Mystery Score #1: Terms & People

Question 1

(from Latin officium, “obligation” or “ceremony”)

A series of eight prayer services of the Roman church, celebrated daily at specified times, especially in monasteries and convents; also, any one of those services.

Answer 1

The Office

Question 2

A poem of praise to God, one of 150 in the Book of Psalms in the Hebrew Scriptures (the Christian Old Testament). Singing psalms was a central part of Jewish, Christian, Catholic, and Protestant worship.

Answer 2

Psalm

Question 3

Song to or in honor of a god. In the Christian tradition, song of praise sung to God.

Answer 3

Hymn

Question 4

(1) A LITURGICAL CHANT that precedes and follows a PSALM or CANTICLE in the OFFICE.
(2) In the MASS, a chant originally associated with ANTIPHONAL PSALMODY; specifically, the COMMUNION and the first and final portion of the INTROIT.

Answer 4

Antiphon

Question 5

(from Latin missa, “dismissed”)

(1) The most important service in the Roman church.
(2) A musical work setting the texts of the ORDINARY of the Mass, typically KYRIE, GLORIA, CREDO, SANCTUS, and AGNUS DEI. In this book, as in common usage, the church service is capitalized (the Mass), but a musical setting of the Mass Ordinary is not (a mass).

Answer 5

The Mass

Ordinary: Kangaroos Get Krunk Singing Alto

KGCSA

Question 6

(Greek, “Lord”) One of the five major musical items in the MASS ORDINARY, based on a BYZANTINE litany.

Answer 6

Mass Ordinary: Kyrie

Question 7

(Latin, “Holy”) One of the five major musical items in the MASS ORDINARY, based in part on Isaiah 6:3.

Answer 7

Sanctus

Question 8

• Of a poem, consisting of two or more stanzas that are equivalent in form and can each be sung to the same MELODY;
• Of a vocal work, consisting of a strophic poem set to the same music for each stanza.

Answer 8

Strophic

Question 9

The entire range of pitches normally written in the Middle Ages.

Answer 9

Gamut

Question 10

(from Greek, “six strings”)

(1) A set of six pitches.
(2) In medieval and RENAISSANCE SOLMIZATION, the six NOTES represented by the syllables ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la, which could be transposed to three positions: the “natural” hexachord, C-D-E-F-G-A; the “hard” hexachord, G-A-B-C-D-E; and the “soft” hexachord, F-G-A-B♭-C-D.
(3) In TWELVE-TONE theory, the first six or last six notes in the ROW.

Answer 10

Hexachord

Question 11

?

Answer 11

8 Church Modes

Question 12

A span of NOTES, as in the range of a MELODY or of a MODE.

Answer 12

Range

Question 13

(from Latin tenere, “to hold”)

(1) In POLYPHONY of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the voice part that has the chant or other borrowed MELODY, often in long-held NOTES.
(2) In POLYPHONY of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the fundamental voice that together with the CANTUS determines the musical structure.
(3) In vocal music from the sixteenth century on, part for relatively high male voice.
(4) Male voice of a relatively high range.

Answer 13

Tenor

Question 14

The main NOTE in a MODE; the normal closing note of a CHANT in that mode.

Answer 14

Final

Question 15

?

Answer 15

Ut queant laxis

Question 16

Having (or tending to have) one NOTE sung to each syllable of text.

Answer 16

Chant Styles: Syllabic

Question 17

Pertaining to a manner of performing CHANT in which a soloist alternates with a group.

Answer 17

Responsorial

Question 18

?

Answer 18

Gloss

Question 19

Addition to an existing CHANT, consisting of

(1) words and MELODY;
(2) a MELISMA; or
(3) words only, set to an existing melisma or other melody.

Answer 19

Trope

Question 20

from Latin sequentia, “something that follows”)

(1) A category of Latin CHANT that follows the ALLELUIA in some MASSES.
(2) Restatement of a pattern, either MELODIC or HARMONIC, on successive or different pitch levels.

Answer 20

Sequence

Question 21

Medieval Latin songs associated with the goliards, who were wandering students and clerics.

Answer 21

Goliard Song

Question 22

(French, “songbook”) Manuscript collection of secular songs with French words; used both for collections of MONOPHONIC TROUBADOUR and TROUv`ere songs and for collections of POLYPHONIC songs.

Answer 22

Chansonnier

Question 23

(from Occitan trobar, “to compose a song”) A poet-composer of southern France who wrote MONOPHONIC songs in Occitan (langue d’oc) in the twelfth or thirteenth century.

