Midterm 1 Flashcards
Describe Hildegard of Bingen, Alleluia! O virga mediatrix Performance 1
- 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
Describe Hildegard of Bingen, Alleluia! O virga mediatrix Performance 2
- 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
Describe Guillaume da Machuat, Agnus Dei from Notre Dame Mass
- 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
Describe Regina CaeliI
- By Vicente Lusitano
- Genre: motet
- Language: Latin (sacred text)
- Ensemble: SATB a cappella
- Texture: imitative polyphony (4 parts)
Describe Lasciatemi qui solo
- By Francesca Caccini
- Lament aria
- 1618
- Soprano voice (soloist) with lute, archlute & bass viola da gamba (bass continuo)
Describe Mio ben, teco il tormento from Orpheus
- By Luigi Rossi
- 1647
- Lament aria
- Italian
- Sung by Eurydice in Act II of the tragic-comic opera
- Eurydice, steadfast, sings Mio ben teco il tormento over a descending tetrachord (four descending notes) basso ostinato
Describe Concerto No. 4 in F Minor, op. 8, RV 297 (Winter) 1st Movement: Allegro con molto
- By Antonio Vivaldi
- First movement
- Allegro non molto (fast but not very fast)
- Ritornello Form
- This ritornello is alternated with the solo episodes played by the featured violin soloist
- Ominous introduction played by orchestra
-> called the tutti
Describe Concerto No. 4 in F Minor, op. 8, RV 297 (Winter from The Four Seasons) 2nd Movement: Largo
- By Antonio Vivaldi
- Second movement
- Largo (slowly)
- ‘Brighter’ (in a major key) and more tuneful than the first or last movements
- This movement is a very simple binary form (A-B), in which both halves have the same basic melody
- The tutti (accompanying orchestra) is plucking their strings (pizzicato) throughout the entire movement
Describe Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 in G major, BWV 1049, i. Allegro
- By Johann Sebastian Bach
- First movement
- Allegro
- G major
- Genre: concerto grosso
- Ensemble: concertino (violin and 2 alto recorders) & ripieno (orchestra) -> 2 violins, viola, cello, violone and basso continuo
- Form: ritornello form (within an ABA structure)
- Features: recorders play ritornello but are also featured in solo episodes. Violin part very virtuosic. Strong bass line played by cellos and harpsichord on basso continuo part
Describe The Well-Tempered Clavier, no. 1, Prelude & Fugue in C, BWV 846
- By Johann Sebastian Bach
- 1722
- Solo keyboard music
- Imitative polyphony (imitative counterpoint)
Describe Cello Suite No. 2 in D Minor, BWV 1008, vi. Gigue
- By Johann Sebastian Bach
- Single cellist plays both a melody and an accompaniment at the same time
- Genre: Gigue (fast, triple meter dance, often with strong accent on beat 3)
Describe “La giustizia ha già sull’arco” from Julius Caesar
- By George Frideric Handel
- Giulio Cesare
- Act III scene 2
- Genre (of this movement): soprano aria from an opera seria
Describe “There were Shepherds” and “Glory to God” from Messiah
- By George Frideric Handel
- 1741
- “There were shepherds” -> soprano recitative
- Continuo accompaniment at beginning is very sparse and sometimes completely absent
- “Glory to God” -> chorus
Dates of Medieval Style Period
450-1450
What’s sacred culture and art?
- Anything intended to serve as part of religious worship
- Usually in Latin
What’s secular culture and art?
- 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
Roman Catholic liturgy
Religious worship of the Roman Catholic Church
What’s a chant?
- 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
What’s a Gregorian chant?
- A plainchant
- Medieval tradition credited St. Gregory I with assembling and 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
Metrical VS non-metrical
Does the work have a beat (is metered) or does it not (non-metered or non-metrical)
Non-metrical
Rhythmically ‘free’ -> has no discernible beat or meter
What’s the Divine Office?
- 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
What’s the order of the Mass Ordinary?
- Kyrie Eleison
- Gloria in Excelsis
- Credo
- Sanctus
- Agnus Dei
What’s the ordinary of the mass (Mass Ordinary)?
- 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
What’s the proper of mass (mass proper)?
- 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
What are the 2 different settings for worship in the Roman Catholic liturgy?
- Divine Office
- Mass
What’s the Mass?
- A public setting for worship
- It has 2 parts: Foremass and Eucharist
What are church modes?
- 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
- Modal harmonic system 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
What’s a direct performance?
- Solo or unison performance of the music throughout
- One person or multiple people singing the same thing together (not in alternation)
What’s responsorial singing?
- 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
What’s antiphonal performance/singing?
Singers were divided into 2 groups that took turns singing phrases of text in alternation (with no individual ‘leader’)
What’s performance practice?
- 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)
What are the 3 types of performance practices for plainchant?
- Direct performance
- Responsorial performance
- Antiphonal performance
What’s a drone?
Part in music performance
What were some notable traits of the 12th century (1100s)?
- 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
What’s an organum?
- 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
What are troubadours, trobairitz (female troubadour) or trouvères?
- Literate secular poets/composers
- Sometimes members of aristocratic families, sometimes musically literate courtiers, sometimes monks, nuns, priests, and other educated members of the clergy
- 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
What are jongleur?
- 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
What’s a cantus firmus?
- 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
What’s a cantus firmus composition?
- 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.
What’s the Notre Dame School of composers?
- 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
What’s Ars Antiqua?
- ‘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
What’s Ars Nova?
- ‘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
Who’s Guillaume da Machaut?
- 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
What’s the Notre Dame Mass and what’s its historical significance?
Earliest extant complete setting of the Mass Ordinary composed by Guillaume da Machaut
Dates of Renaissance style period
1450-1600
What’s humanism?
Intellectual movement and ethical system focused on humans and their values, needs, interests, abilities, dignity, and freedom, often emphasizing secular culture and sensuality over sacred concerns
Describe the innovation of moveable-type printing press
- Invention in 1450 during Renaissance
- Music printing soon followed -> expanding affordable access to vocal and instrumental music of all genres (sacred and secular)
What’s the Protestant Reformation?
- AKA Lutheran Reformation
- Early 16th century (1500 and after)
- Martin Luther
- Separation of protestant Christian sects from the Roman Catholic Church
- Leads to great diversity in post-1500 Christian sacred music
What’s word painting?
- Music is composed in a way that the sound of the music reflects the meaning of the text
- Ex: an allusion to heaven in the text might be set to a vocal line that is rising in pitch or the mention of “pain” or “tears” in the text might be set to harsh sounding, dark, or dissonant harmony
What are points of imitation?
In imitative polyphony, the individual parts share brief snippets of melody so that you can occasionally hear the same musical figure occur in one voice after another