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Music > Listening Quiz #1 > Flashcards

Listening Quiz #1 Flashcards

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1
Q

Describe Viderunt Omnes by Anonymous

A
  • Original plainchant
  • Text: Latin (language) and Sacred (function)
  • Nonmetrical
  • Based harmonically on the Church Modes of the Medieval musical-theoretical system
  • Monophonic Texture
  • Ensemble type: A Cappella
  • Direct performance
  • Genre: plainchant gradual (‘plainchant’ = style) (‘gradual’ = function)
  • Part of the Mass Proper -> sung after the reading or chanting of the Epistle and before the Alleluia
  • This particular gradual is associated with the Christmas season
  • From 9th – 11th centuries
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2
Q

Describe Hildegard of Bingen, Alleluia! O virga mediatrix Performance 1

A
  • Genre = plainchant Alleluia, part of the Mass Proper, usually performed before the reading of the Gospel
  • Text = sacred (function) & Latin (language) -> a meditation on the Virgin Mary, prominent theme
    in Hildegard’s original poetry
  • Texture = monophonic (how the music looks in the original manuscript)
  • Ensemble: a single female soprano soloist with an improvised harp countermelody -> harp part is not part of the original work
  • Polyphonic
  • Much quicker, energetic and virtuosic than the second performance
  • Direct performance of plainchant
  • The melody becomes more melismatic as it continues, with the voice or voices rising to the upper range, requiring skilled singers
  • 12th Century
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3
Q

Describe Hildegard of Bingen, Alleluia! O virga mediatrix Performance 2

A
  • Genre = plainchant Alleluia, part of the Mass Proper, usually performed before the reading of the Gospel
  • Text = sacred (function) & Latin (language) -> a meditation on the Virgin Mary, prominent theme
    in Hildegard’s original poetry
  • Texture = monophonic (how the music looks in the original manuscript)
  • Ensemble: a cappella male choir
  • Much more ‘conservative’ performance of Hildegard’s Alleluia
  • Monophonic throughout
  • Responsorial performance of plainchant: the first ‘Alleluia’ is sung by a male soloist (the leader), but the second ‘Alleluia’ is sung by a larger group (the choir)
  • The melody becomes more melismatic as it continues, with the voice or voices rising to the upper range, requiring skilled singers
  • Around 12th century
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4
Q

Describe La Comtessa de Dia (Beatriz de Dia) A chantar m’er de so qu’eu no volria

A
  • Genre: canso (Occitan love song)
  • Language : Occitan / secular (poem of courtly love)
  • Ensemble: female soprano, vielle (medieval bowed string) and flute
  • Texture : monophonic in surviving Medieval manuscript (containing only the vocal line heard in recording and text) but homophonic (vocal melody over improvised instrumental accompaniment) in this recording
  • The only extant melody by a woman troubadour (trobairitz)
  • The opening vielle part and the flute interlude heard in this performance are improvised parts
  • Poem uses a sophisticated versification scheme and structure of its melody involves repetition of first 2 phrases and a recurring cadential motif, sometimes varied, ending nearly every phrase
  • Late 12th - Early 13th century
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5
Q

Describe Pérotin, Viderunt omnes

A
  • Genre: four-voice florid organum
  • Latin (language) and sacred (from the Mass Proper)
  • Texture: non-imitative polyphony
  • 3 of the 4 melody lines are florid (busy with fast notes), whereas the lowest voice moves much more slowly, often sustaining long, single pitches.
  • Not as rhythmically “free” as chant, and sometimes there is a sense of pulse
  • Organum was based on the Medieval church modes
  • Notated and usually performed a cappella, but other methods are possible
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6
Q

Describe Anonymous (Herrad?), Sol oritur occasus nescius from Hortus deliciarum

A
  • Genre: conductus
  • Style: Ars Antiqua
  • Text: Latin (language) & sacred
  • Texture: 2-part parallel motion
  • Form: strophic (3 verses sung to same melody)
  • Responsorial performance: each verse introduced by leader, followed by chorus - Ensemble: notated and usually performed a cappella; other methods possible
  • Around 12th century
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7
Q

Describe Cantigas de Santa Maria, No. 8 A Virgen Santa Maria todos a loar devemos by Anonymous

