CLASS: Nov 16, 2018--COMPLETE

Question 1

Differentiate French and Italian keyboard music of the 17th c.

Question 2

Describe English music of the 17th c.

Question 3

Explain the musico-historical significance of Dido’s Lament.

Question 4

Review Questions

Characterize the musical style at the French court of Louis XIV. How can you tell it apart from other styles?

Answer 4

• Extravagant
• Opulent
• Trumpets and Timpini
• Te Deum: Latin Hymn of Praise
  • How do you tell it apart from Sacred Concerto of Heinrich Schütz? Dotted Rhythms
• Homophony, lots and lots. Don’t get the intricate contrapuntal relationships that you get in Gabrieli or Schütz
• Lots of performers: Singers + Instrumentalist
  • Same is true of Tragedie Lyrique
• Epic proportions
• Concerted Texture between instruments and voices
  
  • Basso continuo runs through everything
  • Earlier examples, Gabrieli and Schütz defy the instrumental and voice forces into many smaller groups. Schütz example, he opens with a duet, then another takes over, then another. Then you get the full choir. In Te Deum, much more all full choir all the time. All the voices. The concerted relationship is between the two choirs and the instruments.
  • Concerted quality is different. Don’t have the divisions into smaller ensembles within the voices.

Question 5

Review Questions

• Describe the French Tragedie lyrique.

Answer 5

• Allegories: Stroking the ego of the kind and monarchy
• Early French Opera
• French court opera: State institution
  
  • Run by the state, performed in state-owned opera houses
• Spectacle: Theatrical representation of power
• Early French Opera = Tragedie Lyrique
  
  • Heroic-historical plots (thinly veiled allegory)
    
    • Stories people are familiar with but then veiled
  • Elements of Spoken Drama (Italian opera is sung all the way through) More like a variety show where things are pieced together.
  • Court pagentry
    
    • You see a lot of things on stage you would see at court
    • Staged Contemporary, 17th-century dresses, dances, etc
      
      • Relates to the example (Way to sexy)
  • Divertissements (Story just stops and everyone dances for awhile)
    
    • In the example when people are dancing around Rameau
  • French Overture
    
    • Open with this iconic, two section piece with dotted rhythms, stately tempo, followed by a triple meter that is much more dance-like.
  • Prejudice against Italianate vocal virtuosity (Verisimilitude)
• Expensive
• Live animals on stage

Question 6

Talk about the piece

Answer 6

Question 7

French Keyboard Music

Answer 7

• GENRE: Keyboard Suites
  
  • To be played in the chamber or their home
  • Intimate contexts
  • Smaller scale
  • Writing is more personal. Played on their own. Not a demonstration of power or opulence
  • Series of movements
  • Compare to Frescobaldi
• Style luthé or style brisé
  
  • Style luthé = Lute Style, Arpeggiated Harmonies
  • Improvise and arpeggiate
  • The harpsichord and clavichord had no way to sustain the pitch. Plucking instrument. To sustain the harmony you have to arpeggiate the chord.
  • Look for this at Cadences. Instead of keyboard player playing the chord, they will arpeggiate it
• Agréments:
  
  • ornamentation
  • Notice how many trills and turns are notated above the different melodic lines in both the left hand and right hand (mostly right)
  • Visually tells you that you are looking at French music versus the Italians
  • Frescobaldi ornaments his lines a lot but its all written out. You won’t see signs.
• “Unmeasured Prelude” followed by binary form dance movements
  
  • Allemande
  • Courante
  • Sarabande
  • Gigue
  • Chaconne
  • Gavotte
  • Minuet
  • The wacky thing about this is what it opens with. Opens with a piece titled PRELUDE, abstract instrumental movement
  • Key element- Unmeasured
• Elisabeth Claude Jacquet de la Guerre (1665-1729)
  
  • Served at the court of Loius XIV composing music for him and his family to play for people in his circle
  • The genre we associate with this is the Keyboard Suites

Question 8

Answer 8

• Contemporaries: Rameau and J.S. Bach
• GENRE to associate with Couperin: Keyboard Suites
• Couperin uses Binary Forms
• Also uses the Style brisé
• Key difference from Elisabeth Claude Jacquet de la Guerre
  
  • Instead of just labeling his dance styles, he interjects the keyboard suite with Programmatic Music (He titles each individual movement of the suite with a suggestive extramusical title)
  • Uses these dance suites, doesn’t stick to just dance styles. He mimics style and shape of a French overture.
• Suggestive titles
  
  • La visionaire
    
    • French Overture
      
      • Slow intro; dotted rhythms
      • Fast imitation -> allemande
• Rameau’s French Opera:
  
  • Innovative use of the orchestra to create meaning in his Tragedie Lyrique
  • Very dramatic rhythms to create a storm on stage
  • Forward-looking like Couperin
  • Couperin does same thing as Rameau but with the titles. Hinting to ideas outside the music to create meaning.

