Midterm 1

Question 1

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

Answer 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

Question 2

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

Answer 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

Question 3

Describe Guillaume da Machuat, Agnus Dei from Notre Dame Mass

Answer 3

• 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

Question 4

Describe Regina CaeliI

Answer 4

• By Vicente Lusitano
• Genre: motet
• Language: Latin (sacred text)
• Ensemble: SATB a cappella
• Texture: imitative polyphony (4 parts)

Question 5

Describe Lasciatemi qui solo

Answer 5

• By Francesca Caccini
• Lament aria
• 1618
• Soprano voice (soloist) with lute, archlute & bass viola da gamba (bass continuo)

Question 6

Describe Mio ben, teco il tormento from Orpheus

Answer 6

• 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

Question 7

Describe Concerto No. 4 in F Minor, op. 8, RV 297 (Winter) 1st Movement: Allegro con molto

Answer 7

• 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

Question 8

Describe Concerto No. 4 in F Minor, op. 8, RV 297 (Winter from The Four Seasons) 2nd Movement: Largo

Answer 8

• 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

Question 9

Describe Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 in G major, BWV 1049, i. Allegro

Answer 9

• 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

Question 10

Describe The Well-Tempered Clavier, no. 1, Prelude & Fugue in C, BWV 846

Answer 10

• By Johann Sebastian Bach
• 1722
• Solo keyboard music
• Imitative polyphony (imitative counterpoint)

Question 11

Describe Cello Suite No. 2 in D Minor, BWV 1008, vi. Gigue

Answer 11

• 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)

Question 12

Describe “La giustizia ha già sull’arco” from Julius Caesar

Answer 12

• By George Frideric Handel
• Giulio Cesare
• Act III scene 2
• Genre (of this movement): soprano aria from an opera seria

Question 13

Describe “There were Shepherds” and “Glory to God” from Messiah

Answer 13

• 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

Question 14

Dates of Medieval Style Period

Answer 14

450-1450

Question 15

What’s sacred culture and art?

Answer 15

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

Question 16

What’s secular culture and art?

Answer 16

• 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

Question 17

Roman Catholic liturgy

Answer 17

Religious worship of the Roman Catholic Church

Question 18

What’s a chant?

Answer 18

• 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

Question 19

What’s a Gregorian chant?

Answer 19

• 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

Question 20

Metrical VS non-metrical

Answer 20

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

Question 21

Non-metrical

Answer 21

Rhythmically ‘free’ -> has no discernible beat or meter

Question 22

What’s the Divine Office?

Answer 22

• 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

Question 23

What’s the order of the Mass Ordinary?

Answer 23

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

Question 24

What’s the ordinary of the mass (Mass Ordinary)?

Answer 24

• 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

Question 25

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

Answer 25

• 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

Question 26

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

Answer 26

• Divine Office
• Mass

Question 27

What’s the Mass?

Answer 27

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

Question 28

What are church modes?

Answer 28

• 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

Question 29

What’s a direct performance?

Answer 29

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

Question 30

What’s responsorial singing?

Answer 30

• 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

Question 31

What’s antiphonal performance/singing?

Answer 31

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

Question 32

What’s performance practice?

Answer 32

• 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)

Question 33

What are the 3 types of performance practices for plainchant?

Answer 33

• Direct performance
• Responsorial performance
• Antiphonal performance

Question 34

What’s a drone?

Answer 34

Part in music performance

Question 35

What were some notable traits of the 12th century (1100s)?

Answer 35

• 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

Question 36

What’s an organum?

Answer 36

• 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

Question 37

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

Answer 37

• 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

Question 38

What are jongleur?

Answer 38

• 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

Question 39

What’s a cantus firmus?

Answer 39

• 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

Question 40

What’s a cantus firmus composition?

Answer 40

• 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.

Question 41

What’s the Notre Dame School of composers?

Answer 41

• 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

Question 42

What’s Ars Antiqua?