A
  • Genre: cantiga
  • Language: Gallician-Portuguese
  • Texture: notated monophonically but probably performed homophonically with improvised accompaniment by instruments, as in this performance
  • Form: strophic (also with a refrain)
  • Around 13th century
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8
Q

Describe Guillaume da Machuat, Agnus Dei from Notre Dame Mass

A
  • Genre: Mass movement (ars nova Mass movement)
  • Text: Latin & sacred (part of the Mass Ordinary)
  • Texture: 4-voice, non-imitative polyphony (4 independent melodies)
  • Ensemble: Notated as an a cappella work. This recording is performed by four male voices (one person per part).
  • Style: ars nova
  • Around 14th century
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9
Q

Describe Trebor, Helas! pitié envers moy dort si fort

A
  • Genre: rondeaux
  • Texture: non-imitative polyphony (3 parts)
  • Language: Provençal
  • Style = ars subtilior
  • Ensemble: tenor voice accompanied by
    viol (a bowed string instrument) & lute (a plucked string instrument)
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10
Q

What is the time period that the recordings for quiz 1 are from?

A

Medieval period (450-1450)

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11
Q

What are the 6 basic elements of musical style?

A
  1. Ensemble
  2. Melody
  3. Rhythm
  4. Texture
  5. Form
  6. Harmonic language/harmony
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12
Q

What’s an ensemble?

A
  • ‘Scoring’, ‘Orchestration’ -> what timbres are heard in the piece?
  • What instruments and/or voices are included in the ensemble?
  • Are there vocalist(s)?
  • Dynamics (the relative loudness or softness at any given point in the music)
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13
Q

What’s a cappella?

A
  • Means ‘for the choir’
  • Type of ensemble
  • The use of only voices (without any instruments)
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14
Q

What’s a melody?

A
  • ‘linear component of music’
  • Pitch & rhythms in succession that form a characteristic whole
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15
Q

What’s rhythm?

A
  • Involves all aspects of projecting and organizing the pulse in music
  • Does the work have a beat (is metered) or does it not (non-metered or ametrical)
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16
Q

What’s a meter?

A
  • The most important large-scale subdivision of the beat into regular (or irregular) patterns
  • Can be duple, triple or asymmetrical (can also change during the piece)
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17
Q

What’s the tempo?

A

The relative speed of the beat

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18
Q

Metrical VS non-metrical

A

Does the work have a beat (is metered) or does it not (non-metered or non-metrical)

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19
Q

What’s texture?

A
  • Texture of a piece (subsection of a piece) can be described by the number of individual, discernible parts (often called ‘voices’ even when played by instruments) in the music
    Ex: 2-voice texture, 3-voice texture, etc.
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20
Q

What are the 3 main types of texture?

A
  • Monophonic texture (monophony)
  • Polyphonic texture (polyphony - counterpoint, contrapuntal texture)
  • Homophonic texture (homophony)
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21
Q

What’s a monophony?

A
  • Type of texture (monophonic texture)
  • Music consists only of a single melody line
  • Whether sung by an individual, a small group, or a large group, there is only one part and everyone sings that same part
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22
Q

What’s a polyphony?

A
  • Type of texture (polyphonic texture)
  • Music consists of 2 or more different melody lines
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23
Q

What’s a homophony?

A
  • Type of texture (homophonic texture)
  • Music consists of vocal melody over improvised instrumental accompaniment (melody + accompaniment)
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24
Q

What’s the study of historiography?

A

The study of how histories have been written and the analysis of how the prejudices of authors and institutions have distorted those histories

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25
Q

What’s pitch?

A
  • A sound-producing vibration that oscillates (beats) at a definite and prescribed rate of speed
  • Ex: the pitch A = 440 MHz (beats per second)
  • Musical instruments are designed to produce focused, clear pitches through the manipulation of lengths of pipe or string and/or through the closing and opening of holes in an instrument’s body
  • Since the early Medieval era, pitches in Western Europe have been designated using only the first 7 letters of the alphabet, in a system that repeats for each octave (A, B, C, D, E, F, G)
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26
Q

What’s the order of the Mass Ordinary?

A
  1. Kyrie Eleison
  2. Gloria in Excelsis
  3. Credo
  4. Sanctus
  5. Agnus Dei
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27
Q

What’s the ordinary of the mass?

