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A Listener’s Guide to Western Music

Introduction

Donald Grout, my teacher at Cornell, wrote A History of Western

Music, the most widely used text in undergraduate music history courses.

Grout’s book cites 526 composers. Now I can’t remember 526 composers

and I don’t think you can either. Without any disrespect to the great musi-

cologist, I propose an “anti-Grout” text containing only 24 composers.

You’ll recognize half of them: Bach, Beethoven, Berlioz, Debussy, Haydn,

Mozart, Purcell, Schubert, Stravinsky, Verdi, Vivaldi, and Wagner. Moreo-

ver, if you attended my lectures on The Matrix of Western Culture you’ll

recognize some of the music. I’ve deliberately repeated that repertoire

since it’s easiest to learn new material if you can attach it to something fa-miliar.

When teaching music history in university, I discovered that I had to

provide an historical context for the music because I could not count on

students having a secure grasp of European history. Time constraints pro-

hibit such a leisurely approach here, but I can refer readers to the lectures

on The Matrix of Western Culture, which outline major ideas in the arts, history, science, mathematics and philosophy. (www.arthurwenk.ca)

I should comment on the peculiar organization of these presenta-

tions. After all, how can one justify devoting one chapter to eight centuries

and another to a mere fifty years? Time constraints play an important role:

a piece of medieval music may last only a couple of minutes while a Wagner

opera stretches on for four or five hours. Musical complexity also affects

the organization. You can say everything that needs to be said about a thir-

teenth-century motet in five or ten minutes whereas you could devote an

entire lecture to Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony without exhausting the sub-

ject. Finally, the increasing complexity of music requires at least a rudi-

mentary knowledge of harmony, traditionally the subject of an entire uni-

versity course. I will endeavor to keep technical language to a minimum, but the glossary may help you deal with unfamiliar terms.

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Chapter I. The Middle Ages and the Renaissance

Music has been described as the universal language. An aesthetic re-

sponse to music seems to be hard-wired into the human psyche, as virtually

every culture has created a musical language of its own. Western music dif-

fers from all the other musics in the world in one important respect: the

presentation of more than one musical idea at the same time. This simulta-

neity may be as simple as guitar chords accompanying a song or as complex

as a musical texture involving eight or more independent voices. This dis-tinctive aspect of western music has its roots in the Middle Ages.

Medieval art does not seek originality so much as a respectful embel-

lishment of pre-existing material. Perhaps the best examples of this princi-

ple may be discovered in the elaborate decorations that medieval scribes added to their transcriptions of ancient texts.

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The elaborate Q on the left provides an entire theological lesson in pictorial

form, including a holy dove inspiring the copyist. The N on the right de-picts a scribe at his labors.

Plainsong

In the case of music, the pre-existing material came in the form of

plainsong, also called Gregorian chant, after Pope Gregory I at the end of

the 6th century. Legend has it that the Holy Spirit, in the form of a dove, sang these melodies into his ear.

While plainsong in some form probably goes back as far as the 3rd century,

our body of plainsong comes from the 9th century, in the time of Charle-magne, who ordered the codification of melodies from earlier times.

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We notice that the staff has four lines, in comparison to the modern five-line staff. The clef sign appears at the beginning of each staff, as in modern practice and indicates that the upper line of the staff is C. Counting down, we find that the first pitch is A. The words, the text of the Kyrie, the open-ing movement of the Ordinary of the Mass, translate as “Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy.” Each phrase of the text is repeated three times, as represented by the italic letters i and j. The final repetition of the words “Kyrie eleison,” a slight variation of the preceding phrase, is written out in full. A dot after a note doubles its value. When two notes ap-pear one above the other, the bottom pitch sounds first. In modern nota-tion, the chant looks like this:

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We observe that plainsong melodies are monophonic (consisting of a single

vocal line), generally narrow in compass, and proceed mostly in stepwise

motion. Our example, the Kyrie Cunctipotens Genitor Deus, has both syl-

labic passages (one note per syllable) and melismatic passages (several

notes for a given syllable, as in the case of the final syllable of the first “Kyrie.”)

Characteristics of Plainsong Conjunct (mostly stepwise), monophonic (single voice) melody,

narrow in compass

Both syllabic (one note per syllable) and melismastic (several notes per syllable)

Pitch well defined; rhythm ambiguous

Tuotilo of St. Gall

In contrast to our modern notions of originality, which essentially be-

gan with Beethoven, medieval artists and musicians held a more modest

view of their purpose, preferring to elaborate or decorate existing sacred art

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instead of attempting to create something entirely new. Just as medieval

scribes added pictorial commentaries on the texts they copied, so medieval

musicians elaborated plainsong through the addition of text or music called

tropes. One purpose of a trope was to aid in the memorization of a long

melody. Around 900 Tuotilo, a Benedictine monk in the Abbey of St. Gall,

in what is now Switzerland, added words to one of the melismas in the plainsong we have just heard.

The addition of a text, transforming a melismatic passage into a syllabic passage, also provided the opportunity to comment upon the original text.

