sign along the path

Never be lukewarm.
Life itself demands passion.
He who is indifferent to God
   has already forfeited his soul.
He who is indifferent to politics 
   has already forfeited his liberty.
In America, religion is not mere window dressing
  and citizenship is not a spectator sport.
Do not allow 
 our common destiny as a whole people
  to just happen without your input. Seek the Truth; find the Way; 
live the Life; please God, and live forever.





....

finally some clarity

The Lost Love of Dancing

Ancient Greek vases often show images of dancers, sometimes dancing in a chorus, sometimes dancing to ‘unheard melodies’ of their own. Their bodies have a peculiarly self-contained look: the limbs seem to radiate outwards from an inner source, and the face is often bowed, as though entirely absorbed in thoughts of its own.

Dancing, these figures suggest, is an occupation of the whole person, and a display of the grace and completion of the soul. As the Attic tragedies indicate, dancing was the preferred way of presenting the community on stage, and the verses chanted or sung by the chorus are chanted or sung in time to complex rhythmical steps. Those steps both unite the chorus into a single social organism, and also impose an elaborate discipline, heightening our consciousness of the words and the solemnity of the occasion.

Dancing for the Greeks was not merely a part of the drama, a spectacle to be compared with the modern ballet. It was also a social occasion, though one in which men and women danced apart. Girls were educated in choruses. They learned to recite, to sing and to dance together; but they could not dance with men without risking their reputations. Sappho’s poems are perhaps addressed to other girls in her chorus. The chorus imparted an education that aimed to unite the soul and the body of the virgin in a single continuous image of marriageable grace.

The separation of the sexes in the dance survived in the Mediterranean into the days of my youth, and the Greeks were especially good at it, wearing their national or local costumes, and dancing in formation to the complex and often irregular rhythms that had been handed down through the centuries. The men would dance athletically in formations that often parodied battle, and the women would follow, dancing with a kind of gentle hilarity that was a joy to watch.

Those examples suggest ways in which dance has been understood as showing the rational being to be distinct from, and higher than, the other animals. Dance, to use Nietzsche’s term, exists in an Apollonian version, which fully acknowledges and bends itself to the ideals of reason. In this form dance is an orderly, reason- and rule-governed epitome of the virtues and graces needed for the long-term stability of society. Whether or not there was also a Dionysian version, and whether it was from that Dionysian version that the art form of tragedy emerged, is another matter. Maybe Nietzsche was right about that. But maybe he was wrong. Maybe, in writing The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music, he was compensating for his own frustrated sense of being a sickly outcast. Maybe the Dionysian frenzy portrayed by Euripides in The Bacchae was something beyond dance and also beneath it – a lapse into the merely animal condition from which it is one purpose of the tragic experience to rescue us. In any event, I take the vases, the poems of Sappho, the tragic choruses, and the descriptions of music in Plato and others all to be pointing towards another view of dancing, as a point of ‘social effervescence’, to use Durkheim’s beautiful phrase. The dance is a social activity, in which we exalt and idealise our rational nature. It shows freedom and discipline united in a single gesture, and at the same time made subject to the demands of social order.

Allow me, at least, that ideal picture of the ancient Greek dance. For, even if it does not correspond to the reality, it enables me to say important things about the downhill journey to what passes for dancing today. All young people need to dance, and – unless social convention forbids it – they need to dance in ways that put their sexuality on display. Put a group of young people together in the presence of rhythmical music and they will begin to move in time to the music, and to use the music to coordinate their movements. They might arrange themselves face to face, body to body, throwing arms and legs about in imitative movements. Nowadays, however, those movements rarely involve dance steps; they are not learned but spontaneous; and the dancers tend to avoid contact with each other, since there is no agreed convention as to what form their contact should take.

In order to set young people in motion in this way it is necessary to overcome their awkwardness. Their fear of conversation, lack of small talk, and generally clumsy manners, are the natural result of the education to which they have been exposed, which is directed to removing all ideas of elegance, distinction or grace from their behaviour, those old fashioned virtues being judged elitist and politically incorrect. But still, young people need to dance, and this result can be brought about, provided the music is loud enough to make conversation impossible, and provided the pulse is regular enough to jerk the body into reflex motion, like the legs of a galvanised frog. The best music for this purpose is not music produced by a band, since bands like to be appreciated and listened to, and will adapt what they play to the mood of their audience. The best music for the purpose is produced by a machine, perhaps only with the faintest hint that a human being had some part in its creation. Hence has arisen the new phenomenon of DJ music, in which the music is not created by the person who controls it but extracted from a variety of pre-packaged computer sounds, and used as a means to manipulate the movements of the crowd. Music becomes an instrument of crowd control, in the hands of a person whose position is justified by no talent that could conceivably excuse such a dangerous allocation of power.

Once the young people have been jerked into motion in this way a vestigial desire for partnership is naturally aroused, since the music suggests sexual motions and sexual union. Hence they will tend to pair off, so as to pulsate face to face, not usually looking at each other and certainly not speaking, but acutely aware, nevertheless, of each other’s bodies, as things replete with movement and governed by the machine. Their bodies become sexual objects, voided of personality, since personality is a relational idea, and no relation exists on the dance floor except that between bodies. Hence, when this kind of dancing happens, it is very disturbing to see children or old people joining in: the first because it transgresses the boundaries of the sexually permissible, the second because it excites our sense of the undignified and the shameful.

The spectacle I have described is related to dancing in something like the way a group speechlessly scoffing hamburgers in the street is related to a formal dinner party. It places a social void where our shared humanity has in the past been displayed, enjoyed and exalted, and it presents animal functions in the place of personal relations. Unfortunately, just as bad money drives out good, so does bad dancing drive out the older kind from any occasion where dancing is required. Weddings, hunt balls, village fêtes, the May Balls of the Oxford and Cambridge colleges – all the places in which elegant and sociable forms of dancing would in the past have been fundamental to the meaning of the event – are now dominated by the DJ, and by the conversation-stopping music that has no virtue beyond its galvanising pulse.

What exactly do I have in mind in referring to those older forms of dancing? Not the Greek chorus, certainly, but something of which I retain the clearest memory, and which is, here and there, still resuscitated, for example in the Ceilidh of the Scots, and the Tancház of the Hungarians. I refer to dancing which has retained the following features: first, it is often accompanied by, and may even, for its full effect, require, live music, made by a band that is as much involved in the movement as those who dance to their sound. Secondly, it involves formal steps, which must be learned in order that people can move together in a coordinated way. Thirdly it involves definite partnerships or groups, people who ‘single each other out’ so as to enter the fray together. Sometimes you could change partners – and this is one of the exciting aspects of the Scottish reel, that you find yourself dancing with strangers, with people of all ages, and sometimes even with someone of the same sex. Fourthly it involves patterns, formations, rounds, ways of creating an ordered motion greater than the motion of the parts. Finally, such a dance may, and usually does, have a conclusion: there is a point at which all the rounds have been performed, all the partners changed, or all the permutations gone through.

Only those who have taken part in that kind of dancing will know the high point of exhilaration to which it can reach. Unlike the DJ alternative it expresses not excitement but joy, not pleasure but happiness. Joy arises when we are doing something which is not simply a means to an end, but an end in itself, and when we are united around that end by others who have the same response to it. This shared response validates our rational nature and also confirms us in the knowledge that we are free.

That is, perhaps, a rather a Kantian way of putting the point. But I am not the only philosopher who has seen the matter in that way. Here, for example, is Schiller, writing about what he calls ‘English’ dancing, but clearly with the Scottish reel in mind:

The first law of gentility is: have consideration for the freedom of others, the second; show your freedom. The correct fulfillment of both is an infinitely difficult problem, but gentility always requires it relentlessly, and it alone makes the cosmopolitan person. I know of no more fitting image for the ideal of beautiful relations than the well danced and multiply convoluted English dance. The spectator in the gallery sees countless movements which cross each other colorfully and change their direction willfully but never collide. Everything has been arranged so that the first has already made room for the second before he arrives, everything comes together so skillfully and yet so artlessly that both seem merely to be following their own mind while never impeding the other. This is the most fitting picture of a maintained personal freedom, which respects the freedom of others.

