Music Hum Study guide PDF

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Final study guide for the whole course with vocab and definitions. ...

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Music Hum Study Guide-Midterm Hildegard von Bingen, “Columba aspexit” ● Plainchant/Gregorian chant ● Middle Ages ● Plainchant is a genre of European sacred music that was sung regularly in Catholic Church services (collectively known as the liturgy) from the earliest days of the Christian church up to the mid-20t h century.  In the medieval era, the singing of plainchants was central to the two main observances of the Christian liturgy: the Mass, a daily commemoration the Last Supper and the death and resurrection of Jesus, and the Divine Office, a collection of eight other services performed throughout the day. Especially for those living in monasteries, worshipping God was a round-the-clock affair, and music was an important aid to worship. ●

Compositionally, the most distinguishing features of plainchant are a monophonic texture, free rhythmic quality, and Latin sacred text. As for performance, plainchants were usually sung by a choir, sometimes alternating with a soloist, in between spoken parts of the service. The particular plainchant you will listen to for homework is one of the earliest chants with an attributed composer, the German nun and mystic Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179 CE). Unlike Hildegard’s chants, the notated sources for which date from the lifetime of their composer, the vast majority of Gregorian chants were part of a longstanding oral tradition, passed down for centuries without the aid of writing until scribes began to copy them in the 9t h century. 

Raimbaut de Vaqueiras, “Kalenda maia” ● a troubadour song composed in the 12th century  ● Troubadour song: genre of secular (non- religious) monophony that flourished from the 11t h to  13t h centuries  in southern France and northern Italy. ● Troubadours wrote poetry according to the literary tradition of courtly love, a code of romantic behavior that prized chivalry and nobility. In a typical troubadour poem, the speaker offers his knightly (and, by implication, amorous) services to a noblewoman, usually married and of higher status than he. The woman then either accepts his services, such that he becomes her vassal, or, more often than not, rejects him. ● Troubadours wrote their poetry in the language Old Occitan, which shares features of French, Spanish, and Italian.  r the story behind the composition of a ● The excerpt is what is known as a razo, o song.

Perotin, “Viderunt omnes” ● an organum on a plainchant for the feast of Christmas ● with text. ● four independent vocal parts ● Typical of all organum, the lowest voice in Viderunt omnes s ings a plainchant borrowed from the corpus of Gregorian chant, but slowed down to a glacial pace. ● this lowest voice is the quiet “drone” in the background. ● the upper three voices dance and dart around each other in quick, repetitive rhythms, as polyphonic adornment to the sacred text.

Background on Notre Dame Polyphony: music composed in Paris in the later middle ages. oth sacred and secular genres. ● organum: a genre of sacred music practiced at Notre-Dame Cathedral in the 12th  and 13t h centuries. Organum is the earliest surviving genre of polyphonic music in the western tradition. Like plainchant, organum was performed as part of the liturgy, though it was reserved for special feast days such as Easter and Christmas, due to its compositional grandiosity. Organum flourished principally in Paris, owing to the financial support of powerful institutions such Notre-Dame, the cornerstone for which was laid in 1163. The intellectual activity at cathedral schools also contributed to the development of organum in crucial ways. The invention of musicnotational symbols for rhythms, for example, took place at the University of Paris—from its founding associated with Notre-Dame—in the late 12t h century.  ● ●

Only a few composers’ names survive along with organum’s notated sources, the most important of which is Perotinus, sometimes styled Perotin.

 olyphony: Background on Ars nova p ● dubbed the first musical avant-garde in the west: the Ars nova , a school of secular  eans the “new art”; its polyphony from the fourteenth century. Ars nova m practitioners made important innovations  both in the notation of musical rhythms—widely expanding what had hitherto been possible in terms of rhythmic complexity—and in the large-scale organization of their musical material (i.e. musical “form”). The principal genre of the Ars nova i s the polytextual motet, a polyphonic genre that, like organum, uses a preexisting plainchant as its lowest voice. Unlike in organum, however, the upper voices of a polytextual motet each have their own, separate text, usually secular. The result is a bewildering

counterpoint of simultaneous dialogue, and a bizarre mix of sacred and secular material. Anonymous, “Musicalis sciencia/Sciencie laudabili” ● anonymously composed ● three-voice Musicalis sciencia/Sciencie laudabili ● comes with text ● This motet exemplifies one of the more curious strains of Ars nova c omposition: music that reflects on the principles of its own composition.

