Nabokov, Nicolas [Nikolay]

Nottingham.

City in the English East Midlands. Records in the Corporation Archives beginning in 1464 show town waits, numbering three to seven men, appearing regularly (except during 1647–53 and 1672–1704) until 1836, when the office was discontinued. The records of the chamberlains of Nottingham for 1558–92 and 1614–40 show payments to the waits of 35 other towns for visits to Nottingham. Local patrons of music included Sir Henry Pierrepont (1546–1615) and Sir Francis Willoughby (c1547–96), who built Wollaton Hall near Nottingham, and whose Lute Book, compiled 1560–85, contains mostly anonymous English music. The Wollaton Hall organ was probably built in the second half of the 17th century. Records of music at the parish church of St Mary the Virgin date back to the late 16th century, and its musicians continue to play an active role in the city's musical life.

The earliest known public concerts were held during race week in 1707, 1709 and 1726. A theatre founded on St Mary's Gate in the early 1760s, also known as the ‘Musick Hall’, was a venue for concerts and musical entertainments. During the 1760s musical societies gave winter seasons of subscription concerts. William Hanbury promoted a music festival in 1763; the Nottingham General Hospital held an annual benefit festival from 1782, the year it opened. Samuel Wise (?1730–1801) was organist of St Mary's from 1755 and also a composer. From 1756 to 1787 he promoted annual concerts at the Ladies' Assembly Rooms on Low Pavement and in 1772 organized a music festival at the St Mary's Gate Hall. A cantata by Henry Hargrave, On Wedlock, addressed to the ladies of Nottingham, was performed in 1763.

The composer, violinist and conductor Henry Farmer (1819–91), author of popular violin tutors, published and sold music in the High Street from about 1840. Mary Bowman-Hart's Musical Guild offered singing classes to working-class men and women in the 1880s and had 400 members in 1886. The Nottingham Empire Theatre of Varieties, opened in 1898, featured leading music-hall performers and was open until 1958; it was demolished in 1969. The Albert Hall (cap. 2550) opened in 1876 as a concert hall and in 1902 became the Albert Hall Methodist Mission. It burnt down in 1906 and was rebuilt in 1909 (cap. 1400), then altered and refurbished in 1987–8 to form a Great Hall (cap. 700) and two smaller rooms. The Royal Concert Hall (cap. 2496), opened in 1983, is the northern base of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra; the adjacent Theatre Royal, opened in 1876, houses Opera North's touring productions. The Midland Sinfonia (renamed the English Sinfonia in 1966), was founded in 1961 by Neville Dilkes, and was based in Nottingham until 1984 when it moved to Sandy in Bedfordshire. Formed in 1979, the Holme Pierrepont Opera Trust produced early English operas at the nearby Holme Pierrepont Hall, becoming in 1985 the touring company Opera Restor'd.

In 1846 the Mechanics Institution formed a Vocal Music Club, later the Sacred Harmonic Society. The present Nottingham Harmonic Society was established in 1856 by Alfred Lowe and was conducted from 1897 to 1902 by Henry Wood. The Nottingham Music Club (founded 1923) presents an annual chamber music season, and the Nottingham Bach Society (founded 1954) regularly performs large-scale choral works. The Nottingham Sinfonietta was founded in 1974, and renamed the Nottingham PO in 1985. There are two annual festivals: the Nottingham Festival (founded 1970) and the competitive Nottingham Music and Drama Festival (established 1902). BBC Radio Nottingham (established 1968) broadcasts a wide range of music. The University department of music, originally part of the department of education, became separate in 1925. From 1956 to 1982 the Nottingham University Opera Group produced a series of lesser-known operas, including the British premières of Dvořák's Dimitrij (1979) and Berwald's Drottningen av Golconda (1982). In 1994 the department moved to the University Arts Centre which includes the Djanogly Recital Hall.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

W.L. Summer: ‘The Organs of St Mary's Parish Church, Nottingham’, The Organ, xvii (1937–8), 30–37

