Final Review - Music 1A03 PDF

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This is a final review for the Music 1A03 Final Exam. All content is from the Revel textbook and contains information that will cover almost 80-90% of the content that comes out in the exam....

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Chapter 1: Elements of Music (A Brief Introduction) - Melody - A single line of notes heard in succession as a coherent unit - Note: smallest unit of music - Phrases: a musical unit that is often a component of a melody - Cadence: a comma or period in a sentence; signals the end of a unit - Melodic motion - Disjunct motion - Motion by leaps, especially large leaps - Conjunct motion - Smooth, stepwise motion with notes very close to each other - Scale: the notes of any given melody typically derive from the notes of a scale - Octave: a series of notes that moves stepwise and covers a complete span - Interval: the distance between each note - The scale provides the essential building blocks of a melody - Scales can begin and end on any pair of notes - In the standard system in use in Western music since 1600, there are 12 keys - There are two modes for each key - Major mode - Corresponds to the scale produced by singing (do-re-mi-fa-so) - Tends to convey mood of optimism and joy - Minor mode - Strikes listeners as darker, more somber, less optimistic - Dynamics - Used to indicate the volume of sound, ranging from very soft to very loud - Rhythm - Movement of music in time - Meter: the most basic framework of this temporal ordering - Triple Meter: one accented beat followed by two unaccented beats - Downbeat: the first note of each measure that receives a relatively strong accent - Duple Meter: only two beats in each measure - Harmony - The sound created by multiple notes played or sung simultaneously - Any song can be played in different harmonizations - Melody can be said to function horizontally - Harmony functions vertically - Chord: when three or more notes are played at the same moment - A melodic line is accompanied by a series of chords - Texture - A function of the number and general relationship of musical lines to one another - These textures range from thick to thin - Monophonic: performed as a single melodic line; can be a single soloist or a group of performers singing the same melody (unison) - Homophonic: this is when the melody is performed with a supporting

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accompaniment - Example: soloist sings the melody while an instrumental ensemble chorus provides musical support Polyphonic: when the melody is performed against another line of equal importance

Timbre - Color of music, the character of sound - Different instruments sound different due to the quality of a sound, apart from its pitch or volume - Pitch: specific frequency of sound and many instruments can play the same pitch - Register: the span of pitches it can create from high to low - Voices: the human sound - Human voice is divided into 4 basic registers - Soprano - Mezzo-soprano - Alto - Tenor - Baritone - Bass - Instruments of the Orchestra - Orchestra: a large ensemble that consists of several different kinds of instruments, usually of different families - The String Family - Stringed instruments are made of wood that are plucked or played with a bow - The Woodwind Family - Produce sound when a player blows across a hole or into a reed or double reed - Vibrations of the air cause the instrument to vibrate and produce sound - The Brass Family - Produce sound by vibrating lips into a cup-like metal mouthpiece - Percussion family - Produce sounds when they are shaken or struck Form - Structure of musical work, the way in which its individual units are put together - Form is based on 3 strategies - Repetition: Hello, hello. - Variation: Hello, hi. - Contrast: Hello. Goodbye. Word-Music Relationships - Textual and musical structures can match - Individual words or emotions can correspond to other musical elements Framework for Listening: Genre - The category of a work is determined by a combination of its performance

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medium and social function Hearing the elements together: Britten’s The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra - Showcases the principal instruments of the Orchestra - Enormous variety of timbre - Variations of a single theme

The Middle Ages - Middle Ages covered almost 1000 years in European history between the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 CE and the beginning of the renaissance in the early 15th century - Historians saw this as a period lying between antiquity and the Renaissance - Preserved repertory of medieval music is enormous - Music of the Middle Ages reflects many social functions (both sacred and secular) - Music and all other forms of art was seen as a means to serve God - For several hundreds of years, mostly monks and priests developed an enormous repertoire of plainchant - Plainchant: monophonic, unaccompanied melodies sung by a single voice or a choir in unison - Projected words of sacred liturgy in a manner that was once clear and moving - Secular courts needed music and composers provided songs about love, pain, heroism, and other emotions that make up the human condition - Polyphony: multiple independent voices sung or played together - Became increasingly important for both sacred and secular music from 10th century onward - We recognize in Medieval music, the effort of the composers to heighten the expressivity of the texts they set and to elevate music beyond language -