What Schiller has noticed is that the kind of discipline involved in a formation dance is there not just to constrain our freedom but also to display it. Through the dance we are made aware of our freedom, and aware of it as a shared social condition. Precisely because our movements are not means to an end, but ends in themselves, and yet at the same time meticulously subject to rules and conventions, do we experience them as movements of the whole person. The self is made present in the movements of the dance, is embodied there, and comes face-to-face with the other who completes it.

I refer to this phenomenon as the ‘withness’ of the dance, and have the immortal Xanthippe as my authority. (See R. Scruton, ed., Perictione in Colophon, St Augustine’s Press, South Bend Illinois, 2001.) The traditional formation dance involves a posture towards the other, the partner. It includes the other essentially, and includes him or her as a free being whose every moment is consensually related to a movement of one’s own. This ‘withness’ is a kind of template for all other social relations, a form of mutuality which illustrates the kindness of our kind, and which shapes the ability to accommodate and defer to others in relations of reciprocity.

It is surely clear that withness is absent from the DJ dances that I described earlier. The young people who jerk on to the floor in obedience to the puppet master at the desk do not move with each other at all. If they are dancing, they are dancing at each other. The difference between “at” and “with” is one of the deepest psychological differences we know. It is exemplified in all our encounters with other people—notably in conversation and in sexual gambits. The essence of sexual abuse is that it is aimed at someone, rather than arising with someone. The decay of manners that we have seen in recent times is to a large extent a result of the loss of withness and the rise of atness in its stead. Rudeness, obscenity, the ‘in your face’ manners of the new TV presenter – all these are ways of being ‘at’ other people. Courtesy, manners, negotiation and deference are, by contrast, ways of being with.

And here we see one reason why it matters, and matters deeply, that the old love of dancing has withered in our societies. Not only was dancing a picture of the ideal, in which freedom and order are perfected and reconciled. It was also a form of education, in which people learned to treat each other as free and equal. This form of education was not a matter of rules and precepts so much as of being fully and gracefully embodied. So it was in the choruses of young girls in ancient Greece. And so it was in the academies of dance in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Hence the loss of that education has led to a growing retreat of withness from the forms of human life. Consider the boy-girl relation, as it is developing today. Almost immediately the question is in the air: will we or will we not have sex? The idea of sexual union as a culmination of a mutually sustained ballet of deferential gestures has all but disappeared from the thinking of the young. Courtship seems like a waste of time and a form of social hypocrisy. Yet, when too hastily arrived at, the sexual act causes trauma, as we know from the repeated accusations of ‘date rape’ by young women in America. The reason is surely obvious: sex performed with another can be full of joy; sex performed at another always verges on assault. But withness is a social attribute of the free and rational being. It must be learned, and it is best learned through the dance. Lose the dance, and young people lose one way of learning how to defer, to yield gracefully and to unite considerately. Surely this is relevant to much of the emotional confusion that we witness today?

This is not the place to moralize. Let me instead pass to the aesthetic consequences that have ensued, as a result of the loss of the love of dancing. Perhaps the principal consequence has been the gradual decay of the sense of rhythm – a decay that can be witnessed in much popular music today. Often what seems like rhythm, and the foregrounding of rhythm, is in fact an absence of rhythm, a drowning out of rhythm by the beat. Rhythm divorced from melodic organization loses its last link to the social dance. It then becomes inert; it is no longer a true gesture and is therefore without the plasticity of gesture. We are often told that rhythm is of prime importance in pop, that it is music to dance to, and that those who judge it by the standards of the concert hall, a place of silent listening, have simply lost the plot. This is certainly a fair response to the more curmudgeonly forms of criticism, but it raises a question of profound importance in the study of music, which is that of the nature of rhythm.

Rhythm is not the same thing as measure. It is not just a matter of dividing time into repeatable units. It is a matter of organizing it into a form of movement, so that one note invites the next into the space that it has vacated. This is exactly what goes on in dancing—real dancing, I mean. And complaints that might be made against the worst form of pop apply also to the lame attempts at dancing that it generally produces—attempts which involve no control of the body, no attempt to dance with another person, but at best only the attempt to dance at him or her, by making movements sliced up and atomized.

Pop music in the early days of rock inherited forms of dancing in which steps and partners were integral to the practice. Of course, the waltz and the foxtrot were already on a slope towards the narcissistic non-dancing that we witness today. The long-term effect of the Viennese waltz, transmitted to the modern world in the form of the slow waltz and (its four-beat equivalent) the foxtrot, was to fragment the community on the dance floor into an assembly of couples, each haloed by the sexual electricity of their clinging bodies. Enough remained of the old forms of dancing, however, to endow those couples with some of the vanishing courtesy and elegance. Waltzes and foxtrots required steps; they followed rules and conventions; they could be enjoyed by people of all ages and regardless of intimacy.

Rock ’n’ roll is linked to those older forms of dance by the fact that the couples touch, swing around each other, move together in an attempt to recapture withness. In a song like ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ you notice that the rhythm is generated internally, by the melodic line, and generated by the voice alone. The backing then joins in, and does so not by measuring out the bar lines and slicing up the time sequence, but by taking up the pulse of Elvis’s voice. Measure, here, is not imposed upon the melodic line like a grid, but precipitated out from it, making virtual bar lines in the ear, as we respond to the syncopation of the voice. There is no violent drumming, no amplified bass, none of the devices which—I am tempted to say—substitute for rhythm in so much contemporary pop. The withness is there in the voice of the singer, and has not been driven out by the atness of the drum kit. And this withness is felt by the listener as an urge to dance, an urge to look around for the person whose hand could be taken and who could be led on to the floor.

When organized melodically, as in Elvis, rhythm is raised from the level of measure to that of gesture and movement. The difference here is not material; it is phenomenological—a difference in how repetitions are heard. In the one case they are heard as regular beats, like the pulse of a machine; in the other case they are heard as repeated movements, of the kind that our bodies produce when running, walking, or dancing. And so it was with the pop music in the days immediately following rock ’n’ roll – music like that of the Beatles, Pink Floyd, the Grateful Dead and a hundred others, which is now widely listened to, but rarely danced to, precisely because it contains a memory of real dancing. Its very melodiousness ensures that it will be banished from the disk jockey’s computer table, and replaced by a grotesque caricature of music in which rhythm is replaced by beat and melody by senseless repetition.

The loss of the true forms of dancing, therefore, involves a loss of the sense of rhythm. This loss infects all of music, even the music of the concert hall. Cut off from the natural experience of withness, unrefreshed by that pure joy in our mutual embodiment that we once knew from the dance floor, serious music acquires a sharp-edged metallic quality, as though it were trying to stir the metal limbs of a machine. When such music tries to dance – as in a piece like John Adams’s ‘The Chairman Dances’ from Nixon in China – it produces a pulsing ostinato, far from the joyous ease of a Dvořák scherzo or the intense release of bodily life in The Rite of Spring.

It is not only in music that we are affectd by this loss of rhythm. Our movements at home and at work, our words in conversation, our decisions and desires, all have a rhythmical component. The old ways of dancing taught us that rhythm is not a solitary thing but a form of social awareness. ‘I’ve got rhythm’, Ira Gershwin tells us, and George shows what he means. But this rhythm is not something that the singer has on his own. The Gershwins are referring, and the music shows this, to a way of ‘being towards others’. I apologize for using that Heideggerian expression, since I can imagine no human being more inimical to the idea of dancing than Heidegger. But alas, it is sometimes Heidegger who provides the words that we need for what we most want to say. We learn how to be in our bodies by learning how we are for others, and rhythm is something that we internalise by moving, talking, thinking in ways that accommodate the observing eye and ear.

And perhaps the most important rhythms that dancing conveyed to us were those of a courtesy purified of all sexual emotion. In the formation dance the eager young couple were very soon separated by the pattern, so that the young boy was dancing with a grandmother, and the girl with another suitor. The rhythm that they shared was thereby purified of its sexual connotation, given a social meaning higher and more lasting than the selfish urgings of desire, and built into the entire experience of community. There was, in this, a renewing of innocence, and a respect for the ages and conditions of human life. Those virtues were given a kind of rhythmical reality, and we see them reflected in the formal turns of phrase, the rhythm-imposing costumes and the extended courtesies that helped our ancestors to mix distance and respect, freedom and discipline, in ways that we have to a great measure lost.