Answer 23

Troubadour

Question 24

See Fine Amour

(French, “refined love”; pronounced FEEN ah-MOOR;

fin’amours in Occitan; also called _______)

An idealized love for an unattainable woman who is admired from a distance. Chief subject of the TROUBADOURS and TROUv’eres.

Answer 24

Courtly Love

Question 25

Medieval MONOPHONIC song in Spanish or Portuguese.

Answer 25

Cantiga

Question 26

(1) One of the several styles of early POLYPHONY from the ninth through thirteenth centuries, involving the addition of one or more voices to an existing CHANT.
(2) A piece, whether IMPROVISED or written, in one of those styles, in which one voice is drawn from a chant. The plural is organa.

Answer 26

Organum

(Latin; pronounced OR- guh -num)

Question 27

Principal Voice

In an ORGANUM, the original CHANT MELODY.

Answer 27

Vox Principalis

Question 28

Organal voice

In an ORGANUM, the voice that is added above or below the original CHANT MELODY.

Answer 28

Vox organalis

Question 29

Type of POLYPHONY in which an added voice moves in exact parallel to a CHANT, normally a perfect fifth below it. Either voice may be doubled at the ocatve.

Answer 29

Parallel Organum

Question 30

?

Answer 30

Free Organum

Question 31

Style of POLYPHONY from the twelfth century, encompassing both DISCANT and FLORID ORGANUM.

Answer 31

Aquitanian Polyphony

Question 32

Twelfth-century style of two-voice POLYPHONY in which the lower voice sustains relatively long NOTES while the upper voice sings note-groups of varying length above each note of the lower voice.

Answer 32

Florid Organum

Question 33

(Latin, “Singing apart”)

(1) Twelfth-century style of POLYPHONY in which the upper voice or voices have about one to three NOTES for each note of the lower voice.
(2) TREBLE part.

Answer 33

Discant Organum

Question 34

Style of POLYPHONY from the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries, associated with the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.

Answer 34

Notre Dame Organum

Question 35

System of six durational patterns (for example, mode 1, long-short) used in POLYPHONY of the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries, used as the basis of rhythmic NOTATION of the Notre Dame composers.

Answer 35

Rhythmic Modes

Question 36

In NOTRE DAME POLYPHONY, a new CLAUSULA (usually in DISCANT style) designed to replace the original polyphonic setting of a particular segment of a CHANT.

Answer 36

Substitute Clausulae

Question 37

?

Answer 37

“Dominus” Melisma

Question 38

(from French mot, “word”)

POLYPHONIC vocal COMPOSITION; the specific meaning changes over time.

• The earliest ____ add a text to an existing DISCANT CLAUSUL.
• Thirteenth-century _____ feature one or more voices, each with its own sacred or secular text in Latin or French, above a TENOR drawn from CHANT or other MELODY.
• Most fourteenth- and some fifteenth-century ____ feature ISORHYTHM and may include a CONTRATENOR.
• From the fifteenth century and on, any polyphonic setting of a Latin text (other than a MASS) could be called a ____;
• from the late sixteenth century on, the term was also applied to sacred compositions in German and later in other languages.

Answer 38

Motet

Question 39

In medieval and RENAISSANCE systems of RHYTHMIC NOTATION, a NOTE equal to two or three BREVES.

Answer 39

Long

Question 40

In medieval and RENAISSANCE NOTATION, a division of a note value into three (rather than two) of the next smaller unit. See MODE, TIME, and PROLATION.

Answer 40

Perfect Subdivisions

Perfect (or major) division

Question 41

The three levels of rhythmic division in ARS NOVA NOTATION.

• Mode is the division of LONGS into BREVES;
• Time is the division of breves into SEMIBREVES;
• Prolation is the division of semibreves into MINIMS.

Answer 41

Mode / Time / Prolation

(Latin modus, tempus, prolatio)

Question 42

In ARS NOVA and RENAISSANCE systems of rhythmic NOTATION, signs that indicate which combination of time and prolation to use (see MODE, TIME AND PROLATION). The predecessors of TIME SIGNATURES.

Answer 42

Mensuration Signs

Question 43

Repetition in a voice part (usually the TENOR) of an extended pattern of durations throughout a section or an entire COMPOSITION.

Answer 43

Isorhythm

(From Greek iso-, “equal,” and rhythm)

Question 44

In an ISORHYTHMIC COMPOSITION, an extended rhythmic pattern repeated one or more times, usually in the TENOR. Compare COLOR.

Answer 44

Talea

Latin, “cutting”; pronounced TAH-lay-ah)

Question 45

(Latin, “new art”)

Style of POLYPHONY from fourteenth-century France, distinguished from earlier styles by a new system of rhythmic NOTATION that allowed duple or triple division of NOTE values, SYNCOPATION, and great rhythmic flexibility.

