Classical on Music Theory Print

21st-century classical music

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Styles and influence#

Post-modernism continues to exert an influence on composers in the 21st century. Styles developed in the 20th century, such as minimalism (Philip Glass, Michael Nyman, Steve Reich), postminimalism (Louis Andriessen (died 2021), Gavin Bryars, John McGuire, Pauline Oliveros (died 2016), Julia Wolfe), New Complexity (James Dillon, Brian Ferneyhough), and New Simplicity (Wolfgang Rihm) continue to be developed. Polystylism and musical eclecticism are growing trends in the 21st century. Julian Anderson combines elements from many different musical genres and practices in his works. Elements of modernism, spectral music, and electronic music are combined with elements of the folk music of Eastern Europe and the resulting works are often influenced by the modality of Indian ragas. His large-scale Book of Hours for 20 players and live electronics premiered in 2005. Tansy Davies’s music also fuses elements of pop and classical music. Prince and Iannis Xenakis are both major influences. Kati Agócs’ work for chorus and orchestra The Debrecen Passion (2015) surrounds settings of poetry by Szilárd Borbély with mystical texts of Medieval Latin, Hungarian, and Georgian origin, as well as a Kabalistic prayer. Composers are influenced from around the world. For example, in 2002, La Monte Young, along with Marian Zazeela and senior disciple Jung Hee Choi, founded the Just Alap Raga Ensemble which performs Indian classical music of the Kirana Gharana and merges the traditions of Western and Hindustani classical music, Young applying his own compositional approach to traditional raga performance, form, and technique. Other composers have also drawn upon diverse cultural and religious influences. For example, John Tavener (died 2013) drew his inspiration from eastern mysticism and the music of the Eastern Orthodox Church, and James MacMillan is influenced by both traditional Scottish music and his own Roman Catholic faith. In a more abstract manner, religious and mystical associations are also found in the works of Sofia Gubaidulina, a devout member of the Russian Orthodox church. The influence of electronic music, numerology, unusual instrumentation, and improvisational techniques are also apparent. Marxist songs serve as basic material for Konrad Boehmer in many works. Roman Turovsky-Savchuk is influenced by his Ukrainian heritage and Baroque music. He composes for the lute, orpharion, and torban, and is an advocate of musical historicism and has collaborated with Hans Kockelmans and the New York Bandura Ensemble led by Julian Kytasty. Tan Dun, best known for his scores for the movies Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and Hero, attempts to connect Buddhist, Christian and other cultures in his works. His works often incorporate audiovisual elements Frank’s House by Andrew Norman tries to evoke the architecture of Frank Gehry’s house in Santa Monica. Péter Eötvös employed a variety of timbres and sound-worlds within his music. Extended techniques such as over-pressure bowings coexist with lyrical folk songs and synthesized sounds. He died in 2024. Composers have even created mashups, more commonly found in pop music. Jeremy Sams’ The Enchanted Island is one example: he draws from Handel, Vivaldi, Rameau, and other Baroque composers to create a combination of pasticcio and musical collage, which also combines the baroque and the modern in its staging and costume. According to A History of Western Music, “it calls into question ideas of authorship and originality, making it a thoroughly postmodern work”. The music of Osvaldo Golijov often combines the classical, modern, and popular traditions within a single work juxtaposing contrasting styles—an important trend in the music of the 1960s onward.

A cappella

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Early history#

Research suggests that singing and vocables may have been what early humans used to communicate before the invention of language. The earliest instructions for performing music were found on a cuneiform tablet from around 2000 BC, while the earliest that has survived in its entirety is from the first century AD: a piece from Greece called the Seikilos epitaph.

Religious origins#

A cappella music was originally used in religious music, especially church music as well as anasheed and zemirot. Gregorian chant is an example of a cappella singing, as is the majority of secular vocal music from the Renaissance. The madrigal, up until its development in the early Baroque into an instrumentally accompanied form, was also usually performed a cappella. Jewish and Early Christian music was largely a cappella, though instrument use subsequently increased in both religions as well as in Islam.

Accentus

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Air (music)

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English lute ayres#

Lute airs were first produced in the royal court of England toward the end of the 16th century and enjoyed considerable popularity until the 1620s. Probably based on Italian monody and French air de cour, they were solo songs, occasionally with more (usually three) parts, accompanied on a lute. (p. 306). Their popularity began with the publication of John Dowland’s (1563–1626) First Booke of Songs or Ayres (1597). His most famous airs include “Come again”, “Flow, my tears”, “I saw my Lady weepe”, and “In darkness let me dwell”. Although this printing boom died out in the 1620s, ayres continued to be written and performed and were often incorporated into court masques. (p. 309).

Air de cour

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Features#

The first use of the term air de cour was in Adrian Le Roy’s Airs de cour miz sur le luth (Book on Court Tunes for the Luth), a collection of music published in 1571. The earliest examples of the form are for solo voice accompanied by lute; towards the end of the 16th century, four or five voices are common, sometimes accompanied (or instrumental accompaniment may have been optional); and by the mid-17th century, most airs de cour were again for solo voice with accompaniment. Beginning in 1608, airs de cour were often taken from ballets de cour, a form of ballet which was quickly becoming popular at the French court. Musically they were strophic, i.e. successive verses of the text were set with similar music. While the earlier music, especially that for multiple voices, was polyphonic, after about 1610 the music usually was homophonic, sung syllabically and without meter, with a clear influence from the musique mesurée which developed in Paris around 1570. Collections exist which deviate considerably from these trends, however; several printers specialized in polyphonic airs de cour throughout the early 17th century, and there are eight volumes published by Le Roy & Ballard which are monophonic – for a single voice with no accompaniment. Airs de cour show surprisingly little influence from the Italian early Baroque trends of monody and the madrigal, either in its polyphonic or its concertato form. This is all the more surprising as Italian musicians often worked in France, and the polyphonic and concertato forms of madrigal were being deeply influential in Germany at the same time. Emotional expression in the airs de cour, compared to that of the contemporary Italian madrigalists, is cool, classical and reserved, in keeping with contemporary French taste. Vocal range of the music is usually limited to one octave; dissonance and chromaticism are rare; and the overall simplicity of expression is striking. The influence of the air de cour extended beyond France. Collections were published in Germany, and more importantly in England, where translations were rather popular, as attested by the several publications and copies. There exists a delightfully titled publication: French Court-airs, with their Ditties Englished, (Edward Filmer, 1629). The air de cour had considerable influence on the development of the English ayre. The atmosphere of these songs is very different from the English lute song, and the lute technique employs some novel features. There are notated strummings with the 1st finger, both up and down. There have been several articles on the finer points of this, as well as the exact meaning of the notation, in the English and French Lute Society Journals.

Amanes

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Etymology#

The term amanes derives from the interjection aman, an exclamation used in both Greek and Turkish expressing pain, sorrow, or supplication. The frequent occurrence of the word aman in the lyrics gave the genre its name.

Characteristics#

Amanes is typically: * Slow and mournful * Heavily melismatic (ornamented) * Based on makam (modal) structures * Non-metric or featuring free rhythm * Focused on themes of pain, exile, love, and nostalgia The genre is considered a vocal form of lament or spiritual improvisation, comparable to the Arabic mawwal and Turkish gazel.

Ambrosian chant

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History#

The history of Milan as a centre for religious music goes back to St. Ambrose, who is not known to have composed any of the Ambrosian chant repertory, much as Gregory the Great is not known to have composed any Gregorian chant. However, during his 4th-century tenure as bishop of Milan, he is credited with introducing hymnody from the Eastern Church to the West. Ambrose composed original hymns as well, four of which still survive, along with music that may not have changed too much from the original melodies. Two methods of singing psalms or other chants are responsorial and antiphonal. In responsorial singing, the soloist (or choir) sings a series of verses, each one followed by a response from the choir (or congregation). In antiphonal singing, the verses are sung alternately by soloist and choir, or by choir and congregation. In the Western Church, formerly the responsorial method seems to have first been used alone, the antiphonal method was introduced by St. Ambrose. Over time, the Milanese liturgy developed into the Ambrosian rite, which shares more in common with the Gallican and Mozarabic rites than with the Roman. Ambrosian chant developed to meet the particular needs of the Ambrosian liturgy. Although the Ambrosian rite is liturgically related to other rites and Ambrosian chant is musically related to other plainchant traditions, different categories of chant, different chant texts, and different musical styles make Ambrosian chant a distinct musical repertory. By the 8th century, this chant was attested to be normative across northern Italy, perhaps reaching into southern Italy as well. Between the 8th and 13th centuries, however, the Carolingian chant commissioned by Charlemagne developed into what we now know as Gregorian chant, which began to influence and eventually replace most of the other Western plainchant traditions. By the 12th century, the Mozarabic, Gallican, Celtic, Old Roman, and Beneventan chant traditions had all been effectively superseded by Gregorian chant. Ambrosian chant alone survived, despite the efforts of several Popes over a period of several centuries to establish Gregorian hegemony. A chronicle by the Milanese historian Landolphus from around the year 1000 recounts a legend that two Sacramentaries, one Gregorian and one Ambrosian, were placed on an altar to see which chant had divine acceptance; miraculously, both books opened simultaneously, showing both were equally acceptable. Ambrosian chant did not wholly escape Gregorian influence. The earliest 8th-century fragments, and the more complete chantbooks from the 11th and 12th centuries that preserve the first recorded musical notation, show marked differences between the Gregorian and Ambrosian repertories. Later additions to the Ambrosian repertory, whose style differs from the earlier chants, may reflect Gregorian influence. Although St. Charles Borromeo fought to keep the Ambrosian rite intact during Spanish occupation, a contemporary edition of Ambrosian chant, published by Perego in 1622, attempts to categorize the Ambrosian chants into the eight Gregorian modes, which is not generally accepted as an accurate reflection of the actual musical practice of the time. Ambrosian chant has survived to the present day, although its use is now limited primarily to the greater part of the Archdiocese of Milan and environs, parts of Lombardy, and parts of the Swiss Diocese of Lugano. Most recently, it survived the changes to the liturgy established by Vatican II, in part due to the prior tenure of Pope Paul VI as Archbishop of Milan.

American patriotic music

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Colonial Era#

Written by Founding Father John Dickinson in 1768 to the music of William Boyce’s “Heart of Oak”, “The Liberty Song” is perhaps the first patriotic song ever written in America. It contains the line “by uniting we stand, by dividing we fall”, which was an overture to the feelings of common blood and origin the Americans had while fighting the French and Indian War, and also the first recorded use of the sentiment. Additional songs gained prominence in keeping with British and American unity, namely “The British Grenadiers” and “God Save the King”. However, with the War of Independence, the tunes of the last two were combined with new lyrics while “Yankee Doodle”, long a tune and lyric addressed to the unique American population descended from the British, became widely popular. Political and cultural links between the colony and Great Britain perhaps explains the ongoing popularity of the two former tunes, despite the war for independence. “Hail Columbia” was written for George Washington’s inauguration. It served as an unofficial national anthem until 1931. It is still the vice presidential anthem today.

Andalusi nubah

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Form, texts, and performance#

According to tradition, there were initially 24 nubat, one for each hour of the day. Each nuba must have a duration of 1 hour. Lyrics are sung by a soloist or in unison by a chorus, and are chosen from the muwashshah or zajal poetic forms, which are in classical and colloquial Arabic, respectively. An andalusi nubah uses one tab (similar to a maqam, or mode) per performance, and includes several instrumental pieces as well as predominantly vocal pieces accompanied by instrumentation. These differ as to mizan (pl. mawazin) or rhythmic pattern (wazn, pl. awzan). Formally the tempo increases while the awzan simply within each of five sections, called mawazin. The sections are introduced by short instrumental pieces and vary according to region, the name of a section indicating the wazn used: *in Algeria (12 nubah and 4 incomplete): *in Tunisia (13 nubah): *in Morocco (11 nubah): The instrumental ensemble used includes the ud, rabab, Maghreb rebab or rebec, nay, qanun, tambourine, and a goblet drum called darbuka. The instrumentalists also serve as chorus.

Anglican chant

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Method#

The text is pointed for chanting by assigning each verse or phrase to a simple harmonised melody of 7, 14, 21 or 28 bars (known respectively as a single, double, triple or quadruple chant). An example of a single chant is shown above. Below are the first four verses of the Magnificat, with the text coloured to show which words correspond to which notes in the music (“the chant”). :1. My soul doth ’ magnify the ’ Lord : And my spirit hath re ’ joiced in ’ God my ’ Saviour . :2. For ’ he hath re ’ garded : the ’ lowli ness ’ of his ’ handmaiden . :3. For be ’ hold from ’ henceforth : all gene ’ rations shall ’ call me ’ blessed . :4. For he that is mighty hath ’ magni fied ’ me : and ’ ho ly ’ is his ’ Name . Various psalters have been published over the years, with each one showing how the chant is to be fitted to the words and each having its own variation on the precise rules for doing so. The rules used in the Parish Psalter (one of the more popular psalters, edited by Sydney Nicholson) are as follows: * Each verse is sung to seven bars of music (the whole chant in the example above, though most chants are 14 bars = 2 verses long) * The bar lines in the music correspond to the “pointing marks” which are shown above as inverted commas or apostrophes in the text. * The double bar line in the music corresponds to the colon in the text. * Where there is one note (a semibreve) to a bar, all the words for the corresponding part of the text are sung to that one note. * Where there are two notes (two minims) to a bar, unless indicated otherwise all the words except the last syllable are sung to the first minim. The final syllable is sung to the second minim. Where more than the last syllable is to be sung to the second minim, a dot (·) (between words) or a hyphen (within a word) is used in the text to indicate where the note change should occur. Other psalters use different notation; modern psalters such as the New St Paul’s Cathedral Psalter (John Scott, 1997) have adopted the following convention: * A vertical bar ( ) is used to indicate a barline. * Whenever there are 3 or more syllables in a bar containing two minims, a dot (·) or hyphen is used, even if the change of note is on the final syllable. There are various additional rules which apply occasionally: * Some chants have more complicated rhythms than the example above, generally in the form of a dotted minim and a crotchet (in any bar except the last of a quarter) or of two crotchets taking the place of a minim. * When a minim in an internal bar (i.e. not the first or last bar of a quarter) is replaced by two crotchets, one of two things happens. If there is only one syllable, both notes are sung to it in quick succession. If there are two (or occasionally more) syllables, they are split as appropriate to smoothly match the rhythm of the words to the two notes. * When an internal bar has a dotted rhythm, it is to be sung as above, excepting that the crotchet can be omitted from the music if the natural rhythm of the words and the sentiment of the words indicate that it is appropriate to do so. * When the first bar of a quarter has a dotted minim and a crotchet, all syllables except the last are sung to the note of the dotted minim, with the crotchet being tucked in on the last syllable before the barline. If there is only one syllable, both notes are sung to it in quick succession with the subtle emphasis being on the first note. * Sometimes the last bar of a quarter has two minims instead of the usual semibreve, in which case a dot/hyphen may be required after the last barline in the text: (e.g. even as ’ though they ’ were mine ’ ene-mies.) * Particularly in long psalms, changes of chant may be used to signal thematic shifts in the words. Psalm 119, which is the longest in the psalter, is generally sung with a change of chant after every 8 of its 176 verses, corresponding to the 22 stanzas of the original Hebrew text. However, it is never sung all at once, but spread over successive days.

Anglican church music

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Forms#

The chief musical forms in Anglican church music are centred around the forms of worship defined in the liturgy.

Service settings#

Service settings are choral settings of the words of the liturgy. These include: ; The Ordinary of the Eucharist : Sung Eucharist is a musical setting of the service of Holy Communion. Naming conventions may vary according to the churchmanship of the place of worship; in churches that tend towards a low church or broad church style of worship, the terms Eucharist or Communion are common, while in high church worship, the more Catholic term Mass may be used. Musical pieces corresponding to the liturgical pattern of the Ordinary of the Mass (Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus & Benedictus, Agnus Dei) may be sung by the choir or congregation. Many English-language settings of the communion service have been written, such as those by Herbert Howells and Harold Darke; simpler settings suitable for congregational singing are also used, such as the services by John Merbecke or Martin Shaw. In high church worship, Latin Mass settings are often preferred, such as those by William Byrd. ; Morning Service : The Anglican service of morning prayer, known as Mattins, is a peculiarly Anglican service which originated in 1552 as an amalgam of the monastic offices of Matins, Lauds and Prime in Thomas Cranmer’s Second Prayer Book of Edward VI. Choral settings of the Morning Service may include the opening preces and responses (see below), the Venite, and the morning canticles of Te Deum, Benedicite, Benedictus, Jubilate and a Kyrie. ; Evening Service : Evening Prayer, also known as Evensong, consists of preces and responses, Psalms, canticles, hymns and an anthem (see below). The evening canticles are the Magnificat and the Nunc Dimittis, and these texts have been set to music by many composers. Herbert Howells alone composed 20 settings of the canticles, including his Collegium Regale (1944) and St Paul’s (1950) services. Like Mattins, Evensong is a service that is a distinctively Anglican service, originating in the Book of Common Prayer of 1549 as a combination of the offices of Vespers and Compline. Choral Evensong is sung daily in most Church of England cathedrals, as well as in churches and cathedrals throughout the Anglican Communion. It is noted for its particular appeal to worshippers and visitors, attracting both believers and atheists with its meditative quality and cultural value. A service of Choral Evensong is broadcast weekly on BBC Radio 3, a tradition begun in 1926.

Antiphon

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Origins#

The chant of early Christianity through to the end of the 5th century had its root in the synagogue, whence early Christians borrowed the traditions of the chanting of psalms, singing of hymns and cantillation. There is some evidence from Acts of the Apostles that early Christians stayed close to contemporary Jewish traditions. For example, Acts 2:46–47 states that “with one accord in the Temple, and breaking bread from house to house did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, praising God, and having favour with all the people”. Socrates of Constantinople wrote that antiphony was introduced into Christian worship by Ignatius of Antioch (died 107) after he saw a vision of two choirs of angels. Antiphonal singing was an element of Jewish liturgy believed to have entered the monasteries of Syria and Palestine in the 4th century from the Jewish communities such as the one in Antioch. The practice did not become part of the Latin Church until more than two centuries later. Ambrose and Gregory the Great, who are known for their contributions to the formulation of Gregorian chant, are credited with ‘antiphonaries’, collections of works suitable for antiphon, which are still used in the Catholic Church today.

Arioso

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Well-known examples#

At the start of the finale in the first act of Mozart’s The Magic Flute, the andante of the priest (Sprecher) “Sobald dich führt der Freundschaft Hand ins Heiligtum zum ew’gen Band” is an example of arioso. “Amor ti vieta”, sung by Loris at Giordano’s Fedora could be a modern arioso example. In 1927, Sir Thomas Beecham referred to Frederick Delius’s Sea Drift as ’the finest example in all music of the Arioso recitativo.'

Ars subtilior

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Overview and history#

Musically, the productions of the are highly refined, complex, and difficult to sing, and probably were produced, sung, and enjoyed by a small audience of specialists and connoisseurs. Musicologist Richard Hoppin suggests the superlative ars subtilissima, saying, “not until the twentieth century did music again reach the most subtle refinements and rhythmic complexities of the manneristic style.” compares avant-garde and modernist music of the 20th century’s “emphasis on generating music through technical experiment” to the precedent set by the movement’s “autonomous delight in extending the kingdom of sound.” He cites Baude Cordier’s perpetual canon Tout par compas (All by compass am I composed), notated on a circular staff. Albright contrasts this motivation with “expressive urgency” and “obedience to rules of craft” and, indeed, "" was coined by musicologist Ursula Günther in 1960 to avoid the negative connotations of the terms manneristic style and mannered notation. (Günther’s coinage was based on references in Tractatus de diversis figuris, attributed to Philippus de Caserta, to composers moving to a style “post modum subtiliorem comparantes” and developing an “artem magis subtiliter”.) One of the centers of activity of the style was Avignon at the end of their Papacy and during the subsequent Great Schism (1378–1417), the time during which the Western Church had a pope both in Rome and in Avignon. Avignon had developed into an active cultural center, and produced a significant surviving body of secular song in the late fourteenth century. The style spread into, or was simultaneously developed in northern Spain, Italy (especially Pavia) and as far east as Cyprus (which was a French cultural outpost at the time). French, Flemish, Spanish and Italian composers used the style.

Athabaskan fiddle

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Origins#

In a sense, there are two main beginnings of Alaskan old-time music: the original introduction of fiddle music in 1847, and Alaska’s version of the great folk music revival in the 1970s. Athabaskan fiddle music has been cultivated in relative isolation from mainstream American country music. According to several accounts, the first fiddler on the Yukon River was a Hudson’s Bay Company employee named Antoine Hoole, who was among a trading party who established Fort Yukon, Alaska in 1847. His French Canadian influence likely helped spread the Anglo-Celtic music and dance tradition to the local Indians (First Nations and Métis), a rich tradition that continues today as a unique style of old-time music known as Athabaskan fiddle music. Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, fiddle music blended with aboriginal singing and dancing and melodic choral singing of hymns introduced by Anglican and Catholic missionaries. This music developed largely in isolation, with only occasional injections of new influences, and today is its own unique style. Athabaskan old-time fiddling music represents a fusion of traditional Athabascan instrumental and vocal music with the songs and violin tunes brought to the region in the late 1840s by Hudson Bay Company traders from their homelands in Scotland, Ireland, the Orkney Islands and French Canada. The popular Gwich’in tune, The Red River Jig, almost certainly came from the Red River area of southern Manitoba. The gold rush such as the Klondike (1896–1899) of Canada and Nome (1899–1909) and Fairbanks (1902–1905) of Alaska in the latter days of the 19th century and early 20th century saw another wave of musical influences as the prospectors’ waltzes, jigs, schottisches, foxtrots, two steps, and square dances (running sets) were incorporated into this unique musical style.

Aubade

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External links#

‘Aubade’ – a poem by Philip Larkin
‘Aubade’ – a poem by William Shakespeare

Bal-musette

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History#

Auvergnats settled in large numbers in the 5th, 11th, and 12th districts (arrondissements) of Paris during the 19th century, opening cafés and bars where patrons danced the bourrée to the accompaniment of the cabrette (a bellows-blown bagpipe locally called a “musette”) and often the vielle à roue (hurdy-gurdy). Parisian and immigrant Italian musicians who played the accordion adopted the style and established themselves in Auvergnat bars especially in the 19th arrondissement. When Italians began introducing new rhythms like the waltz and polka into the traditional musical form and began playing it on the recently introduced hybrid accordion, conflicts arose, and the Italian and Auvergnat styles split. By the end of 19th century, there were three kinds of bals-musette establishments: *bal des familles – Auvergnat *bal musette populaires – Italian *guinche or bal de barrière – seedy hangouts frequented by low-lifes and so-called bohemians. These places often were frequented by members of the French upper classes looking for excitement among the poor and downtrodden. Some establishments even staged mock police raids for their patrons’ benefit. Performers of this era include Antoine Bouscatel, Émile Vacher, Martin Cayla, Charles Péguri, and Gus Viseur. Musette dance forms arose from people looking for easier, faster and more sensual dance steps, as well as forms that did not require a large hall. “Musette-forms” that established themselves as variations to popular dances of the day include: * tango-musette * paso-musette * valse-musette, with a special variation called la toupie (“the top”), where dancers are very close and turn around themselves very regularly. An original musette dance also appeared, known as java. Admission to most bals was free, but dancers bought dance tokens at the cash-desk. These tokens were made of metal in various shapes, with the name of the hall stamped on one side. In the middle of the dance, the bal director walked between the couples with a bag and the dancers turned in a token. In the 1930s, gypsy jazz, a rhythmic form of swing music, drew on musette styles. By 1945, the bal-musette became the most popular style of dance in France and its biggest stars were widely known across the country. Its popularity declined drastically beginning around 1960. A revival of bals has begun, especially in larger cities, and a modern form of the musette is establishing itself.

Balkan brass

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History#

Records show that trumpeters were part of the Serbian army of prince Stefan Vojislav, which defeated the Byzantines in the Battle of Bar on the Rumija mountain in 1042. Together with the drummers, they are mentioned being in the armies of prince Lazar Hrebeljanović and his successors, despots Stefan Lazarević and Đurađ Branković in the 14th and 15th century. During that period, the trumpet was only used as a military instrument. The music’s tradition stems from the First Serbian Uprising led by Karageorge in 1804 (Serbian revolution) when Serbs revolted against the occupying Ottoman Empire, eventually liberating Serbia. The trumpet was used as a military instrument to wake and gather soldiers and announce battles, the trumpet took on the role of entertainment during downtime, as soldiers used it to transpose popular folk songs. When the war ended, the soldiers returned to the rural life; the music became common, accompanying births, baptisms, weddings, the slava (family patron saint day), farewell parties for those joining military service, state and church festivals, harvesting, reaping, and during funerals of family members in the community. As Serbia was liberated from the Ottoman Empire after the Second Serbian Uprising in 1815, Serbian prince Miloš Obrenović formed the band at his court in Kragujevac. As the new state was still under heavy Ottoman influence, the band played oriental music. It was headed by violin and zurna player, Mustafa. He was titled oberlautar (chief singer) or in Serbian, bukadžija, which literally means the “noise maker”. To westernize the state, prince Miloš dismissed Mustafa in 1831 and invited Josif Šlezinger (1794-1870), a musician and composer from Sombor, to form the first military orchestra, with the European instruments, so the trumpet was returned to the orchestras. After the World War I it became the most popular folk instrument, suppressing the previously dominant gaida and violin (in folk music called ćemane). The amateur players were originally taught by the former professional military trumpeters, like Momir Miletić, Momir Subotić and Dojčilo Đukić. The village orchestras were mostly disbanded during the World War II, but after 1945 they were renewed. In time, three schools of brass music developed: eastern (Zaječar, Boljevac), southern (Vranje, Surdulica, Vladičin Han) and western (Užice, Čačak, Požega).

Ballad opera

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Earliest ballad operas#

Ballad opera has been called an “eighteenth-century protest against the Italian conquest of the London operatic scene.” It consists of racy and often satirical spoken (English) dialogue, interspersed with songs that are deliberately kept very short (mostly a single short stanza and refrain) to minimize disruptions to the flow of the story, which involves lower class, often criminal, characters, and typically shows a suspension (or inversion) of the high moral values of the Italian opera of the period. It is generally accepted that the first ballad opera, and the one that was to prove the most successful, was The Beggar’s Opera of 1728. It had a libretto by John Gay and music arranged by Johann Christoph Pepusch, both of whom probably experienced vaudeville theatre in Paris, and may have been motivated to reproduce it in an English form. They were also probably influenced by the burlesques and musical plays of Thomas D’Urfey (1653–1723) who had a reputation for fitting new words to existing songs; a popular anthology of these settings was published in 1700 and frequently re-issued. A number of the tunes from this anthology were recycled in The Beggar’s Opera. After the success of The Beggar’s Opera, many similar pieces were staged. The actor Thomas Walker, who played Macheath in the original production, wrote several ballad operas, Although they featured the lower reaches of society, the audiences for these works were typically the London bourgeois. As a reaction to opera seria (at this time almost invariably sung in Italian), the music, for these audiences, was as satirical in its way as the words of the play. The plays themselves contained references to contemporary politics—in The Beggar’s Opera the character Peachum was a lampoon of Sir Robert Walpole. This satirical element meant that many of them risked censorship and banning—as was the case with Gay’s successor to The Beggar’s Opera, Polly. The tunes of the original ballad operas were almost all pre-existing (somewhat in the manner of a modern “jukebox musical”): however they were taken from a wide variety of contemporary sources, including folk melodies, popular airs by classical composers (such as Purcell) and even children’s nursery rhymes. A significant source from which the music was drawn was the fund of popular airs to which 18th century London broadside ballads are set. It is from this connection that the term “ballad opera” is drawn. This ragbag of familiar music is a good test for distinguishing between the original type of ballad opera and its later forms. Many ballad operas used the same tunes, such as “Lillibullero”, and by about 1750 it had become clear that there was a need for new tunes to be written. In 1762, Thomas Arne’s Love in a Village presented a new form of ballad opera, with mainly new music and much less reliance on traditional tunes. It was followed in similar style by Charles Dibdin’s Lionel and Clarissa in 1768. The Disappointment (1762) represents an early American attempt at such a ballad opera.

Ballade (classical music)

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Origin#

The musical ballade originates in the literary tradition of medieval and early Renaissance poetry. In poetry, the ballade featured a highly structured form, typically composed of three main stanzas with a repeated refrain. This structure allowed poets to weave tales of romance, heroism, and folklore, with Guillaume de Machaut being a key figure in popularizing this poetic style. Additionally, the ballade existed as a courtly dance, marked by its elegance and association with nobility, reinforcing its connection to grand and noble themes. As the literary ballade evolved, its narrative and lyrical qualities inspired composers to translate these elements into instrumental music. By the Romantic era, composers like Chopin began adapting the narrative essence of the ballade, creating expressive piano works that conveyed dramatic arcs and emotional depth without adhering to a strict poetic structure. These musical ballades embraced the storytelling spirit of their literary predecessors, allowing composers to explore narrative through melody and thematic development.

Ballade (forme fixe)

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Musical form#

The musical form of a ballade stanza is a bar form ( \mathrm AAB ), with a first, repeated musical section (stollen) setting the two initial pairs of verses (rhyme scheme \mathrm ab ,, ab ), and the second section (abgesang) setting the remaining lines including the refrain verse ( \mathrm bcbC ). The two statements of the " \mathrm A " section often have different endings, known as “ouvert” and “clos” respectively, with the harmony of the “ouvert” ending leading back to the beginning and that of the “clos” ending leading forward into the " \mathrm B " section. In many ballades, the final part of the " \mathrm B " section may reintroduce melodic material referring back to the end of the \mathrm A part, a feature known as “musical rhyme” (or, in German, Rücklaufballade). An alternative form employed by Machaut, known as ballade duplex or balladelle, has the \mathrm B part also divided into two repetitions, with the refrain line sung as part of the repetition. A famous exception to the normal form is “Se la face ay pale” by Guillaume Dufay, where the entire stanza is through-composed, i.e. without a repetition between the two " \mathrm A " sections.

Ballata

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Lauda and Ballata#

The vernacular sacred genre called lauda were often written in ballata form both before and after the height of the Trecento polyphonic ballata. It is through newly composed laude and laude-contrafacta that the ballata has its chronologically widest influence.

Editions#

Modern editions of the majority of the surviving ballata repertory were prepared by Nino Pirrotta in The Music of Fourteenth-Century Italy (esp. volume 8) and in Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century vol. 4 (Leo Schrade, ed., the music of Francesco Landini), vol. 24 (Margaret Bent and Anne Hallmark, ed., the music of Johannes Ciconia), and throughout vols. 6-11 (W. Thomas Marrocco, ed.).

Banda music

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Traditional ensembles#

Brass instruments in the state of Oaxaca of European origin that date back to the 1850s have been found. The repertoire of the bands of Morelos, Guerrero, Oaxaca, Chiapas and Michoacán covered gustos, sones, vinuetes, funeral pieces, marches, danzones, valses, corridos, paso dobles, polkas, rancheras, alabanzas, and foxes. Traditional bands that play Yucatecan Jarana are instrumented with clarinet, tenor saxophone, baritone saxophone, trumpet, trombone, timbales, snare drum, bass drum, cymbals, and güiro. Traditional Oaxacan bands use a mix of tuba, saxophones and clarinets, fewer trumpets and more tenor trombones, and the bass drum and cymbals are played separately. One of the oldest bands recorded in history is the Banda de Tlayacapan of the state of Morelos, founded approximately in 1870 and being one of the first to play la danza del Chinelo. Traditional Zacatecan tamborazo bands do not use tuba, the tambora taking the bass voice instead.

Barcarolle

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Description#

A barcarolle is characterized by a rhythm reminiscent of the gondolier’s stroke, almost invariably in metre at a moderate tempo. While the most-famous barcarolles are from the Romantic period, the genre was known well enough in the 18th century for Burney to mention, in The Present State of Music in France and Italy (1771), that it was a celebrated form cherished by “collectors of good taste”.

Notable examples#

The barcarolle was a popular form in opera, where the apparently artless sentimental style of the folklike song could be put to good use. In addition to the Offenbach example: Paisiello, Weber, and Rossini wrote arias that were barcarolles; Donizetti set the Venetian scene at the opening of Marino Faliero (1835) with a barcarolle for a gondolier and chorus; and Verdi included a barcarolle in Un ballo in maschera (i.e., Richard’s atmospheric “Di’ tu se fidele il flutto m’aspetta” in Act I). Arthur Sullivan set the entry of Sir Joseph Porter’s barge (also bearing his sisters, cousins and aunts) in H.M.S. Pinafore to a barcarolle, as well as the Trio “My well-loved lord and guardian dear” among Phyllis, Earl Tolloller and the Earl of Mountararat in Act I of Iolanthe. Schubert, while not using the name specifically, used a style reminiscent of the barcarolle in some of his most famous songs, including especially his haunting “Auf dem Wasser zu singen” (“To be sung on the water”), D.774. Stephen Sondheim uses a barcarolle for the two princes’ song “Agony” from his 1986 musical Into the Woods. Bob Dylan’s song “I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You” from his 2020 album Rough and Rowdy Ways uses Offenbach’s “Barcarolle” as a riff.

Baroque music of the British Isles

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Charles II#

With the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, Charles II made the court once more the centre of musical patronage in Britain, the theatres were reopened and, after the introduction of a new Book of Common Prayer in 1662, choral music began to be developed again. The king’s time on the continent, his (hidden) preference for Catholicism and explicit desire for entertainment led to the embracing of the Baroque and continental forms of music. As well as encouraging many French musicians to join his court, the king dispatched the young Pelham Humfrey (1647–74) to study in Paris, probably in 1665. When he returned he became the Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal and composer to the Court. Although he died aged only 27 he was highly influential on other English composers like William Turner (1651–1740), John Blow (1649–1708) and Henry Purcell (1659–95). Early in his career Purcell wrote secular music, including for the theatre. Later, as organist of Westminster Abbey and the Chapel Royal, he devoted himself to sacred music. In both fields he emerged as the most influential British composer of the era.

Beatrhyming

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Technique#

The primary technique of beatrhyming is singing or speaking rhyming lyrics while concurrently imitating drum beats with the voice and lips. It can also involve techniques such as vocal scratching the spoken or sung lyrics, making vocal sound effects relevant to the lyrics, and instrument mimicry. It can be improvised, pre-written, or covering a popular song.

Early history#

Kid Lucky began developing the concept for beatrhyming in the early 2000s. He credits Biz Markie’s hit song “A one two” as the earliest known example of what he defines as beatrhyming. The techniques of beatrhyming were already being practiced by artists such as Rahzel, D-Cross, and Masai Electro.

Bel canto

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History of the term and its various definitions#

As generally understood today, the term bel canto refers to the Italian-originated vocal style that prevailed throughout most of Europe during the 18th and early 19th centuries. Late 19th- and 20th-century sources “would lead us to believe that bel canto was restricted to beauty and evenness of tone, legato phrasing, and skill in executing highly florid passages, but contemporary documents those of the late 18th and early 19th centuries describe a multifaceted manner of performance far beyond these confines”. The main features of the bel canto style were: * prosodic singing (use of accent and emphasis) * matching register and tonal quality of the voice to the emotional content of the words * a highly articulated manner of phrasing based on the insertion of grammatical and rhetorical pauses * a delivery varied by several types of legato and staccato * a liberal application of more than one type of portamento * messa di voce as the principal source of expression (Domenico Corri called it the “soul of music”) * frequent alteration of tempo through rhythmic rubato and the quickening and slowing of the overall time * the introduction of a wide variety of graces and divisions into both arias and recitatives * gesture as a powerful tool for enhancing the effect of the vocal delivery * vibrato primarily reserved for heightening the expression of certain words and for gracing longer notes. The Harvard Dictionary of Music by Willi Apel says that bel canto denotes “the Italian vocal technique of the 18th century, with its emphasis on beauty of sound and brilliance of performance rather than dramatic expression or romantic emotion. In spite of the repeated reactions against bel canto (or its abuses, such as display for its own sake; Gluck, Wagner) and the frequent exaggeration of its virtuoso element (coloratura), it must be considered as a highly artistic technique and the only proper one for Italian opera and for Mozart. Its early development is closely bound up with that of the Italian opera seria (A. Scarlatti, N. Porpora, J. A. Hasse, N. Jommelli, N. Piccinni).”

Bélé

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As a dance#

The bélé dance formed from a combination of traditional African dance styles and Caribbean influences due to the changed landscape, musical instruments, and tumultuous lifestyle. It may be the oldest Creole dance of the creole French West Indian Islands, and it strongly reflects influences from African fertility dances. It is performed most commonly during full moon evenings, or sometimes during funeral wakes (Antillean Creole: lavèyé). In Tobago, it is thought to have been performed by women of the planter class at social events in the planters’ great houses, and the dress and dance style copied by the enslaved people who worked in or around these houses http://www.trinidadexpress.com/news/Birthplace-of-the-bele-112487054.html .

Beneventan chant

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History#

During the Lombard occupation of the 7th and 8th centuries, a distinctive liturgical rite and plainchant tradition developed in Benevento. It included feasts of special local importance such as the Holy Twelve Brothers of Benevento. At the time it was called cantus ambrosianus (“Ambrosian chant”), although it is a separate plainchant tradition from the chant of Milan which is called Ambrosian chant. The common use of the name cantus ambrosianus, the common influence of the Lombards in both Benevento and Milan, and musical similarities between the two liturgies and chant traditions suggest a Lombard influence in the origins of Beneventan chant. Gregorian chant had already begun to take hold in the Beneventan orbit as early as the 8th century. The two traditions appear to have coexisted for about a century before the Gregorian chant began to replace the native Beneventan. Many Beneventan chants exist only as interpolations and addenda in Gregorian chantbooks, sometimes next to their corresponding chants in the Gregorian repertory. External ecclesiastical influences, such as two German abbots at Montecassino during the 11th century, led to an increasing insistence on the Roman rite and Gregorian chant instead of the local Beneventan traditions. One of these abbots later became Pope Stephen IX, who in 1058 officially outlawed the Beneventan rite and chant. A few Beneventan chants continued to be recorded and performed for a time, especially for the feasts of local importance such as the Holy Twelve Brothers, which had no Gregorian counterpart. However, the Beneventan repertory as a whole fell into disuse. This was commemorated in a legend of a singing contest between a Gregorian and a Beneventan cantor, which ended in victory for the Gregorian repertory when the Beneventan cantor fainted from exhaustion.

Bertsolaritza

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Bertso#

A bertso consists of two main components: the spontaneous verse and the melody to which it is sung. The famous modern-day bertsolari Xabier Amuriza defined it in a bertso as: Many different forms of metre exist for bertsos but 4 of the commonly encountered ones are the zortziko txiki “small of eight”, zortziko handi “big of eight”, hamarreko txiki “small of ten” and hamarreko handi “big of ten”. An example of a Zortziko Txiki is the first stanza of the bertso Aitorren Izkuntz Zarra “Aitor’s Ancient Language” by Z. Andonegi: The zortziko txiki is called the “small of eight” as the first lerro or “line” contains 7 oinak or “syllables” (literally called “feet”), followed by 6 syllables in the next line. Such a pair of lines is called a puntu, a “point”, 4 puntu (or 8 lines) in total form one stanza in a zortziko txiki. The rhyme is carried in the lines of 6 syllables. The zortziko handi on the other hand contains 10 syllables in the first line, followed by 8 in the second. The hamarreko txiki and hamarreko handi only differ in the number of lines, of which they have 10 rather than 8. An error in the rhyme is called a poto.

Bicinium

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External links#

- Didactic two-part compositions of the Renaissance and the Baroque A large site dedicated to bicinia, includes lists of composers and works, scores and an extensive bibliography.

Biomusic

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Biophony#

At the 2014 Cheltenham Music Festival (UK), “The Great Animal Orchestra Symphony for Orchestra and Wild Soundscapes,” composed by Bernie Krause and Oxford (Balliol College) former composer-in-residence, Richard Blackford, premiered, and was performed by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. This composition is the first symphony based on ecological themes and the first to perform, live, with whole natural soundscapes informing the orchestral form and themes, just as biophonies and geophonies inspired music (rhythm, melody, organization of sound, timbre, and dynamic) at the dawn of cultural time. Commissioned by the Alonzo King LINES Ballet, an international corps based in San Francisco, the score for Biophony, composed by Bernie Krause and Richard Blackford, consists almost entirely of biophonies and geophonies and premiered in 2015. It has since been performed worldwide.

Blues

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Etymology#

The term ‘Blues’ may have originated from “blue devils”, meaning melancholy and sadness. An early use of the term in this sense is in George Colman’s one-act farce Blue Devils (1798). The phrase ‘blue devils’ may also have been derived from a British usage of the 1600s referring to the “intense visual hallucinations that can accompany severe alcohol withdrawal”. As time went on, the phrase lost the reference to devils and came to mean a state of agitation or depression. By the 1800s in the United States, the term “blues” was associated with drinking alcohol, a meaning which survives in the phrase ‘blue law’, which prohibits the sale of alcohol on Sunday. In Henry David Thoreau’s book Walden, he mentions “the blues” in the chapter reflecting on his time in solitude. He wrote his account of his personal quest in 1845, although it was not published until 1854. The phrase “the blues” was written by Charlotte Forten, then aged 25, in her diary on December 14, 1862. She was a free-born black woman from Pennsylvania who was working as a schoolteacher in South Carolina, instructing both slaves and freedmen, and wrote that she “came home with the blues” because she felt lonesome and pitied herself. She overcame her depression and later noted a number of songs, such as “Poor Rosy”, that were popular among the slaves. Although she admitted being unable to describe the manner of singing she heard, Forten wrote that the songs “can’t be sung without a full heart and a troubled spirit”, conditions that have inspired countless blues songs. Though the use of the phrase in African-American music may be older, it has been attested to in print since 1912, when Hart Wand’s “Dallas Blues” became the first copyrighted blues composition. In lyrics, the phrase is often used to describe a depressed mood.

Bolero

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Origins#

In Cuba, the bolero was perhaps the first great Cuban musical and vocal synthesis to win universal recognition. In time, this dance music spread to other countries, leaving behind what Ed Morales has called the “most popular lyric tradition in Latin America.” The Cuban bolero tradition originated in Santiago de Cuba in the last quarter of the 19th century; it does not owe its origin to the Spanish music and song of the same name. In the 19th century there grew up in Santiago de Cuba a group of itinerant musicians who moved around earning their living by singing and playing the guitar. Pepe Sanchez is known as the father of the trova style and the creator of the Cuban bolero. Untrained, but with remarkable natural talent, he composed numbers in his head and never wrote them down. As a result, most of these numbers are now lost, but two dozen or so survive because friends and students wrote them down. He was the model and teacher for the great trovadores who followed.