Translation

Cunctipotens genitor Deus om-

nicreator eleison All-powerful Father, God, Creator of all

things, have mercy

Salvificet pietas tua nos bone rec-

tor eleison May thy compassion save us, good

ruler, have mercy

Fons et origo bone pie luxque

perhennis eleison Font and origin of goodness, Holy one,

light everlasting, have mercy

Christe dei splendor virtus pa-

trisque sophia eleison Christ, the splendor of God, strength

and wisdom of the Father, have mercy

Plasmatis humanis factor lapsis

reparator eleison Creator of humankind, healer of those

who fall, have mercy

Ne tua dampnatur Jhesu factura

benigne eleison Lest thy creation be damned, kind Je-

sus, have mercy

Amborum sacrum spiramen

nexus amorque eleison The holy breath, the fusion and the love

of both, have mercy

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Procedens fomes vite fons purifi-

cans vis eleison Advancing flame, source of life, purify-

ing power, have mercy

Indultor culpe venie largitor op-

time offensas dele sacro nos

munere reple eleison

Forgiver of sin, bestower of pardon,

erase our offenses, replenish us, give us

holy grace, have mercy

Spirte alme eleison Most gracious Spirit, have mercy

Tuotilo’s Achievement Showed the possibility of embellishing plainsong

Added text to long melismas as a mnemonic device

Additional words commented on the original plainsong text

This same spirit of elaboration lies at the root of polyphony—the sounding

of more than one voice at the same time—the distinguishing feature of

western music. The earliest examples, dating from the 9th century, are

called parallel organum, in which the plainsong melody is doubled at the

fifth or the octave. Doubling at the octave occurs whenever men and

women sing the same melody, as in the case of a hymn tune. We are so ac-

customed to this sound that we scarcely notice it as being different from

unison singing. Doubling at the fifth, however, produces a clearly audible difference.

In the next step, called modified parallel organum, each phrase be-

gins in unison, spreads to the fourth or fifth, and contracts again to the

unison. Notice the two forms of elaboration in this example from the 11th

century, based on the Kyrie we have been studying: first, the text is deco-

rated or amplified; second, the melody is elaborated with an organal voice.

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Notice the intervals between the voices: always a unison, fourth, fifth or oc-tave.

Just as medieval copyists elaborated their sacred texts with illumina-

tions, so medieval composers embellished plainsong either by adding a

trope in the form of new words or by adding consonant intervals above the

plainsong melody. In this rudimentary practice, called organum, we see the first steps in the development of polyphony.

St. Martial School

By the 12th century composers were experimenting with a style, called

St. Martial organum, named for the Abbey of St. Martial in Limoges,

France. In this style of organum each note of the original plainsong ap-

peared in sustained notes in the tenor, while an upper voice, called the du-

plum, performed multiple notes. By the way, the word “tenor” comes from

the Latin “tenere” meaning to hold. In medieval music the held notes of the original plainsong always appear in the tenor.

“We can identify the extraordinary twelfth century as the one in

which European musical practice took a decisive turn toward polyphonic

composition. And if we are interested in isolating the fundamental distin-

guishing feature of what may be called ‘western’ music, this might as well

be it. After this turning point, polyphonic composition in the West … would

be indispensably, increasingly, and unique the norm. From now on, stylis-

tic development and change would essentially mean the development and

refinement of techniques for polyphonic composition.” [Taruskin, 2010, vol. 1, p.148]

An example of this practice, based on the Kyrie Cunctipotens chant,

appears in the Codex Calixtinus, a collection of music and tourist infor-

mation housed at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Spain, a nota-ble pilgrimage site.

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As with the case of plainsong, it is relatively easy to decipher the pitches,

but there is no indication of the rhythm.

In this style of polyphony, different intervals between the voices are permit-

ted in the middle of the melisma but each phrase is supposed to begin and end with a consonance, defined as a unison, perfect fifth, or octave.

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One wonders how such a piece might have been performed: did the

performer on the upper line (or duplum) nudge the performer on the lower

line (tenor) when it was time to move to a different note? Or could both

singers read the same score, so that the person singing the tenor could keep

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track of the progress of the person singing the duplum? Either way, it be-

comes evident that composers would have to solve the problem of coordi-

nating parts in order to write polyphony in more than two voices. But St.

Martial organum represents an important advance over the lock-step, note-against-note procedures of parallel or modified parallel organum.

Characteristics of St. Martial Organum Plainsong sustained in long notes in the tenor Melismatic organal voice in free rhythm

Each phrase begins and ends with a consonance (unison, fifth, oc-tave)

Anonymous French motet

A solution to the problem of coordinating two voices came in the 13th

century with the development of rhythmic modes, fixed patterns compara-

ble to the metric feet in poetry. “With rhythm the Notre Dame composers

could build, as the masons around them were building the immense cathe-

dral.” [Griffiths, 2006, p.25] There were six rhythmic modes in all, the most common being the alternation of long and short notes:

Our example is a French motet En non Diu—Quant voi—Ejus in oriente.

The term “motet” comes from the French “mot,” meaning “word,” since

words would be added to a melodic line. “‘A piece of music in several parts

with words’ is as precise a definition of the motet as will serve from the thir-

teenth to the late sixteenth century and beyond. The motet was born in the

thirteenth century out of the more tightly measured discant sections of or-

ganum, by the addition to their upper part(s) of words unrelated or newly

related to the parent composition. … The added words were often different

in language (French) and subject matter (secular love) from the sacred

Latin chants on which they were built, and when there were two or more texts, different from each other.” [Bent, 1992, p.114]

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To compose a motet, one began with the tenor, a passage of plain-

song, in this case a fragment of the Alleluia called Videntes stellam, and put it into one of the rhythmic modes.

