Music History I

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Music History I

• Lecture Notes 10

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Concerto

• Concerto grosso the most important type of
  Baroque concerto
• Concertino A small group of solo instruments
• Ripieno The larger ensemble the full orchestra
• Allessandro Stradella (1639-1682) the first to
  use the concerto grosso design
• Corelli composed some of the earliest and best
  known concerti grossi (Op. 6 of 1714)
• Some composers preferred the multi-movement
  design (as in the dance suite) while others
  adhered to the 3-movement plan

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Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713)

• Youngest of 5 raised by his mother
• Music studies at Faenza and Lugo
• Accademia Filarmonica, Bologna, 1670
• Became highly skilled violinist
• Op. 1 12 trio sonatas dedicated to Queen
  Christina
• Op. 2 chamber trios in 1785 parallel 5ths in
  the Allemande
• Music Director in palace of Cardinal Pamphili in
  1687
• Op. 3 12 church sonatas dedicated to Duke of
  Modena
• Under patronage of Cardinal Ottoboni in 1690
  became widely known for his concertos
  (sinfonie)
• To Arcadian Academy in 1706 with Scarlatti and
  Pasquini contact with Handel
• Retired in 1708 continued to compose and revise
  earlier works
• Concerti grossi performed on anniversary of his
  death

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Concerto grosso in F, Op. 6, No. 2 by Corelli

• 4 Movements How are they related harmonically?
• Compositional device in opening measures of each
  allegro (except the last one)
• Movement One motion away from the home key to ?
• Distinctive rhythmic features
• 4th Movement open or closed form?
• CD recordings compared
• Obbligato and ad libitum

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Concerto in A minor, Op. 3, No. 8 by Vivaldi

• Structural harmonies i, III, iv, i
• Pivotal cadence, tonic to mediant
• Preparation for iv chord in m. 47
• Return to the home key
• Harmonic prolongation for strength and closure
• Significant melodic figures
• The head motif
• Returns of earlier melodic/thematic material

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Prelude and Fugue No. 1 in C by J. S. Bach

• The basic building blocks melody, harmony and
  rhythm
• Number of voices in the fugue
• The fugue subject appears how many times in 27
  measures?

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The Goldberg Variations

• The harmonic design of the Aria
• Melody, harmony and rhythm in the 4 variations
• How does the reply in each binary compare with
  the statement?
• Why Statement and Reply rather than A section and
  B section?

8
In Bachs Day

• Contemporaries of note and events of significance
  in
• England
• France
• Spain
• Italy
• Germany

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Instrumental Music

• Its vitality in the 17th and 18th centuries may
  be attributed to
• Homophonic texture
• A greater sense of rhythmic and melodic freedom
• A strong desire for timbral contrast

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The Baroque Violin

• Shorter and lighter bass bar
• Neck angle less steep than violin of today
• Lower bridge
• Shorter fingerboard
• Bow generally shorter with less tension
• Tone softer, sweeter, more rounded

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Baroque Woodwinds

• Recorders conical bore
• Some use of transverse flute
• Oboe successor to the shawm tapered bore
  developed gradually others in oboe family
• Bassoon evolved from the curtal used mainly on
  the basso continuo
• The chalumeau used sparingly

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Brass and Percussion

• Cornetto (Zink) the forerunner of the trumpet
  made of wood with a cup-shaped mouthpiece
• Natural trumpets (no valves)
• Trombones developed from the sackbut used in
  church and theater
• Horns moved to orchestra gradually from military
  and hunting (no valves)
• Timpani used with trumpets

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Keyboard Instruments

• The golden age of harpsichord and organ making
  mid 16th to early 18th C
• Sound generation
• Clavichord metal tangent strikes the string
• Harpsichord plectrum plucks the string
• Fortepiano hammer strikes the string

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Invention of the Piano

• Bartolomeo Cristofori (1655-1730)
• Made the first successful mechanism where the
  hammer would strike the string and fall away
  immediately leaving the string to vibrate

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Organ Registration

• C. P. E. Bach used the term in a letter to his
  father
• Registration is the selection of a set of sounds
  from the various ranks of pipes.

