The guittar, now commonly known as the ‘English guittar’, is a small plucked instrument which was widely used in the British Isles from the middle of the 18th to the beginning of the 19th centuries. Appearing in a variety of shapes and sizes, and having essentially wire strings and an open major tuning, it was more related to the cittern, and quite different from the Spanish guitar. Being cheap, elegant, and relatively easy to play, the guittar quickly became popular among amateur musicians, especially upper-class ladies. In addition, the guittar was at the forefront of mechanical and technical invention, and especially the later types of the instrument were often fitted with several innovative devices that found use on other contemporary or successor instruments. This thesis refines the results of past research concerning the guittar by undertaking a critical review of the relevant literature, and by introducing new data collected during the detailed examination and comparison of numerous surviving guittars in museums and private collections. The results are supported by the investigation of a wide variety of primary sources, including literary references, newspaper advertisements, patent records, legal documents, music scores, and iconographical evidence. The research has led to the establishment of a methodology for the documentation and classification of extant guittars using a prototype template, and to the creation of various reference databases for the future study of the instrument. This thesis is the first complete study of the guittar in the British Isles during the second half of the 18th century. It presents the most important facts and figures related to the origins and development of the instrument, while documenting and highlighting its main historical, musical and technical features, with emphasis on aspects of design, construction and decoration. Additionally, this thesis examines the guittar’s social and cultural role as a predominantly domestic female instrument, and also brings to light new interesting details about the establishment of a guittar trade within and outside the British Isles. Finally, it accounts the main reasons for the decline of the guittar and also identifies its significance in the wider fields of musicology and organology, indicating possible relations and influences with other contemporary musical instruments across Europe.

This thesis explores the concerns of mid-eighteenth century naval captains through the careers of Captain Thomas Burnett and the cohort of thirty five officers who were posted captain in 1757 soon after the start of the Seven Years' War. A subsidiary cohort, that of the 129 lieutenants who were, like Burnett, first commissioned in 1744 is used as a control against which to measure the statistical worth of the smaller cohort. Examination of the day to day concerns of the captains has been made possible through the rich and varied resource of their letters to the Admiralty, which have hitherto been little used as a source by historians. Despite the formality of these letters not merely the concerns but also the personalities and characters of the writers are vividly conveyed. After tracing the career of Thomas Burnett this thesis examines the 1757 cohort and its progression to the rank of master and commander. At this point the correspondence with the Admiralty begins. The influences, 'interest' and formative experiences behind their appointments are considered. The duties of the mid-eighteenth century captain are outlined, as their relationship with the Admiralty is analysed and the extent to which they were kept under strict Admiralty control by precedent and financial scrutiny is demonstrated. All aspects of manning are shown to dominate the daily concerns of captains. The extent to which 'interest' or chance gave them the opportunity to display their professional expertise and increase their standing within the active naval corps is weighed. Tracking this cohort beyond the war into the years of peace and subsequent wars has revealed the extent to which the timing of being made post captain was crucial and that 'interest' was more significant than merit in accelerating and promoting active careers.

En undersökning i det kvinnligt konstruerade könet och dess framställning pastorala porträtt under frihetstidens Sverige. Genom en undersökning av den dåtida kontexten och analys av tre kvinnliga porträtt undersöks framställningen av kvinnan som ett ideal. / An analysis of the female constructed gender and it's display in the pastoral portrait during the first half of the 18th century in Sweden. By looking at the kontext of the time an through analyzing three portraits the matter of woman as an ideal will be explored.

