Lecture 5

Music in Early Modern

Europe (1600s):
Moving Passions, Erasing
Boundaries

MU51061 Discovering Music

Dr. Berta Joncus
questions
• how has the ‘Baroque’ been defined?
• from 1600 to 1700 what were some formative social changes for
Western European music?
• how did Monteverdi fuse diverse practices from his circles in his
opera Orfeo (1607)?
• how did South and Central America become the foundation of
Western European art music?
• how did King Louis XIV of France turn music into propaganda?
defining ‘Baroque’ – a sensibility
“This style in decorations got the epithet of Barroque
taste, derived from a word signifying pearls and teeth
of unequal size.” -- 1765 H. Fuseli trans. J. J.
Winckelmann

“The authors of the degenerated Renaissance known

as Baroque” -- 1877 Baedeker's Central Italy & Rome
p. 59.
‘Display of splendour was one of the main social functions
of music for … Baroque courts, made possible only
through money … sumptuousness in the arts became an
end in itself … With the brilliant development of court and
church music went the Inquisition and the ruthless
exploitation of the lower classes by means of oppressive
taxes.’

-Manfred Bukofzer, ‘Sociology of Baroque Music’ (1947) [Taruskin, pp.14-15]

changes, upheavals
• slavery: Portugal, Spain, England, France, the Dutch
• banking, patronage and the Church: in Italy,
especially Rome and Venice
• absolutism and the nation state: France, Louis XIV
• Protest(ant) wars: England’s Civil War (1642–1651),
Thirty-years War (1618-48), Independence of
Netherlands (1566-1648)
• boundaries contested: class, gender, religion
Doctrine of Affect – across the arts
• ‘Doctrine’ showed how to make art dramatic
• René Descartes: theory Passions of the Soul (c.1645-6)
• Six principle affects: joy/sorrow; love/hate,
admiration/desire; intermix as anger/tenderness;
fear/hope; jealousy/trust; bravery/despair
• same for everyone
• external stimuli set ‘humors’ (vapours, spirits, fluids) in
motion, generating passions
Eight heads showing human passions. Etching by Taylor, 1788,
based ib Charles Le Brun, Method for Learning how to Draw the
Passions (1668)
innovations in music
• opera • monody
• monody • seconda pratica
• recitative • harmonic progression
• aria • even temperament
• ostinato bass • major and minor keys
• basso continuo • stile concertato
• stile fantasticus
Academies and the birth of opera
• academies = ‘clubs’ formed among privileged to promote discussion
of the arts
• Vincenzo Galileo – reject madrigals, imitate Greek practice
• exchanges with Girolamo Mei (in Rome) and
• Greek tragedy all-sung, on single melody
• ideas communicated to Florentine Camerata members
• aim: reproduce speech, deploy rhetoric, move the listener
Florence to Camerata
Held by Count Bardi, 1573-
Rome and back 1592

again

Representation of the Vicenzo Galilei

Soul and Body (1600) (Florence) corresponds
with Girolamo Mei, (Rome)
Emilio de Cavalier’s specialist in music of Greek
morality play drama

Eurydice (1600)
one version by Peri,
another by Caccini
Florentine
intermedi and
‘fables’

Apollo and Bacchus descend, accompanied by

Harmony, Rhythm, the Three Graces, Flora and
others (1589)
Giulio Caccini (1551-1618): composer, Francesca Caccini (1587-c1641): composer,
singer, Florence Camerata member singer, vocal teacher; daughter of Giulio Caccini,
first female composer of opera
 monody
• Vincenzo Galilei asserts Greek drama was recited on specific tones
• urged composers to mirror this
• solo arias and madrigals: through-composed, non-strophic
• natural accentuation, written-out embellishments, one line of poetry =
separate phrase + cadence
• bass intervals indicated by numbers: basso continuo
 melody

textures:
polarized bass line
(continuo)
 • established reputation across courts and urban
rebel, rebel: centres through books of madrigals
Claudio • synthesized forms: madrigal, monody,
Monteverdi continuo, dance
• advanced monody: song-like, declamatory,
declamatory with ritornello, strophic variation
Monterdi and L’Orfeo (1607)
performed as part of carnival
celebrations
under auspices of academy in
Mantua, sponsored by the Duke
of Mantua, Vincenzo Gonzaga,
performed in the ducal palace
Structure and Affective contrast: ‘Ahi caso
cerbo’ – Monteverdi, Orfeo