Answer 42

• ‘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

Question 43

What’s Ars Nova?

Answer 43

• ‘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

Question 44

Who’s Guillaume da Machaut?

Answer 44

• 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

Question 45

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

Answer 45

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

Question 46

Dates of Renaissance style period

Answer 46

1450-1600

Question 47

What’s humanism?

Answer 47

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

Question 48

Describe the innovation of moveable-type printing press

Answer 48

• Invention in 1450 during Renaissance
• Music printing soon followed -> expanding affordable access to vocal and instrumental music of all genres (sacred and secular)

Question 49

What’s the Protestant Reformation?

Answer 49

• 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

Question 50

What’s word painting?

Answer 50

• 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

Question 51

What are points of imitation?

Answer 51

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

Question 52

What’s a madrigal?

Answer 52

• Most important secular vocal genre of the late Renaissance and early Baroque periods
• Polyphonic, secular vocal genre invented in Italy in the 16th century (late Renaissance)
• Settings of secular poetry on a variety of topics (love, Greek mythology, etc.) in the vernacular language (always in Italian for Monteverdi and M. Casulana)
• Nearly always settings of celebrated contemporary poetry by someone other
  than the composer
• Genre of ‘high art’ -> created and performed for the entertainment of royalty and other educated members of royal courts
• Commoners rarely/never heard this music
• Imitated and adapted by international composers in royal courts in France and England, where they created madrigals using poetry in their own languages

Question 53

Vicente Lusitano

Answer 53

• 1520 - after 1561
• Portuguese composer, music theorist, and Roman Catholic priest (later converted to Protestantism) of African descent
• Sparse biography provides a rare glimpse of African presence in Renaissance Europe’s musical life
• Evidence of Lusitano’s racialized identity -> in 17th-century biographical manuscript in which he’s referred to as ‘homem pardo’
• Characteristics of Lusitano’s professional position within the Catholic Church -> the fact that he never held a benefice (i.e., a paid, permanent position) nor served as a maestro di capella, align with the limitations placed on priests of African descent
• Lack of info about Lusitano is directly related to his failure to find a secure position at church or court (fate of many musicians at the time)
• The institutional racism of both his own time and of later historiographical approaches (except for a few Portuguese scholars) erased him from all histories of Renaissance music until recently

Question 54

What’s a motet?

Answer 54

• Genre of sacred vocal music
• Polyphonic vocal genre, usually performed a cappella, that sets any Latin sacred text that doesn’t belong to the Mass or Divine Office
• Definition changes slightly during music history depending on time and place of composition

Question 55

Claudio Monteverdi

Answer 55

• 1567-1643
• Perhaps most important musician in late 16th- and early 17th-century Italy
• Excelled in nearly all the major genres of the period
• His 9 books of madrigals consolidated the achievement of the late Renaissance masters and cultivated new aesthetic and stylistic paradigms for the musical Baroque
• In his operas for Mantua and Venice he took the experiments of the Florentines (who originally invented opera circa 1600) and developed powerful ways of expressing and structuring musical drama
• Composer of high Renaissance and early Baroque music -> Transitional composer who ‘bridged’ between these 2 musical style periods, composing in and embodying the styles and genres of both style periods, composing a great deal of sacred and secular music for voices and instruments in all combinations
• Composed operas that were performed in the local opera houses of Venice -> most of these works survive, and they have earned Monteverdi the title of ‘first great composer of opera’ -> still performed today
• Traveled regularly to the wealthy Italian court of Ferrara, where he wrote music for a famous group of professional female singers known as the Concerto delle donne
• Published 8 books of madrigals (1587-1643) -> 9th was published after his death

Question 56

Who’s considered the ‘first great composer of opera’?

