Music 15 Midterm Study Guide

refers to the overall structure or plan of a piece of music, and it describes the layout of a composition as divided into sections

A period of time during which historians perceive certain unifying stylistic and aesthetic characterizations in art of a certain time

explored the mathematical and cosmological dimensions of rhythmic and harmonic organization

music performed or composed for religious use or through religious influence.

Non-religious music

• Charlemagne and pope came to agreement
• Pope gave him his blessing
• "Consolidation of religious practices under Charlemagne"

Authorized texts for services in the Catholic mass

• Medieval propaganda, a body of chant
• Authorship credited to Pope Gregory
• Male choir with one musical line at a time in increasing intensity
• Simple rhythm, Latin
• Earliest preserved Western musical tradition

A music genre is a conventional category that identifies pieces of music as belonging to a shared tradition or set of conventions

Wrote the Gregorian Chant

Music in which all the notes sung are in unison is called monophonic

words and music can correspond in various   ways

One pitch per syllable

several (or sometimes     many!) notes per syllable      of text; often associated with operatic     singing

A vowel that is stretched over many different pitches

• Earliest known female composer
• Founder of abbey in Bingen, Germany
• Composer, poet, and scientist
• Known as prophet for her visions

two or more melodies heard simultaneously

a melody starts in one performer (or group of performers) and is then       overlapped by a second performer(s) performing the same melody delayed in       time

• Each voice enters in succession with the same melody
• A type of imitative polyphony
• For a capella voices
• "Row, row, row your boat"

High female voice

Low female voice

high male voice

middle-range male voice

Low male voice

All voices move together in same rhythm

• A "rebirth" of learning and innovation
• 1453- fall of Constantinople
• Increased interest in Ancient Greece and Rome

• Increased interest in life and human value as opposed to Medieval focus on religion and afterlife
• Move towards commercialism and centralized govt
• Move towards more realistic style in visual arts

• Originally from Northern France
• Moved to Italy to find fame
• Sang in choir and Sistine chapel
• Wrote both secular and sacred works

• Catholic Church's response to Protestant reformation in early 1600s
• An attempt to reform the Church

• Group of about 255 clergy
• Established new policies for Church

• "The man who saved polyphony"
• Born in Palestrina, Italy
• Worked at The Vatican for several different popes
• Famous for a more conservative, restrained style of polyphony
• Wrote music for hundreds of masses

The musical setting of ordinaries from the mass (usually a cappella)

The intentional use of musical gestures in a work that in some way reflect the literal or figurative meaning of a word or phrase of the lyrics

• Worked in Italy
• 250 madrigals
• His 1st book of madrigals was the most widely reprinted collection of the time

• Possibly born in 1570
• Active in Dublin and London Most famous for fair phyllis

In music, principle of organizing musical compositions around a central note, the tonic

In music, the tonic is the first scale degree of a diatonic scale and the tonal center or final resolution tone

Almost always the last note of the piece

Happier sounding

Softer sounding

• Familiar instruments are developed
• Instruments begin to be highlighted by themselves
• Composers moulded the musical language to fit moods and affections
• A baroque piece is famous for its doctrine of mood. What is happy will be happy throughout and what is sad continues to the end

a   melody with vocal or instrumental accompaniment (a kind of texture)

Basso continuo is a form of musical accompaniment used in the Baroque period. It means "continuous bass".

Basso continuo, sometimes just called “continuo”, was played by a keyboard instrument and another bass instrument such as cello, violone (an old form of double bass) or bassoon. The keyboard instrument was normally a harpsichord or, if it was being played in a church, an organ.

• Started in Italy at the end of the 16th century
• A drama that is primarily sung, accompanied by instruments, and presented theatrically
• Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance. The performance is typically given in an opera house, accompanied by an orchestra or smaller musical ensemble

in music was originally any expressive melody, usually, but not always, performed by a singer. The term became used almost exclusively to describe a self-contained piece for one voice, with or without orchestral accompaniment, normally part of a larger work. The typical context for arias is opera

• is a style of delivery (much used in operas, oratorios, and cantatas) in which a singer is allowed to adopt the rhythms of ordinary speech.
• Recitative does not repeat lines as formally composed songs do. It resembles sung ordinary speech more than a formal musical composition

• a German-born British Baroque composer famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos
• Born in a family indifferent to music
• Handel composed more than forty operas in over thirty years
• strongly influenced by the great composers of the Italian Baroque and the middle-German polyphonic choral tradition.

