Classical

Question 0

Jean-Philippe Rameau

Answer 0

Jean-Philippe Rameau, 25 September 1683 – 12 September 1764) was one of the most important French composers and music theorists of the Baroque era. He replaced Jean-Baptiste Lully as the dominant composer of French opera and is also considered the leading French composer for the harpsichord of his time, alongside François Couperin.

Question 1

Traité de l’harmonie

Answer 1

Traité de l’harmonie réduite à ses principes naturels is a music treatise written by Jean-Philippe Rameau. It was first published in Paris in 1722.

The Treatise describes music and how to write it based on the tonal system used today in classical music. It uses the modern major and minor keys to teach readers what to do to achieve good sounding music based on the 12 tone music scale.

The Treatise is divided into four books:

Book I: On the relationship between Harmonic Ratios and Proportions.
Book II: On the Nature and Properties of Chords; and on Everything which may be used to make music perfect.
Book III: Principles of Composition.
Book IV: Principles of Accompaniment.
Rameau’s treatise often obtains passages written already in a very similar manner in other publications of other books by other authors.

Question 2

galant

Answer 2

In music, Galant was a term referring to a style, principally occurring in the third quarter of the 18th century, which featured a return to classical simplicity after the complexity of the late Baroque era. This meant (in some implementations) simpler music, with less ornamentation, decreased use of polyphony (with increased importance on the melody), musical phrases of regular length, a reduced harmonic vocabulary (principally emphasizing tonic and dominant), and a less important bass line. It was, in many ways, a reaction against the showy Baroque style. Probably the most famous composer in the Galant style was Johann Stamitz.[citation needed] The movement also affected other arts, such as literature.

Question 3

Johann Joachim Quantz

Answer 3

Johann Joachim Quantz (30 January 1697 – 12 July 1773) was a German flutist, flute maker and composer.

Question 4

Essay on playing the transverse flute

Answer 4

Versuch einer Anweisung die Flöte traversiere zu spielen (1752) (titled On Playing the Flute in English), a treatise on traverso flute playing. It is a valuable source of reference regarding performance practice and flute technique in the 18th century.

By Quantz

Question 5

Domenico Scarlatti

Answer 5

Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti (26 October 1685 – 23 July 1757) was an Italian composer who spent much of his life in the service of the Portuguese and Spanish royal families. He is classified as a Baroque composer chronologically, although his music was influential in the development of the Classical style. Like his renowned father Alessandro Scarlatti he composed in a variety of musical forms, although today he is known mainly for his 555 keyboard sonatas.

Question 6

essercizi

Answer 6

This lists the sonatas for solo keyboard (originally intended for harpsichord or fortepiano) by Domenico Scarlatti. Note, however, that a few of the works, such as K78, K81 and K88 through K91, are scored for keyboard and a second instrument.

Question 7

opera buffa

Answer 7

Opera buffa (Italian, plural: opere buffe; English: comic opera) is a genre of opera. It was first used as an informal description of Italian comic operas variously classified by their authors as “commedia in musica”, “commedia per musica”, “dramma bernesco”, “dramma comico”, “divertimento giocoso”, etc. It is especially associated with developments in Naples in the first half of the 18th century, whence its popularity spread to Rome and northern Italy. It was at first characterized by everyday settings, local dialects, and simple vocal writing (the basso buffo is the associated voice type), the main requirement being clear diction and facility with patter.

Question 8

La Guerre des Bouffons

Answer 8

The Querelle des Bouffons (“Quarrel of the Comic Actors”), also known as the Guerre des Bouffons (“War of the Comic Actors”), was the name given to a battle of rival musical philosophies which took place in Paris, France between 1752 and 1754. The controversy concerned the relative merits of French and Italian opera.

It was sparked by the reaction of literary Paris to a performance of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s short intermezzo La serva padrona at the Académie royale de musique in Paris on 1 August 1752. La serva padrona was performed by an itinerant Italian troupe of comic actors, known as buffoni (bouffons in French, hence the name of the quarrel). The work had already been given in Paris in 1746, but had attracted little notice. This time it provoked a full-scale war of words between the defenders of the French operatic tradition and the champions of Italian music. In the controversy that followed, critics such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Friedrich Melchior Grimm, together with other writers associated with the Encyclopédie, praised Italian opera buffa and attacked the styles French lyric tragedy, a style originated by Jean-Baptiste Lully and promoted among then-living composers such as French composer Jean-Philippe Rameau.

Question 9

opera comique

Answer 9

Opéra comique (plural: opéras comiques) is a genre of French opera that contains spoken dialogue and arias. It emerged from the popular opéra comiques en vaudevilles of the Fair Theatres of St Germain and St Laurent (and to a lesser extent the Comédie-Italienne),[1] which combined existing popular tunes with spoken sections. Associated with the Paris theatre of the same name, the Opéra-Comique, opéra comique is not always comic or light in nature; Carmen, perhaps the most famous opéra comique, is a tragedy.