Now I have been writing about the lost love of dancing, and in a tone of regret. Let me therefore conclude on a more positive note. There is no reason why social dancing of the kind I have been praising should not return. Indeed, the craze for Salsa suggests that it might. And there is no reason to think that young people will not find some other way of rediscovering the withness that they will not find by clubbing. Maybe the rise of sport as a social arena is to be explained, at least in part, by this hunger for an elegant display of the human body. And maybe, when young people search, as they must, for a paradigm of withness, they will find it on the football field, or learn it from watching what goes on there. All is not lost, if that is so. But it is worth drawing one last lesson from this thought. Social dancing of the kind I have praised in this article did not merely exercise the virtues of freedom and order. It obeyed the precept of equality. Anybody could learn the steps, and everybody could join in, regardless of how agile, young or attractive they were. The new replacement activities arise to a considerable extent from the official culture of equality and political correctness, with its fear of elegance and distinction. They are nevertheless massively discriminatory. The cult of sport, good though it is for our sense of withness, requires us to turn the spotlight on young, athletic and attractive people, and to rub into the remainder the humiliating awareness that they are not part of the game. In losing the love of dancing, therefore, we have lost a major source of our love for ourselves.

.

well....here you go

https://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Pound/1939/Pound-Ezra_12_Canto-XLV_Harvard_1939.mp3








...

the rubber tires of theory hitting the road

Merely bearing witness is not enough. As visionaries and outsiders, we are capable of appropriating and reconfiguring contemporary propaganda and re-deploying it in service of our own alternative concepts and transformative objects. We can employ photography, video, painting, sculpture, land art, performances, installations, site-specific work, and various hybrids thereof to conduct “hardcore, nasty” investigations of extraction—all of its forms and all of its consequences, including its effects on human health and the social and cultural damage it causes, especially to poor, minority, and indigenous communities.We can follow a new model of inclusivity, recognizing and respecting stakeholders of all races, cultures, genders, and ages; and helping guarantee that the historically marginalized people who've suffered most because of natural resource exploitation are provided opportunities for interpreting their own experience and subverting oppressive narratives. We can expose and interrogate the abundant evidence of Faustian overreach most people don’t wish to acknowledge, and re-represent it with all the eye-opening, assumption-smashing power the arts have always exerted on the human condition. We can counter the violent subjugation of nature brought about by mining and drilling with the playful but liberating strategy of détournement. Through radical engagements and inspired derangements we can destabilize the way extractive industry is portrayed and consumer culture promoted. We can hijack and reroute the conversation about what constitutes a good life in the opening decades of the 21st century. We can sound an alarm.

We can raise a ruckus.

—Edwin Dobb

1950 - 2019

..

from an interview...EM Cioran

In “Tares,” you write:  “Outside of music, everything is a lie, even solitude, even ecstasy.  It is precisely one and the other but better.”

I’ll tell you my view of music in taking up that formula again.  If everything is a lie, is illusory, then music itself is a lie, but the superb lie.  That’s how I would define music.  Obviously, it’s very difficult to speak about.  As long as you listen to it, you have the feeling that it is the whole universe, that everything ceases to exist, there is only music.  But then, when one stops listening, one falls back into time and wonders, “Well, what is it?  What state was I in?”  One had felt it was everything, and then it all disappeared.  So, that is why I say music is the superb illusion.

You said that you’ve listened to Brahms a lot, his chamber works.  What other composers did you listen to?

My big passion in the beginning was Bach.  Which brought about something very curious.  Until the age of twenty, I had a profound contempt for my mother.  I thought she was superficial.  One day she told me, “You know, the only thing in the world that deeply moves me is Bach.”  And from that moment on, I completely changed my opinion of her.  I understood that my image of her was false.  Because of Bach.  And two beings communicate extraordinarily when they listen to music together.

You’ve also written that you scorn a person who has no taste for music.

I’ll tell you, I never wanted to meet André Breton.  Because Breton was totally impervious to music and to Dostoyevsky.







......

an outline of music history from boethius forward

Medieval Music:


 Boethius (d. 525)  Treatise:  De Musica   Three Levels of Music:    Musica humana:  symmetry of the body and soul    Musica mundana:  “music of the spheres” – harmony of the world about us    Musica instrumentalis:  practical music (subject to the two higher levels)     Cantores:  knew only the “how” (performers)     Musicus:  understood the mathematical ratios    Music is number made audible (Pythagoras)     Music is a way of depicting the beauty and perfection of God   Greek System:  Trivium:  grammar, rhetoric and dialectic              Quadrivium:  arthmetic, geometry, music and astronomy     (followed by philosophy and theology (highest level))

Hours:  Greater:  Matins, Lauds, Vespers and Compline  Lesser:  Prime, Terce, Sext and Nones  (built around the singing of the psalms)   Mass: Ordinary:   Proper:   Kyrie   Introit   Gloria   Offertory   Sanctus   Communion   Agnus Dei   Gradual   Credo   Alleluia

Missal:  Texts for the ordinaries and propers of the mass Graduale:  Music for the ordinaries and propers of the mass Breviary:  Texts for the hours (except Matins) Antiphonale:  Music for the hours (except Matins) Liber Usualis:  One volume compendium including parts from the above plus Matins (prepared during the late 19th Century)

Pythagorean Tuning:  Derived from fundamental proportions    2:1 perfect octave   3:2 perfect fifth   4:3 perfect fourth   9:8 perfect second   (all other intervals are derived through a process of addition and subtraction) Modes:   Range Reciting tone/tenor  Dorian I D-D a  Hypodorian II A-A f   Phyrgian   III E-E c  Hypophrygian IV B-B a  Lydian V F-F c  Hypolydian VI C-C a  Mixolydian VII G-G d  Hypomixolydian VIII D-D c

 Ambitus:  range  Final of modes are their starting pitch final of hypo-modes are the same as their related mode

Non-Roman Rites   Influenced by local tradtions, impact of foreign importations, changes due to oral tradition and distance from Rome  Ambrosian Chant – Milan  (St. Ambrose)  Gallican Rite – France (most influential on development of Roman Rite)  Mozarabic Rite – Spain  Byzantine Rite- Eastern Europe  Sarum – Salisbury, England  Celtic Rite – Ireland – Act of piety and confession (Missal of Stowe)

Troubadours (Southern France)     music intended for aristocratic audience  Noble musican-poets of secular music   poetry reflects the feelings of the author  mid-11th Century     principal subjects:   Love  Language:  Provencal or langue d’oc     political satire  Duke of Aquitaine, notable troubadour     death songs Trouveres (Northern France)       political debates  mid-12th Century       crusades  Language:  langue d’oil Jongleur:  special class of musician who performed the music of the troubadours (movement disappeared in France around the beginning of the 13th Century)


Fixed Forms:  (13th-14th Century)  Secular Monophony   Rondeau  ABAAABAB   Virelai  ABBAA   Ballade  AAB

Minnesingers:  Late 12th to Early 14th Century Germany-descendents of the troubadour/trouvere tradition Bar Form: German version of the ballade (AAB)

Meistersingers:  Guild-like organization of middle-class that took over the minnesinger tradition in Germany  Survived into the 19th century  Musician-poets, but primarily poets

Doctrine of Ethos:  Ancient Greek  Ethical character of various scales  Dorian – masculine, represents the ancient tradition  Phyrgian - passionate, ecstatic  Lydian – femine, lascivious  Mixolydian – sad, mournful

