MUAR 211 Week 3 January 22-26, 2018

Renaissance Continued 22/01/18

Instrumental Music and Dances

▪ If you were a courtier of any kind, then you should have some musical talent
→ And had to be able to read notation from a book
→ These dances were published in the thousands, but they never mention instruments
- We don’t know how they performed
- Instruments either played dance music (all instrumental music from the 12th
century), in 14th century we think they sang and played instruments together
▪ Then in 1600: The Theater of Instruments was published, which described all instruments
→ Shows someone conducting
→ Shows instruments of the time with dimensions and sometimes tuning
→ It even includes percussion instruments, even though we only have written music
for percussion as of 1750
→ “barbaric” instruments from other countries: evidence of contact between cultures
- Some of these people came over as slaves

▪ Ex: La Bourrée from Terpischore

→ Dance is not a genre
- The beat is very important
- The genre of this piece is a bourée
• Quick
• In duple time, first beat accented
• Has plucked strings
→ Consort: mixed instruments

▪ Ex: Courante from Terpischore

→ Very similar to the other one
→ Pay attention to the beat and then the subdivision of the beat

Renaissance Instruments
▪ Recorder
▪ Viols: bowed string instruments (bows made with horsehair and are dragged to make
vibrations)
→ Base viol like a cello
▪ Lute: plucked string instrument
→ Rounded back
→ Came from Muslim countries
▪ Harpsichord: keyboard instrument that plucks the strings (a modern piano hits the strings)
→ Very important in baroque music
▪ Racket: double reed instrument
▪ Crumhorn: double reed instrument
MUAR 211 Week 3 January 22-26, 2018

Early Opera
Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643)
▪ Best composer that ever lived
▪ Starts off in Renaissance world, but dies in the world of the Baroque (starts in 1600)
▪ Around 1600:
→ Start getting modernised systems
- Monetary, political systems
- Genres of music that still survive
- System of musical harmony
▪ Revolutionary, criticized for being so
▪ Transitional composer
▪ First important opera composer
▪ Madrigal: most important secular vocal genre, sung only in the courts
→ Polyphonic

▪ Ex: “Ohimé, se tanta amate” from The Fourth Book of Madrigals

→ A cappella men and women
- Has 2 sopranos
→ Polyphonic
→ Word painting: ohimé like a sigh
End of material for quiz 1

Opera – Invented in 1600

▪ Italian phenomenon
▪ Put music to Greek and Roman dramas
→ Turned it into a spoken, musical, dramatic play
→ Exclusively for aristocratic entertainment
▪ Libretto: text of the opera, written by the librettist
▪ 1637: first public opera house, which you can go to as long as you have money
→ Some of the middle class could attend with the aristocracy
▪ For vocal soloists, chorus and orchestra
▪ Divided into acts, which is divided into scenes (like a play)
▪ Always secular
▪ All dialogue is sung

▪ Ouverture: the opening instrumental number, played by orchestra alone

→ Baroque music has a lot of strings

▪ Recitative: like reciting, what most early operas were 24/01/18

→ Singing in a way that’s like speaking
→ Not lyrical or melodious
→ Not a lot of melismas
- Trying to get message across quickly
MUAR 211 Week 3 January 22-26, 2018

→ No beat (nonmetrical)
→ Basso Continuo: a few instruments follow the soloist
- Base line
→ Hard to tell apart from aria in early opera (it will be easier later)

▪ Aria: lyrical song

→ Has a beat
→ Orchestral accompaniment
→ About music and beautiful singing, not about the text
→ Used for emotional expression and character development
- Usually about themselves

Henry Purcell (1659 – 1695)

▪ English composer for English court
▪ Ex: Dido and Aeneas
→ Nothing that the plucked strings are doing is written
→ Basso Continuo: given bass line and also little figures that tell you what the
harmony line is
- No rhythm notated, just given a suggested harmony (given a note, and they
can play within the chord)
• We often have to make stuff up when looking at baroque music
• The most important part of baroque music is the melody and the base
line
• There was a lot of improvisation in the baroque period
→ Recitative followed by aria (typical)
- Aria has repeated text and melismas
→ The aria has a lament base (basso ostinato): repeating base line

Lament: a song expressing sadness

▪ Often accompanied by basso ostinato

Baroque Era: 1600 – 1750

▪ Composers now tell you what instruments to play
→ Opera composers wanted certain instruments for certain things (ex: low instruments
to portray hell)
- Now have scoring
▪ Composers also indicate the speed and how loud to play
→ Dynamics: how quietly or loudly you play
- f (forte), mf (mezzo forte), mp (mezzo piano), p (piano)
- > (crescendo), < (decrescendo)
MUAR 211 Week 3 January 22-26, 2018

→ Tempo: speed
- Presto (very fast), allegro, allegretto, moderato, adagio/andante (slow)
- Italian terms

▪ Ornamentation: improvising short parts to show off skill

→ Treatise on Playing the Flute: had descriptions of hundreds of ornaments

▪ Orchestra: large group of instruments (back then, 25 was large, so it was often less than
that)
→ Bowed instruments (strings): violins, violas, cellos, bass
→ Harpsichord
→ Small wind section or no wind instruments and no percussion
- Usually playing the same parts
- Oboe, French horn, etc.
- Natural horns had no valves  can’t play all the notes

▪ Score: piece of music that shows you all of the parts in the music (for the conductor)
→ They didn’t have conductors, so they didn’t really have scores
→ Part: piece of music that only shows what one performer will do
- A part doesn’t mean how many instruments there are, it means how many
different musical lines there are
• Sometimes all violins will play the same part

Johann Sebastien Bach (1685-1750)

▪ Bach died in 1750, which is when the baroque period ended