Next one added the second and third voices, called the duplum and triplum,

each one forming a consonance with the tenor on the strong beats. The

weak beats could be dissonant. Moreover, while each voice had to be con-

sonant with the tenor—that is, forming an interval of unison, fifth, or oc-

tave—the voices did not have to be consonant with each other. The result-

ing level of dissonance contributes to this music sounding strange to mod-ern ears.

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Texts were assigned to the upper voices, often but not necessarily conveying

sentiments related to each other. These texts could be in French instead of Latin.

Triplum (upper voice) En non Diu! Que que nus die, Quant voi l’herbe vert et le tans clear, Et le rosignol chanter, A donc fine amore me prie Docement d’une joliverté chanter: “Marions, leise Robin por moi amer!”

Now in truth! Whate’er they tell us, When the grass is green and weather clear, And the nightingale doth sing, Then my dainty love doth bed me Sweetly of a pretty tale of love to sing:

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Bien me doi adés pener. Et chapeau de fleurs porter, Por si bele amie, Quant voi la rose espanie, Lerbe vert et le tans cler.

“Marion, O let Robin now be my love!’ Truly I must try to please, And a wreath of flowers wear, For so sweet a lover, When I see the roses budding, Grasses green and weather clear.

Motetus (middle voice) Quant voi la rose espanie, L’herbe vert et le tans clear, Et le rosignol chanter, A dont fine amors m’envie De joie fere et mener, Car qui n’aime, il ne vit mie; Por ce se doit on pener: D’avoir amors a amie Et server et honerer, Qui en joie veut durer. En non Diu! Que que nus die, Au cuer mi tient limaus d’amer.

When I see the roses budding, Grasses green and weather clear, And the nightingale doth sing, Then my dainty love doth beg me To rejoice with her and play, He who loves not lives not either; For this only should one live: Love to cherish toward his lover, Serve and honor her for aye, Who in joy would still remain, Now in truth! Whate’er they say, My heart is filled with woes of love.

Tenor (lowest voice) Vidimus stellam ejus in Oriente et venimus cum muneribus adorare Dominum.

We have seen his star in the east and are come with gifts to worship the Lord.

This motet gives evidence of the decreasing importance of plainsong.

The tenor, the only voice directly associated with plainsong, would usually

be played on an instrument, so the text would not be heard. Moreover, un-

like organum duplum, which quoted an entire piece of plainsong, the

French motet uses only a fragment. The development of rhythmic modes

solved a critical problem: how to coordinate multiple voices. The use of

rhythmic modes permitted medieval composers for the first time to write polyphony in three or four voices.

Characteristics of French Motet Plainsong in tenor often performed instrumentally

Two upper voices (triplum and motetus) may have different texts, frequently secular

Rhythmic modes coordinate the movement of the three voices

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Guillaume de Machaut

The rhythmic modes, although a splendid solution to the problem of

coordinating voices in polyphony, proved to have limited usefulness, as one

grew tired of the endless patterns in the equivalent of 6/8 time. Around

1320 a theorist by the name of Phillip de Vitry proposed a new system of

notation that would allow greater variety in rhythmic values. The treatise,

called Ars nova notandi, or “new technique of writing music,” gave its

name to music composed in the 14th century, as contrasted with musica an-tiqua of the 13th century.

Our examples comes from the Messe de Notre Dame (ca. 1364) writ-

ten by the greatest composer of the 14th century, Guillaume de Ma-chaut(ca.1300-1377).

By the time he composed this mass, probably for the cathedral at Rheims,

Machaut had established his reputation both as a poet and as a composer, in the service of noblemen in the vicinity of Rheims.

If the repetitious patterns of the rhythmic modes seemed too simple,

their replacement, called isorhythm, may strike us a completely arcane. In

an isorhythmic composition one begins with a fragment of plainsong called

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the color to which one applies a rhythmic pattern called the talea. In the

case of the Kyrie from Machaut’s Mass, we recognize the plainsong as being the Kyrie Cunctipotens Genitor Deus.

Applying the talea gives us a rhythmicized melody:

One cannot be expected to hear these relationships, which take the

form of an esoteric game. One other rhythmic procedure of the Ars nova

can be readily heard. This is the fragmentary division of a melody between

two different voices so it seems as if the two voices are constantly interrupt-

ing each other. This procedure is called hocket, from the French word for hiccup.

One other audible procedure in the Machaut Mass is the presence of a

unifying melodic pattern that turns up in each movement. In our example, the motif occurs in the Christe section.

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Machaut seems to revel in the new rhythmic freedom of the Ars nova,

employing techniques of isorhythm and hocket as a kind of compositional tour de force, whether his technical mastery could actually be heard or not.

Machaut’s Messe de Notre Dame has become celebrated as the first

setting by a single composer of the Ordinary (or fixed portions) of the Mass:

Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus, Agnus Dei. Up to this point Kyr-

ies, Glorias, etc. were gathered together in manuscripts according to their

texts. Machaut seems to have been the first to think of the five divisions of the Ordinary as a single musical composition.