Cantus planus – plainsong, Gregorian chant (term not used until 13th Century) Psalm:  Book of psalm set to music and sung during offices Sequence:  orginally long melismas sung without text after the word alleluia Conductus:  (12th and 13th Century)  Latin Strophic Song  Secular, sacred, lyrical political texts  Based on freely invented melodies  Counterpart to troubador/trouvere songs Chanson de geste:  French epic poem of middle ages  Long in length – often more than 10,000 lines of equal meter Estampie: (13th and 14th Century)  Instrumental form  4-7 puncta (sections) which were repeated   AABBCCDD etc  often different endings for the 1st and 2nd times (a+x, a+y, b+x, b+y, c+x, c+y, etc Clausulae:  (late 12th –Early 13th Century)  Notre Dame School  Short polyphonic works based on a melisma of a responsorial chant (gradual, alleluia, reponsory)  Tenor has a portion of original  text  Led to the motet Motet:  Early 13th Century:   Addition of a full text to the upper part (duplum) of the clausulae   Tenor usually a melisma from a chant   Later- rhythmic structure quicker patterns in upper voice, slower patterns in lower voice   14th Century:   Addition of secular texts in the vernacular   Isorhythm (Machaut)  15th Century:   cantus firmus abandoned for “free composition” of tenor  Renaissance:   Choral piece in imitative style on a latin extra-liturgical text   Still treble dominated (Burgundian school)   Expanded in length (to 1 or 3 sections)   Expanded number of voices (to 4 or 5)   Polychoral (Venetian)   Points of Imitation (Josquin) Ligatures:  13th –16th Century   Notational style that combines two or more notes in a singly symbol  Franco of Cologne – mensural notation – added rhythmic values to ligatures (13th Century) Ars Antigua:    Ars Nova: 13th Century    14th Century (trecento) triple divisions of beat    duple and triple divisions of beat      compositions in the Roman defauvel      Philip deVitry (duple divisions)      More frequent use of thirds and sixths
Tempus perfectum: Principle of triple divisions of the beat dominating the 13th Century Le Roman de Fauvel:  14th Century Manuscript  Paris  Motets and monophonic songs inserted in a continuous narrative  Ars Nova works Isorhythmic Motet:  14th Century  reiterated scheme of valus for the presentation of the cantus firmus  color-notes  talea-rhythm  Machaut Caccia:  14th Century  Italian poetry and music  Strict canon in 2 parts  Subjects:  hunting/fishing scenes, street vendor cries  Often has supporting tenor line in long values (not involved in canon) Ballata:  14th Century  Italian Secular Song  Related to Virelai  AbbaA form

Composers:  Leonin:    Perotin:    Machaut:   Late 12 th Century   late 12th/early 13th Centuries  (1300-1377)   Magnus Liber Organi   revised Magnus Liber Organi  dominant French composer   (great book of organum)  (added 3rd and 4th parts)        of Ars Nova    2-part     contributed to development of  fixed forms   among first to employ modal   mensural notation  process of composing     rhythms   further developed modal rhythm       treble melody first       work:  “Viderunt omnes”       and then lower        cantus firmus plus added voices-       voices (as opposed       added voices only need to         to Cantus firmus        correspond to cantus firmus not        technique       to each other   1st to set complete                  Mass Ordinary –                 Notre Dame Mass                 (4 Voices)           rhythmic variety-                                   duple meter,                   prolation  Landini:   14 th Century Italian Composer   2-3 voice polyphony   ornamented upper part over 1-2 less active lower parts   Lanini Cadence:  upward leap of a third in melodic line to create a perfect interval at cadence   Lots of 3rds and 6ths (Ars Nova)

Neumes:  9 th Century  / \ for marking direction of melodic line   marked over text

Guido of Arezzo:  11th Century  Introduced four line staff  Guidonian Hand – method for singing/learning intervals by pointing to location on hand

Madrigal:  14th Century:   secular song for 2 or 3 voices   ornamented conductus style   AAB form   Major Composers:  Jacopo da Bologna and Francesco Landini   Ars Nova – use of thirds and sixths      Triple and duple rhythm

(Madrigal):  16th Century (Renaissance):  secular song form  4-6 voices  contrasting chordal and imitative textures using poetry from 14th century models, but avoiding a fixed form or    rhyme scheme  sung in upper and upper-middle class social gatherings, meetings of academies and special occasions

RENAISSANCE MUSIC (15th and 16th Centuries):  Music as an autonomous art (unshackled by Greek Thoery)  Based on the interval of a third (rather than P4, P5, and octave)  Simultaneously conceived counterpoint (rather than composed part by part against cantus firmus)  Fauxbourdon:  three voice singing basically in first inversion (frequently used by Dufay  Tone-painting/text-painting  French Chanson – air de cour  Motet (Palestrina)  Equality of Voices  Expression of text important  Imitation  Concertato Style (Giovanni Gabrieli)  Expressive use of chromaticism  Freer use of dissonance  Vocal polyphony  Music that pleases the ear – important goal (as opposed to “philosopher king”)

Instruments:  Medieval:    Renaissance:   Lute    Lute   Kithera    Keyboard       Recorders       Viols       Crumhorns       Cornetti       Sackbuts

Instrumental Forms;  Medieval:    Renaissance:   Estampie    Fantasia (Luis Milan)       Prelude       Basse Dance       Pavane-galliard       Passamezzo-saltarello       Ricercare       Canzona       Toccata (Merulo) Mass:  Sung ordinary (from medieval) 1) Requiem Mass 2) Organ Mass (polyphonic organ music in alternation with chant) 3) Plainsong Mass (uses appropriate chant as cantus firmus) 4) Cantus Firmus Mass (one basic melody, often borrowed from secular used as cantus firmus for all movements) 5) Motto Mass (same motive at the beginning of each movement) 6) Paraphrase Mass (a paraphrased or embellished cantus firmus from chant, chanson or motet is used) 7) Parody or Imitation Mass (borrowed polyphonic material, more than just melody, from motet, chanson or even madrigal 8) Prolation Mass (using more different meters for each voice (Ockeghem)) *more than one technique could be used in the same composition **popularity of the Mass reflects the church’s strong position as a patron Chanson:  14th Century:   Secular song that developed out of the fixed forms  15th Century (end of):  “free (free of fixed forms)   more imitation and canon  polyphonic (imitation and counterpoint with some homophonic sections  Dufay, Binshois, Lassus  Sectional form  Lead to the canzona


Anthem:  English Motet  Evolved from Latin motet after the Reformation  Latin title, but sung in English  Simpler and more homophonic than “motet”   More faithful to conveying text clearly than “motet”  Composer:  Byrd Verse Anthem:  Alternates solo sections with full choir sections  Anglican Church (new in Renaissance)  Byrd Lied:  German polyphonic song  Secular  Finck Ricercare:  16th Century instrumental pieces  work for keyboard or instrumental ensemble  resembles motet in its points of imitation  often composed on a single theme – continuously developed  anticipates the fugue  Frescobaldi Frottola:  Middle Renaissance  Italian  Secular song  Usually set in treble dominated style and lighter in tone and texture than the Renaissance madrigal Canzona:  Instrumental compostion derived from Chanson retaining the sectional structure, varied features and lively rhythms  Frescobaldi Fantasia:  Late 16th –17th Century improvisatory piece for Lute or Keyboard  Luis Milan Chorale:  a protestant hymn cutlivated during Renaissance and Baroque periods Carol:   15th Century:   Associated with form only – not subject   Refrain form:  Burden 1 , verse 1, Burden 2, verse 2, Burden 3, verse 3, etc     (burden + refrain)  16th Century:   Began to be associated with Christmas (maybe from Medieval French Carole – a round dance associated with     Pagan dances celebrating solstice)   Gradually lost its association with a single form or style Canon:  A stated melody is repeated in it entirety in subsequent parts Discantus (discant):  12th-15th Centuries:   term for polyphonic music in which a part was composed against a plainsong (cantus firmus)   Perotin considered a skilled discanter   To 11 th Century synonymous with organum…became associated with more elaborate types of organum later     (with melismas in upper voices) L’Homme Arme:  15th Century melody that became famous because of its use as a tenor of Polyphonic Masses.  Readily used because of its long rhythms as scalar motion  Masses by:  Dufay, ockeghem, Obrecht, Josquin, Palestrina and others Odhecaton:   1501  published by Petrucci (he printed 96 songs…even  though title implies 100 songs)  earlist printed publication of polyphonic songs  includes Ockeghem, Obrecht, Isaac, Josquin and others Missa Prolationum:  Ockeghem (1420-1497)  Each of the four voices sings in a different mensuration (time signature)  2/4, ¾, 6/8, 9/8 respectively (in modern noation) Musica Reservata:  Term used by Adrian Coclico in his “Compsenium musices” (1552) to describe the music of Josquin and his followers as    opposed to that of the preceding period (Ockeghem, Obrecht, Isaac)  Expressing emotion in music within the reserved constraints of the aristocracy (moderation and detachment) – led to    Baroque “Doctrine of Affections”