Answer 56

Claudio Monteverdi

Question 57

Dates of Baroque style period

Answer 57

1600-1750

Question 58

Francesca Caccini

Answer 58

• 1587-after 1641
• Composer, singer, multi-instrumentalist (keyboards and stringed instruments), music teacher and musica (all-around musician) serving at the Medici court in Tuscany
• Entered service to the Medici’s in 1607 and served in the women’s court for more than 30 years
• Oldest legitimate child of Giulio Caccini
• Contemporary of Galileo and Monteverdi, both of whom she knew
• Composed at least 17 theatrical works, nearly all of which were performed at court, along with hundreds of shorter vocal works meant for chamber performance
• Little of her music survives

Question 59

What’s a musica/musico?

Answer 59

An all-around musician

Question 60

Atto Melani

Answer 60

• 1626-1714
• Italian castrato and composer in the service of the de’ Medici family in Tuscany
• From an artisan-class family, one of seven brothers, all of who became musicians and four of whom were castrati vocalists
• Premiered the title role in Rossi’s tragic-comic opera L’Orfeo
• Most often performed in private settings for his patrons and their guests, and at the aristocratic courts where his patrons sent him as an emissary
• His vocal abilities created demand for his services at courts all over Europe
• His patrons used him as a secret diplomatic courier (a spy)
• In hundreds of letters, he kept patrons at the courts of Florence, Rome, Paris, Mantua, Turin, Innsbruck, and Regensburg apprised of the military plans and political machinations of the others -> his vocalism serving as effective cover for gathering info
• Such pursuits were dangerous -> resulted in his banishment from France for a time
• Louis XIV made him a gentleman of his chamber and titular abbot of a monastery in Normandy, the republic of Venice and cities of Lucca and Bologna granted him patrician status
• His network of patrons provided him with many sources of income
• He recognized that a career in diplomacy offered greater rewards than music alone -> so he devoted the latter half of his life to diplomacy, completely giving up his professional musical career

Question 61

What’s a castrato?

Answer 61

• Male singer castrated before puberty to retain the pre-adolescent high (soprano or alto) vocal range
• Most important category of vocal soloists in opera (and other vocal genres) during the baroque
• Most of them were employed by Italian churches
• Many leading operatic roles for men (hero or romantic lead) were written for castrati
• Castrati commonly performed women’s roles
• The “rock stars” of their day -> most successful castrati enjoyed great popularity and financial reward
• Today, the operatic roles and other vocal parts originally composed for castrati are sung by women or countertenors or falsettists (male sopranos)

Question 62

General traits of the baroque orchestra

Answer 62

• During the Baroque Era, our modern conception of the orchestra, as a group centered around a group of bowed strings, first developed
• Baroque orchestras were much smaller than the orchestras used in later art music, usually included only 10 to 25 people
• Often consisted of only bowed strings and sometimes a harpsichord or organ
• Wind instruments (brass and woodwinds) could be used and often were, including a limited array of percussion
• Bowed strings were the core of the orchestra from its earliest inception

Question 63

What are the ranges of human voices?

Answer 63

• Soprano (women, boys & castrati)
• Alto (women, boys & castrati)
• Tenor (adult men)
• Bass (adult men)

Question 64

What’s a basso ostinato/ground bass?

Answer 64

• Short bass theme (or any musical figure) that repeats over and over as an accompaniment, laying a harmonic foundation over which other prominent melodies occur
• Basso ostinatos/ground basses of lament arias typically consist of a descending figure in a slow triple meter

Question 65

What’s a recorder?

Answer 65

• Flute
• Wind instruments
• Various sizes capable of playing in 4 SATB ranges and much higher and much lower

Question 66

What’s a movement?

Answer 66

• Each of the individual pieces that comprise a multi-movement genre
• Multi-movement genre: musical work under one title that’s composed of several separate musical pieces that are always played together in the same order
• The individual movements with any multi-movement genre are designed to complement and contrast with one another regarding key, tempo, and musical material.

Question 67

What’s a sonata?

Answer 67

• Solo sonata
• 2 types -> both with the same title
• 1. Multi-movement genre for a solo instrumentalist and basso continuo
     or
• 2. Multi-movement genre for a solo keyboard (commonly harpsichord)

Question 68

What’s a trio sonata?