The author of a libretto

• a musical form that was prevalent in the Baroque era
• It is sung by a soloist with the accompaniment of instruments, often a small orchestra
• The da capo aria is very common in the musical genres of opera and oratorio

• An oratorio is a large musical composition for orchestra, choir, and soloists.
• Like an opera, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias. However, opera is musical theatre, while oratorio is strictly a concert piece—though oratorios are sometimes staged as operas, and operas are sometimes presented in concert form

A line or group of lines repeated at intervals in a song

• a recurrent musical section that alternates with different episodes of contrasting material. The repetition can be exact or varied to a greater or lesser extent
• In the concerto grosso the full orchestra (tutti) has the ritornello; the solo group (concertino) has the contrasting episodes.

is the quality of a musical note or sound or tone that distinguishes different types of sound production, such as voices and musical instruments, string instruments, wind instruments, and percussion instruments

• Born in central Germany and never left country
• Composed both sacred and secular works
• Over 200 church cantatas
• Lots of keyboard music with no opera
• Not well-known during lifetime

A form in which one or more melodic themes are developed through carefully controlled imitative polyphony

Melody is called the subject

The melody in a fugue

A passage between statements of a main subject or theme, as in a rondo or fugue.

• Rebellion against the authority of the Catholic Church
• New types of music, including chorales
• The Catholic Church undertook its own internal program of reform

a professor of biblical theology whose arguments that God offers salvation through faith alone and that religious authority comes from the Bible alone posed a challenge to the authority of the Catholic Church.

• chorale is a melody to which a hymn is sung by a Christian congregation.
• The typical four-part setting of a chorale, in which the sopranos (and the congregation) sing the melody along with three lower voices, is known as a chorale harmonization. In certain modern usage, this term may include classical settings of such hymns and works of a similar character.

• Developed 1700 as part of the Lutheran service
• Based on a chorale melody
• Used as part of a central church service
• Chorus, ducts, and chorales

• Composers like Bach composed sets of dances in a much more formal way and called these sets of dances dance suites.
• Dance suites were very popular in 1700s and were written for orchestras or solo instruments
• For a dance suite to be called a suite, it had to contain the four most popular dances

• Requested a dance suite from Handel
• Legend has it that Handel composed Water Music to regain the favour of King George I

Instrumental music that carries some extramusical meaning, some “program” of literary idea, legend, scenic description, or personal drama

is a musical composition usually composed in three parts or movements, in which (usually) one solo instrument (for instance, a piano, violin, cello or flute) is accompanied by an orchestra.

• Italian Baroque Composer
• Catholic Priest
• Known mainly for composing instrumental concertos for the violin
• One of the most popular and widely recorded Baroque composers

The Ospedale della Pietà was a convent, orphanage, and music school in Venice

The composer Antonio Vivaldi was appointed a violin teacher in 1703 and served in various roles through 1715, and again from 1723 to 1740

Many Baroque concertos are structured in a form known as ritornello form. In this form, a repeated section of music, the ritornello (literally, "the little thing that returns") alternates with freer episodes

Violin, viola-slightly bigger than violin, cello, double bass

• Flute
• Picolo-tiny, difficult to play
• Clarinet-accompanies violin
• Oboe-double reed
• Bassoon-double reed, awkward size

• Trumpet- highest pitch brass, valves
• Trombone-uses a slide, uses valves
• French Horn: 16 ft long uncoiled, uses valves

2 groves with and without pitch

Play with bow

Pluck string

Quiet

In music, a theme is the material, usually a recognizable melody, upon which part or all of a composition is based

a leading phrase or figure that is reproduced and varied through the course of a composition or movement

• Classical era
• The form generally used for the opening movement of the Classical sonata.

This form is typically employed as the third movement of classical symphonies, string quartets, and other works. It originated as a stately, dignified dance in which the dancing couple exchanged curtsies and bows. But the minuet movement of a symphony or string quartet is written for listening, not dancing. It is in triple meter and usually in a moderate tempo. The Minuet is in A B A form: minuet(A), trio(B), minuet(A).

variation is a formal technique where material is repeated in an altered form

   material, usually a recognizable melody, upon which part or all of a composition is based

• Classical Era composer
• Child prodigy
• Austrian composer, widely recognized as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music
• Wrote in all the musical genres of his day and excelled in every one

• One of the most prolific and prominent Classical composers
• Spent most of career as a court musician
• "Forced to become original" because he was isolated from other composers until later in his life
• One of the most celebrated composers in Europe at time of death

A string quartet is a musical ensemble of four string players – two violin players, a violist and a cellist

The text of a dramatic musical work, such as an opera

an improvised or written-out ornamental passage played or sung by a soloist or soloists, usually in a "free" rhythmic style, and often allowing for virtuosic display