Choralis Constaninus:  H. Isaac  Large cycle litugical compositions written for the Cathedral of Constance (completed by his student Senfl and published    posthumoulsly)  3 vols.  Settings of the proper for the Mass  Lauda:  (13th –19th Centuries)  Italian Hymns sung in Italian  Origin and development connected to St. Francis of Assisi  Refrain poem form Lochamer Liederbuch (c. 1450):  “German Songs” Collection  most important collection of German folksong (vocal pieces) Glogaur Liederbuch:  Contains vocal and instrumental pieces  German folksong collection Quodilbet:  Humorous type of music in which well-known melodies or texts are combined in an advisedly incongrous manner  Polyphonic quodlibet:  different melodies used simultaneously in different voice-parts  Successive Quodlibet:  melodies used in succession  Textual Quodlibet:  mixture of borrowed texts Villancico:  15th/16th Century Spanish poetry  idyllic or amorous subjects  refrain form (related to the ballata) Toccata:  a keyboard composition in free, idiomatic keyboard style employing full chords and running passages with or without the    inclusion of sections in imitative style (A. Gabrieli) Council of Trent:  1545-1563  Council of the Roman Church  Attempt to compat theseculariztion of previous centuries  Abolished all tropes and all but 4 sequences  Endangered polyphonic music because they considered abolishing everything but plainsong in the service Fitzwilliam Virginal Book:  Most extensive collection of virginal music (containing 297 pieces by practically all of the major composers of the    virginalist school)  Byrd, Bull, Gibbons,   Virginal:  a form of harpsichord Old Hall Manuscript:  English  Late 14th – Early 15th Century Manuscript (compiled c. 1410)  Consists of sections devoted to settings of single sections of the mass ordinary    (Kyrie missing)  contains one work by Dunstable and works by other minor composers Fall of Constanople (1453):  Brought Byzantine scholars to Europe  Spurred classic revival of the renaissance “rebirth of classic virtues of antiquity” – especially in art and literature Dukes of Burgundy:  Royal patrons of the arts (as opposed to the church)  Duke Philip of Burgundy also a performer of note  Busnois served in the courts of Burgundy  (15th Century) Early Renaissance Composers (Early 15th Century): Dufay:   Dunstable:   Binchois:   Ockegham: c.1400-1474  c.1390-1453  c.1400-1460  c.1420-1497 Franco-Flemish  English   Burgundian  Franco-Flemish Fauxbourdon  3rds and 6ths combined Fauxbourdon  3rds and 6ths    W/French polyphonic tradition Burgundian Style (vertically Influenced Burgundian style treble-dominated style  Known for Cantus Firmus Mass:      Oriented music  Metric form common to  Contemporary of Dufay      Missa L’Homme Arme Prominent in cyclic develop-     Dunstable:          Missa Caput     Ment of the Mass Ordinary      triple – duple – triple         Missa Prolationum     As large scale musically     (each meter being a      Unified whole based on a      section of the work)     Borrowed cantus firmus English school – wrote almost     (tenor mass) – brought to     exclusively sacred music     Franco-Flemish School Perhaps 1st to use secular      Melody “L’homme Arme”
(Dufay): developed a countertenor       to cantus firmus creating      a bass Motet “Ave Regina Coelorum” Burgundian Cadence

Middle Renaissance Composers (Late 15th Century-Early 16th Century): Josquin:   Lassus:   Byrd:   Palestrina:   c. 1440-1521  1532-1594   1543-1623   c. 1525-1594 Franco-Flemish  Franco-Flemish  English   Italian Musica Reservata  Culminating figure of Franco- Elizabethan Composer Sacred polyphony at its height 1st to use systmatic points of     Flemish school  Perfected English Virginal  Free Mass on original material     imitation as a basis for Free imitative technique,      style        “Missa Papae Marcelli”     composition      Parody   May have invented Verse  Refined and culminated  4-5 interlocking parts  Leads to Baroque choral sound,     Anthem       Netherlands imatative  Chanson “Mille Regretz”     chord progression and bass Vertical Chord alienments     technique Motet:  “Ave verum”      (strong structural use of Imitation   Church music of Counter-              “Salve Regina”     tonality)   3rds and 6ths       Reformation - officially Influenced Gombert and  No plainchant cantus firmus         sanctioned by the church      Willaert  “Requiem Mass” Canon, Counterpoint, ostinato Chanson “O Faible Espirit”

English Style:    Franco-Flemish Style: Full chords with third    Points of Imitation Block chord passages    More contrapuntal Uniformly consonant    More Chormatic Sacred Music dominates   Often heavier in style (except French Chanson) Carefully controlled dissonance Lighter 

Burgundian Cadence:  Disguised V-I Cadence   Three Voice   Top voice-seventh moves to the octave   2 nd Voice-leaps up an octave (from dominant)   lower voice-descends one step to tonic  Dufay

BAROQUE MUSIC: Doctrine of Affections:  An aesthetic theory of the late baroque describing human affections and how they should be expressed in  music.  Music could create-recreate a given feeling (discussed in treatises by Quantz, Mattheson and others) Basso Continuo (Thorough Bass) (Figured Bass):  a method of notating accompanying parts by using bass notes together with  numerical figures indicating intervals and chords above the bass.  Continuo:  clavier, organ or lute fills in chords while  cello, bass gamba or bassoon reinforce the bass Intermezzo:  A light theatrical entertainment introduced between acts of a serious play or opera – predecessor to intermedi and opera  buffa Madrigal Comedy:  Modern desination for a late 16th Century type in which an entire play was set to music in the form of madrigals or  other types of contemporary polyphonic vocal music (Vecchi: l’Amfiparnaso (c. 1594)) Pastoral:  16th Century – a dramatic performance with an idyllic plot (shepherds, etc.).  French forerunner to opera.  (Lully:  Les Festes  de l’Amour et de Bacchus (1672)) Monody:  Florentine Camerata (c. 1580) met at Count Bardi’s palace  An attempt to rediscover Greek expressive musical principles  Monody:  an expressive accompanied solo song somewhere between speech and singing with simple chordal     accompaniment  Led to the development of opera, oratorio and cantata  Text has a speech rhythm of its own that polyphony interferes with – monody to use tones that would enhance the speech    of a good orator  Caccini/Peri:  Euridice  (pastoral, mythological subject)  (first opera, written together for the marriage of Henry IV of    France) Stile rappresentativo (monody):  (Italian)  passages of melody in vocal or instrumental music characterized by freedom of rhythm,  irregularity of phrasing, frequent pauses and other traits of recitative (which it led to) Ritornello:  17th Century – instrumental refrain to an aria or song….appears in early opera Episode:  from fugue form, a secondary passage or section forming a digression from the main theme. Recitative:  a vocal style designed to imitate and emphasize the natural inflections of speech  In opera, serves to carry the action between arias…functions as the narrative prose   Florentine Recitative:  possibly modeled after Greek reciting poetry to instrumental accompaniment (Kithara) – see    monody  Usually accompanied by chords rather than melodic material
Aria:  a composition for solo voice (or duo) with accompaniment, developed out of monody  Ostinato Aria:  (c. 1630) somposed over a short basso ostinato  Da capo Aria:  (c. 1650) ABA’ (tonic, dominant, tonic)   Became mainstay of opera  Developed into concerto instrumental form…..sonata allegro Arioso:  (recitative aria):  a lyrical and expressive recitative (as opposed to narrative and speech-like)  Florentine Opera (Peri, Monteverdi, Caccini)  Predates speech-like recitative Overture:  instrumental composition serving as an introduction to opera, oratorio and similar works – originally composed and used  with various operas (interchangable) – later uses specific material related to a particular opera   French Overture (c. 1650)    Slow intro – dotted rhythms – pompous style for entrance of the King    Allegro in Imatative style on a shor canzona-like subject (imitative treatment not strictly maintained)     sometimes fast section ends with slow adagio section (Lully’s operas)   Italian Overture     Three sections:  Allegro – Adagio – Allegro      1 st section – some imitative treatment     2 nd section – predominantly homophonic     3 rd section – predominantly homophonic    Often called “sinfonia”    Led to the classical sonata and symphony Commedia dell’arte:  (Italian c. 1500) Commical stage presentation – had no music   Characters became standard in comic opera:   Venetian Merchant and his unfaithful wife   Unscrupulous lawyer   Bolognese doctor   Comic Servant  Mozart:  Le Nozze di Figaro  Pergolesi:  La Serva Padrona  Stravinsky:  Pulcinella (ballet) Ground Bass:  a short melodic bass, sometimes inherited from 16th century dances or improvisatory pieces, repeated over and over  again as a bassline with varying upper parts (can occur transposed or slightly varied) (Byrd) Romanesca Bass:  a homophonic bass (implies chord progressions) used for the composition of arie per cantar and dance variations  (16th and 17th Century) (ostinato or isorhythmic pattern)  In arie per cantar – singers improvised discant over bass.  Typical  bass figure:  Bb, F, G, D, Bb, G, D, G Chaconne – Passacaglia:  distinction between the two blurred, ostinato bass in a tetrachord descending from dominant to tonic by steps  or chromatically (became more elaborate) implying I-IV-V-I pattern….ostinato appearing in other voices as a variation  (Purcell:  Dido and Aeneas (1689) aria-extended chromatic descent Stile Concertato:  Concertato Style  Contrast of one voice against another (concerto)  Roots:  polychoral works of Venetian school (Gabrieli:  sonata a pian’ e forte)  Contrast of counterpoint and monody  Growth of Concertato style can be traced through Books 5-8 of Monteverdi’s Madrigals Figurenlehre (17th and 18th Centuries):  a German effort to codify in music the Doctrine of Affections, a codification of the musical  practices used to produce the affections or emotional meaning in music

