Titles Flashcards
Alleluia Pascha Nostrum
A hymn sometimes used by Christians during Easter season. The title is Latin for “Our Passover,” (Middle Ages)
Sederunt principes (4-v)
One of only three surviving four-part organa. It is one of two attributed to the medieval French composer Perotinus (fl c.1200). It is notated in the very early mensural rhythmic notation called rhythmic modes, which causes it to be in what we would consider compound meter. (Middle Ages)
Messe de Notre Dame
a polyphonic mass composed before 1365 by a French poet, composer Guillaume de Machaut (c. 1300-1377). This was one of the great masterpieces of medieval music and of all religious music; it is historically notable as the earliest complete setting of the Ordinary of the Mass attributable to a single composer (Middle Ages)
Sumer is icumen in
a medieval English rota (type of round) of the mid-13th century.
The title translates approximately to “Summer Has Come In” or “Summer Has Arrived”.[1] The song is composed in the Wessex dialect of Middle English. Although the composer’s identity is unknown today, it may have been W. de Wycombe. The year of composition is estimated to be ca. 1260. (Middle Ages)
Nuper rosarum flores
(“Recently Flowers of Roses/The Rose Blossoms Recently”), is a motet composed by Guillaume Dufay for the 25 March 1436 consecration of the Florence cathedral. The motet presents homographic tenors and is not an isorhythmic motet as often presented, since there are no isorythms in its compositional proceedings (Bent 2008). The motet is striking for its synthesis of the older isorhythmic style and the new contrapuntal style that Dufay himself would explore further in the coming decades (Renaissance)
Missa Se la face ay pale
Guillaume Dufay composed the ballade Se la face ay pale in the 1430s, perhaps for a Savoy wedding in 1434. Its courtly text speaks in clever, punning rhymes of the pale-faced, dejected lover. (Renaissance)
Missa Mi-mi
From its composition in the fifteenth century until 1985, a reasonably well-documented mass by Johannes Ockeghem was known only by the mysterious title Missa MyMy [Mi-Mi] Three manuscripts in the Vatican Library, copied between around 1480 and 1503, preserve copies of the Mass, and a copying record from the church of St. Donatian in Bruges from 1475-1476 may refer to the same piece. (Renaissance)
Missa prolationum
a musical setting of the Ordinary of the Mass, by Johannes Ockeghem, dating from the second half of the 15th century. Based on freely written material probably composed by Ockeghem himself, and consisting entirely of mensuration canons,[1] it has been called “perhaps the most extraordinary contrapuntal achievement of the fifteenth century”, and was possibly the first multi-part work to be written which used a unifying canonic principle for all its movements. (Renaissance)
Missa Hercules dux Ferrariae
a setting of the Ordinary of the Mass composed by Josquin des Prez, and dedicated to Ercole d’Este I, Duke of Ferrara. The musical source material for the mass, the cantus firmus, is derived from the musical letters in the Duke’s name, a technique called soggetto cavato. (Renaissance)
Pope Marcellus Mass
a mass by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. It is his most well-known and most often-performed mass, and is frequently taught in university courses on music. It was always sung at the Papal Coronation Mass (the last being the coronation of Paul VI in 1963). (Rennaissance)
Cruda Amarilli
madrigal (genre of secular music) for 5 voices (from Book 5…there were 9), SV 94 - Claudio Monteverdi [interesting note - Canon Artusi published a book in 1600 that was a passionate attack on progressive tendencies in the music of the day. Cruda Amarilli, which has a number of new harmonic devices, is one of the negative examples he calls on to make his point.] (Early and Middle Baroque)
The Triumphs of Oriana
a book of English madrigals, compiled and published in 1601 by Thomas Morley, which first edition[1] has 25 pieces by 23 composers (Thomas Morley and Ellis Gibbons have two madrigals). It was said to have been made in the honour of Queen Elizabeth I. Every madrigal in the collection contains the following couplet at the end: “Thus sang the shepherds and nymphs of Diana: long live fair Oriana” (the word “Oriana” often being used to refer to Queen Elizabeth). (Early and Middle Baroque)
Flow, my tears
a lute song (specifically, an “ayre”) by the accomplished lutenist and composer John Dowland.