Josquin des Prez, “Ave Maria” ● Renaissance Humanism: undertaking to recover and translate texts from Roman and Greek antiquity ● four voice motet ● sacred but not for mass. for private pleasure of Josquin’s patron ● imitative polyphony: single melody is passed in succession between multiple voices. staggered so melodies overlap ● Mei and Zarlino discussed the mind bending powers of music. ● In particular, Mei says music must move the “affect” (emotions). ● Music resembling poetry gains momentum in this period. Renaissance humanism marks the move for music to persuade the listener by moving their emotions so they feel a certain way (this is done by creating a mirror-like relationship between the music and poetry. ● language of tones can be created this way because the music can depict things like madness caused by love or an angel coming down from heaven (expression of concrete poetic images & human emotions). ● varietas: Latin for “variety,” which dictated that a composer should continually vary his music by alternating the texture frequently (homophonic and polyphonic) and moments when the voices are grouped into pairs rather than singing together. 2) frequently introducing new melodies that usually correspond with the meaningful divisions in the poetry. 3) the harmony Ave Maria is rich with consonances and triads (type of harmony that gained footing in the Renaissance/became fundamental to all musical composition by the mid 17th century) Critiques of Polyphony and by who ● The backlash against imitative polyphony & compositional style developed by Josquin came from the Catholic church and humanist scholars

● said it was too confusing Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, “Gloria” from Missa Papae Marcelli ● Italian composer famous for his mass Gloria ● Mass: genre of sacred liturgical music that consists of five movements, each of which has an invariant text of the mass service )text sung by mass everyday/all year round)--unlike Viderunt. ● The five movements of the mass musical genre are the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Benedictus, and Angus Dei Claudio Monteverdi, “Piagn’e sospira” ● (1603), a five-voice madrigal (polyphonic setting of poetry) ● The text for “Piagn’e sospira” is excerpted from the epic poem “Jerusalem Delivered” (1581) by Torquato Tasso, a 16t h-century Italian poet. The poem is a fictional take on the First Crusade (1096-99), during which Christian soldiers from Western Europe captured the city of Jerusalem. At the center of the poem is a love story. Erminia, a Muslim, loves Tancredi, a Christian soldier. One night she disguises herself as a soldier to find Tancredi, but is attacked by Christians and as a result flees into the forest. Here is where we meet Erminia in our madrigal, lost in the forest and thinking of Tancredi, whom she has failed to find. Tasso’s poem was wildly popular in its day. Claudio Monteverdi, “Si dolce e’l tormento” ● (1624), a monody (solo song with instrumental accompaniment) ● The text for “Si dolce” is anonymously written, and is a standalone poem rather than part of a narrative epic. ● The solo singer is what is known as a countertenor,  a man who sings in the mezzosoprano (middle-high female) range. Countertenors train to project loudly while singing in falsetto. Henry Purcell, “Whence could so much virtue spring” through “But ah! I fear I pity his too much,” from Dido and Aeneas, Act I 1689 ● ● ● ●

~Opera~ Purcell’s is a drama. an opera written by the Baroque English composer, Henry Purcell (1659-95). Opera: form of dramatic theater that is sung all the way through.

● This rendition is a so-called “concert performance,” without stage scenery or costumes. In class, we will compare a few staged performances.