Dorothea Herbert was an Irish provincial writer who did not publish during her lifetime. Only three of her manuscripts are now extant: a collection of poetry, Poetical Eccentricities Written by an Oddity (1793), an illustrated memoir, Retrospections of an Outcast (1806) and a Journal which covers the years 1806-7. All three manuscripts were missing for long periods and some doubts as to their existence and authenticity made many scholars reluctant to study her work. There is almost no documented historical evidence of her life and our only access to her is through her writing. The internal evidence of her writing suggests that by 1806 she was suffering from a serious mental illness. Nevertheless, her works reveal a relatively hidden world of literary practice in Ireland in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Studied alongside the manuscripts and printed works of a range of contemporary writers, Herbert’s extant manuscripts uncover a complex and informal literary culture. This textual world is dependent on print culture but operates independently of it in a closed system of gift-giving and manuscript circulation. In this thesis I explore the influence of print culture on the writing and reading practices of Herbert and her contemporaries. The thesis is divided into five chapters which examine: the history of Herbert’s manuscripts and those of her contemporaries, their writing as material practice, the cultures in which they read the writing and circulation of manuscripts and the history of the print trade in Ireland in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Zu den bevorzugten Kunstgattungen gehörte in der Klassik auch in der Slowakei die Musik. Der kosmopolitische Charakter der Musikkunst sicherte die Kontinuität beim Übergang des Mäzenatentums vom Adel auf das Bürgertum (bei fortdauernder Mäzenatenrolle der Kirche) auch in jener Zeit, als die Übernahme des Mäzenatentums durch das Bürgertum bei uns Stagnation, sogar den Niedergang anderer Kunstgattungen zur Folge hatte. Zeugnis von der bedeutenden Position der Musik im Leben der zeitgenössischen Gesellschaft in der Slowakei und in ganz Ungarn gibt die Vielzahl an erhaltenen Noten.

This dissertation is an analysis of two of the six sonatas for organ using rhetorical-musical prescriptions from seventeenth and eighteenth-century German theorists. It undertakes to examine the way in which lines are built by application of figurae, to observe the design of each of the six movements, and to draw conclusions concerning implications for performance based upon the use of figurae in specific contexts. The period source on melodic design and the ordering of an entire movement based upon principles of rhetoric is Johann Mattheson's Per volkommene Capelmeister (1739). Guidelines for categorization of figures derive from the twentieth-century writers Timothy Albrecht, George Buelow, Lena Jacobson, and Peter Williams. Chapter I provides justification for the rhetorical approach through a brief description of the rise of the process as applied to composition during the Baroque period by relating Bach's own familiarity with the terminology and processes of rhetorical prescription, and by describing the implications for performance in observing the sonatas from the rhetorical viewpoint. Chapter II deals with the process of composition by rhetorical prescription in (1) the invention of the subject and its figural decoration and (2) the elaboration of the subject through the sixpart discourse of an entire movement. Specific figures of decoration are defined through examples of their use within the context of the sonatas. Chapter III constitutes the analysis of the six sonata movements. Chapter IV reinforces the justification of this type of analysis. The figures, as aids for inflection and punctuation, affect decisions concerning articulation of events and assist in effecting convincing performance.

The present study investigates the failure of the Enlightenment to liberate Englishwomen from the prejudices society and law imposed upon them. Classifying social classes by lifestyle, the roles of noble, middleclass, and criminal women, as well as the attitudes of contemporary writers of both sexes, are analyzed. This investigation concludes that social mores limited noblewomen to ornamental roles and condemned them to exist in luxurious boredom; forced middle-class women to emulate shining domestic images which contrasted sharply with the reality of their lives; subjected women of desperate circumstances to a criminal code rendered erratic and inconsistent by contemporary attitudes, and impelled the Enlightenment to invent new defenses for old attitudes toward women.

Studies of eighteenth-century French musical aesthetics have traditionally focused on questions of taste treated in the critical literature of the day. During the first half of the century, however, certain French writers were dealing with aesthetics in the stricter sense of the word, proposing theories of beauty that suited existing philosophical values. The treatises in which these ideas were set forth--Jean-Pierre de Crousaz' Traité du beau, Jean-Baptiste DuBos' Réflexions critiques sur la poësie et sur la peinture, Yves-Marie André's Essai sur le beau, and Charles Batteux' Les Beaux arts réduits à un même principe--are among the first learned writings to present the musical experience in something other than a mathematical or pedagogical light. This study investigates not only the role music played in these theories of beauty, but also the methodological problems inherent in translating this data into historical information.

This study is a translation of and commentary on an eighteenth-century treatise written by Juan Miguel Urtasun de Yrarraga. Its purpose is to contribute to the field of knowledge of eighteenth-century Spanish materials, making an original work of that era accessible to the reader unfamiliar with the Spanish language.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal. / Pour respecter les droits d'auteur, la version électronique de cette thèse ou ce mémoire a été dépouillée, le cas échéant, de ses documents visuels et audio-visuels. La version intégrale de la thèse ou du mémoire a été déposée au Service de la gestion des documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.