Originally composed as an instrumental under the name Lachrimae pavane in 1596, it is Dowland’s most famous ayre,[1] and became his signature song, literally as well as metaphorically: he would occasionally sign his name “Jo. Dolandi de Lachrimae”. (Early baroque)
L’Orfeo
sometimes called L’Orfeo, favola in musica, is a late Renaissance/early Baroque opera by Claudio Monteverdi, with a libretto by Alessandro Striggio. It is based on the Greek legend of Orpheus, and tells the story of his descent to Hades and his fruitless attempt to bring his dead bride Eurydice back to the living world. Written in 1607 for a court performance during the annual Carnival at Mantua, L’Orfeo is one of the earliest music dramas still regularly performed.(Early and Middle Baroque)
L’incoronazione di Poppea
an Italian baroque opera comprising a prologue and three acts, first performed in Venice during the 1642–43 carnival season. The music, attributed to Claudio Monteverdi, is a setting of a libretto by Giovanni Francesco Busenello. One of the first operas to use historical events and people, it is based primarily on the Annals of Tacitus and describes how Poppaea, mistress of the Roman emperor Nerone (Nero), is able to achieve her ambition and be crowned empress. (Early and Middle Baroque)
Combattimento di Tancredi et Clorinda
an operatic scena for three voices by Claudio Monteverdi, although many dispute how the piece should be classified. The piece has a libretto drawn from Torquato Tasso’s La Gerusalemme Liberata (“Jerusalem Delivered”, Canto XII, 52-62, 64-68), a Romance set against the backdrop of the First Crusade. Il Combattimento was first produced in 1624 but not printed until 1638, when it appeared with several other pieces in Monteverdi’s eighth book of madrigals (written over a period of many years). (Early and Middle Baroque)
In ecclesiis (polychoral)
Giovanni Gabrieli’s magnum opus and most famous single work. A masterpiece of polychoral techniques, it also epitomises Baroque and Renaissance styles, with its prolific use of pedal points and extended plagal cadences.
Written while Gabrieli was the organist at St Mark’s Basilica, Venice, the music was designed to be performed in this unique building. The individual groups of musicians and singers would have been spatially separated around the grand architecture creating a polychoral, antiphonal texture that is difficult to replicate in modern performances. (1585-1600) (Renaissance)
Jephtha
an oratorio (1751) by Handel with a libretto by the Rev. Thomas Morell, based on the story of Jephtha in Judges (Chapter 11) and Jephthas sive votum - “Jeptha or the Vow” (1554) by George Buchanan. (High Baroque)
Symphoniae sacrae
by Giovanni Gabrieli. (Late renaissance/Early Baroque)
Saul, was verfolgst du mich
part of Symphoniae sacrae III by Schultz circa 1650 (Early and Middle Baroque)
Dido and Aeneas
an opera in a prologue and three acts, written by the English Baroque composer Henry Purcell with a libretto by Nahum Tate. The first known performance was at Josias Priest’s girls’ school in London no later than the summer of 1688. The story is based on Book IV of Virgil’s Aeneid.[2] It recounts the love of Dido, Queen of Carthage, for the Trojan hero Aeneas, and her despair when he abandons her. (Early and Middle Baroque)
The Well-Tempered Clavier
a collection of solo keyboard music composed by Johann Sebastian Bach. He first gave the title to a book of preludes and fugues in all 24 major and minor keys, dated 1722, composed “for the profit and use of musical youth desirous of learning, and especially for the pastime of those already skilled in this study.” Bach later compiled a second book of the same kind, dated 1742, but titled it only “Twenty-four Preludes and Fugues.” The two works are now usually considered to make up a single work, The Well-Tempered Clavier, or “the 48,” and are referred to respectively as Books I and II. (High Baroque)
L’Art de toucher le clavecin
a didactic treatise by the French composer François Couperin. It was first published in 1716, and was followed by a revised edition in 1717.The treatise was written to instruct keyboard players in performance practice, particularly for Couperin’s Pièces de Clavecin; Couperin, upon its publication, noted that it was “absolutely indispensable for playing my Pièces in the style most suitable to them”. (High Baroque)
Twelve solo sonatas, Op.5
Arcangelo Corelli wrote it for violin and continuo. (6 sonate da chiesa and 6 sonate da camera for violin and continuo) (Rome 1700) The last sonata is a set of variations on La Folia. (High Baroque)
Traité de l’harmonie [réduite à ses principes naturels]
music treatise written by Jean-Philippe Rameau. It was first published in Paris in 1722 by Jean-Baptiste-Christophe Ballard.