Answer 68

• Multi-movement genre for 2 instrumental soloists and basso continuo
• The ensemble can vary widely -> the basso continuo part might be played by 1-3 people, the total ensemble of a trio sonata could include from 3 players (2 soloists + 1 continuo player) to 5 players (2 soloists + 3 continuo players) or more

Question 69

What’s a solo concerto?

Answer 69

Multi-movement (usually 3 -> not standardized in baroque era) genre for a single instrumental soloist (of any type) and orchestra (including basso continuo)

Question 70

What’s a concerto grosso?

Answer 70

• Concerto grossi (Italian plural)
• Multi-movement (usually 3 -> could be more) genre for 2 or more instrumental soloists and orchestra (including basso continuo)
• Many were written for 2 violinists and basso continuo (the solo group) accompanied by a larger group (the orchestra, which usually also consisted of strings only)
• Part of the interest in such works -> contrast of the smaller solo group with the larger orchestra
• During Baroque Era, concerto grosso were never titled Concerto Grosso -> usually titled ‘concerto’, making it difficult to differentiate from a solo concerto by title alone

Question 71

What’s a Baroque dance suite?

Answer 71

• AKA Orchestral Dance Suite
• Multi-movement genre for orchestra without any particular featured soloists
• Each movement is usually named after and is an example of a particular dance type -> though some might have other inspirations and be unrelated to dance
• Dance suites could be used for dancing or simply as concert works for listening enjoyment

Question 72

What’s a suite?

Answer 72

Multi-movement collection of dances

Question 73

What’s a fugue?

Answer 73

• Entire piece or distinct subsection of music that employs imitative polyphony in a strictly
  prescribed manner
• A fugue can be a genre (if an entire piece or movement contains nothing but that fugue), but it’s also possible for a subsection of a piece to be described as a fugue
• Fugues may be written for any instrument capable of polyphonic solo playing, or any combination of voices or instruments, or instruments and voices together
• First musical theme of a fugue -> the subject

Question 74

What’s the first musical theme/main theme of a fugue?

Answer 74

• The subject
• After its first appearance in a single voice or part, we then hear that same melody again and again in the other parts

Question 75

What’s ritornello form?

Answer 75

Type of form where the music played by the orchestra appears both at the beginning, end, and several times during the movement

Question 76

When did Johann Sebastian Bach die?

Answer 76

• 1750
• This date marks the end of the Baroque Period

Question 77

Johann Sebastian Bach

Answer 77

• 1685-1750
• German, Lutheran composer
• One of the most influential figures in Western music history
• Foremost Baroque composer to be ‘revived’ in the early 19th century
• Musician-composer all his life
• His sacred and secular works are among the most studied and performed in the canon
• Born into a family of musicians, all of whom worked in churches and town bands
• Orphaned at an early age -> prepared for the musical profession by his older brother, an organist
• Eventually known as a virtuoso organist himself
• H was highly regarded as an expert on organ construction and maintenance
• At 23, he was appointed court organist and chamber musician to the Duke of Weimar
• He later worked at the court of the Prince of Anhalt-Cöthen, where he wrote
  some of his most famous instrumental works (including The Brandenburg Concertos)
• Bach composed 6 “Brandenburg” concertos, 5 of which have 3 movements (No. 1 in F major has 4), and each for a different ensemble for instrumental soloists with orchestra
• His “The Well-Tempered Clavier” is regarded as one of the most influential works in the history of Western classical music
• His music is generally regarded as one of the greatest artistic achievements of the Baroque Period
• Near the end of his life, J. S. Bach created an incomplete collection of keyboard works titled The Art of the Fugue, perhaps to preserve the High Baroque polyphonic musical tradition he loved
• At 38 he was appointed as a cantor at St. Thomas Church in Leipzig -> he was in charge of all of the music performed in the 4 municipal Lutheran churches in and around Leipzig
• During his years as Cantor, Bach composed hundreds of sacred cantatas for use in worship services in the Lutheran Church

Question 78

What’s a cantor?