Bolero (Spanish dance)

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Classical music#

During its heyday, the bolero became a popular dance in ballrooms across Spain and was performed by Spanish troupes abroad along with other dances such as the cachucha. Over time, many classical composers wrote pieces inspired in the genre: * Frédéric Chopin wrote Boléro for solo piano (Op. 19) in 1834, but its rhythms are more those of the polonaise. He was a close friend of Pauline Viardot, the daughter of the famed Spanish tenor Manuel García, who had introduced the bolero to Paris. * Clara Schumann wrote “Caprice à la Boléro” as the second movement of her 4 Pièces caractéristiques for piano, opus 5, composed 1834–1836. *Giuseppe Verdi wrote a bolero, Mercé, dilette amiche, for his 1855 opera I vespri siciliani. * Charles-Auguste de Bériot wrote a bolero in his Scène de ballet (Op. 100), 1840s, for violin and piano (or orchestra), one of his most famous pieces. * Julián Arcas wrote several bolero pieces for guitar and greatly influenced both the bolero form and guitar playing in the context of classical music. * Louis James Alfred Lefébure-Wély wrote Boléro de Concert for organ in 1865. * Hervé wrote a bolero for his operetta Chilpéric in 1868, which was immortalized in painting by Toulouse-Lautrec. * Léo Delibes wrote a bolero in Tableau 2 of Coppélia, 1870. * Camille Saint-Saëns wrote a bolero for 2 voices and orchestra, El desdichado, 1871. * Moritz Moszkowski wrote a bolero as the last of his first set of Spanish Dances (Op. 12), 1876. * César Cui’s Bolero from 1881 was composed for solo soprano voice with accompaniment of orchestra or piano, and published with Russian, Italian, and French texts. The score is available at IMSLP/Petrucci. * Friedrich Baumfelder wrote Premier Boléro for piano (Op. 317) in 1883. * Joe Morley wrote a bolero for banjo titled “El contrabandista” (c. 1920) after noted banjoist and composer Alfred Cammeyer published a bolero in time for banjo. Morley composed his as a true bolero in time. * Maurice Ravel wrote Boléro (whose working title was Fandango) as a ballet score commissioned by Ida Rubinstein in 1928, but it is now usually played as a concert piece. It has inspired other classical works such as Fumio Hayasaka’s theme for Rashomon, 1950. * Richard Aaker Trythall wrote a bolero for four percussionists in 1979. It is based on the rhythm and structure of the traditional Spanish bolero. Trythall imagined the four percussionists as four dancers, intertwining their solos, duets, and trios with moments of group ensemble work in the same way a choreographer might have done. * John Serry Sr. composed his African Bolero for accordion and flute in 1950. * Keith Emerson composed his Abaddon’s Bolero for orchestra and synthesizer in 1972. * Zbigniew Preisner’s film score for Three Colors: Red (1994) employs the bolero rhythm in several cues. * Ryuichi Sakamoto composed Blu in 2014, for piano and orchestra. The piece starts with a dreamy piano melody that is followed by a four-minute bolero part. * Barry Gray composed Zero-X, an Incidental cue, for the score of the 1966 film ‘Thunderbirds Are Go’, using a bolero rhythm. Some art music boleros are actually based on the habanera, a Cuban adaptation of the French contredanse which was often featured in French opera and Spanish zarzuela.

Boogie-woogie

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Musical features#

Boogie-woogie is characterized by a regular left-hand bass figure, which is transposed following the chord changes. : : Boogie-woogie is not strictly a solo piano style; it can accompany singers and be featured in orchestras and small combos. It is sometimes called “eight to the bar”, as much of it is written in common time () time using eighth notes (quavers) (see time signature). The chord progressions are typically based on I–IV–V–I (with many formal variations of it, such as I/i–IV/iv–v/I, as well as chords that lead into these ones). For the most part, boogie-woogie tunes are twelve-bar blues, although the style has been applied to popular songs such as “Swanee River” and hymns such as “Just a Closer Walk with Thee”. Typical boogie-woogie bassline: : :

Bourrée

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History#

The bourrée originates in Auvergne in France. It is sometimes called the “French clog dance” or a “branle of the sabots”. First mentioned as a popular dance in 1665 in Clermont-Ferrand, it still survives in Auvergne in the Massif Central and in the department of Ariège and is danced during bals folk in France and in other countries. The present-day dance in lower Auvergne, also called Montagnarde (Montanhardas), is in triple time while that of high Auvergne called Auvergnate (Auvernhatas) is in double time. Modern variants termed bourrées are danced as partner dances, circle dances, square dances and line dances. However bourrées have been composed as abstract musical pieces since the mid-16th century. Michael Praetorius mentions it in his Syntagma musicum and it is one of the dances arranged for his collection Terpsichore. However, there is no early dance notation and it is difficult to assess the early interaction of the folk dance and the courtly dance. Musically, the bourrée took on the common binary form of classical dance movements, sometimes extended by a second bourrée, the two to be played in a grand ternary form A–(A)–B–A. Marguerite de Navarre, who was the wife of the King of Navarre and sister to the King of France, introduced the dance to the French court in 1565 and it was popular until the reign of Louis XIII (1601–1643) and opened many balls, but the bourrée took some time to appear in the early ballet dance notation of the French baroque theatre. The step with two movements is not illustrated by Feuillet but appears in Rameau as the “true” pas de bourrée, the simpler step, with one movement, is identified with the fleuret. The basic step, with one initial movement (i.e. a plié on the supporting leg) and three subsequent changes of weight in a measure, can be performed in a great many variations, and varieties of this step appear commonly throughout the notated dances that were published in the eighteenth century, starting with Feuillet in 1700. The minuet step is a pas composé, a step composed of more basic steps. The pas de bourrée of one movement is the second half of the most common minuet step, the minuet step of two movements, or “one and a fleuret”, as the English master Tomlinson described it. The rare pas de bourrée of two movements, mentioned above, occurs as a graceful variation in some recorded passepied, as part of a minuet step of three movements. As later formalised in classical ballet the skipping step of the bourrée became a quick, gliding step, often en pointe or demi-pointe, one of the most-used step sequences of ballet. A pas de bourrée, more commonly known as the “behind side front” or “back side front”, is a quick sequence of movements often taken in preparation for a larger step. In one account it begins with an extension of the first leg while demi plié, closing it to the second as both transit to relevé, extending the second leg to an open position and again closing first to second in demi plié , or with legs straight if quick or as the final step of an enchainement. There are several variants. A pas de bourrée piqué picks up the feet in between steps. In his Der Vollkommene Capellmeister (Hamburg, 1739), Johann Mattheson wrote of the bourrée, “its distinguishing feature resides in contentment and a pleasant demeanor, at the same time it is somewhat carefree and relaxed, a little indolent and easygoing, though not disagreeable”. Johann Sebastian Bach often used the bourrée in his suites as one of the optional dance movements that come after the sarabande but before the gigue, and he also wrote two short bourrées in his Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach. His Bourrée in E minor in his Lute Suite, BWV 996 is especially popular. Handel wrote several bourrées in his solo chamber sonatas (for example the fourth movement of his Oboe sonata in C minor); however, perhaps his best-known is the seventh movement of the Water Music (Handel) suite. In the 19th century Frédéric Chopin and Emmanuel Chabrier wrote bourrées for the piano (such as the latter’s Bourrée fantasque, composed 1891). The Victorian English composer Hubert Parry included a bourrée in his Lady Radnor Suite (1894).

Bulerías

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Cante (singing)#

When sung, the bulería has three or four octosyllabic lines. It is sometimes subdivided into bulerías al golpe and bulerías ligadas. The former is slower while the latter is frantic. There are many styles of Buleria depending on the region of Spain from which it originated. For example: Buleria de Lebrija, Buleria de Jerez (possibly the most commonly used style), Buleria de Cadiz, Buleria de Utrera etc.

Burletta

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List of theatrical Burlettas#

Midas by Kane O’Hara (Belfast, 1760, Dublin, 1762)
Orpheus by François-Hippolyte Barthélémon (London, 1767)
The Judgement of Paris by Barthélémon (London, 1768)
The Recruiting Serjeant by Charles Dibdin (London, 1770)
The Portrait by Samuel Arnold (1770)
The Portrait by Barthélémon (Dublin, c. 1771)
L’infedeltà delusa by Joseph Haydn (1773)
The Golden Pippin by John Abraham Fisher (1773)
Buxom Joan by Raynor Taylor (1778)
Poor Vulcan by Dibdin (1778)
Marie Tanner, words by Broughton Black and Poland Henry, music by John Ivimey (produced at Cardiff, 1897)
Tom and Jerry, or Life in London by W. T. Moncrieff (1821)

Other Meanings#

The word burletta has also been used for scherzo-like instrumental music by composers including Max Reger and Bartók. In America, the word has sometimes been used as an alternative for burlesque.

Ca trù

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History#

There are different myths and theories related to ca trù’s conception. There is a theory points to a woman named Đào Thị, a talented musician who was beloved by the Lý Dynasty imperial court. This theory also claims that ever since the time of Đào Thị, in admiration of her, women who held a profession as singers (such as ca trù singers) were referred to as Đào nương (“nương” here refers roughly to “maiden” or “lady”). The latter is true although this term is no longer widely used in modern Vietnam. What is known for sure is that ca trù started off like many of Vietnam’s arts as being a form of entertainment for the royal court. Officially ca tru count the age of their profession since The Later Le dynasty (, 1428–1789), at that time musicians called performed only on religious court ceremonies. It was only later on that it branched out into being performed at small inns. Indeed, it was mainly scholars and other members of the elite who enjoyed the genre. In the 15th century ca tru spread through Northern Vietnam. The artists might be called to celebrate a son’s birth, or to celebrate the signing of a contract. Ca tru were outside of the caste system, so they could entertain the most noble clients. In the late 20th century, ca trù nearly died out. After the communists came to power following the 1945 August Revolution and the First Indochina War, ca trù was discouraged and even suppressed, being associated with prostitution, feudal romanticism, colonial decadence, and superstition. Consequently, before 1976 there were only two ca trù professionals: the musician Nguyễn Xuân Khoát Later they both started to revive the tradition of ca tru. In the past, men were allowed to have several wives and concubines. Thus, it was commonly known that many famous ca trù singers did indeed have affairs with important men, but it was just something to be accepted as a part of society back then, and not a part of the profession itself. As of 2009, extensive efforts are being made to invigorate the genre, including many festivals and events where several types of ca trù (among other related arts) are performed. Vietnam has also completed documents to have ca trù recognized by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage. By 2011 there were 140 ca tru from 23 clubs.

Cabaletta

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References#

Notes Sources *Apel, Willi (1962) Harvard Dictionary of Music. Taylor & Francis *Budden, Julian (1998), “Cabaletta”, in Stanley Sadie, (Ed.), The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, Vol. One, pp. 665. London: Macmillan Publishers, Inc. * Encyclopædia Britannica Online. “cabaletta”. britannica.com Retrieved 23 July 2011 *Fisher, Burton D. (2005). Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Opera Journeys Publishing. *Greenwald, Helen M. (editor) (2012). Critical Commentary Edition and Score of Attila, University of Chicago Press,

Canon (music)

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Medieval and Renaissance#

During the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Baroque—that is, through the early 18th century—any kind of imitative musical counterpoints were called fugues, with the strict imitation now known as canon qualified as fuga ligata, meaning “fettered fugue”. Only in the 16th century did the word “canon” begin to be used to describe the strict, imitative texture created by such a procedure. The word is derived from the Greek “κανών”, Latinised as canon, which means “law” or “norm”. In contrapuntal usage, the word refers to the “rule” explaining the number of parts, places of entry, transposition, and so on, according to which one or more additional parts may be derived from a single written melodic line. This rule was usually given verbally, but could also be supplemented by special signs in the score, sometimes themselves called canoni. The earliest known non-religious canons are English rounds, a form first given the name rondellus by Walter Odington at the beginning of the 14th century; the best known is “Sumer is icumen in” (composed around 1250), called a rota (“wheel”) in the manuscript source. The term “round” was first used in English sources in the 16th century. Canons featured in the music of the Italian Trecento and the 14th-century ars nova in France. An Italian example is “Tosto che l’alba” by Gherardello da Firenze. In both France and Italy, canons were often featured in hunting songs. The medieval and modern Italian word for hunting is “caccia”, while the medieval French word is spelled “chace” (modern spelling: “chasse”). A well-known French chace is the anonymous “Se je chant mains”. Richard Taruskin describes “Se je chant mains” as evoking the atmosphere of a falcon hunt: “The middle section is truly a tour de force, but of a wholly new and off-beat type: a riot of hockets set to ‘words’ mixing French, bird-language, and hound-language in an onomatopoetical mélange.” Guillaume de Machaut also used the 3-voice “chace” form in movements from his masterpiece Le Lai de la Fontaine (1361). Referring to the setting of the fourth stanza of this work, Taruskin says “a well-wrought chace can be far more than the sum of its parts; and this particular chace is possibly Machaut’s greatest feat of subtilitas.” An example of late 14th century canon which featured some of the rhythmic complexity of the late 14th century ars subtilior school of composers is La harpe de melodie by Jacob de Senleches. According to Richard Hoppin, “This virelai has two canonic voices over a free and textless tenor.” In many pieces in three contrapuntal parts, only two of the voices are in canon, while the remaining voice is a free melodic line. In Dufay’s song “Resvelons nous, amoureux”, the lower two voices are in canon, but the upper part is what David Fallows describes as a “florid top line”:

Canticle

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Catholic Church#

Prior to Pope Pius X’s 1911 reforms, the following cycle of seven Old Testament Canticles was used at Lauds: * Sunday – The Song of the Three Holy Children () * Monday – The Song of Isaiah the Prophet () * Tuesday – The Song of Hezekiah () * Wednesday – The Song of Hannah () * Thursday – The (First) Song of Moses () * Friday – The Prayer of Habakkuk () * Saturday – The (Second) Song of Moses () These are rather long, and the weekday ones display something of a penitential theme, but some were not often used, as all feasts and the weekdays in Eastertide had the Canticle of Daniel, assigned to Sunday. The 1911 reform introduced for weekdays not of penitential nature, and for lesser feasts and days of the lesser octaves, the following Canticles: * Monday – The Song of David the King () * Tuesday – The Song of Tobit () * Wednesday – The Song of Judith () * Thursday – The Song of Jeremiah the Prophet () * Friday – The (Second) Song of Isaiah the Prophet () * Saturday – The Song of Ecclesiasticus () For weekdays in Advent, Pre-Lent, Lent and the quarterly Ember Days, if not superseded by higher-ranking feasts—due to the multitude of feasts in the rest of the year, these make up almost the totality of the days that did not have the Canticle of Daniel before—the original seven Canticles would still be used. The Liturgy of the Hours (introduced in 1971) uses one canticle from the Old Testament each day at Lauds, “each weekday of the four-week cycle has its own proper canticle and on Sunday the two sections of the Canticle of the Three Children may be alternated”. The liturgy prior to the reform after Vatican II used fourteen Old Testament Canticles in two weekly cycles. At Vespers according to the Liturgy of the Hours, a Canticle from the New Testament is used. These follow a weekly cycle, with some exceptions. Additionally, the following Canticles from the Gospel of Luke (also called the “Evangelical Canticles”) are said daily: * At Lauds, the “Canticle of Zachary” (Luke 1:68-79), commonly referred to as the Benedictus. * At Vespers, the “Canticle of Mary” (Luke 1:46-55), commonly known as the Magnificat. * At Compline, the “Canticle of Simeon” (Luke 2:29-32), commonly referred to as the Nunc dimittis. This usage is also followed by Lutheran churches.

Cantiga

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References#

Rip Cohen. 500 Cantigas d’Amigo, edição crítica/critical edition. Porto: Campo das Letras, 2003.
Giulia Lanciani and Giuseppe Tavani (edd.). Dicionário da Literatura Medieval Galega e Portuguesa. Lisbon: Caminho, 1993.
Manuel Pedro Ferreira. O Som de Martin Codax. Sobre a dimensão musical da lírica galego-portuguesa (séculos XII-XIV). Lisbon: UNISYS/ Imprensa Nacional – Casa de Moeda, 1986.
Manuel Pedro Ferreira. Cantus Coronatus: 7 Cantigas d’El Rei Dom Dinis. Kassel: Reichenberger, 2005.
Manuel Rodrigues Lapa. Cantigas d’escarnho e de mal dizer dos cancioneiros medievais galego-portugueses, edição crítica. 2nd ed. Vigo: Editorial Galaxia, 1970.
Walter Mettmann. Afonso X, o Sabio. Cantigas de Santa Maria. 4 vols. Coimbra: Por ordem da Universidade, 1959–72 (rpt. Vigo: Ediçóns Xerais de Galicia, 1981).
Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos. Cancioneiro da Ajuda, edição critica e commentada. 2 vols. Halle a.S.: Max Niemeyer, 1904 (rpt. with Michaëlis 1920, Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional – Casa de Moeda, 1990).
Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos. “Glossário do Cancioneiro da Ajuda”. Revista Lusitana (1920) 23: 1–95.
José Joaquim Nunes. Cantigas d’amor dos trovadores galego-portugueses. Edição crítica acompanhada de introdução, comentário, variantes, e glossário. Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade, 1932 (rpt. Lisbon: Centro do Livro Brasileiro, 1972).
Jack Sage. “Cantiga”, Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (accessed 17 September 2006), grovemusic.com (subscription access).
Giuseppe Tavani. Trovadores e Jograis: Introdução à poesia medieval galego-portuguesa. Lisbon: Caminho. 2002.

Cantiñas

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Sources#

MARTÍN SALAZAR, Jorge: Los cantes flamencos, Diputación Provincial de Granada ÁLVAREZ CABALLERO, Ángel: La discoteca ideal del flamenco, Planeta, 1995

Canzone

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Canzone#

The canzone (German: Kanzone) is the characteristic strophic form of , the Middle High German lyric genre. In , the canzone follows the tri-partite structure of the Provençal canso: two metrically identical (“supports”) form the (literally “up-song”), which is followed by a metrically distinct (“down-song”). The following rules generally apply: * each line in the first rhymes with the matching line in the second * the introduces new rhymes and may contain a non-rhyming line * the is longer than a single but shorter than the entire . class=“wikitable” style=“border; margin: 2em; vertical-align: top; background:#fff;” - ! colspan=“5” Hartman von Aue, Crusading Song (MF 211,20) The earliest canzone in date from the late 12th Century and are part of the more general influence of the Romance lyric.

Canzonetta

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Origins in Italy#

In its earliest form, the canzonetta was closely related to a popular Neapolitan form, the villanella. The songs were always secular, and generally involved pastoral, irreverent, or erotic subjects. The rhyme and stanza schemes of the poems varied but always included a final “punch line.” Typically the early canzonetta was for three unaccompanied voices, moved quickly, and shunned contrapuntal complexity, though it often involved animated cross-rhythms. It was fun to sing, hugely popular, and quickly caught on throughout Italy, paralleling the madrigal, with which it later began to interact. The earliest books of canzonettas were published by Giovanni Ferretti in 1567 and Girolamo Conversi in 1572. By the 1580s some of the major composers of secular music in Italy were writing canzonettas, including Luca Marenzio and Claudio Monteverdi, who published his first set in 1584. Monteverdi was to return to the form with his ninth and final book of madrigals (published posthumously in 1651). Orazio Vecchi was another important composer of canzonettas in the 1580s. His canzonettas varied widely, and included some for dancing and some that parodied the excesses of the contemporary madrigal. Some composers, such as Roman School member Felice Anerio, adapted the form for a sacred purpose. Anerio wrote a set of sacred canzonette. By the end of the century most canzonettas were for four to six voices, and had become more similar to the madrigal. Some composers who studied in Italy carried the canzonetta back to their home countries, such as Hans Leo Hassler, who brought the form to Germany.

Cape Breton fiddling

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Playing style#

Cape Breton- Scottish playing is accented, characterized by driven up-bowing. The tunes of other music origins (Irish, Canadian, French-Canadian, etc.) sound different when performed by Cape Breton- Scottish players. The downbeat pulse is driven by the fiddler’s heel into the floor. The pattern tends to be heel-and-toe on reels, the heel on strathspeys. Cape Breton fiddle music is influenced by the intonations of the Scots-Gaelic language, especially Puirt a Beul (mouth music) and strathspeys. The ornaments are adapted from those used on the Great Highland bagpipe. The ornamentation (cuts aka. trebles, drones and doubling) brings out the feeling of Cape Breton fiddle. A century ago the violin and pump organ were the common instruments; the latter has been supplanted by piano to provide a rhythmic accompaniment. Guitar is also used for accompaniment but it’s less prominent than piano.

Cariso

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Chantwells#

The “chantwell” is another incarnation of the African “griot” tradition. On the Caribbean plantations African griots became chantwells, preserving the tribe’s history and traditions orally. They would sing to contemporary and mythical heroes and to the Gods. They would also preserve the complex oral traditions of West Africa with songs of derision, praise, satire, and lament. At first the chantwells were mostly women because the males were targeted for destruction on the plantation. On Emancipation the tradition continued and the chantwells would sing call-and-response chants called lavways lionizing and cheering on champion stickfighters. This form of music gradually evolved into the modern calypso. Calypso music was developed in Trinidad in the 17th century from the West African Kaiso and canboulay music brought by African slaves imported to that Caribbean island to work on sugar plantations. These enslaved Africans were stripped of all connections to their homeland and family and not allowed to talk to each other. They used calypso to mock the slave masters and to communicate with each other. As calypso developed, the role of the griot (originally a similar travelling musician in West Africa) became known as a chantwell and, eventually, calypsonian. As the country became urbanized chantwells became more and more a male function but the portfolio remains the same. The chantwell is the Call, the tribe and the audience is the Response.

Carol (music)

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History#

The word carol is derived from the Old French word carole, a circle dance accompanied by singers (in turn derived from the Latin choraula). Carols were very popular as dance songs from the 1150s to the 1350s, after which their use expanded as processional songs sung during festivals, while others were written to accompany religious mystery plays (such as the “Coventry Carol”, written before 1534). Sacred music was traditionally sung in Latin by clergy or appointed cantors of the Catholic church. Following the Protestant Reformation, reformers aimed to bring music “back to the people”. To enable the common person to sing church music, great efforts were made to translate musical texts from Latin into the native languages that people spoke. Martin Luther, the father of Lutheran Christianity, encouraged congregational singing during the Mass, in addition to spreading the practice of caroling outside the liturgy. Composers such as William Byrd composed motet-like works for Christmas that they termed carols; and folk-carols continued to be sung in rural areas. Nonetheless, some famous carols were written in this period, and they were more strongly revived from the nineteenth century and began to be written and adapted by eminent composers.

Celtic chant

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History#

The Celtic Church goes back to the Irish monastic traditions. The churches in Ireland and Britain had no central authority except, in theory, Rome, which in practice exerted very little influence. Notable in this transition from local Irish customs to more standardized Roman traditions was the conflict over the dating of Easter, where the Roman tradition of solar dating finally supplanted the Irish lunar dating at the Synod of Tara in 692. Over the next several centuries, versions of the Roman rite such as the Use of Salisbury were gradually enforced in Brittany in the 9th century, Scotland in the 11th century.

Cerdd Dant

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History#

is a unique tradition of singing lyrics over a harp melody. Traditional Welsh language singers who sang in stately homes tended to sing in a verse form that had strict rules about metre, rhyme, and acceleration. is usually performed by a solo singer and a harpist; however, it is also performed by choirs and with several harps. A common form is have a harp melody written down or a well known tune, while the vocalist improvises their own harmony while singing a poem . When sung in a competition, there are strict rules about rhythm and cadences. When finishing a piece, the final verse has to end on a perfect cadence that is close to the home key so that the ending of the song is clear. In Wales, during the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, two arts flourished side by side: (the craft of the tongue, poetical craft) and (the craft of string music). The poets and musicians were part of an all-embracing bardic system. The poets wrote verse of an occasional nature, praising the exploits and virtues of their patrons: the Welsh nobility and high-ranking clergy. They also provided elegies, devotional poetry, commemorated the generous acts of their patrons and satirised certain people in verses which might have the intensity of curses. The art of poetry was learnt orally, i.e. examples were learnt by heart and exercises given as spoken instruction. Part of the poet or musician’s craft was the ability to remember the important work of previous generations. One of the spurs to the active and generous patronage of poets must have been the prospect that one’s name and deeds would live forever. In descending social order came: poet, harper, player and the specialised singer of bardic verse, the . The crafts of poetry and instrumental music were interdependent and the performance of a new poem, at its most splendid, probably required the services of the , harpist and/or player; no doubt superintended by the poet. Between the beginning of the 14th century and the end of the 16th century Welsh poetical forms were brought to an extreme pitch of elaboration.

Chacarera

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Chacarera music#

While much of the Chacarera repertoire can be traced to the 1920s sheet music of Andrés Chazarreta (Chazarreta 1947 1916 ), the contemporary Chacarera style described in this article was standardized by the recordings of the 1950s folk group Los Hermanos Ábalos (Ábalos 1952). Today, this style is ubiquitous throughout Argentina, with important variants appearing in the provinces of Santiago del Estero and Salta.

Melody and harmony#

Contemporary Chacareras generally utilize descending, minor-mode melodies within an octave range. They are not harmonically distinctive, relying predominantly on tonic and dominant accompaniment, and the occasional shift to the relative major. Some modern Chacarera musicians use major-seventh and other altered chords in their arrangements.

Chaconne

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History#

Though it originally emerged during the late sixteenth century in Spanish culture, having reputedly been introduced from the New World, as a quick dance-song characterized by suggestive movements and mocking texts, the chaconne by the early eighteenth century had evolved into a slow triple meter instrumental form. Alex Ross describes the origins of the chacona as actually having been a sexily swirling dance that appeared in South America at the end of the sixteenth century and quickly spread to Europe. The dance became popular both in the elite courts and in the general population. “Un sarao de la chacona” is one of the earliest known examples of a “chacona”, written down by Spanish musician Juan Arañés. Outstanding examples of early baroque chaconnes are Monteverdi’s “Zefiro torna” and “Es steh Gott auf” by Heinrich Schütz. One of the best known and most masterful and expressive examples of the chaconne is the final movement from the Violin Partita in D minor by Johann Sebastian Bach. This 256-measure chaconne takes a plaintive four-bar phrase through a continuous kaleidoscope of musical expression in both major and minor modes. However, recently it has been proposed that Bach’s “Ciaccona” (he used the Italian form of the name, rather than the French “Chaconne”) is really cast in the form of a French theatrical dance known as the “passacaille”, although it also incorporates Italian and German style features as well. After the Baroque period, the chaconne fell into decline during the 19th century, though Beethoven’s 32 Variations in C minor suggest its continuing influence. However, the form saw a very substantial revival during the 20th century, with more than two dozen composers contributing examples (see below).

Chamber music

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History#

From its earliest beginnings in the Medieval period to the present, chamber music has been a reflection of the changes in the technology and the society that produced it.

Early beginnings#

During the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance, instruments were used primarily as accompaniment for singers. String players would play along with the melody line sung by the singer. There were also purely instrumental ensembles, often of stringed precursors of the violin family, called consorts. Some analysts consider the origin of classical instrumental ensembles to be the sonata da camera (chamber sonata) and the sonata da chiesa (church sonata). These were compositions for one to five or more instruments. The sonata da camera was a suite of slow and fast movements, interspersed with dance tunes; the sonata da chiesa was the same, but the dances were omitted. These forms gradually developed into the trio sonata of the Baroque – two treble instruments and a bass instrument, often with a keyboard or other chording instrument (harpsichord, organ, harp or lute, for example) filling in the harmony. Both the bass instrument and the chordal instrument would play the basso continuo part. During the Baroque period, chamber music as a genre was not clearly defined. Often, works could be played on any variety of instruments, in orchestral or chamber ensembles. The Art of Fugue by Johann Sebastian Bach, for example, can be played on a keyboard instrument (harpsichord or organ) or by a string quartet or a string orchestra. The instrumentation of trio sonatas was also often flexibly specified; some of Handel’s sonatas are scored for “German flute, Hoboy oboe or Violin” Bass lines could be played by violone, cello, theorbo, or bassoon, and sometimes three or four instruments would join in the bass line in unison. Sometimes composers mixed movements for chamber ensembles with orchestral movements. Telemann’s ‘Tafelmusik’ (1733), for example, has five sets of movements for various combinations of instruments, ending with a full orchestral section. Baroque chamber music was often contrapuntal; that is, each instrument played the same melodic materials at different times, creating a complex, interwoven fabric of sound. Because each instrument was playing essentially the same melodies, all the instruments were equal. In the trio sonata, there is often no ascendent or solo instrument, but all three instruments share equal importance. The harmonic role played by the keyboard or other chording instrument was subsidiary, and usually the keyboard part was not even written out; rather, the chordal structure of the piece was specified by numeric codes over the bass line, called figured bass. In the second half of the 18th century, tastes began to change: many composers preferred a new, lighter Galant style, with “thinner texture, … and clearly defined melody and bass” to the complexities of counterpoint. Now a new custom arose that gave birth to a new form of chamber music: the serenade. Patrons invited street musicians to play evening concerts below the balconies of their homes, their friends and their lovers. Patrons and musicians commissioned composers to write suitable suites of dances and tunes, for groups of two to five or six players. These works were called serenades, nocturnes, divertimenti, or cassations (from gasse=street). The young Joseph Haydn was commissioned to write several of these.

Chanson

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Chanson de geste#

The earliest chansons were the epic poems performed to simple monophonic melodies by a professional class of jongleurs or ménestrels. These usually recounted the famous deeds (geste) of past heroes, legendary and semi-historical. The Song of Roland is the most famous of these, but in general the chansons de geste are studied as literature since very little of their music survives.

Chanson courtoise#

The chanson courtoise or grand chant was an early form of monophonic chanson, the chief lyric poetic genre of the trouvères. It was an adaptation to Old French of the Occitan canso. It was practised in the 12th and 13th centuries. Thematically, as its name implies, it was a song of courtly love, written usually by a man to his noble lover. Some later chansons were polyphonic and some had refrains and were called chansons avec des refrains.

Chant

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Chant as a spiritual practice#

Chanting (e.g., mantra, sacred text, the name of God/Spirit, etc.) is a commonly used spiritual practice. Like prayer, chanting may be a component of either personal or group practice. Diverse spiritual traditions consider chant a route to spiritual development. Some examples include chant in African, Hawaiian (mele), Native American, Assyrian and Australian Aboriginal cultures, Gregorian chant, Vedic chant, Quran reading, Islamic Dhikr, Baháʼí chants, various Buddhist chants, various mantras, Jewish cantillation, Epicurean repetition of the Kyriai Doxai, and the chanting of psalms and prayers especially in Roman Catholic (see Gregorian chant or Taizé Community), Eastern Orthodox (see Byzantine chant or Znamenny chant, for examples), Lutheran, and Anglican churches (see Anglican Chant). Historical or mythological examples include chant in Germanic paganism. Chant practices vary. In the Theravada tradition, chanting is usually done in Pali, and mainly from Pāli Canon. Tibetan Buddhist chant involves throat singing, where multiple pitches are produced by each performer. The concept of chanting mantras is of particular significance in many Hindu traditions and other closely related Indian religions. India’s bhakti devotional tradition centers on kirtan, which has a following in many countries and traditions such as Ananda Marga. The Hare Krishna movement is based especially on the chanting of Sanskrit Names of God in the Vaishnava tradition and is sung from the Dan tien (or lower abdomen)—the locus of power in Eastern traditions.

Chanté mas

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The French#

The French were known to have celebrated this ‘freedom of the flesh’ prior to the Lenten season since the 4th Century. The Africans however, being enslaved in the Caribbean, were known to have carnival since emancipation in 1838. It is no wonder people have argued whether the festival is of historical or religious origin. Truth is though, this festival, as celebrated in Dominica, is a combination of both history and religion. The Europeans, most of whom were Roman Catholics, had celebrated carnival as the day before they would stay away from meat, as well as all fleshly desires.

Chầu văn

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External links#

*Additional information

Choral concerto

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Background#

Eastern Christian liturgical music has ancient Byzantine roots, with a particular focus on chants. Traditions such as Russian Znamenny chant, Ukrainian Kievan chant, and Carpatho-Rusyn Prostopinije are unique within Christendom, and are a distinguishing feature of Russian, Ukrainian, and Carpatho-Rusyn liturgical music. The sacred chants and the polyphony (multi-part singing) found in much folk and secular music were difficult to reconcile. The Eastern Churches eventually relaxed their restrictions on the performance of polyphonic chant, and multi-part church music began to develop in the seventeenth century. However, the Greek Orthodox Church ban on the use of musical instruments in church remained in effect. This prohibition was a result of a desire to remain faithful to the ancient Byzantine tradition of a cappella singing. In the long eighteenth century, Orthodox church music in the Russian Empire underwent a period of Westernisation; the near-ubiquity of Italian music contributed to this, as did the transmission of polyphonic singing from Catholic Poland and Lithuania to Orthodox Christians and Byzantine Catholics in Ukraine and Russia. The popularity of this music, as well as the widespread acceptance of polyphonic church music, led to an almost complete cessation in the use of traditional chant. Rising nationalism contributed to a deeper interest in folk music, from both ideological and aesthetic viewpoints. The eighteenth century saw the adoption of folk tunes into so-called “high genres”, such as symphonies, cantatas, oratorios and opera seria. However, the desire to create a high “para-liturgical” genre, comparable with Western European masses, requiems and passions, remained unfulfilled.

Chorale

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History#

In German, the word may as well refer to Protestant congregational singing as to other forms of vocal (church) music, including Gregorian chant. The English word which derived from this German term, that is chorale, however almost exclusively refers to the musical forms that originated in the German Reformation.

17th century#

The bulk of Lutheran hymn texts and chorale melodies was created before the end of the 17th century. Johann Pachelbel’s Erster Theil etlicher Choräle, a set of organ chorales, was published in the last decade of the 17th century. Johann Sebastian Bach’s earliest extant compositions, works for organ which he possibly wrote before his fifteenth birthday, include the chorales BWV 700, 724, 1091, 1094, 1097, 1112, 1113 and 1119.

Chorale cantata

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Description#

The chorale cantata developed out of the chorale concerto, an earlier form much used by Samuel Scheidt in the early 17th century, which incorporated elements of the Venetian School, such as the stile concertato, into the liturgical music of the Protestant Reformation. Later the chorale cantata developed into three general forms: * a form in which each verse (strophe) of the chorale was developed as an independent movement; * a form in which the chorale appeared in some of the movements, perhaps only two, while the other parts of the cantata used other texts; and * the version pioneered by J. S. Bach, in which the first and last movements use the first and last strophes of the chorale, but the inner movements—perhaps aria and recitative—use paraphrases of the chorale text. Typically the beginning and ending movements use all the instrumental and vocal forces, while the interior movements are for smaller groups. Most compositions in this genre were never published. It was common at the time for composers to write for local performances; often the composer and the music director at a church were the same person, and the music was written, copied and performed in short order, remaining in manuscript. Some 95% of all compositions of this type have been lost.

Chorale cantata cycle

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Development of the second cantata cycle and the chorale cantata cycle#

Possibly the idea for writing a series of chorale cantatas was inspired by the bicentennial anniversary of the first publications of Lutheran hymnals (1524). The first of these early hymnals is the Achtliederbuch, containing eight hymns and five melodies. Four chorale cantatas use text and/or melody of a hymn in that early publication (BWV 2, 9, 38 and 117). Another 1524 hymnal is the Erfurt Enchiridion: BWV 62, 91, 96, 114, 121 and 178 are based on hymns from that publication. BWV 14 and 125 were based on hymns from Eyn geystlich Gesangk Buchleyn, also published in 1524. Apart from some cantatas composed after Palm Sunday 1725, the chorale cantata cycle and the second cantata cycle overlap, and the two designations are often used interchangeably in scholarly literature. Otherwise the cycle is described as breaking off after Palm Sunday or Easter 1725. There are some cantatas that belong to one of both cycles, but not to the other, for instance the chorale cantata for Trinity 1727 replaces the Trinity cantata of the second cycle composed in 1725. Also, some cantatas traditionally seen as belonging to the chorale cantata cycle are not chorale cantatas in a strict sense, for instance the cantata for the Sunday between New Year and Epiphany added to the chorale cantata cycle in 1727. Neither the second cantata cycle, nor the chorale cantata cycle are complete annual cycles as extant. Even a merging of both cycles into one, with some occasions having two cantatas, which hardly can be seen as an intention of the composer, would still be missing a few cantatas (e.g. for Easter 3 and Trinity XXVI).

Chorale concerto

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Description#

This use of the word concerto differs considerably from the more modern, and considerably more common usage: in the early Baroque the word meant vocal music accompanied by instruments, specifically in stile concertato (). The stile concertato was brought north across the Alps by composers such as Hans Leo Hassler and Heinrich Schütz, who studied in Venice with the originators of the style, the Venetian School composers including Giovanni Gabrieli. Hassler, Schütz and others then applied their newly learned techniques to the German chorale to create a form roughly equivalent in expression and purpose to the motet which in the preceding Renaissance era was used in Roman Catholic context. The Protestant Reformation made necessary the development of new genres of music, most of which were related in form and function to equivalent genres in Roman Catholic parts of Europe, but which avoided the use of Gregorian Chant, using the chorale instead (many chorale tunes of which were derived directly from chant, but fitted with words in German). A chorale concerto is a sacred concerto based on a Lutheran chorale. There were two basic types of chorale concerto: # A simple composition for voice and basso continuo, sometimes with an obbligato solo instrument; # A more elaborate polychoral setting, directly related to the music of the Venetian School, and often modeled after the work of Giovanni Gabrieli. The chorale cantata, culminating in the works of J.S. Bach, evolved out of the chorale concerto, and became a popular liturgical form in Germany for more than a hundred years.

Chorale fantasia

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History#

Chorale fantasias first appeared in the 17th century in the works of North German composers such as Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (who arguably had the greatest influence on the genre), Heinrich Scheidemann and Franz Tunder (who, however, rarely used the term). Their works would treat each phrase of a chorale differently, thus becoming large, sectional compositions with elaborate development of the chorale melody. By mid-18th century this type of organ composition was practically non-existent. Johann Sebastian Bach used the term first to designate a whole variety of different organ chorale types (during his period in Weimar), and then limited its use to large compositions with the chorale melody presented in the bass. Bach also wrote movements which have been described as chorale fantasias scored for various combinations of singers and instruments, for example the opening choruses of his chorale cantatas and the opening and closing movements of Part I of the St Matthew Passion. In the vocal pieces the chorale cantus firmus is often given to the soprano voice. In the 19th century the chorale fantasia was revived by Max Reger, who applied the term to monumental pieces based on chorale melodies.

Chorale motet

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References and further reading#

Articles “Chorale motet,” “Chorale settings,” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980.
Gustave Reese, Music in the Renaissance. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1954.
Manfred Bukofzer, Music in the Baroque Era. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1947.

Chorale prelude

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Function#

The precise liturgical function of a chorale prelude in the Baroque period is uncertain and is a subject of debate. One possibility is that they were used to introduce the hymn about to be sung by the congregation, usually in a Protestant, and originally in a Lutheran, church. This assumption may be valid for the shorter chorale preludes (Bach’s setting of ‘Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier, BWV 731, for example), but many chorale preludes are very long. It could be the case that these were played during special services in churches or in cathedrals.

Chorale setting

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Christmas cantata

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Theme#

Different from Christmas oratorios, which present the Christmas story, Christmas cantatas deal with aspects of it. Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, written for performance in Leipzig in 1734/1735 touches many of these themes. It consists of six parts, each part is a complete work and composed for the church service of a specific feast day. Bach structured the report from the Gospels which connects the parts to a whole, as told by the Evangelist, in six topics. In Parts I to IV he followed the Gospel of Luke (), in Parts V and VI the Gospel of Matthew (). In some instances he deviated from the prescribed readings, rather continuing the tradition of older works by Heinrich Schütz and others. * Part I, Jauchzet, frohlocket!, for Christmas Day (25 December): Nativity of Jesus * Part II, Und es waren Hirten in derselben Gegend, for the Second Day of Christmas (26 December): Annunciation to the shepherds, Glory to God, peace on earth * Part III for the Third Day of Christmas (27 December): Adoration of the shepherds * Part IV, Fallt mit Danken, fallt mit Loben, for New Year’s Day (1 January): Naming of Jesus * Part V for the first Sunday after New Year’s Day: Biblical Magi * Part VI for Epiphany (6 January): Adoration of the Magi These themes appear also in cantatas of later composers.

Christmas carol

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History#

The first known Christmas hymns may be traced to 4th-century Rome. Latin hymns such as Veni redemptor gentium, written by Ambrose, Archbishop of Milan, were austere statements of the theological doctrine of the Incarnation in opposition to Arianism. Corde natus ex Parentis (Of the Father’s heart begotten) by the Spanish poet Prudentius (d. 413) is still sung in some churches today. In the 9th and 10th centuries, the Christmas sequence (or prose) emerged in monasteries of Northern Europe, developing under the influence of Bernard of Clairvaux into a liturgical sequence composed of rhymed stanzas. In the 12th century, the Parisian monk Adam of Saint Victor began incorporating melodic elements derived from popular songs, creating musical forms more closely resembling the traditional Christmas carol. By the 13th century, a strong tradition of popular Christmas songs written in regional vernacular languages had developed in France, Germany, and particularly Italy, under the influence of Francis of Assisi. The earliest English Christmas carols appear in a 1426 manuscript by the Shropshire chaplain John Awdlay, who recorded twenty-five “caroles of Cristemas”, likely sung by groups of wassailers traveling from house to house. The songs now identified as Christmas carols were originally communal festival songs performed during seasonal celebrations such as harvesttide. Only later were they adopted for church use and associated specifically with the Christmas season. Many carols that later gained widespread popularity were printed in Piae Cantiones, a collection of late-medieval Latin songs first published in 1582. Early Latin forms of carols such as “Christ was born on Christmas Day”, “Good Christian Men, Rejoice”, and “Good King Wenceslas” appear in this collection. "" (“O Come, All Ye Faithful”) appears in its present form in the mid-18th century, although its lyrics may date to the 13th century; the origin of its melody remains disputed. Christmas carols increased in popularity following the Protestant Reformation, particularly in regions where Protestant churches became dominant. Reformers such as Martin Luther actively promoted congregational singing and composed carols for worship, reflecting the Lutheran tradition’s strong embrace of sacred music. During the period of the Puritan ban on Christmas in England, semi-clandestine religious services commemorating Christ’s birth continued to be held, and carols were sung privately despite official restrictions. The publication of Christmas music books in the 19th century helped to widen the popular appeal of carols. “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen”, “The First Noel”, “I Saw Three Ships” and “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” appear in English antiquarian William Sandys’ 1833 collection Christmas Carols, Ancient and Modern. Composers such as Arthur Sullivan helped to repopularise the carol, and it is this period that gave rise to such favourites as “Good King Wenceslas” and “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear”, a New England carol written by Edmund H. Sears and Richard S. Willis. The publication in 1871 of Christmas Carols, New and Old by Henry Ramsden Bramley and Sir John Stainer was a significant contribution to a revival of carols in Victorian Britain. In 1916, Charles Lewis Hutchins published Carols Old and Carols New, a scholarly collection which suffered from a short print run and is consequently rarely available today. The Oxford Book of Carols, first published in 1928 by Oxford University Press (OUP), was a notably successful collection; edited by the British composers Martin Shaw and Ralph Vaughan Williams, along with clergyman and author Percy Dearmer, it became a widely used source of carols in among choirs and church congregations in Britain and remains in print today. The singing of carols was further popularised in the 20th century when OUP published one of the most popular carol books in the English-speaking world, Carols for Choirs. First published in 1961 and edited by David Willcocks and Reginald Jacques, this bestselling series has since expanded to a five-volume set. Along with editor John Rutter, the compilers included many arrangements of carols derived from sources such as Piae Cantiones, as well as pieces by modern composers such as William Walton, Benjamin Britten, Richard Rodney Bennett, William Mathias and John Rutter. Today carols are regularly sung at Christian religious services. Some compositions have words that are clearly not of a religious theme, but are often still referred to as “carols”. For example, the 16th-century song “A Bone, God Wot!” appears to be a wassailing song (which is sung during drinking or while requesting ale), but is described in the British Library’s Cottonian Collection as a Christmas carol. As recently as 1865, Christmas-related lyrics were adopted for the traditional English folk song “Greensleeves”, becoming the internationally popular Christmas carol “What Child is This?”. Little research has been conducted on carol singing, but one of the few sociological studies of caroling in the early 21st century in Finland determined that the sources of songs are often misunderstood, and that it is simplistic to suggest caroling is mostly related to Christian beliefs, for it also reinforces preservation of diverse national customs and local family traditions. A modern form of the practice of caroling can be seen in “Dial-A-Carol”, an annual tradition held by students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, wherein potential audiences call the singers to request a performance over phone call.