Prima Prattica:     Seconda Prattica: Renaissance     Baroque Text in service to music    Music serves text expression Palestrina and Netherlanders    Monteverdi Written in theoretical writings of Zarlino Restricted use of dissonance    Free use of dissonance to express feelings in text Musica Reservata     Doctrine of Affections Free Rhythm (madrigal, chanson)    Regular rhythm (aria) vs. free rhythm (recitative) (often in contrast  Imitation      - tocatta (free) and fugue (regular) Equal voice polyphony    Treble and bass dominated

Strophic Variations:  (early 17th Century)  Same bass for every stanza – text and melody may vary (Monteverdi:  L’Orfeo, aria  “Possente spirto” Stile rappresentativo:  theater style, usually narrative text, recitatives and short speeches Stile Concitato:  style of dramatic expression and representation Cantata:  solo duet or chorus with ensemble accompaniment                 Sacred or secular text (secular came first)                 Aria and Recitative                 Dramatic, but not acted out (no props, etc)                 Off- spring of monodic style                 (Bach sacred and secular contatas) Oratorio:  sacred or contemplative narrative texts (no props, acting)                   Solo voices, chorus and orchestra (greater emphasis on chorus than opera) (Handel:  Messiah)
Turba:  In oratorios, passions, etc term for choral movement representing the Jews or heathens (usually allegro, fugal style with close  imitation)  (Bach’s:  St Matthew Passion) Testo:  narrator in Oratorios and Passions Canzona:  (16th and 17th Century)  Instrumental form   Developed from French Chanson (especially Josquin) – alternation of sections in differing meters/styles  Sectional structure with contrasting characters (imitative vs. homophonic styles, triple vs. duple meter) occur juxtaposed in    a single work  Led to sonata  Frescobaldi, Merulo Fantasia:  Instrumental form for keyboard or lute with an improvisatory character (Luis Milan)  (Sweelinck:  Chromatic Fantasia – continuous development of a single chromatic theme) Sonata:  a composition for a small group of instruments and continuo consisting of several sections or movements in contrasting  textures and tempos Sonata da chiesa:    Sonata da camera:  Trio Sonata:   Church sonata    Chamber sonata  4 instruments (2 upper instruments and  Note in dance rhythms or titled as dance movements Suite of stylized dances  continuo Corelli:  established slow-fast-slow-fast structure    writing essentially in three parts  Off-spring of the Italian Overture      1660 developed into sonata da chiesa and  *These two types became clearly distinguished after 1660.   Sonata da camara         (Corelli, Buxtehude, Handel)         Established continuo as standard practice

Partita:  variation (Froberger, Bach, Bohm) Agrements:  (17th Century) – French system of ornamentation – later accepted throughout Europe as standard ornamentations (turn,  etc.) Tragedie Lyrique:  (ca. 1660)  Louis XIV, France  Lully:  Alceste  Blended elements of ballet and drama   Quinault librettist  Serious text on mythological subject – glorified the king and French nation  Music reflected the pomp and splendor of the French Court  In French language – Lully attempted to write music that reflected the rhythms of the French language  French Overture Opera Ballet:  more ballet than opera, spectacle important (Rameau:  Les Indes galantes (1735) (French) Masque:  (Late 17th Century) British Opera  Similar to French Court Ballet  Entertainment of the nobility  Poetry, music, dancing and acting  Mythical or allegorical subjects  Originated in  Italy and France (Forerunner to opera)  (Ben Johnson) Equal Tempermant:  one of many systems of tuning used during the Baroque and earlier periods – became established as the norm.    Divided the octave into 12 semi-tones (second square root of twelve)  Possibly devised by Andreas Werckmeister (c. 1700)  Bach:  Well-Tempered Clavier Fortspinnung:  (German)  melodic construction – process of continual development or working out of material (as opposed to  repetition) – Baroque ideal Orchestral Suite:  a suite of music from opera, ballet or other larger works (Bizet:  L’Arlesienne, Tchaikovsky:  Suite from the  Nutcracker) Basse fondamentale:  Rameau’s theory of a ficticious bass line that consists of the roots of the chords ocuring in a succession of  harmonies (demonstrated Rameau’s novel theory of inverted chords) Passion:  a musical setting of the text of the passion according to one of the four evangelists (St. John, St. Mark, St. Matthew or St.  Luke), exeisted in plainsong, polyphonic passion, Baroque passion, passion oratorio)..singers and ensemble   Baroque Passion:  (17th Century)    Aria, recitative and orchestra    Freer treatment of text (broadened, paraphrased, etc)    Approaching oratorio in magnitude (Schutz)    (Passion-Oratorio:  Bach:  St. Matthew Passion) Querrelle des Bouffons:   (French)  “War of the Buffoons”  1752 , Paris  French Serious Opera (Lully and Rameau) – counterpoint (supported by Louis XIV and Madame de Pompadour)    Vs.  Italian Opera Buffa (Pergolesi:  La Serva Padrona)  (supported by the Queen, Rousseau, Diderot)   More natural melodic expression  (Really Baroque vs. Roccoco) Rameau:    Treatise on Harmony (1722)  Basse fondamentale (chords and inversions)
(Rameau):  chord primary element – not the melodic line or interval  derived the major triad from the overtone series  posited building chords by triad  posited functional harmony through dominance of the tonic, subdominant and dominant chords  Modulation through pivot chords  Harmony implying melody

BAROQUE STYLE:     CLASSICAL STYLE: Continuous spun-out melodic motion   Phrases, periods and sections Doctrine of Affections    Rational techniques of thematic development and drama of tonal         relations       Disciplined logic (from Greek)       Intellectualism attracted Goethe and other intellectuals       Encylopedists (Diderot)       “raise man above the wordly realm to the realm of the spirit and         higher morality” (Greek) Irregular phrase structure    Symmetry and Balance (4 and 8 bar phrases) Counterpoint     Theme and homophonic accompaniment One basic melodic idea (affection) spun out   Contrast of Themes or melodic ideas (sonata allegro form) One Basic Tonal Center    Contrast of Tonal Centers (sonata allegro form)