“Even if we assume that the Mass was composed in a single shot and

that a recurring six-note melodic figure is more than just a stock formula,

there is no strong sense of musical unity from one movement to another:

though the Kyrie, Sanctus, Agnus Dei and Ite missa est are all entirely iso-

rhythmic, each is built on a different plainchant; the Gloria and Credo are

freely constructed, with no isorhythm or plainsong cantus firmus, and the

first three movements cadence on D, the last three on F. Whatever sense of

unity we may perceive through the course of the Mass, this probably more psychological and ‘mood-related’ than anything else.” [Atlas, 1998, p.114]

Although it took time for the idea of a unified Mass to be accepted, in

this work Machaut established the model for the Mass composers of the Re-naissance.

Machaut’s Achievement Complete mastery of the new rhythmic procedures of the Ars nova

(isorhythm, hocket)

Use of a melodic motive to unify movements of the mass

First polyphonic setting of the Ordinary by an identifiable composer

Before turning to the music of the Renaissance it may be useful to re-

view the course of medieval music. The basic principle of medieval art is

the respectful embellishment of a pre-existing sacred object. In music, that

pre-existing sacred object is the corpus of plainsong and the embellishment

can be can be summarized by the word “trope,” the interpolation of words

or music or both. While we have traced the development of polyphony in a

matter of minutes, the individual stages actually occurred across six centu-ries.

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Treatment of Plainsong Era Procedure Example 9th cen-tury

Unornamented plainsong Kyrie Cunctipotens

10th cen-tury

Parallel organum: note for note in 4ths and 5ths

Kyrie Cunctipotens

11th cen-tury

Modified parallel organum: note for note in various consonant intervals

Cunctipotens genitor

12th cen-tury

St. Martial organum: plainsong in long notes, free notes decorating

Kyrie Cunctipotens

13th cen-tury

Motet: plainsong in tenor in rhythmic mode, other voices added above

En non Diu-Quant voi-Ejus in Oriente

14th cen-tury

Isorhythm: plainsong chopped into bits and fitted with a rhythmic pattern

Machaut, Notre Dame Mass

In all cases, the addition of polyphonic voices served to decorate plainsong,

though as we have noted, by the 13th century, the original plainsong became less and less audible.

The period of the Renaissance represents perhaps the first example of

general self-consciousness in a culture. Artists of the Renaissance adopted

a kind of three-layer view of history, making a clear distinction between the

glories of ancient antiquity, the recent past of the Dark Ages, and the new

glories of the present. The word “renaissance,” or re-birth, captures this ideal of restoring the mantel greatness.

The Renaissance witnessed fundamental changes of world-view. For the planet, there was a new continent.

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For the cosmos there was a new center, no longer the earth.

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For religion, there was a new reality no longer based on a monolithic church.

Literature and drama displayed an added dimension of self-aware-

ness—one might even call it “irony”—a self-conscious stepping out of one-

self, the very act of which demands an additional dimension, as exemplified in the soliloquies of Hamlet.

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In art this added dimension expressed itself in linear perspective

which creates a new reality both in presenting the illusion of depth in a

painting and in actively recognizing the presence of a viewer, outside the plane of the painting, whose eyes define the work’s vanishing point.

This idea of a new dimension expresses itself in music as a new con-

cern for the vertical as well as the horizontal dimension of polyphony. In

medieval music, each new layer of polyphony had to be in harmony with the

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tenor, but the composer took no account of the relationships among the up-

per voices. This process produced a considerable proportion of disso-

nances. These dissonances did not offend the medieval ear which perceived

music in horizontal terms, with the exception of the cadence which neces-

sarily had to be a consonance. Where medieval polyphony concentrated on

layers of horizontal lines, Renaissance polyphony takes a new interest in

vertical relationships, what we would call harmony, as composers devel-

oped a greater sensitivity to the consonance of chords. Music, like the other

arts, displayed an awareness of newness, to the point that the theorist Jo-

hannes Tinctoris could write, in 1477, “Although it seems beyond belief,

there is not a single piece of music not composed in the last forty years that is regarded by the learned as worth hearing.” [Griffiths, 2006, p.44]

Guillaume Dufay

Guillaume Dufay(ca.1397-1474), the most famous composer of the

15th century, enjoyed the good fortune of working for Philip the Good, Duke

of Burgundy, the most powerful sovereign in Europe. Philip established a

reputation as a patron of the arts, commissioning tapestries, paintings and metal work.

Philip the Good employed musicians in the court chapel and for dances and

incidental music For the Feast of the Pheasant, given by Philip on 17 Feb-

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ruary 1454, there were placed in a giant pie 28 minstrels who played vari-

ous instruments including a trumpet, bagpipes, crumhorn, tambourines, lutes, flutes and viels.

At one point a young boy rode in on a fake horse, the boy and the horse per-forming a duet as they entered.

Dufay appears as a watershed figure in the history of music, embody-

ing characteristics of both the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Dufay’s

motet, Ave regina coelorum (ca. 1464) presents the plainsong melody in the

tenor, phrase by phrase, but the motet opens with the plainsong melody di-

vided into sections, with one embellished section as a counterpoint for the other.

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Where medieval composers preserved the integrity of plainsong melodies,

Renaissance composers treated plainsong as a source of musical ideas, to be altered or recomposed.

Dufay’s motet gives evidence of a new vertical dimension in music.