Church cantata

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External links#

Musique vocale sacrée section at Georg Philip Telemann (1681–1767) Catalogue TWV ()
“Übersicht über die Bestimmung der Kantaten”, Appendix 2, pp. 482–483 in Alfred Dürr, Yoshitake Kobayashi (eds.), Kirsten Beißwenger. Bach Werke Verzeichnis: Kleine Ausgabe, nach der von Wolfgang Schmieder vorgelegten 2. Ausgabe. Preface in English and German. Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1998. –
The Sources of Bach’s works: Liturgical/secular designation of vocal works at

Church music

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Early Christian music#

The only record of communal song in the Gospels is the last meeting of the disciples before the Crucifixion: Outside the Gospels, there is a reference to St. Paul encouraging the Ephesians and Colossians to use psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Later, there is a reference in Pliny the Younger who writes to the emperor Trajan (53–117) asking for advice about how to persecute the Christians in Bithynia, and describing their practice of gathering before sunrise and repeating antiphonally “a hymn to Christ, as to God”. Antiphonal psalmody is the singing or musical playing of psalms by alternating groups of performers. The peculiar mirror structure of the Hebrew psalms makes it likely that the antiphonal method originated in the services of the ancient Israelites. According to the historian Socrates of Constantinople, its introduction into Christian worship was due to Ignatius of Antioch (died 107), who in a vision had seen the angels singing in alternate choirs. During the first two or three centuries, Christian communities incorporated into their observances features of Greek music and the music of other cultures bordering on the eastern Mediterranean Sea. As the early Church spread from Jerusalem to Asia Minor, North Africa, and Europe, it absorbed other musical influences. For example, the monasteries and churches of Syria were important in the development of psalm singing and the use of strophic devotional song, or hymns. In the late 4th or early 5th century, St. Jerome wrote that a Christian maiden ought not even to know what a lyre or flute is like, or to what use it is put. Evidence of musical roles during the 6th through 7th centuries is particularly sparse because of the cycle of invasions of Germanic tribes in the West and doctrinal and political conflict in the East as well as the consequent instability of Christian institutions in the former Roman empire. The introduction of church organ music is traditionally believed to date from the time of the papacy of Pope Vitalian in the 7th century.

Classical music in hip-hop

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Style#

Typical classical music elements in hip hop include orchestral sounds, either sample-based or recorded live. In addition, some hip hop songs may feature orchestral elements by way of sampling progressive rock tracks, such as Kanye West sampling “21st Century Schizoid Man” by King Crimson on his 2010 song “Power”.

History#

It is believed that Afrika Bambaataa and the Soulsonic Force were the first to sample classical music into their tracks in the 1980s, in particular to the 1982 track “Planet Rock” with a sample of Stravinsky’s The Firebird. Another early example of classical music in hip hop is from the 1996 The Simpsons episode “Homerpalooza”. In the episode, rap group Cypress Hill steal the London Symphony Orchestra, which was intended for Peter Frampton. With the orchestra in tow, they perform their 1993 hit “Insane in the Brain” with orchestral backing. In 2023, Cypress Hill is vying to make what started out as a joke a reality by teaming up with the LSO to record an authentic orchestral version of “Insane in the Membrane”. Warren G would embrace classical hip hop in a 1997 duet with Sissel on the track “Prince Igor”. Starting in the 2000s, classical music in hip hop became more prominent as Nas, Kendrick Lamar, Kanye West and Jay-Z (with Alicia Keys on “Empire State of Mind”) exploring the genre. In addition to West’s progressive rock sampling track “Power”, he also worked with progressive rock artist Manfred Mann on his 2014 album Lone Arranger. More recently, classical orchestras have also begun incorporating hip hop into their programs. The National Symphony Orchestra, for example, collaborated with Common and Pharrell Williams in the late 2010s, and the Nashville Symphony has experimented with hip hop as a means of attracting a younger audience.

Colossal Baroque

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Background#

Some of the roots of the Colossal Baroque style were in the opulent Florentine Intermedii of the 16th century, commissioned and attended by the powerful Medici family. La Pellegrina, performed for the wedding of Ferdinand de’ Medici to the French princess, Christine of Lorraine, in 1589, featured music for up to seven choirs, by Cristofano Malvezzi in Intermedio VI. Yet another city that cultivated large sonorities was Rome. Composers there were not as adventurous with harmony and rhythm as the Venetians, but they had spacious churches with elaborate interiors which demanded music to match. Composers such as Orazio Benevoli, who began his career in Rome, helped spread the style elsewhere, especially across the Brenner Pass into the Austrian lands. In the Austrian area, multi-part pieces were written for special occasions but not always published. There is a long list of missing and incomplete works by Giovanni Valentini, (some in 17 choirs), Priuli, Bernadi, (the mass for consecration of Salzburg Cathedral used 16 choirs), and others. Some of Valentini’s trumpet parts survive; they have few changes of note, and many rests. It is possible that the brass may have made dovetailed mass volume answering phrases in a multi-choir texture similar to the effects exploited by Giovanni Gabrieli and the other composers of the Venetian School. Pieces were typically in 12 or more parts but there is evidence that the polychoral aspects did not always involve wide spacing. For example, in Ugolini’s Exultate Omnes there are trio passages for all the sopranos, tenors and altos from each choir together. This would have been impractical if the singers were widely separated, due to the physical limitation imposed by the speed of sound. On the other hand, some pieces were very likely to have been performed with singers and players distributed widely, in venues such as Salzburg Cathedral; for maximum effect and practicality, much of this music was antiphonal or exploited echo effects. Orazio Benevoli became confused with Heinrich Biber and Stefano Bernardi in the celebrated mixup over the authorship of the Missa Salisburgensis, now assigned to Biber and provisionally dated to 1682. Works we may consider to be examples of the Colossal Baroque style were frequently ceremonial works, composed for special occasions (coronations, weddings, religious festivals, municipal functions, victory celebrations, et cetera). These works were frequently performed with unusually large musical forces. From time to time the scores of such works may have been presented to the aristocrat hosting or the subject of the event. As a result, many scores of large-scale 16th- and 17th-century works have been lost. Heinrich Schütz composed a musical setting of Psalm 136, Danket dem Herren, denn er ist freundlich which included three vocal choirs, 12 cornetti and 18 trumpets. This score is also now lost.

Comédie en vaudevilles

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Evolution#

The annual fairs of Paris at St. Germain and St. Laurent had developed theatrical variety entertainments, with mixed plays, acrobatic displays, and pantomimes, typically featuring vaudevilles (see Théâtre de la foire). Gradually these features began to invade established theatres. The Querelle des Bouffons (War of the Clowns), a dispute amongst theatrical factions in Paris in the 1750s, in part reflects the rivalry of this form, as it evolved into opéra comique, with the Italian opera buffa. Comédie en vaudevilles also seems to have influenced the English ballad opera and the German Singspiel.

Comédie mêlée d'ariettes

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Sources#

Bartlet, M. Elizabeth C. (1992). “Comédie mêlée d’ariettes” in Sadie 1992, vol. 1, p. 910.
Cook, Elizabeth (1992a). “Anseaume, Louis” in Sadie 1992, vol. 1, p. 144.
Cook, Elizabeth (1992b). “Peintre amoureux de son modèle, Le” in Sadie 1992, vol. 3, p. 932.
Libby, Dennis; Willaert, Saskia; Jackman, James L. work-list (1992). “Ciampi, Vincenzo (Legrenzio)” in Sadie 1992, vol. 1, pp. 858–859.
Loewenberg, Alfred (1978). Annals of Opera 1597–1940 (third edition, revised). Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman and Littlefield. .
Sadie, Stanley, editor (1992). The New Grove Dictionary of Opera (4 volumes). London: Macmillan. .
Sonneck, Oscar G. (1911). “Ciampi’s Bertoldo, Bertoldino e Cacasenno and Favart’s Ninette à la cour: A Contribution to the History of Pasticcio (Sämmelbände der I. M. G., 1911)”, pp. 111–179, in Miscellaneous Studies in the History of Music, edited by O. G. Sonneck. New York: Macmillan, 1921.
Warrack, John; West, Ewan (1992). The Oxford Dictionary of Opera. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. .
Wild, Nicole; Charlton, David (2005). Théâtre de l’Opéra-Comique Paris: répertoire 1762-1972. Sprimont, Belgium: Editions Mardaga. .

Comic opera

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Italian opera buffa#

In late 17th-century Italy, light-hearted musical plays began to be offered as an alternative to weightier opera seria (17th-century Italian opera based on classical mythology). Il Trespolo tutore (1679) by Alessandro Stradella was an early precursor of opera buffa. The opera has a farcical plot, and the characters of the ridiculous guardian Trespolo and the maid Despina are prototypes of characters widely used later in the opera buffa genre. The form began to flourish in Naples with Alessandro Scarlatti’s Il trionfo dell’onore (1718). At first written in Neapolitan dialect, these works became “Italianized” with the operas of Scarlatti, Pergolesi (La serva padrona, 1733), Galuppi (Il filosofo di campagna, 1754), Piccinni (La Cecchina, 1760), Paisiello (Nina, 1789), Cimarosa (Il matrimonio segreto, 1792), and then the great comic operas of Mozart and, later, Rossini and Donizetti. At first, comic operas were generally presented as intermezzi between acts of more serious works. Neapolitan and then Italian comic opera grew into an independent form and became the most popular form of staged entertainment in Italy from about 1750 to 1800. In 1749, thirteen years after Pergolesi’s death, his La serva padrona swept Italy and France, evoking the praise of such French Enlightenment figures as Rousseau. In 1760, Niccolò Piccinni wrote the music to La Cecchina to a text by the great Venetian playwright, Carlo Goldoni. That text was based on Samuel Richardson’s popular English novel, Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740). Many years later, Verdi called La Cecchina the “first true Italian comic opera” – that is to say, it had everything: it was in standard Italian and not in dialect; it was no longer simply an intermezzo, but rather an independent piece; it had a real story that people liked; it had dramatic variety; and, musically, it had strong melodies and even strong supporting orchestral parts, including a strong “stand-alone” overture (i.e., you could even enjoy the overture as an independent orchestral piece). Verdi was also enthusiastic because the music was by a southern Italian and the text by a northerner, which appealed to Verdi’s pan-Italian vision. The genre was developed further in the first half of the 19th century by Gioachino Rossini in his works such as The Barber of Seville (1816) and La Cenerentola (1817) and by Gaetano Donizetti in L’elisir d’amore (1832) and Don Pasquale (1843), but declined in the mid-19th century, despite Giuseppe Verdi’s Falstaff staged in 1893.

Conductus

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Origins of the name#

The conductus was most likely sung while the lectionary was carried from its place of safekeeping to the place from which it was to be read. But the origins of the term “conductus” remain obscure. The noun is derived from the verb conducere, which can mean to lead, guide, or escort. Thus according to one hypothesis, the genre was called “conductus” because it served to accompany a procession. For example, according to the record of manuscript in the Institución Colombina, Seville, the conductus Salve festa dies was used for the same role of procession as the ancient hymn. The hymn with the same name was sung during the procession to the altar. But conducere can also mean “to bring together” or “join together.” Thus according to another hypothesis, the genre was called “conductus” because it brings sequence or hymn together. The conductus is based on a condensed version of a sequence or hymn. For instance, the conductus Orienti oriens is derived from the sequence Noster cetus iste letus.

Contenance angloise

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Origins of the term#

The phrase Contenance Angloise was coined by Martin le Franc in 1441–42, in a poem dedicated to Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy (1396–1467) to describe the era’s distinctive musical style. Le Franc mentioned English composer John Dunstaple (c. 1390–1453) as the key figure and a major influence on the Burgundian composers Guillaume Dufay and Gilles Binchois.

Characteristics#

It is not clear exactly what Martin le Franc saw as the elements of the Contenance Angloise. Musicologists have noted the style as a distinctive form of melodic polyphony using full, rich harmonies based on the third and sixth, which may have made lyrics easier to articulate.

Coon song

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Rise and fall from popularity#

Although the word “coon” is now regarded as a racial slur, according to Stuart Flexner, “coon” was short for “raccoon”, and it meant a frontier rustic (someone who may wear a coonskin cap) by 1832. The Whigs used a raccoon as its emblem, but the party also developed a more tolerant attitude towards black people than the other political factions. One suggestion is that this may have transformed the term “coon” from mere political slang into a racial slur. At that time, “coon” was typically used to refer someone white, and a coon song referred to a Whig song. Although the word “coon” meaning “black person” was in use by 1837, it was only in 1848 that the first clear case of using “coon” to refer to a black person in a derogatory sense appeared. It is possible that the negative racial connotation of the word may have evolved from “Zip Coon” (a variant of “Turkey in the Straw”) published around 1834 and notably performed by George Washington Dixon in blackface. as well as the common use of the word “coon” in blackface minstrel shows. An alternative suggestion of the word’s origin to mean a black person is that it was derived from barracoon, an enclosure for slaves, which became increasingly used in the years before the American Civil War as temporary enclosure for slaves escaping or traveling. 1883), “Coon Salvation Army” (by Sam Lucas, 1884), “Coon Schottische” (by William Dressler, 1884). The most popular coon songs of this early period, however, were written by whites, and only one, “New Coon in Town”, has enough syncopation “to foreshadow the true, shouting, ragtime school”. Black Americans had also entered the music business by this time, and their syncopated music then came to be identified with real coon songs. By the mid-1880s, coon songs were a national craze; over 600 such songs were published in the 1890s. The most successful songs sold millions of copies. To take advantage of the fad, composers “add ed words typical of coon songs to previously published songs and rags”. The first hit recorded song by a black man was “The Whistling Coon” by George W. Johnson recorded in 1890. After the turn of the century, coon songs began to receive criticism for their racist content. In 1905, Bob Cole, an African-American composer who had gained fame largely by writing coon songs, made somewhat unprecedented remarks about the genre. When asked in an interview about the name of his earlier comedy A Trip to Coontown, he replied: “That day has passed with the softly flowing tide of revelations.” In 1908, the Broadway company Cinemaphone, created by J. A. Whitman, released a short film, Coon Song, which had an audible track featuring singers such as Blanche Ring, Anna Held, Eva Tanguay and Stella Mayhew. Following further criticism, the use of “coon” in song titles greatly decreased after 1910. On August 13, 1920, Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League created the red, black and green flag as a response to the song “Every Race Has a Flag but the Coon” by Will A. Heelan and J. Fred Helf. That song along with “Coon, Coon, Coon” and “All Coons Look Alike to Me” were identified by H. L. Mencken as being the three songs which firmly established the derogatory term “coon” in the American vocabulary. It is possible that the popularity of coon songs may be explained in part by their historical timing: coon songs arose precisely as the popular music business exploded in Tin Pan Alley. However, James Dormon, a former professor of history and American studies at the University of Southwestern Louisiana, has also suggested that coon songs can be seen as “a necessary sociopsychological mechanism for justifying segregation and subordination.” The songs portrayed black people as posing a threat to the American social order and implied that they had to be controlled.

Coptic music

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Contemporary personalities contributing to Coptic music#

Mikhail Girgis El Batanouny
Adel Kamel
Ragheb Moftah
Ernest Newlandsmith
Nabila Erian
Emmanuel Saad
Abanob Ghobrial

External links#

“The Transmission of Coptic Orthodox Liturgical Music: Historical and Contemporary Forms of Theorization, Translation, and Identity Construction” A PhD dissertation exploring the history and current practice and theory of Coptic music.
“Coptic youth blog” Contains digital music and videos of Coptic liturgies, hymns, songs, and Coptic hymn lessons.
“Coptic Music,” Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia
Complete collection of Cantor Mikhail Girgis El Batanouny’s recordings of Coptic chant from coptichymns.net
DeaconTube - A video learning website for Coptic Orthodox hymns
coptichymns.net coptichymns.net - Sharing the Joy of Coptic Hymns Around the World
copticheritage.org The Official Website of the Heritage of the Coptic Orthodox Church.
Coptic Music, Hymns, and Rites Articles from coptichymns.net
Coptic Music Articles
Coptic Multimedia Archive at Saint TeklaHimanot Church of Egypt Articles
Coptic Orthodox Liturgical Chant & Hymnody and the Ragheb Moftah Collection at the Library of Congress

Coronation anthem

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Handel’s coronation anthems#

Although part of the traditional content of British coronations, the texts for all four anthems were picked by Handel—a personal selection from the most accessible account of an earlier coronation, that of James II of England in 1685. One of George I of Great Britain’s last acts before his death in 1727 was to sign an “Act of naturalisation of George Frideric Händel and others”. Handel’s first commission as a newly naturalised British subject was to write the music for the coronation of George II of Great Britain and Queen Caroline which took place on 11 October the same year. Within the coronation ceremonies Let thy hand be strengthened was played first, then Zadok, then The King shall rejoice, and finally My heart is inditing at the coronation of the Queen. (In modern coronations the order is Zadok, Let thy hand be strengthened, The King shall rejoice and My heart is inditing, with the order of Let thy hand be strengthened and The King shall rejoice sometimes reversed.) Right from their composition the four anthems have been popular and regularly played in concerts and festivals even during Handel’s own lifetime. He re-used substantial extracts from them in many of his oratorios without many changes (other than to the text), notably Esther and Deborah. Two of the anthems were played at the 1742 inauguration of the Holywell Music Room in Oxford, a hall dedicated to chamber music. Their success perhaps contributed to the popular image of Handel as a composer whose music required a huge number of singers and musicians (the more the better)—in other words, the character criticised by Berlioz as “a barrel of pork and beer”. In practice, Handel often adapted his music to the occasion and to the skill of those for whom he was writing, and no occasion could be grander than a coronation. The ceremonial style of the anthems differs from his music for the theatre just as his Music for the Royal Fireworks (the latter designed for open-air performance) differs from his instrumental concertos. The anthems show a completely extrovert tone, managing massed forces and important contrasts rather than delicate colours—with the wide spatial reverberation in Westminster Abbey, he did not waste time and effort trying to show small points of detail. The means he had at his disposal were the most important of the era—the choir of the Chapel Royal was augmented by 47 singers, with an orchestra which reached perhaps 160 people. The chorus was divided into 6 or 7 groups (with the tenors kept together) and a large string section, made up of three groups of violins (rather than the two which were usual).

Corrido

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Form#

Corridos, like rancheras, have introductory instrumental music and adornos (ornamentations), accommodating the stanzas of the lyrics. Like rancheras, corridos can be played in virtually all regional Mexican styles. Also, like rancheras, corridos are usually played in march, waltz, or mazurka mode.

History#

The word corrido comes from the Spanish word correr (“to run”). A typical corrido’s formula is eight quatrains with four to six lines containing eight syllables. The earliest living specimens of corrido are adapted versions of Spanish romances or European tales, mainly about disgraced or idealized love or religious topics. These, which include (among others) “La Martina” (an adaptation of the romance “La Esposa Infiel”) and “La Delgadina”, show the same basic stylistic features of the later mainstream corridos (1/2 or 3/4 tempo and verso menor lyric composing, meaning verses of eight or less phonetic syllables, grouped in strophes of six or fewer verses). Beginning with the Mexican War of Independence (1810–1821) and culminating during the Mexican Revolution (1910–1921), the genre flourished and acquired its “epic” tones, along with the three-step narrative structure. The academic study of corridos written during the Revolution shows that they were used to communicate news throughout Mexico as a response to the propaganda being spread in the newspapers, which the corrupt government of Porfirio Díaz owned. Sheet music of popular corridos was sold or included in publications. Other corrido sheets were passed out free as a form of propaganda to eulogize leaders, armies, and political movements or, in some cases, to mock the opposition. The best-known Revolutionary corrido is “La Cucaracha”, an old song rephrased to celebrate the exploits of Pancho Villa’s army and poke fun at his nemesis Victoriano Huerta. File:Cantos populares maderistas Aquiles serdan.jpg Song about the battle of Ciudad Juarez titled Toma de Ciudad Juárez Image:Valentina-corrido.jpg Corrido sheet music from 1915, at the height of the Mexican Revolution File:Corrido de la Cucaracha (Antonio Venegas).jpg A contemporary corrido song sheet of “La cucaracha” issued during the Mexican Revolution. Note the original lyrics and the reference to cartoncitos, a scrip issued as pay. Before the widespread use of radio, popular corridos were passed around as an oral tradition, often to spread news of events (for example, “La cárcel de Cananea”) and famous heroes and humour to the population, many of whom were illiterate before the post-Revolution improvements to the educational system. Until the arrival and success of electronic mass media in the mid-20th century, the corrido served in Mexico as the leading informational and educational outlet, even with subversive purposes, due to an apparent linguistic and musical simplicity that lent itself to oral transmission. After the spread of radio and television, the genre evolved into a new stage and is still in maturation. However, some scholars have disputed this notion and consider the corrido to be a dead or moribund art form. With the consolidation of “Presidencialismo” (the political era following the Mexican Revolution) and the success of electronic mass media, corridos lost their primacy as a form of mass communication, becoming part of a folklorist cult in one branch and, in another, the voice of the new subversives: oppressed workers, drug growers or traffickers, leftist activists and emigrated farm workers (mainly to the United States). Scholars designate this as the “decaying” stage of the genre, which tends to erase the stylistic or structural characteristics of “revolutionary” or traditional corrido without a clear and unified understanding of its evolution. This is mainly signified by the “narcocorrido”, many of which are egocentric ballads paid for by drug smugglers to anonymous and almost illiterate composers, but with others coming from the most popular norteño and banda artists and written by some of the most successful and influential ranchera composers. In more rural areas, where Spanish and Mexican cultures have been preserved because of isolation, romantic works have also taken on other forms related to the corrido. In New Mexico, for example, a story-song emerged during the colonial period known as an Indita, which loosely follows the format of a corrido, but is chanted rather than sung, similar to a Native American chant, hence they are called Inditas. Some corridos are love stories. These are not exclusively male; there are also corridos about women, such as “La Venganza de Maria”, “Laurita Garza”, “El Corrido de Rosita Alvirez” and “La Adelita”, or couples, such as “La Fama de la Pareja” sung by Los Tigres del Norte. Some even employ fictional stories invented by their composers. In the Mestizo-Mexican cultural area, the three variants of corrido (romance, revolutionary and modern) are both alive and sung, along with popular sister narrative genres, such as the “valona” of Michoacán state, the “son arribeño” of the Sierra Gorda (Guanajuato, Hidalgo and Querétaro states) and others. Its vitality and flexibility allow original corrido lyrics to be built on non-Mexican musical genres, such as blues and ska, or with non-Spanish lyrics, like the famous song “El Paso” by Marty Robbins, and corridos composed or translated by Mexican indigenous communities or by the “Chicano” people in the United States, in English or “Spanglish”. The corrido was, for example, a favourite device employed by the Teatro Campesino led by Luis Valdez in mobilizing predominantly Mexican and Mexican-American farmworkers in California during the 1960s. Corridos have seen a renaissance in the 21st century. Contemporary corridos feature contemporary themes such as drug trafficking (narcocorridos), immigration, migrant labour, and the chupacabra.

Creole music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Early development#

In 1803, the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory, including New Orleans, from France. In 1809 and 1810, more than 10,000 refugees from the West Indies arrived in New Orleans, most originally from French-speaking Haiti. Of these, about 3,000 were freed slaves. Creole folk songs originated on the plantations of the French and Spanish colonists of Louisiana. The music characteristics embody African-derived syncopated rhythms, the habanera accent of Spain, and the quadrille of France. Central to Creole musical activities was Place Congo (in English: Congo Square). The much quoted 1886 article by George Washington Cable offers this description: The booming of African drums and blast of huge wooden horns called to the gathering … The drums were very long, hollowed, often from a single piece of wood, open at one end and having a sheep or goat skin stretched across the other … The smaller drum was often made from a joint or two of very large bamboo … and this is said to be the origin of its name; for it was called the Bamboula. Cable then describes a variety of instruments used at Congo Square, including gourds, triangles, jaw harps, jawbones, and “the grand instrument at last”, the four-stringed banjo. The bamboula, or “bamboo-drum”, accompanied the bamboula dance and bamboula songs. Chase writes, “For Cable, the bamboula represented ‘a frightful triumph of body over the mind,’ and ‘Only the music deserved to survive, and does survive … ‘”

Csárdás

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

The origin of the csárdás can be traced back to the 18th century Hungarian music genre the verbunkos, where the ‘verbunk’ was used as a recruiting dance by the Austrian army.

Music#

The csárdás is characterized by a variation in tempo: it starts out slowly (lassú) and ends in a very fast tempo (friss, literally “fresh”). There are other tempo variations, called ritka csárdás, sűrű csárdás and szökős csárdás. The music is in or time. The dancers are both male and female, with the women dressed in traditional wide skirts, which form a distinctive shape when they whirl. Classical composers who have used csárdás themes in their works include Emmerich Kálmán, Franz Liszt, Johannes Brahms, Léo Delibes, Johann Strauss, Pablo de Sarasate, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Franz von Suppé, Vittorio Monti, and others. The csárdás “Klänge der Heimat” from Strauss’ operetta Die Fledermaus, sung by the character Rosalinde, is probably the most famous example of this dance in vocal music. One of the best-known examples of instrumental csárdás is the composition by Vittorio Monti for violin and piano. This virtuoso piece has seven tempo variations.

Cyclic mass

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

Prior to complete settings of the Mass Ordinary by a single composer, which had become the norm by around the middle of the 15th century, composers often set pairs of movements. Gloria-Credo pairs, as well as Sanctus-Agnus Dei pairs, are found in many manuscripts of the early 15th century, by composers such as Johannes Ciconia, Arnold de Lantins and Zacara da Teramo. While it is possible that some of these composers wrote an entire setting of the mass, no complete cyclic setting by a single composer has survived. (The Messe de Nostre Dame by Guillaume de Machaut (c. 1300–1377), which dates to before 1365 is generally not considered to be a true cyclic mass, but is the earliest surviving complete mass setting by a single composer, although the existence of at least four earlier such pieces is known.) Some mass cycles from the period 1420–1435, especially from northern Italy, show that composers were working in the direction of a unified mass, but were solving the problem in a different way: often a separate tenor would be used for each movement of a mass that was otherwise unified stylistically. The true cyclic mass most likely originated in England, and the first composers known to have organized a mass by using the same cantus firmus in each movement were John Dunstable and Leonel Power. However it was the Missa Caput, an anonymous English composition once attributed to Guillaume Dufay, “one of the most revered compositions of the 15th century”, which was to be the most influential on continental practice; this work appears in seven separate continental sources of the 15th century, more than any other mass prior to the 1480s. Among other features, it was the first widely influential work to use a freely-written bass line underneath the tenor cantus firmus. As a result of the spread of the Missa Caput, composers commonly added this lower voice to their polyphonic textures after about mid-century; this allowed a harmonic and cadential flexibility which was previously lacking. The earliest consistently used method for organizing the movements of the mass was use of a head motif, also known as a “motto”. In this case, a recognizable theme or thematic fragment began each of the important sections of the mass. Many “motto” masses were also unified by some other means, but such a procedure was not necessary. An early example of a “motto” mass is the Missa verbum incarnatum by Arnold de Lantins, probably from around 1430, in which each movement is linked by use of a head motif. Additionally, the movements contain subtle references to his own motet O pulcherrima mulierum. Many of Dufay’s masses use the head-motif technique, even when they employ another, such as cantus-firmus. The motto technique was common on the continent, but rare with English composers. During the late 15th century, cantus firmus technique was by far the most frequent method used to unify cyclic masses. The cantus firmus, which at first was drawn from Gregorian chant, but later from other sources such as secular chansons, was usually set in longer notes in the tenor voice (the next-to-lowest). The other voices could be used in many ways, ranging from freely composed polyphony to strict canon, but the texture was predominantly polyphonic but non-imitative. In some cases the cantus firmus appeared also in voices other than the tenor, with increasing freedom as the century reached its close. Secular chansons became the favored source for cantus firmi by the time of Ockeghem and his generation (the last third of the 15th century), and composers began writing their own; for example Ockeghem’s Missa au travail suis is based on his own chanson of that name. Ockeghem was a particularly experimental composer, writing probably the first example of a mass organized entirely by canon: the Missa prolationum. Instead of being based on a fixed cantus firmus, each movement is a mensuration canon, with the interval of imitation expanding from the unison to the octave during the course of the mass (Leeman Perkins called this “the most extraordinary contrapuntal achievement of the 15th century”, and compared it in scope and execution with the Goldberg Variations of J.S. Bach). Another of Ockeghem’s masses, the Missa cuiusvis toni, is so written that it can be performed in any of the four modes. By the beginning of the 16th century, the cantus firmus technique was no longer the preferred method for composition of masses, except in some areas distant from Rome and the Low Countries (Spanish composers, in particular, used the method into the 16th century). Some other methods of organizing cyclic masses include paraphrase and parody. In paraphrase technique, a source tune, which could be either sacred or secular, is elaborated, usually by ornamentation but occasionally by compression. Usually in paraphrase masses the tune appears in any voice. Josquin des Prez’ Missa Pange lingua (c. 1520) is a famous example; Palestrina also used the method extensively, second only to parody technique. The parody mass, also known as the imitation mass (for the use of the word “parody” implies no satire, but is based on a misreading of a 16th-century source), uses many voices from a polyphonic source to unify the different movements of a cyclic mass. Parody technique was the most commonly used of all the methods in the 16th century: Palestrina alone wrote 51 parody masses. Either sacred or secular source material could be used in constructing a parody mass, and some of the songs were secular indeed: a late example was Orlande de Lassus’ Missa entre vous filles (1581), based on an obscene popular song by Clemens non Papa, “Entre vous filles de quinze ans” (“You sweet 15-year-old girls”).

Da capo aria

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Form#

A da capo aria is in ternary form, meaning it is composed of three sections. The first section is a complete song with accompaniment, ending in the tonic key, and could in principle be sung by itself. The second section contrasts with the first in its musical key, texture, mood, and sometimes also tempo. The third section was usually not written out by the composer, who would instead simply note the instruction “da capo” (Italian for “from the head”) - meaning from the beginning, i.e., the first section is to be repeated. The text for a da capo aria was typically a poem or other verse sequence written in two strophes, the first for the A section (hence repeated later) and the second for B. Each strophe consisted of from three to six lines, and terminated in a line containing a masculine ending, that is a line ending in a stressed syllable.

Daina (Latvia)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Poetic metre and its limitations#

The trochaic metre is the most popular, with around 95% of dainas being in it. Characteristic of this metre is that an unstressed syllable follows a stressed syllable, with two syllables forming one foot. Two feet form a dipody and after every dipody, there is a caesura, which cannot be in the middle of a word. The dainas traditionally are written down so that every line contains two dipodies. If a caesura is followed by three syllables, the last syllable – i.e. the one at the end of the line – is long; if four syllables follow it is short. A syllable is considered short if it contains a short vowel or a short vowel and S; all other syllables are considered long. This results in a rather limited vocabulary as a dipody can consist of either one four-syllable word, two two-syllable words, one one-syllable and one three-syllable word or two one-syllable words and one two-syllable word. Exceptions are mostly found in Eastern Latvian dialects, which allow words to start one syllable before or after where the caesura normally would be, thus allowing five-syllable combinations. This inconsistency is usually found only in one or two lines, most often in the second or fourth. The notion of short and long syllables at the end of lines is retained. However, the syllable after a lost caesura is often unstressed as it is in everyday speech. A sound may be added or removed to increase vocabulary there or elsewhere. The addition of sounds is explained with structural changes in the language itself (loss of vowels in word endings). The sound added at the end of a word is usually I, in some rare cases also A, U or E (the last of these mostly in some regions of Courland). Occasionally contractions occur and I replaces a diminutive ending in I – i.e. the ending is retained but separated from the rest of the word by a caesura. This can perhaps be explained by diminutives being so popular in dainas that people didn’t find it appropriate to replace one with the same word without it, which would be a syllable shorter. Sometimes a diminutive is added to increase the number of syllables even when the meaning of the word is the opposite of what is usually expressed with the diminutive. Similarly, the need to match the metric might cause disagreement in tenses.

Danzón

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

The danzón developed from the habanera, a creolized Cuban dance form. By 1879, the year Las alturas de Simpson composed by Miguel Failde (leader of the Orquesta Faílde) was first performed in Matanzas, Creation of the new danzón form is generally attributed to Faílde. The classical composer Manuel Saumell has also been cited as a key figure in its delineation.

Precursors: figure dances#

The English contradanza was the predecessor of the “habanera”, also known as danza criolla. Out of this Creole genre, the Habanera, was born in 1879 another Cuban genre, called danzon, a sequence dance, in which all danced together a set of figures. The first use of the term danzón, which dates from the 1850s, is for just such a dance. Havana’s daily paper, El Triunfo, gave a description of this earlier danzón. It was a co-ordinated dance of figures performed by groups of Matanzas blacks. The dancers held the ends of colored ribbons, and carried flower-covered arches. The group twisted and entwined the ribbons to make pleasing patterns. This account can be corroborated by other references, for example, a traveler in Cuba noted in 1854 that black Cubans “do a kind of wreath dance, in which the whole company took part, amid innumerable artistic entanglements and disentanglements”. This style of danzón was performed at carnival comparsas by black groups: it is described that way before the late 1870s. Faílde’s first danzóns were created for just such sequence dances. Faílde himself said “In Matanzas at this time there was a kind of square dance for twenty couples who carried arches and flowers. It was really a dance of figures (sequence dance), and its moves were adapted to the tempo of the habanera, which we took over for the danzón.”

Degenerate music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Racial emphasis#

Jewish composers such as Felix Mendelssohn and Gustav Mahler were disparaged and condemned by the Nazis. In Leipzig, a bronze statue of Mendelssohn was removed. The regime commissioned music to replace his incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The Nazis also regulated jazz, including the banning of solos and drum breaks, scat, “Negroid excesses in tempo” and “Jewishly gloomy lyrics”.

Discrimination#

From the Nazi seizure of power onward, these composers found it increasingly difficult, and often impossible, to get work or have their music performed. Many went into exile (e.g., Arnold Schoenberg, Kurt Weill, Paul Hindemith, Berthold Goldschmidt); or retreated into “internal exile” (e.g., Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Boris Blacher); or ended up in the concentration camps (e.g., Viktor Ullmann, or Erwin Schulhoff). Like degenerate art, examples of degenerate music were displayed in public exhibits in Germany beginning in 1938. One of the first of these was organized in Düsseldorf by Hans Severus Ziegler, at the time superintendent of the Deutsches Nationaltheater Weimar, who explained in an opening speech that the decay of music was “due to the influence of Judaism and capitalism”. Ziegler’s exhibit was organized into seven sections, devoted to: # The influence of Judaism # Arnold Schoenberg # Kurt Weill and Ernst Krenek # Minor Bolsheviks (Franz Schreker, Alban Berg, Ernst Toch, etc.) # Leo Kestenberg, director of musical education before 1933 # Hindemith’s operas and oratorios # Igor Stravinsky From the mid-1990s the Decca Record Company released a series of recordings under the title “Entartete Musik: Music Suppressed by the Third Reich”, covering lesser-known works by several of the above-named composers.

Divertimento

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Genre#

As a separate genre, it appears to have no specific form, although most of the divertimenti of the second half of the 18th century go either back to a dance suite approach (derived from the ‘ballet’ type of theatrical divertimento), or take the form of other chamber music genres of their century (as a continuation of the merely instrumental theatrical divertimento). There are many other terms which describe music similar to the divertimento, including serenade, cassation, notturno, Nachtmusik; after about 1780, the divertimento was the term most commonly applied to this light, “after-dinner” and often outdoor music. Divertimenti have from one to nine movements, and there is at least one example with thirteen. The earliest publication to use the name “divertimento” is by Carlo Grossi in 1681 in Venice (Il divertimento de’ grandi: musiche da camera, ò per servizio di tavola) and the hint that the divertimento is to accompany “table service” applies to later ages as well, since this light music was often used to accompany banquets and other social events.

Dramma per musica

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Drone music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Forerunners#

In 1949, Nouveau Réalisme artist Yves Klein wrote The Monotone Symphony (formally The Monotone-Silence Symphony, conceived 1947–1948), a 40-minute orchestral piece that consisted of a single 20-minute sustained chord (followed by a 20-minute silence) —showcasing how the sound of one drone could make music.

Origins#

Composer La Monte Young is a pioneering figure in drone music. He described himself as fascinated from a young age by droning sounds, such as “the sound of the wind blowing”, the “60 cycle per second drone of step-down transformers on telephone poles”, the tanpura drone and the alap of Indian classical music, “certain static aspects of serialism, as in the Webern slow movement of the Symphony Opus 21”, and Japanese gagaku “which has sustained tones in it in the instruments such as the Sho”. Young started writing music incorporating sustained tones in 1957 with the middle section of For Brass, The group released nothing during their lifetime (although Young and Zazeela issued a collaborative LP in 1969, and in 1970 Young contributed one side of a flexi disc accompanying an issue of Aspen magazine ). The concerts themselves were influential on their own upon the art world including Karlheinz Stockhausen (whose Stimmung bears their influence most strikingly) and the drone-based minimalist works of dozens of other composers many of whom made parallel innovations including Young classmate Pauline Oliveros, or Éliane Radigue, Charlemagne Palestine, Yoshi Wada, Phill Niblock and many others. In 2000, La Monte Young wrote: " About the style of music that I originated, I believe that the sustained tone branch of minimalism, also known as ‘drone music’, is a fertile area for exploration."

Early music of the British Isles

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Medieval music to 1450#

Surviving sources indicate that there was a rich and varied musical soundscape in medieval Britain. Historians usually distinguish between ecclesiastical music, designed for use in church, or in religious ceremonies, and secular music for use from royal and baronial courts, celebrations of some religious events, to public and private entertainments of the people. Our understanding of this music is limited by a lack of written sources for much of what was an oral culture.

Electronic music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Origins: late 19th century to early 20th century#

At the turn of the 20th century, experimentation with emerging electronics led to the first electronic musical instruments. These initial inventions were not sold, but were instead used in demonstrations and public performances. The audiences were presented with reproductions of existing music instead of new compositions for the instruments. While some were considered novelties and produced simple tones, the Telharmonium synthesized the sound of several orchestral instruments with reasonable precision. It achieved viable public interest and made commercial progress into streaming music through telephone networks. Critics of musical conventions at the time saw promise in these developments. Ferruccio Busoni encouraged the composition of microtonal music allowed for by electronic instruments. He predicted the use of machines in future music, writing the influential Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music (1907). Futurists such as Francesco Balilla Pratella and Luigi Russolo began composing music with acoustic noise to evoke the sound of machinery. They predicted expansions in timbre allowed for by electronics in the influential manifesto The Art of Noises (1913).

Ensalada (music)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Works#

Prague 1581 # El Fuego (the fire) – Flecha # La Bomba (the pump) – Flecha # La Negrina (the black girl) – Flecha # La Guerra (the battle) – Flecha # El Bon Jorn (the good day) – Vila # La Justa (the joust) – Flecha # La Viuda (the widow) – Flecha # La Feria (the fair) – Flecha (the younger) # Las Cañas (the pan-pipas) – Flecha (the younger) # La Trulla - Càrceres # La Lucha (the struggle) – Vila # Los Chistes (the jokes) – Flecha # Las Cañas II (the pan-pipes II) – Flecha # El Molino (the mill) – Chacón Supplement # El Jubilate – Flecha # La Caza (the hunt) – Flecha # El Toro (the bull) – Flecha # La Negrina (the black woman) – Cárceres # Las Cañas III (the pan-pipes III) – Brudieu Francisco de Peñalosa # Por las sierras de Madrid, for 6 voices. # Tú que vienes de camino, for 2 voices. Garcimuñóz (attributed) # Una montaña pasando, for 4 voices Anon. * Quien madruga Dios le ayuda. Romancero 1612

Estampie

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Musical form#

The estampie is similar in form to the lai, consisting of a succession of repeated notes. Each puncta has a pair of lines that repeat the same melody, in the form: :aa, bb, cc, etc.. The two statements of the melody in each punctus differ only in their endings, described as apertum (“open”) and clausum (“closed”) by Grocheio, who believed that six puncta were standard for the stantipes (his term for the estampie), though he was aware of stantipes with seven puncta. The structure can therefore be diagrammed as: :a+x, a+y; b+w, b+z; etc.. In an instrumental estampie, the open and closed endings of the puncta are the same each time, so that the end of the punctum serves as the refrain, in the form: a+x, a+y; b+x, b+y, c+x, c+y, etc. He further states that this difficulty captivates the attention of both the players and listeners because of these complications. According to Grocheio, the vocal estampie begins with a refrain, which is repeated at the end of each stanza, with text and melody independent of the stanza. However, surviving songs do not include a section labeled as a refrain, so some scholars suggest that a convention must have existed for choosing lines to use as a refrain. Scholar Elizabeth Eva Leach wrote about a poetic form of estampie through the discussion of Douce 308. In a chapter titled “The Estampies of Douce 308” from Leach’s book Music and Instruments of the Middle Ages, there is a heavy discussion about how the poetic forms of estampies differ from both instrumental and vocal forms. These poetic estampies were devoid of musical notation making the form reliant on syllabic stress and enjambment to make it recognizable.

Ethiopian chant

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Etymology#

Zema means a pleasing sound, a song or a melody in Geʽez, the liturgical language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church.

History#

Saint Yared has been credited with the invention of the musical tradition of Ethiopian liturgical chants. Yared, who lived in the sixth century, represents the first known case of indigenous Ethiopian musical notation and religious music. According to Ethiopian Christian tradition St. Yared was divinely inspired to create three forms of chanting. The story of his inspiration follows St. Yared watched a small insect fall from a tree and then climb to a greater height up the tree than the insect had been at before, leading St. Yared to theorize a human could accomplish much more. According to tradition, from that moment onward St. Yared began to take inspiration from the beauty of nature and the singing of birds to create his chants. Thus it is said that “even the sounds of animals and the songs of the birds, fall under one of these modes of St. Yared. Each of these chants is associated with an aspect of the Holy Trinity. The geeze is associated with the Father, the ararai with the Holy Spirit, and the ezil with the Son. The geeze are the most often used chants and are frequently performed with the ararai on non-feast days. The Ezel chants which are often much slower and are performed on holidays, at vigils, funerals, and Good Friday. The Synaxarium of the Ethiopian Church attests that Ethiopian liturgical chants are faithful to Yared and divine in nature. Most of the Ethiopian Highlands had been Miaphysite Christian since the fourth century. Ancient chanted liturgy with congregation participating with clapping, ululation and rhythmic movements has been retained from that era. Ethiopian liturgical chants are based on both written and oral sources, but the isolation of Ethiopia and the lack of source material make it difficult to reconstruct the exact history of Ethiopian church music. The musical notation (melekket) used for the chants, is not a typical notational system since it does not represent pitch or melody. Rather, it is as a mnemonic. Most studies conclude that there has been impressive consistency since the 1500s. It is likely that Ethiopian liturgical chants have undergone an evolution similar to that of European liturgical chants. It can be assumed that the notations have become more and more complex as time has passed. Regional varieties may have become standardized over time, and more symbols and segments of music have become available for composers. Any form of Ethiopian gospel music was not recorded until the 1950s when priest Mere Geta Lisanework assisted the Ethiopian Radio in recording.

Execution ballad

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Composition#

The use of song was a popular method of spreading news across a community in early modern Europe; music and lyrics were easier to remember, and thus made it easier to spread than written news, as many people were illiterate during the height of its popularity. The subject of the ballad usually spoke in first-person or, sometimes, in the third-person. They were modeled as if they were the last words of the criminal being executed. The person was always portrayed as undoubtedly guilty of the crime and remorseful for their actions, emphasizing the warning to the listener to learn from their mistakes and making an appeal to God to save their souls. Execution ballads from the early modern period briefly mention the trial proceedings of the verdict before they were to be condemned at the gallows.