Question 10

empfindsamer Stil

Answer 10

The Empfindsamer Stil (literally sensitive style) is a style of musical composition developed in 18th century Germany, intended to express “true and natural” feelings, and featuring sudden contrasts of mood. It was developed as a contrast to the Baroque Affektenlehre (lit. The Doctrine of Affections), in which a composition (or movement) would have the same affect, or emotion, throughout.

Composers in this style include:

Gottfried August Homilius
Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, the eldest son of J.S. Bach
C.P.E. Bach, the second eldest son of J.S. Bach
Johann Joachim Quantz
Carlos Seixas

Question 11

C.P.E. Bach

Answer 11

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (8 March 1714 – 14 December 1788) was a German Classical period musician and composer, the fifth child and second (surviving) son of Johann Sebastian Bach and Maria Barbara Bach. His second name was given in honor of his godfather Georg Philipp Telemann, a friend of Emanuel’s father.

Emanuel Bach was an influential composer working at a time of transition between his father’s baroque style and the classical and romantic styles that followed it. His personal approach, an expressive and often turbulent one known as empfindsamer Stil or ‘sensitive style’, applied the principles of rhetoric and drama to musical structures. Bach’s dynamism stands in deliberate contrast to the more mannered rococo style also then in vogue.

Question 12

Bartolomeo Cristofori

Answer 12

Bartolomeo Cristofori di Francesco (May 4, 1655 – January 27, 1731) was an Italian maker of musical instruments, generally regarded as the inventor of the piano.

Question 13

fortepiano

Answer 13

Fortepiano designates the early version of the piano, from its invention by the Italian instrument maker Bartolomeo Cristofori around 1700 up to the early 19th century. It was the instrument for which Haydn, Mozart, and the early Beethoven wrote their piano music. Starting in Beethoven’s time, the fortepiano began a period of steady evolution, culminating in the late 19th century with the modern grand. The earlier fortepiano became obsolete and was absent from the musical scene for many decades. In the 20th century the fortepiano was revived, following the rise of interest in historically informed performance. Fortepianos are built for this purpose today in specialist workshops.

Question 14

rounded binary form

Answer 14

Occasionally, the B section will end with a “return” of the opening material from the A section. This is referred to as rounded binary, and is labeled as ABA′. In rounded binary, the beginning of the B section is sometimes referred to as the “bridge”, and will usually conclude with a half cadence in the original key. Rounded binary is not to be confused with ternary form, also labeled ABA—the difference being that, in ternary form, the B section contrasts completely with the A material as in, for example, a minuet and trio. Another important difference between the rounded and ternary form is that in rounded binary, when the “A” section returns, it will typically contain only half of the full “A” period, whereas ternary form will end with the full “A” section.

Question 15

Sinfonia

Answer 15

In English it most commonly refers to a 17th- or 18th-century orchestral piece used as an introduction, interlude, or postlude to an opera, oratorio, cantata, or suite.

Question 16

Giovanni Battista Sammartini

Answer 16

Giovanni Battista Sammartini (c. 1700 – 15 January 1775) was an Italian composer, oboist, organist, choirmaster and teacher. He counted Gluck among his students, and was highly regarded by younger composers including Johann Christian Bach. It has also been noted that many stylizations in Joseph Haydn’s compositions are similar to those of Sammartini, although Haydn denied any such influence.[2] Sammartini is especially associated with the formation of the concert symphony through both the shift from a brief opera-overture style and the introduction of a new seriousness and use of thematic development that prefigure Haydn and Mozart. Some of his works are described as galant, a style associated with Enlightenment ideals, while “the prevailing impression left by Sammartini’s work… [is that] he contributed greatly to the development of a Classical style that achieved its moment of greatest clarity precisely when his long, active life was approaching its end”.

Question 17

Johann Stamitz

Answer 17

Jan Václav Antonín Stamic (later, during his life in Mannheim, Germanized as Johann Wenzel Anton Stamitz; June 18, 1717, Deutschbrod, Bohemia – March 27, 1757, Mannheim, Electorate of the Palatinate) was a Czech composer and violinist. His two surviving sons, Carl and Anton Stamitz, were scarcely less important composers of the Mannheim school, of which Johann is considered the founding father. His music is stylistically transitional between Baroque and Classical periods.

Question 18

Mannheim

Answer 18

city in the southwestern part of Germany and after Stuttgart and Karlsruhe the third-largest city in the German state of Baden-Württemberg.

Question 19

Charles Burney

Answer 19

Charles Burney FRS (7 April 1726 – 12 April 1814) was an English music historian and father of authors Frances Burney and Sarah Burney.

