Music History I

1
Music History I

• Lecture Notes 3

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Baroque Era

• The Age of Absolutism
• A period of time when European monarchs claimed
  complete and sole authority over their dominions.
• The time frame 1600 - 1750

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Louis XIV

• Set the standard for absolutism
• Reign 1643 to 1715
• Divine right of kings advocate
• Sources of authority ancestors and God
• Results for the arts? Excellent
• For the political system? Not so good. Depleted
  the French treasury through costs of palace
  construction, lavish entertainments, military
  adventures by the time of his death.
• Patron of Lully, Molière, Racine

4
Peter the Great

• B. 1672, youngest child of Czar Alexis
• Reign As Peter I from 1682 to 1725
• Transformed Russia into a European power
• Strong military leader
• Promoter of cultural events
• Made St. Petersburg capital in 1703
• Second palace, the Russian Versailles
• Attracted many artists and entertainers

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Thirty Years War (1618-1648)

• Catholics vs. Protestants at the beginning
• On German territory but involved France, Spain,
  Sweden, Denmark, Holland and other parts of the
  Holy Roman Empire
• Results economic depression, political disarray
  especially in Germany
• French strength diminished when Louis XIV revoked
  Edict of Nantes in 1685, an alliance (1598) that
  had brought peace between Catholics and
  Protestants
• Protestants fled to Holland, Prussia, North
  America

6
17th Century England

• Magna Carta (1215) king/nobility shared power
• Parliament House of Lords (nobility), House of
  Commons (wealthy land owners)
• English Civil Wars (1642-1649) Parliament vs.
  the monarchy (the Puritan Revolution)
• Charles I executed (1/30/1649)
• Commonwealth established
• Oliver Cromwell, military dictator (1649-1660)
• Charles II (exiled 1651 returned 1660, r. until
  1685)
• Glorious Revolution (1688) ended struggle between
  king and Parliament James II deposed (Glorious
  Revolution, 1688-89)
• Wm. Mary (r. 1689-1702) power of the monarchy
  by consent of Parliament arts began to thrive
  second oldest college in the U. S. chartered in
  1693 became a university in 1779

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The Arts in England

• In contrast to the rest of Europe in the 18th C.,
  public support of the arts emerged as an
  alternative to the patronage of church and court
• Theaters and opera houses became as successful as
  those in Hamburg and Venice, both of which
  flourished under republican governments

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The Baroque Timeline

• Now its your turn

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Colonization

• North America England and France
• Central and South America Spain and Portugal
• Africa, the Middle East, southern Asia, the
  Pacific all of the above plus Holland

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Galileo and the Inquisition

• Embraced the Copernican view that the earth is
  not the center of the universe
• Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543), Polish
  astronomer treatise on the universe published in
  1543 and dedicated to Pope Paul III
• Church censured Copernican view in 1616
• Inquisition A Roman Catholic tribunal
  established in the 13th C. to root out
  suppress heresy determine and carry out
  punishment for heretics made official by Pope
  Gregory IX in 1233

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Literary Figures

• Cervantes (1547-1616) Don Quixote
• John Donne (1572-1631) English poet and Anglican
  priest
• Ben Jonson (1572-1637) English playwright poet
  Shakespeare cast in Every Man in His Humor (1598)
• John Milton (1608-1674) Champion of freedom two
  famous epic poems
• John Dryden (1631-1700) Poet, dramatist, critic

• Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) English author,
  satirist Gullivers Travels
• Alexander Pope (1688-1744) English poet
• Pierre Corneille (1606-1684) Dramatist master of
  classical French tragedy
• Jean-Baptiste Moquelin, aka Molière (1622-1673)
  Master of French comedy
• Jean Racine (1639-1699) French dramatist
  preference for tragedy

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Baroque

• From the Portuguese barroco, a misshapen pearl
• Applied at first in a derogatory manner
• Distorted grotesque
• Applied to music by Rousseau in his Dictionary of
  Music (Paris, 1768)
• Term applied by art historians of the 19th C.
• Negative connotations had disappeared by the 20th
  C. when applied to music.

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Artists

• Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640)
  Opulent sensuality
• Frans Hals (ca. 1582-1666) Portraits of lively
  expressiveness
• Rembrandt (1606-1669) Insight into human
  psychology
• Jan Vermeer (1632-1675) The Thomas Kinkade of the
  17th C.

• Bernini (1598-1680) Painter, architect, sculptor
  influenced by Michelangelo (flair, exuberance)
• Gentileschi (1593-ca. 1653) famous female
  painter Biblical subjects
• Velásquez (1599-1660) Influenced by Rembrandt
  (portraits)

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Affect

• The premise that every work or movement can and
  should convey a single predominant emotion
• Music must move the listener emotionally
• Music historians often refer to this phenomenon
  as the Doctrine of the Affections

15
Opera

• Opera began and flourished under political
  absolutism
• Firmly established with the opening of public
  theaters in Venice, Hamburg and London

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Trends in the Baroque Era

• Demand for something new old music largely
  ignored
• Main musical institutions church and court
• Music publishing centers London, Paris,
  Amsterdam
• Typesetting replaced by engraving by the early
  18th C. long storage print on demand
• Music should be word driven give expression to
  the text (like the ancient Greeks) use musical
  devices
• Florentine Camerata develop a style of singing
  that preserves the intelligibility of the text
  polyphony obscures the words

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Your Observations

• The Enraged Musician (p. 202)
• A View of the musical cosmos, 1650 (p. 205)

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The Pilgrim Woman

• Words Rinuccini, Strozzi, Bardi
• Music Cavalieri, Peri, Caccini, Marenzio

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More Terms to Define

• Homophonic Music with a main melodic line
  supported by accompanying voices
• Prima prattica (Renaissance polyphony)
• Seconda prattica (the new musical style)
• Basso continuo Supporting musical line that
  provided the harmonic framework for the solo
  voice above it. Also known as figured bass
• Opera sung drama
• Monody Solo and continuo combined

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Your Turn Again

• Three (or more) features of Sfogava con la stelle
  by Giulio Caccini

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Rules of Figured Bass

• No numerals harmonic root in the bass performer
  supplies the 3rd and 5th
• A 6 calls for the performer to add a 6th above
  the note in the bass the 3 is implied simply
  means a chord in first inversion
• A 6 over a 4 a second inversion major triad
• Old use of 10 and 11 gave way to 3 and 4
• Performers discretion in figured bass realization

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Modality to Tonality

• Composers and theorists were still writing and
  thinking in the traditional modes (the 8 church
  modes) through most of the 17th C.
• By the end of the century, the diatonic scale
  emerged with the major mode and the minor mode as
  the most favored
• Mode was now applied to only two
• The old modes never faded away completely

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Stylistic Overview

• Emergence of basso continuo
• Old and new together
• Shift from modal writing to tonal writing
• Intervallic to chordal harmony
• Greater rhythmic freedom
• Allowance for virtuosity

• Distinction between vocal and instrumental styles
• Growing importance of instruments and
  instrumental music
• Program music
• Contrasting timbres
• National styles

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Style DifferencesRenaissance Baroque

• One consistent style
• Text clarity less important
• Polyphonic
• Balanced, evenly flowing rhythm
• Lyrical melody, rarely virtuosic
• Primarily modal
• Form mainly paratactic
• Vocal style instruments double voices

• Two styles
• Text declamation
• Polyphonic or homophonic
• Rhythmic variety metric pulse
• Virtuosic embellished
• Primarily tonal
• Paratactic and syntactic
• Option of writing for voices and/or instruments
  with clear stylistic differences