Expressionist music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Major figures#

The three central figures of musical expressionism are Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) and his pupils, Anton Webern (1883–1945) and Alban Berg (1885–1935), the so-called Second Viennese School. Other composers that have been associated with expressionism are Ernst Krenek (1900–1991) (the Second Symphony, 1922), Paul Hindemith (1895–1963) (Die junge Magd, Op. 23b, 1922, setting six poems of Georg Trakl), Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) (Three Japanese Lyrics, 1913), Alexander Scriabin (1872–1915) (late piano sonatas). Another significant expressionist was Béla Bartók (1881–1945) in early works, written in the second decade of the 20th century, such as Bluebeard’s Castle (1911), The Wooden Prince (1917), and The Miraculous Mandarin (1919). American composers with a sympathetic “urge for such intensification of expression” who were active in the same period as Schoenberg’s expressionist free atonal compositions (between 1908 and 1921) include Carl Ruggles, Dane Rudhyar, and, “to a certain extent”, Charles Ives, whose song “Walt Whitman” is a particularly clear example. Important precursors of expressionism are Richard Wagner (1813–1883), Gustav Mahler (1860–1911), and Richard Strauss (1864–1949). Later composers, such as Peter Maxwell Davies (1934–2016), “have sometimes been seen as perpetuating the Expressionism of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern”, and Heinz Holliger’s (b. 1939) most distinctive trait “is an intensely engaged evocation of … the essentially lyric expressionism found in Schoenberg, Berg and, especially, Webern”.

Fandango

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Origins#

The earliest fandango melody is found in the anonymous “Libro de diferentes cifras de guitarra” from 1705, and the earliest description of the dance itself is found in a 1712 letter by Martín Martí, a Spanish priest. The fandango’s first sighting in a theatrical work was in Francisco de Leefadeal’s entremés “El novio de la aldeana” staged in Seville, ca. 1720. By the late 18th century it had become fashionable among the aristocracy and was often included in tonadillas, zarzuelas, ballets and operas, not only in Spain, but also elsewhere in Europe. Widely varying claims have been made about the origin of fandango: its relation to the jabera, the soleá, and the petenera; to the Andalusian malagueña, granadina, murciana and rondeña; to the canario and gitano; to the jota aragonesa.

Fauxbourdon

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Description#

In its simplest form, fauxbourdon consists of the cantus firmus and two other parts a sixth and a perfect fourth below. To prevent monotony, or create a cadence, the lowest voice sometimes jumps down to the octave, and any of the accompanying voices may have minor embellishments. Usually just a small part of a composition employs the fauxbourdon technique.

Hymn singing#

In a hymn, the term is sometimes used when the congregation sings in parallel octaves, with some singers singing a descant over the melody, but the term was historically used to indicate an arrangement of the tune in four parts with the melody in the tenor voice, such as those composed by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English composers including John Dowland, Giles Farnaby, and Thomas Ravenscroft.

Folk songs of Lithuania

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Etymology#

The word “dainos” may come from meaning “song” or or , meaning “folk song, often with sad music or contents.”

Song festivals#

Lithuania is home to many folk music festivals. The “Dainų šventė” (literally Song Celebration) a state-supported festival, is perhaps the most famous. First held in 1924, it has taken place every five years since then, and helps to keep the folk and choral music tradition alive. Other major folk festivals include the Skamba skamba kankliai and the , both held annually. Of historical importance is the , which was held in the 1980s and was the first major festival of its kind. The Baltica International Folklore Festival is held in one of the Baltic states every year. The tradition of mass Song Festivals was inscribed in the UNESCO list of Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2003.

Franco-Flemish School

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Term and controversy#

Several generations of Renaissance composers from the region loosely known as the Low Countries (Imperial and French fiefs ruled in personal union by the House of Valois-Burgundy in the period from 1384 to 1482)—i.e. present-day Northern France, Belgium and the Southern Netherlands—are grouped under “Franco-Flemish School”, though a teacher-student-relationship between them rarely existed. Most of these musicians were born in the thriving Burgundian provinces of Artois, Flanders, Brabant, Hainaut, or Limburg. Others were born in Northern and Southern France, like Guillaume Faugues, Simone de Bonefont and Antoine Brumel who was one of the most influential composers of his generation. During periods of political and economic stability, the courts of the Burgundian dukes were a centre of cultural activity in Europe. Franco-Flemish composers had their origins in ecclesiastical choir schools such as at the cathedrals and collegiate churches of Saint-Quentin, Arras, Valenciennes, Douai, Bourges, Liège, Tournai, Cambrai, Mons, Antwerp, Bruges, and Ghent, although they were famous for working elsewhere. Numerous musicians established themselves in French court or moved to the European courts in Italy where they were called “I fiamminghi” or Oltremontani (“those from over the Alps”) and Spain—notably in the Flemish chapel (capilla flamenca) of the Habsburgs, or to towns in Germany, and other parts of Europe—Poland, the Czech lands, Austria, Hungary, England, Sweden, Denmark, Saxony—carrying their styles with them. The exact centres shifted during this time, and by the end of the sixteenth century the focal point of the Western musical world had moved from the Low Countries to Italy. The expression “Franco-Flemish” (as well as the more biased term “Dutch school”) are still the subject of some controversy among musicologists. They were not in use at that time and seem to cover only part of the linguistic, political, territorial and historical reality.

French organ school

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Characteristic forms and nomenclature#

French organ composers cultivated four major genres: masses, hymns, suites and noëls. Noëls are variations on Christmas carols, whereas the first three genres were all realized as collections of brief pieces in various characteristic forms. Such forms included the following: * Récit: a piece in which a single voice emerges soloistically above all others by means of special registration. The latter is usually indicated in the title, i.e. in a Récit de Cromorne the solo voice would be played using the cromorne stop. Cromorne, cornet, tierce, nasard, trompette and voix humaine are the most commonly encountered solo stops. The titles of such compositions frequently omit the word “récit” and simply indicate the registration (Cromorne, Cornet, etc.) and/or the position of the solo voice. Typical combinations include the following: : Dessus de Cromorne: the solo voice is in the soprano (dessus), played using the cromorne stop : Tierce en taille: the solo voice is in the tenor (taille), played using the tierce stop : Basse de Trompette: the solo voice is in the bass (basse), played using the trompette stop * Dialogue: a piece which constantly alternates between two different registrations. A Dialogue sur les grands jeux would be alternatively played on the Grand orgue (Great) and the Positif. * Fugue: usually, three- or four-voice polyphonic pieces that adhere more or less strictly to the imitative style. The designation Fugue grave indicates a piece of a serious character, whereas the Fugue gaie (or gaye) is its opposite. Rarely, four-voice fugal pieces bear the title Quatuor (“quartet”). Nicolas de Grigny cultivated five-voice fugues. * Echo: phrases are played twice, quieter on the second time, giving the impression of an echo. This impression is heightened in echos that repeat only the endings of phrases. Such pieces used specially designed echo divisions. * Prélude: mostly homophonic pieces in duple or quadruple meter. They are almost invariably used as introductory movements. Additionally, a number of standard registrations may be indicated by the following designations: * Plein jeu: combination of the organ’s principals and flutes, with the mixtures also included. * Grand jeu: a loud combination, based on the reed stops, frequently used in homophonic sections of larger pieces or standalone movements. The designations dessus, taille and basse stand for “soprano”, “tenor” and “bass”, respectively. A rarely used type of voicing is haute-contre (or haulte contre), “high tenor”. Such designations are used to point to the position of the solo stop in a récit (see examples above), or of the chant melody in a setting (i.e. the title Kyrie en basse indicates that the chant itself is in the bass).

French overture

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Frottola

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Composers#

Composers of frottole include: * Francesco d’Ana * Giovanni Brocco * Antonio Caprioli * Marchetto Cara * Giacomo Fogliano * Lodovico Fogliano * Erasmus Lapicida * Filippo de Lurano * Rossino Mantovano * Michele Pesenti * Bartolomeo Tromboncino * Michele Vicentino Except for Tromboncino and Cara, who were extremely famous, very little is known about most of these composers; in many cases only their names survive, and those because Petrucci, the prominent Venetian publisher, included their names in collections containing their music.

Fugue

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Etymology#

The English term fugue originated in the 16th century and is derived from the French word fugue or the Italian fuga. This in turn comes from the Latin fuga, which is itself related to both fugere (“to flee”) and fugare (“to chase”). Variants include fughetta (“a small fugue”) and fugato (a passage in fugal style within another work that is not a fugue).

Musical outline#

A fugue begins with the exposition and is written according to certain rules. The composer has more freedom once the exposition ends, though a logical key structure is usually followed. Further entries of the subject will occur throughout the fugue, repeating the accompanying material at the same time, and often accompanying key changes. The various entries may or may not be separated by episodes or occur in stretto. :: S = subject; A = answer; CS = countersubject; T = tonic; D = dominant Exposition A fugue begins with the exposition of its subject in one of the voices alone in the tonic key. After the statement of the subject, a second voice enters and states the subject with the subject transposed to another key (almost always the dominant or subdominant, with the latter being less common), which is known as the answer. To enable a natural harmonic progression, the answer may also be altered slightly (usually by changing one or a few notes near the beginning). When the answer is an exact transposition of the subject into the new key, the answer is classified as a real answer; alternatively, if the intervals of the subject are altered in any way, the answer is a tonal answer. During the answer, the voice in which the subject was previously heard accompanies with new material. If this new material is reused in later statements of the subject, it is called a countersubject; if this accompanying material is only heard once, it is simply referred to as free counterpoint. The countersubject is written in invertible counterpoint at the octave or fifteenth (two octaves). The distinction is made between the use of free counterpoint and regular countersubjects accompanying the fugue subject/answer, because in order for it to be heard accompanying the subject in more than one instance, the countersubject must be capable of sounding correctly when played above or below the subject, and must be conceived, therefore, in invertible (double) counterpoint. In tonal music, invertible contrapuntal lines must be written according to certain rules, because several intervallic combinations, while acceptable in one orientation, are not permissible when inverted. As an example, perfect fifths are contrapuntally acceptable, while the inversion of a perfect fifth results in a perfect fourth, which, unlike the perfect fifth, is considered a dissonance, requiring proper preparation and resolution. The countersubject, if sounding at the same time as the answer, is transposed to the pitch of the answer. Each voice then responds with its own subject or answer, and further countersubjects or free counterpoint may be heard. It is customary in the exposition to alternate entrances of the subject (S) with entrances of the answer (A). However, this order is occasionally varied. For example, the exposition from J.S. Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier Fugue No. 1 in C Major, BWV 846 uses a SAAS (subject-answer-answer-subject) exposition. A brief codetta is often heard connecting the various statements of the subject and answer, smoothly connecting each and often facilitating the modulation between the tonic and the key of the answer. The codetta, like other parts of the exposition, may be reused throughout the remainder of the fugue. The first answer must occur as soon after the initial statement of the subject as possible; therefore, the first codetta is often absent or very short. In the example shown above of J.S. Bach’s Fugue No. 16 in G minor, BWV 861, the first codetta is absent. The subject concludes on the quarter note (or crotchet) B of the third beat of the second bar, which harmonizes the opening G of the tonal answer. The later codettas may be considerably longer, and often serve to develop the material heard in the subject/answer and countersubject and possibly introduce ideas heard in the second countersubject or free counterpoint that follows. They may also be present to delay, and therefore heighten the impact of, the reentry of the subject in another voice. Finally, they may be modulatory passages to return the fugue to the tonic. The exposition usually concludes when all voices have given a statement of the subject or answer. In some fugues, especially those with an odd number of voices, the exposition will end with a redundant entry, or an extra presentation of the theme in a voice which has already entered. Furthermore, the entry of one of the voices may not be heard until considerably later. For example, in J.S. Bach’s Fugue in C minor for Organ, BWV 549, the subject entrance in the lowest voice (played by the organ pedals), is not heard until near the end of the fugue.

Fuguing tune

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Description#

Fuguing tunes are sacred music, specifically, Protestant hymns. They are written for a four-part chorus singing a cappella. George Pullen Jackson has described the fuguing tune as follows: A well-known fuguing tune that is typical of the form is “Northfield”, composed in 1804 by Jeremiah Ingalls. The text is by Isaac Watts.

Variety in fuguing tunes#

George Pullen Jackson’s description above gives a common form for a fuguing tune, but there are variations. Jackson describes the entrance order of the four parts as “bottom to top” (Bass-Tenor-Alto-Treble), but this is not the only possible order. Indeed, in the fuguing tunes printed in The Sacred Harp, 1991 edition, it is not even the most common one; the most common order is Bass-Tenor-Treble-Alto. There are many other orders possible, particularly if one includes the many cases in which composers bring in two parts at once (so that there are just three instead of four entrances). However, it does seem to be a widely valid rule that the basses must at least be included in the first group to enter. This may reflect a wish to support the entrances with a solid bass line, or perhaps just a practical consideration: thanks to the weight of existing tradition, the bass singers have considerable practice in coming in alone at the beginning of a musical phrase, practice which the other sections lack. Thus a fuguing tune with a bass-first structure is likely to be more stable in performance.

Furiant

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Etymology#

Besides the dance, the word is also used in the Czech language to describe a stubborn, arrogant, boastful person with bloated self-confidence. The word is recorded in the Czech language since the end of the 18th century, then meaning “a rebel” or “a disturber of peace”. In this meaning, it appears in Jan Antoš’ 1777 opera “De Rebellione Boemica Rusticorum” and in the ballad “Chvála sedláků”, also from the 1770s. It is unclear how the dance became known under the name “Furiant”, and the origin of its name is controversial. John Paul Bohumil Dudek suggested the word comes from the Latin word furians, through one way or another. In Bohemia, Farmers were often attributed with attributes connected to the word in its other meanings in Czech, including unrest, hubris, and arrogance (for example, in Ladislav Stroupežnický’s 1887 play “Naši furianti”); It is possible that the close connection between the dance and farmers has led to the dance’ naming. Moreover, other Bohemian folkdances with mixed meter were also termed with related names such as the “Sedlák” (farmer) or the “Kozel” (billy goat). Ladislav Urban wrote in his book “The Music of Bohemia” (1919): Other explanations for the name were suggested as well: Jaroslav Markl proposed the word arrived through French influence during the Napoleonic wars, and a possible connection to an earlier German dance by the name “Furie” was proposed as well in German circles. A dance in the that name is found in Johann Joachim Quantz’s Versuch einer Anweisung die Flöte traversiere zu spielen (1752) and in Daniel Gottlob Türk’s Klavierschule (1789).

Furniture music

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The music#

Although other selections of Erik Satie’s music can be experienced (and are sometimes indicated) as furniture music, Satie himself applied the name only to five short pieces, composed in three separate sets: * 1st set (1917), for flute, clarinet and strings, plus a trumpet for the first piece: ** 1. Tapisserie en fer forgé – pour l’arrivée des invités (grande réception) – À jouer dans un vestibule – Mouvement: Très riche (Tapestry in forged iron – for the arrival of the guests (grand reception) – to be played in a vestibule – Movement: Very rich) ** 2. Carrelage phonique – Peut se jouer à un lunch ou à un contrat de mariage – Mouvement: Ordinaire (Phonic tiling – Can be played during a lunch or civil marriage – Movement: Ordinary), * 2nd set, Sons industriels (Industrial sounds, February/March 1920), for piano duet, 3 clarinets and trombone: ** Premier Entr’acte: Chez un “Bistrot” (First Entr’acte: At a “Bistro”) ** Second Entr’acte: Un salon (Second Entr’acte: A drawing room) * 3rd set (1923), commissioned by Mrs Eugène Meyer jr. (living in Washington DC), for small orchestra: ** Tenture de cabinet préfectoral (Wall-lining in a chief officer’s office) The first set was apparently never performed (nor the score published) during Satie’s lifetime. The second set contained reminiscences of popular tunes by, amongst others, Camille Saint-Saëns and Ambroise Thomas. It was premiered in Paris the year it was composed, as intermission music to a lost comedy by Max Jacob. During these intermissions the audience was invited to visit an exposition of children’s drawings in the Galerie Barbazanges that was hosting the premiere. Indications of the intentions of the artists giving the first performance are found in the manuscript of the score: Furnishing divertissement organised by the group of musicians known as the “Nouveaux Jeunes” Furnishing music replaces “waltzes” and “operatic fantasias” etc. Don’t be confused! It’s something else!!! No more “false music” Furnishing music completes one’s property; it’s new; it doesn’t upset customs; it isn’t tiring; it’s French; it won’t wear out; it isn’t boring –quoted in Gillmor, 1988, p 325-326 See also the Entr’acte article for more details regarding the circumstances of this first, and only documented, public performance of furniture music during Satie’s lifetime, assisted by the composer himself. The separate commissioned piece was sent to America. There are no known public performances or publications of this music prior to leaving the European continent. This piece is sometimes presented as furniture music No. 3. As Satie’s pieces of furniture music were very short pieces, with an indefinite number of repeats, this kind of furniture music later became associated with repetitive music (sometimes used as a synonym of minimal music), but this kind of terminology did not yet exist in Satie’s time.

Futurism (music)

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Pratella’s Manifesto of Futurist Musicians#

The musician Francesco Balilla Pratella joined the movement in 1910 and wrote the Manifesto of Futurist Musicians (1910), the Technical Manifesto of Futurist Music (1911) and The Destruction of Quadrature (Distruzione della quadratura), (1912). In The Manifesto of Futurist Musicians, Pratella appealed to the young, as had Marinetti, because only they could understand what he had to say. He boasted of the prize that he had won for his musical Futurist work, La Sina d’Vargöun, and the success of its first performance at the Teatro Comunale at Bologna in December 1909, which placed him in a position to judge the musical scene. According to Pratella, Italian music was inferior to music abroad. He praised the “sublime genius” of Wagner and saw some value in the work of Richard Strauss, Debussy, Elgar, Mussorgsky, Glazunov and Sibelius. By contrast, the Italian symphony was dominated by opera in an “absurd and anti-musical form”. The conservatories encouraged backwardness and mediocrity. The publishers perpetuated mediocrity and the domination of music by the “rickety and vulgar” operas of Puccini and Umberto Giordano. The only Italian Pratella could praise was his teacher Pietro Mascagni, because he had rebelled against the publishers and attempted innovation in opera, but even Mascagni was too traditional for Pratella’s tastes. In the face of this mediocrity and conservatism, Pratella unfurled “the red flag of Futurism, calling to its flaming symbol such young composers as have hearts to love and fight, minds to conceive, and brows free of cowardice”. His musical programme was: *for the young to keep away from conservatories and to study independently; *the founding of a musical review, to be independent of academics and critics; *abstention from any competition that was not completely open; *liberation from the past and from “well-made” music; *for the domination of singers to end, so that they became like any other member of the orchestra; *for opera composers to write their own librettos, which were to be in free verse; *to end all period settings, ballads, “nauseating Neapolitan songs and sacred music”; and *to promote new work in preference to old.

Galant music

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Music styles#

This movement featured a return to simplicity and immediacy of appeal after the complexity of the late Baroque era. The galant style developed a set of stock melodic and harmonic patterns known as galant schemata. This meant simpler, more song-like melodies, decreased use of polyphony, short, periodic phrases, a reduced harmonic vocabulary emphasizing tonic and dominant, and a clear distinction between soloist and accompaniment. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and Daniel Gottlob Türk, who were among the most significant theorists of the late 18th century, contrasted the galant with the “learned” or “strict” styles. The “strict” style refers to the use of counterpoint with multiple independent voices working against each other (such as Bach’s fugues). Galant composers deliberately favored a single and singable melody played over simple accompaniment. The German empfindsamer Stil, which seeks to express personal emotions and sensitivity, can be seen as a closely related North-German dialect of the international galant style. This musical style was part of the wider galant movement in art at the time. The word “galant” derives from French, where it was in use from at least the 16th century. In the early 18th century, a galant homme described a person of fashion, who was elegant, cultured and virtuous. The German theorist Johann Mattheson appears to have been fond of the term. It features in the title of his first publication of 1713, Das neu-eröffnete Orchestre, oder Universelle und gründliche Anleitung wie ein Galant Homme einen vollkommenen Begriff von der Hoheit und Würde der edlen Music erlangen. (Instead of the Gothic type rendered here in italics, Mattheson used Roman to emphasize the many non-German expressions. Mattheson was apparently the first to refer to a “galant style” in music, in his Das forschende Orchestre of 1721. He recognized a lighter, modern style, einem galanten Stylo and named among its leading practitioners Giovanni Bononcini, Antonio Caldara, Georg Philipp Telemann, Alessandro Scarlatti, Antonio Vivaldi and George Frideric Handel. Not every contemporary was delighted with this revolutionary simplification: Johann Samuel Petri, in his Anleitung zur praktischen Musik (1782) spoke of the “great catastrophe in music”. The change was as much at the birth of Romanticism as it was of Classicism. The folk-song element in poetry, like the singable cantabile melody in galant music, was brought to public notice in Thomas Percy’s Reliques of Ancient Poetry (1765) and James Macpherson’s “Ossian” inventions during the 1760s. This simplified style was melody-driven, not constructed on rhythmic or melodic motifs as so much classical music was to be: “It is indicative that Haydn, even in his old age, is reported to have said, ‘If you want to know whether a melody is really beautiful, sing it without accompaniment. This simplification also extended to harmonic rhythm, which is generally slower in galant music than is the case in the earlier baroque style, thus making lavish melodic ornamentation and nuances of secondary harmonic colorings more important. The affinities of galant style with Rococo in the visual arts are easily overplayed, but characteristics that were valued in both genres were freshness, accessibility and charm. Watteau’s fêtes galantes were rococo not merely in subject matter, but also in the lighter, cleaner tonality of his palette, and the glazes that supplied a galant translucency to his finished pictures often compared to the orchestrations of galant music. This style of music was often expressed through forms like keyboard sonata, Opera Buffa and Intermezzo, Minuet, Trio, Waltz, Polonaise, Gavotte, Divertimento, and chamber music (either accompanying keyboard or wind and string ensembles). Galant music faded and transitioned into the Classical period largely as Haydn and Mozart’s music began to develop more structural complexity and motivic development and strayed away from the use of galant schemata. As forms became more sophisticated, it gradually eclipsed the lighter and more ornamental galant style.

Galician chant

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History#

The tradition of Galician chant arose as part of the broader East Slavic chant heritage and was influenced by both the Byzantine and local Ukrainian musical idioms. Printed collections and regional anthologies of Galician chant began to appear in the late 19th century; the first Ukrainian regional compilations of church chant were published in 1894. The repertoire preserves older Kyivan-style melodies as well as Western-influenced harmonizations that developed under the Austro-Hungarian cultural sphere.

Galliard

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Dance form#

The galliard is not an improvised dance, but rather, it consists of choreographed patterns of steps, which occupy one or more measures of music. In one measure, a galliard typically has five steps; in French such a basic step is called a cinq pas and in Italy, cinque passi. This is sometimes written in English sources as sinkapace. These steps are: right, left, right, left, cadence. The galliard is an athletic dance, characterised by leaps, jumps, hops and other similar figures. The main feature that defines a galliard step is a large jump, after which the dancer lands with one leg ahead of the other. This jump is called a cadence, and the final landing is called the posture. The cadence is typically preceded by three quick hops with alternating feet. The sources generally describe movement patterns starting on the left foot, then repeating it starting with the right foot. A galliard pattern may also last twice as long, or more, which would involve 11 steps, or 17 steps. The galliard was a favourite dance of Queen Elizabeth I of England, and although it is a relatively vigorous dance, in 1589 when the Queen was aged in her mid-fifties, John Stanhope of the Privy Chamber reported, “the Queen is so well as I assure you, six or seven galliards in a morning, besides music and singing, is her ordinary exercise.” While most commonly being an entire dance, the galliard’s steps are used within many other forms of dance. For example, 16th-century Italian dances in Fabritio Caroso’s (1581) and Cesare Negri’s (1602) dance manuals often have a galliard section. One special step used during a galliard is lavolta, a step which involves an intimate, close hold between a couple, with the woman being lifted into the air and the couple turning 270 degrees, within one six-beat measure. Lavolta was considered by some dancing masters as an inappropriate dance. Another special step used during a galliard is the tassel kick (“salto del fiocco”). These steps are found in Negri’s manual and involve a galliard step usually (though not always) ending with a spin. The easier steps involve single spins of 180 or 360 degrees; later, more difficult steps involve multiple sequential spins and spins of up to at least 540 degrees. During the spin, the dancer kicks out to touch a tassel suspended between knee and waist height.

Gallican chant

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History#

Several sources attest the existence of a distinctive Gallican rite in the Frankish lands between the 5th and 9th centuries. The Celtic Rite and Mozarabic rite, which are liturgically related to the Gallican, are sometimes collectively referred to as “Gallican” as opposed to the different structure of the Roman rite. Lack of a central authority led to the development of local traditions of the Gallican rite in Francia, sharing a basic structure but varying in details. These traditions endured until the Carolingian dynasty. During a papal visit in 752-3, Pope Stephen II had Mass celebrated using Roman chant. According to Charlemagne, his father Pepin and Chrodegang of Metz abolished the Gallican rites in favor of the Roman use, in order to strengthen ties with Rome that would culminate in Charlemagne’s elevation to Holy Roman Emperor. Charlemagne completed the job his father had begun, so that by the 9th century the Gallican rite and chant had effectively been eliminated. However, the Roman chant brought to the Carolingian churches was incomplete, and ended up incorporating musical and liturgical elements from the local Gallican traditions. The resulting Carolingian chant, which developed into Gregorian chant, was a Romanized chant, but one in which traces of the lost Gallican repertory may still be found.

Geisslerlieder

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First outbreak, 13th century#

The first period of Geisslerlied began in 1258 in response to the breakdown of civil order in northern Italy. Permanent warfare, famine, and an apparent demise of the moral order in contemporary life gave rise to a movement of public flagellation accompanied by singing; the penitents implored the help of God to ameliorate their sufferings, but never formed a specific sect, and neither did they attempt a social revolution. Initially, the flagellants were members of the mercantile and noble classes, but as the movement spread outside of Italy, lower social classes took part. Of the first period of activity, only a single song has survived, although many of the words they sang have been recorded. Typically the texts were imploring, penitential, and apocalyptic.

Gelineau psalmody

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Text#

Gelineau was himself part of the working group of the French La Bible de Jérusalem and he developed a revised version of that psalter which respected the rhythms of the Hebrew original. This was later translated into English as the Grail Psalms translation of the Psalter.

Verse#

The psalm verse uses a “pulsed tone” technique, with a variable number of syllables between the main pulses (barlines). Each line has a prescribed number of accented syllables, even though the total number of syllables varies from line to line. In that sense, it may be regarded as similar to the song Three Blind Mice: each line contains the same number of bars (pulses), but the number of syllables varies from three (“Three blind mice”) to eleven “Did ever you see such a thing in your life”. It is thus a form of sprung rhythm.

Género chico

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Historical context#

Zarzuela was developed during the reign of Philip IV (1605–1665, reigned from 1621), who during the 1640s began to commission musico-theatrical entertainments on mythological themes mixed with popular peasant song and dance, from the writer Calderón de la Barca working with composers such as Juan de Hidalgo. These were performed at the Royal hunting lodge, the Palacio de la Zarzuela. During the next two hundred years, zarzuela, as these mixed entertainments swiftly became known, became the native-language alternative to the Italian operatic form nurtured by successive monarchs. In the 19th century, the country’s tense political circumstances affected zarzuela. Isabella II fell from power during the liberal revolution of 1868, and the country found itself submerged in a crisis at all levels: economic, political, and ideological (with various strands of socialism coming to prominence). Instability increased with the 1870 assassination of Juan Prim, President of the regency council and Marshal of Spain. For economic and other reasons, there was a sharp drop in theatre box-office sales, as most people could not afford the average fourteen reales for non-necessities. Such high prices, plus the national uncertainty, brought most Madrid theatres into crisis, and many - including the Teatro de la Zarzuela itself - came close to ruin.

Gigue

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Etymology#

An early Italian dance called the giga probably derives its name from a small accompanying stringed instrument called the giga. Historians, such as Charles Read Baskerville, claim that use of the word in relation to dancing took place in England prior to such usage on the Continent. Giga probably has a separate etymology.

Pachelbel’s Canon and Gigue#

Pachelbel’s Canon by the German Baroque composer Johann Pachelbel was originally paired with a gigue under the title Canon and Gigue for 3 violins and basso continuo. Both movements are in the key of D major. The gigue is set in time and consists of 2 equal sections of 10 bars each. Unlike the canon, the gigue neither has a repeating bass voice nor a set chord progression. The gigue exhibits fugal writing, with each section introducing a brief melodic statement which is then imitated in the other voices.

Glee (music)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Form#

The term “glee” has been as loosely used as madrigal, from whose rediscovery the impulse for glee composition likely grew (that, at least, was John Callcott’s opinion). Glees, although often in simple binary form, can also be extended pieces consisting of a number of short movements contrasted in key and tempo, including so-called word-painting. Their texts can be convivial, fraternal, idyllic, tender, philosophical or even (occasionally) dramatic. Glee composers often turned to near-contemporary poets for their texts on pastoral themes, as well as sources as diverse as Chaucer, Nicholas Breton, Shakespeare and Milton or translations of Classical poets or even Goethe. Some composers also used texts from more Romantic sources such as James Macpherson’s Ossianic epics. The form was very flexible and text-driven and could therefore be a great deal more complex in terms of variety of texture and freedom of expression than that of the post-Mendelssohnian, Romantic part song which largely superseded the glee and was intended to be sung by choirs. Several glee composers wrote pieces they described as madrigals, in imitation of the Renaissance style, the most famous being “Let me careless and unthoughtful lying” by Thomas Linley the Elder. Many glees in fact use madrigalian contrapuntal procedures as part of their tapestry of effects. Other composers successfully juxtaposed sections in the French Overture style and style galant with Affetuoso 3/4 movements and sections of robust Handelian fugal writing as well as short sections for solo or duetting voices. A very few glees have basso continuo or other instrumental accompaniment. A notable example of the simpler sort of glee is Glorious Apollo, by Samuel Webbe Sr., written in 1787 as a theme song for the newly founded London Glee Club, it is a vigorous piece for 3 voices (ATB). Webbe’s glee took root with the Harvard Glee Club, the oldest such group in America, which still sings this song. Webbe wrote the text as well as the music, and in it he faithfully traced the London Glee Club’s history; for the first couple of years, the meetings circulated among members’ homes. This is reflected in the second line, which notes that the club was “wand’ring to find a temple for his praise.” It finally found its “temple” when the club’s meetings moved to the Newcastle Coffee House. Webbe’s references to the gods of the Greek pantheon were part and parcel of the Georgian gentlemen’s singing clubs’ identification with the learning and leisure activities of the classical world. Webbe structured the poem so that the first two couplets of each verse were sung by solo voices, with all the members joining in at the refrain, “Thus then combining…”. :Glorious Apollo :Glorious Apollo from on high beheld us, :Wand’ring to find a temple for his praise. :Sent Polyhymnia hither to shield us, :While we ourselves such a structure might raise. :Thus then combining, hands and hearts joining, :Sing we in harmony Apollo’s praise. :Here ev’ry gen’rous sentiment awaking, :Music inspiring unity and joy. :Each social pleasure giving and partaking, :Glee and good humour our hours employ. :Thus then combining, hands and hearts joining, :Long may continue our unity and joy.

Grand opera

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Origins#

Paris at the turn of the 19th century was a magnet for composers, both French and foreign, especially those of opera. The term “grand opéra” became current in the early 19th century, with contemporaries like the critic Castil-Blaze defining it as a work that was sung throughout (in contrast to opéra comique), performed at the prestigious Paris Opéra, and had a noble subject. The librettist Étienne de Jouy further advocated for a five-act structure and plots drawn from heroic historical events. The aesthetic goals of the Empire were exemplified by works like Gaspare Spontini’s Fernand Cortez (1809), which combined an exotic setting with melodramatic plots and spectacular tableaux, such as a cavalry charge and the burning of an Aztec temple. These large-scale works were the immediate forerunners of grand opéra. Other factors contributing to Parisian supremacy in operatic spectacle were the Opéra’s ability to stage sizeable productions, its long tradition of French ballet, and its skilled staff of innovative designers like Duponchel, Cicéri, and Daguerre. The first theater performance lit by gas, for example, was Aladin ou La lampe merveilleuse at the Opéra in 1823. Several operas by Spontini, Luigi Cherubini, and Gioachino Rossini can be regarded as direct precursors to the genre. These include Spontini’s La vestale (1807) and Fernand Cortez (1809), Cherubini’s Les Abencérages (1813), and Rossini’s Le siège de Corinthe (1827) and Moïse et Pharaon (1828). All of these have the characteristics of size and spectacle that would become hallmarks of grand opéra. An especially important forerunner was Giacomo Meyerbeer’s Il crociato in Egitto (1824). Produced by Rossini in Paris in 1825, this opera successfully blended the Italian vocal style with German orchestral techniques, introducing a wider range of musical-theatrical effects than traditional Italian opera. With its exotic historical setting, on-stage bands, and themes of culture clash, Il crociato exhibited many of the features that would form the basis of grand opera’s popularity. What became the essential features of ‘grand opéra’ were foreseen by Étienne de Jouy, the librettist of Guillaume Tell, in an essay of 1826: Division into five acts seems to me the most suitable for any opera that would reunite the elements of the genre: … where the dramatic focus was combined with the marvellous: where the nature and majesty of the subject … demanded the addition of attractive festivities and splendid civil and religious ceremonies to the natural flow of the action, and consequently needed frequent scene changes.

Gregorian chant

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Development of earlier plainchant#

Singing has been part of the Christian liturgy since the earliest days of the Church. It is widely accepted that the psalmody of ancient Jewish worship significantly influenced and contributed to early Christian ritual and chant. Christians read Scriptures and sang chants, as their Jewish predecessors had done. Although new Christian liturgy was developed, the source of much of this Christian liturgy was Jewish psalmody. The source materials for newly emergent Christian chants were originally transmitted by Jews in sung form. Early Christian rites also incorporated elements of Jewish worship that survived in later chant tradition. Canonical hours have their roots in Jewish prayer hours. “Amen”, “alleluia”, and “hosanna” come from Hebrew, and the threefold “sanctus” derives from the threefold “kadosh” of the Kedushah. The New Testament mentions singing hymns during the Last Supper: “When they had sung the hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives” (). Other ancient witnesses such as Pope Clement I, Tertullian, St. Athanasius, and Egeria confirm the practice, although in poetic or obscure ways that shed little light on how music sounded during this period. Musical elements that would later be used in the Roman Rite began to appear in the 3rd century. The Apostolic Tradition, attributed to the theologian Hippolytus, attests the singing of Hallel (Jewish) psalms with Alleluia as the refrain in early Christian agape feasts. Chants of the Office, sung during the canonical hours, have their roots in the early 4th century, when desert monks following St. Anthony introduced the practice of continuous psalmody, singing the complete cycle of 150 psalms each week. Around 375, antiphonal psalmody became popular in the Christian East; in 386, St. Ambrose introduced this practice to the West. In the fifth century, a singing school, the Schola Cantorum, was founded at Rome to provide training in church musicianship. Scholars are still debating how plainchant developed during the 5th through the 9th centuries, as information from this period is scarce. Around 410, St. Augustine described the responsorial singing of a Gradual psalm at Mass. At c. 520, Benedict of Nursia established what is called the rule of St. Benedict, in which the protocol of the Divine Office for monastic use was laid down. Around 678, Roman chant was taught at York. Distinctive regional traditions of Western plainchant arose during this period, notably in the British Isles (Celtic chant), Spain (Mozarabic), Gaul (Gallican), and Italy (Old Roman, Ambrosian and Beneventan). These traditions may have evolved from a hypothetical year-round repertory of 5th-century plainchant after the western Roman Empire collapsed. John the Deacon, biographer (c. 872) of Pope Gregory I, modestly claimed that the saint “compiled a patchwork antiphonary”, unsurprisingly, given his considerable work with liturgical development. He reorganized the Schola Cantorum and established a more uniform standard in church services, gathering chants from among the regional traditions as widely as he could manage. Of those, he retained what he could, revised where necessary, and assigned particular chants to the various services. According to Donald Jay Grout, his goal was to organize the bodies of chants from diverse traditions into a uniform and orderly whole for use by the entire western region of the Church. His renowned love for music was recorded only 34 years after his death; the epitaph of Honorius testified that comparison to Gregory was already considered the highest praise for a music-loving pope. While later legends magnified his real achievements, these significant steps may account for why his name came to be attached to Gregorian chant.

Hindustani classical music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

Around the 12th-century, Hindustani classical music diverged from what eventually came to be identified as Carnatic classical music. The central notion in both systems is that of a melodic musical mode or raga, sung to a rhythmic cycle or tala. It is melodic music, with no concept of harmony. These principles were refined in the musical treatises Natya Shastra, by Bharata (2nd–3rd century CE), and Dattilam (probably 3rd–4th century CE). In medieval times, the melodic systems were fused with ideas from Persian music, particularly through the influence of Sufi composers like Amir Khusro, and later in the Mughal courts, noted composers such as Tansen flourished, along with religious groups like the Vaishnavites. Artists such as Dalptaram, Mirabai, Brahmanand Swami and Premanand Swami revitalized classical Hindustani music in the 16-18th century. After the 16th century, the singing styles diversified into different gharanas patronized in different princely courts. Around 1900, Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande consolidated the musical structures of Hindustani classical music, called ragas, into a few thaats based on their notes. This is a very flawed system but is somewhat useful as a heuristic. Distinguished musicians who are Hindu may be addressed as Pandit and those who are Muslim as Ustad. An aspect of Hindustani music going back to Sufi times is the tradition of religious neutrality: Muslim ustads may sing compositions in praise of Hindu deities, and Hindu pandits may sing similar Islamic compositions. Vishnu Digambar Paluskar in 1901 founded the Gandharva Mahavidyalaya, a school to impart formal training in Hindustani classical music with some historical Indian Music. This was a school open to all and one of the first in India to run on public support and donations, rather than royal patronage. Many students from the School’s early batches became respected musicians and teachers in North India. This brought respect to musicians, who were treated with disdain earlier. This also helped spread of Hindustani classical music to the masses from royal courts.

Holy minimalism

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Origins#

With the growing popularity of minimalist music in the 1960s and 1970s, which often broke sharply with prevailing musical aesthetics of serialism and aleatoric music, many composers, building on the work of such minimalists as Terry Riley, Philip Glass and Steve Reich, began to work with more traditional notions of simple melody and harmony in a radically simplified framework. This transition was seen variously as an aspect of musical post-modernism or as neo-romanticism, that is, a return to the lyricism of the nineteenth century.

Horn trio

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Hyperrealism (music)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Articles and reviews#

“STUFF MUZAK #1: A (VERY) SOFT FOCUS ON HYPERREALIST MUSIC” by Dwight Pavlovic, Decoder Magazine, June 7, 2016
“Twilight of The Gods” by Allan Kozinn, The New York Times, June 18, 2010
“Consistent lines: Creshevsky clearly builds his own reality.”, by Tobias Fischer, “Tokafi”, November 30, 2007
“A Language We Already Understand: Noah Creshevsky’s Hyperrealism” by Dennis Báthory-Kitsz, “NewMusicBox”, June 13, 2007
“Hyperrealism, Hyperdrama, Superperformers and Open Palette” by Noah Creshevsky, “Kalvos & Damian New Music Bazaar”, 2005
“Slice ‘N’ Dice” by Kyle Gann, Village Voice, July 6, 2004
“Traveling Through Hyperreality With Umberto Eco”, “Transparency”
https://not.neroeditions.com/archive/orange-milk-records-elettronica-iperrealista/ ,https://not.neroeditions.com/archive/orange-milk-records-elettronica-iperrealista/ by Riccardo Papacci, Not, December 5, 2018

In Nomine

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

This “most conspicuous single form in the early development of English consort music” originated in the early 16th century from a six-voice mass composed before 1530 by John Taverner on the plainchant Gloria Tibi Trinitas. In the Benedictus section of this mass, the Latin phrase “in nomine Domini” was sung in a reduced, four-part counterpoint, with the plainchant melody in the meane part. At an early point, this attractive passage became popular as a short instrumental piece, though there is no evidence that Taverner himself was responsible for any of these arrangements. Over the next 150 years, English composers worked this melody into “In Nomine” pieces of ever greater stylistic range. In Nomines are typically consort pieces for four or five instruments, especially consorts of viols. One instrument plays the theme through as a cantus firmus with each note lasting one or even two measures; usually this is the second part from the top. The other parts play more complex lines, often in imitative counterpoint. Usually they take up several new motifs in turn, using each one as a point of imitation. However, there are In Nomines composed for solo or duo keyboard instruments and even one for the lute: a fantasy titled Farewell by John Dowland. Examples of the genre include compositions by Christopher Tye (the most prolific composer of In Nomines, with 24 surviving settings), Thomas Tallis, William Byrd, John Bull, Orlando Gibbons, Thomas Tomkins, William Lawes, and Henry Purcell, among many others. They can vary in mood from melancholy to serene, exultant, or even playful or hectic (as in Tye’s In Nomine “Crye”, in which the viols seem to imitate the call of a street hawker). Composition of In Nomines lapsed in the eighteenth century but was revived in the twentieth century, an early notable example being Richard Strauss’s opera Die schweigsame Frau, which quotes a keyboard In nomine by John Bull. Later examples are found in works by Peter Maxwell Davies and Roger Smalley. Starting in 1999, the Freiburg new-music organization ensemble recherche began commissioning an ongoing series of short In Nomine compositions for the festival Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik. The series is dedicated to , director of the festival since 1989, and is collectively titled the Witten In Nomine Broken Consort Book. Some of the notable composers who have contributed pieces to this series to date include Brian Ferneyhough, Georg Friedrich Haas, Toshio Hosokawa, György Kurtág, Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf, Gérard Pesson, Robert H.P. Platz, Rolf Riehm, Wolfgang Rihm, Salvatore Sciarrino, Hans Zender, and Walter Zimmermann. In 1995, for the 300th anniversary of the death of Purcell, Gavin Bryars composed In Nomine (after Purcell) for the viol consort Fretwork. Graham Waterhouse composed In Nomine for cello solo in 2013.

Indie classical

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Terminology#

According to composer and co-founder of New Amsterdam Records, Judd Greenstein, the intention behind the term “indie classical” was a shorthand description of the kind of music they were making under a “do-it-yourself” institutional spirit. For New Amsterdam, indie classical was not intended to provide a context with which to comprehend its individual albums and compositions, but a term to brand the label’s identity and describe its innovations in the classical music market. The term’s usefulness is still debatable, and because it was promoted by publicists and accepted by journalists, “indie classical” could also be dismissed as outsider public relations jargon.

Intermezzo

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Renaissance intermezzo#

The Renaissance intermezzo was also called the intermedio. It was a masque-like dramatic piece with music, which was performed between the acts of a play at Italian court festivities on special occasions, especially weddings. By the late 16th century, the intermezzo had become the most spectacular form of dramatic performance, and an important precursor to opera. The most famous examples were created for Medici weddings in 1539, 1565, and 1589. In Baroque Spain the equivalent entremés or paso was a one-act comic scene, often ending in music and dance, between jornadas (acts) of a play.

Jota (music)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Etymology#

The medieval word “xiota” (pronounced or ), derives from Mozarabic šáwta “jump”, ultimately from Latin saltāre “to jump”. Due to phonetic changes, it has become jota (pronounced ) in modern Spanish (reborrowed to Valencian as , or ) and (pron. ) or (pron. ) in Aragonese; ; ; .