Music for Sacred Spaces - Largest structures of the Middle Ages were its churches, monuments to god, and physical testimonies to the power of the church itself - Meant to inspire, life the eye heavenward, to instruct mortals about their relationship to the divine - Stained glass windows in churches were similarly instructive - Depicted biblical scenes in ways that could be understood even by those who are illiterate - Sacred music fulfilled a similar function - Enhanced the texts beiing sung and inspire worshippers with the beauty of their sound - Plainchant was a perfect vehicle for projecting sacred texts with great clarity - Typical monk or nun attended church 9 times a day - 8 of these times were devoted to reading and singing of prayers, psalms, hymns - Most important service of the day was Mass - Ritual reenactment of Christ’s Last Supper with his disciples

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Many composers of early Middle Ages devoted special efforts to many chants of the Mass

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Music for Entertainment - Great cathedrals were symbols of divine power - Medieval castles were symbols of secular, worldly power - Medieval courts used art as a means of projecting their cultural power and impressing subject or visitors - Rulers competed for the best poets, singers, dancers - Wandering minstrels played once in a while when passing by town - Troubadours were poet-composers - Minnesingers sang and played songs about love, heroism, and pastoral life

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Music for Dancing - Dance was a highly significant social activity - Most dances have appeared to have been in group activities, similar to presentday line dancing - Most had a drummer providing base beat

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Information Technology 1.0 - Earliest medieval music was not notated until the 10th century - Earliest chant manuscripts show simple symbols indicating pitch up or down - Printing did not emerge until 15th century so written music was hard to come by - Ink and parchment were expensive items - Manuscripts were also not that accurate

Chapter 2: Hildegard von Bingen - Music exerts a powerful pull on the human spirit and medieval composers put this to good use - Hildegard recognized that the words in her song Play of Virtues can be made even more expressive when set to music - Director of an abbey of nuns in what is now Western Germany - Play of Virtues consists of confrontations between Satan and 16 Virtues - Satan never sings - When virtues sing together they sing a single chorus - Hildegard built a long tradition of liturgical plainchant - The music used in the daily services of the church - This repertory of chant grew out of Jewish services of worship, particularly the melodic recitation of the Psalms - Many texts of Christian liturgy were set to music by a series of anonymous composers who were monks and priests - The most important service of worship was the Mass (reenactment of the Christ’s Last Supper) - Exploring Play of Virtues

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The clarity of monophonic texture - Allowed for performers to project the text with clarity - Earliest preserved music from Middle Ages was monophonic - It came to be known as plainchant - Later to be known as Gregorian chant on grounds that Pope Gregory I was said to have written the bulk of it in late 6th century - Plainchant: projected text with clarity and melodic beauty which enhanced the meaning of words - Well suited for performance in large, resonant spaces of medieval churches - Medieval melody - This piece primarily moved in conjunct motion with the occasional leaps (disjunct motion) - Many phrases begin with a leap up and descend gradually - This type of melodic contour was typical to plainchants and is always related to the structure of the text being sung: a sentence of text almost always ends with a cadence (musical resting point) - Medieval composers had 4 additional modes other than major and minor mode - Medieval modes were Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, Ionian - Play of Virtues was based on the Dorian Mode (note of D) - Projecting words through music - Syllabic - One note per syllable - Ensures the words will be heard with special clarity - Melismatic - A syllable is sung to many notes - Provides variety and emphasizes keywords in a text - Entirely melismatic setting makes it difficult for listeners to understand every word - Entire syllabic would be boring - Hildegard used a mix of both - Also used high register to create thrilling effect - Free rhythm - Not really certain but it was either free or measured - A measured performance would adhere to a duple meter Hildegard von Bingen and Her Defense of Music - Entered Benedictine convent at the age of 7 and committed herself to a life in church when she was 16 - Early 30s experienced revelations - Considered herself a channel through which the Holy Spirit transmitted its message to humankind - She was the first to receive explicit permission from a pope to write on theology