Answer 78

Music director

Question 79

Antonio Vivaldi

Answer 79

• 1678-1741
• The “Red Priest” -> was a priest with red hair
• Famous and influential as a virtuoso violinist and composer
• Born in Venice, Italy
• Son of violinist employed at St. Mark’s Cathedral
• Worked as a violin teacher, composer, and conductor at the Music School of the Pietà (orphanage for girls)
• Orchestra and chorus at this school was one of the finest in Italy, and much of Vivaldi’s music was composed for them to perform
• He composed operas and church music
• Best known for his ~450 concertos (solo concerti and concerti grossi)

Question 80

What’s an oratorio?

Answer 80

• Genre of secular vocal music
• Multi-movement works that contain introductory orchestral overtures, arias, recitatives, duets, trios, choral numbers, and interludes for orchestra alone
• Usually based on a narrative libretto with plots and characters, and often a narrator
• There is no acting, scenery, or costumes (unlike an opera)
• Singers stand in place during their recitatives and arias, without moving about or pretending to be their characters
• Despite their biblical subject matter, oratorios were originally conceived as a secular genre -> composed and performed for entertainment purposes and didn’t have a place in the worship practice of their original audiences
• Very successful with the English audience

Question 81

What’s da capo aria form?

Answer 81

Specific type of ternary form (A—B—A’)

Question 82

George Frideric Handel

Answer 82

• 1685-1759
• German-born composer
• Created numerous works in every genre of his day, including orchestral dance suites, organ concertos, and concerti grossi
• Most remembered for his 39 Italian-style operas and his oratorios for English audiences
• Handel wasn’t from a musical family -> studied with a local organist and composer from a young age
• At 18, worked as a violinist and harpsichordist in the orchestra of an opera house in Hamburg
• At 20 he produced his first successful opera
• At 21 he went to Italy, where he further studied the Italian opera style -> composed and produced operas in several Italian cities
• In 1710 Handel took a well-paid position as music director for Elector Georg Ludwig of Hanover, who became Handel’s patron -> he allowed Handel to travel extensively and promote his music on the international stage
• He became London’s most important composer and a favorite of Queen Anne
• He became the director of the Royal Academy of Music and then later his own opera company -> both of these went bankrupt for a variety of reasons, including a decline in English enthusiasm for Italian opera
• He began to compose and produce the genre of oratorio -> these were usually based on stories from the Old Testament (ex: Handel’s oratorios Israel in Egypt and Joshua)
• Handel’s oratorios propelled him into the developing ‘canon’ of great composers that coalesced during the 19th century -> he was one of the first canonic composers

Question 83

What are the dynamics markings for forte, piano, mezzo forte, mezzo piano, crescendo, and decrescendo?

Answer 83

• forte = f -> play loudly
• mezzo forte = mf -> somewhat loudly (less loud than f)
• mezzo piano = mp -> somewhat softly (less loud than mf)
• piano = p -> play softly
• crescendo = < -> to become gradually louder
• decrescendo = > -> to become gradually softer

Question 84

What are dynamics?

Answer 84

The relative loudness or softness of the music

Question 85

Importance of Greek and Roman antiquity during the Renaissance

Answer 85

• Fascination with and study of Greek and Roman Antiquity becomes more common among the literate classes
• The architecture, visual arts, poetry, and music of the renaissance demonstrates this influence
• Ex: operas (attempts to recreate the ancient Greek dramas), madrigals (sometimes about Greek mythology)

Question 86

What’s a monody?

Answer 86

• New vocal style and texture in 1600
• Literally ‘one song’
• Characterized by a solo vocal melody with instrumental accompaniment
• Writings of Francesca Caccini’s father (& other music theorists in 1600) demonstrated a new style of vocal writing -> monody
• Arias and recitatives fall under the general vocal category of monody -> includes all works that can be correctly referred to as a “song” of one kind or another
• Homophonic texture

Question 87

What’s basso continuo?