Aragonese jota#

The Aragonese jota is the best-known expression of Aragonese folklore. It dates as far back as the 18th century, and reached the pinnacle of its splendor in the 19th century. Due to the complexities of the dance steps and manner of singing, the jota has evolved. Since the end of the 19th century, heavily choreographed versions have often been made for zarzuelas, movies, contests, festivals, and other entertainments. The most pure forms of the jota can still be found in Calanda, Alcañiz, Andorra, Albalate, and Zaragoza. Nowadays there exist many modern varieties of the jota which are performed by various folkloric groups. Among the most popular can be found: Jota de San Lorenzo (Huesca), Jota Vieja, Aragón Tierra Bravía, Gigantes y Cabezudos, La Dolores (these two are taken from the zarzuela and opera respectively of the same names), and the danza de la Olivera.

Katavasia

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Ordinary katabasia#

On ordinary weekdays (that is, days which do not fall on a Sunday or higher-ranking feast day), the irmos from the canon being chanted is repeated at the end as katabasia. When several canons are tied together, as is normally the case at Matins, only the irmos of the first canon is chanted, subsequent irmoi being omitted. The irmos of the final canon in the string will be chanted at the very end of Odes 3, 6, 8 and 9 as katabasia.

Khyal

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Etymology#

() is an Urdu word of Arabic origin which means “imagination, thought, ideation, meditation, reflection”. Hence khyal connotes the idea of a song that is imaginative and creative in either its nature or execution. The word entered India through the medium of the Persian language. Just as the word reflects ideas of imagination and imaginative composition, the musical form is imaginative in conception, artistic and decorative in execution and romantic in appeal.

Klapa

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Description#

A klapa group consists of a first tenor, a second tenor, a baritone, and a bass. It is possible to double all the voices apart from the first tenor. It is usually composed of up to a dozen male singers. In recent times, female vocal groups have been quite popular, but in general male and female groups do not mix. Although klapa is a cappella music, on occasion it is possible to add a gentle guitar and a mandolin (instrument similar in appearance and sound to tamburitzas). Klapa can also be accompanied with synthesizer keyboards, usually simulating percussion instruments.

Konkani liturgical music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

Prior to Vatican II, most of the liturgy was in Latin. When liturgy in vernacular languages was introduced in Vatican II, Fr. Vasco do Rego SJ led the effort to compose the needed Konkani liturgical music. Goan composers developed a rich and unique form of motets for the Lenten season, which were accompanied by violins, clarinets and double bass. Goan church authorities had obtained special permission from the Holy See to use these instruments during the Holy Week services. Unfortunately, most of these Konkani motets were not preserved and have been lost. There were similar efforts made independently in Mangalore in the field of Konkani liturgical music.

Kontakion

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Etymology#

The word kontakion derives from the Greek κόνταξ (kóntax), which means “rod” or “stick” and refers specifically to the rod around which a scroll is wound. While the genre dates to at least the 6th century, the word itself is attested only in the 9th century. The name is likely a reference to the fact that kontakions tend to be lengthy and have a large number of stanzas, thus metaphorically or literally requiring a great deal of “scrolling”. A hymn book containing kontakia is called a kontakarion (; loaned into Slavonic as kondakar, ), but a kontakarion is not just a collection of kontakia: in the tradition of the Cathedral Rite (like that practiced at the Hagia Sophia of Constantinople) this became the name of the book of the prechanter or lampadarios, also known as psaltikon, which contained all the soloistic parts of hymns sung during the morning service and the Divine Liturgy. Because the kontakia were usually sung by protopsaltes during the morning services, the first part for the morning service with its prokeimena and kontakia was the most voluminous part, and acquired the name kontakarion.

Ladishah

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

Ladishah genre originally emerged as a popular lyrics narrating with a combination of situational ballad, humorous and melody tone in Jammu and Kashmir princely state around eighteenth or nineteenth century. It has its roots in the culture of Kashmir written and narrated by the same entertainer. Literary associated with Kashmiri literature, it was initially used to criticise the rulers engaged in human rights abuse. Some local people believe that ladishah songs were used to be sung during the harvest season particularly exercised by nomads to get food in return. Over the times with modern music revolution, the genre became less popular or almost unknown to the people, and subsequently it declined due to Kashmir conflict, a war that triggered unrest since the military conflict started in the region.

Lauda (song)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Origin and spread of the lauda#

Originally, the lauda was a monophonic (single-voice) form, but a polyphonic type developed in the early fifteenth century. The early lauda was probably influenced by the music of the troubadours, since it shows similarities in rhythm, melodic style, and especially notation. Many troubadours had fled their original homelands, such as Provence, during the Albigensian Crusade in the early 13th century, and settled in northern Italy, where their music was influential in the development of the Italian secular style. A monophonic form of the lauda spread widely throughout Europe during the 13th and 14th centuries as the music of the flagellants; this form was known as the Geisslerlied, and picked up the vernacular language in each country it affected, including Germany, Poland, England and Scandinavia. After 1480, the singing of laude was extremely popular in Florence, since the monk Savonarola (and others) had prohibited the dissemination of any other style of sacred vernacular music. Many of Josquin’s motets and masses are based on melodies he heard in laude during his sojourns in Italy around this time. Laude had a resurgence of popularity again at the time of the Counter-Reformation, since one of the musical goals of the Council of Trent was to increase the intelligibility of text, and the simple, easily understood laude provided an ideal example. The significance of the lauda diminished as the oratorio evolved. However, tunes and lyrics continued to influence later music.

Leçons de ténèbres

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Spelling#

In the original French sources “Leçons de ténèbres” is more common; the spelling “Leçons des ténèbres” is increasingly common in later resources, but modern sources still use “de”, as seen in Sébastien Gaudelus’s Les offices de Ténèbres en France, 1650–1790(2005). The capitalisation of “ténèbres” varies.

Liturgical function#

The tenebrae service uses the text of the Lamentations of Jeremiah, originally deploring the Siege of Jerusalem (587 BC) and subsequent desolation of the city, but applied allegorically to the three days of mourning for Christ between his crucifixion and resurrection. However the context of the French Leçons de ténèbres was often private performance. Delalande’s 15-year-old daughter sang for Louis XIV first in his living rooms and then in chapel, becoming the praise of all Paris. Philidor’s catalogue indicates that Delalande’s three surviving virtuoso solo Leçons de ténèbres were composed for such occasions. A complete set of Leçons de ténèbres for the full three days of Holy Week (Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday; played for practical reasons on the eve of each mentioned day, so: Holy Wednesday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday), would have included nine lessons, with each of these leçons requiring the setting of specific texts from Lamentations, although the conventions of exactly which texts to set varied slightly from the Renaissance to the Baroque, and by local custom. The following represents the typical French baroque schema set by Marc-Antoine Charpentier, which follows the order of the Roman Breviary of St. Pius V as it was promulgated after the Council of Trent in 1568. :Holy Wednesday * Première leçon pour le mercredi Saint – 1:1–5 * Deuxième leçon pour le mercredi Saint – 1:6–9 * Troisième leçon pour le mercredi Saint – 1:10–14 :Holy Thursday * Première leçon pour le jeudi Saint – 2:8–11 * Deuxième leçon pour le jeudi Saint – 2:12–15 * Troisième leçon pour le jeudi Saint – 3:1–9 :Good Friday * Première leçon pour le vendredi Saint – 3:22–30 * Deuxième leçon pour le vendredi Saint – 4:1–6 * Troisième leçon pour le vendredi Saint – 5:1–11 However, in practice composers rarely supplied a complete group of all 9 settings. A notable exception was Charpentier, who authored a complete set Les Neuf Leçons de ténèbres (H. 96–110) and duplicated all the settings several times over. In addition the services required antiphons and supplementary motets – 9 for each day, 27 in total. Charpentier again produced extensively in this genre, such as his Les neuf répons du mercredi saint (H. 111–119, 120–125, 135–137). As with the lessons the French répons are stylistically differentiated from the Renaissance responsories for Holy Week of Victoria and Gesualdo.

Lied

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Terminology#

For German speakers, the term “Lied” has a long history ranging from twelfth-century troubadour songs () via folk songs () and church hymns () to twentieth-century workers’ songs () or protest songs (). The German word Lied for “song” (cognate with the English dialectal leed) first came into general use in German during the early fifteenth century, largely displacing the earlier word gesang.

Late Middle Ages or Early Renaissance#

The poet and composer Oswald von Wolkenstein is sometimes claimed to be the creator of the lied because of his innovations in combining words and music. The late-fourteenth-century composer known as the Monk of Salzburg wrote six two-part lieder which are older still, but Oswald’s songs (about half of which actually borrow their music from other composers) far surpass the Monk of Salzburg in both number (about 120 lieder) and quality.

Lining out

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

Lining out first appears in 17th-century Britain when literacy rates were low and books were expensive. Precenting the line was characterised by a slow, drawn-out heterophonic and often profusely ornamented melody, while a clerk or precentor (song leader) chanted the text line by line before it was sung by the congregation. It was outlined for use by the Westminster Assembly for English churches in 1644, and it has persisted longest in Britain in the Scottish Hebrides. The tide turned against lining out in England and New England in the first quarter of the 18th century, with greater literacy, improved availability of texts such as New Version of the Psalms of David (1696) by Nahum Tate and Nicholas Brady, and more widely available and better-printed tune collections. Influential clerics in England and America disliked the ragged nature of the singing that resulted as the congregation struggled to remember both the tune and the words from the lining out, but it continued to be practiced in most rural churches and still survives today in a form that likely would have been familiar to the original English and Ulster-Scots colonists in isolated communities in the Appalachian Mountains. Lining out was in most places replaced by “regular singing”, in which either the congregation knew a small number of tunes like Old 100th that could be fitted to many different texts in standard meters such as long meter, or a tunebook was used along with a word book. There began to be “singing societies” of young men who met one evening a week to rehearse. As time went on, a section of the church was allocated for these trained voices to sit together as a choir, and churches voted to end the lining out system (although there was often a transitional phase that had the entire congregation singing from tunebooks like the still-popular The Sacred Harp and others, before this was taken over by using trained choirs; this gave birth to the still vibrant tradition of “Sacred harp singing” ). A vivid picture of the transition comes from Worcester, Massachusetts:

Literaturoper

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Current definition#

According to a seminal publication by Peter Petersen, the term means “a special form of music theater in which the libretto is based on a literary work whose linguistic, semantic and aesthetic structure remains recognizable in the musical-dramatic work as a structural layer.”

History#

The tradition of literaturoper only became established in European opera culture when, with Richard Wagner and the “through-composed dramatic form” he developed, the conventions of verse metrics for the opera libretto had faded. At the same time, the personal union of libretto poet and composer appeared as the new norm of opera production. Especially in the area of the Romance languages, the alliterating verse in Wagner’s Ring des Nibelungen was perceived as prose text, since the use of alliteration as basis for the poetry in the Ancient Germanic languages had always been alien the syllable-counting verse systems in the French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese poetic tradition. Since the production of literaturopern possessed the potential to make the function of the opera librettist redundant, the genre was first able to assert itself in those opera cultures in which professional libretto-writing had not been able to develop a centuries-long tradition (Russia, Germany). The first examples of this dramaturgical process can be found in the history of French and Russian music in the second half of the 19th century. Early Russian literaturopern include Alexander Dargomyzhsky’s opera The Stone Guest (after Alexander Pushkin) and Modest Mussorgsky’s opera fragment The Marriage and his Boris Godunov (also after Pushkin). In French and Italian opera, which had possessed an established libretto tradition for centuries, the introduction of the literaturoper took place parallel to the discussions about the possibility of writing opera libretti in prose. Since the Italian tradition of operatic verse proved to be particularly resistant to the introduction of prose libretti, the first Italian literaturopern were created on the basis of Gabriele d’Annunzio’s verse dramas (Alberto Franchetti, La figlia di Iorio (1906), Pietro Mascagni, Parisina (1913), Riccardo Zandonai, Francesca da Rimini (1914), Ildebrando Pizzetti, Fedra (1915). The first composers to directly set plays include Charles Gounod, Pietro Mascagni, Claude Debussy, Richard Strauss and Alban Berg. After the Second World War, the genre flourished, especially in Germany, and composers often resorted to setting plays from previous centuries or from Greek Antiquity. The production of literary operas continues to this day.

Liturgical music

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Roman Catholic church music#

The interest taken by the Catholic Church in music is shown not only by practitioners, but also by numerous enactments and regulations calculated to foster music worthy of Divine service. Contemporary Catholic official church policy is expressed in the documents of the Second Vatican Council Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy promulgated by Pope Paul VI on December 4, 1963 (items 112–121); and most particularly Musicam sacram, the Instruction on Music In The Liturgy from the Sacred Congregation for Rites, on March 5, 1967. While there have been historic disputes within the church where elaborate music has been under criticism, there are many period works by Orlandus de Lassus, Allegri, Vittoria, where the most elaborate means of expression are employed in liturgical music, but which, nevertheless, are spontaneous outpourings of adoring hearts (cf. contrapuntal or polyphonic music). Besides plain chant and the polyphonic style, the Catholic Church also permits homophonic or figured compositions with or without instrumental accompaniment, written either in ecclesiastical modes, or the modern major or minor keys. Gregorian chant is warmly recommended by the Catholic Church, as both polyphonic music and modern unison music for the assembly. In 1963, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (Sacrosanctum Concilium) of the Second Vatican Council directed that “bishops and other pastors of souls must be at pains to ensure that, whenever the sacred action is to be celebrated with song, the whole body of the faithful may be able to contribute that active participation which is rightly theirs, as laid down in Art. 28 and 30”, which articles say: “To promote active participation, the people should be encouraged to take part by means of acclamations, responses, psalmody, antiphons, and songs”. Full and active participation of the people is a recurring theme in the Vatican II document. To achieve this fulsome congregational participation, great restraint in introducing new hymns has proven most helpful.

Live electronic music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Early electronic instruments#

Early electronic instruments intended for live performance, such as Thaddeus Cahill’s Telharmonium (1897) and instruments developed between the two world wars, such as the Theremin (1919), Spharophon (1924), ondes Martenot (1928), and the Trautonium (1929), may be cited as antecedents, but were intended simply as new means of sound production, and did nothing to change the nature of musical composition or performance. Many early compositions included these electronic instruments, though the instruments were typically used as substitutes for standard classical instruments. An example includes composer Joseph Schillinger, who in 1929 composed First Airphonic Suite for Theremin and Orchestra, which premièred with the Cleveland Orchestra with Leon Theremin as soloist. Percy Grainger, used ensembles of four or six theremins (in preference to a string quartet) for his two earliest experimental Free Music compositions (1935–37) because of the instrument’s complete ‘gliding’ freedom of pitch.( The ondes Martenot was also used as a featured instrument in the 1930s, and composer Olivier Messiaen used it in the Fête des belles eaux for six ondes, written for the 1937 International World’s Fair in Paris. Cage’s Imaginary Landscape No. 1 (1939) was among the earliest compositions to include an innovative use of live electronic material; it featured two variable-speed phonograph turntables and sine-tone recordings. Cage’s interest in live electronics continued through the 1940s and 1950s, providing inspiration for the formation of a number of live-electronic groups in America who came to regard themselves as the pioneers of a new art form. The earliest use of live electronics together with acoustic instruments is in all likelihood Daphne Oram’s Still Point (1948), a work for turntable, double orchestra and five microphones. The work was unperformed until 2016.

Lute song

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The English lute ayre#

In England, the lute song was usually called an “ayre”, possibly borrowed from the French word, air. The first written record of the lute songs or ayres is a 1597 publication First Booke of Songes or Ayres, which was composed by John Dowland. This is considered the beginning of the popularity of the lute songs, that set the standard for other composer’s songbooks of English ayres. The music was printed on the page, so that when placed in the center of a table it could be read by the performers around the table. John Dowland’s ayres, like other composers, used music from dance forms such as pavane, galliard and jig, for the melody. Philip Rosseter, court musician, composer, and theatrical manager, published a collection in 1601, A Book of Ayres, with composer and poet Thomas Campion. The compositions were short, homophonic songs with minimal phrase repetition with their own lyrics. The last book published was by John Attey in 1622, called First Book of Ayres. The format of these songbooks was intended to be performed with a solo voice and an accompaniment, but some did include variations for multiple voices and additional instruments. It is possible that lute songs were composed before these books were published, but the written record of such songs starts with John Dowland. The consort song, popular in England during the reign of Henry VIII, leads to some consideration that the lute songs were composed prior to 1597. Other composers of lute songs during this time include John Danyel, Robert Jones, Pilkington and Alfonso Ferrabosco.

Lutheran chorale

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Lutheran hymns#

Starting in 1523, Martin Luther began translating worship texts into German from the Latin. He composed melodies for some hymns himself, such as “Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott” (“A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”), and even a few harmonized settings. For other hymns he adapted Gregorian chant melodies used in Catholic worship to fit new German texts, sometimes using the same melody more than once. For example, he fitted the melody of the hymn “Veni redemptor gentium” to three different texts, “Verleih uns Frieden gnädiglich”, “Erhalt uns, Herr, bei deinem Wort”, and “Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland”. The first Lutheran hymns were published in 1524. These included the (known as the first Lutheran hymnal) and the Erfurt Enchiridion (both with unaccompanied melodic settings), as well as Johann Walter’s , the first to contain part song settings of Lutheran hymns. Luther and his contemporaries referred to these vernacular hymns as geistliche Lieder (spiritual songs), Psalmen (psalms), christliche Lieder (Christian songs), and geistliche (or christliche) Gesänge or Kirchengesänge. The German word Choral, which was originally used to describe Latin plainchant melodies, was first applied to the Lutheran hymn only in the later sixteenth century. In the modern era, many Lutheran hymns are used in Protestant worship, sometimes sung in four-part harmony. A four-part harmony is the traditional method of organizing chords for 4 different voice ranges: soprano, alto, tenor and bass (known together as ‘SATB’). The term ‘voice’ or ‘part’ refers to any musical line whether it is a melody sung by singers, a long note played on an instrument or anything in between.

Madrigal

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Origins and early madrigals#

The madrigal is a musical composition that emerged from the convergence of humanist trends in 16th-century Italy. First, renewed interest in the use of Italian as the vernacular language for daily life and communication, instead of Latin. In 1501, the literary theorist Pietro Bembo (1470–1547) published an edition of the poet Petrarch (1304–1374); and published the Oratio pro litteris graecis (1453) about achieving graceful writing by applying Latin prosody, careful attention to the sounding of words, and syntax, the positioning of a word within a line of text. As a form of poetry, the madrigal consisted of an irregular number of lines (usually 7–11 syllables) without repetition. Second, Italy was the usual destination for the oltremontani (“those from beyond the Alps”) composers of the Franco-Flemish school, who were attracted by Italian culture and by employment in the court of an aristocrat or with the Roman Catholic Church. The composers of the Franco-Flemish school had mastered the style of polyphonic composition for religious music, and knew the secular compositions of their homelands, such as the chanson, which much differed from the secular, lighter styles of composition in late-15th- and early-16th-century Italy. Stylistically, the music in the books of Arcadelt and Verdelot was closer to the French chanson than the Italian frottola and the motet, given that French was their native tongue. As composers, they were attentive to the setting of the text, per Bembo’s ideas, and through-composed the music, rather than use the refrain-and-verse constructions common to French secular music.

Madrigal (Trecento)

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History#

The origins of the madrigal are obscure, and debated, with one school of thought seeing it as a secular mutation of the conductus of the ars antiqua, and another seeing it as deriving from 13th-century secular monophonic song with an improvised accompaniment. Little Italian music from the 13th century has survived, so links between medieval forms such as the conductus and troubadour song and the music of the trecento are largely inferential. The origin of the name (which appears in early sources as madriale, matricale, madregal, and marigalis) is also unclear; two possibilities are derivation from materialis (in contrast to formalis), designating a poem without a definite form, or from matrix, meaning mother, either as in a song in the mother tongue or music used for Mother Church. The earliest stage in the development of the madrigal is seen in the Rossi Codex, a collection of music from ca. 1350 or earlier, compiled around 1370. It has been suggested that the ornamentation of the upper voices may be improvised above a skeletal structure. Each line of a madrigal often has a long melisma on each of the first and penultimate syllables. In the madrigal’s later stages of development its uppermost voice was often highly elaborate, with the lower voice, the tenor, much less so. The form at this time was probably a development of connoisseurs, and sung by small groups of cognoscenti; there is no evidence of its widespread popularity, unlike the madrigal of the 16th century. By the end of the 14th century it had fallen out of favor, with other forms (in particular, the ballata and imported French music) taking precedence, some of which were even more highly refined and ornamented. By the beginning of 15th century the term was no longer used musically. The later, 16th-century madrigal is unrelated, although it often used texts written in the 14th century (for instance by Petrarch).

Makossa

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Etymology#

The word “makossa” is originated from the Duala words “m’a” and “kossa”. “Kossa” is a term that was a term at the edge of neologism expressed initially as a cry of exhortation, and as “a kind of swear word that has the status of a stimulus, a spur. In the book Le Makossa: une musique africaine moderne, a passage including this quote is written as follows: :“En effet, le terme Makossa, dérive de « m’a kossa » qui veut dire littéralement en langue duala et au pluriel les contorsions; au singulier « di kossa » la contorsion. Ce vocable « Kossa » est un terme à la lisière du néologisme et du cri d’exhortation, mieux, une sorte de juron ayant statut de stimulus, d’aiguillon.” : “Kossa is a kind of exclamation, a cry of joy that is usually uttered to give more vigor, and more energy to the dance.” In the original French version, a passage including the translated version of this quote reads: :“Remy MINKO MBA poursuit: « Kossa est une sorte d’exclamation, un cri de joie que l’on pousse généralement pour donner plus de vigeur, plus d’énergie à la danse. Il s’agit donc d’une sorte de stimulus qui doit nécessairement provoquer une réaction positive ».”

Malaysian contemporary music

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Background#

The MPO forum brought together six talented young composers, Ahmad Muriz Che Rose, Chong Kee Yong, Vivian Chua, Johan Othman, Tay Poh Gek and Adeline Wong, from around the country and abroad, to Kuala Lumpur, to compose music for the orchestra. Spread over two years, the forum introduced six new compositions for chamber orchestra and four for full orchestra. Chong Kee Yong, who had won numerous awards in Europe, emerged as the winner of the forum and won the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra International Composers Award 2004 with his symphony work The Starry Night’s Ripples. The Forum was also a success from the audience standpoint, as all concerts were well attended and enthusiastically received by the music-going public as well as by the media. The success of the Forum is a key factor in raising the profile on Malaysian contemporary music in Malaysia, although the composers who participated, as well as a number of others who were not represented, have been composing music in this medium for a number of years, the majority of their output having been premiered abroad. That is to say, this does not mean that there was no activity in the field prior to the Forum, only that such efforts were not highly visible or organised. Information on serious composition in the 1980s through to the 1990s by composers such as Tazul Tajuddin (whose Etudes for chamber orchestra was performed in 1995 in USA), Dr Valerie Ross (who was awarded Malaysian Young Composer (1988) by the Asian Composers’ League in Hong Kong), Razak Abdul Aziz (who began composing vocal works as early as 1980) is only now slowly becoming available, although a comprehensive survey of the pre-millennium period is still in need. As cited by a Malaysian research paper in the late 1990s, the lack of such musical activities in Malaysia prior to the 21st Century is largely attributed to the absence of professional ensembles in the country who were able to support composers, although key issue has been one of a total absence of infrastructure rather than one of talent. Fortunately for the Malaysian art music scene progress in the current period has been brisk, and the number of serious composers and compositions in this field is increasing. The 2006-2007 series of Composers Forums in Kuala Lumpur, for example, introduced new voices such as Ng Chong Lim, Teh Tze Siew, Yii Kah Hoe and Mohd Yazid Zakaria. In 2008 Off The Edge magazine based in Kuala Lumpur collaborated with the Malaysian Composers Collective and HSBC Bank Malaysia Ltd to produce the country’s first CD anthology of contemporary Malaysian music called Faith, Hope & Chaos. In 2009 the Malaysian Composers Collective collaborated with Goethe Institut to hold the country’s first ever three-day contemporary music festival, the KL Contemporary Music Festival 09. Titled Urban Soundscapes, the festival featured guest composers from around the country and the South East Asia region and Germany, with music performed by international new music groups Ensemble Mosaik and Hong Kong New Music Ensemble with a host of Malaysian musicians. The festival held concerts, workshops and a two-day conference at Segi University College Kota Damansara, and also included a late night electroacoustic concert at the Central Market Annexe and an art exhibition on the theme of the city. KLCMF 09 also held the region’s first ever Southeast Asian Young Composers Competition which received over 60 entries from Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam and Thailand. This article offers only a brief introduction to Malaysia’s growing contemporary music movement, in the absence of a full study on the subject. It also places emphasis on the western-based formal tradition, and on composers largely trained in this tradition, purely as a matter of focus on an area that is particularly lacking in information, notwithstanding the very notions of art music or western-based music is itself evolving rapidly today with the blurring of lines between western and eastern instruments and the smearing of borders between various genres such as avant-garde, minimalism, world music and jazz, amongst others.

Mass (music)

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Middle Ages#

The earliest musical settings of the mass are Gregorian chant. The different unchanging portions of the mass, collectively known as the Ordinary, came into the liturgy at different times, with the Kyrie probably being first (perhaps as early as the 7th century) and the Credo being last (it did not become part of the Roman mass until 1014). In the early 14th century, composers began writing polyphonic versions of the sections of the Ordinary. The reason for this surge in interest is not known, but it has been suggested that there was a shortage of new music since composers were increasingly attracted to secular music, and overall interest in writing sacred music had entered a period of decline. The Ordinary then would have music which was available for performance all the time. Two manuscripts from the 14th century, the Ivrea Codex and the Apt Codex, are the primary sources for polyphonic settings of the Ordinary. Stylistically, these settings are similar to both motets and secular music of the time, with a three-voice texture dominated by the highest part. Most of this music was written or assembled at the papal court at Avignon. Several anonymous complete masses from the 14th century survive, including the Tournai Mass; however, discrepancies in style indicate that the movements of these masses were written by several composers and later compiled by scribes into a single set. The first complete mass we know of whose composer can be identified was the Messe de Nostre Dame (Mass of Our Lady) by Guillaume de Machaut in the 14th century.

Mawwal

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Etymology#

Mawwal is an Arabic word that means “affiliated with”, “associated with,” or “connected to”. The verb is waala (). It is measure 3 of the root verb “Walia” (), which means to follow, be affiliated with, support, or sponsor. Originally the verbal noun has a Yaa in the definite form but it loses it when the word is indefinite.

History#

There are many preferences regarding the origin of the mawwal, one of these is the one al-Suyuti attributes it in the book Sharh al-Muwashah to the era of Harun al-Rashid. When he insisted on his concubines to eulogize his minister, Jaafar al-Barmaki, after his brutality against him, then a concubine named al-Mawlia, from which “mawwal” is derived, was the one who eulogized him. Another preference is Safi al-Din al-Hilli in his book al-Mawwal al-Baghdadi in which he attribute it to the people of Wasit in Iraq. Also, Safi al-Din al-Hilli says that the mawal is from the simple sea sounding on the base of the wide sea, and the mawal continued in this way until the eighth century AH, when the mawwal appeared using the Iraqi dialect of the vernacular and the subsequent branching of the mawal in the eleventh century into three other types, namely The quatrain and The lame and Numani.

Mazurka

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History#

The folk origins of the Mazurka are three Polish folk dances which are: * mazur, most characteristic due to its inconsistent rhythmic accents, * slow and melancholic kujawiak, * fast oberek. The mazurka is always found to have either a triplet, trill, dotted eighth note (quaver) pair, or an ordinary eighth note pair before two quarter notes (crotchets). In the 19th century, the form became popular in many ballrooms in different parts of Europe. Mazurka as a term denoting a music piece originated in France, and is connected to the name of the mazur dance. Until the mid-20th century, Mazur also signified an inhabitant of Mazovia, while Mazurka meant a Mazovian woman in the past. Mazurek is a diminutive and masculine form of Mazur. In relation to dance, all three words (mazur, mazurek, mazurka) underline the connection to Mazovia. Several classical composers have written mazurkas, with the best known being the 59 composed by Frédéric Chopin for solo piano. In 1825, Maria Szymanowska wrote the largest collection of piano mazurkas published before Chopin. Henryk Wieniawski also wrote two for violin with piano (the popular “Obertas”, Op. 19), Julian Cochran composed a collection of five mazurkas for solo piano and orchestra, and in the 1920s, Karol Szymanowski wrote a set of twenty for piano and finished his composing career with a final pair in 1934. Alexander Scriabin, who was at first conscious of being Chopin’s follower, wrote 24 mazurkas. Chopin first started composing mazurkas in 1824, reaching full maturity by 1830, the year of the November Uprising, a rebellion in Congress Poland against Russia. Chopin continued composing them until 1849, the year of his death. The stylistic and musical characteristics of his mazurkas differ from the traditional variety because Chopin in effect created a more complex type of mazurka, using classical techniques, including counterpoint and fugue. By including more chromaticism and harmony in the mazurkas, he made them more technically interesting than the traditional dances. Chopin also tried to compose his mazurkas in such a way that they could not be used for dancing, so as to distance them from the original form. However, while Chopin changed some aspects of the original mazurka, he maintained others. His mazurkas, like the traditional dances, contain a great deal of repetition: repetition of certain measures or groups of measures; of entire sections; and of an initial theme. The rhythm of his mazurkas also remains very similar to that of earlier mazurkas. However, Chopin also incorporated the rhythmic elements of the two other Polish forms mentioned above, the kujawiak and oberek; his mazurkas usually feature rhythms from more than one of these three forms (mazurek, kujawiak, and oberek). This use of rhythm suggests that Chopin tried to create a genre that had ties to the original form, but was still something new and different. The mazurka began as a dance for either four or eight couples. Eventually, Michel Fokine created a female solo mazurka dance dominated by flying grandes jetés, alternating second and third arabesque positions, and split-leg climactic postures.

Mélodie

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Nature#

The mélodie is often defined by comparison with the lied. Pierre Bernac provides this comparison in The Interpretation of French Song: Debussy goes on to write that ‘clarity of expression, precision and concentration of form are qualities peculiar to the French genius.’ These qualities are indeed most noticeable when again compared with the German genius, excelling as it does in long, uninhibited outpourings, directly opposed to the French taste, which abhors overstatement and venerates concision and diversity. Bernac writes that “the art of the greatest French composers is an art of suggestion”, rather than explicit statement of feelings. The mélodie is noted for its deliberate and close relationship between text and melody. To compose or interpret mélodies, one must have a sensitive knowledge of the French language, French poetry, and French poetic diction. Numerous books have been written about the details of French pronunciation specifically for mélodie singers, often featuring IPA transcriptions of songs with further notations for French-specific features like liaison and elision.

Méringue

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History#

Méringue was heavily influenced by the contredanse from Europe and then by Afro-Caribbean influences from Hispaniola. The blend of African and European cultures has created popular dance music, music played on simple acoustic instruments by artists who don’t need theaters or microphones to show off their art. The term meringue, a whipped egg and sugar confection popular in eighteenth-century France, was adopted presumably because it captured the essence of the light nature of the dance where one gracefully shifts one’s weight between feet in a very fluid movement, animating the final section of the Haitian kontradans. It is said that the carabinier, a dance from Haiti originating back to the time of the Haitian Revolution, combined European dances accompanied by Kongo influences, deriving from a section of kontradans and is said to have evolved into the méringue. However, like almost all Latin American dances, the méringue can trace its origins back to the contredanse; the French dance that was hugely popular in Europe and the creolization of it by the use of the drums, poetic song, antiphonal song form, and imitations of colonial elite dance elements by the mulattos and the black slaves that had already begun to transform the genre.

Milonga (music)

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Notable artists#

Artists known for their milonga compositions and interpretations include Roberto Firpo, Angel D’Agostino, Pedro Maffia, Pedro Laurenz, Ángel Villoldo, Francisco Canaro, Rodolfo Biagi, Jorge Drexler, Juan d’Arienzo, Edgardo Donato, Gabino Ezeiza, Aníbal Troilo, Lucio Demare, Domingo Federico, Angel Vargas, Mariano Mores, Alfredo Zitarrosa, Francisco Lomuto, Astor Piazzolla and Carlos Di Sarli. These artists are from the early years and the Golden era of tango. Los Moonlights released a song entitled “Milonga de pelo largo” (Milonga of long hair) on their debut LP, Moonlights. In Rio Grande do Sul, milonga is an important regional genre and it is part of the repertoire of many gaucho musical groups and interpreters, not to be confused with the Argentinean gauchos. It also continues to influence other genres of the modern gaucho music. José Cláudio Machado’s “Milonga Abaixo de Mau Tempo”, Renato Borghetti’s “Milonga para as Missões” and Jayme Caetano Braun’s “Bochincho” are examples of the traditional rio-grandense form of milonga, Argentine composer and pianist Fernando Otero has based many of his orchestral and chamber works on this rhythm, creating compositions for Symphonic Orchestra, String Quartet and Jazz Combos. Kevin Johansen is a modern Argentine rock artist who has a number of songs that combine folkloric and pop music with a milonga rhythm.

Missa sine nomine

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20th century#

In 1977, Leon Schidlowsky composed a work that he called Misa Sine Nomine and dedicated to the Chilean human rights activist Victor Jara; the text is a juxtaposition of part of the mass ordinary with both Bible verses in Hebrew and contemporary texts, and he wrote it for different combinations of narrator, choirs, organ and percussion.

References#

Ronald Cross, review of Capella Cordina recording directed by Alejandro Planchart, in The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 60, No. 1 (Jan., 1974), pp. 154-159
Program notes to February 3, 2007 concert at UCLA
Lewis Lockwood/Andrew Kirkman, Mass, II. Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed April 19, 2007), (subscription access)
Jennifer Bloxam, “Masses on Polyphonic Songs”, in Scherr, Richard, ed. The Josquin Companion. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2000. .

Monodrama

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In opera#

In opera, a monodrama was originally a melodrama with one role such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Pygmalion, which was written in 1762 and first staged in Lyon in 1770, and Georg Benda’s work of the same name (1779). The term monodrama (sometimes mono-opera) is also applied to modern works with a single soloist, such as Arnold Schoenberg’s Die glückliche Hand (1924), which besides the protagonist has two additional silent roles as well as a choral prologue and epilogue. Erwartung (1909) and La voix humaine (1959) closely follow the traditional definition, while in Eight Songs for a Mad King (1969) by Peter Maxwell Davies, the instrumentalists are brought to the stage to participate in the action. Twenty-first century examples can be found in Émilie (2008) by Kaija Saariaho and Four Sad Seasons Over Madrid (2008) or God’s Sketches (2011) both of them by Jorge Grundman.

Monody

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History#

Musical monody, which developed out of an attempt by the Florentine Camerata in the 1580s to restore ancient Greek practices of melody and declamation (probably with little historical accuracy), one solo voice sings a melodic part, usually with considerable ornamentation, over a rhythmically independent bass line. Accompanying instruments could be lute, chitarrone, theorbo, harpsichord, organ, and even on occasion guitar. While some monodies were arrangements for smaller forces of the music for large ensembles which was common at the end of the 16th century, especially in the Venetian School, most monodies were composed independently. The development of monody was one of the defining characteristics of early Baroque practice, as opposed to late Renaissance style, in which groups of voices sang independently and with a greater balance between parts. Contrasting passages in monodies could be for the most part melodic or for the most part declamatory and the two styles of presentation developed into the aria and the recitative respectively, both of which came to be incorporated into the cantata by about 1635. The parallel development of solo song with accompaniment in France was called the air de cour: the term monody is not normally applied to these more conservative songs, however, which retained many musical characteristics of the Renaissance chanson. An important early treatise on monody is contained in Giulio Caccini’s song collection, Le nuove musiche (Florence, 1601).

Motet

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Etymology#

In the early 20th century, it was generally believed motet came from the Latin movere (to move), though a derivation from the French (“word”, or “phrase”) had also been suggested. The Medieval Latin for “motet” is motectum, and the Italian was also used. If the word is from Latin, the name describes the movement of the different voices against one another. Today, however, the French etymology is favoured by reference books, as the word “motet” in 13th-century French had the sense of “little word”. The troped clausulas that were the forerunner of the motet were originally called motelli (from the French mot, “word”), soon replaced by the term .

Mozarabic chant

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Terminology#

Confusion caused by the Arabic term “Mozarabic chant” has led to the use of several competing names for the music to which it refers. The Islamic term Mozarabic was used by the Islamic rulers of Hispania (Al Andalus) to refer to the Mozarabs, that is, the Christians of the formerly Christian Visigothic Kingdom of Hispania (modern Spain and Portugal) living under Muslim rule. However, the chant existed before the Muslim occupation began in 711. Visigothic refers to the Visigoths who dominated the Iberian peninsula in the centuries prior to the Muslim invasion and converted from Arian Christianity to Roman Catholic Christianity in 587. However, this Catholic rite already existed in Hispania prior to their conversion, and the chant was not limited to the Visigoths, so “Old Spanish” can also be seen as an inaccurate alternative. Because the chant was found in Portugal as well as Spain, the term “Hispanic” has also been used by scholars. Because of the ambiguity and vagueness of the terms “Visigothic”, “Hispanic”, and “Mozarabic”, “scholars have come to favour the term ‘Old Hispanic’ for this repertory” .

Music in Medieval England

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Sources#

Surviving sources indicate that there was a rich and varied musical soundscape in medieval England. Historians usually distinguish between ecclesiastical music, designed for use in church, or in religious ceremonies, and secular music for use in places from royal and baronial courts, celebrations of some religious events, to public and private entertainments of the people. Because literacy, and musical notation in particular, were preserves of the clergy in this period, the survival of secular music is much more limited than for church music. Nevertheless, some were noted, often by clergymen who had an interest in secular music.

Music in the Elizabethan era

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Church music#

The Church was a major influence for music in the 16th century. The Puritans wanted to do away with all church music, but the will of the people to sing only made it more predominant. Many composers that wrote for the church also wrote for the royalty. The style of the church music was known as choral polyphony. Hundreds of hymns were written for the church. Many of those are still sung today. It is “doubtless (that) your worship requires music. ” At the most elegant of weddings, usually those of the nobility, the processional included musicians who played lutes, flutes, and violins. It was also very common at that time for commoners to have music played for them whenever they wanted.

Music of the Trecento

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background and early history (to 1330)#

Little newly composed Italian music remains from the 13th century, so the immediate antecedents of the music of the Trecento must largely be inferred. The music of the troubadors, who brought their lyrical, secular song into northern Italy in the early 13th century after they fled their home regions—principally Provence—during the Albigensian Crusade, was a strong influence, and perhaps a decisive one; many of the Trecento musical forms are closely related to those of the troubadours of more than a century before. Another influence on Trecento music was the conductus, a type of polyphonic sacred music which had the same text sung in all parts; texturally, Trecento secular music is more like the conductus than anything else that came before, although the differences are also striking, and some scholars (for example, Hoppin) have argued that the influence of the conductus has been overstated. Some of the poetry of Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) was set to music at the time it was written, but none of the music has survived. One of the musicians to set Dante’s poetry was his friend Casella (died 1299 or 1300), memorialized in Canto II of Purgatorio. Poems of Dante set by others included canzoni and ballate; if they were similar to the other earliest ballate, they would have been monophonic. Though the pioneering music theory of Marchetto da Padova was written in this early period, the influence of his treatise on notation, the Pomerium, is largely seen in the manuscripts of the succeeding generations. Marchetto, building on (or in parallel with) the innovations of Petrus de Cruce, described a system of division of the breve into 2, 3, 4, 6,8, 9, or 12 semibreves (later minims) with dots (singular punctus divisionis ) indicating breaks at the end of a breve (however, Marchetto never used a term “punctus divisionis”). Although more Trecento music is written in the international system of notation descended from Franco of Cologne and Philippe de Vitry than in the Marchettian system (and there exist a few, mostly instrumental, works not of Italian origin that use the Marchettian system), nonetheless, Marchetto’s contribution to rhythmic notation is so connected with the Italian Trecento that it is often referred to as simply, “Italian Notation.”

Music theatre

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Musical theatre

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Book musicals#

Since the 20th century, the “book musical” has been defined as a musical play where songs and dances are fully integrated into a well-made story with serious dramatic goals and which is able to evoke genuine emotions other than laughter. The three main components of a book musical are its music, lyrics and book. The book or script of a musical refers to the story, character development and dramatic structure, including the spoken dialogue and stage directions, but it can also refer to the dialogue and lyrics together, which are sometimes referred to as the libretto (Italian for “small book”). The music and lyrics together form the score of a musical and include songs, incidental music and musical scenes, which are “theatrical sequence s set to music, often combining song with spoken dialogue.” The interpretation of a musical is the responsibility of its creative team, which includes a director, a musical director, usually a choreographer and sometimes an orchestrator. A musical’s production is also creatively characterized by technical aspects, such as set design, costumes, stage properties (props), lighting and sound. The creative team, designs and interpretations generally change from the original production to succeeding productions. Some production elements, however, may be retained from the original production, for example, Bob Fosse’s choreography in Chicago. There is no fixed length for a musical. While it can range from a short one-act entertainment to several acts and several hours in length (or even a multi-evening presentation), most musicals range from one and a half to three hours. Musicals are usually presented in two acts, with one short intermission, and the first act is frequently longer than the second. The first act generally introduces nearly all of the characters and most of the music and often ends with the introduction of a dramatic conflict or plot complication while the second act may introduce a few new songs but usually contains reprises of important musical themes and resolves the conflict or complication. A book musical is usually built around four to six main theme tunes that are reprised later in the show, although it sometimes consists of a series of songs not directly musically related. Spoken dialogue is generally interspersed between musical numbers, although “sung dialogue” or recitative may be used, especially in so-called “sung-through” musicals such as Jesus Christ Superstar, Falsettos, Les Misérables, Evita and Hamilton. Several shorter musicals on Broadway and in the West End in the 21st century have been presented in one act. Moments of greatest dramatic intensity in a book musical are often performed in song. Proverbially, “when the emotion becomes too strong for speech, you sing; when it becomes too strong for song, you dance.” In a book musical, a song is ideally crafted to suit the character (or characters) and their situation within the story; although there have been times in the history of the musical (e.g. from the 1890s to the 1920s) when this integration between music and story has been tenuous. As The New York Times critic Ben Brantley described the ideal of song in theatre when reviewing the 2008 revival of Gypsy: “There is no separation at all between song and character, which is what happens in those uncommon moments when musicals reach upward to achieve their ideal reasons to be.” Typically, many fewer words are sung in a five-minute song than are spoken in a five-minute block of dialogue. Therefore, there is less time to develop drama in a musical than in a straight play of equivalent length, since a musical usually devotes more time to music than to dialogue. Within the compressed nature of a musical, the writers must develop the characters and the plot. The material presented in a musical may be original, or it may be adapted from novels (Wicked and Man of La Mancha), plays (Hello, Dolly! and Carousel), classic legends (Camelot), historical events (Evita and Hamilton) or films (The Producers and Billy Elliot). On the other hand, many successful musical theatre works have been adapted for musical films, such as West Side Story, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, Oliver! and Chicago.

