The Concerted Style in

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CHAPTER 31

• The Concerted Style in
• Venice and Dresden

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The basilica of St. Mark was and is the focus of
civic and spiritual life in Venice

• It is built in the form of an equal-sided Greek
  cross, a unique architectural plan among the
  major churches of the West.

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• Cori spezzati literally "broken choirs," it is
  music composed for two, three, or four choirs
  placed in different parts of the building. Since
  the mid sixteenth century, cori spezzati was a
  whole mark of composers working at St. Mark's,
  where separate ensembles would perform in the two
  choir lofts to the left and right of the main
  isle (see Fig. 31-1).
• Stile concertato Italian for "corcerted style,"
  it is a term broadly used to identify Baroque
  music marked by grand scale and strong contrast,
  either between voices and instruments, between
  separate instrumental and choral ensembles, or
  even between soloist and choir.

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• Giovanni Gabrieli organist and composer at St.
  Mark's, he is important to history for having
  been the first composer to indicate dynamic
  levels and specify particular instruments in a
  musical score, as can be heard throughout the two
  volumes of his Sacred Symphonies (1597 and 1615).
• Concerted motet a motet entirely in stile
  concertato (for an example of a concerted motet,
  listen to Anthology, No. 83).

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• Claudio Monteverdi, creator of a new-style
  madrigal at the end of the Renaissance (see
  Chapter 28) and main progenitor of opera (see
  Chapter 30), succeeded Giovanni Gabrieli as
  maestro di cappella at St. Mark's in 1613. While
  Monteverdi's secular music survives in print,
  most of his compositions for St. Mark's have been
  lost as they were never published.
• Concerted madrigal a madrigal in which
  instruments appear, and textures and timbres are
  strongly contrasting (for an example of a
  concerted madrigal, listen to Anthology, No. 84).

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• Stile concitato a style of composition
  particularly suited to warlike music which
  consists in dividing whole notes into machine
  gun-like short notessixteenth notes all firing
  on the same pitch (Ex. 31-2). Monteverdi claims
  to have invented this new style in his eighth
  book of madrigals, in which it is featured
  prominently.

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• Barbara Strozzi a pupil of opera composer
  Francesco Cavalli, she published eight volumes of
  vocal music, mostly solo madrigals, arias, and
  cantatas with basso continuo.
• Cantata literally "a sung thing," it was the
  primary genre of vocal chamber music. Grown out
  of the solo madrigal, the cantata is usually a
  piece of accompanied solo vocal music dealing
  with secular topics. Because it was usually
  performed for a small audience in a private
  residence, this genre is also called the chamber
  cantata.

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• Basso ostinato a bass line that insistently
  repeats, note for note. The most frequent types
  of basso ostinato in the seventeenth century are
  the passamezzo antico, folia, passacaglia, and
  ciaconna (called chaconne in French).

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• Lament bass A basso ostinato which consists in a
  descending tetrachordal figure, usually in triple
  meter (Ex. 31-4a). This ostinato figure would
  remain a signpost of lament all the way to J.S.
  Bach, who used it in the "Crucifixus" of his
  B-Minor Mass.

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The Concerted Style Moves North Heinrich Schütz
in Dresden

• Heinrich Schütz was among the first of a long
  line of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
  composers who made their way to Italy to learn
  the Italian style (Handel and Mozart would
  follow). He studied with Andrea and Giovanni
  Gabrieli, and later with Monteverdi in Venice.
  He composed the first opera in German, namely
  Dafne (now lost) of 1627. In 1621 Schütz became
  Kapellmeister (chief of music at court, German
  equivalent of maestro di cappella) in the chapel
  of the Elector of Saxony in Dresden, where he
  started to publish sacred music for the court.
• Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) a series of
  declared and undeclared wars fought essentially
  between the Protestants and the Catholics over
  political control and religious dominance in
  central Europe. During this time, musical
  institutions in Germany were devastated,
  including those in Dresden. Schütz's
  compositions during the Thirty Years' War reflect
  the mood of these troubled times.

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• Schütz's knowledge of the dramatic conventions of
  opera and the Venetian concerted motet can be
  heard in his Saul, Saul, was verfolgst du mich?
  (Anthology, No. 86), which recounts St. Paul's
  conversion to Christianity on the way to
  Damascus. In this concerted motet, Schütz makes
  use of many compositional techniques learned in
  Italy among them cori spezzati, monody,
  concerted madrigal style, and dynamic
  markingswhich reinforce the dramatic contrast at
  the heart of much Baroque art and music (see, for
  example, the stark contrast between light and
  dark in Fig. 31-3).