Quiz #1 Prep

Question 1

when was medieval period

Answer 1

450-1450

Question 2

Difference between sacred versus secular chant

Answer 2

Sacred music can only be sung in worship services - if it is not sacred it is secular

Question 3

Viderunt Omnes - Anonymous

Answer 3

Text = LATIN (function) SACRED
Texture = Monophonic
Ensemble = acapella
Direct Performance
genre = plainchant

Question 4

Alleluia! O Virga mediatrix - Hildegard of Bingen

Answer 4

Text = Sacred (function) Language (Latin)
Texture = Monophonic
Performance practice (ver 1 is a direct performance with a woman soloist, ver 2 is a responsorial performance)
Ensemble = acapella and women accompanied by harp

Question 5

A chantar m’er de so qu’ieu non volria - Beatriz de Dia (La Comtessa)

Answer 5

genre=canso
language = occitan - secular
ensemble = female soprano, vielle bowed string, flute
texture - monophonic/homophonic?

Question 6

Viderunt Omnes - Perotin the great

Answer 6

Genre = four voice florid organum
text = latin (language) sacred
texture = non-imitative polyphony
ensemble = acapella

Question 7

Sol oritur ocassus - Herrad of Landsburg

Answer 7

Genre = conductus
text = Latin/sacred
texture = two-part parallel motion
form = strophic; three verses - sung the same melody
Responsorial performance
ensemble = acapella

Question 8

A Virgen Santa Maria todos a loar devemos - Anonymous

Answer 8

genre = cantiga
language = Galician/Portugeuse
texture = notated monophonically - prob performed homophonic-ally
form = strophic

Question 9

Helas! Pitie envers moy dort si fort

Answer 9

genre = rondeux
texture = non imitative polyphony
language = provencal
ensemble = tenor voice w viol and lute
style = ars subtilior

Question 10

Agnus Dei From Notre Dame Mass - Guillaume de Machaut

Answer 10

Genre - mass movement (ars nova)
text = latin sacred
texture = non imitative polyphony 4 voices
ensemble = accapella
style = ars nova

Question 11

Roman catholic liturgy - 2 forms of settings for worship

Answer 11

Divine Office - private to be observed by the cloistered community
in a monastery or convent. 8 daily scheduled services.
Mass - public worship

Question 12

What is an important structuring principle of the liturgy?

Answer 12

the division of material into those parts of the text that always remain the same (ordinary) and those that change according to the particular day in the
liturgical year (proper) (usually sung by choir or solo).

Question 13

Mass ordinary’s 5 musical settings of 5 movements

Answer 13

1. Kyrie
2. Gloria
3. Credo
4. Sanctus
5. Agnus Dei
   (most frequently set to music)

Question 14

Plainchant

Answer 14

text intended for worship services in Mass or the Divine Office

Question 15

church modes’

Answer 15

the scales (a hierarchical and limited set of musical pitches) that served as the basis for the harmonic language of Medieval music
——-> A mode is a limited collection of pitches that are organized within a piece of music
to emphasize one particular pitch, called the FINAL.

Question 16

Modal harmony

Answer 16

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.
a. Cadence: a ‘resting place’ in music, usually on the FINAL in modal music, if it is a
very strong and conclusive cadence. In plainchant, the location and relative strengths
of all cadences were determined by the syntax of the sacred text, which in all cases
existed before the music was composed

Question 17

Performance Practices

Answer 17

9th century manuscripts also include theoretical treatises that describe various aspects of how to compose and perform this music.
1. Direct performance: solo or unison performance of the music throughout—i.e., one person or multiple people singing the same thing together (not in alternation).
2. Responsorial singing: in which 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.
3. Antiphonal singing: in which singers were divided into two groups that take turns singing
phrases of text in alternation (with no individual ‘leader’).

Question 18

Gradual plainchant and Alleluia plainchant

Answer 18

A gradual is part of the Mass Proper and is sung after the reading or chanting of
the Epistle and before the Alleluia. fr example - viderunt omnes

A plainchant Alleluia, part of the Mass
Proper, usually performed before the reading of the
Gospel to accompany the procession of the minister and
book of Gospels.

Question 19

12th century developments

Answer 19

1. earliest extant manuscripts of secular vocal music in Occitania (Aquitania)
   - Medieval secular texts often deal with courtly love and chivalry, as well as war,
   weaving, and other aristocratic activities & concerns. Many were humorous, bawdy or
   vulgar satires.
   - Secular pieces by these troubadours and trouvères functioned as entertainment
   in royal courts.
2. earliest extant manuscripts of instrumental music (various genres of dance)
   - A few manuscripts of instrumental music from the 12th
   century survive. These manuscripts were recognizable as
   instrumental music because (1) there is no text associated
   with the music, and (2) the pieces are notated in a manner
   that suggests a consistent rhythm or meter (because
   nearly all of these early instrumental works are dances).
   - As with the 12th century secular vocal works, the
   earliest surviving instrumental pieces were notated
   monophonically, consisting of only one melody line
   (with no text and no specified instrument).
   - Nearly all of these earliest extant instrument pieces are dances of some type, for
   example the estampie (medieval dance genre).