Musique mesurée

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

Pieces written as musique mesurée were settings of the poetical form known as vers mesurés. Beginning in the late 1560s in Paris, under the direction of Jean-Antoine de Baïf, a group of poets known as the Pléiade attempted to recreate the metrical effect of ancient Greek and Latin poetry in French, using the quantitative principles of those languages. The attempt was more than an academic one: Baïf and his associates, horrified by the barbarity of the age, including the bloody religious wars which raged throughout the last decades of the century, sought to improve mankind by bringing back the ancient diction, which was believed to have had a positive ethical effect on its hearers. For this attempt they had the approval of the current king of France, Charles IX, and they met in secret to plan their musical revolution. Baïf, with the royal patent, founded the Académie de Poésie et de Musique in 1570, along with his intimate musical associate Joachim Thibault de Courville. Poet Pierre de Ronsard was also involved in the group. As originally planned, the members of the Académie would be in a hierarchy of two grades: first, the composers and singers, known as the professionnels, and after that, the gentleman listeners, known as the auditeurs, who were also to provide financial backing for the enterprise. Aside from this small group of aristocrats, no one else was invited. The concerts took place at Baïf’s house in Paris: Charles IX himself, who provided much of the patronage, was often present. Some of the house rules have been recorded. There was to be no talking, or disturbances of any kind, during the singing, and anyone who came in late had to wait until the end of a piece to be seated – rather like modern concert-hall etiquette. Musicians were to rehearse every day, and no music was to be copied or taken away from the area of performance. The music was so closely guarded, at least during the early years of the Académie, that no music of the originating composer – Courville – is known to have survived. The Académie was short-lived, and probably did not survive after 1573, the year of the death of Charles IX. Another similar group, the Académie du Palais, which met at the Louvre after 1573 with the backing of the new king, Henri III, seemed to carry on some of the work of the previous group, but its aim seems to have been more to debate philosophical issues than to reform humanity through reviving Ancient Greek and Latin poetry and music. The activities, if any, of the original Académie after this time are poorly-documented: while the musicians continued to meet, it is not known if they met in a formal setting, as they had prior to the death of Charles IX. This was during a period of increasing religious turmoil, ending in the fighting in Paris in 1589, and the assassination of the king; associations of humanists such as the Académie, which included both Catholics and Protestants, became increasingly difficult (Baïf, a Catholic, even wrote a sonnet in 1572 praising the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre; Claude Le Jeune, a Protestant, was nearly murdered during the siege of Paris in 1589). Even though the original Académie had faded away within a few years of its founding, several prominent composers found the concept of musique mesurée to be so attractive as to make it their primary compositional method. The most famous of these was Claude Le Jeune, followed by Jacques Mauduit, Eustache Du Caurroy, Nicolas de La Grotte, and Guillaume Costeley.

Muwashshah

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

While the qasida and the maqama were adapted from the Mashriq, strophic poetry is the only form of Andalusi literature known to have its origins in the Iberian Peninsula. Andalusi strophic poetry exists in two forms: the muwaššaḥ: a more complex version in Standard Arabic with the exception of the concluding couplet, or the kharja, and zajal: a simpler form entirely in vernacular Arabic. Ibn Sanāʾ al-Mulk (d. 1211), author of Dār aṭ-ṭirāz fī ʿamal al-muwashshaḥāt (), wrote the most detailed surviving musical description of the muwashshaḥ. He wrote that some of the muwashshaḥāt had lyrics that fit their melodies (sometimes through melisma), while others had improvised nonsense syllables to fill out the melodic line—a practice that survives to the present with relevant sections labeled as shughl ( ‘work’) in songbooks.

Neo-medieval music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

16th–19th centuries#

Though there is some scholarly disagreement about the extent to which a revival and study of medieval music existed in the 16th and 17th centuries, studies from the late 18th and early 19th century show comprehensive efforts to come to terms with various forms of medieval music. German scholar Martin Gerbert wrote a study De cantu et musica sacra on medieval ecclesiastical music in 1774, followed shortly by the volume of histories General History of Music written by Charles Burney between 1776-1789 and the Essai sur la musique ancienne et moderne by composer Jean-Benjamin de La Borde in 1780. Activity increased in the 19th century with the beginning of the academic discipline of musicology, while in 1814 French musician and music historian Francois-Louis Perne “attempted a complete transcription of a polyphonic mass for the first time”. Edmond de Couseemaker would publish a monograph of medieval music in 1852, and Richard Wagner’s music would further increase interest in musical medievalism.

New Complexity

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Origins#

Though often atonal, highly abstract, and dissonant in sound, New Complexity music is most readily characterized by the use of techniques which require complex musical notation. This includes extended techniques, complex and often unstable textures, microtonality, highly disjunct melodic contour, complex layered rhythms, abrupt changes in texture, and so on. It is also characterized, in contrast to the music of the immediate post–World War II serialists, by the frequent reliance of its composers on poetic conceptions, very often implied in the titles of individual works and work-cycles. The origin of the name New Complexity is uncertain; amongst the candidates suggested for having coined it are the composer Nigel Osborne, the Belgian musicologist Harry Halbreich, and the British-Australian musicologist Richard Toop, who gave currency to the concept of a movement with his article “Four Facets of the New Complexity”; Toop’s article emphasizes the individuality of four composers (Richard Barrett, Chris Dench, James Dillon, and Michael Finnissy), both in terms of their working methods and the sound of their compositions, and demonstrates that they did not constitute a unified “school of thought”. In the UK, particularly at the instigation of ensembles Suoraan and later Ensemble Exposé, works by “New Complexity” composers were for some time frequently programmed together with then unfashionable non-UK composers including Xenakis and Feldman, but also such diverse figures as Clarence Barlow, Hans-Joachim Hespos, and Heinz Holliger. Although the British influence, via the teaching efforts of Brian Ferneyhough and Michael Finnissy, was decisive in the origins of this movement, initial support came not from British institutions but rather from performers and promoters of new music in continental Europe, particularly at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse where Ferneyhough coordinated the composition courses from 1984 to 1992. Ferneyhough’s Etudes Transcendantales, a song cycle for soprano and chamber ensemble, demonstrates many traits found in New Complexity music. In addition to being generally difficult to learn and perform, the pitch vocabulary makes heavy use of microtones—in this case, equal-tempered quarter tones. It also contains many tuplets of unusual ratios which are nested in multiple layers. Rapid changes, sometimes from note to note, happen in dynamics, articulation, and playing technique, including techniques such as multiphonics on the oboe, glottal stops for the voice, and key-clicking for the flute. According to Richard Toop, the rhythm for the oboe part in the first song is almost totally determined by a strict system with five stages of complexity, each governed by its own cycle of numbers.

New Mexico music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Origins#

The musical history of New Mexico goes back to pre-colonial times, but the sounds that define New Mexico music begin particularly with the ancestral Puebloans. Their music survived in the traditional songs of the Pueblo people with wind instruments such as the Anasazi flute, as well as the chants and drum beats of the Navajo and Apache. In Santa Fe de Nuevo México, the Hispanos of New Mexico brought Christian liturgical music, the violin, and the Spanish guitar, and Mexico brought with it the traditions of mariachi and ranchera. After New Mexico became a territory, the people of the American frontier brought the traditions of country and Cajun music. This was when the first forms of New Mexico music began to be played. Western was an adaption of country and Cajun, accompanied by traditionally Mexican and Native American instruments. New Mexico music is distinguished by its bouncy and steady rhythm, while accompanied by instruments common in Pueblo music, Western, Norteño, Apache music, country, mariachi, and Navajo music. Country and western music lend their drum and/or guitar style sections, while the steadiness of the rhythm owes its origins to the music of the Apache, Navajo, and Pueblo. And the differing rates of that tempo comes from the three common ranchera rhythm speeds, the polka at 2/4 (ranchera polkeada), the waltz at 3/4 (ranchera valseada), and/or the bolero at 4/4 (bolero ranchero). After statehood, the music was sung at parties and in homes as traditional folk music, and New Mexico music grew in popularity with native New Mexicans, mostly with the Pueblo, Navajo, Apache, Neomexicanos, and the descendants of the American frontier. Musicians in the genre received prominent airtime on KANW, and international recognition on the syndicated Val De La O Show.

New Simplicity

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Goals#

At the end of the 1970s, the German movement was first recognized by Aribert Reimann, who named seven composers, not previously associated as a group, who had each come to similar positions “in an entirely personal fashion”. These seven composers were: Hans-Jürgen von Bose, Hans-Christian von Dadelsen, Detlev Müller-Siemens, Wolfgang Rihm, Wolfgang von Schweinitz, Ulrich Stranz, and Manfred Trojahn. In general, these composers strove for an immediacy between the creative impulse and the musical result (in contrast to the elaborate precompositional planning characteristic of the avant garde), with the intention also of communicating more readily with audiences. In some cases this meant a return to the tonal language of the 19th century as well as to the traditional forms (symphony, sonata) and instrumental combinations (string quartet, piano trio) which had been avoided for the most part by the avant garde. For others it meant working with simpler textures or the employment of triadic harmonies in non-tonal contexts. Of the composers most closely identified with this movement, only Wolfgang Rihm has established a significant reputation outside of Germany. At least three writers have gone so far as to argue that one of the Darmstadt avant-garde composers against whom the New Simplicity was ostensibly rebelling, Karlheinz Stockhausen, had anticipated their position through a radical simplification of his style accomplished between 1966 and 1975, which culminated in his Tierkreis melodies. Another writer finds Rihm’s inclusive aesthetic better viewed as “an expansion of constructivist concerns . . . than as a negation of them”.

New-age music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Definition#

New-age music is defined more by the use and effect or feeling it produces rather than the instruments and genre used in its creation; it may be acoustic, electronic, or a mixture of both. New-age artists range from solo or ensemble performances using classical-music instruments ranging from the piano, acoustic guitar, flute, or harp to electronic musical instruments, or from Eastern instruments such as the sitar, tabla and tamboura. There is also a significant overlap of sectors of new-age music with ambient, classical, jazz, electronica, world, chillout, pop, and space music, among others. The two definitions typically associated with the new-age genre are: * New-age music with an ambient sound that has the explicit purpose of aiding meditation and relaxation, or aiding and enabling various alternative spiritual practices, such as alternative healing, yoga practice, guided meditation, or chakra auditing. The proponents of this definition are almost always musicians who create their music expressly for these purposes. To be useful for meditation, music must have repetitive dynamic and texture without sudden loud chords or improvisation, which could disturb the meditator. It is minimalist in conception, and musicians in the genre are mostly instrumentalists rather than vocalists. Subliminal messages are also used in new-age music, and the use of instruments along with sounds of animals (like whales, wolves and eagles) and nature (waterfalls, ocean waves, rain) is also popular. Flautist Dean Evenson was one of the first musicians to combine peaceful music with the sounds of nature, launching a genre that became popular for massage and yoga. Other prominent artists who create new-age music expressly for healing or meditation include Irv Teibel, Paul Horn, Deuter, Steven Halpern, Paul Winter, Lawrence Ball, Karunesh, Krishna Das, Deva Premal, Bhagavan Das, and Snatam Kaur. * Music found in the new-age sections of record stores. This is largely a definition of practicality, given the breadth of music classified as “new age” by retailers that are often less interested in finely grained distinctions between musical styles than are fans of those styles. Music that falls into this definition usually cannot be easily classified into other, more common definitions, but can contain almost any kind of music; it is more of a marketing slogan rather than musical category.

Odissi music

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Ritual music of Jagannatha Temple#

Odissi music is intimately and inextricably associated with the Jagannatha temple of Puri, where it is a ritual service to the deity. The deity of Jagannatha is at the heart of Odisha’s culture, and Odissi music was originally the music offered as a sevā or service to Jagannatha. Every night during the Badasinghara or the last ritual of the deity, the Gitagovinda of Jayadeva is sung, set to traditional Odissi ragas & talas. This tradition has continued unbroken since the time of Jayadeva, who himself used to sing in the temple. After the time of the poet, the singing of the Gitagovinda according to the authentic Odissi ragas & talas was instated as a mandatory sevā at the temple, to be performed by the Maharis or Devadasis, systematically recorded in inscriptions, the Mādalā Pānji and other official documents that describe the functioning of the temple. To this date, the Jagannatha temple remains the fountainhead of Odissi music and the most ancient & authentic compositions (including a few archaic Odia chhandas and jananas by Jayadeva himself) survive in the temple tradition, although the Devadasis are no more found owing to their systematic eradication by the British government.

Old Roman chant

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

The chant that is now called “Old Roman” comes primarily from a small number of sources, including three graduals and two antiphoners from between 1071 and 1250. Although these are newer than many notated sources from other chant traditions, this chant is called “Old Roman” because it is believed to reflect a Roman oral tradition going back several centuries. There are several theories concerning the origins of Gregorian and Old Roman chants, but one prominent hypothesis, supported by Apel and Snow, posits that both chant traditions derive from a common Roman ancestor in use circa 750 AD. In order to consolidate ecclesiastical power and strengthen their political ties to the power of the Roman church, the Franks, especially under the Carolingian rulers Pepin and Charlemagne, brought this older Roman chant north. There it was subsequently modified, influenced by local styles and Gallican chant, and categorized into the system of eight modes. This Carolingian, or Frankish-Roman, chant, became known as “Gregorian.” In the meantime, the local chant remaining in Rome gradually evolved into the form in which it was eventually notated, at the same time that Gregorian was supplanting it in Rome. Another theory, advanced by Hans Schmidt, suggests that what we now call the “Old Roman” chant reflected the use in the city churches in Rome, as opposed to the chants used in the Vatican for papal ceremonies, and that it was the latter that was brought north and evolved into Gregorian chant. This would explain the discrepancies between early Gregorian chant and the local Roman chant which were noticed during the Middle Ages. However, this remains a minority view. In the case of other defunct chant traditions, such as the Gallican, Mozarabic, and Beneventan, it is conceivable that Roman pre-eminence in the West tended toward the supplanting of non-Roman liturgies and chant traditions. The supplanting of the local chant of Rome itself would seem to require some other explanation. Several factors influenced this. In the 10th century, virtually no musical manuscripts were notated in Italy. A pattern developed wherein Roman Popes imported chants from the German Holy Roman Emperors during the 10th and 11th centuries. For example, the Credo was added to the Roman rite at the behest of the German emperor Henry II in 1014. The local musical traditions in Rome had already been showing some Gregorian influence, and eventually the Gregorian was taken to be the authentic, original chant of Rome, a misconception that continues.

Opera

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Operatic terminology#

The words of an opera are known as the libretto (meaning “small book”). Some composers, notably Wagner, have written their own libretti; others have worked in close collaboration with their librettists, e.g. Mozart with Lorenzo Da Ponte. Traditional opera, often referred to as “number opera”, consists of two modes of singing: recitative, the plot-driving passages sung in a style designed to imitate and emphasise the inflections of speech, During both the Baroque and Classical periods, recitative could appear in two basic forms, each of which was accompanied by a different instrumental ensemble: (dry) recitative, sung with a free rhythm dictated by the accent of the words, accompanied only by , which was usually a harpsichord and a cello; or (also known as ) in which the orchestra provided accompaniment. Over the 18th century, arias were increasingly accompanied by the orchestra. By the 19th century, had gained the upper hand, the orchestra played a much bigger role, and Wagner revolutionised opera by abolishing almost all distinction between aria and recitative in his quest for what Wagner termed “endless melody”. Subsequent composers have tended to follow Wagner’s example, though some, such as Stravinsky in his The Rake’s Progress, have bucked the trend. The changing role of the orchestra in opera is described in more detail below.

Opera buffa

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Opéra bouffon#

Opéra bouffon is the French term for the Italian genre of opera buffa (comic opera) performed in 18th-century France, either in the original language or in French translation. It was also applied to original French opéras comiques having Italianate or near-farcical plots. The term was also later used by Jacques Offenbach for five of his operettas (Orphée aux enfers, Le pont des soupirs, Geneviève de Brabant, and Le voyage de MM. Dunanan père et fils ), and is sometimes confused with the French opéra comique and opéra bouffe.

Opéra comique

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Use of the term#

The term opéra comique is complex in meaning and cannot simply be translated as “comic opera”. The genre originated in the early 18th century with humorous and satirical plays performed at the theatres of the Paris fairs which contained songs (vaudevilles), with new words set to already existing music. The phrase opéra comique en vaudevilles or similar was often applied to these early-stage works. In the middle of the 18th century, composers began to write original music to replace the vaudevilles, under the influence of the lighter types of Italian opera (especially Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s La serva padrona). This form of opéra comique was often known as comédie mêlée d’ariettes, but the range of subject matter it covered expanded beyond the merely comic. By the 19th century, opéra comique often meant little more than works with spoken dialogue performed at the Opéra-Comique theatre, as opposed to works with recitative delivery which appeared at the Paris Opéra. Thus, probably the most famous of all opéras comiques, Georges Bizet’s Carmen, is on a tragic subject. As Elizabeth Bartlet and Richard Langham Smith note in their Grove article on the subject, composers and librettists frequently rejected the use of the umbrella term opéra comique in favor of more precise labels.

Opera seria

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Structure#

Opera seria built upon the conventions of the High Baroque era by developing and exploiting the da capo aria, with its A–B–A form. The first section presented a theme, the second a complementary one, and the third a repeat of the first with ornamentation and elaboration of the music by the singer. As the genre developed and arias grew longer, a typical opera seria would contain not more than thirty musical movements. A typical opera would start with an instrumental overture of three movements (fast-slow-fast), the so-called “Italian overture”, though often termed a sinfonia in the period. Following that would then be a series of recitatives in verso sciolto (freely alternating unrhymed seven- and eleven-syllable lines) containing dialogue, interspersed with arias in rhymed verse expressing the emotions of the character, this pattern only broken by the occasional duet for the leading amatory couple. The recitative was typically secco: that is, accompanied only by continuo (usually harpsichord, theorbo, and cello, sometimes supported by further bass and chordal instruments). At moments of especially violent passion secco was replaced by stromentato (or accompagnato) recitative, where the singer was accompanied by the entire body of strings. * Aria di bravura / Aria d’agilità * Aria cantabile * Aria di mezzo carattere * Aria parlante / Aria di strepito * Aria di portamento A fourfold classification using aria d’affetto, grouping aria di portamento with aria parlante, is also seen. These are supplemented by the following, which could be classified into more than one of the above, but are distinguished by instrumentation (concertata, unisono) or textual considerations (imitazione): * Aria concertata * Aria d’imitazione / simile aria * Aria all’unisono Opere serie were structured into three acts; at the end of Act III they would conclude with a final upbeat chorus (lieto fine, literally a “happy ending”), with all the characters to celebrate the jubilant climax.

Opéra-ballet

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

The first work in the genre is generally held to be André Campra’s L’Europe galante (“Europe in Love”) of 1697, but Les Saisons of 1695 is often mentioned as the most distinctive prototype of this sort of composition Famous later examples are Les élémens (1721) by Destouches, Les Indes galantes (1735), and Les fêtes d’Hébé (1739) by Jean-Philippe Rameau.

References#

Anthony, James R. (2001). “Opéra-ballet” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edition, edited by Stanley Sadie. London: Macmillan. (hardcover). (eBook). Also at Oxford Music Online (subscription required).
Bartlet, M. Elizabeth C. (1992). “Opéra-ballet”, vol. 3, pp. 683–684, in The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, 4 volumes, edited by Stanley Sadie. New York: Grove. . Also at Oxford Music Online (subscription required).
Bellingham, Jane (2002). “opéra-ballet”, p. 862, in The Oxford Companion to Music, edited by Alison Latham. Oxford: Oxford University Press. . Also at Oxford Music Online (subscription required).
Pitou, Spire (1983). The Paris Opéra. An Encyclopedia of Operas, Ballets, Composers, and Performers – Genesis and Glory, 1671-1715. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. .
Warrack, John; West, Ewan (1992). The Oxford Dictionary of Opera. Oxford: Oxford University Press. .

Operatic pop

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

According to music historians, operatic pop songs became most prevalent with the rise of Tin Pan Alley musicians during the early 1900s. One influence was the large influx of Italian immigrants to the United States who popularized singers such as Enrico Caruso and inspired the creation of “novelty songs” using Italian dialect. The songs often used operatic repertory “to make a satirical or topical point”. Other singers, including Andrea Bocelli, Josh Groban, and Katherine Jenkins, also recorded the number. while his famous duet partner, British soprano Sarah Brightman, also gravitated considerably towards this combination of opera and pop music. In the 2000s, singers and singing groups devoted primarily to operatic pop built on this renewed success. Groups like Il Divo and Amici Forever have achieved popularity with the mix of “contemporary pop with operatic style” characteristic of operatic pop.

Operetta

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Definitions#

The term operetta arises in the mid-eighteenth-century Italy and it is first acknowledged as an independent genre in Paris around 1850. The definition of operetta has changed over the centuries and ranges depending on each country’s history with the genre. It is often used to refer to pieces that resemble the one-act compositions by Offenbach in contrast with his full length compositions, ‘opéra-bouffe’. Offenbach invented this art form in response to the French government’s oppressive laws surrounding the stagings of works that were larger than one act or contained more than four characters.

Orchestral jazz

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

Orchestral jazz developed from early New Orleans jazz. The African-American musicians who pioneered the genre prior to 1920, and who migrated from New Orleans to Chicago and New York in the early 1920s, brought jazz north; in time, the African-American neighborhood of Harlem became the genre’s cultural center. In New York, the entertainment and arts industries thrived and jazz found a fitting home, becoming an important part of the cultural landscape. But before the widespread popularity of big bands, which developed in tandem with the growing dance craze, jazz was generally regarded by the white mainstream as a rather crude variety of music. It was not widely listened to for its artistic value, as music critic Richard Hadlock writes: :“In the twenties, most of those who listened at all regarded jazz as merely an energetic background for dancers; the few who sought more profound values in the music tended to accept Paul Whiteman’s concert productions… as the only jazz worth taking seriously. A movement emerged during the 1920s, however, indebted in part to Paul Whiteman’s musical influence. This movement led to the more stylized, and more formal variety of jazz that would become orchestral jazz, imagined first by Whiteman as symphonic jazz. This stylization of jazz had elements of classical European composing, coupled with the rhythmic and instrumental sound of New Orleans jazz. Orchestral jazz was musically distinct from its southern predecessor for a variety of reasons: not only were the bands bigger, creating a certain richness of sound, but also the music was structurally more sophisticated. While New Orleans jazz was characterized by collective improvisation and the spontaneous reinterpretation of standard tunes, jazz orchestras played head arrangements that were composed and arranged prior to the performance in which they were executed. The busy, raucous style of early jazz did not hold the same kind of popular appeal that the comparative restraint of orchestral jazz did. In particular, the implementation of measured rhythm accounted for much of its popular appeal. The two-beat groove reminiscent of New Orleans jazz was replaced during the transition into the swing era by the bass innovations of Jimmy Blanton and Walter Page, both of whom are credited for developing the walking bass line. This would make four beats to the bar a jazz standard; furthermore, this rhythm was conducive to the kind of dancing audiences desired. Prearranged music had a particular commercial appeal, since audiences were familiar with the songs they saw performed live from the recordings they purchased. Furthermore, exposure to musical innovation—and jazz, in all its varieties, was certainly innovative—had never before reached the same breadth of American audience. Given the commercial availability of music—which, in addition to records, was aided by the proliferation of broadcast radio—a platform was thus created that accounted for the popularization of jazz. But the mass consumption of jazz simultaneously allowed the audience an inverted influence on its development, and consumer demands dictated that orchestral jazz adopted a structure similar to traditionally accessible popular music.

Orchestral song

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

What was effectively song with instrumental accompaniment – the cantata and the aria – had been part of music since the early baroque. Beethoven and Schumann too had occasionally provided instrumental accompaniment to some songs. Full orchestration, to enable a song to “hold its own” in a 19th-century concert environment, developed from the 1840s. Among the earliest experiments with orchestral song are those of Liszt who orchestrated several of his songs in the 1840s but did not publish them. Liszt also had the operetta composer August Conradi orchestrate his Le juif errant and Jeanne d’Arc around 1848, but these too were neither published nor performed. Long after Berlioz’ publication of his orchestrations of Les nuits d’été in 1856, Liszt finally published his own orchestration of Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher, as a dramatic scene for voice and orchestra in 1874. The form was brought to fruition by Mahler, to the extent that it is difficult to say where Mahler’s symphonies end and where his symphonic songs begin.

Organum

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Early organum#

The first document to describe organum specifically, and give rules for its performance, was the Musica enchiriadis (c. 895). The oldest methods of teaching organum can be found in the Scolica and the Bamberg Dialogues, along with the Musica enchiriadis. The societies that have developed polyphony usually have several types of it found in their culture. In its original conception, organum was never intended as polyphony in the modern sense; the added voice was intended as a reinforcement or harmonic enhancement of the plainchant at occasions of High Feasts of importance to further the splendour of the liturgy. The analogue evolution of sacred architecture and music is evident: during previous centuries monophonic Mass was celebrated in abbatial churches; in the course of the 12th and 13th centuries the newly consecrated cathedrals resounded with ever more complex forms of polyphony. Exactly what developments took place where and when in the evolution of polyphony is not always clear, though some landmarks remain visible in the treatises. As in these instances, it is hard to evaluate the relative importance of treatises, whether they describe the ‘actual’ practice or a deviation of it. As key-concept behind the creative outburst that manifested in the 11th and 12th centuries is the vertical and harmonic expansion of dimension, as the strongly resonant harmony of organum magnified the splendour of the celebration and heightened its solemnity. The earliest European sources of information concerning organum regard it as a well-known practice. Organum is also known to have been performed in several different rites, but the main wells of information concerning its history come from Gregorian chant. Considering that the trained singers had imbibed an oral tradition that was several centuries old, singing a small part of the chant repertory in straightforward heterophony of parallel harmony or other ways of “singing by the ear” would come naturally. It is made clear in the Musica enchiriadis that octave doubling (magadization) was acceptable, since such doubling was inevitable when men and boys sang together. The 9th-century treatise Scolica enchiriadis treats the subject in greater detail. For parallel singing, the original chant would be the upper voice, vox principalis; the vox organalis was at a parallel perfect interval below, usually a fourth. Thus the melody would be heard as the principal voice, the vox organalis as an accompaniment or harmonic reinforcement. This kind of organum is sometimes called parallel organum, although terms such as sinfonia or diaphonia were used in early treatises. The history of organum would not be complete without two of its greatest innovators, Léonin and Pérotin. These two men were “the first international composers of polyphonic music”. The innovations of Léonin and Pérotin mark the development of the rhythmic modes. These innovations are grounded in the forms of Gregorian chant, and adhere to the theoretical rhythmic systems of St. Augustine. It is the composers’ love for cantus firmus that caused the notation of the tenor line to stay the same, even when the methods of penning music were changing. It was the use of modal rhythm, however, that would make these two men great. Modal rhythm is defined clearly as a succession of (usually) unequal notes arranged in a definite pattern. The Notre-Dame composers’ development of musical rhythm allowed music to be free from its ties to text. While it is well known that Léonin composed a great deal of organum, it was the innovations of Pérotin, who spent much of his time revising the of Léonin, that caused generations of organum and motet composers to exploit the principles of the rhythmic modes.

Parody mass

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Etymology#

In the sense considered here, the term parody mass applies to masses where a polyphonic fragment from another work is used as the basis of a new composition. The term imitation mass has been suggested instead of parody mass, as being both more precise and closer to the original usage, since the term parody is based on a misreading of a late 16th-century text. In contradistinction, masses which incorporated only a single voice of the polyphonic source, treated not as a cantus firmus (‘Tenor Mass’) but elaborated and moving between different parts, are referred to by writers on musical theory as paraphrase masses. Other compositional techniques provided the basis for the cyclic mass, canon mass, and soggetto cavato. The modern English word ‘parody’ derives from ‘parody’, from , ‘burlesque song or poem’, from ‘beside, parallel to’ (in this case, “mock-”) + ‘song, or ode". See also A. , the first ode sung by the chorus after its entrance in the ancient Greek drama. In the case of masses, “parody” has almost nothing to do with humor or ridicule, as understood in the modern definition of the word; while in some cases bawdy secular songs were indeed used in composition of masses, equally often non-liturgical sacred music such as motets formed the basis for parody masses.

Parody music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Etymology#

The word “parody” derives from the post-classical Latin parodia, which came from the Greek παρῳδία ().

Renaissance#

The earliest musical application of this Greek term was only in 1587, on the title-page of a parody mass by the German composer Jakob Paix, as the equivalent of the previously usual Latin expressions missa ad imitationem or missa super …, which were used to acknowledge the source of borrowed musical material. Such preferences for Greek terms were a product of Renaissance humanism, which was strong in Germany by that time though the word’s use was infrequent and casual. It was only in modern times that the term “parody technique” came into general use as a historical musicological term, especially after the publication of Peter Wagner’s Geschichte der Messe in 1913. In Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Michael Tilmouth and Richard Sherr write of the genre: Many of the most famous composers of the 16th century, including Victoria, Lassus and Palestrina, used a wide range of earlier music in their masses, drawing on existing secular as well as religious pieces.

Part song

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

In Britain#

The part song was created in Great Britain, growing out of the madrigal tradition (though initially with more emphasis on homophonic harmony and less on polyphonic part writing) and the 18th century Glee. Paul Hillier describes the Glee as “a uniquely English creation…the convivial music of all-male musical societies”. The classic Glee is “essentially a work for unaccompanied men’s voices, in not less than three parts…simpler than the madrigal in texture, less sophisticated in design, and generally based on the simplest kind of diatonic harmony”. The part song was soon established as more suitable for mixed-voice choirs, its development marked by increasing complexity of form and contrapuntal content. Part songs were quickly seen as a commercial opportunity by music publishers. From the early 1840s Novello and Co’s Musical Times and Singing Class Circular included a simple piece of choral music (alternating secular and sacred) inside every issue, which choral society members subscribed to collectively for the sake of the music. Early British composers of part songs include R. J. S. Stevens, John Liptrot Hatton, Henry Smart and George Alexander Macfarren, the latter renowned for his Shakespearean settings. Around the turn of the 20th century in the heyday of the part song, Hubert Parry, Charles Villiers Stanford and Edward Elgar were the principal exponents, often bringing a high-minded seriousness to their settings of great English poetry both contemporary and from earlier epochs. More recent major contributors to the genre include Ralph Vaughan Williams, Granville Bantock, Arnold Bax, Peter Warlock, Gustav Holst and Benjamin Britten (his Five Flower Songs of 1950). Interest declined rapidly from the 1950s as more specialist choirs began to champion the madrigal tradition. Composers have also successfully used the part song medium to make contemporary arrangements of traditional folk songs, including those of Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland. Part songs can sometimes be sacred as well as secular. The unaccompanied liturgical anthem can be closely related in form and texture. Sullivan’s Five Sacred Partsongs were published in 1871.

Pasodoble

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Structure#

All pasodobles have binary rhythm. Its musical structure consists of an introduction based on the dominant chord of the piece, followed by a first fragment based on the main tone and a second part, called “the trío”, based on the sub-dominant note, based yet again on the dominant chord. Each change is preceded by a brieph. The last segment of the pasodoble is usually “the trío” strongly played. The different types of pasodoble – popular, taurino, militar – can vary in rhythm, with the taurino being the slowest and the popular being faster and often incorporating voice. Pasodoble as we know it started in Spain but is now played in a wide variety of Hispanic nations. Each region has developed its own subgenre and personal style of pasodoble, adjusting some formal aspects of the structure to fit their local musical tradition. In modern Spain, the most prolific composition of pasodobles takes place on the Valencian coast, associated with the festivals of Moors and Christians and the Fallas. The dance form is very free regarding figures. The dancers must remain one in front of the other, and keep their bodies parallel to each other at all times, leaning slightly to the left. They must give one step per tempo . The left hand of the male and the right hand of the woman must remain united almost permanently. Besides this, almost all motions and figures are accepted, which allows space for dramatization. The dance can be similar to the one-step, except for the speed and number of steps given.

Passacaglia

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Origin#

The term passacaglia (; ; Italian: passacaglia, passacaglio, passagallo, passacagli, passacaglie) derives from the Spanish pasar (cross, pass) and calle (street). It originated in early 17th-century Spain as a strummed interlude between instrumentally accompanied dances or songs. Despite the form’s Spanish roots (confirmed by references in Spanish literature of the period), the first written examples of passacaglias are found in an Italian source dated 1606. These pieces, as well as others from Italian sources from the beginning of the century, are simple, brief sequences of chords outlining a cadential formula. The passacaglia was redefined in the late 1620s by Italian composer Girolamo Frescobaldi, who transformed it into a series of continuous variations over a bass (which itself may be varied). Later composers adopted this model, and by the nineteenth century the word came to mean a series of variations over an ostinato pattern, usually of a serious character. A similar form, the chaconne, was also first developed by Frescobaldi. The two genres are closely related, and since “composers often used the terms chaconne and passacaglia indiscriminately … modern attempts to arrive at a clear distinction are arbitrary and historically unfounded”. In early scholarship, attempts to formally differentiate between the historical chaconne and passacaglia were made, but researchers often came to opposite conclusions. For example, Percy Goetschius held that the chaconne is usually based on a harmonic sequence with a recurring soprano melody, and the passacaglia was formed over a ground bass pattern, whereas Clarence Lucas defined the two forms in precisely the opposite way. More recently, however, some progress has been made toward making a useful distinction for the usage of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, when some composers (notably Frescobaldi and François Couperin) deliberately mixed the two genres in the same composition. The melodic pattern—usually four, six or eight (rarely seven) bars long—repeats without change through the duration of the piece, while the upper lines are varied freely, over the bass pattern serving as a harmonic anchor. The seventeenth-century chaconne, as found in Frescobaldi’s music, more often than not is in a major key, while the passacaglia is usually in a minor key. In eighteenth-century French practice, the passacaglia leans more strongly to the melodic basso ostinato, while the chaconne, “in a reversal of the seventeenth-century Italian practice, in various respects undergoes a freer treatment”.

Pavane

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Origin of term#

The word pavane is most probably derived from Italian danza padovana, meaning " dance typical of Padua" (similar to Bergamask, “dance from Bergamo”); pavan is an old Northern Italian form for the modern Italian adjective padovano (= from Padua). This origin is consistent with the equivalent form, Paduana. An alternative explanation is that it derives from the Spanish pavón meaning peacock. Although the dance is often associated with Spain, it is “almost certainly of Italian origin”.

Persian traditional music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

The history of musical development in Iran dates back thousands of years. Archaeological records attributed to the Elam in the southwest and of Oxus in the northeast, demonstrate musical traditions in prehistoric times. Little is known about the music of the classical Iranian empires of the Medes, the Achaemenids, and the Parthians. However, an elaborate musical scene is revealed through various fragmentary documents, including those that were observed at the court and in public theaters and those that accompanied religious rituals and battle preparations. The history of Sasanian music is better documented than the earlier periods, and the names of various instruments and court musicians from the reign of the Sasanians have been attested. Under the Sasanian rule, modal music was developed by a poet-musician of the court named Barbad, who is remembered in many documents. He may have invented the lute and the musical tradition that was to transform into the forms of dastgah and maqam. He has been credited to have organized a musical system consisting of seven “royal modes” (), 30 derived modes (), and 360 melodies (). Iran’s academic classical music, in addition to preserving melody types attributed to Sasanian musicians, is based on the theories of sonic aesthetics as expounded by the likes of Iranian musical theorists in the early centuries of after the Muslim conquest of the Sasanian Empire, most notably Avicenna, Farabi, Qotb-ed-Din Shirazi, and Safi-ed-Din Urmawi. During the late Qajar and the early Pahlavi eras, numerous musical compositions were produced within the parameters of classical Iranian modes, and many involved western musical harmonies. The introduction and popularity of western musical influences in the early contemporary era was criticized by traditionalists, who felt that traditional music was becoming endangered. It was prior to the 1950s that Iran’s music industry was dominated by classical musicians. In 1968, Dariush Safvat and Nur-Ali Borumand helped form an institution called the Center for Preservation and Propagation of Iranian Music, with the help of Reza Ghotbi, director of the National Iranian Radio and Television, an act that is credited with saving traditional music in the 1970s. The “Radif of Iranian music” was officially inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2009, described as “the traditional repertoire of the classical music of Iran”.

Phase music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Origins#

In 1965, influenced by Terry Riley’s use of tape looping and delay, the American composer Steve Reich started experimenting with looping techniques and accidentally discovered the potential of gradual phase shifting as a compositional resource. In discussing the technicalities of what has been termed a “phase shifting process” Reich has stated that it is related to infinite canon or rounds in medieval music. The difference between phase music and traditional rounds, where two or more identical melodies are played with one starting after the other, is that the melodic phrases are generally short repeating patterns with the imitation being variable instead of fixed.

Piano quartet

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

List of works#

The following is an incomplete list of piano quartets by famous and lesser-known composers. Ordering is by surname of composer.

A-B#

Elfrida Andrée
Piano Quartet A minor (1870)
Henk Badings
Piano Quartet (1973)
Jeanne Barbillion
Quatuor avec piano
Béla Bartók
Piano Quartet in C minor (1898)
Arnold Bax
Piano Quartet, in one movement (1922)
Ludwig van Beethoven
Piano Quartet WoO 36, No. 1 in E-flat major (1785)
Piano Quartet WoO 36, No. 2 in D major (1785)
Piano Quartet WoO 36, No. 3 in C major (1785)
Opus 16/b: Piano Quartet in E-flat (1797) (arrangement of Quintet for Piano and Winds, Op. 16)
Paul Ben-Haim
Piano Quartet in C minor, Op.4 (1920)
Wilhelm Berger
Piano Quartet in A major, op. 21 (published 1887)
Piano Quartet in C minor, op. 100
Charles Auguste de Bériot
Piano Quartet in A minor, Op. 50 (1881)
Leopoldine Blahetka
Piano Quartet No. 1 in A major, Op. 43 (1836)
Piano Quartet No. 2 in E-flat major, Op. 44 (1837/38)
Arthur Bliss
Piano Quartet in A minor (1915)
Nancy Bloomer Deussen
Pacific City for Piano Quartet (2017)
Léon Boëllmann
Piano Quartet in F minor, Op. 10 (c. 1890)
William Bolcom
Piano Quartet (1976)
Mélanie Bonis
Piano Quartet No. 1 in B-flat major, Op. 69 (1905)
Piano Quartet No. 2 in D major, Op. 124 (1927)
Johannes Brahms
Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, Op. 25 (1859)
Piano Quartet No. 2 in A major, Op. 26 (1862)
Piano Quartet No. 3 in C minor, Op. 60 (1875)
Charlotte Bray
Replay (2011)
Zustände (2016)
Frank Bridge
Phantasy Piano Quartet in F-sharp minor, H. 94 (1910)
Dora Bright
Piano Quartet in D major (1893)
James Francis Brown
Piano Quartet (2004) '

C-D#

Alexis de Castillon
Piano Quartet in G minor, Op.7 (1869)
Georgy Catoire
Piano Quartet in A minor, Op.31 (1916)
Ernest Chausson
Piano Quartet in A major, Op.30 (1897)
Rhona Clarke
Undercurrent (2001)
Osvaldo Coluccino
Eco immobile (2002)
Aaron Copland
Piano Quartet (1950)
Vincent d’Indy
Piano Quartet in A minor, Op.7 (1878–88)
Tina Davidson
Barefoot (2011)
Leap (2020)
Peter Maxwell Davies
Piano Quartet (2007)
Emma Lou Diemer
Piano Quartet (1954)
Ernst von Dohnányi
Piano Quartet in F minor, (1894)
Théodore Dubois
Piano Quartet in A minor (1907)
Jan Ladislav Dussek
Piano Quartet in E-flat major (1804)
Antonín Dvořák
Piano Quartet No. 1 in D major, Op. 23 (1875)
Bagatelles, Op. 47 (for two violins, cello and harmonium (or piano); 1878)
Piano Quartet No. 2 in E-flat major, Op. 87 (1889)

E-F#

Danny Elfman
Piano Quartet (2017)
Rosalind Ellicott
Piano Quartet in D major (1895)
George Enescu
Piano Quartet No. 1 in D major, Op. 16 (1909)
Piano Quartet No. 2 in D minor, Op. 30 (1943–1944)
Gabriel Fauré
Piano Quartet No. 1 in C minor, Op. 15 (1876–79, Finale rev. 1883)
Piano Quartet No. 2 in G minor, Op. 45 (1885–86)
Morton Feldman
Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello (1987)
Zdeněk Fibich
Piano Quartet in E minor, Op. 11 (1874)
Graciane Finzi
Free Quartet (1984)
Elena Firsova
Frozen Time (2013-16)
Eugénie-Emilie Juliette Folville
1er Quatuor pour piano, Op. 9 (1885)
Jacqueline Fontyn
Musica a quattro for piano quartet (1966)
Arthur Foote
Piano Quartet in C major, Op. 23 (1890)
Erika Fox
Malinconia Militare for Piano Quartet (2003)
Richard Franck
Piano Quartet No.1 in A Major, Op.33 (1901)
Piano Quartet No.2 in E Major, Op.41 (1905)
Carl Frühling
Piano Quartet in D major, Op. 35
Robert Fuchs
Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, Op. 15 (1876)
Piano Quartet No. 2 in B minor, Op. 75 (1904)
Vivian Fung
Shifting Landscapes (2018)

G-H#

Hans Gál
Piano Quartet in B major, Op.13 (1914)
Friedrich Gernsheim
Piano Quartet No. 1 in E major, Op. 6 (1865)
Piano Quartet No. 2 in C minor, Op. 20 (performed in 2003. Pub. ca. 1870.)
Piano Quartet No. 3 in F major, Op. 47 (1883)
Ruth Gipps
Brocade, Op. 17 (1941)
Hermann Goetz
Piano quartet in E major Op. 6 (1867)
Reynaldo Hahn
Piano Quartet in G major
Ilmari Hannikainen
Piano Quartet in F-Sharp Minor
John Harbison
November 19, 1828 (1988)
Robert Helps
Piano Quartet (1997)
Louise Héritte-Viardot
Piano Quartet No. 1 in A major, Op. 9 (published in 1883)
Piano Quartet No. 2 in D major, Op. 11 (published in 1883)
Piano Quartet No. 3 in D minor (1877-1878)
Heinrich von Herzogenberg
Piano quartet No.1 in E minor, Op. 75 (1891-1892)
Piano quartet No. 2 in B major, Op. 95 (1897)
Alfred Hill
The Sacred Mountain (1932)
Wilhelm Hill
Piano Quartet in E major, Op. 44 (1879)
Ferdinand Hiller
Piano Quartet No. 1 in B minor, Op. 1 (1826)
Piano Quartet No. 2 in F minor, Op. 3 (1830)
Piano Quartet No. 3 in A minor, Op. 133 (1870)
Franz Anton Hoffmeister
Piano Quartet in G major (1785)
Piano Quartet in B-flat major (1788)
Herbert Howells
Piano Quartet in A minor, Op. 21 (1916-1st version, 1936-2nd version)
Hans Huber
Piano Quartet No.1 in B major, Op.110 (1891/2?)
Piano Quartet No.2 in E major, Op.117 (1901)
Ferdinand Hummel
Piano Quartet in C-sharp minor, Op. 19 (1879)
Johann Nepomuk Hummel
Piano Quartet in G major, Op. post. (2 movements; published in 1839)
William Hurlstone
Piano Quartet in E minor, Op. 43 (1906)

I-L#

Salomon Jadassohn
Piano Quartet 1 in C minor, Op.77 (1884)
Piano Quartet 2 in G major, Op.86 (1887)
Piano Quartet 3 in A minor, Op. 109 (1890)
Marie Jaëll
Piano Quartet in G minor (1875)
Gustav Jenner
Piano Quartet in F major (1905)
Robert Kahn
Piano Quartet No. 1 in b minor, Op. 14 (1891)
Piano Quartet No. 2 in a minor, Op. 30 (1899)
Piano Quartet No. 3 in c minor, Op. 41 (1904)
Hannah Kendall
Network Bed (2018)
Friedrich Kiel
Piano Quartet No. 1 in a minor, Op. 43 (1866)
Piano Quartet No. 2 in E major, Op. 44 (1866)
Piano Quartet No. 3 in G major, Op. 50 (1867)
Uuno Klami (1900-1961)
Piano Quartet in D major
Arnold Krug
Piano Quartet in C minor, Op. 17 (1879)
Friedrich Kuhlau
Piano Quartet No. 1 in C minor, Op. 32 (1820-1821)
Piano Quartet No. 2 in A major, Op. 50 (1822)
Piano Quartet No. 3 in G minor, Op. 108 (composed in 1829, published in 1833)
Josef Labor
Piano Quartet in C major, Op.6 (1893)
Paul Lacombe
Piano Quartet in C minor, Op. 101 (1904)
Libby Larsen
Over, Easy (2009)
Anne Lauber
Piano Quartet (1989)
Luise Adolpha Le Beau
Piano Quartet in F minor, Op. 28 (1883-1884)
Nicola Le Fanu
Miniature and Canon (2000)
Helvi Leiviskä
Piano Quartet in A Major, Op. 1 (1926)
Guillaume Lekeu
Piano Quartet in B minor - (incomplete, first and second movement only; 1893)
Jeanne Leleu
Quatuor pour piano et cordes (1922)
Lowell Liebermann
Piano Quartet Op.114 (2010)
Helene Liebmann
Grand Quatuor pour Pianoforte, Violon, Viola et Violoncelle in A-flat major, Op. 13
Ruth Lomon
Shadowing for Piano Quartet (1993)
Running with the Wolves for Piano Quartet (1994)