• MOOD CRASH: bass semi-tone moves to new key, creating dissonance

– NEW MODE – rooted in sustained E
• score showing modal transition
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL8FbXtu_t0
• example of synthesis: interlaced monody with instrumental solo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hs4jPwy8AMc (from 7:50)
 Baroque
instruments
• plucked: lute, theorbo, harp
• bowed: viols, violin family
• outdoors: trumpet, sackbut,
serpent, chalumeau
(forerunner of clarinet),
bagpipe
• indoors: traverse flute,
recorders, cornett (made of
wood), dulcian (forerunner
of bassoon
• keyboard – organ,
harpsichord, cembalo
• percussion – tabor,
dulcimer, tambourine, bells
Monterdi, L’Orfeo (1607)
exploits colours of 40-instrument band for mood change

Class exercise: how many instruments from the illustration can you spot
in this video: L'Orfeo ‘Toccata’ [overture]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjpFi9bn1do

contrasts vocal sections with dance – the moresca, a ‘Moorish’ or

Arabic dance [independent study: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk0Wnhf_b44]
Textures: Polarized Lines, Contrasted
Sonorities
melody: voice, violin,
wind instrument
(recorder, flageleot,
cornetto, tranverse flute)

continuo band: one

instrument plucked,
another with bowed,
sustained notes:
Barbara Strozzi (1619- Barbara
Strozzi: poet,
1677): composer composer,
singer
• her mother was servant in household of
father, librettist Giulio Strozzi
• trained with next-generation (after
Monteverdi) Venetian opera composer,
Cavalli
• led an academy hosted by her father,
possibly as courtesan
• composed and performed solo arias,
ariettas, cantatas
• re-invents monody: fluid movement
between unmeasured/measured passages;
duple/triple metre
• Barbara Strozzi - Lagrime mie, (with
English translation)- from 2:16
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VAVg
8BG8II
New world rhythms
• Iberian-led slave trade brings musical
migration
• Jácaras, folia, passacalles, xacaras (from
Argentina), canário (from Canary Islands) –
become fashionable European court and
social dance, song
• written sources scarce
• exception: Lucas Ruiz de Ribayaz a Spanish
guitarist, harpist, composer and priest
transcribes tunes in treatise Luz y Norte
[independent study: ‘xacara’ performed by The Harp
Consort, Andrew Lawrence King)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-wIJkAbkzU]
ground bass
• a ground – generative of musical material
• typically derived from court and social dances
• associated with patterns of triads, generating a series of pitches in the
melody
• left to musicians to realize melodic line and how to fill in bass line
• associated with affects, states of mind
• proper execution, for proper affect
• L'Arpeggiata - Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680) – Tarantella Napoletana,
Tono Hypodorico: music “to cure tarantism [illness of the mind]”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RD6khYNpnS4
… or the ‘folia’
[video clip La Folia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puMBpccmGBA 7:59-end]

• folia: originated in Portugal, means ‘mad’ or ‘empty-headed’

• performed with tambourines and other instruments by disguised
street-porters carrying young men in women’s clothing on their
shoulder
• becomes faster and noisier, yields to madness
• from street to social dance to concert stage
• like most dances: progression of chords, and metric patterns,
rhythmic and melodic figures, cadential formulae
• independent study: Principles of Music: The "La Folía" Progression
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7Np0vV1-fw
 lament ground bass
• a descending, chromatic line spanning the
tetrachord
• chromatic or non-chromatic
• Note-per-note triad, typically (not always)
outlining i – v – VI – v
• from New World-derived dances,
passacaglia and chaconne, associated with
servants, slaves, and Amerindians
• thought to trigger ‘lament’ affects: sorrow,
despair, hope
• solo female vocal numbers
 lament bass: chaconne
‘Dido’s Lament’ in Henry Purcell, Dido and
Aeneas, composed 1688

(from 0:59)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGQq3H
cOB0Y&t=57s
LOUIS XIV :
ABSOLUTISM AND PLEASURE
Jean-Baptiste Lully
Ballet de la Nuit 1653
(Ouverture)

https://www.youtube.co
m/watch?v=PdeqbpfXaK8
1:29
ideology through spectacle
• Ballet de cour cultivated since the 16th century: classical stories
enacted by professionals and nobility
• Louis XIV debuts in 1653
• dance becomes means to command court
• opera propaganda for his magnificence
• accompanying bands unique among courts
 Opera as propaganda

• Louise XIV’s power expands in 1670s

• Lully procures license 1673
• Jean-Baptiste Lully (Italian by birth!) weds French tragedy to his own
composition = tragédie lyrique
• librettos based on classical mythology, epic poetry, and pastoral tales
• ‘orchestra’= where band sits, 24 Violons du Roi (in five parts)
suite: polite dance for the ears
• emerging genres of court dance, allemande, sarabande, gigue, canary
• cultivated for solo instruments, lute and keyboard, arranged into
collections, like the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book
• 1617 Johann Froberger composes dance suite: genre identified with
countries: French gigue, courante; Spanish sarabande
• metric emphases, rhythmic patterns, bass line, affective character
and associations distinguish each dance type