Answer 45

Ars nova

Question 46

(1) French FORME FIXE, normally in three stanzas, in which each stanza has the musical form aabC and ends with a REFRAIN (C).
(2) Instrumenal piece inspired by the GENRE of narrative poetry.

Answer 46

Fixed Forms: Ballade

Question 47

The 1300s (the fourteenth century), particularly with reference to Italian art, literature, and music of the time.

Answer 47

Italian Trecento

(Italian, short for mille trecento, “one thousand three hundred” pronounced treh-CHEN-toh)

Question 48

?

Answer 48

Squarcialupi Codex

Question 49

Fourteenth-century Italian song GENRE with the FORM AbbaA, in which A is the ripresa or REFRAIN, and the single stanza consists of two piedi (bb) and a volta (a) sung to the music of the ripresa.

Answer 49

Ballata

(from Italian ballare, “to dance”; pl. ballate)

Question 50

Fourteenth-century Italian FORM featuring two voices in CANON over a free untexted TENOR

Answer 50

Caccia

(Italian, “hunt”; pronounced CAH-cha; pl. cacce)

Question 51

(1) Fourteenth-century Italian poetic form and its musical setting, having two or three stanzas followed by a RITORNELLO.
(2) Sixteenth-century Italian poem having any number of lines, each of seven or eleven syllables.
(3) POLYPHONIC or CONCERTATO setting of such a poem or of a sonnet or other nonrepetitive VERSE form.
(4) English polyphonic work imitating the Italian GENRE.

Answer 51

Madrigal

(Italian madrigale, “song in the mother tongue”)

Question 52

Was credited with discovering that the octave, fifth, and fourth, long recognized as consonances, are also related to numbers. These intervals are generated by the simplest possible ratios: for example, when a string is divided, segments whose lengths are in the ratio 2;1 sound an octave, 3;2 a fifth, and 4;3 a fourth.

Answer 52

Pythagoras

Question 53

Was the most revered authority on music in the Middle Ages. His is a science of numbers, and numerical ratios and proportions determine intervals, consonances, scales, and tuning. Divided music into three parts music mundana (the music of the universe), musica humana (human music), and musica instrumentalis (instrumental music)

Answer 53

Boethius

Question 54

Conquests expanded his territory throughout modern-day France, Belgium, the Netherlands, western Germany, Switzerland, and northern Italy, continued this policy, sending for singers from Rome to teach the chant in the north.

Answer 54

Charlemange

Question 55

Revered as the founder of their church and consequently attributed their liturgy and its music to him. The legend arose that the changes were dictated to him by the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove.

Answer 55

Pope Gregory I

Question 56

The most famous early writer of sequence texts

Answer 56

Notker Balbulus

Question 57

Suggested an arrangement of lines and spaces, using a line of red ink for F and of yellow ink for C and scratching other lines into the parchment.

To facilitate sight-singing, introduced a set of syllables corresponding to the pattern of tones and semitones in the succession C-D-E-F-G-A. Solmization.

His followers developed a pedagogical aid on the hand.

Answer 57

Guido d’Arezzo

Question 58

Achieved great success as prioress and abbess of her own convent and as a writer and composer. There are more surviving chants by this person than by any other composer from the entire Middle Ages.

Answer 58

Hildegard von Bingen

Question 59

Thanks to a treatise from about 1285 known as Anonymous IV, we know the names of two musicians associated with creating polyphony for Notre Dame:

Served at the Cathedral of Paris in many capacities, beginning in the 1150s, before the current building was begun. He was a canon at Notre Dame, became a priest, and was affiliated with the monastery of St. Victor.

Answer 59

Leonin

Question 60

Thanks to a treatise from about 1285 known as Anonymous IV, we know the names of two musicians associated with creating polyphony for Notre Dame:

Little is known about him. He must have held an important position at the cathedral. The treatise’s reference to both as “master” suggests that both earned the master of arts degree at the school that would become the University of Paris, a center of intellectual innovation intertwined with Notre Dame Cathedral since the last decades of the twelfth century.

Was a European composer, believed to be French, who lived around the end of the 12th and beginning of the 13th century. He was the most famous member of the Notre Dame school of polyphony and the ars antiqua style.

Answer 60

Perotin

Question 61

The first vernacular poet-composer whose complete works were collected in a manuscript, showing the great esteem in which he was held. Musical plays were built around narrative pastoral songs (songs in idealized rural settings). The most famous was Jeu de Robin et de Marion by this trouvère.