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- Wrote about medicine, plants, lives of saints - Took her name from place of residence (Bingen) The Composer Speaks: Hildegard Defends the Practice of Music - She debated over what the impact of music on the human mind and spirit was - Church authorities forbade her nuns form singing in the church - She allowed excommunicated individuals to be buried o consecrated ground - Eventually was allowed to resume singing

Chapter 3: San Ildefonso Indians of New Mexico Eagle Dance - Chant is predominant form of music in Native North American Indian culture - Native American chanting heard primarily at powwows - Powwows: intertribal gatherings where NAs of mixed tribes express mutual bond and identity - Begins with a grand entry - All participants go into arena, flags are brought in, etc - Traditional dances: gourd dance, grass dance, jingle dance, fancy feather or eagle dance - Eagle dance portrays life cycle of the eagle (connecting link between heaven and earth) - Texture - All voices sing in unison, singing one melodic line together throughout - Rhythm - Change from free rhythm at the beginning to duple meter later on - Melody - Consistently downward contour of each melodic unit - Form - Repetition of large-scale sections of the chant - Texture: Monophony - It has a single melodic line - Sung by male voices in unison - The sounds of the percussion punctuate the rhythm of the chant rather than furnish a contrasting and independent rhythmic line - Almost all Native American music was monophonic and accompanied by percussion - Free versus Metered Rhythm - Opening section is free rhythm - Voices move fluidly over a rapid pulsation of even drumbeats - No pattern of strong or weak beats - Bulk of the chant is in duple meter with strong accents on the first beat of two or four beat units - (1-2 | 1-2 | 1-2 or 1-2-3-4 | 1-2-3-4) - The occasional change in tempo does not alter underlying rhythm - Melodic Contour - Melodic units of this chant move consistently downward - Each phrase begins on a relatively high not and moves to lower and lower

pitches and eventually a cadence on a low note Typical pattern of North American Indian chant melodies There are no “words” to this melody Native American chant makes use of vocables ( meaningless sung syllables, the sound of which is like a melodic instrument) Form: ABA - Melody A consists of two phrases with identical vocables - The melody occurs three times on slightly different pitches with same downward terraced contour - The same basic melodic unit begins on a slightly lower note each time repeated - The B melody consists of the shorter vocable “hey le ya” likewise sung twice - Melodic phrase is repeated, but the third time it varies slightly at the end and concludes with different vocables (hey ya ay) -

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Chapter 4: Plainchant Alleluia “Caro Mea” - Plainchant was an integral part of every service of worship in medieval church - Caro Mea was used during the Mass for the Feast of Corpus Christi - Celebrates Holy Sacrament - Body and Blood of Christ - Texts for the Propers of the Mass for the Feast of Corpus Christi all deal in some way with the ritual of Holy Sacrament - The text for Alleluia is taken from the Gospel of John 6:55-56 - These words foreshadow words that Jesus would say at the Last Supper the night before his crucifixion - This is when he distributed bread and wine to his disciples - Exploring Alleluia “Caro Mea” - Timbre: Soloist and Chorus - It is a responsorial chant - A song that alternates between a soloist and chorus - Soloist intones the opening word and the chorus responds by repeating the words and music of what the soloist sang - Texture: Monophony - Monophonic texture - There is never more than one melodic line - Chorus of men’s voices sing in unison - Melody - Melody has a “floating” quality to it that projects well across the large spaces of a church -

Word-Music Relationships: Singing Syllables - Reciting a text and singing it are two different things - Singing lengthens and extends each syllable and allows the singer to project words over a much larger space

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Melisma: singing many notes to one syllable - Singer can further embellish and emphasize the words to heighten the expression The register (range of pitches) of the melody can also set into relief keywords of the text The text and music of Alleluia section of the Mass change throughout the year - Always begins and ends with the word Alleluia