A
  • Parts of the text in the liturgy that always remain the same
  • Originally intended to be sung by the entire congregation
  • Sections of the Mass that are most important in music history because they have been set to music most often
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28
Q

What’s the proper of mass (mass proper)?

A
  • Parts of the text in the liturgy that change according to the particular day in the liturgical year
  • Tended to be reserved for the choir and solo singers
  • Historically, the Mass Proper is older and more closely tied to the texts of the scripture than the Ordinary
  • Part of the traditional chant
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29
Q

What are the 2 different settings for worship in the Roman Catholic liturgy?

A
  • Divine Office
  • Mass
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30
Q

What’s the Divine Office?

A
  • AKA Canonical Hours
  • A more private setting for worship
  • Observed by the cloistered community in a monastery or convent
  • Followed a daily schedule of 8 prescribed services that articulated the day of study and work
  • The musical content of the Offices centers on the singing of psalms
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31
Q

What’s the Mass?

A
  • A public setting for worship
  • It has 2 parts: Foremass and Eucharist
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32
Q

What’s the name of the book containing the music of the Offices?

A

The Antiphonary

33
Q

What’s a genre?

A
  • A specific category of musical composition, as defined by that composition’s stylistic traits, considering all relevant aspects
  • Ex: a plainchant, an organum, a string quartet, a piano sonata, a symphony, an opera buffa, a rock opera, a polka Mass, etc.
34
Q

What’s a direct performance?

A
  • Solo or unison performance of the music throughout
  • One person or multiple people singing the same thing together (not in alternation)
35
Q

What’s responsorial singing?

A
  • A solo singer or ‘leader’ performs verses of the text and the choir and/or congregation answers each verse with the following verse or with a response or refrain
  • Common responses were the simple Hebrew words amen (an expression of affirmation) and hallelujah (‘praise Jahweh’), but others were more expansive
36
Q

What’s antiphonal singing?

A

Singers were divided into 2 groups that took turns singing phrases of text in alternation (with no individual ‘leader’)

37
Q

What’s performance practice?

A
  • The often unwritten rules regarding how music is performed
  • Most manuscripts of medieval chant contain simply the text and the music, and provide no directions at all regarding ‘performance practice’
  • 3 general manners of performing any
    chant (direct performance, responsorial singing, antiphonal singing)
38
Q

What’s a gradual?

A
  • Medieval sacred vocal genre
  • The function of a particular text
  • A gradual is part of the Mass Proper and is sung after the reading or chanting of the Epistle and before the Alleluia
39
Q

What’s the Alleluia?

A
  • Medieval sacred vocal genre
  • Part of the Mass Proper
  • Usually performed before the reading of the Gospel to accompany the procession of the minister and book of Gospels
40
Q

What’s a plainchant?

A
  • Sung sacred texts (usually in Latin)
  • A type of category/genre
  • The most important part of a plainchant is its text
  • The specific genre of a plainchant is determined by the function of that text
  • Most of those texts were
    intended for either the Mass or the Divine Office
  • Typically performed with a monophonic texture
  • Usually performed a cappella
41
Q

What’s a Gregorian chant?

A
  • A plainchant
  • Medieval tradition credited St. Gregory I with assembling and even creating the plainchants required for Roman Catholic Church services of the middle- and late-medieval Christian Church
  • Not all plainchants are gregorian chants -> many plainchants are older or more recent than the 6th century and hence shouldn’t be considered gregorian chants
42
Q

What’s sacred culture and art?

A
  • Anything intended to serve as part of religious worship
  • Usually in Latin
43
Q

What’s secular culture and art?

A
  • Everything that is not intended to serve as part of religious worship, including art intended for entertainment
  • Secular music/poetry was often in the vernacular language of the royal courts
  • Secular pieces functioned as entertainment in royal courts
  • Medieval secular texts often deal with courtly love and chivalry, as well as war, weaving, and other aristocratic activities & concerns
  • Many were humorous or vulgar satires
44
Q

What are the 2 types of text setting?

A
  • Syllabic
  • Melismatic
45
Q

What’s the syllabic text setting?

A
  • Each syllable of the text is set to only one pitch
  • In general, it presents the sacred words in the plainest or most easily understood manner
46
Q

What’s the melismatic text setting?