Question 9

England in the early 17th Century

Answer 9

• In England, this is when they were stealing all the Italian music, Italian madrigals, writing the Fa la la chours. We are picking up right after that.
• “Jacobean” England (after James I)
• GENRE to associate with early 17th Century England: Masques
  
  • Staged Dramatic Genre
  • Mostly SPOKEN, like a musical would be today but with even less music
  • Music is very incidental
  • No singing very much, incidental instrumental music, overture music, curtin music, tunes for individual act changes, dance tunes. Fills in the GAPS. A little bit of music thrown in for decoration.
• Instrumental Consort Music
  
  • Music composed for similar instruments
  • Thomas Morley (Ex. On Spotify)
    
    • Stealing music from the Italians
    • Virtuosic Fantasias
      
      • 2 Viols (two like instruments)
      • NOT based on a Vocal Model at all. Freely formed and composed.
  • Old-fashioned in nomine settings
    
    • GENRE: Borrows the cantus firmus technique from the Renaissance. Puts it into an instrumental composition. Always using the same melody. in nomine is the melody that appears. Very similar to cantus firmus masses and melodies. Instead of putting in in the tenor they put it in the tessitura. Long, sustained pitches. Looks a lot like a Cantus Firmus mass setting but with CF in Alto line.
      
      • Christopher Tye, In nomine no. 20. (On Spotify)

Question 10

Answer 10

Question 11

England in the later 17th Century

Answer 11

• English Civil War/the Puritan Revolt (1642- 1648)
• Restoration England
  
  • The second half of the 17th Century, England was trying to piece itself back together again after a devastating civil war
    
    • 1660-forward
      
      • Blend of French/Italian Styles
        
        • The French and Italians don’t really like each other. The artistic relationship wasn’t good. In England, they bring the two together.
        • Music of the Mass: Italian sounding instrumentation (mixes a bunch of timbres vs all strings) and French compositional style (dotted rhythms, French Overture)
    • Theatre Expanded

Question 12

Music of Restoration England (1660-1785)

Answer 12

• Masques
  
  • SPOKEN
  • Incidental music
• Matthew Locke
  
  • Composed a bunch of music for Masques
  • Main characters: spoken dialogue
  • “Incidental” Music
    
    • Music is purely incidental
    • No Aria
    • No Recitative
  • The Tempest (1674)
    
    • All instrumental music
    • The instrumentation sounds like Gabrieli and Schutz but dotted rhythms sound straight from French Overture
  • (On Spotify)

Question 13

Answer 13

Henry Purcell and Dido and Aeneas (1689)

• Sung from beginning to end
  
  • Just like Italian Opera; very different
• Likely for performance at court
  
  • We aren’t sure, this it the only one like it.
• Story from Roman poet Virgil’s Aeneid
  
  • Old story people would have known. Similar story arch of Aeneid
• The anomaly in the repertoire

Answer 14

Henry Purcell and Dido and Aeneas (1689)

• Dido’s Recitative:
  
  • Expressive melismas (Unusual, but still syllabic in Recitative fashion)
  • She drinks a potion to kill herself
  • Continuo plays
• Dido’s Aria:
  
  • Lament:
    
    • Descending chromatic bass line
  • Ground Bass:
    
    • Repeated bass line
    • First ground bass Aria
• Concluding Chorus
  
  • like French/Italian counterparts.
  • Text painting: “Drooping”, “soft”

Question 15

Talk about the piece

Answer 15

Question 16

Talk about the piece

Answer 16

Question 17

Music in England in the 17th Century, the piece in our Anthology is an anomaly in the repertoire. It’s a weird, forward-looking piece. It’s famous in music history, but it’s not definitive of English music in the 17th century. Other examples on Spotify. It’s not that interesting.

Question 18

Music in the 17th Century

Answer 18

talian music is going crazy. Instrumental music, opera. France is going crazy, extravagant with Louis XIV. English music is subdued and not as elaborate.

Purcell piece is from the first English opera that adapts French and Italian styles. If you remember the early Renaissance. The moving of styles across the channel. The English knowing where it was at. The new, innovative English Sound. The French and Belgians were interested in borrowing that. In the 17th Century, the direction has shifted. The English are doing what they did with Madrigals, taking French and Italian dramatic styles and incorporating them into their pieces. That’s where we are headed.

Answer 19

It’s an instrumental parallel to Recitative

Question 20

What defines the Allemande?

Answer 20

Meter and Tempo

Binary Form

Ornamentation

Style Brisé

Question 21

Answer 21

Question 22

Elisabeth Claude Jacquet de la Guerre (1665-1729), Served Louis XIV is

Question 23

Answer 23

Question 24

Style luthé or style brisé are two words to mean the ______

Answer 24

Style luthé or style brisé are two words to mean the same thing

Sounds like you are strumming a lute. Arpeggiated harmonies.

Question 25

Answer 25

Question 26

Answer 26

Question 27

Answer 27