Answer 87

• 1, 2, or more instruments that accompany one or more vocal or instrumental soloists, reading from a musical part called the figured bass
• The continuo or figured-bass part is notated as a single musical line (the bass line) over which numbers and other symbols (‘figures’) indicate which other notes should be played in each chord
• At least one of the basso continuo instruments plays the bass line as written by the composer, while the other (or others) improvises chords indicated by the figured bass
• A typical basso continuo consists of a low bass string instrument (such as viola da gamba or violoncello) or low wind (bassoon) and a keyboard (harpsichord, organ) and/or plucked string instruments (lute, archlute) that is capable of realizing the chords
• In Baroque and early Classical periods, the keyboard instrument in the basso continuo was nearly always the harpsichord or the organ
• The instrumentation of the basso continuo (the continuo or the continuo group) was never specified in the music
• Musicians and composers of the period were very practical about performance practices, and their music was designed to accommodate a wide variety of performance situations

Question 88

What’s the continuo/continuo group?

Answer 88

The instrumentation of the basso continuo

Question 89

What’s improvisation?

Answer 89

Spontaneously adding something to a performance

Question 90

What’s ornamentation/embellishment?

Answer 90

• Practice (vocal and instrumental) of spontaneously adding (improvising) short decorative flourishes to the written music during performance
• These additional notes are called ornaments or embellishments
• The ornaments were not random but followed the written and unwritten (aural) traditions of musical performance relevant to the specific music being performed (national origin of the music, the general musical style, the performance situation, etc.)
• Some Baroque composers used specially designed symbols to notate the ornaments that they preferred
• During the High Baroque instrumental treatises appeared that provided detailed instructions on how to practice and play ornaments
• Francesca Caccini’s father Giulio included such details in his publications of monody
• Musicians who wish to recreate baroque music in a historically-informed manner -> must include ornamentation

Question 91

Origins of Opera

Answer 91

• In the wealthy Italian courts of Florence
• In ~1600
• Invented by a group of intellectuals, poets and musicians who were attempting to recreate the ancient Greek dramas, which they determined had been sung in a very declamatory (speech-like) style
• Originally a genre designed for aristocratic entertainment
• By 1637 the city of Venice opened the first public opera house that sold tickets and operated on basis of profit
• Opera was to become one of the most important public venues for musical entertainment in all of history

Question 92

Luigi Rossi

Answer 92

• 1597-1653
• Italian composer and keyboard player who was active in Naples, Rome and Paris
• Considered by many to have composed some of the finest vocal music of the 17th century
• His canzonettas (short love songs) and cantatas enjoyed wide popularity, and he composed operas for both the papal family and the French royal court
• Rossi’s L’Orfeo (1647)

Question 93

What’s an aria?

Answer 93

• Song for solo voice, often with a larger ensemble (orchestra) playing the accompaniment
• Strongly metrical -> has a strong and recognizable beat (not necessarily fast)
• Melodious or lyrical song that expresses an outpouring of emotion, thereby developing the character of the person singing the aria
• Very lyrical, ‘musically oriented,’ often repeating fragments of the text, and containing melismas that ‘show off’ the technical and expressive abilities of the star singers
• Arias became the most well-known parts of an opera, and the most famous ones were/are often performed as ‘stand-alone works’ without the rest of the opera
• Arias appear in other Baroque-era, large-scale vocal genres (ex: oratorios and secular cantatas and sacred cantatas)
• Arias were composed as ‘stand-alone’ works (works that were/are performed alone without being part of a larger work) -> they’re determined by their musical style not by their placement within larger genres to which they were first associated
• Ex: Francesca Caccini, Lasciatemi qui solo (1618) -> lament aria

Question 94

What’s a recitative?