Medieval harmony was conceived horizontally: each new voice had to be

consonant with the tenor but not necessarily with the other voices, except at

cadences, a practice which produced a high level of dissonance. Early Re-

naissance composers, by contrast, began to conceive music vertically as well

as horizontally, with greater concern for consonance among all the voices.

“The flow of their music suggest a change of view from the horizontal, writ-

ing one voice part after another, to the vertical, conceiving the whole tex-

ture together, the new voices incorporating the given cantus firmus in a continuous harmonic unfolding.” [Griffiths, 2006, p.47]

In Dufay’s motet we note the frequent appearance of full chords and

modern-sounding V-I cadences. Dufay often ended musical sections with a

progression known as the Burgundian cadence, in which a leading tone would drop a step before resolving to the tonic.

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In the Middle Ages, the interpolation of text in the form of a trope

served as mnemonic device for recalling long stretches of melody. Four

times Dufay interpolates words into the traditional text of the Ave regina

coelorum, but with a personal touch—he even mentions his own name—typical of Renaissance sensibilities.

Miserere tui labentis Dufay ne pecca-

torum ruat in ignem fervorum

Have mercy on thy dying Dufay lest he

fall into the hellish fire of sinners.

Miserere genetrix Domini ut pateat porta

coeli debili.

Have mercy, Mother of God, that the gate

of heaven may be opened to the weak.

Miserere supplicanti Dufay sitque in con-

spectus tuo mors ejus speciosa.

Have mercy on thy suppliant Dufay, that

his death may find favour in thy sight.

In excelsis ne damnemur, miserere nobis

et juva ut in mortis hora nostra sint corda

decora.

Let us not be damned on high but have

mercy on us, and help us that in our last

hour our hearts may be upright.

In his will, Dufay requested that this motet be sung at his deathbed.

“Though the music of the fifteenth century, like that of any other period,

ranged from the ravishingly beautiful to the painfully boring, we do not

generally think of fifteenth-century music as ‘spine-tingling.” Yet is would

be difficult to find a more appropriate description of Dufay’s turn to C mi-

nor, when he asks for mercy with the tropes ‘Miserere tui labentis Dufay’

(Have mercy on your dying Dufay, mm.21-29) and, especially, ‘Miserere,

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miserere supplicant Dufay’ (Have mercy on your supplicant Dufay, mm.86-96).” [Atlas, 1998, p.98]

Dufay’s Achievement New freedom in treatment of plainsong: embellished, divided and

reassembled

New concern for consonance—awareness of vertical aspects of mu-sic

New concern for cadences—using harmony to mark phrase divi-sions

The music of Dufay maintains a medieval attitude toward plainsong

as the basis for musical composition but takes Renaissance liberties in his

treatment of the underlying melody and displays a frankly humanistic ap-proach by introducing his own name into the text of the motet.

Josquin des Pres

Josquin des Pres(ca.1450-1521), the most famous composer in the

first half of the 16th century, served various noblemen in Burgundy, Italy

and France during his career. Josquin’s music illustrates the characteristics of high Renaissance polyphony.

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The change of texture from alto, two tenors, and baritone to the new norm

of soprano, alto, tenor and bass spread out the voices and led to greater

clarity. Instead of a texture dominated by a tenor line bearing the plain-

song melody, we hear a greater equality of voices. High Renaissance po-

lyphony is based on melodic fragments passed from voice to voice—so-

called “points of imitation”—a method that composers have employed ever since.

Josquin’s Missa Pange lingua is a paraphrase mass in which a pre-

existing tune is embellished and used freely in all the voices, not just the

tenor. In this case, the pre-existing melody comes from plainsong, but

composers of the Renaissance felt free to base their mass compositions on

secular melodies as well. “Josquin based the Mass on St. Thomas Aquinas’s

hymn Pange lingua gloriosi corpis mysterium, sung at Vespers on the

Feast of Corpus Christi. … The hymn tune darts from voice to voice, perme-

ating every corner of the polyphonic fabric. Nor do any of the voices quote

the plainsong melody exactly. At times, in fact, Josquin isolates a single

motive from the plainsong and develops it extensively.” [Atlas, 1998, pp. 302-303]

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Josquin uses this melody, in embellished form, in all four voices at the beginning of the Agnus Dei.

“The paraphrase Mass may be characterized as follows: it is based on

a single-line pre-existent model, usually a plainsong melody; it typically

wraps that model in a cloak of melodic embellishment; it rolls the model

out phrase by phrase (or motive by motive) and scatters it through the poly-

phonic fabric by means of points of imitation; and it may include large

stretches of material with barely a gesture toward the model. What it does

not do is place the pre-existent melody in a single voice and use it as the

melodic-structural scaffold on which the Mass as a whole hangs. For the

sixteenth-century composer who wished to write a Mass based on plain-

song, the paraphrase Mass became the route most frequently taken.” [At-

las, 1998, p.304]

Josquin, celebrated in his own time for his technical mastery, seemed

to take pleasure in showing off his skill in solving compositional problems.

In particular, Josquin had a particular fondness for canons, a new tech-

nique in Renaissance music. We associate canons with rounds—such as

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“Row, row, row your boat”—in which each voice copies the preceding voice

at the same pitch, but canons can be written at other intervals as well. The

second section of the Agnus Dei begins with the first phrase of the plain-

song hymn in a canon at the 5th with a two-measure gap, followed by the

third phrase of the plainsong in a canon at the 5th with a one-half-measure gap.