A
  • Text setting that contains melismas (a single syllable of text that is set to a large number of pitches)
  • It elongates the syllables and might make the text more obscure
  • A melismatic presentation might not impede comprehension when the sacred text is very brief (ex: Kyrie of the Mass) or well-known to the audience
47
Q

What are church modes?

A
  • AKA medieval modes
  • “modal harmony”
  • The scales (a hierarchical and limited set of musical pitches) that served as the basis for the harmonic language of Medieval music
  • Mode: limited collection of pitches that are organized within a piece of music to emphasize one particular pitch, called the final
  • The modal harmonic system also allows the construction of cadences of various strengths, allowing the motion of the music to accentuate the meaning and structure of the text that it sets
  • In plainchant, the location and relative strengths of all cadences were determined by the syntax of the sacred text, which existed before the music was composed
48
Q

What were the musical innovations of the 12th century?

A
  • The music of Hildegard of Bingen
  • Earliest extant manuscripts of secular vocal music
  • Earliest extant manuscripts of instrumental music (ALL dances of various types)
  • The beginning of the Notre Dame School of polyphonic music
49
Q

The earliest extant manuscripts of music in western Europe date from when?

A

The late 9th century (800s)

50
Q

All of the musical manuscripts dating from the 9th century (including all extant manuscripts until the 12th century) contained what kind of music?

A

Sacred music exclusively

51
Q

What’s an organum?

A
  • Medieval sacred vocal genre
  • A genre of polyphonic music dating back (in the extant written record) to the 9th century
  • A genre of Medieval polyphony created by adding additional melodic lines (usually one to three) to a pre-existing plainchant melody
  • There are parallel organums and florid organums
52
Q

What’s a parallel organum?

A

2 voices moving in ‘parallel motion’ with one another -> both voices maintain the same interval (usually a 4th or 5th) between them the entire time, although sometimes they reach a unison (the same pitch) at cadences

53
Q

What’s a florid organum?

A

Added melodic line that’s more ‘florid’ (busy with notes), intended to decorate the original plainchant

54
Q

What are troubadours, trobairitz (female troubadour) or trouvères?

A
  • Literate secular poets/composers
  • Secular pieces by these troubadours and trouvères functioned as entertainment in royal courts, most of which employed musicians, and some of which had very sophisticated musical establishments that particularly cultivated music
55
Q

What’s Occitan and Provençal?

A

Vernacular language of the medieval royal courts

56
Q

What are jongleur?

A
  • Illiterate ‘free-lance’ musicians who made a living/supplemented their incomes by playing music for dances, civic functions, etc.
  • They typically either played memorized repertory and/or improvised, so their musical tradition left no written record and is entirely lost
57
Q

What’s an estampie?

A
  • A type of dance that’s part of the earliest extant instrument pieces
  • Medieval genre of dance
58
Q

What’s a canso?

A

Medieval secular vocal genre

59
Q

What’s the Hortus Deliciarum (Garden of Delights)?

A
  • Created in 1175 (12th century)
  • Manuscript compiled by Herrad of Landsberg
  • One of the earliest polyphonic sources from a convent
  • Created as a pedagogical tool for her novices
  • Its content is for the most part not original
  • Demonstrated that the sisters at St. Odilien were exposed to the same contemporary authors and ideas studied by their male counterparts in the universities of Paris
  • At least 20 song texts, most set to music, were placed throughout the manuscript
60
Q

What’s a strophic form?

A
  • Form term in vocal music
  • Consists of 3 verses, each sung to the same melody
61
Q

What’s a cantus firmus?

A
  • Originally, a pre-existing chant melody (therefore, a sacred melody and text) that is recycled into a new composition
  • The chant melody that serves as the
    basis for a new musical creation
  • Often a plainchant
62
Q

What’s a cantus firmus composition?

A
  • General term (not specific enough to be genre) for any piece of polyphonic music in which one of the melody lines is a cantus firmus (it’s not original but was borrowed or recycled from the earlier musical tradition)
  • Composers in the late Medieval and early Renaissance eras created cantus firmus Masses, cantus firmus organa, cantus firmus motets, etc.
63
Q

What’s a conductus?