The Treatise describes music and how to write it based on the tonal system used today in classical music. It uses the modern major and minor keys to teach readers what to do to achieve good sounding music based on the 12 tone music scale. (divided into 4 books) (High Baroque)
The Art of Fugue
A Musical Offering
a collection of canons and fugues and other pieces of music by Johann Sebastian Bach, all based on a single musical theme given to him by Frederick the Great (Frederick II of Prussia), to whom they are dedicated. The Ricercar a 6, a six-voice fugue which is the highpoint of the entire work, was put forward by the musicologist Charles Rosen as the most significant piano composition in history (partly because it is one of the first).[1] This ricercar is also occasionally called the Prussian Fugue, a name used by Bach himself. (1745-1750) (High Baroque)
Goldberg Variations
a work for harpsichord by Johann Sebastian Bach, consisting of an aria and a set of 30 variations. First published in 1741, the work is considered to be one of the most important examples of variation form. The Variations are named after Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, who may have been the first performer. (High Baroque)
St. Matthew Passion
a sacred oratorio from the Passions written by Johann Sebastian Bach in 1727 for solo voices, double choir and double orchestra, with libretto by Picander (Christian Friedrich Henrici). It sets chapters 26 and 27 of the Gospel of Matthew (in the German translation of Martin Luther) to music, with interspersed chorales and arias. It is widely regarded as one of the masterpieces of classical sacred music. (High Baroque)
Mass in B minor
a musical setting of the complete Latin Mass by Johann Sebastian Bach. The work was one of Bach’s last, not completed until 1749, the year before his death in 1750. Much of the Mass consisted of music that Bach had composed earlier (High Baroque)
Giulio Cesare
Giulio Cesare in Egitto (Julius Caesar in Egypt, HWV 17), commonly known simply as Giulio Cesare, is an Italian opera in three acts written for the Royal Academy of Music by George Frideric Handel in 1724. The libretto was written by Nicola Francesco Haym who used an earlier libretto by Giacomo Francesco Bussani, which had been set to music by Antonio Sartorio (1676). (High Baroque)
Israel in Egypt
a biblical oratorio by the composer George Frideric Handel. Many historians believe the libretto was compiled by Handel’s collaborator Charles Jennens, and it is composed entirely of selected passages from the Hebrew Bible, mainly from Exodus and the Psalms.