W.L. Woodfill: Musicians in English Society from Elizabeth to Charles I (Princeton, NJ, 1953)

M. Tilmouth: ‘A Calendar of References to Music in Newspapers Published in London and the Provinces, 1660–1719’, RMARC, no.i (1961)

E.D. Mackerness: A Social History of English Music (London, 1964), 203 only

R. Iliffe and W. Baguley: Victorian Nottingham: a Story in Pictures, xii (Nottingham, 1974)

D.C. Price: Patrons and Musicians of the English Renaissance (Cambridge, 1981), 106 only, 142–51

S. Bicknell: ‘The Organs in Wollaton Hall’, BIOS Journal, vi (1982), 43–55

R. Evans: Music in Eighteenth-Century Nottingham (thesis, U. of Loughborough, 1983)

M. Tilmouth: ‘The Beginnings of Provincial Concert Life in England’, Music in Eighteenth-Century England: Essays in Memory of Charles Cudworth, ed. C. Hogwood and R. Luckett (Cambridge, 1983), 1–17

A. Abbott and J. Whittle: The Organs and Organists of St Mary's Church, Nottingham (Beeston, 1993)

ROSEMARY WILLIAMSON

Notturno

(It.: ‘nocturnal’).

Term used in the 18th century mainly for works performed outdoors, not in the evening but at night (generally around 11 p.m.). In Salzburg Mozart used the term as the title of his Serenata notturna k239 for double orchestra and his Notturno k286/269a for four orchestras: Hausswald suggested that he preferred this term for works elaborately scored, using ‘Nachtmusik’ for simpler ones (such as the Trio k266/271f and Eine kleine Nachtmusik k525; see Nachtmusik). The form is related to the Serenade, as the style and sequence of movements in k239 and 286 make clear. Mozart later applied the term to vocal works, the notturni for three voices and wind instruments (k436–9, 346/439a (incomplete) and perhaps 549). For Michael Haydn, on the other hand, the title signified a soloistic work; his two string quintets of 1773 (st187/p108 and st189/p109) are both authentically called ‘Notturno’.

Although Haydn’s eight notturni of 1790 in two to four movements (hII:25*–32*), originally written for the King of Naples and later arranged for the London concerts which he organized with J.P. Salomon, should possibly be considered orchestral pieces, they are chamber-like in character; set for solo instruments, the notturno became popular among composers of southern Germany, Austria, Bohemia, northern Italy and Paris (including Boccherini, Bonnay, Johann Brandl, Camerloher, Ferrari, Ignaz Fränzl, Gyrowetz, Michael Haydn, Holzbauer, Kammel, Kirmayer, Kreubé, Maschek, M.L. Neubauer, Paluselli, Piombanti, Polz, Pugnani, G.B. Sammartini, Vanhal, Anton Wranitzky). Chamber works bearing the title ‘notturno’ either had more than five movements, like the serenade, or two to four movements, like the Divertimento. In England the term usually signified a two-movement work, the first in moderate tempo (often in march rhythm), the second a slow minuet (for example J.C. Bach’s Six Trios or Notturnos for two violins and viola or bass, op.2 (recte op.4), c1765).

The later Nocturne for solo piano had no direct connection with the notturno.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

H. Hoffmann: ‘Über die Mozartschen Serenaden und Divertimenti’, Mozart-Jb 1929, 59–80

G. Hausswald: Mozarts Serenaden (Leipzig, 1951/R)

C. Bär: ‘Zum Begriff des “Basso” in Mozarts Serenaden’, MJb 1960–61, 133–55

R. Hess: Serenade, Cassation, Notturno und Divertimento bei Michael Haydn (diss., U. of Mainz, 1963)

Gesellschaftsgebundene instrumentale Unterhaltungsmusik des 18. Jahrhunderts: Eichstätt 1988

HUBERT UNVERRICHT/CLIFF EISEN