Then Josquin presents the third phrase of the plainsong in a canon at the 5th with note values halved, a rhythmic alteration called diminution.

The third section of the Agnus Dei presents the beginning of the plainsong melody in long notes in the superius, as if recalling medieval techniques.

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Josquin’s Achievement Complete mastery of canons, including voices moving at different

speeds

New texture of soprano, alto, tenor, bass increases clarity of sound

Equality of voices, with plainsong appearing throughout the poly-phonic texture, not just in the tenor, and divided into melodic cells (points of imitation)

Tomas Luis de Victoria

Tomas Luis de Victoria(ca.1548-1611), the most important Spanish

composer of the 16th century, also achieved distinction as a singer and or-

ganist, and spent the latter part of his life as chaplain to the sister of Philip

II in Madrid. Victoria’s work illustrates another aspect of Renaissance mu-

sic, a concern for giving musical expression to details of the text. We ob-

serve this expressivity in the opening of Victoria’s motet O magnum myste-rium (O great mystery).

31

O magnum mysterium,

et admirabile sacramentum,

ut animalia viderent Dominum natum,

jacentem in praesepio!

Beata Virgo, cujus viscera

meruerunt portare

Dominum Christum.

Alleluia.

O great mystery,

and wonderful sacrament,

that animals should see the new-born

Lord,

lying in a manger!

Blessed is the Virgin whose womb

was worthy to bear

Christ the Lord.

Alleluia!

Victoria sets the word “magnum” (great) to a leap of a perfect fifth, a “great”

interval. The “mystery” of the word “mysterium” is marked by a chromatic

movement of a semitone.

When the text introduces the idea of concerted action, the voices generally

proceed in uniform rhythm: the phrase “ut animalia viderent” is composed

in a homophonic, or chordal, style to depict the animals together witnessing

the birth of Jesus, first two by two, then three by three, and then all four

voices together.

32

To suggest the joy of the spectacle, Victoria sets the “Alleluia” at the end in

triple meter.

In the paraphrase mass, as we have seen, a composer would adopt a

pre-existing melody, either sacred or secular, as a basis for creating polyph-

ony. In the so-called parody mass, composers borrowed the entire poly-

phonic texture of a pre-existing work, a procedure used by Victoria in his Missa O magnum mysterium.

“The art of the parody technique lies not in literal quotation but in

thoroughly reworking and transforming the material of the model, shaping

it into what is essentially a new composition; the building block is a motive

33

or phrase of the model, usually in the form of a point of imitation; a move-

ment of a parody Mass customarily draws on various sections of the model;

and the parody Mass as a whole is constructed by alternately referring to

the model and filling intervening sections with new and original music.” [Atlas, 1998, p.307]

The beginning of the Kyrie takes up the initial motif of the motet, a

procedure that one sees most clearly in the alto and the bass, while the other voices are freely composed.

Or the composer may preserve nearly the entire polyphonic fabric, chang-

ing only the words, as we see in this comparison of the original motet and

the parody mass based on it.

Original motet:

34

Mass:

In the music of Victoria we hear a greater use of “word-painting” than in

the music of his contemporaries, a preference for simplicity over complex-

ity, and a free treatment of melody and harmony for expressive purposes.

Victoria’s Achievement Master of the parody technique, employing parts or all of a pre-ex-

isting polyphonic texture in a new work

Expressive use of melody and harmony

Graceful flow between polyphony and homophony

35

Thomas Weelkes

Musical expressivity appears only occasionally in sacred works such

as Victoria’s motet, “O magnum mysterium.” In secular compositions, such

as the English madrigals, a concern for giving musical expression to the text

seems to govern the entire work. The English madrigal, a secular form of

polyphony, may perhaps be best understood in the context of the English

pastoral tradition of the 16th century, which depicted shepherds and shep-

herdesses at play in Arcadia, a symbol of rural simplicity, a natural life un-

corrupted by civilization. English nobility would dress up in pastoral garb

for idyllic retreats in lovely landscapes of timeless spring.

Queen Elizabeth I effectively co-opted the movement in an early ex-

ample of public relations. The queen drew on pastoral images to consoli-

date her “natural authority” over her subjects as “Eliza, queen of the shep-

herds” incorporating a benevolent relationship between the royal shepherd-

ess and her flock. Edmund Spenser’s The Shepherd’s Calendar devoted the

month of April to Elizabeth, adopting deliberate misspellings to create an

archaic flavor to his poem.

36

Contented I: then will I singe his laye

Of fayre Elisa, Queene of shepheardes all:

Which once he made, as by a spring he laye,

And tuned it vnto the Waters fall. …

Of fayre Elisa be your siluer song, that blessed wight: The flowre of Virgins, may shee florish long, In princely plight. For she is Syrinx daughter without spotte, Which Pan the shepheards God of her begot: So sprong her grace Of heauenly race, No mortal blemishe may her blotte. Edmund Spenser, The Shepherd’s Calendar

Madrigals had texts about romantic love, often in pastoral settings. :

The great popularity of the madrigal in England dates from the publication,

in 1588, of Musica transalpina, a collection of Italian madrigals translated

into English. The popularity of this anthology encouraged the composition

of original English madrigals.