Pre-Classical Period Styles (Early 18th Century): Style galant:  France (rococo or gallant style)  Light textured, elegant style  Arose in courtly aristocratic circles  Elegant, playful, witty, polished and ornate  Baroque decorativeness (lots of ornamentation) without grandeur  (JGB Neruda) Enfindsamer Stil:  German (style burgeouis or sensitive style) (1760-1770)  CPE Bach  Composite of Baroque and Classical Styles  Expressive style that relies strongly on changes of mood and dynamics  Middle class  Not ornate  Turns Baroque Affections into sentiments of the individual soul  Chromaticism – sigh (motive ending portamento on a weak beat) – aim to express feelings naturally  “sturm und drang” – abrubt shifts of harmony, strange modulations, expectant pauses, changes of texture, sudden sfz    accents) (**Both styles:  Melody reigns supreme and bass loses its contrapuntal interest (inner-voices become chordal)

Scarlatti Keyboard (Harpsichord) Sonatas):  (Late Baroque-Early Classical)  two movements in same key (sometimes similar in mood and style)  two sections each repeated:   section 1:  tonic – dominant   section 2 modulating – tonic  (tension near the middle (modulating section) (Classical) rather than near the end (cadence) (Baroque)) Classical Sonata:  Haydn, Mozart, Beethove  3-4 movements (sometimes 2)  contrasting mood and tempo  1 st movement typically sonata form (sometimes slow movement and finale as well) Symphony: Precursors:  Influenced by Italian Opera Overture (or sinfonia)   Fast-slow-fast movement design   Mvmt 1    Mvmt 2 lyrical   Mvmt 3 dance rhythm   (not thematically related to the opera – began to be performed independently)   ca. 1730 composers began to write independent “sinfonias”  (not intended for opera, but to be performed alone)  Suite (of dances) – multi-movement instrumental work  -  Minuett addition to the symphony  Sonata da chiesa – multi-movement form – instrumental  Concerto – idea of contrast – instrumental multi-movement work  Pre-Classical Symphonists:   Giovanni Battista Sammartini (Milan) (1701-1775)    Symphony in G (forward looking) – 4 mvmts, fourth movement a Minuetto, opening “Allegro ma      non troppo” resembles sonata form   
Matthias Monn (1717-1750) (Vienna) Symphony in D (1740) – typical four movement structure of classical symphony (allegro, aria, Menuetto,  allegro)  Georg Christoph Wagenseil (1715-1777)   Symphony in D (1746) – 3 mvmts – 1st mvmt comes close to sonata form  Mannheim School   Composers:  Johann Stamitz (1717-1757)       F. X. Richter (1709-1789)   4 mvmt form   lyrical second theme   introduced orchestral crescendo and decrescendo   tutti sound throughout   prominence of wind scoring  Berlin (North German School):    CPE Bach   Contributed:    Unified thematic development in quasi dramatic style    Enriched symphonic texture with counterpoint Symphonie Concertante (ca. 1770) (France):  Symphonic work employing two or more solo instruments in addition to the regular orchestra  Composers:  Gossec and Cambini Singspiel (German)/Opera Comic (France) – spoken dialogue – lighter  plot, folk elements, ensemble finale  Mozart:  Die Zauberflote (singspiel) Drama Giocoso:  emphasis on ensemble singing            More realistic characterization             Balance of serious plot and comic elements            Concert Ensemble finales            Mozart:  Don Giovanni String Quartet:   (emerged last 1/3 of 18th Century)  Emergence of 2 vlns, va, vc as established ensemble (due to decline of trio sonata)  Haydn brought to artistic level  Important steps:  equalization of parts             Four movement form             Use of thematic development and counterpoint  Precursors:  divertimento, Viennese serenade and other “entertaining forms” with no basso continuo  Beethoven:  expanded length, manner of expression, sonority Opera Seria:   (Italian)  Pietro Metastasio (primary librettist – also Italian poet)  3 acts  recitative/aria alternations  conflict of human passions based on a story from an ancient Greek or Latin poet (plot usually involves two pairs of lovers    plus subordinates)  chief musical interest in the aria (especially da capo aria form)  Handel:  Rinaldo; Handel:  Giulio Cesare; Mozart:  Idomeneo Opera Reform:  (mid 18th Century)  Problems:  emphasis on aria (singers often substituted arias without regard for narrative, etc)   Extra melodic embellishment and cadenzas freely added by the singers to show virtuosity (without regard to     narrative)   Heavily slanted toward the coloratura  Reform:  Make opera more natural and flexible inorder to carry narrative more realistically  Composers:  Niccolo Jommelli and Tommaso Traetta  Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787)   Consummation of international style in opera   Operas:  Alceste, Orfeo ed Euridice   “music should serve narrative”    Opera Reform Mozart’s Operas:  The Abduction from the Seraglio (1782) (Singspiel)  Idomeneo (Opera serie)  Le nozze di Figaro  Don Giovanni (drama giocoso)  Cosi fan Tutti (Opera buffa)  Die Zauberflote (German Opera) (Singspiel)







Symphony: Haydn:    Mozart:    Beethoven: Wrote in seclusion of Esterhazy Palace Cosmopolitan prodigy   Took lessons from Haydn (1792)         Performed for Mozart (1787) Patron:  Princes of Esterhazy  Various positions w/wo patrons  No patron Music similar to pre-classical symphonists angular lines/chromaticism  culmination of classical forms 1781 befriended Mozart “Esterhazy Symphonies”  programmatic Italian Influence (K. 81/K.182)  works basis of romantic style (forward  titles  #6 Le Matin (Morning)  (Sammartini) (1770-73)  looking)           #7  Le Midi (Noon)           #8  Le soir (Evening) Haydn Influence (1781) (K. 133)  music a direct outpouring of his Early Symphonies “Pre-Classical”      personality  3 Mvmt form (# 9 and # 19) K. 183 – 1st Masterwork in symphonic    (3 mvmt from It Ov.  Form    Last mvmt gigue or   “sturm un drang” (Haydn abrupt contrasts of mood (#5, #8)   Minuet    influence)  Sonata da chiesa style (4 mvmt  Thematic unity –expansion music as a personal mode of expression   s-f-s-f) (# 21 & #22)   of form (similar to  (influenced romantic period) # 35- # 38 appearance of swift rondo form   k. 201) “sturm und drang” emotion (# 44, 45, 47)     expansion of form (#3 /I expo – 6 themes)  more dramatic – larger scale Vienna Period (1781-)  sforzandos, etc   influenced by study of Bach:  Art  expansion of resources (#9 - Maturity – Paris Symphonies (# 82-87)   of the Fugue and WTC  chorus)    (commission for Paris  also still influenced by Haydn concert series)  Apex:  Haffner Symphony (K. 385) Wrote 9 Symphonies  Oxford Symphonies (#88-92)              Prague Symphony (K. 504)   Coincide with time he             Jupiter Symphony (K. 551)   Received Dr. from  summation of aspects of Mozart’s   Oxford University)   musical language   (4 mvmts (Allegro, Adagio,    (clarity, concise, musically   Minuetto, Rondo)   mature) London Symphonies – crowning    Lyrical 2nd Theme in Sonata form   Achievement    (unlike Haydn)  # 94 Surprise  #100 Military   Mozart – combination of Italian lightness Expanded Orchestra (tpts own parts – not   and entertainment with German  Doubling horns – add clarinets)   seriousness and intellectualism  (Cellos independent of basses)   (counterpoint) Expanded Harmonic Range (explores mediant  Relationship between mvmts)  Wrote around 50 Symphonies    Wide-ranging modulations  Chromaticism (# 104) Unlike Mozart, extensive changes in order   And repetition of themes in  Sonata form recapitulation Wrote over 100 Symphonies

