Chapter 15 THE Early Classical Period Opera AND Vocal Music PDF

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CHAPTER 15 | THE EARLY CLASSICAL PERIOD: OPERA AND VOCAL MUSIC Prelude ● Music reflected international culture that spread throughout Europe during the Enlightenment ○ Ideal musical style was made up of the best features of music from all nations ● Emulated form of speech General Characteristics of the New Style ● Periodicity ○ Frequent resting points break melodic flow into segments that relate to each other (as parts of a large whole) ○ Rather than being persistently repeated, musical ideas were articulated through distinct phrases ● Musical Rhetoric ○ Rhetoric → art of oration ○ Heinrich Christoph Koch wrote guide on melodic composition ■ Melody intelligible and capable of moving our feelings ● Harmony ○ Shaped by a series of weaker and stronger cadences ○ Change less frequently, but turn into pulsing chords ● Alberti Bass ○ Device that arpeggiated each of the underlying chords into a simple repeating pattern of short notes that produced a light chordal background ■ Set the melody in relief ● Form ○ Each segment was recognizable as beginning, middle, or ending statement ■ Made it possible to follow the logic of the entire form ● Emotional Contrasts ○ Feelings were constantly in flux, jostled by associations that might take unpredictable turns ● Form and Content ○ Composers began to introduce contrasting moods in movements/themes ○ However, content had to be expressed within universally valid forms Opera Buffa ● Full length work with six or more singing characters (sung throughout) ● Served moral purpose by alternating between comic cast and serious characters ● Intermezzo ○ Took the form of two or three musical interludes between the acts of a serious opera or spoken play ■ Plots were mostly situation comedies

● Pergolesi ○ Wrote La serva padrona which set off an aesthetic debate known as the “quarrel of the comic actors” ● La Serva Padrona ○ Styles that were usually reserved for the most dramatic situations in a serious opera were now used as comic effects ● Comic Opera ○ Responded to the widespread demand for naturalness during the latter half of the eighteenth century ○ Anticipated the trend toward musical nationalism ● French Opéra Comique ○ French counterpart of opera buffa ■ Began as a lowly form of popular entertainment ○ Used spoken dialogue instead of recitative ● English Ballad Opera ○ Consists mainly popular tunes set to new words ○ Rising popularity signaled general reaction against foreign opera (“exotic and irrational entertainment” ● German Singspiel ○ Revived by the success of the ballad opera Opera Seria ● Metastasio ○ Wrote heroic operas which were intended to promote morality through entertainment ● Arias ○ Recitative → promote action through dialogue ○ Aria → dramatic soliloquy ■ Main musical focus of the Italian opera seria is on the aria ● Demands of the Singers ○ Singers made arbitrary demandas on poets and composers without respect for dramatic or musical appropriateness ● New Features of Da Capo Arias ○ Artists started to express a series of moods (lighthearted to tragic) ○ Hasse was the most popular and successful opera composer ■ Became thoroughly Italian in his musical style Opera Reform ● Sought to make opera more “natural” → flexible in structure, deeply expressive, less laden with coloratura, more varied in other musical resources ● Nicoló Jommelli and Tommaso Traetta were important composers ● Christoph Willibald Gluck wanted to confine music to its proper function (serve poetry

and advance the plot) ○ Make the overture an integral part of the opera ○ Adapt the orchestra to the drama ○ Lessen the contrast between aria and recitative ● Gluck’s Orfeo ○ Music of “beautiful simplicity” ○ Molded the music to the drama ■ Intermingling recitatives, arias, dance, and choruses ● Gluck’s Other Operas ○ Mature style in Orfeo and Alceste, amalgamating Italian melodic grace, German seriousness, and the stately magnificence of the French tragédie lyrique ● Influence ○ Became models for the works of his immediate followers in Paris The New World ● Much early of American music grew out of religious traditions of the settlers ● Puritans ○ Worship music centered on metrical psalm singing ○ Availability of such singers became an invitation for composers to write new music Postlude ● Urge to entertain and reach a diverse audience led composers to simplify...