Question 20

Enlightenment

Answer 20

The Age of Enlightenment (or simply the Enlightenment or Age of Reason) was a cultural movement of intellectuals beginning in late 17th- and 18th-century Europe emphasizing reason and individualism rather than tradition.[1] Its purpose was to reform society using reason, to challenge ideas grounded in tradition and faith, and to advance knowledge through the scientific method. It promoted scientific thought, skepticism, and intellectual interchange.[2] The Enlightenment was a revolution in human thought. This new way of thinking was that rational thought begins with clearly stated principles, uses correct logic to arrive at conclusions, tests the conclusions against evidence, and then revises the principles in the light of the evidence.

Question 21

dramma giocoso

Answer 21

Dramma giocoso (Italian, literally: jocular drama; plural: drammi giocosi) is the name of a genre of opera common in the mid-18th century. The term is a contraction of “dramma giocoso per musica” and is essentially a description of the text rather than the opera as a whole. The genre developed in the Neapolitan opera tradition, mainly through the work of the playwright Carlo Goldoni in Venice. Characteristic of drammi giocosi is the technique of a grand buffo scene as a dramatic climax at the end of an act. Carlo Goldoni’s texts always consisted of two long acts with extended finales, followed by a short third act.

Goldoni’s texts were set by Baldassare Galuppi, Niccolò Piccinni and Joseph Haydn, but the only works of this genre that are still frequently staged are Mozart and da Ponte’s operas Don Giovanni (1787) and Così fan tutte (1790). However, Mozart entered these works in his catalogue as “opera buffa”.

Question 22

Carlo Goldoni

Answer 22

Carlo Osvaldo Goldoni (Italian: [ˈkarlo ozˈvaldo ɡolˈdoni]; 25 February 1707 – 6 February 1793) was an Italian playwright and librettist from the Republic of Venice. His works include some of Italy’s most famous and best-loved plays. Audiences have admired the plays of Goldoni for their ingenious mix of wit and honesty. His plays offered his contemporaries images of themselves, often dramatizing the lives, values, and conflicts of the emerging middle classes. Though he wrote in French and Italian, his plays make rich use of the Venetian language, regional vernacular, and colloquialisms. Goldoni also wrote under the pen name and title “Polisseno Fegeio, Pastor Arcade,” which he claimed in his memoirs the “Arcadians of Rome” bestowed on him.

Question 23

opera reform

Answer 23

Opera seria had its weaknesses and critics. The taste for embellishment on behalf of the superbly trained singers, and the use of spectacle as a replacement for dramatic purity and unity drew attacks. Francesco Algarotti’s Essay on the Opera (1755) proved to be an inspiration for Christoph Willibald Gluck’s reforms. He advocated that opera seria had to return to basics and that all the various elements—music (both instrumental and vocal), ballet, and staging—must be subservient to the overriding drama. Several composers of the period, including Niccolò Jommelli and Tommaso Traetta, attempted to put these ideals into practice. The first to succeed however, was Gluck. Gluck strove to achieve a “beautiful simplicity”. This is evident in his first reform opera, Orfeo ed Euridice, where his non-virtuosic vocal melodies are supported by simple harmonies and a richer orchestra presence throughout.

Question 24

Christoph Willibald Gluck

Answer 24

Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck (German pronunciation: [ˈkʁɪstɔf ˈvɪlɪbalt ˈɡlʊk]; 2 July 1714 – 15 November 1787) was an opera composer of the early classical period. After many years at the Habsburg court at Vienna, Gluck brought about the practical reform of opera’s dramaturgical practices that many intellectuals had been campaigning for over the years. With a series of radical new works in the 1760s, among them Orfeo ed Euridice and Alceste, he broke the stranglehold that Metastasian opera seria had enjoyed for much of the century.

Question 25

Raniero Calzabigi

Answer 25

Ranieri de’ Calzabigi (23 December 1714 – July 1795) was an Italian poet and librettist, most famous for his collaboration with the composer Christoph Willibald Gluck on his “reform” operas.

Question 26

Symphony

Answer 26

A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, generally scored for orchestra or concert band. A symphony usually contains at least one movement or episode composed according to the sonata principle. Many symphonies are tonal works in four movements with the first in sonata form, which is often described by music theorists as the structure of a “classical” symphony, although many symphonies by the acknowledged classical masters of the form, Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Ludwig van Beethoven do not conform to this model.

Question 27

string quartet

Answer 27

A string quartet is a musical ensemble of four string players – two violin players, a violist and a cellist – or a piece written to be performed by such a group. The string quartet is one of the most prominent chamber ensembles in classical music, with most major composers, from the late 18th century onwards, writing string quartets.