Israel in Egypt premiered at London’s King’s Theatre in the Haymarket on April 4, 1739. (High Baroque)
La serva padrona
an opera buffa by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710 – 1736) to a libretto by Gennaro Antonio Federico, after the play by Jacopo Angello Nelli. The opera is only 45 minutes long and was originally performed as an intermezzo between the acts of a larger serious opera. The same libretto was set by Giovanni Paisiello in 1781 (High Baroque)
Orfeo ed Euridice
an opera composed by Christoph Willibald Gluck based on the myth of Orpheus, set to a libretto by Ranieri de’ Calzabigi. It belongs to the genre of the azione teatrale, meaning an opera on a mythological subject with choruses and dancing.[1] The piece was first performed at Vienna on 5 October 1762. Orfeo ed Euridice is the first of Gluck’s “reform” operas, in which he attempted to replace the abstruse plots and overly complex music of opera seria with a “noble simplicity” in both the music and the drama (Classical)
Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments
While in Berlin Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach placed himself in the forefront of European music with a treatise, Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen (An Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments). Immediately recognised as a definitive work on keyboard technique, by 1780 the book was in its third edition and laid the foundation for the keyboard methods of Muzio Clementi and Johann Baptist Cramer. In it, Bach broke with tradition in allowing, even encouraging, the use of the thumbs. Since his time this has been standard technique for keyboard instruments. (Classical)
Le Matin, Le Midi, & Le Soir Symphonies
Joseph Haydn - under the employ of Prince Esterházy in 1761, in the transition between the Baroque and Classical periods. a set of three symphonies – Le matin (No 6.), Le midi (No 7) and Le soir (No. 8). (Classical)
Farewell Symphony
Symphony No. 45 in F-sharp minor, known as the “Farewell” Symphony (in German: Abschieds-Symphonie), was composed by Joseph Haydn and dated 1772 on the autograph score.It was written for Haydn’s patron, Prince Nikolaus Esterházy, while he, Haydn and the court orchestra were at the Prince’s summer palace in Eszterháza. The stay there had been longer than expected, and most of the musicians had been forced to leave their wives back at home in Eisenstadt, so in the last movement of the symphony, Haydn subtly hinted to his patron that perhaps he might like to allow the musicians to return home: during the final adagio each musician stops playing, snuffs out the candle on his music stand, and leaves in turn, so that at the end, there are just two muted violins left (played by Haydn himself and the concertmaster, Alois Luigi Tomasini). Esterházy seems to have understood the message: the court returned to Eisenstadt the day following the performance. (Classical)
London Symphonies
sometimes called the Salomon symphonies after the man who introduced London to Joseph Haydn, were composed by Joseph Haydn between 1791 and 1795. They can be categorized into two groups: Symphonies Nos. 93 through 98, which were composed during Haydn’s first visit to London, and Symphonies Nos. 99 through 104, composed in Vienna and London for Haydn’s second London visit. (Classical)
String Quartets, Op.33
written by Joseph Haydn in the summer and Autumn of 1781 for the Viennese publisher Artaria. This set of quartets has several nicknames, the most common of which is the “Russian” quartets, because Haydn dedicated the quartets to the Grand Duke Paul of Russia and many (if not all) of the quartets were premiered on Christmas Day, 1781, at the Viennese apartment of the Duke’s wife, the Grand Duchess Maria Feodorovna. (Classical)
The Creation
an oratorio written between 1796 and 1798 by Joseph Haydn (H. 21/2), and considered by many to be his masterpiece. The oratorio depicts and celebrates the creation of the world as described in the biblical Book of Genesis and in Paradise Lost. It is scored for soprano, tenor and bass soloists, chorus and a symphonic orchestra, and is structured in three parts (Classical)
“Dissonance” Quartet
The String Quartet No. 19 in C Major, KV. 465 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, nicknamed “Dissonance” on account of its unusual slow introduction, is perhaps the most famous of his quartets. It is the last in the set of six quartets composed between 1782 and 1785 that he dedicated to Joseph Haydn. (Classical)
Jupiter Symphony