Answer 94

• Song that imitates the rhythms and pitch patterns of natural speech
• Usually carries the action and dialogue of an opera (used to forward the action of drama)
• Not very lyrical and melodious -> sounds more like speech or recitation
• Often largely syllabic and contains many repeated pitches
• Good for expressing text in which meaning is important
• Usually doesn’t have long melismas or repetitions of text
• Rhythmically ‘free’ or nonmetrical -> contains no strong beat
• Usually accompanied by 1 or 2 instruments (basso continuo) who closely follow the singer (and/or conductor)
• Recitatives appear in other Baroque-era, large-scale vocal genres (ex: oratorios and secular cantatas and sacred cantatas)
• Recitatives were composed as ‘stand-alone’ works (works that were/are performed alone without being part of a larger work) -> they’re determined by their musical style not by their placement within larger genres to which they were first associated

Question 95

What are the 2 types/subgenres of song in opera?

Answer 95

• Recitative
• Aria

Question 96

What’s tempo?

Answer 96

The relative speed of the beat in music

Question 97

What are the 6 different tempos?

Answer 97

• Presto = very fast
• Allegro = fast
• Allegretto = moderately fast
• Moderato = moderate rate (slower than allegretto)
• Adagio/Andante = slow
• Largo = slowly

Question 98

What’s lament aria?

Answer 98

• Poem (or song) expressing grief, regret or mourning
• Musical subcategory of recitative and aria
• Very popular in the 17th century and after
• Baroque lament arias often featured a basso ostinato (ground bass)
• The basso ostinatos or ground basses of lament arias typically consist of a descending figure in a slow triple meter
• Common form of lament uses a descending tetrachord (4 descending notes) over and over (basso ostinato) as the basis of the basso continuo part

Question 99

What’s a balletto?

Answer 99

• Genre of early opera
• Ex: Francesca Caccini’s Il liberazione di Ruggeiero dall’isola d’Alcina (1625) -> 75mins long

Question 100

What’s a canso?

Answer 100

Medieval secular vocal genre

Question 101

What’s a secular cantata?

Answer 101

• 17th century
• Large work for solo vocalist, basso continuo, and occasionally other instruments, featuring secular texts that are often sad but might be humorous
• One-movement works divided into several sections featuring a variety of vocal styles (recitative, arioso, and aria) with changing meters and tempos
• Cantatas of this sort were common forms of entertainment at court in 17th Century

Question 102

What’s a conductus?

Answer 102

• 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

Question 103

What’s an ensemble?

Answer 103

• ‘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)

Question 104

What’s a cappella?

Answer 104

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

Question 105

What’s an SATB choir?

Answer 105

4-part choir including (Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass)

Question 106

What’s an overture?

Answer 106

• Instrumental piece (for orchestra alone) that introduces an opera
• First thing you hear at the beginning of the opera, often before main opera characters come on stage
• Often contain musical themes from the vocal pieces to follow -> ‘foreshadowing’ the action of the opera

Question 107

What’s a genre?

Answer 107

• 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.

Question 108

What’s a score?

Answer 108

• Piece of music that contains all of the parts in that piece
• For practicality -> each musician in a large ensemble (ex: orchestra) may perform from a piece of music containing only their part
• Only the conductor would have a score

Question 109

What’s a part?

Answer 109

• Piece of music that contains musical instructions for a single instrument or voice within an ensemble
• It’s common for multiple players to play the same part (doubling, tripling, etc.) -> number of performers and number of parts in a piece are often not the same

Question 110

What are the 3 main types of texture?

Answer 110

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

Question 111

What’s a monophony?

Answer 111

• 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

Question 112

What’s a polyphony?

Answer 112

• Type of texture (polyphonic texture)
• Music consists of 2 or more different melody lines
• Imitative and non-imitative polyphony

Question 113

What’s a homophony?

Answer 113

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

Question 114

What’s imitative polyphony?