37

The English composer Thomas Morley, perhaps as a way of currying

favor at court, invited his contemporaries to compose twenty-four madri-

gals, each ending with the text, “Then sang the shepherds and nymphs of

Diana, Long live the fair Oriana” (one of the nicknames for Elizabeth). A

representation of the queen appears on the dedication page.

Thomas Weelkes(1576-1623) served off and on as organist at Chiches-

ter Cathedral where he was fined for urinating on the dean from the organ

loft during Evensong. A distinguished composer of madrigals, Weelkes

contributed to Morley’s collection “As Vesta was from Latmos Hill descend-

ing.” Weelkes’ naive figuralism—using an ascending melodic line to repre-

sent going up the hill or a descending melodic line for going down—seems appropriate to the simplicity of the pastoral games.

38

Here is the text of the poem with a summary of Weelkes’ figuralist devices: As Vesta was from Latmos hill descend-

ing

Descending scales

she spied a maiden queen the same as-

cending

attended on by all the shepherds swain

Ascending scales

to whom Diana's darlings came running

down amain

Rapid descending figures

First two by two, Two voices

then three by three together Three voices, then all voices

leaving their goddess all alone, hasted

thither

and mingling with the shepherds of her

train

with mirthful tunes her presence enter-

tain

Solo voice

39

Then sang the shepherds and nymphs of

Diana,

Long live fair Oriana! Imitation among voices with long notes in

the bass

In contrast to the Renaissance ideal of equal voices, we notice in Weelkes’s

madrigal the new role played by the bass, not only in the prolonged notes at

the end of the madrigal but also in passages oscillating between tonic and dominant

40

We also observe the use of cadential formulas in the bass, such as I-IV-V-I.

41

The separation of the bass from the other voices will be one of the essential elements of music in the Baroque period.

Weelkes’s Achievement Employment of melody, rhythm, and harmony in the interest of giv-

ing musical expression to a text

Variety in texture—from one voice to six—for expressive purposes

Cadential formulas anticipate new harmonic language

The Renaissance may be viewed as an era of liberation: a release

from the conventions of an earth-centered universe and a monolithic

church. A new sense of perspective opened new dimensions: a layered

view of human history, more realistic representation in art, and a new con-

sciousness of the self. Renaissance music reflected these new ideas. Com-

posers continued to rely on plainsong but treated it within an unprece-

dented liberty. Secular music took on a more significant role than in the

past, and in a new concern for the vertical perspective in music, composers

began laying the foundations for the harmonic language that ruled western

music from around 1600 to 1900.

42

Chapter II. The Baroque Period

The 17th and 18th centuries in Europe have been called The Age of En-

lightenment or the Age of Reason. One might also describe this period as

the age of rational systems, marked by an urge to discovery universal laws

in every aspect of existence. In his Principia Mathematica (1687), Newton proclaimed a system of universal laws governing motion the cosmos.

In France René Descartes laid out the principles of a rational scientific

method based on accepting only what is undeniably true. The social sci-

ences sought to discover the natural laws underlying government and to

propound the laws of economics. Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan (1651) in-sisted that political science is subject to general laws.

43

French classic drama was governed by rules known as the biensé-

ances in addition to the principles known as the dramatic unities. Philoso-

phers sought rational proofs of God’s existence. Descartes famously began

by doubting everything and building on what lay beyond doubt: cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am).

44

The spirit of rationalism found expression in music with the system of

equal temperament and Bach’s systematic exploration of its possibilities in

the Well-Tempered Clavier, or, “preludes and fugues through all the tones

and semitones, both in major and in minor keys. For the use and profit of

the musical youth desirous of learning as well as for the pastime of those al-

ready skilled in this study.”

45

Music in the Baroque period embodies the spirit of the age in its in-

sistence on a central governing principle: each movement tends to have a

single, driving rhythm; a single mode (either major or minor); and a single expressive mood.

The 17th century saw the application of reason to the rebirth of Greek

music. A group of intellectuals, literary figures and musicians in Florence,

having appreciated the rediscovery of classical antiquity in sculpture and

architecture, resolved to accomplish the same task for music. They faced

one nearly insurmountable problem: unlike sculpture and architecture, no

examples of Greek music remained extant. Yet the descriptions of ancient

Greek music seemed almost magical. Aristotle evoked the amazing expres-

sive power of music, which could move spectators by imitating the rhythms

and inflections of natural speech and by using the vocal registers associated

with changing emotions. Who could resist such a challenge?

The group, known as the Florentine Camerata, gathered the known

details: the entire tragedy was sung; the music consisted of a single mel-

ody, performed by either a soloist or an ensemble; and, according to Aristo-

tle, the melody imitated natural speech. With nothing but this sparse infor-

mation to go on, the composers associated with the Camerata concocted

what we call monody, music consisting of a single melody line with a simple

chordal accompaniment. Thus was born what we now know as opera. Of

course, the most popular aspects of opera developed only over time: cos-

tumes, scenery, amazing theatrical effects, an orchestra, and especially the

lyrical display of vocal technique in an aria. The earliest operas consisted entirely of what we now call recitative, with music subordinate to the text.

Henry Purcell

Henry Purcell (1659-1695) spent most of his life in the service of the

church, eventually attaining the post of organist at Westminster Abbey,

where he composed an estimable corpus of sacred music. Purcell also

wrote music for the theatre, including incidental music for plays and op-eras.