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Emergence of the Orchestra

• 17th century Italy large churches had
  instrumental groups St. Marks in Venice had 18
  players on its payroll in 1643, a number that
  grew to about 70 by the early 18th century
• There were court orchestras in France and Germany
  in the early 18th century

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Public Concerts in the Baroque

• Convents and orphanages
• Taverns and public rooms
• Private homes
• Telemann organized the Leipzig Collegium Musicum
  in 1702

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Can you find the conductor?

• In the illustration depicting an orchestra of the
  1740s, the conductor is in the center at the
  harpsichord (see p. 275)

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Concerts spirituel

• Instrumental and sacred music concerts given at
  various locations when theaters were closed

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Sonata

• From the infinitive sonare which means to sound
• Trio sonata its form generally fixed by the end
  of the 17th century
• How many to perform a trio sonata?
• Sonata da camera suite of dances for performance
  in a secular setting
• Sonata da chiesa sectional form for performance
  in church

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Concertos Compared

• The concertos of Corelli consist of a series of
  sections that are unrelated thematically. They
  are consistently of the concerto grosso design
• The solo concertos of Vivaldi make greater use of
  the ritornello principle. The sections are longer
  and fewer in number

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Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741)

• Talbots description (Syllabus, p. 17)
• Eldest of 6 children asthma and heart problems
  trained for priesthood (tonsure in1693) il prete
  rosso
• Op. 1 12 trio sonatas (1710)
• Op. 2 violin sonatas dedicated to Frederick IV
  of Denmark
• Op. 3 Lestro armonico (12 concertos) in 1712
• Concertos very popular composed and produced
  opera as well (30 in his total output)
• Extensive travel over a period of about 20 years
  took him to Mantua, Venice, Vienna, Prague,
  Germany and France returned to Vienna in 1740

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The Baroque Suite

• Typically the suite is made up of a set of
  dance-type movements all in the same key (may
  change modes)
• The four stylized dances
• Allemande
• Courante
• Sarabande
• Gigue

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Program Music

• Music to which a non-musical story or idea has
  been attached

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Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre (1665-1729)

• Composer and harpsichordist
• Published a set of harpsichord pieces in 1687
• In 1694, became the first French woman to compose
  an opera
• Skilled at improvisation on the harpsichord
• Also composed sonatas and sacred cantatas

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Musical Rhetoric

• The basic premise
• A piece of instrumental music could be accepted
  as a type of oration (a speech without words).
• That instrumental music might create in listeners
  the same kinds and degree of effects that had
  long been considered the exclusive domain of
  vocal music.

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Free Genres

• Works based on no preexistent material and adhere
  to no particular pattern or structure

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Fugue

• 17th C a keyboard genre where a single thematic
  idea is subjected to imitative treatment for the
  entire length of a work
• The subject the theme, or basic musical idea on
  which the work is based
• The exposition when all voices have sounded the
  subject once in succession
• An episode a section with no complete statement
  of the subject
• Middle entries new points of imitation in an
  episode
• A countersubject distinctive thematic material
  used consistently as a counterpoint to the subject

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Equal Temperament

• Tuning that divides the octave into 12 equal
  semitones
• System that makes it possible to play at the
  keyboard in any key
• Bach gave significant meaning to this phenomenon
  with a set of 24 pieces known as the
  Well-Tempered Clavier

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Split Keys

• Keyboard instrument builders made them to allow
  for the differences in pitch of what we now
  accept as enharmonic tones.

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Vocal-Based Genre

• Keyboard music of the Baroque Era based on
  chorale melodies

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Picardy Third

• A major third at the end of a piece that
  otherwise is in minor mode

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Systems of Temperament

• Pythagorean all 5ths (32) and 4ths (43) are
  just whole tones are 98 semitones are narrow
  3rds and 6ths are dissonant
• Just system of pure 5ths that favors the
  interval of a 3rd
• Mean-Tone compromise between the first two 5ths
  made slightly smaller
• Equal all intervals equal

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Basso ostinato

• A consistently repeated bass line below ever
  changing melodies in the upper parts

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Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764)

• Known as the creator of the modern science of
  harmony
• The first to codify the modern system of harmony
  based on triadic chords related to a fundamental
  bass