M#

Alexander Mackenzie
Piano Quartet in E major, Op. 11 (1873)
Gustav Mahler
Piano Quartet in A minor (only 1st movement completed; 1876)
Otto Malling
Piano Quartet in C minor, Op.80 (1904)
Joan Manén
Piano Quartet Op. A-6 “Mobilis in mobili” (1901)
Bevan Manson
Quartet for violin, viola, cello and piano (2007)
Tera de Marez Oyens
Dublin Quartet (1989)
Heinrich Marschner
Piano Quartet No. 1 in B-flat major, Op. 36 (1827)
Piano Quartet No. 2 in G major, Op. 158 (1853)
Bohuslav Martinů
Piano Quartet, H. 287 (1942)
Emilie Mayer
Piano Quartet in E-flat major
Piano Quartet in G major
Piano Quartet (2015)
Fanny Hensel
Piano Quartet in A-flat major, H-U No. 55 (1822)
Felix Mendelssohn
Piano Quartet in D minor (1821)
Piano Quartet No. 1 in C minor, Op. 1 (1822)
Piano Quartet No. 2 in F minor, Op. 2 (1823)
Piano Quartet No. 3 in B minor, Op. 3 (1825)
Elena Mendoza
Nebelsplitter for Piano, Violin, Viola and Cello (2007/2008)
Olivier Messiaen
Quatuor pour la fin du temps (for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano; 1941)
Darius Milhaud
Piano Quartet, Op. 417 (1966)
Bernhard Molique
Piano Quartet, Op. 71 in E-flat major (published 1870)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, K. 478 (1785)
Piano Quartet No. 2 in E-flat major, K. 493 (1786)

N-R#

Eduard Nápravník
Piano Quartet in A minor, Op.42 (1882)
Zygmunt Noskowski
Piano Quartet in D minor, Op. 8 (premiered in 1879, published in 1881)
Vítězslav Novák
Piano Quartet in C minor, Op.7 (1894, rev. 1899)
Cornélie van Oosterzee
Piano Quartet in C-sharp minor (c. 1890)
Henrique Oswald
Piano Quartet No. 1 (Piccolo quartetto) in F-sharp minor, Op. 5 (1888)
Piano Quartet No. 2 in G major, Op. 26 (1898)
Hubert Parry
Piano Quartet in A-flat major (1882)
Dora Pejačević
Piano Quartet in D minor, Op. 25 (1908)
Walter Piston
Piano Quartet (1964)
Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia
Piano Quartet No. 1 in E-flat major (published 1806)
Piano Quartet No. 2 in F minor (published 1806)
Ebenezer Prout
Piano Quartet in C major, Op.2 (1865 ca.)
Piano Quartet No.2 in F major, Op.18 (1882?)
Osmo Tapio Räihälä
Les Oréades (2014)
Santa Ratniece
feu sur glace (2019)
Max Reger
Piano Quartet No. 1 in D minor, Op.113 (1910)
Piano Quartet No. 2 in A minor, Op.133 (1914)
Carl Reinecke
Piano Quartet in E-flat major, Op.34 (1853)
Piano Quartet in D major, Op.272 (1904)
Josef Gabriel Rheinberger
Piano Quartet in E flat major, Op. 38 (1870)
Ferdinand Ries
Piano Quartet in F minor, Op.13 (1808)
Piano Quartet in E-flat major, Op.17 (1809)
Piano Quartet in E minor No.3, Op.129 (1820 or 1822?)
Amanda Röntgen-Maier
Piano Quartet in E minor (1891)
Anton Rubinstein
Piano Quartet in C major, Op. 66 (1864)

S#

Camille Saint-Saëns
Piano Quartet in E major, Op. post (1851–53)
Serenade in E-flat major, Op. 15 (for violin, viola (or cello), organ, and piano; 1865)
Piano Quartet in B-flat major, Op. 41 (1875)
Caprice sur des airs danois et russes, Op. 79 (for flute, oboe, clarinet and piano; 1887)
Barcarolle in F major, Op. 108 (for violin, cello, harmonium, and piano; 1898)
Quartet for pianoforte, violin, viola and violoncello in C major, Op.14 (1908?)
Quartet for 2 violins, viola and violoncello in G major, Op.17 (1905)
Alfred Schnittke
Piano Quartet, based on a fragment by Gustav Mahler (1988)
Franz Schubert
Adagio and Rondo concertante in F major, D487 (1816)
Georg Schumann
Piano Quartet in F minor, Op. 29 (1901)
Robert Schumann
Piano Quartet in E-flat major, Op. 47 (1842)
Cyril Scott
Piano Quartet in E minor, Op. 16 (1899)
Johanna Senfter
Piano Quartet in E Minor, Op. 11
Piano Quartet in D Minor, Op. 112
Eric Sessler
Piano Quartet (2004)
Vache Sharafyan
“Adumbrations of the Peacock” for piano quartet (2003)
“Good-lights” four movements for piano quartet (2018)
Caroline Shaw
Thousandth Orange (2018)
Nikos Skalkottas
Scherzo for piano quartet (1939)
Alice Mary Smith
Piano Quartet No. 1 in B-flat major (1861)
Piano Quartet No. 2 in E major
Piano Quartet No. 3 in D major (1864)
Piano Quartet No. 4 in G minor (1867)
Linda Catlin Smith
Dark Flower (2020)
Marcelle Soulage
Piano Quartet (1925)
Charles Villiers Stanford
Piano Quartet No. 1 in F Major, Op. 15 (1879)
Piano Quartet No. 2 in C Minor, Op. 133 (1914)
Johann Franz Xaver Sterkel
Piano Quartet in B-flat major, StWV 157 (ca. 1804)
Richard Stöhr
Piano Quartet in D minor, Op.63
Richard Strauss
Piano Quartet in C minor, Op. 13 (1884–1885)
Rita Strohl
Quatuor pour piano et cordes en ré mineur (1891)
Josef Suk
Piano Quartet in A min, Op.1 (1891)
Ananda Sukarlan
Variations on C. Simanjuntak’s “Tanah Tumpah Darahku” (2020)
Freda Swain
The Sea (1938)

T-Z#

Dobrinka Tabakova
Goldberg Gymnopedie (2011)
Josef Tal
Piano Quartet for violin, viola, cello & piano (1982)
Sergei Taneyev
Piano Quartet in E major, Op. 20 (1906)
Ferdinand Thieriot
Piano Quartet in E major, Op.30 (1875)
Anna S. Þorvaldsdóttir
Shades of Silence (for violin, viola, cello & harpsichord; version for violin, viola, cello & piano also available; 2012)
Piano Quartet (2017)
Donald Tovey
Piano Quartet in E minor, Op. 12 (1913)
Joan Tower
White Granite for Piano Quartet (2010)
Eduard Tubin
Piano Quartet in C-sharp minor, ETW 59 (1930)
Joaquín Turina
Piano Quartet in A minor, Op. 67 (1931)
Stefania Turkewich
Piano Quartet
Gwyneth Van Anden Walker
Letters to the World (2001)
Earth and Sky for Violin, Viola, Cello, and Piano with Readers (2018)
Joelle Wallach
Runes and Ritual
William Walton
Piano Quartet in D minor
Johann Baptist Wanhal
Piano Quartet in E-flat major, Op. 40 No. 1
Piano Quartet in G major, Op. 40 No. 2
Piano Quartet in B-flat major, Op. 40 No. 3
Graham Waterhouse
Skylla and Charybdis (2014)
Vilma von Webenau
Piano Quartet in E minor
Carl Maria von Weber
Piano Quartet in B-flat major, J. 76 (1809)
Judith Weir
Piano Quartet (2000)
Charles-Marie Widor
Piano Quartet in A minor, Op. 66 (1891)
John Williams
Air and Simple Gifts (2009)
John Woolrich
Adagissimo (1997)
Sestina (1997)
Georg Hendrik Witte
Piano Quartet in A major, Op. 5 (1867)
Władysław Żeleński
Piano Quartet in C minor, Op. 61 (1907)

List of ensembles#

Fauré Quartet
Domus Quartet
Garth Newel Piano Quartet
Mariani Klavierquartett
Tunnell Piano Quartet
Copenhagen Piano Quartet
Bohuslav Martinů Piano Quartet
Bartholdy Piano Quartet
Menuhin Festival Piano Quartet
Berlin Piano Quartet
Ames Piano Quartet
Mozart Piano Quartet
Amara Piano Quartet
Frith Piano Quartet
Ax, Ma, Laredo & Stern

External links#

Piano Quartet Repertoire — A Comprehensive Listing of the piano quartet repertoire by major composers at the New Zealand Piano Quartet website
Ames Piano Quartet
Public Domain Piano Quartet Scores from IMSLP

Piano quintet

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The piano quintet before 1842#

While the related chamber music genres of the piano trio and piano quartet were established in the eighteenth century by Mozart and others, the piano quintet did not come into its own until the nineteenth century. Its roots extend into the late Classical period, when piano concertos were sometimes transcribed for piano with string quartet accompaniment. Although Luigi Boccherini composed quintets for piano and string quartet, before 1842 it was more common for the piano to be joined by violin, viola, cello and double bass. Among the best known quintets for this combination of instruments are Franz Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet in A major (1819) and Johann Nepomuk Hummel’s Piano Quintet in E-flat minor, Op.87 (1802). Other piano quintets using this instrumentation were composed by Jan Ladislav Dussek (1799), Ferdinand Ries (1817), Johann Baptist Cramer (1825, 1832), Henri Jean Rigel (1826), Johann Peter Pixis (ca.1827), Franz Limmer (1832), Louise Farrenc (1839, 1840), and George Onslow (1846, 1848, 1849). Mozart (in 1784) and Ludwig van Beethoven (in 1796) each composed a quintet for piano and winds, scored for piano, oboe, clarinet, horn, and bassoon, that are sometimes referred to as piano quintets.

Piano trio

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Form#

Works titled “Piano Trio” tend to be in the same overall shape as a sonata. Initially this was in the three movement form, though some of Joseph Haydn’s have two movements. In five late works, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is generally credited with transforming the accompanied keyboard sonata, in which the essentially optional cello doubles the bass of the keyboard left hand, into the balanced trio which has since been a central form of chamber music. With the early 19th century, particularly Ludwig van Beethoven, this genre was felt to be more appropriate to cast in the four movement form. Piano trios that are set in the Sonata tradition share the general concerns of such works for their era, and often are reflective directly of symphonic practice with individual movements laid out according to the composer’s understanding of the sonata form. In the Classical era, home music-making made the piano trio a very popular genre for arrangements of other works. For example, Beethoven transcribed his first two symphonies for piano trio. Thus a large number of works exist for the arrangement of piano, violin and violoncello which are not generally titled or numbered as piano trios, but which are nonetheless part of the overall genre. These include single movements as well as sets of variations such as Beethoven’s Kakadu Variations Op. 121a and Variations in E flat major Op. 44. After the Classical era, works for piano and two instruments continue to be written which are not presented as in the sonata tradition, or are arrangements of other works. Many of these individual works are popular on concert programs, for example Joseph Suk’s Elegy.

Pizmonim

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Geographical background#

Pizmonim are traditionally associated with Sephardi Jews, although they are related to Ashkenazi Jews’ zemirot. The best known tradition is associated with Jews descended from Aleppo, though similar traditions exist among Iraqi Jews (where the songs are known as shbaḥoth, praises) and in North African countries. Jews of Greek, Turkish and Balkan origin have songs of the same kind in Ladino, associated with the festivals: these are known as coplas.

Plainsong

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History#

Plainsong developed during the earliest centuries of Christianity, influenced possibly by the music of the Jewish synagogue and certainly by the Greek modal system. It has its own system of notation. Their collection consists of 170 volumes of plainsong chants for the procession, Mass, and Office. It is probable that even in the early period the two methods caused the differentiation in the style of musical composition which is observed throughout the later history of plain chant, the choral compositions being of a simple kind, the solo compositions more elaborate, using a more extended compass of melodies and longer groups of notes on single syllables. The last type of plainsong performance is the solo performed by the choir or the individual performer. The Plainsong and Medieval Music Society was founded in 1888 to promote the performance and study of liturgical chant and medieval polyphony. Interest in plainsong picked up in 1950s Britain, particularly in the left-wing religious and musical groups associated with Gustav Holst and the writer George B. Chambers. In the late 1980s, plainchant achieved a certain vogue as music for relaxation, and several recordings of plainchant became “classical-chart hits”.

Polka

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Etymology#

The term polka referring to the dance is believed to derive from the Czech words “půlka”, meaning “half-step”. Czech cultural historian Čeněk Zíbrt attributes the term to the Czech word půlka (half), referring to both the half-tempo and the half-jump step of the dance. The name was changed to “Polka” as an expression of honour and sympathy for Poland and the Poles after the November Uprising 1830–1831. “Polka” meaning, in both the Czech and Polish languages, “Polish woman”. The name was widely introduced into the major European languages in the early 1840s.

Polonaise

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Influence of Polonaise in music#

The notation alla polacca ( means “polonaise”) on a musical score indicates that the piece should be played with the rhythm and character of a polonaise. For example, the third movement of Beethoven’s Triple Concerto op. 56, marked “Rondo alla polacca,” the last movement in Weber’s Clarinet Concerto No. 2 is marked “Alla Polacca”, his Horn Concertino likewise ends with a polka movement, and the finale of Chopin’s Variations on “Là ci darem la mano” both feature this notation. In his book Classic Music: Expression, Form, and Style, Leonard G. Ratner cites the fourth movement from Beethoven’s Serenade in D major, Op. 8, marked “Allegretto alla Polacca,” as a representative example of the polonaise dance topic (Ratner 1980, pp. 12–13). Frédéric Chopin’s polonaises are generally the best known of all polonaises in classical music. However, there had been a long tradition of polonaises in Western European music at least a century before Chopin. Händel wrote a famous one, and Wilhelm Fiedemann Bach wrote a number of in major-minor pairs. Other composers who wrote polonaises or pieces in polonaise rhythm include Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, Georg Philipp Telemann, Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Danzi, Bernhard Henrik Crusell, Karol Kurpiński, Józef Elsner, Maria Agata Szymanowska, Henryk Wieniawski, Franz Schubert, Carl Maria von Weber, Clara Schumann, Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt, Johann Kaspar Mertz, Moritz Moszkowski, Modest Mussorgsky, Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Alexander Scriabin. Another more recent prolific polonaise composer was the American Edward Alexander MacDowell. John Philip Sousa wrote the Presidential Polonaise, intended to keep visitors moving briskly through the White House receiving line. Sousa wrote it in 1886 after a suggestion from then-President of the United States Chester A. Arthur, who found it undignified, temporarily replacing Hail to the Chief as the presidential march under Sousa’s leadership of the United States Marine Band. Tchaikovsky’s opera Eugene Onegin, an adaption of Alexander Pushkin’s novel in poetry verse, includes a famous polonaise.

Polyphonic era

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Gothic period (c. 1170–c. 1310)#

Earliest forms of notated polyphonic music are developed known as ars antiqua or “ancient art”.

Ars nova (14th century)#

New techniques of rhythm and melody brought more feeling to the music, paving the way for the first important polyphonic music schools. “Ars nova” means “new art”.

Important polyphonic schools (15th–16th centuries)#

Netherland (Flemish) School: Guillaume Dufay (1400–1474), Josquin des Prez (c. 1450–1521), and Orlande de Lassus (1532–1594)
Venetian School: Adrian Willaert (c. 1488–1562), and Giovanni Gabrieli (c. 1557–c.1612)
Roman School: Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (c. 1525–1594), and Tomás Luis de Victoria (c. 1548–1611)

Secular polyphonic music (16th century)#

William Byrd (1543–1623)
Thomas Morley (1557–1603)
Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643)
Orlando Gibbons (1583–1625)

Baroque period#

During the Baroque period, forms become more elaborate, attention paid to dramatic effect, choruses combined with arias, duets and quartets with choral music accompanied by instruments. New church forms developed such as the oratorio, the passion, and the cantata. *Heinrich Schütz (1585–1672) *Giacomo Carissimi (1605–1674) *J. S. Bach (1685–1750) *G. F. Handel (1685–1759)

Postminimalism

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Visual art#

Postminimalist visual art uses minimalism either as a conceptual art aesthetic or a generative art practice. Like Fluxus, postminimalism is more of an artistic tendency than a particular style, but in general, postminimalist artworks often use everyday objects, simple materials, and sometimes take on a pure formalist aesthetic or post-conceptual approaches. However, since postminimalism includes such a diverse and disparate group of artists, it is impossible to enumerate all the continuities and similarities between them. But as two opposing examples, take the work of Eva Hesse and her use of modern art grids and minimalist seriality that were usually hand-made, introducing a human element into minimalism in contrast to the machine fabrication more typical of the minimalism of someone like Carl Andre. American sculptor Christopher Wilmarth falls within the post-Minimalist movement alongside Eva Hesse and Bruce Nauman. Wilmarth’s work eschewed the perfect machine-made aesthetic of the minimalists, yet also resisted the process-oriented excess of much 1970s postminimalist sculpture. Richard Serra was another prominent postminimalist though his large metal sculptures are completely machine made.

Postmodern music

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The postmodernist musical attitude#

Postmodernism in music is not a distinct musical style, but rather refers to music of the postmodern era. Postmodernist music, on the other hand, shares characteristics with postmodernist art—that is, art that comes after and reacts against modernism (see Modernism in Music). Rebecca Day, Lecturer in Music Analysis, writes “within music criticism, postmodernism is seen to represent a conscious move away from the perceptibly damaging hegemony of binaries such as aestheticism/formalism, subject/object, unity/disunity, part/whole, that were seen to dominate former aesthetic discourse, and that when left unchallenged (as postmodernists claim of modernist discourse) are thought to de-humanise music analysis”. Fredric Jameson, a major figure in the thinking on postmodernism and culture, calls postmodernism “the cultural dominant of the logic of late capitalism”, meaning that, through globalization, postmodern culture is tied inextricably with capitalism (Mark Fisher, writing 20 years later, goes further, essentially calling it the sole cultural possibility). Drawing from Jameson and other theorists, David Beard and Kenneth Gloag argue that, in music, postmodernism is not just an attitude but also an inevitability in the current cultural climate of fragmentation. As early as 1938, Theodor Adorno had already identified a trend toward the dissolution of “a culturally dominant set of values”, citing the commodification of all genres as beginning of the end of genre or value distinctions in music. In some respects, Postmodern music could be categorized as simply the music of the postmodern era, or music that follows aesthetic and philosophical trends of postmodernism, but with Jameson in mind, it is clear these definitions are inadequate. As the name suggests, the postmodernist movement formed partly in reaction to the ideals of modernism, but in fact postmodern music is more to do with functionality and the effect of globalization than it is with a specific reaction, movement, or attitude. In the face of capitalism, Jameson says, “It is safest to grasp the concept of the postmodern as an attempt to think the present historically in an age that has forgotten how to think historically in the first place”.

Puirt à beul

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Term#

The Scottish Gaelic term port à beul refers to “a tune from a mouth—specifically a cheerful tune—which in the plural becomes puirt à beul”. In Scotland, they are usually referred to as puirt à beul but a variety of other spellings and misspellings also exists, for example port-a-beul, puirt a bheul, puirt a’ bhéil, etc. These are mostly because a number of grammatical particles in Gaelic are very similar in nature, such as the definite article a, the prepositions “of” and “to” which can both be a and the preposition á “from” which can appear without the acute accent. Modern Irish dictionaries give port (aireacht) béil, translated as “mouth music” also referred to as lilting. Older dictionaries, such as Dinneen, only give portaiḋeaċt, portaireaċt, or portonaċt. Puirt à beul are related to Irish lilting, Scottish diddling, New Brunswick chin music, and other “Celtic” forms of mouth music. However, whereas these latter forms of mouth music consist of improvised vocables, puirt à beul lyrics are fixed and almost always consist of “real” (i.e. lexical) words, although sometimes vocables are also present.

Qudud Halabiya

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History#

Qudud Halabiya originated in al-Andalus. However, it was formed as a musical genre in the Levant, mainly in the city of Aleppo. It was developed by the musicians in Aleppo, based on secular, folk and religious songs. During the 20th century, Qudud Halabiya further developed and popularized by many Aleppine musicians including Omar al-Batsh (1885–1950), Abdul Qader al-Hajjar (1917–1993), Bakri al-Kurdi (1909–1978), Bakri Rajab (1910–1979), Sabri Moudallal (1918-2006), Sabah Fakhri (1933-2021), Mohammad Khairy (1935-1981), etc. Contemporary Qudud Halabiya performers include Mohammad Qadri Dallal, Shadi Jamil, Nihad Najjar, Hamam Khairy, Shahd Barmada, Nadya Manfukh, Subhi Toufic, Ahmad Azrak etc.

Quodlibet

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Renaissance#

The quodlibet originated in 15th-century Europe, during a time when the practice of combining folk tunes was popular. Composer Wolfgang Schmeltzl first used the term in a specifically musical context in 1544. The Por las sierras de Madrid by Francisco de Peñalosa (c. 1470–1528) is an ensalada -an early form of the quodlibet- contained in the Cancionero Musical de Palacio, a manuscript of the early 16th century. Composer Ludwig Senfl (1486–1542/43) was able to juxtapose several pre-existing melodies in a cantus firmus quodlibet; one such piece, "" / “Es taget”, was noted for its symbolism rather than its humor. It was not until 1618, however, that anyone published a rigorous definition of the quodlibet: Michael Praetorius described it as “a mixture of diverse elements quoted from sacred and secular compositions”. During the Renaissance, a composer’s ability to juxtapose several pre-existing melodies, such as in the cantus firmus quodlibet, was considered the ultimate mastery of counterpoint.

Ragtime

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Etymology#

While the word ragtime was first recorded in 1896, the term probably originates in the dance events known as “rags”, hosted by enslaved black folk bound to the plantation system. The first recorded use of the term ragtime was by vaudeville musician Ben Harney who in 1896 used it to describe the piano music he played (which he had extracted from banjo and fiddle players) and first published the year prior.

Recitative

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Origins#

The first use of recitative in opera was preceded by the monodies of the Florentine Camerata in which Vincenzo Galilei, father of the astronomer Galileo Galilei, played an important role. The elder Galilei, influenced by his correspondence with Girolamo Mei on the writings of the ancient Greeks and with Erycius Puteanus on the writings of Hucbald and wishing to recreate the old manner of storytelling and drama, pioneered the use of a single melodic line to tell the story, accompanied by simple chords from a harpsichord or lute. In the Baroque era, recitatives were commonly rehearsed on their own by the stage director, the singers frequently supplying their own favourite baggage arias which might be by a different composer (some of Mozart’s so-called concert arias fall into this category). This division of labour persisted into the 19th century: Rossini’s La Cenerentola (1817, recitatives by Luca Agolini ) is a famous example. Later it remained a custom to replace originally spoken dialogue with new recitatives: Carl Maria von Weber’s Der Freischütz (1821, adapted 1841 with recitatives by Hector Berlioz for the Paris Opera), Georges Bizet’s Carmen (1875, recitatives by Ernest Guiraud for the posthumous run in Vienna the same year), Charles Gounod’s Mireille and La colombe (staged by Sergei Diaghilev with recitatives respectively by Eric Satie and Francis Poulenc ).

Religious Jewish music

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History of religious Jewish music#

The history of religious Jewish music is that of the Jerusalem Temples, synagogal, and cantoral music composed for Jewish worship contexts since the period of the First Temple. The earliest synagogal music was based on that used during Jewish rituals performed in the Temple in Jerusalem. According to the Mishnah, the regular Temple orchestra consisted of twelve instruments and a choir of twelve male singers. A number of additional instruments were known to the ancient Hebrews but were not included in the Temple’s regular orchestra: the uggav (a small flute) and the abbuv (a reed flute or oboe-like instrument). After the destruction of the Second Temple and subsequent Jewish diasporization, music in religious contexts was initially banned. Later, these restrictions were relaxed—save for Yemenite Jews, who maintained strict adherence to Talmudic and Maimonidean Halakha, and, “instead of developing the playing of musical instruments, they perfected singing and rhythm.” It was with the development of the genre of piyyut (pl. piyyutim, ’liturgical poems’) that Jewish religious music began to crystallize into definite form. In the Jewish congregational setting, the hazzan chanted piyyutim to melodies selected by their composers or composed by himself, thus introducing fixed melodies into synagogal music. The music likely retained some phrases from Temple songs, including scripture, but mainly reflected the tones familiar to Jews of various ages and places, influencing both borrowed tunes and local musical tonality.

Rescue opera

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Term#

“Rescue opera” was not a contemporary term. Dyneley Hussey used the term in English in 1927 as a translation of Karl M. Klob’s 1913 reference to Fidelio as “das sogenannte Rettungs- oder Befreiungsstück” in Die Oper von Gluck bis Wagner. David Charlton believes that rescue opera is not an authentic genre, and that the concept was coined to make what he believes is a nonexistent connection between Beethoven’s work and French opera. Patrick J. Smith, on the other hand, observes: “The ‘rescue opera’…antedated the Revolution, but ‘rescue opera’ as a genre was a product of it.” In French, this genre is referred to as the pièce à sauvetage or opéra à sauvetage,

Responsory

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Definition#

The most general definition of a responsory is any psalm, canticle, or other sacred musical work sung responsorially, that is, with a cantor or small group singing verses while the whole choir or congregation respond with a refrain. However, this article focuses on those chants of the western Christian tradition that have traditionally been designated by the term responsory. In the Roman Rite and rites strongly influenced by it, such as the pre-reformation English rite and the monastic rite of the Rule of St. Benedict, these chants ordinarily follow readings at services of the Divine Office (also called the Liturgy of the Hours); however, they have also been used as processional chants.

Rondeau (forme fixe)

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Verse structure#

The older French rondeau or rondel as a song form between the 13th and mid-15th century begins with a full statement of its refrain, which consists of two halves. This is followed first by a section of non-refrain material that mirrors the metrical structure and rhyme of the refrain’s first half, then by a repetition of the first half of the refrain, then by a new section corresponding to the structure of the full refrain, and finally by a full restatement of the refrain. Thus, it can be schematically represented as \mathrm AB ,, aAab ,, AB , where \mathrm A and \mathrm B are the repeated refrain parts, and \mathrm a and \mathrm b the remaining verses. If the poem has more than one stanza, it continues with further sequences of \mathrm aAab ,, AB , \mathrm aAab ,, AB , etc. In its simplest and shortest form, the rondeau simple, each of the structural parts is a single verse, leading to the eight-line structure known today as triolet, as shown in “Doulz viaire gracieus” by Guillaume de Machaut: In larger rondeau variants, each of the structural sections may consist of several verses, although the overall sequence of sections remains the same. Variants include the rondeau tercet, where the refrain consists of three verses, the rondeau quatrain, where it consists of four (and, accordingly, the whole form of sixteen), and the rondeau cinquain, with a refrain of five verses (and a total length of 21), which becomes the norm in the 15th century. :Allés, Regrez, vuidez de ma presence; :allés ailleurs querir vostre acointance; :assés avés tourmenté mon las cueur, :rempli de deuil pour estre serviteur :d’une sans per que j’ay aymée d’enfance. :Fait lui avés longuement ceste offence, :Ou est celluy qui onc fut ne en France, :qui endurast tel mortel deshonneur? ::Allés, Regrez, … :N’y tournés plus, car, par ma conscience, :se plus vous voy prochain de ma plaisance, :devant chascun vous feray tel honneur :que l’on dira que la main d’ung seigneur :vous a bien mis a la malle meschance. ::Allés, Regrez, … In the medieval manuscripts, the restatement of the refrain is usually not written out, but only indicated by giving the first words or first line of the refrain part. After the mid-15th century, this feature came to be regarded no longer as a mere scribal abbreviation, but as an actual part of the poetry. As the form was gradually divorced from the musical structure and became a purely literary genre, it is often not entirely clear how much of the refrain material was actually meant to be repeated. A rondeau quatrain in which the first refrain interjection (lines 7–8, rhymes \mathrm AB ) is preserved in full, while the final restatement of the refrain is reduced to a single line ( \mathrm A ) or again just two lines ( \mathrm AB ), ends up with a total of 13 or 14 lines respectively. This form is usually defined as the “rondel” in modern literary compendia. Another version has the refrains shortened even further. Both restatements are reduced to just the first two or three words of the first line, which now stand as short, pithy, non-rhyming lines in the middle and at the end of the poem. These half-lines are called . If derived from the erstwhile , this results in a 12-line structure that is now called the “rondeau prime”, with the in lines 7 and 12. If derived from the erstwhile 21-line , the result is a 15-line form with the in lines 9 and 15 (rhyme scheme \mathrm aabba – \mathrm aabR – \mathrm aabbaR ). This 15-line form became the norm in the literary rondeau of the later Renaissance, and is known as the “rondeau” proper today. The following is a typical example of this form: :Avant mes jours mort me fault encourir, :Par un regard dont m’as voulu ferir, :Et ne te chault de ma grefve tristesse; :Mais n’est ce pas à toy grande rudesse, :Veu que to peulx si bien me secourir? :Auprés de l’eau me fault de soif perir; :Je me voy jeune, et en aage fleurir, :Et si me monstre estre plein de vieillesse ::Avant mes jours. :Or, si je meurs, je veulx Dieu requerir :Prendre mon ame, et sans plus enquerir, :Je donne aux vers mon corps plein de foiblesse; :Quant est du cueur, du tout je te le laisse, :Ce nonobstant que me faces mourir ::Avant mes jours. A large corpus of medieval French rondeaux was collected, catalogued, and studied by Nico H.J. van den Boogaard in his dissertation Rondeaux et refrains du XIIe siècle au début du XIVe: Collationnement, introduction et notes (Paris: Klincksieck, 1969).

Sacred Harp

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The music and its notation#

The name of the tradition comes from the title of the shape-note book from which the music is sung, The Sacred Harp. This book exists today in various editions, discussed below. In shape-note music, notes are printed in special shapes that help the reader identify them on the musical scale. There are two prevalent systems, one using four shapes, and one using seven. In the four-shape system used in The Sacred Harp, each of the four shapes is connected to a particular syllable, fa, sol, la, or mi, and these syllables are employed in singing the notes, just as in the more familiar system that uses do, re, mi, etc. (see solfege). The four-shape system is able to cover the full musical scale because each syllable-shape combination other than mi is assigned to two distinct notes of the scale. For example, the C major scale would be notated and sung as follows: The shape for fa is a triangle, sol an oval, la a rectangle, and mi a diamond. In Sacred Harp singing, pitch is not absolute. The shapes and notes designate degrees of the scale, not particular pitches. Thus for a song in the key of C, fa designates C and F; for a song in G, fa designates G and C, and so on; hence it is called a moveable “do” system. When Sacred Harp singers begin a song, they normally start by singing it with the appropriate syllable for each pitch, using the shapes to guide them. For those in the group not yet familiar with the song, the shapes help with the task of sight reading. The process of reading through the song with the shapes also helps fix the notes in memory. Once the shapes have been sung, the group then sings the verses of the song with their printed words.

Saint Thomas Christian music

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History#

The Saint Thomas Christians trace their origins to the evangelical activity of Thomas the Apostle in the 1st century. The community grew under the influence of migration from Syrians, members of the Church of the East. The community’s modern musical traditions may be derived from this connection. Into the 20th century, Saint Thomas Christian liturgy was performed and sung in the Syriac language, though today this largely has been replaced with the local language, Malayalam. Due to the community’s resistance to outside influence and isolation, the music of the Saint Thomas Christians may preserve elements of the earliest forms of Christian music. Scholar Israel J. Ross compares Saint Thomas Christian music to that of the Jews in Kerala. Jewish music influenced the early Christian music ancestral to the Saint Thomas Christian forms, and Jews have lived in similar conditions to the Thomas Christians in Kerala for centuries. For example, a Saint Thomas Christian blessing given by a dying father to his children is similar to the Jewish Amidah. These similarities may reflect a common origin in the ancient Middle East.

Salon music

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Definition and characteristics#

The boundaries of the category of salon music have always been disputed, and there is no single agreed musical definition. As early as 1841, the German composer and critic Robert Schumann dismissed Salonmusik as superficial and sentimental, while in 1853 the theorist Johann Christian Lobe argued against generalisation, pointing to such works as Schumann’s own Kinderszenen, Beethoven’s Bagatelles, Weber’s Aufforderung zum Tanze and Mendelssohn’s Lieder ohne Worte as examples of music written for the salon that nonetheless possessed lasting artistic value. In musical terms the genre tends to favour the character piece, a short composition built around a single idea, mood or scene and often given a programmatic title. Two broad currents are commonly identified: the lyrical character piece (nocturne, reverie, mazurka, waltz, polka), prized for cantabile melody, expressive rubato and tasteful ornamentation; and the virtuosic showpiece (operatic paraphrase, fantasia, étude and variation set), which reworked popular opera tunes and other familiar material with dazzling pianistic display.

Sarabande

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History#

The Sarabande evolved from a Spanish dance with Arab influences, danced by a lively double line of couples with castanets. A dance called zarabanda is first mentioned in 1539 in Central America in the poem Vida y tiempo de Maricastaña, written in Panama by Fernando de Guzmán Mejía. In 1596, Alonso López, “el Pinciano”, traces its origins even to the cult of Dionysus. The dance seems to have been especially popular in the 16th and 17th centuries, initially in Spain and in the Spanish colonies. The Jesuit priest Juan de Mariana thought it indecent, describing it in his (Treatise Against Public Amusements, 1609) as “a dance and song so loose in its words and so ugly in its motions that it is enough to excite bad emotions in even very decent people”. A character in an entremés by Cervantes alluded to the dance’s notoriety by saying that hell was its “birthplace and breeding place” (in ). It was banned in Spain in 1583 but was nevertheless still performed and frequently cited in literature of the period (for instance, by Lope de Vega). Bach sometimes gave the sarabande a privileged place in his music, where it is often the heart of his suites for cello or keyboard. And outside the context of dance suites, striking examples include the theme (aria) and the 13th and 26th variations from Bach’s Goldberg Variations; and the final movements of both the St. John and St. Matthew Passions. The anonymous harmonic sequence known as La Folia appears in pieces of various types, mainly dances, by dozens of composers from the time of Mudarra (1546) and Corelli through to the present day, custom perhaps influenced by its Spanish origin. The theme of the fourth-movement Sarabande of Handel’s Keyboard suite in D minor (HWV 437) for harpsichord, one of these many pieces, appears prominently in the film Barry Lyndon. The sarabande was revived in the 19th and early 20th centuries by the German composer Louis Spohr (in his Salonstücke, Op. 135 of 1847), Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg (in his Holberg Suite of 1884), French composers such as Debussy and Satie, and in England, in different styles, Vaughan Williams (in Job: A Masque for Dancing), Benjamin Britten (in the Simple Symphony), Herbert Howells (in Six Pieces for Organ: Saraband for the Morning of Easter), and Carlos Chávez in the ballet La hija de Cólquide. The sarabande inspired the title of Ingmar Bergman’s last film Saraband (2003). The film uses the sarabande from Bach’s Fifth Cello Suite, which Bergman also used in Cries and Whispers (1972).

Savoy opera

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Other definitions#

During the years when the Gilbert and Sullivan (“G&S”) operas were being written, Richard D’Oyly Carte also produced, at the Savoy Theatre, operas by other composer–librettist teams, either as curtain raisers to the G&S pieces, or to fill the theatre when no G&S piece was available. To his contemporaries, the term “Savoy Opera” referred to any opera that appeared at that theatre, regardless of who wrote it. Aside from curtain raisers (which are listed in the second table below), the G&S operas were the only works produced at the Savoy Theatre from the date it opened (10 October 1881) until The Gondoliers closed on 20 June 1891. Over the next decade, there were only two new G&S pieces (Utopia Limited and The Grand Duke), both of which had comparatively brief runs. To fill the gap, Carte mounted G&S revivals, Sullivan operas with different librettists, and works by other composer–librettist teams. Richard D’Oyly Carte died on 3 April 1901. If the nexus of Carte and the Savoy Theatre is used to define “Savoy Opera,” then the last new Savoy Opera was The Rose of Persia (music by Sullivan, libretto by Basil Hood), which ran from 28 November 1899 to 28 June 1900. After Carte’s death, his wife Helen Carte assumed management of the theatre. In 1901, she produced Sullivan’s last opera, The Emerald Isle (finished after Sullivan’s death by Edward German), and during the run of that opera, she hired William Greet as manager of the theatre. Later that year, she leased the theatre to Greet, who then produced Ib and Little Christina, The Willow Pattern, a revival of Iolanthe, Merrie England (1902) and A Princess of Kensington (1903), each with a cast made up largely of Carte’s Savoy company. Cyril Rollins and R. John Witts adopt A Princess of Kensington as the last of the Savoy Operas. After A Princess of Kensington closed in May 1903, Mrs. Carte leased the theatre to unrelated parties until late 1906, when she produced the first of her two seasons of G&S revivals in repertory at the Savoy, with Gilbert returning to direct. In March 1909, Charles H. Workman leased the theatre, producing three new pieces, including one by Gilbert, Fallen Fairies (music by Edward German). The last of these Workman-produced works came in early 1910, Two Merry Monarchs, by Arthur Anderson, George Levy, and Hartley Carrick, with music by Orlando Morgan. The contemporary press referred to these works as “Savoy Operas”, and S. J. Adair Fitz-Gerald regarded Workman’s pieces as the last Savoy Operas. Fitz-Gerald wrote his book, The Story of the Savoy Opera, in 1924, when these other pieces were still within living memory. But over the ensuing decades, the works produced at the Savoy by composers and librettists other than Gilbert and Sullivan were forgotten or infrequently revived. The term “Savoy Opera” came to be synonymous with the thirteen extant works of Gilbert and Sullivan. The first collaboration of Gilbert and Sullivan – the 1871 opera Thespis – was not a Savoy Opera under any of the definitions mentioned to this point, as Richard D’Oyly Carte did not produce it, nor was it ever performed at the Savoy Theatre. Nevertheless, Rollins & Witts include it in their compendium of the Savoy Operas, as does Geoffrey Smith. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the phrase as: “Designating any of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas originally presented at the Savoy Theatre in London by the D’Oyly Carte company. Also used more generally to designate any of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, including those first presented before the Savoy Theatre opened in 1881, or to designate any comic opera of a similar style which appeared at the theatre”.

Scherzo

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Origins#

The Italian word scherzo means “joke” or “jest”. More rarely, the similar-meaning word badinerie (also spelled battinerie; from French, “jesting”) has been used. Sometimes the word scherzando (“joking”) is used in musical notation to indicate that a passage should be executed in a playful manner. An early use of the word scherzo in music is in light-hearted madrigals of the early baroque period, which were often called scherzi musicali, for example: * Claudio Monteverdi wrote two sets of works with this title, in 1607 and in 1632. * Antonio Brunelli wrote Scherzi, Arie, Canzonette e Madrigale for voices and instruments in 1616. * Johann Baptist Schenk wrote Scherzi musicale (fourteen suites for gamba and continuo). Later, composers applied the term scherzo (plural scherzos or scherzi) and sometimes badinerie to certain instrumental works in fast tempos in duple meter time signature, for example: * The scherzo of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Partita No. 3 for keyboard. * The best-known “Badinerie” is the final movement of Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 2 in B minor. * Badineries in French ouvertures by Christoph Graupner and Georg Philipp Telemann. The scherzo, as most commonly known today, developed from the minuet and trio, and gradually came to replace it as the third (sometimes second) movement in symphonies, string quartets, sonatas, and similar works. It traditionally retains the triple meter time signature and ternary form of the minuet, but is considerably quicker. It is often, but not always, of a light-hearted nature. The main features include a 6/8 bar melody with one beat per bar feel.

Schrammelmusik

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The Schrammel brothers#

In 1878, the brothers Johann Schrammel (1850–1893) and Josef Schrammel (1852-1895), musicians, violinists and composers from Vienna, Austria, formed an ensemble with guitarist Anton Strohmayer, son of the celebrated composer Alois Strohmayer. The Schrammel brothers played two violins, accompanied by Strohmayer on a double-necked contraguitar. Inspired by both urbane and rustic traditions, the three musicians performed folk songs, marches, and dance music, most often for audiences at wine taverns (Heurigen) and inns around Vienna. At first the trio called themselves the “Nussdorfers” after the village of Nussdorf where they often performed. In 1884 clarinetist joined the group, which soon enjoyed phenomenal success under the name “Schrammel Brothers Specialities Quartet” (Specialitäten Quartett Gebrüder Schrammel). The ensemble was invited to perform in palaces and mansions as “Schrammel euphoria” gripped the Viennese elite. So great was the Schrammel brothers’ popularity that some earlier folk music forms, such as the Wienerlied dialect song, came to be known as Schrammelmusik as well. The Schrammels’ popularity eventually extended throughout Europe and in 1893 they were invited to perform at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The Schrammels composed more than 200 songs and music pieces in just seven years. Johann Schrammel died in 1893, followed two years later by Josef. Each brother was 43 years old at his death, and both died of nephritis.

Seconda pratica

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Seguidilla

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Types#

The earliest and most influential of the types of seguidilla are thought to originate in either La Mancha or Andalusia, having become typical of large parts of central Spain. Variants include the seguidilla manchega (from La Mancha) as well as the murciana from Murcia and the slightly faster sevillana of Seville. One of the most complex styles of seguidilla is the seguidilla flamenca or seguiriya), which is used in flamenco music. Act I of Jacques Offenbach’s opera La Périchole includes a number entitled “Séguedille”.