Answer 61

Adam de la Halle

Question 62

The rhythmic variety of the Franconian motet was extended one step further by this person

Answer 62

Petrus de Cruce

Question 63

Codified the new system, now called Franconian notation, in his Ars cantus mensurabilis (The Art of Measurable Music), written around 1280.

Answer 63

Franco of Cologne

Question 64

French composer, poet, church canon, administrator for the duke of Bourbon and the king of France, and later bishop of Meaux, is named by one writer as the “inventor of a new art”—in Latin, ars nova.

Answer 64

Philippe de Vitry

Question 65

The most important composer and poet of the French Ars Nova period

Answer 65

Guillaume de Machaut

Question 66

Was born in northern Italy, probably in Florence or nearby Fiesole. The son of a painter, he was blinded by smallpox during childhood and turned to music, becoming an esteemed performer, composer, and poet. A master of many instruments, he was especially known for his skill at the organetto, a small portative organ

Answer 66

Francesco Landini

Question 67

Item from the MASS PROPER, sung just before the Gospel reading, comprising a RESPOND to the text “Alleluia,” a verse, and a repetition of the respond. CHANT alleluias are normally MELISMATIC in style and sung in a RESPONSORIAL manner, one or more soloists alternating with the CHOIR.

Answer 67

Mass Proper: Alleluia

Question 68

(Latin, “Glory”) Second of the five major musical items in the MASS ORDINARY, a praise formula also known as the Greater DOXOLOGY.

Answer 68

Mass Ordinary: Gloria

Question 69

(Latin, “I believe”) Third of the five major musical items in the MASS ORDINARY, a creed or statement of faith.

Answer 69

Mass Ordinary: Credo

Question 70

(Latin, “Lamb of God”) Fifth of the five major musical items in the MASS ORDINARY, based on a litany.

Answer 70

Agnus Dei

Question 71

The second most important NOTE in a MODE (after the FINAL), often emphasized in CHANT and used for reciting text in a PSALM TONE.

Answer 71

Reciting Tone

Question 72

In CHANT, having about one to seven NOTES (or one NEUME) sung to each syllable of text.

Answer 72

Chant Styles: Neumatic

Question 73

Of a MELODY, having many MELISMAS.

Answer 73

Chant Styles: Melismatic

Question 74

Adjective describing a manner of performance in which two or more groups alternate.

Answer 74

Antiphonal

Question 75

Pertaining to a manner of performing CHANT without alternation between groups (see ANTIPHONAL) or between soloist and group (see RESPONSORIAL).

Answer 75

Direct

Question 76

Early form of ORGANUM that combines parallel motion with oblique motion (in which the ORGANAL VOICE remains on the same NOTE while the PRINCIPAL VOICE moves (in order to avoid TRITONES.

Answer 76

Oblique Organum

Question 77

In medieval and RENAISSANCE systems of RHYTHMIC NOTATION, a NOTE that is normally equal to half or a third of a LONG.

Answer 77

Breve

(from Latin brevis, “short”)

Question 78

In medieval and RENAISSANCE systems of rhythmic NOTATION, a NOTE that is normally equal to half or a third of a BREVE.

Answer 78

Semibreve

Question 79

In medieval and RENAISSANCE NOTATION, a division of a NOTE value into two of the next smaller units (rather than three). See MODE, TIME and PROLATION.

Answer 79

Imperfect Subdivisions

Question 80

In an ISORHYTHMIC COMPOSITION, a repeated MELODIC pattern, as opposed to the repeating rhythmic pattern (the TALEA)

Answer 80

Color

(Latin rhetorical term for ornament, particularly repitition , pronounced KOH- lor )

Question 81

?

Answer 81

Ars Antigua

Question 82

French FORME FIXE in the pattern A bba A bba A bba A, in which a REFRAIN (A) alternates with stanzas with the musical FORM bba, the a using the same music as the refrain.

Answer 82

Fixed Forms: Virelai

Question 83

(1) French FORME FIXE with a single stanza and the musical FORM ABaAabAB, with capital letters indicating lines of REFRAIN and lowercase letters indicating new text set to music from the refrain.
(2) FORM in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century instrumental music in which a repeated STRAIN alternates with other strains, as in the pattern AABACA.

Answer 83

Fixed Forms: Rondeau

(pl. rondeaux)

Question 84

(from Latin gradus, “stairstep”)

Item in the MASS PROPER, sung after the Epistle reading,

comprising a RESPOND and VERSE.

CHANT graduals are normally MELISMATIC

in style and sung in a RESPONSORIAL manner,

one or more soloists alternating with the CHOIR.

Answer 84

Mass Proper: Gradual