Answer 114

• Stylistic development of the Renaissance
• AKA continuous imitation
• Brief fragments of melody (motives) are passed from voice to voice (or instrument to instrument) within the performing group, so that these motives are heard again and again within close proximity of each other, making the music easier to comprehend and follow
• 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 (‘points of imitation’)
• Much easier to understand than non-imitative polyphony -> aural relationship between the independent parts
• After invention of imitative polyphony, most polyphony composed thereafter is imitative

Question 115

What’s non-imitative polyphony?

Answer 115

• Contrary to imitative polyphony
• Medieval polyphony
• Harder to understand -> little to no aural relationship between the independent parts

Question 116

What’s homorhythm?

Answer 116

• Musical texture in which all of the parts move together rhythmically
• Type of texture
• Renaissance music often alternates between polyphonic passages (all parts are rhythmically independent) and homorhythmic passages (all parts move together in the same rhythm)

Question 117

What are the 2 types of text setting?

Answer 117

• Syllabic
• Melismatic (melisma)

Question 118

What’s the syllabic text setting?

Answer 118

• 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

Question 119

What’s the melismatic text setting?

Answer 119

• 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

Question 120

What’s pitch?

Answer 120

• 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)

Question 121

What’s a harpsichord?

Answer 121

• Keyboard instrument that plucks the strings
• Looks like a piano with 2 keyboards
• Extremely popular in the Renaissance and Baroque Periods as both a soloist and a continuo instrument

Question 122

What’s an archlute?

Answer 122

Larger bass lute

Question 123

What’s a lute?

Answer 123

• Plucked string instrument
• Introduced to Europe by Muslim communities (called it an ud) living in the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) during the medieval era
• Important instrument both for solo performance and for accompanying singers or other instrumental soloists

Question 124

What’s an organ?

Answer 124

Air-powered keyboard instrument

Question 125

What’s a viol?

Answer 125

• AKA viola da gamba
• Similar to modern orchestral strings
• Held in front of the body and rested on the knees
• In the Baroque Era the large bass viola was a typical basso continuo instrument

Question 126

What’s a libretto?

Answer 126

• Story or text of an opera, written by the librettist
• Operas were/are intended as entertainment and use secular texts in a vernacular language
• Subject matter of librettos varies widely, covering the range of human experiences, but love, sex and violence are always favorites (even when based on biblical story)
• Earliest operas drew their subject matter from the myths, dramas and histories of ancient Greece and Rome, and often feature mythical figures, gods, etc.
• Early operas contained choruses that comment on the plot and circumstances of the main characters

Question 127

What’s a librettist?

Answer 127

• Composer/writer of a libretto
• Rarely the composer herself -> rather someone with literary and poetic skills

Question 128

Hildegard von Bingen

Answer 128

• 1098-1179
• One of the first composers for whom we have numerous pieces of music and a well established biography
• She was well known in her day -> her musical works, poetry and other writings
  were widely copied and disseminated around Europe
• She lived all of her life in service to the
  Church, eventually becoming a convent abbess and founding her own convent in Rupertsburg (western Germany)
• A noted visionary, mystic, and prolific writer of original poetry, prose and music
• In addition to her spiritual writings and morality plays, Hildegard wrote on a wide variety of topics, including science, medicine, botany, and sexuality
• Her visions and prophecies made her famous throughout Europe: popes, kings, and priests sought her advice on political and religious issues
• She was an unusually well-educated, famous and powerful woman for her time
• She wrote religious poetry with music, collected in the Symphonia armonie celestium revelationum (Symphony of the Harmony of Celestial Revelations)
• Her poetry is characterized by brilliant imagery and visionary language
• Much of her original poetry celebrates the lives of local saints, such as St. Rupert, the patron saint of Hildegard’s convent and of the Virgin Mary
• Her musical style is rather unusual for her time -> uses an expansive range, occasional wide intervallic leaps, and florid melismas -> suggests Hildegard worked with talented singers in a sophisticated musical establishment