Question 20

Start of Notre Dame school in the 12th century

Answer 20

• multi-generational tradition of sacred (and secular) vocal
  music originating from composers working at or near the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, beginning about 1170 and continuing throughout the 13th century.
• Léonin, Pérotin and the other anonymous composers whose music has survived are
  representatives of the era of European music history later known as the ars antiqua,
  which is a style term only associated with the music of the 12th and 13th centuries.
• Many works in the Medieval genres of organum, motet, conductus, and of course
  Mass movements were composed by the composers of the Notre Dame School.

Question 21

organum (Medieval sacred vocal genre)

Answer 21

a genre of polyphonic music
- created by adding additional
melodic lines (usually one to three) to a pre-existing plainchant melody

Question 22

Jongleur

Answer 22

illiterate ‘free-lance’
musicians who played by memory
- made a precarious living or supplemented their incomes by
playing music for dances, civic functions, etc.

Question 23

Vernacular language of royal courts

Answer 23

(Occitan/Provencal)

Question 24

Hortus deliciarum (Garden of Delights)

Answer 24

one of the earliest
polyphonic sources from a convent.
- Hortus deliciarum was created as a pedagogical tool for her novices. It’s content are for the most part not original, but its scope is unusually encyclopedic and it could (and did) serve as a compendium of 12th
century knowledge.
- wrritenn by Herrad

Question 25

Strophic form

Answer 25

repetition of musical unit/verse

Question 26

cantus firmus

Answer 26

Originally, a pre-existing chant melody (therefore, a sacred melody and text) that is
recycled into a new composition; i.e., the chant melody that serves as the basis for a new musical creation is itself called the cantus firmus.

Question 27

cantus-firmus composition

Answer 27

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; in other words, one of the
melody lines is not original but was borrowed or recycled from the earlier musical
tradition.

Question 28

Conductus

Answer 28

new settings of sacred Latin poetry in a genre
- Conductus were 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.
- mainly by 2 or three voices
- the genre of conductus is 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).

Question 29

ars antiqua (style term)

Answer 29

meaning ‘the old art’)
- refer to music of 12th, 13th centuries

Question 30

ars nova (style term)

Answer 30

meaning ‘new art’
- refer to music of 14th century (their own)

Question 31

ars nova music notation

Answer 31

The great advantage and innovation of ars nova
notation was that any rhythm, no matter how complicated, could be notated. The basic
beat of the music could be divided into two or three subdivisions, and even asymmetrical
divisions of the beat into 5 or 11 subdivisions were possible, making it an extraordinarily
flexible form of notation.

Question 32

ars subtilior (style term)

Answer 32

Meaning a “more subtle art,” the ars subtilior was a highly refined style of music created in the late 14th century, centered primarily in the secular courts of southern
France, Aragon, and Cyprus.
- often features very complicated rhythms and substantial dissonance.

Question 33

Chantilly Codex (ca. 1390)

Answer 33

• The most extensive manuscript source for ars subtilior music
• containing 112 polyphonic pieces by a variety of mostly French composers, all composed
  between ca. 1350-1400
• Trebor is in this

Question 34

Cantigas de Santa Maria (ca. 1221-1284)

Answer 34

A manuscript collection of 420 monophonic songs (i.e., poems set to single lines of musical notation) about the Virgin Mary made between about 1270 and 1290 under the direction of King Alfonso X (El Sabio).
- The manuscripts
are famous for their pictorial representations of paired
medieval instruments and performers,

Question 35

refrain

Answer 35

lines repeated - like the chorus of a song

Question 36

Guillaume da Machaut (c. 1300-1377)

Answer 36

1. a cleric in the Church, a courtier, and
   a very widely celebrated poet / musician.
   widely known as the greatest musician
   of his time; renowned even long after his
   death—the foremost composer-poet of
   the Ars Nova style.
2. composed both sacred and secular
   poetry and music
3. composed the earliest extant complete setting of the Mass Ordinary, known to us
   today as the Notre Dame Mass

Question 37

rondeaux

Answer 37

(Medieval secular vocal genre)

Question 38

Ensemble includes

Answer 38

What instruments and/or voices are included in the ensemble?

Question 39

genre

Answer 39

• specific category of musical composition, as defined by that composition’s stylistic
  traits, taking all relevant aspects into consideration: for instance, a plainchant, an organum, a
  string quartet, a piano sonata, a symphony, an opera buffa, a rock opera, a polka Mass

Question 40

metrical / non-metrical

Answer 40

does it have a beat

Question 41

Pitch

Answer 41

sound-producing vibration that oscillates (beats) at a definite and prescribed rate
of speed

Question 42

Texture (3 kinds)

Answer 42

How many individual parts (not individual players) are there in the music, and what is the
relationship between these parts?
- monophonic texture
- polyphonic
- homophonic texture

Question 43

Text settings (2 kinds)

Answer 43

syllabic: each syllable of the text is set to only one pitch

melismatic: a text setting that contains melismas; a melisma is a single syllable of text that is set to a large number of pitches.