultivation of the tragédie musique outside of Paris, focusing on the successful Danchet–Campra collaboration on Hésione (1700). By tracing its circulation in Lyon, Brussels and finally in Paris, Hardemann demonstrated the genre's malleability and the means by which it was perpetuated. Shifting the geographic focus to Eszterháza, Erin Jerome (Brandeis University) discussed Haydn's La canterina, focusing on the composer's subtle yet carefully crafted and effective satire of tragedy and its all-too-familiar conventions. The final paper was a contribution in absentia by Roland Pfeiffer (German Historic Research Institute, Rome), read by Margaret Butler (University of Florida), on two private manuscript collections in Rome. Working from the original catalogue prepared by Friedrich Lippmann, Pfeiffer took an inventory of the genres represented, primarily the Roman intermezzo and tragedy.

The final session on Saturday afternoon made a foray into eighteenth-century performance practice and compositional techniques. Evan Cortens (Cornell University) delineated Bach's multi-faceted use of the organ in his cantatas, isolating distinguishing traits of the composer's approach to the obbligato organ in this genre. Mathieu Langlois (Cornell University) presented detailed analyses of selected Haydn string quartets to illuminate their introductory tonal play, which led to a consideration of broader eighteenth-century notions of unity and variety. The final paper of the session by Edward Green (Manhattan School of Music) revived interest in the topic of Mozart as pedagogue by examining the Ployer/Attwood notebooks. Green's fascinating revelation that Mozart instructed his pupils in so-called ‘chromatic completion’ brought into focus compositional techniques in evidence in Le nozze di Figaro and the piano concertos for Barbara Ployer.

The closing day of the conference was initiated by a session organized around ‘Perspectives on Landscape’. Estelle Joubert (Dalhousie University) considered the critical role of natural landscapes in Die Zauberflöte. Based on close readings of the libretto, related fairytales and other singspiels, Joubert demonstrated how landscape not only marks time within the drama, but also clarifies Tamino and Pamina's journey towards knowledge, serving as a ‘territorial demarcation’ between Sarastro and the Queen of the Night. Paul Moulton (The College of Idaho) offered an intriguing investigation of Scottish songbooks, which included the contributions of figures such as Haydn and Pleyel; he put forward the case that the collections were also received as decorative objects, related to the popular landscape paintings of the era. The texts, music and engravings in the songbooks promoted an image of Scottish identity and locality to suit ‘sophisticated’ audiences on the Continent. The final session consisted of three papers on ‘Sacred and Secular in Late Eighteenth-Century Vienna and Beyond’. Lisa de Alwis (University of Southern California) addressed an important lacuna in contemporary knowledge of late eighteenth-century Viennese theatrical practices through her recovery of Karl Hägelin's detailed instructions on how to censor the dramatic stage – a source long thought to have been lost. De Alwis made the case that nineteenth-century sources were selective at best and at worst often omitted crucial information in their analyses of these directives. Allan Badley (University of Auckland) considered the sacred works of Leopold Hofmann, Kapellmeister at St Stephen's from 1772 to 1793. Drawing on an array of sources, Badley focused on the authentic works of Hofmann that have been excluded from the accepted lists of his oeuvre. Examining stylistic evidence and multiple extant copies of individual works, he argued that the Viennese Kapellmeister had a wider sphere of influence than has previously been assumed. In the concluding paper, Edgardo Raul Salinas (Columbia University) considered Beethoven's self-proclaimed ‘wholly new style’ and its links to the early romantic philosophy of irony. In particular, Salinas concentrated on the three piano sonatas Op. 31, detailing how certain sections undo the conventions of sonata form and thus imply ironic self-awareness.

The diversity of the SECM biennial conferences and their attention to new modes of inquiry and scholarship were often in evidence during this meeting in Brooklyn – perhaps the most successful yet. The Society has established itself as an important voice in the discipline and a welcoming venue for scholars, whether well established or just starting out, to share research and discuss larger trends in the study of eighteenth-century musical culture.