Classical Period Terms Flashcards
Terms from Study Guide (Chap. 20-21 and part of 22)
Musical idiom of the mid-to-late 18th Century, generally characterized by an emphasis on melody over relatively light accompaniments; simple, clearly articulated harmonic plans; periodic phrasing; clearly delineated forms based on contrast between themes, between stable and unstable passages, and between sections with different functions; and contrasts of mood, style, and figuration within movements as well as between them.
Classical style
The most vibrant intellectual movement of the 18th Century whose central themes were reason, nature, and progress. In general, it was a humanitarian movement whose adherents were interested in promoting the welfare of human kind.
Enlightenment
(French, “elegant”) 18th Century musical style that featured songlike melodies, short phrases, frequent cadences, and light accompaniment.
Galant style
(German, “sensitive style” or “sentimental style”) close relative of the galant style, featuring surprising turns of harmony, chromaticism, nervous rhythms, and speech like melodies.
Empfindsam style
The quality of being periodic, especially when this is emphasized through frequent resting points and articulations between phrases and periods.
Periodicity
Wrote volume 2 of the “Versuch Einer Anleitung Zur Composition” (Introductory Essay on Composition, published in 3 volumes in 1782, 1787, and 1793), one of several treatises written for amateurs who wished to learn how to compose.
Heinrich Christoph Koch
Broken-chord accompaniment common in the second half of the 18th Century and named after Domenico Alberti, who used the figuration frequently.
Alberti bass
(Italian, “comic opera”) 18th Century genre of Italian comic opera, sung throughout.
Opera buffa
Composed “Le Zite ‘Ngalera” (The Spinsters in the Galley) which premiered in Naples in 1722.
Leonardo Vinci
18th Century genre of Italian comic opera, performed between acts of a serious opera or play.
Intermezzo
(1710-1736) was one of the most original composers of his day but died young of tuberculosis. He is best known for his intermezzo “La Serva Padrona” (The Maid as Mistress, 1733), a classic example of opera in miniature, with only 3 characters: Uberto (bass), a rich bachelor; his maid, Serpina (soprano); and his mute valet, Vespone.
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi
(Italian, “serious opera”) 18th Century genre of Italian opera, on a serious subject but normally with a happy ending, usually without comic characters and scenes.
Opera seria
(1698-1782) An Italian poet where opera seria received its standard form from. His two-stanza aria texts set the standard for the da capo aria of the 1720s through 1740s. His success in Naples, Rome, and Venice led to an appointment in 1729 as court poet in Vienna, where he remained the rest of his life. His operas were intended to promote morality through entertainment and to present models of merciful and enlightened rulers, in tune with Enlightenment thought.
Pietro Metastasio
Aria form with two sections. The first section is repeated after the second section’s close, which carries the instruction da capo (Italian, “from the head”), creating an ABA form.
Da capo aria
(1699-1783) was one of the most popular and successful opera composers in Europe around the middle of the 18th Century. He was acknowledged by most of his contemporaries as the great master of the opera seria. The great majority of his eighty operas use Metastasio librettos, some of which he set two or three times, and his music in the perfect complement to Metastasio’s poetry.
Johann Adolf Hasse
(Quarrel of the comic actors) a long-simmering critical opposition to the old-fashioned, state-subsidized French opera that erupted in Paris in 1752-54.
“Querelle Des Bouffons”
(1712-1778) A leader of the Enlightenment in France and a major influence on Romanticism; one of the most vehement voices arguing for the merits of Italian opera who praised Italian composers’ emphasis on melody and their ability to express any emotion through melody.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
(The Village Soothsayer, 1752) a charming little opera by Jean-Jacques Rousseau with airs and recitatives inspired by the new Italian melodic style.
“Le Devin Du Village”
(French, “comic opera”) (1) In the 18th Century, light French comic opera, which used spoken dialogue instead of recitatives. (2) In 19th Century France, opera with spoken dialogue, whether comic or tragic.
Opera comique
Genre of 18th Century English comic play featuring songs in which new words are set to borrowed tunes.
Ballad opera
(German, “singing play”) German genre of opera, featuring spoken dialogue interspersed with songs, choruses, and instrumental music.
Singspiel
(1714-1787) achieved a winning synthesis of French, Italian, and German operatic styles. Born of Bohemian parents in what is now Bavaria, he studied under Giovanni Battista Sammartini in Italy, visited London, toured in Germany as conductor of an opera troupe, became court composer to Emperor Charles VI at Vienna, and triumphed in Paris under the patronage of Marie Antoinette. His operas become models for many subsequent works, especially in Paris. His influence on the form and spirit of opera was transmitted to the 19th Century through composers.
Christoph Willibald Gluck
In France, a strophic song on a sentimental text with a simple, expressive, melody, almost entirely without ornamentation, over a plain accompaniment.
Romance
In Britain, songs printed on single large sheets called broadsides or gathered in printed collections. Usually only the text was printed, typically a new poem about recent events or on a sentimental theme, meant to be sung to a familiar tune.
Ballads