Haydn Oratorios:  The Creation and The Seasons

Beethoven: Three Style Periods (so named by Vincent D’Indy):  First Style Period (Imitation) (1770-1802):        Dependence on “classical tradition”:    Six String Quartets, Op. 18 (Haydn-like motivic development)    First 10 Piano Sonatas (4 mvmts instead of classical 3 – addition of Beethoven’s characteristic      “scherzo” movement)    Symphony #1 (Haydn influence in technique – all mvmts “textbook” models of form)    Symphony #2 (Large Scale form suggests 2nd Period – Haydn influence in technique)  Second Style Period (Externalization) (1802-1816):    Symphonies #3-8      Symphony #3 (Eroica) – unprecedented length and complexity (mvmt I expositon has 6       themes plus extended codas)    Fidelio    String Quartets, Op. 59 (emotional fire, new themes grow imperceptibly out of old ones, disquised      recapitulations, propulsive drive, complex developments, extended codas)  Third Style Period (Reflection) (1816-1827):    Symphony #9 (Extremes meet (the sublime and the grotesque)) choral finale – new to symphony    Last five piano sonatas    Missa Solemnis    String Quartets, Opp. 127, 130-132, 135 and Grosse Fugue
Beethoven (Third Style Period):    Diabelli Variations    Deafness    Style: Intentionally blurring dividing lines between phrases and cadences Working out of themes to their utmost potentialities (thematic variation – whole theme in  new guises rather than fragmenting theme) Classical forms stretched beyond limits Works have a meditative character (tranquil)     Language more concentrated and more abstract (extensive contrapuntal textures resulting       in new sonorities) Beethoven’s Influence on Romantic Period Symphony:  Two “Schools of Thought”:   Symphonies # 4, 7, 8 led to absolute music in the classical forms (conservative)    Brahms:  Symphonies #1-4 (absolute music, 4 mvmt form, no excessive displays of soloistic      virtuosity)    Schubert:  Unfinished Symphony    Mendelssohn:  Italian Symphony, Scotch Symphony    Bruckner:  Symphonies 1-8 (4 mvmt form)   Symphonies # 5, 6, 9 led to program music and unconventional forms (radical)    R. Strauss and F. Liszt (Hamlet) – tone poems    Berlioz:  Symphonie Fantastique (1830) – idee fixe – recurrence of a theme throughout a work      (occurs in all five mvmts of Symphonie Fantastique) ROMANTIC PERIOD: Romantic Style:     Classical Style: Nationalism     Universal Musical Language   Emphasis on qualities of strangeness and remoteness  Symmetry and Balance Seeks to transcend time (eternity Freedom, passion, movement Intentional obscurity (Beethoven: Sym #3 – 6 themes)  Allusion and symbol (tone poems) Merging of arts (poetry, plastic arts and music (Wagner)) Flood om impressions, thoughts, feelings Goal:  communicate emotion (instrumental music unfettered   By text best to do this with) Program Music (1st was Beethoven #6 “Pastoral” with its   Descriptive program involving country life) Had to reach musically uneducated middle-class inorder to Patronage System (expect Beethoven and Mozart later years)  Survive Composer as priest and poet bearing his soul and revealing  The deeper meaning of life through music Accent on the individual    International Musical Language Composer:  A Heroic figure struggling against a hostile  Patronage System  Environment Age of Virtuoso Musician (Paganini, Liszt) Nature idealized (Schumann’s Spring Symphony) Fascination with supernatural Nationalism versus socialist movements (Marx and Engels:  Communist Manifesto (1848) Exoticism (foreign influences – esp, Asia and Turkey) Enfindsamer Stil (Sturm und Drang) – early pangs of   Romanticism Chromaticism Distant Modulations Expanded Orchestral Color (and expanded orchestra) Tonal Ambiguity Chromatic Third Relationships

Liszt:  Symphonic Poems  One movement works with a programmatic (often literary) element  Cyclic treatment of themes  Hamlet Grand Opera:  (c. 1830) (France)  Emphasis on spectacle to “sell product” to the mass middle class audience taking over the concert hall  Large chorus and cast  Extensive set  Meyerbeer:  Les Huguenots and Rossini:  William Tell Lyric Opera:  (1860-)  Lyric melody with Romantic drama or fantasy plot  Smaller scale than grand opera, but larger than opera comique  All lines sung (no spoken dialogue)
 Plot more serious than opera comique  Bizet:  Carmen  Gounod:  Faust Verdi:  refinement of Italian opera tradition             Opera as human drama             Form:  4 main divisions (either 4 acts or 3 acts with a proloque)             Elemental emotional force with balance and clarity             Operas: Il Trovatore   La Traviata   Aida   Nabucco   Falstaff   Otello   Rigoletto Schubert (1797-1828):  Lieder:    classical serenity and poise   Suspends tonality in long passages (hovers between major and minor triad quality)   Chromatic coloring within a diatonic context   Modulations to mediant and submediant   Accompaniment depicts text:      Erlkonig (octaves in piano represent horse galloping)    Gretchen am Spinnrad (accompaniment suggests whir of spinning wheel)   Wrote over 600 Lieder (some on texts by Goethe)   Song cycles:  Der Winterreise (1827) and Die Schone Mullerin (1823)   Successors to Schubert’s Lieder:   Robert Schumann:  Liebeslied, Op. 51 (more romantic in lyric quality and harmonic color than Schubert)   Johannes Brahms:  Wiegenlied (reflective style – accompaniments rarely pictoral) Richard Wagner (1813-1883):  Significance:  1) brought German Romantic Opera to its consummation (like Verdi with Italian Opera)    2) created a new form:  Music Drama    3) harmonic idiom of late works led towards the dissolution of classical tonality  Importance of music – to serve the ends of dramatic expression  Operas: Der Fliegend Hollander (The flying Dutchman) (Romantic Opera based on legend)   Rienzi (5 Act Grand Opera)   Tannhauser   Lohengrin   Parsifal   Tristan und Isolde  Der Ring des Nibelungen:   Das Rheingold   Die Walkure   Siegfried   Gotterdammerung  Ideals:  1) absolute oneness of music and drama   2) instrumental music portrays the “inner life” (leading to expressionism)   3) sung words express the “outer life” of particular situations and events    4) music continues throughout each act (not divided into recitatives, arias or other set numbers)  Two Principle Means of Achieving Articulation and Formal Coherence: 1) leitmotif:  a musical theme or motive associated with a particular person, thing or idea in the drama 2) Acts written in sections or periods (each in a disguised but recognizable pattern such as AAB (bar form) or ABA (arch form)). Tristan Und Isolde:  Tonal Ambiguity (tonality of work in E Major, but begins in A Major – Ends in B Major (key polarized    between the subdominant and dominant (in fact, E Major is heard very little in the score)))  Extreme Chromaticism:  Prelude modulates every phrase  Telescoping of Resolutions (one key resolves at the point another begins)  Blurring of progressions through suspensions and other non-harmonic tones Gesamstkunstwerk (universal art-work):  words, stage setting, visible action and music all working in closest harmony  toward the central dramatic pupose  Wagner noted for use of mythology and symbolism Gustav Mahler: 1) Joins sophistication with simplicity (Austrian folk song, dance rhythms, chorale themes, marches) 2) Juxtaposes vocal (solo and chorus) with orchestra in symphonies 3) Practice of ending a symphony in a key other than the one it began in 4) Freely transfers motives from one movement to another (but not to the extent of being cyclic) 5) Expanded Romantic symphony and symphony-oratorio to their final point of dissolution 6) Last in the line of German symphonists extending from Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms and Bruckner)



Richard Strauss:  1) Best known form his tone poems (Also Sprach Zarathustra, Don Juan, Til Eulenspiel) and operas (Salome, Elektra) 2) Tone poems from the tradition of Berlioz and Liszt 3) Also Sprach Zarathustra (Nietsche text) (1896) – fugue theme contains all twelve tones 4) Salome (libretto based on Oscar Wilde’s decadent version of the Biblical Story) 5) Elektra – all harmony stems out of a single germinal chord Claude Debussy:   Pelleas et Melidande (symbolism)   Veiled allusions and images of text   Modal harmonies   Subdued orchestral colors   Restrained expressiveness of music   Continuous orchestral background   Instrumental interludes connecting the scenes carry on the mysterious inner course of the drama Oliver Messiaen: 1) Various scales or modes of eight tones to the octaves consisting of alternating half and whole steps in various    combinations 2) Rhythmic Pedals – not lining up with melody (like isorhythm) 3) Add Rhythmic values resulting in assymetric patterns 4) Rhythmic pallendromes 5) Augmentation and diminution of melodic line 6) Use of Rhythms derived from Indian Talas 7) Complex vertical sound-aggregations (chords) 8) “bird songs”       











Amy Dunker Associate Professor of Music Clarke College 1550 Clarke Drive Dubuque, IA  52001

www.amydunker.com