● https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0GotUP-9hM ● Act I: 0:00-14:32 in Act III: 39:51-end ● The opera is scored for voices, string instruments, and “basso continuo” (harpsichord and bass string instruments) ● ~The Baroque~ ● The Baroque period in music is defined as lasting from approximately 1600 to 1750. ● Claudio Monteverdi is usually considered to be among the first Baroque composers (he bridges the Renaissance to the Baroque), while Johann Sebastian Bach and Georg Friedrich Händel, who both died in the 1750s, bring up the rear. ● “Baroque” needs clarification. First used by jewelers to describe irregularly shaped pearls, the term filtered into architectural criticism in the mid-seventeenth century, where it was employed to compare contemporary buildings unfavorably to those of the Renaissance. The word’s first appearances in musical discourse, in the 1730s in France, were similarly pejorative; only in the late nineteenth century, when musical style periods were definitively codified by academics, did “baroque” lose its connotation of degeneracy. ● We will focus on four major, interlinked themes and techniques central to Baroque composition: drama, both as a musical genre in its own right and a model for preexisting ones, virtuosity, of both performers and composers, the rise of tonality, a new system of pitch organization based on the supremacy of triadic harmonies, and the increasing use of instrumental ensembles, both to accompany singers and as standalone groups for performance. Henry Purcell, “When I am laid in earth,” from Dido and Aeneas, Act III ● aria: reflective of narrative and stops time. An aside. Spotlight on character’s emotions and feelings. ● recitative: moves the plot forward, corresponds to regular time. speech like. Antonio Vivaldi, “Spring,” first movement ● Date: 1725 ● Genre: Violin concerto; program music ● Instrumentation: String orchestra and continuo with violin soloist ● Form: Ritornello form – alternates returning melody (ritornello) played by orchestra with contrasting sections played by soloist ● Key: E major (with sections in B major and C# minor) ● Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) was a priest and violinist who spent most of his career overseeing a musical program at an orphanage for girls in Venice, the Pio Ospedale della Pietà. He was particularly revered in his lifetime for his abundant concertos

(over five hundred survive!), many for which he served as soloist in premieres at the orphanage. Travelers from across Europe came to see him perform.

Tonality First, the rise of tonality in the 17th century,  a new system of pitch organization, allowed for instrumental music to create its own, internally consistent “musical narratives,” dramatic by their own logic without reference to external phenomena (such as those carried by a text). Instrumental drama, aided by tonality, consists largely in affective contrasts of mood, and alternating periods of stability and instability. The basic idea behind tonality is that, in a given piece of music, certain notes are privileged over others, such that a hierarchy of relations forms between them. Program Music Another means by which instrumental music in the Baroque period created dramatic interest was, in fact, by reference to external (or “extramusical”) phenomena, despite the absence of singers. famous example of such music: La primavera ( “Spring”) from Antonio Vivaldi’s set of violin concertos, “The Four Seasons” (1725). Though it features no vocalists, “Spring” depicts, with startling specificity, various natural phenomena (and the feelings they arouse) associated with the season. In class, we will parse out Vivaldi’s particular techniques of musical representation. A concerto is a piece of music for one or more soloists accompanied by a larger ensemble. “Spring” is written for solo violin and an ensemble (of strings and harpsichord), and is thus called a “violin concerto.” Because his concerto makes reference to extramusical content, we also designate it as an example of program music.

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) JS Bach, “Fugue in C minor” from The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1 ● Prelude and Fugue in C minor from The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1 (1722)

JS Bach, “Brandenburg Concerto No. 5,” first movement ● “Brandenburg Concerto No. 5” (1721), a concerto grosso for solo flute, solo violin, solo harpsichord, and ensemble. ● J.S. Bach was born into a family whose compositional pedigree stretched back for over a century. Like his predecessors, Bach worked as a Lutheran church musician

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for the duration of his career. He served the church in various capacities (as organist, music director, concerto director) and cities (Weimar, Cöthen, Leipzig), but rarely traveled outside his birth region of east Germany. As a result, Bach gained little renown as a composer during his lifetime, especially compared to the international success enjoyed by his exact contemporary, G.F. Handel (1685-1750). Bach was, indeed, better known in his lifetime for his virtuoso keyboard playing than for his compositions, and his fame as a musician protruded only meekly beyond Germany. (His current, elevated status in the western art music tradition is a product of 19t h century  revivalism.) Bach composed with the diligence required by his profession: about 1100 of his compositions survive, consisting largely of sacred vocal pieces such as cantatas and chorales, and organ music for performance in church services. The works you will listen to for homework are culled from his secular output. The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1 Bach published the first book of The Well-Tempered Clavier ( Das Wohltempierte Clavier ) in 1722. The work consists of 24 sets of Preludes and Fugues, each pair in a different key, as follows: #1: Prelude and Fugue in C major #2: Prelude and Fugue in C minor #3: Prelude and Fugue in C-sharp major #4: Prelude and Fugue in C-sharp minor #5: Prelude and Fugue in D major #6: Prelude and Fugue in D minor #7: Prelude and Fugue in E-flat major #8: Prelude and Fugue in E-flat minor #9: Prelude and Fugue in E major #10: Prelude and Fugue in E minor ....Etc. up to #24: Prelude and Fugue in B minor each pair is the fugue, a Baroque genre of polyphony that discourses elaborately on a single melody for its duration, tossing it into different registers and rhythmic permutations alongside tricky counter-melodies. The prelude in each pair, on the other hand, most often consists of a fanciful series of chords elaborated in quick rhythms. Preludes thus attend more to harmony than counterpoint (“counterpoint” meaning the combination of multiple lines in polyphony), which is the purview of fugues. Bach’s preludes function both to establish the key and to clear the air for the fugues that follow. They are “curtain-raisers” before the main event.