Symphony No. 41 in C major, K. 551, on 10 August 1788.[1] It was the last symphony that he composed, and also the longest. (Classical)
The Marriage of Figaro
Mozart (Classical)
Don Giovanni
Mozart (Classical)
Cosi fan tutte
an Italian language opera buffa in two acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart first performed in 1790 (Classical)
The Magic Flute
Mozart (Classical)
Fidelio
opera in two acts by Ludwig van Beethoven (Classical/Early Romantic)
Sonate pathétique
Beethoven (Classical/Early Romantic)
Midsummer Night’s Dream Overature
Felix Mendelssohn composed music for William Shakespeare’s play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In 1826, near the start of his career, Mendelssohn wrote a concert overture (Op. 21). (Early Romantic)
Symphony No. 41 in C major
Mozart (Classical)
Symphony No. 5 in C minor
Ludwig van Beethoven, Op. 67, was written in 1804–1808. It is one of the most popular and best-known compositions in classical music, and one of the most frequently played symphonies. (Early Romantic)
Symphony No. 104 in D major
Joseph Haydn’s final symphony. It is the last of the twelve so-called London Symphonies, and is known (somewhat arbitrarily, given the existence of eleven others) as the London Symphony (Classical)
Sinfonia eroica
Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major (Op. 55), also known as the Eroica (Italian for “heroic”), is a musical work marking the full arrival of the composer’s “middle-period,” (Classical/Early Romantic)
Rasumovsky Quartets
The three “Rasumovsky” (or “Razumovsky”) string quartets, opus 59, are the quartets Ludwig van Beethoven wrote in 1806, as a result of a commission by the Russian ambassador in Vienna, Count Andreas Razumovsky:
String Quartet No. 7 in F major, Op. 59, No. 1
String Quartet No. 8 in E minor, Op. 59, No. 2
String Quartet No. 9 in C major, Op. 59, No. 3 (Classical/Early Romantic)
Pastoral Symphony
Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68, also known as the Pastoral Symphony ( German Pastoral-Sinfonie), is a symphony composed by Ludwig van Beethoven (Early Romantic)
Appassionata Sonata
Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 23 in F minor, Op. 57 (colloquially known as the Appassionata) is a piano sonata. (Classical/Early Romantic)
Emperor Concerto
Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73, by Ludwig van Beethoven (Early Romantic)
Diabelli Variations
33 Variations on a waltz by Anton Diabelli, Op. 120, commonly known as the Diabelli Variations, is a set of variations for the piano written between 1819 and 1823 by Ludwig van Beethoven (Early Romantic)
Missa solemnis
Missa solemnis in D major, Op. 123 was composed by Ludwig van Beethoven (Early Romantic)
Symphonie fantastique
French composer Hector Berlioz in 1830 (Early Romantic)
Harold en Italie
Hector Berlioz’s second symphony, written in 1834. (Early Romantic)
A Faust Symphony
Hungarian composer Franz Liszt and was inspired by Johann von Goethe’s drama, Faust. (Later Romantic, Post-Romantic)
Hebrides Overture
The concert overture The Hebrides (German: Die Hebriden), Op. 26, also known as Fingal’s Cave (die Fingalshöhle), was composed by Felix Mendelssohn in 1830 (Early Romantic)
Italian Symphony
Symphony No. 4 in A major, Op. 90, commonly known as the Italian,[1] is an orchestral symphony written by German composer Felix Mendelssohn. (Early Romantic)
Scottish Symphony
Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Op. 56, known as the Scottish, is a symphony by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, composed between 1829 and 1842 (Early Romantic)
Spring Symphony
Benjamin Britten’s Opus 44. It is dedicated to Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra (Early Modern)
Variations on a Theme by
Haydn
also called the Saint Anthony Variations, is a work in the form of a theme and variations, composed by Johannes Brahms in the summer of 1873 at Tutzing in Bavaria. (Later Romantic, Post-Romantic)
Ein deutsches Requiem
A German Requiem, To Words of the Holy Scriptures, Op. 45 (German: Ein deutsches Requiem, nach Worten der heiligen Schrift) by Johannes Brahms (Later Romantic, Post-Romantic)
Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op. 98
Johannes Brahms. Also the last of his symphonies. (Later Romantic, Post-Romantic)
Les Préludes
third of Franz Liszt’s thirteen symphonic poems. (Later Romantic, Post-Romantic)
Romeo and Juliet Fantasy- Overture
an orchestral work composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. (Later Romantic, Post-Romantic)
