Test #1 (Week 3)

Question 1

What were the 2 principal genres of sacred music in the Renaissance?

Answer 1

The Mass and the motet

Question 2

What is a cyclic Mass?

Answer 2

cycle of all movements of Mass Ordinary integrated by a common cantus firmus or other musical device

Question 3

The cyclic Mass was significant because composers were placing the issues of ____ _____ above questions of liturgical propriety or projection of text

Answer 3

musical coherence

Question 4

What are the 2 features of Guillaume de Fay’s “If My Face is Pale” that are significant?

Answer 4

1. 1st Mass by any composer that is based on a cantus firmus from a secular source, tenor is no longer the lowest voice
2. lowest voice no longer bound to cantus firmus so composers were free to explore more harmonies

Question 5

What is the term for a thematic idea in multiple voices that is placed prominently in the beginning of a movement or section?

Answer 5

head motif

Question 6

What are two other terms for mensuration?

Answer 6

prolation and meter

Question 7

What are the 4 unification devices for the Mass?

Answer 7

1. cantus firmus
2. canon
3. imitation (or parody)
4. paraphrase

Question 8

What is musical symbolism?

Answer 8

Settings are connected to political events and understood to convey a particular message

Question 9

What is the term for when the cantus firmus is repeated so consistently that it appears in at least 1 voice at all times?

Answer 9

Ostinato technique

Question 10

What is “soggetto cavato”?

Answer 10

cantus firmus “subject” (soggetto) is “carved” (cavato) out of a given word or name

Question 11

describe strict technique vs. free technique

Answer 11

strict technique: cantus firmus remains consistently in tenor

free technique: cantus firmus migrates from voice to voice, or may drop out altogether

Question 12

What are Canonic Masses (canon)?

Answer 12

Masses that are structured according to the principle of strict canon, in which at least 1 of the notated voices generates a 2nd voice

Question 13

What are Imitation/Parody Masses?

Answer 13

Masses that incorporate all the voices of an existing work into the fabric of a new work

Question 14

What is a paraphrase?

Answer 14

When an existing melodic idea is borrowed from a different work and then elaborated freely in the new work

Question 15

What is a prayer text set to music?

Answer 15

A motet

Question 16

What are the three principal functions of a motet?

Answer 16

1. liturgical
2. devotional
3. occasional

Question 17

What were the 2 rules of application of musica ficta?

Answer 17

1. melodic: intended to avoid certain linear tritones

2. harmonic: inted to acoid vertical tritones, semitones and cross-relations

Question 18

What is a frottola?

Answer 18

Italian, texts are freely structured poems as well as established literary forms

Question 19

What were the subjects in frottolas?

Answer 19

sarcastic, ironic, lighthearted (as opposed to courtly love)

Question 20

Frottolas avoided ____ and ____

Answer 20

imitation and counterpoint