● The Well-Tempered Clavier or Preludes and Fugues through all the tones and semitones including those with a major third or Ut Re Mi [i.e. major mode] as well as those with a minor third or Re Mi Fa [minor mode]. For the needs and use of musical youth, as well as those already experienced in this study for the passing of time, composed and prepared by

Johann Sebastian Bach at present Kapellmeister to His Serene Highness the Prince of Anhalt-Cöthen, and director of His Chamber Music. Anno 1722.

The fugue is a deadly complicated genre of polyphony—the Baroque heir to Renaissance techniques of polyphonic imitation. More than any other genre we will consider this semester, to enjoy a fugue is to appreciate its subtle compositional sleights of hand, which take us far outside the realm of extramusical representation. ● 2. Listen to the Prelude and Fugue in C minor from The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I. Compare the two in terms of musical elements. As you listen to the fugue, pay attention to appearances of the fugue subject, which is first heard, solo, from 0:00-0:05. This particular fugue is written in three “voices” (roughly equivalent to a soprano, alto or tenor, and bass), which all perform the subject at various points throughout. ● A fugue begins with the exposition of its subject in one of the voices alone in the t onic key.[14] After the statement of the subject, a second voice enters and states the subject with the subject transposed to another (often closely related) key, which is known as the answer

● In 1721, Bach shipped the scores of his Brandenburg Concertos, six in total, to Christian Ludwig, the Margrave (ruler) of Brandenburg, a territory in northeast Germany. Bach was looking for employment in Berlin; the concertos were his job application, so to speak. Though the Margrave, apparently, did not take well to them (Bach didn’t get the job), posterity has: they are some of the most beloved orchestral works of the Baroque period. All the concertos in the collection are examples of the subgenre concerto grosso, which is a concerto that features multiple soloists. ● Brandenburg No. 5: The soloists are violin, flute, and harpsichord; the ensemble consists of strings and harpsichord (harpsichord plays double duty). Like Vivaldi’s “Spring,” this movement is composed in ritornello form. ● ● ● ●

Bach, Critiqued Like all good polyphonists, Bach found his critics. the Bach-Scheibe- Birnbaum controversy. arguments for and against complex polyphonic composition to those forwarded by our previous authors, in particular Girolamo Mei.

Vocab

“Through-composed” designates a musical form with no exact repetition. (Josquin’s “Ave Maria,” for example, is through composed.) Contrast with strophic form and isorhythmic form.

Baroque Music Vocabulary Basso continuo: a form of musical accompaniment consisting of a harpsichord and a bass string instrument, such as cello. The bass string instrument “doubles” (plays the same thing as) the bass line played by the harpsichordist’s left hand. Basso continuo is the “backup band” of the Baroque period. It is ubiquitous in ensemble music of any genre during the period. Examples: Basso continuo is present in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, Vivaldi’s “Spring,” and Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 5. Note that in Bach’s concerto grosso, the harpsichord both plays a basso continuo role, during the ritornelli, and the role of the soloist, in the solo sections.

Ground bass: A bass line that repeats continually while other musical features, such as a melody in a higher register, vary. Example: “When I am laid in earth” from Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas e mploys a ground bass.

Onomatopoetic representation: A technique of musical representation (or “imitation”) wherein musical sounds imitate non-musical sounds, such as those found in nature. Example: Many examples in Vivaldi’s “Spring.” E.g., in the first solo section, three violins mimic birdsong. (Note: Charles Avison calls this kind of representation simply “the imitation of sounds.”)

Metonymic representation: A technique of musical representation (or “imitation”) used in instrumental music wherein musical sounds imitate non-musical things by evoking one or more of their features. Some kind of linguistic mediation between the sound and the thing is usually required. Example: In V...