Chapter 5: Francesco Landini, “Behold, Spring” - Music was the food of love in the Middle Ages - It is a ballata for two voices - Landini’s setting captures the feeling of bodies in motion - Middle ages: age of courtly love - Knight declaring himself as servant of the lady he is wooing - Exploring Alleluia “Caro Mea” - The Richness of Polyphonic Texture - This work uses polyphony - Two or more voices of equal importance combine in a way where each voice retains its own identity - People drawn to - Upper line for acoustical reasons - Lower line is every bit as melodious - 8th or 9th century is when the earliest polyphonic work created - Added new lines above/below already existing plainchant melodies - Composers began writing polyphony against new, original melodies, extending technique beyond sacred music to include secular music - Rhythm: The Pulse of Meter - “Behold Spring” organized around a pattern of triple meter - Length of notes vary but stay in triple - Units of Melody - Mostly conjunct melodic lines are subdivided into smaller units, each of which ends with a cadence - Cadences act similarly to punctuations - Landini always cadences on the unison (both voices singing exactly the same note) - The two voices move in same rhythmic pattern and also diverge - But, always coincide before each cadence - Form: Turning Poetry into Music - In vocal music, form of texts shapes form of the work - This poetry has three verses known as strophes (stanzas) - First strophe is repeated at the end - Second strophe contrasts with others

- The musical form can be diagrammed as ABAA Word-Music Relationships: Syllabic versus Melismatic - The text is largely syllabic (one note per syllable) - Melismas (multiple notes per syllable) used occasionally - Melismas creates a welcome degree of variety, avoiding a monotonic setting Composer Profile: Francesco Landini (1325 - 1397) - Blinded by smallpox - Most famous and prolific Italian composer of the 14th century - Was an organist at church in Florence and a poet - Many of songs from middle ages featured poetry - He has written over 150 secular songs (⅓ of all Italian music survived from 14th century) - Had many talents (composer, performer, poet) - He played the organ ever so well - Was crowned with laurel by His Illustrious and King of Cyprus -

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Chapter 6: Guillaume de Machaut, “No More than One Man Could count the Stars” - Love songs are as old as songs themselves - In the Middle Ages, many songs adopted the perspective of courtly love - This song plays on the age-old idea that the poet cannot express his love more than he could count the stars in the sky, drops of rain, waves in the sea - Exploring “No More than One Man Could Count the Stars - Three-Voice Texture - This work is for 3 voices - Each voice presents a melodic line different from the other two - Machaut constantly explored possibilities of combing 2,3,4,5 independent voices to create polyphony - Uppermost voice is easiest to hear - Two lower voices move slightly slower and sing longer notes - The two voices create an underpinning for lead voice on top - A Melody Punctuated by Cadences - There are cadences within the course of the upper voice’s melody - They occur at the end of each important phrase in the poetry and end of the first verse - Entire verse consists of a single sentence so it is important for the phrases to stand out - AAB Form - AA and then a contrasting melodic idea (B) appears for the closing three lines of text and is not repeated - Composer Profile: Guillaume de Machaut - 1300-1377 - Both poet and composer writing the words as well as music to his secular songs - Spent much of life in service of monarchs and traveled widely throughout

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northern Europe Appointed a canon at the Cathedral of Reims in 1335 Machaut’s “Messe de Nostre Dame” is first known polyphonic setting of all sung movements of the Mass Ordinary by one composer He was first to write a complete set of multivoiced movements to be sung in a service Machaut Manuscripts was copied (2100 leaves)

Chapter 7: Alfonso el Sabio Songs to the Virgin Mary, no. 147, “The Talking Sheep” - Little music for instruments survives form the Middle Ages - Often performed vocal lines on instruments if not enough singers were available - Jazz music still commonly arrange songs with words for instruments alone - Alfonso el Sabio ruled the Kingdom of Castile and Leon on the Iberian Peninsula - The Cantigas: collection of more than 400 songs preserved in several different manuscripts - One of these sources housed in the library of a monastery in Escorial, Spain - Exploring “The Talking Sheep” - Timbre: The Sound of Double Reeds - Shawm is a double-reed instrument because the player blows through tiny space between pair of cane strips - Shawm is used widely in Northern Africa and the Middle East - Largely disappeared from western Europe by end of Renaissance - Closest relative of shawm is the oboe - The drum in this piece is played with hands - Form: Repetition and Contrast - Performance begins with intro where players are warming up - No clear melody - One musician holds steady note underneath called drone bass - The shawms launch into the first two short melodic units A and B - It is repeated and contrasted - Towards the end, A is played several times - Three Kinds of Texture - Monophony - Play together in unison - Homophony - One/two instruments plays melody and other a drone bass - P...