A
  • A medieval sacred vocal genre
  • Performed during Mass while the lectionary (a book of sacred writings) was carried from its place of safekeeping to the place from which it was to be read aloud to the congregation
  • Associated exclusively with the ars antiqua style, for they were not composed before the 12th century (probably invented circa 1150) and were no longer composed by the late Medieval Era (14th century)
  • Many conductus were composed for 2 or 3 voices
64
Q

What’s the Notre Dame School of composers?

A
  • School of polyphonic music at the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris
  • 12th & 13th centuries
  • Ars antiqua style
  • Beginning of an important traditional of polyphonic music in Paris, France
  • Many works in the Medieval genres of organum, motet, conductus, and Mass movements were composed by the composers of the Notre Dame School
65
Q

What’s Ars Antiqua?

A
  • ‘the old art’
  • Style term only associated with the music of the 12th and 13th centuries
  • Léonin and Pérotin are the only ars antiqua composers whose names have survived in the historical record, thanks to a student (Anonymous IV) who wrote about them around the 1270-80s
  • The genre of conductus is associated exclusively with the ars antiqua style
66
Q

What’s Ars Nova?

A
  • ‘new art’
  • Style term
  • 14th-century
  • 14th-century composers invented a new system of music notation -> ars nova notation
  • Guillaume da Machaut was an ars nova style composer-poet
67
Q

What was different about ars nova music notation?

A
  • Any rhythm, no matter how complicated, could be notated
  • The basic beat of the music could be divided into 2 or 3 subdivisions, and asymmetrical divisions of the beat into 5 or 11 subdivisions were possible
    -> flexible form of notation
68
Q

What’s the ars subtilior style?

A
  • “more subtle art”
  • Late 14th-century
  • Highly refined style of music
  • Centred primarily in the secular courts of southern France, Aragon, and Cyprus
  • Often features complicated rhythms and substantial dissonance
  • Some scholars have referred to this music as “mannerist” due to its fixation on complexity and novelty, on pushing the boundaries of both rhythm and harmony
69
Q

What’s the most extensive manuscript source for ars subtilior music?

A

The Chantilly Codex

70
Q

Describe the Chantilly Codex

A
  • In 1390
  • Most extensive manuscript source for ars subtilior music
  • Contains polyphonic pieces by a variety of mostly French composers, all composed between 1350-1400
  • A lot of the pieces are the most popular courtly dance styles of its time, in addition to motets and songs of various types
  • Some composers are known only from the Chantilly manuscript, including Trebor, who is represented by 6 pieces
71
Q

What’s a refrain?

A
  • Form term in vocal music
  • Chorus
72
Q

What’s the Cantigas de Santa Maria?

A
  • Between 1270 and 1290
  • A manuscript collection of 420 monophonic songs about the Virgin Mary
  • One of the largest collections of monophonic songs from the Medieval Period
  • Characterized by the mention of the Virgin Mary in every song
    -The Cantigas depict the Virgin Mary in a very humanized way, often having her play a role in earthly episodes in locales from Syria to Scotland
  • The Portuguese-Galician text of the cantigas, much influenced by the art of the troubadours, is set in metrically irregular stanzas of 4-10 lines
  • The manuscripts are famous for their pictorial representations of paired medieval instruments and performers
73
Q

What’s rondeaux?

A

Medieval secular vocal genre

74
Q

What’s the abbreviated form of manuscript?

A

ms.
plural is mss.

75
Q

Who’s Guillaume da Machaut?

A
  • 1300-1377
  • A cleric in the Church, a courtier, and a widely celebrated poet/musician
  • Active at a variety of royal courts, including the Court of Charles
  • Widely known as the greatest musician of his time -> renowned even long after his death
  • Top composer-poet of the Ars Nova style
  • Composed both sacred and secular poetry and music
  • Composed the earliest extant complete setting of the Mass Ordinary -> Notre Dame Mass
76
Q

What’s the Notre Dame Mass and what’s its historical significance?

A

Earliest extant complete setting of the Mass Ordinary composed by Guillaume da Machaut

77
Q

What’s a cantiga?

A
  • Medieval genre
  • Monophonic
  • Galician-Portuguese language
  • Most surviving examples (nearly all from the Cantigas de Santa Maria manuscripts) relate narratives about miracles performed by the Virgin Mary
78
Q

Why does Hildegard von Bingen include large ranges and complicated melismas in her music?

A

For the music to express religious ecstasy

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