Semi-opera

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List of English semi-operas#

Macbeth (1673) libretto by William Davenant after Shakespeare’s Macbeth; music by Matthew Locke
The Tempest, or The Enchanted Island (1674) libretto by Thomas Shadwell after John Dryden and William Davenant’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest; music by Matthew Locke, Giovanni Battista Draghi and Pelham Humfrey
Calisto, or The Chaste Nymph (1675) libretto by John Crowne; music by Nathaniel Staggins
Psyche (1675) libretto by Thomas Shadwell; music by Matthew Locke
Circe (1677) libretto by Charles Davenant; music by John Banister
The Lancashire Witches and Tegue O’Divelly the Irish Priest (1681) libretto by Thomas Shadwell; music by John Eccles
Albion and Albanius (1685) libretto by John Dryden; music by Louis Grabu
Dioclesian (1690) libretto by Thomas Betterton after the play The Prophetess, by John Fletcher and Philip Massinger; music by Henry Purcell
King Arthur (1691) libretto by John Dryden; music by Henry Purcell
The Fairy Queen (1692) libretto by an anonymous author after Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream; music by Henry Purcell
Timon of Athens (1694), music by Henry Purcell
Macbeth (1695) libretto by William Davenant after Shakespeare’s Macbeth; music by John Eccles and Godfrey Finger
The Indian Queen (1695) libretto adapted version of the play by Sir Robert Howard and John Dryden; music by Henry Purcell, Act V completed by Daniel Purcell
Brutus of Alba (1696) libretto by George Powell; music by Daniel Purcell
Cinthia and Endimion, or The Loves of the Deities (1696) libretto by Thomas Durfey; music by Daniel Purcell, Richard Leveridge, Jeremiah Clarke, Henry Purcell and David Underwood
The World in the Moon (1697) libretto by Elkanah Settle; music by Daniel Purcell, Jeremiah Clarke and Henry Purcell
Rinaldo and Armida (1698) libretto by John Dennis; music by John Eccles
The Island Princess (1699) libretto by Peter Motteux, adapted from plays by John Fletcher and Nahum Tate; music by Daniel Purcell, Richard Leveridge and Jeremiah Clarke
The Grove, or Love’s Paradise (1700) libretto by John Oldmixon; music by Daniel Purcell
The Mad Lover (1700) libretto by Peter Motteux after the play by John Fletcher; music by John Eccles and Daniel Purcell
Alexander the Great (1701) anonymous libretto after The Rival Queens by Nathaniel Lee; music by Godfrey Finger and Daniel Purcell
The Virgin Prophetess, or The Fate of Troy (1701) libretto by Elkanah Settle; music by Godfrey Finger
The British Enchanters, or No Magic Like Love (1706) libretto by George Granville, Lord Lansdowne; music by John Eccles, Bartholomew Issack and William Corbett
Wonders in the Sun, or The Kingdom of the Birds (1706) libretto by Thomas Durfey; music by John Smith, Samuel Akeroyde, John Eccles, Giovanni Battista Draghi, Lully and Durfey
The Tempest (1712) libretto adapted by Thomas Shadwell from the Dryden-Davenant version of Shakespeare’s play; music possibly by John Weldon (long attributed to Henry Purcell)

References#

Warrack, John and West, Ewan (1992), The Oxford Dictionary of Opera, 782 pages,
A Companion to Restoration Drama ed. Susan J. Owen (Blackwell, 2008): chapter by Todd S. Gilman

Serialism

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Basic definitions#

Serialism is a method, “highly specialized technique”, or “way” of composition. It may also be considered “a philosophy of life (Weltanschauung), a way of relating the human mind to the world and creating a completeness when dealing with a subject”. Serialism is not by itself a system of composition or a style. Neither is pitch serialism necessarily incompatible with tonality, though it is most often used as a means of composing atonal music. “Serial music” is a problematic term because it is used differently in different languages and especially because, shortly after its coinage in French, it underwent essential alterations during its transmission to German. The term’s use in connection with music was first introduced in French by René Leibowitz in 1947, and immediately afterward by Humphrey Searle in English, as an alternative translation of the German (twelve-tone technique) or (row music); it was independently introduced by Stockhausen and Herbert Eimert into German in 1955 as , with a different meaning, but also translated as “serial music”.

Siciliana

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History and notable examples#

In a 2006 book, Raymond Monelle found musicologists’ attempts to trace the style to any authentic tradition in Sicily inconclusive, though he did trace its origins back to Italian Renaissance madrigals from the 1500s, in triple time with dotted rhythms. These madrigal rhythms may themselves derive from the dactylic hexameter of the epic poetry of ancient Greece and Rome.

Baroque era#

The siciliana was firmly established as a signifier of a pastoral context in the operas of Sicilian-born Alessandro Scarlatti, though only two of his slow arias in are actually titled “aria siciliana” in the scores. Monelle notes that the texts of Scarlatti’s siciliana arias are generally lamenting and melancholic. and sicilianas are described in musical dictionaries since 1703. Further examples of Baroque sicilianas are found in J. S. Bach’s music: for instance, in his Sonata in G minor for solo violin, BWV 1001, in his Sonata in E-flat for flute and harpsichord, BWV 1031, and in his Concerto in E for harpsichord and strings, BWV 1053. Other well-known Baroque sicilianas are: the middle movement of Antonio Vivaldi’s Concerto Grosso, Op. 3, No. 11, from L’estro armonico (which Bach then transcribed as his Concerto in D minor for organ, BWV 596), the first movement of Giuseppe Tartini’s “Devil’s Trill Sonata” for violin, and the last movement of Arcangelo Corelli’s Christmas Concerto, Op. 6, No. 8.

Singspiel

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History#

Some of the first Singspiele were miracle plays in Germany, where dialogue was interspersed with singing. By the early 17th century, miracle plays had grown profane, the word “Singspiel” is found in print, and secular Singspiele were also being performed, both in translated borrowings or imitations from English and Italian songs and plays, and in original German creations. In the 18th century, some Singspiele were translations of English ballad operas. In 1736, the Prussian ambassador to England commissioned a translation of the ballad opera The Devil to Pay. This was successfully performed in the 1740s in Hamburg and Leipzig. A further version of this was made by Johann Adam Hiller and C. F. Weiße in 1766 (Der Teufel ist los oder Die verwandelten Weiber), the first of a string of such collaborations which led to Hiller and Weisse being called “the fathers of the German Singspiel.” French operas with spoken dialogue (opéras comiques) were frequently transcribed into German and became very successful in Vienna in the late 1770s and early 1780s. By contrast, German translations of contemporary Italian opere buffe, which were quite successful in England and France at the time, were significantly less frequent. Singspiele were considered middle-to-lower class entertainment – as opposed to the predominantly aristocratic genres of opera, ballet and stage play – and were usually performed by traveling troupes (such as the Koch, Döbbelin and Koberwein companies), rather than by established companies within metropolitan centers. Mozart wrote several Singspiele: Bastien und Bastienne (1768), Zaide (1780), Die Entführung aus dem Serail (1782), Der Schauspieldirektor (1786), and finally Die Zauberflöte (1791). E. T. A. Hoffmann, who admired him, composed Singspiele, such as Liebe und Eifersucht in 1807. In 1927, Kurt Weill created a new word, “Songspiel”, to describe his work Mahagonny-Songspiel.

Sonata da chiesa

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Sound poetry

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20th century#

While it is sometimes argued that the roots of sound poetry are to be found in oral poetry traditions, the writing of pure sound texts that downplay the roles of meaning and structure is a 20th-century phenomenon. The Futurist and Dadaist Vanguards of the beginning of this century were the pioneers in creating the first sound poetry forms. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti discovered that onomatopoeias were useful to describe a battle in Tripoli where he was a soldier, creating a sound text that became a sort of a spoken photograph of the battle. Dadaists were more involved in sound poetry and they invented different categories: *Bruitist poem: a phonetic poem, not so different from the futurist poem. Invented by Richard Huelsenbeck. *Simultaneous poem: a poem read in different languages, with different rhythms, tonalities, and by different persons at the same time. Invented by Tristan Tzara. *Movement poem: a poem accompanied by primitive movements.

Spatial music

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Context#

The term “spatial music” indicates music in which the location and movement of sound sources is a primary compositional parameter and a central feature for the listener. It may involve a single, mobile sound source, or multiple, simultaneous, stationary or mobile sound events in different locations. There are at least three distinct categories when plural events are treated spatially: #essentially independent events separated in space, like simultaneous concerts, each with a strong signaling character #one or several such signaling events, separated from more “passive” reverberating background complexes #separated but coordinated performing groups.

Spectral music

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Definition#

Defined in technical language, spectral music is an acoustic musical practice where compositional decisions are often informed by sonographic representations and mathematical analysis of sound spectra, or by mathematically generated spectra. The spectral approach focuses on manipulating the spectral features, interconnecting them, and transforming them. In this formulation, computer-based sound analysis and representations of audio signals are treated as being analogous to a timbral representation of sound. The (acoustic-composition) spectral approach originated in France in the early 1970s, and techniques were developed, and later refined, primarily at IRCAM, Paris, with the Ensemble l’Itinéraire, by composers such as Gérard Grisey and Tristan Murail. Hugues Dufourt is commonly credited for introducing the term musique spectrale (spectral music) in an article published in 1979. Murail has described spectral music as an aesthetic rather than a style, not so much a set of techniques as an attitude; as Joshua Fineberg puts it, a recognition that “music is ultimately sound evolving in time”. Julian Anderson indicates that a number of major composers associated with spectralism consider the term inappropriate, misleading, and reductive. The Istanbul Spectral Music Conference of 2003 suggested a redefinition of the term “spectral music” to encompass any music that foregrounds timbre as an important element of structure or language.

Spirituals

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Terminology#

The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians—one of the largest reference works on music and musicians —itemized and described “spiritual” in its electronic resource, Grove Music Online, an important part of Oxford Music Online, as a “type of sacred song created by and for African Americans that originated in oral tradition. Although its exact provenance is unknown, spirituals were identifiable as a genre by the early 19th century.” The term was generally employed without the descriptor “African American”. “Negro spirituals” is a 19th-century term that according to writer Arthur Evans was “used for songs with religious texts created by African Enslaved in America”. The first published book of slave songs referred to them as “spirituals”. In the introductory phrase, the singular form is used without the adjective “African American.” Throughout the encyclopedia entry, the singular and plural forms of the term are used without the “African American” descriptor. The Library’s introductory sentence observes that “A spiritual is a type of religious folksong that is most closely associated with the enslavement of African people in the American South. The songs proliferated in the last few decades of the eighteenth century leading up to the abolishment of legalized slavery in the 1860s. The African American spiritual (also called the Negro Spiritual) constitutes one of the largest and most significant forms of American folksong.”

Stile antico

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History#

Stile antico has been associated with composers of the high Baroque and early Classical periods of music, in which composers used controlled dissonance and modal effects and avoided overtly instrumental textures and lavish ornamentation, to imitate the compositional style of the late Renaissance. Stile antico was deemed appropriate in the conservative confines of church music, or as a compositional exercise as in J. J. Fux’s Gradus Ad Parnassum (1725), the classic textbook on strict counterpoint. Much of the music associated with this style looks to the music of Palestrina as a model. The term prima pratica was first used during the conflict between Giovanni Artusi and Claudio Monteverdi about the new musical style. For 18th-century composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach, can refer to music composed as late as the early years of that century (e.g. by Antonio Lotti, Pietro Torri), a style Bach would imitate more frequently in his later compositions (starting in the 1730s, up to his death in 1750).

Stile concertato

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Composers of music in stile concertato#

Giovanni Croce
Ignazio Donati
Andrea Gabrieli
Giovanni Gabrieli
Alessandro Grandi
Johann Kaspar Kerll
Claudio Monteverdi
Michael Praetorius
Samuel Scheidt
Johann Hermann Schein
Heinrich Schütz
Lodovico Viadana

Sources#

Manfred Bukofzer, Music in the Baroque Era. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1947. ()
The New Harvard Dictionary of Music, ed. Don Randel. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1986. ()
Article “concertato” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980. ()

Stile concitato

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History#

The earliest description of stile concitato comes from the foreword to Madrigali guerrieri, et amorosi (“Madrigals of war and love”), Claudio Monteverdi’s eighth and final book of madrigals, published in 1638. Monteverdi wrote the following: I have reflected that the principal passions or affections of our mind are three, namely, anger, moderation, and humility or supplication… The art of music also points clearly to these three in its terms “agitated,” “soft,” and “moderate” (concitato, molle, and temperato). In all the works of former composers I have indeed found examples of the “soft” and the “moderate,” but never of the “agitated.” Monteverdi developed the musical style of stile concitato to represent the human emotion of agitation. He considered Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, one of the pieces from Madrigali guerrieri, et amorosi, to be the first instance of stile concitato. Stile concitato is represented musically in Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda through the rapid repetition of sixteenth notes.

String quintet

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List of viola quintets#

Johann Georg Albrechtsberger – 19 String Quintets called “Sonatas” (1782–1803)
Franz Joseph Aumann – String Quintet “Divertimento” in C major (c.1760)
Arnold Bax – Quintet (1933)
Frank Bridge – Quintet in E minor (H15, 1901)
Ludwig van Beethoven – Quintet, Op. 29, sometimes called the Storm Quintet; a Fugue in D major for viola quintet, Op. 137; an arrangement of his Octet for Viola Quintet, Op. 4 (the original Octet was later published as Op.103); an arrangement of his Piano Trio Op. 1 No. 3 for Viola Quintet, Op. 104
Luigi Boccherini – twelve original Quintets, arrangements of all twelve of his Piano Quintets (Op.56 and Op.57) for Viola Quintet.
Johannes Brahms – two Quintets, Op. 88 and Op. 111; the first edition of the Clarinet Quintet Op. 115 included an alternate part for viola substituting for the clarinet
Max Bruch – Quintet in A minor
Anton Bruckner – String Quintet in F major (1879); Intermezzo in D minor (substitute for the scherzo)
Carson Cooman – Quintet (Unquiet Parables, 2009), Op 856
Brett Dean – Epitaph for string quintet (2010)
Antonín Dvořák – two Quintets, No. 1 in A minor and No. 3 in E (the American Quintet)
Victor Ewald – a Quintet Op. 4 in A major
Eduard Franck – two Quintets, Op. 15 in E minor and Op. 51 in C Major
Florian Leopold Gassmann – Op. 2 six String Quintets H 501–506 (1772)
Friedrich Gernsheim – Quintet Op. 9 in D
Roy Harris – Quintet (1940)
Franz Joseph Haydn – Hob.II:2 Divertimento in G major (c.1754)
Heinrich von Herzogenberg – Quintet in C minor, Op.77 (1892)
Franz Anton Hoffmeister Op. 2 six Quintets (c.1782)
Klaus Huber – Ecce homines (1998)
Heinrich Kaminski – Quintet in F minor (two versions, first 1916)
Franz Krommer – fifteen String Quintets
six String Quintets in F,G,B,A,E♭,C major
Bohuslav Martinů – Quintet (1927)
Felix Mendelssohn – two Quintets: No. 1 in A major, Op. 18 (1826, revised 1832) and No. 2 in B-flat major, Op.87 (1845)
Ernst Mielck – Quintet in F major (1897)
Darius Milhaud – Quintet Op. 325 (1953–1954)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – six Quintets: K174, K406/516b, K515, K516, K593, K614
Carl Nielsen – Quintet in G major (1888)
George Onslow – five out of his thirty-four Quintets are with two violas; four are with double bass and the rest with two cellos (see below)
Hubert Parry – Quintet in E flat (1909 )
George Perle – Quintet (1958)
Josef Rheinberger – Quintet in A minor, Op. 82 (1874) (Carus-Verlag)
Ferdinand Ries – Seven Quintets, Op. 37 in C, Op. 68 in D minor, Op. 167 in A minor, Op. 171 in G, Op. 183 in E-flat, and two published without opus in A major and F minor (published in a series “Samtliche Streichquintette” edited by Jürgen Schmidt between 2003-5 for Accolade Musikverlag.)
Franz Schubert – “Quintet-Overture” for Quintet, D 8
Roger Sessions – Quintet (1958)
Robert Simpson – Quintet (1987)
Louis Spohr – seven Quintets
Charles Villiers Stanford – Two Quintets, Op. 85 & Op.86
Johan Svendsen – Quintet in C, Op. 5 (1868)
Sergei Taneyev – Quintet in C, Op. 16
Johann Baptist Wanhal – Six String Quintets (1774)
Ralph Vaughan Williams – Quintet (the Phantasy Quintet – 1912) and Nocturne and Scherzo (1904–1906)
Felix Weingartner – Quintet, his Op. 40
Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari - Quintet in C, Op. 24 (1939)
John Woolrich – The Death of King Renaud (1991)
Alexander von Zemlinsky – Quintet (1894–1896): 2 movements are lost

List of cello quintets#

Arnold Bax – Quintet in G major (1908), the second movement of which was rescored by the composer for Viola Quintet and published as the Lyrical Interlude (1923);
Wilhelm Berger – Quintet in E minor, Op. 75 (1911)
Darius Milhaud – Quintet Op. 350 (1956)
George Onslow – twenty-five of his thirty-four string quintets are Cello Quintets; five are with two violas and four are with double bass
Carl Vine – String Quintet (2009)

String quintets for 3 violins, viola and cello#

Johann Georg Albrechtsberger, String Quintet (1798)
Franz Clement, Introduction and Polonaise in E major (Polonaise für die Violine mit Begleitung von 2 Violinen, Viola und Violonzello)
Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst, Polonaise, Op.17
Morton Feldman, Violin and String Quartet (1985)
Charles Martin Loeffler – one Violin Quintet (three violins, viola and cello)
Joseph Mayseder, Polonaise No.1, Op.10; Polonaise No.3, Op.12
Alessandro Rolla, Divertimento for Violin and String Quartet, BI 429
Franz Schubert, Rondo in A major for Violin and Strings, D 438
Louis Spohr, Potpourri No.2 in B major (Potpourri on themes by Mozart for violin and string quartet (with bass ad libitum))

List of double bass quintets#

Leslie Bassett – Quintet (1957)
Luigi Boccherini – three Quintets.
Antonín Dvořák – Quintet Op. 77 in G (1875)
Brian Ferneyhough – Christus Resurgens (2017)
Alistair Hinton – String Quintet (1969–77)
Vagn Holmboe – Quintet, Op. 165/M.326 (1986)
Darius Milhaud – Quintet Op. 316
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Serenade No. 13, K. 525, “Eine kleine Nachtmusik”
George Onslow – four out of his thirty-four String Quintets are with double bass; five with two violas and the rest with two cellos
Robert Paterson – I See You (2015) (for string quintet with double bass and recording)

String quintets for other combinations#

*Felix Draeseke – one Quintet in A for Two Violins, Viola, Violotta, and Cello (the Stelzner-Quintett; 1897); Draeseke also composed one Cello Quintet- in F, Op. 77 (1901)

String sextet

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Notable string sextets#

Among the earliest works in this form are the nine string sextets Op. 23 by Luigi Boccherini, written in 1776. Other notable string sextets include the String Sextets Op. 18 and 36 by Brahms, Dvořák’s Op. 48, Tchaikovsky Souvenir de Florence, Op. 70, Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4, Erich Wolfgang Korngold Op. 10, Erwin Schulhoff’s String Sextet of 1924, and Charles Wuorinen’s String Sextet of 1989.

Less usual combinations#

More unusual combinations for a string sextet: * three violins, viola and two cellos: Ferdinand David (1810–1873), op. 38, Gaetano Brunetti (1744–1798), op. 1, Eugene Goossens (1893–1962), op. 37 * three violins, two violas and cello: Jan Brandts Buys (1868–1933), op. 40 * two violins, two violas, cello, double bass: Ignaz Pleyel (1757–1831) B.261, and others * two violins, viola, two cellos, double bass: including works by Auguste Franchomme (1808–1884) and Ignacy Feliks Dobrzyński (1807–1867)

String trio

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Early history#

The earliest string trio, found during the mid 18th century, consisted of two violins and a cello, a grouping which had grown out of the Baroque trio sonata. Over the course of the late 18th century, the string trio scored for violin, viola, and cello came to be the predominant type. String trios scored for two violins and viola were also used, although much less frequently. The term “string trio” was not used until the late 19th century. The genre was previously referred to as divertimento a tre, sonate a tre, and terzetto. The early classical string trio generally consisted of three movements, although four, five and six movement trios were later written. Most movements were in binary form, although some of Joseph Haydn’s trios were written as theme and variations. The violins shared the important thematic material, while the cello maintained an accompanimental role.

Surrealist music

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Early surrealist music#

In the 1920s several composers were influenced by surrealism, or by individuals in the surrealist movement. The two composers most associated with surrealism during this period were Erik Satie, who wrote the score for the ballet Parade, causing Guillaume Apollinaire to coin the term surrealism, and George Antheil who wrote that, “The Surrealist movement had, from the very beginning, been my friend. In one of its manifestos it had been declared that all music was unbearable—excepting, possibly, mine—a beautiful and appreciated condescension.” Early surrealist music was also linked to film; according to Hannah Lewis: perhaps one of the most famous early film scores was Satie’s music for René Clair’s film Entr’acte. Shown between the acts of Satie’s ballet Relâche performed by the Ballets suédois in 1924, the film, featuring a scenario by Dadaist artist Francis Picabia, was an important precursor to surrealist cinema. The film, too, featured unusual juxtapositions and dream logic, and some have considered the film, and by extension Satie’s score, to be surrealist." Adorno cites as the most consequent surrealist compositions those works by Kurt Weill, such as The Threepenny Opera and Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, along with works by others drawn from the middle-period music of Igor Stravinsky—most particularly that of L’Histoire du soldat—and defines this surrealism as a hybrid form between the “modern” music of Arnold Schoenberg and his school, and the “objectivist” neoclassicism/folklorism of the later Stravinsky. This surrealism, like objectivism, recognizes alienation but is more socially alert. It thereby denies itself the positivist notions of objectivism, which are recognised as illusion. Its content deals instead with “permitting social flaws to manifest themselves by means of flawed invoice, which defines itself as illusory with no attempts at camouflage through attempts at an aesthetic totality”, thereby destroying aesthetic formal immanence and transcending into the literary realm. This surrealism is further differentiated from a fourth type of music, the so-called Gebrauchsmusik of Paul Hindemith and Hanns Eisler, which attempts to break through alienation from within itself, even at the expense of its immanent form. The early works of musique concrète by Pierre Schaeffer have a surrealist character owing to the unexpected juxtaposition of sound objects, such as the sounds of Balinese priests chanting, a barge on the River Seine, Sacha Guitry’s singing and coughing, and rattling saucepans in Étude aux casseroles (1948). The composer Olivier Messiaen referred to the “surrealist anxiety” of Schaeffer’s early work in contrast to the “asceticism” of the later Etude aux allures of 1958. After the first concert of musique concrète (Concert de bruits, 5 October 1948) Schaeffer received a letter from one member of the audience (identified only as G. M.) describing it as “the music heard, by themselves alone, by Poe and Lautréamont, and Raymond Roussel. The concert of noises represents not only the first concert of surrealist music, but also contains, in my view, a musical revolution.” Schaeffer himself argued that musique concrète, in its initial phase, tended either towards atonality or surrealism, or both, rather than, as it subsequently became, the starting point of a more general musical procedure.

Tango music

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Origins#

Even though present forms of tango developed in Argentina and Uruguay from the mid-19th century, there are records of 19th and early 20th-century tango styles in Cuba and Spain, while there is a flamenco tango dance that may share a common ancestor in a minuet-style European dance. All sources stress the influence of African communities and their rhythms, while the instruments and techniques brought in by European immigrants in the 20th century played a major role in the style’s final definition, relating it to the salon music styles to which tango would contribute back at a later stage. Ángel Villoldo’s 1903 tango “El Choclo” was first recorded no later than 1906 in Philadelphia. Villoldo himself recorded it in Paris (possibly in April 1908, with the Orchestre Tzigane du Restaurant du Rat Mort), as there were no recording studios in Argentina at the time. Early tango was played by European immigrants in Buenos Aires and Montevideo. The first generation of tango players from Buenos Aires was called “Guardia Vieja” (the Old Guard). It took time to move into wider circles; in the early 20th century, it was the favorite music of thugs and gangsters who visited brothels, in a city with 100,000 more men than women (in 1914). The complex dances that arose from such rich music reflect how the men would practice the dance in groups, demonstrating male sexuality and causing a blending of emotion and aggressiveness. The music was played on portable instruments: flute, guitar, and violin trios, with bandoneón arriving at the end of the 19th century. The organito, a portable player-organ, broadened the popularity of certain songs. Eduardo Arolas was the major driver of the bandoneón’s popularization, with Vicente Greco soon standardizing the tango sextet as consisting of piano, double bass, two violins, and two bandoneóns. Like many forms of popular music, tango was associated with the underclass, and attempts were made to restrict its influence. In spite of the scorn, some, like writer Ricardo Güiraldes, were fans. Güiraldes played a part in the international popularization of tango, which had conquered the world by the end of World War I; he wrote the poem “Tango”, which describes the music as the “all-absorbing love of a tyrant, jealously guarding his dominion, over women who have surrendered submissively, like obedient beasts”. also dates from this time. The first two sections of “La Cumparsita” were composed as an instrumental march in 1916 by teenaged Gerardo Matos Rodríguez of Uruguay.

Temperance songs

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Development and genre history#

A consistent theme within temperance songs of 19th and 20th century society was that drinking negatively impacted a stable family life and that it was at the center of much suffering. “Molly and the Baby Don’t You Know” is about a father promising not to drink for the sake of his young child and suffering wife. Some temperance songs were intended to produce guilt about the consequences of alcohol consumption. Themes including abuse were common, such as “The Drunkard’s Child,” by Mrs. Parkhurst, 1870. In this song, a mother hears her child decry that her father’s drinking and their poverty leads to her being ignored by her peers. An archived field-recording of this song, sung by John McCready, relates the song of a dying child of an alcoholic, as the child fears they will not be allowed to enter heaven. Stephen Foster was considered to be the best-known of the Temperance songwriters.

Thumri

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Structure#

As in khayal, thumri has two parts, the sthayi and the antara. It favours talas such as Deepchandi, Roopak, Addha, and Punjabi. These tala-s are characterized by a special lilt, nearly absent in the tala-s used in khayal. Thumri compositions are mostly in ragas such as Kafi, Khamaj, Jogiya, Bhairavi, Pilu and Pahadi. A common feature of these and other such ragas is the free movement they allow the artist, since they do not depend for their identity on rigidly formulated tonal sequences, irrespective of the compositions involved. In fact, one may say that they have a built-in provision for mixing ragas or for moving out of the nominal raga to add color to the proceedings.

Tiento

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Name#

The word derives from the Spanish verb tentar (meaning either to touch, to tempt or to attempt), and was originally applied to music for various instruments. In the early eighteenth century, some composers also used the term obra, originally a more general term meaning “work”, to refer to this genre.

Formal aspects#

The tiento is formally extraordinarily diverse, more a set of guidelines than a rigid structural model such as fugue or rondo. Nearly all tientos are imitative to some degree, though not as complex or developed as the fugue. This has led to their being associated with the other embryonic imitative forms cited above. Similarly, it is difficult to assign a single style to the form, since it underwent a considerable amount of evolution from its inception to its decline in the late 18th century. The earliest tientos (such as those of Cabezón) were stylistically quite close to the ricercare in their extended use of the strict, motet-style counterpoint. Later (especially in the works of Cabanilles), tientos would frequently alternate between the older style of strict counterpoint, and virtuosic, affective figuration typical of the toccata and some fantasias. The evolution of the form was in part conditioned by the evolution of the Spanish organ, and it eventually came to include several variants or sub-forms, several of which are listed below: * Tiento de medio registro: A tiento making use of the split keyboard, frequently found on Spanish organs from the mid-16th century on. The split keyboard refers to an organ manual where ranks of pipes may be engaged for half the keyboard, as opposed to the entire compass, which is the norm. This enables the player to utilize different sounds on the same keyboard, generally a solo sound and an accompaniment sound, though occasionally two sounds of equal strength. The tiento de medio registro figures prominently in the oeuvres of Correa de Arauxo, Aguilera de Heredia, and Bruna. * Tiento de lleno: The opposite of the tiento de medio registro; a tiento played on one sound (full register). * Tiento de falsas: A tiento making frequent use of dissonance, so as to achieve particularly dramatic effect. “Falsas” refers to “false notes,” or dissonant tones not part of the current mode or key. It is similar to the Italian idea of Durezze e ligature (consonance and dissonance). * Tiento pleno: an irregular tiento consisting of three sections: a prelude, fugue, and postlude. It has more in common with the German praeludium than with other tientos.

Tonás

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Totalism

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Early 1980s#

In the early 1980s, many young composers began writing music within the static confines of minimalism, but using greater rhythmic complexity, often with two or more simultaneous tempos (or implied tempos) audible at once. The style acquired a name around 1990, when it became evident to composers working in New York City that a number of them, including John Luther Adams, Glenn Branca, Rhys Chatham, Kyle Gann, Michael Gordon, Arthur Jarvinen, Bernadette Speach, Ben Neill, Larry Polansky, Mikel Rouse, and Evan Ziporyn, were employing similar types of global tempo structures in their music. Others include Eve Beglarian, Allison Cameron, Nick Didkovsky, David First, Phil Kline, and Lois V. Vierk. The term totalist refers to the aims of the music, in trying to have enough surface rhythmic energy, but also to contain enough background complexity. There is also an echo in the term of serialism’s “total organization,” here drawn not from the 12-tone row, but from Henry Cowell’s theories about using the same structuring devices for rhythm that have been traditionally used for pitch. For instance, the traditional ratio between frequencies of a major second interval is 9:8, and 9-against-8 is an important tempo contrast in many totalist pieces, achieved by having some instruments play dotted eighth notes while others play triplet half notes. In practice, totalist music can be consonant, dissonant, or both, but generally restricts itself to a small number of sonorities within any given piece.

Tragédie en musique

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Notable examples of the genre#

Apart from Lully, the most considerable writer of tragédies en musique is Rameau, whose five works in the form are considered the culminating masterpieces of the genre. The Viking Opera Guide refers to Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s tragédie Médée as “arguably the finest French opera of the seventeenth century”. In the eighteenth century, Jean-Marie Leclair’s lone tragédie Scylla et Glaucus has been similarly praised. Other highly esteemed exponents are André Campra (Tancrède, Idoménée), Marin Marais (Alcyone, Sémélé) and Michel Pignolet de Montéclair (Jephté).

Venetian polychoral style

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History of the style#

The style arose in Northern Italian churches in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and proved to be a good fit for the architectural peculiarities of the imposing Basilica San Marco di Venezia in Venice. Composers such as Adrian Willaert, the maestro di cappella of St. Mark’s in the 1540s, wrote antiphonal music, in which opposing choirs sang successive, often contrasting phrases of the music from opposing choir lofts, from specially constructed wooden platforms, and from the octagonal bigonzo across from the pulpit. This was a rare but interesting case of the architectural peculiarities of a single building encouraging the proliferation of a style which had become popular all over Europe, and helped define the shift from the Renaissance to the Baroque era. The idea of different groups singing in alternation contributed to the evolution of the stile concertato, which in its different instrumental and vocal manifestations eventually led to such diverse musical ideas as the chorale cantata, the concerto grosso, and the sonata. The peak of development of the style was in the late 1580s and 1590s, while Giovanni Gabrieli was organist at San Marco and principal composer, and while Gioseffo Zarlino was still maestro di cappella. Gabrieli seems to have been the first to specify instruments in his published works, including large choirs of cornetti and sackbuts; he also seems to be one of the earliest to specify dynamics (as in his Sonata pian’ e forte), and to develop the “echo” effects for which he became famous. The fame of the spectacular, sonorous music of San Marco at this time spread across Europe, and numerous musicians came to Venice to hear, to study, to absorb and bring back what they learned to their countries of origin. Germany, in particular, was a region where composers began to work in a locally modified form of the Venetian style—most notably Heinrich Schütz—though polychoral works were also composed elsewhere, such as the many masses written in Spain by Tomás Luis de Victoria. After 1603, a basso continuo was added to the already considerable forces at San Marco—orchestra, soloists, choir—a further step toward the Baroque cantata. Music at San Marco went through a period of growth and decline, but the fame of the institution spread far. Although the repertoire eventually included music in the stile concertato, as well as the conservative stile antico, works in the polychoral style maintained a secure place in the San Marco repertoire into the 1800s.

Verbunkos

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Slovácko verbuňk#

The Slovácko verbuňk is also an improvised folk dance in the South Moravia and Zlín districts of the Czech Republic, and was inscribed in 2008 on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity of UNESCO.

Verismo

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History#

A short story by Verga called (), then developed into a play by the same author, became the source for what is usually considered to be the first verismo opera: Cavalleria rusticana by Mascagni, which premiered on 17 May 1890 at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome. Thus begun, the operatic genre of verismo produced a handful of notable works such as Pagliacci, which premiered at Teatro Dal Verme in Milan on 21 May 1892, and Puccini’s Tosca (premiering at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome on 14 January 1900). The genre peaked in the early 1900s, and lingered into the 1920s.

Verse anthem

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Villancico

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Portuguese type#

This type of poem has a mote—the beginning of the poem, which functions, when in music, as a refrain—followed by one or more intervening stanzas—the volta, copla or glosa—each one with 7 lines. The difference between the vilancete and the cantiga depends on the number of lines in the mote: if there are 2 or 3 it is a vilancete, if there are 4 or more it is a cantiga. Each line of a vilancete is usually divided in five or seven metric syllables (“old measure”). When the last line of the mote is repeated at the end of each stanza, the vilancete is “perfect”. Here is an example of a Portuguese vilancete, written by Luís de Camões: Original (Mote:) Enforquei minha Esperança; Mas Amor foi tão madraço, Que lhe cortou o baraço. (Volta:) Foi a Esperança julgada Por setença da Ventura Que, pois me teve à pendura, Que fosse dependurada: Vem Cupido com a espada, Corta-lhe cerce o baraço. Cupido, foste madraço. English Translation (Mote:) I hanged my Hope; But Love was so knavish He cut off the noose. (Volta:) Hope was condemned By verdict of Fate To be hanged for having me Hanging out with her Then comes Cupid with the sword And cuts the noose short. O Cupid, you were knavish. This poem has a common rhyme scheme, ABB CDDC CBB. The theme of this type of villancico was usually about the saudade, about the countryside and the shepherds, about ’the perfect woman’ and about unrequited love and consequent suffering. Iberian poets were strongly influenced by Francesco Petrarca, an Italian poet.

Virelai

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Musical virelai#

The virelai as a song form of the 14th and early 15th century usually has three stanzas, and a refrain that is stated before the first stanza and again after each. Within each stanza, the structure is that of the bar form, with two sections that share the same rhymes and music (Stollen), followed by a third (Abgesang). The third section of each stanza shares its rhymes and music with the refrain. Thus, it can be schematically represented as AbbaA, where “A” represents the repeated refrain, “a” represents the verse set to the same music as the refrain, and “b” represents the remaining verses set to different music. Within this overall structure, the number of lines and the rhyme scheme is variable. The refrain and Abgesang may be of three, four or five lines each, with rhyme schemes such as ABA, ABAB, AAAB, ABBA, or AABBA. The structure often involves an alternation of longer with shorter lines. Typically, all three stanzas share the same set of rhymes, which means that the entire poem may be built on just two rhymes, if the Stollen sections also share their rhymes with the refrain. “Douce Dame Jolie” by Guillaume de Machaut is an example of a virelai with rhymes AAAB in the refrain, and AAB (with a shortened second verse) in each of the stollen sections. : : : : :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: : : : :

Vocal harmony

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In art music#

Vocal harmonies have been an important part of Western art music since the Renaissance-era introduction of Mass melodies harmonized in sweet thirds and sixths. With the rise of the Lutheran church’s chorale hymn singing style, congregations sang hymns arranged with four or five-part vocal harmony. In the Romantic era of music during the 1800s, vocal harmonization became more complex, and arrangers began including more dissonant harmonies. Operas and choral music from the Romantic era used tense-sounding vocal harmonies with augmented and diminished intervals as an important tool for underscoring the drama of the music. With contemporary music from the 1900s and 2000s, composers made increasingly difficult demands on choirs which were singing in vocal harmony, such as instructions to sing microtonal notes or make percussive sounds.

Voluntary (music)

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English organ voluntaries of the late Baroque#

During the late 17th century, a ‘voluntary’ was typically written in a fugal or imitative style, often with different sections. In the 18th century, many organists and other musicians of high prominence, particularly in London, published collections of voluntaries - usually ten or twelve -‘for organ or harpsichord’, establishing the genre as a serious addition to the standard repertoire. Whilst almost always the harpsichord is indicated alongside the organ, subsequent markings which frequently appear in the music, such as swell or eccho suggest the organ was the chief instrument in mind. The form typically begins with a short slow movement followed by a contrasting more substantial fast movement, either a fugue or movement for a solo stop on the organ. Two movements are very common although three and four are also encountered. Some imitate the character of the French overture, with a slow movement of dotted or double-dotted rhythms, followed by a fugue. Others begin with a slow movement making use of close-written harmony and suspensions, followed by solo writing for the right hand and one-line accompaniment for the left hand, such as the trumpet voluntary or the cornet voluntary. In the latter the eccho manual and/or the swell or full organ to give ripieno effects are often employed, and it is typically non-fugal. At the time, organ builders such as Renatus Harris had been building organs with stops imitating certain instruments such as the trumpet and cornett. Some composers, such as John Bennett (ca. 1735–1784) made more use of the slow introduction than, say, John Stanley whose introductory movements tend to be shorter and simpler in comparison. In Bennett’s case, the introductions can easily stand alone as movements in their own right. With most composers, the slow introductory movement sometimes ends with an imperfect cadence inevitably leading into the next movement. Others finish with a perfect cadence. Many of the fast movements end with a short adagio section, particularly those of William Goodwin, John Bennett and, to a lesser extent, William Boyce. In 18th century England, the word ‘fuge’ is often encountered. English style ‘fuges’ (or fugue) do not follow the strict theoretical form of German-style fugues and are only notionally such. They are more related to the ‘fugues’ written by Italian composers of the time, being generally imitative without substantial development and length. One noteworthy example of a substantial voluntary is that of Pepusch, which has 13 movements in total. Several of the movements are named after organ solo stops or mixtures (bassoon, cornet, trumpet, sesquialtera, flute, twelfth, etc.). Pepusch had been the teacher of Bennett and other younger composers. Some voluntaries were called double voluntaries. These were pieces written for organs with two manuals (keyboards). The pieces contrasted a loud manual with a soft one. One of the most prolific composers of voluntaries from this period was John Marsh whose copious volumes contain prefaces which tell us something of the role of voluntaries in his day. In general, the English organ voluntary of the 18th century arguably does not have the more profound, devotional flavour of the chorale prelude of, say, J S Bach who had died in 1750. A new style was developing, the galant style, which emphasised lighter elegance. The writing can be clichéd, based on rapid scales, arpeggios and sequences which sometimes can be perceived as superficial and repetitive. Variation between the style of one composer and the next is sometimes not greatly obvious. However, the very best still represent originality and exploit fully the possibilities of the instruments of the time. Of the many composers active in London, those of Maurice Greene, William Goodwin and John Bennett arguably show the most inventiveness and variety in character. The voluntaries of John Bennett demonstrate the greatest variety of textures and profundity of character.

Ypakoe

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Examples#

;Sunday (Tone 5): The myrrh-bearing women, their minds dazzled by the sight of the angel and their souls enlightened by Thy divine Resurrection, preached the good tidings to the Apostles: “O spread among the nation the news of the Resurrection of the Lord, He, Who works wonders and grants us His great mercy.” ;Nativity of Christ (Tone 8):: Calling the Magi by a star, heaven brought the first fruits of the Gentiles unto Thee, a Babe lying in the manger: and they were amazed to see neither sceptre nor throne but only utter poverty. For what is meaner than swaddling clothes? Yet therein shone forth the wealth of Thy divinity: Glory to Thee, O Lord! ;Pascha (Tone 8): Before the dawn, Mary and the women came and found the stone rolled away from the tomb. They heard the angelic voice: “Why do ye seek among the dead, as a mortal man, the One Who is Everlasting Light? Behold the clothes in the grave! Go, and proclaim to the world: The Lord is risen! He hath slain death, as He is the Son of God, saving the race of man.” In 1997, Sir Nicholas Goodison of the City of London Festival commissioned English composer and Orthodox Christian John Tavener to write a piece for the festival. He wrote a suite for solopiano, entitled, Ypakoë, based on the Ypakoë of Pascha. It was premiered at the 1999 Festival by Venezuelan pianist Elena Riu (daughter of Catalan philosopher Federico Riu). The work is a 20-minute meditation on the Passion and Resurrection of Christ. The composer has described the piece as “a totally spiritual concept – to atune the individual’s (performer’s or listener’s) will to the divine will.”

Zamacueca

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

The word Zamacueca comes from the 16th-century Spanish dance Zamba Antigua combined with kwa-kwa, which in the African Kikongo language means cajón. This fusion, called Zamba Kwa-kwa (“Zamba of the drum”) later evolved into Zamacueca. The origin of zamacueca, also known as canto de jarana or marinera limeña, comes from the mestizaje music that occurred between the Romani people and the Mulatto people that inhabited Lima during the Viceroyalty of Peru. Founded in 1542, the Viceroyalty of Peru served as a major administrative division of the Spanish Empire. It encompassed modern-day Peru and much of Spain’s South American territories with political authority centered in the capital city of Lima. Zamacueca dates back to the 16th and 17th centuries when this mixed musical form began to stand out in the Rímac and Barrios Altos neighborhoods of Callao as well as in bars located among Lima’s bridges, alleyways, and balconies. The dance primarily emerged among enslaved people as a rhythmic and seductive courtship dance.

Zarzuela

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Baroque zarzuela#

In 1657 at the Royal Palace of El Prado, King Philip IV of Spain, Queen Mariana and their court attended the first performance of a new comedy by Pedro Calderón de la Barca, with music by Juan Hidalgo de Polanco titled El Laurel de Apolo (The Laurels of Apollo). El Laurel de Apolo traditionally symbolises the birth of a new musical genre that had become known as La Zarzuela. Like Calderón de la Barca’s earlier El golfo de las sirenas (The Sirens’ Gulf, 1657), El Laurel de Apolo mixed mythological verse drama with operatic solos, popular songs and dances. The characters in these early, baroque zarzuelas were a mixture of gods, mythological creatures and rustic or pastoral comedy characters; Antonio de Literes’s popular Acis y Galatea (1708) is yet another example. Unlike some other operatic forms, there were spoken interludes, often in verse.

Zemirot

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Words and lyrics#

Many derive from a corpus of poems written by various rabbis and sages during the early Middle Ages, which were then set to music at a later point, with some appropriated for paraliturgical purposes, such as the zemirot, and others for liturgical use, as with the piyyutim. The extra-liturgical domestic tradition of singing the zemirot increasingly gained a foothold in Jewish praxis by the 11th to 12th centuries. In the 16th century, especially, certain kabbalists of Safed and Italy such as Isaac Luria and Israel Najara, specifically authored texts with the intention of utilization as Sabbath song texts, helping to promote a mystical renaissance in Jewish thought they were pioneering at the time. Using the tunes or styles of surrounding gentile musical selections from the Levant and Turkey, and at times deploying their metaphorical strategies as well, these zemirot have diffused throughout the Jewish world similarly to the influential mystical ideologies on which they depend. Others of the zemirot were likely conceived as anonymous folk songs that have been passed down from generation to generation. Lyrically, zemirot tend to focus on the themes of the Sabbath or the specific holiday being celebrated while employing intertextual references to the extended Jewish canon from sources as diverse as the Bible, mystical works like Sefer Yetzirah, Midrash, or Talmudical or legal literature for either artistic or expressive reasons. Certain songs are primarily didactic, listing Sabbath prohibitions and issuing recommendations for pious conduct, while underscoring the ideas of Shabbat as a treasure and covenant. Often the lyrical tie-in to Shabbat is merely implicit. Over time, various songs have acquired an association with the Sabbath or holidays based on their incorporation of metaphors for Shabbat such as redemption and Jewish chosenness, even when mention of Shabbat is absent. These heightened themes reinforce the spiritual goals of Shabbat observance.

Znamenny chant

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Notation#

Znamenny Chants are not written with notes (the so-called ’linear notation’), but with special signs, called (Russian for “marks”, “banners”) or (“hooks”), as some shapes of these signs resemble hooks. Each sign may include the following components: a large black hook or a black stroke, several smaller black ‘points’ and ‘commas’ and lines near the hook or crossing the hook. Znamenny notation would be incredibly difficult to interpret via modern western notation, due to the fact that the specific instructions provided by the signs were up for interpretation. For example, a sign could mean “1 sound, 1/2 down.” It would be up to the individual singer to determine how long 1 sound was, what pitch 1 sound was, and how far “1/2 down” meant. This was due to the nature of Znamenny chant’s oral tradition. The most notable feature of this notation system is that it records transitions of the melody, rather than notes. This type of notation is known as neumatic notation, and they are adiastematic. The signs also represent a mood and a gradation of how this part of melody is to be sung (tempo, strength, devotion, meekness, etc.) Every sign has its own name and also features as a spiritual symbol. For example, there is a specific sign, called “little dove” (, ), which represents two rising sounds and is also a symbol of the Holy Ghost.

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