Opera developed rapidly after its scholarly origins at the beginning of

the 17th century. Adopted by royal courts, and elaborated with costumes

and dance, opera served as a vehicle for festive celebration and glorification

of the monarch. Introduced into public theatres, and enhanced by painted

46

sets and astonishing mechanical effects, opera became the most popular form of mass entertainment.

Throughout the 17th century the subject matter of opera came from

history or legend. In the case of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, composed in

1689, the story comes from Book IV of Virgil’s Aeneid, the story of Dido

(Queen of Carthage) and Aeneas (travelling from Troy to Italy after the Tro-

jan War). Dido loves Aeneas but duty calls him to Italy to found the city of

Rome. The conflict between love and duty forms the basis of many an opera plot, where the inevitable triumph of duty leads to tragedy.

Dido and Aeneas represents an amalgamation of national styles:

from France, the French overture, numerous dances, and choruses in dance

rhythm; from Italy, the clear differentiation of recitative (for describing

events) and aria (for expressing a character’s feelings in response to

events); from England choruses written in madrigal style with much picto-

rial representation and recitatives in expressive style, in contrast to the rapid recitative of Italian opera.

The so-called doctrine of affections prescribed that each movement

should convey a single expressive mood. Dido’s Lament expresses the

queen’s grief at losing Aeneas, who has succumbed to the demands of duty,

and announces her acceptance of death. “How does Dido die? With Dido

the chorus’s references to her tomb and drooping-winged cupids assure us

47

that death has come, but when and how is not definite. … She is clearly re-

solved to die and her heart is near the breaking point.” [Savage, 1994, p.466]

The opening recitative consists of an expressive vocal line over a sim-

ple chordal accompaniment.

Thy hand, Belinda, darkness shades me,

On thy bosom let me rest,

More I would, but Death invades me;

Death is now a welcome guest.

Purcell embellishes the first syllable of the word “darkness,” anticipating the mood of the aria that follows.

The vocal line traces a chromatic descent that foreshadows the chromatic

ground bass of the lament that follows.

In contrast to recitative, which gives simple expression to a text with-

out any particular musical form, an aria represents a developed musical

48

idea with a formal structure and orchestral accompaniment. Dido’s La-

ment, “When I am laid in earth,” is set to a chromatic ground bass, in which

a bass melody is repeated while the upper part offers variations. Frequently

employed for laments in Italian opera, the constant repetition of the ground

bass pattern challenges the composer to avoid monotony. Purcell skilfully

varies the structure of the vocal line so that melodic phrases do not always

end at the same point as the chromatic bass pattern.

We observe the chromatic “sigh” on the word “laid,” and expressive skip on the word “trouble”.

49

At the end of the aria the instruments take up and develop the “sigh” mo-tive to conclude the movement.

50

With one exception, each repetition of the bass pattern ends with a V-I ca-

dence, with a major chord on the dominant D. But in the next to last state-

ment, we heard a D minor chord from the orchestra that interrupts the ca-

dence with a minor 7th chord leading to even more dolorous diminished 7th chords that intensify the basic affect of tragic grief.

Purcell’s Achievement Consistent musical language for tragedy, including the use of

ground bass movements and chromatic elements in melody and harmony

Creation of a rational tonal scheme to organize a number opera: movement from minor to parallel major (e.g., C minor to C major in Act I) or major to relative minor (e.g., Bb major at the beginning of Act III to g minor for Dido’s Lament at its end)

Amalgamation of various national styles into a coherent whole

51

Dietrich Buxtehude

The launching of the Protestant Reformation in 1517 required the cre-

ation of a new German-language liturgy to replace the Roman Catholic

Mass. It also required the creation of a new body of music to be used in

worship services in the new church. Martin Luther himself composed a

number of chorales, or hymns, including the well-known “A Mighty For-

tress Is Our God.” Other chorales were produced by adding sacred words to

a pre-existing secular tune, a practice known as contrafactum. The familiar

hymn, “O sacred head now wounded,” took its melody from a German

drinking song “Mein G’müt ist mir verwirret von einer Jungfrau zart” [“A

young girl has tangled up all my thoughts”] written by Hans Leo Hassler in

1601. A contemporary example appears in the hymnal Voices United,

where the tune to Danny Boy has been fitted with the text, “We shall go out with hope of resurrection.”

New chorale melodies could also be formed by transforming plain-

song. In this fashion the Latin hymn Veni creator gentium became the

German chorale Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland (Saviour of the nations

come).

VENI, redemptor gentium,

ostende partum Virginis;

miretur omne saeculum:

talis decet partus Deum.

O COME, Redeemer of the earth,

and manifest thy virgin-birth.

Let every age in wonder fall:

such birth befits the God of all.

52

Organ composers of the Baroque period would write chorale preludes

to introduce the tunes to be sung in worship, much as a contemporary or-

ganist will play a hymn through to announce it to the congregation. Die-

trich Buxtehude (ca. 1637-1707) composed chorale preludes as part of his

duties as organist at Marienkirche (St. Mary’s Church) in Lübeck, Germany.

Buxtehude frequently elaborated the original chorale melody with orna-

mentation reflecting the Italian manner of singing, which sometimes made

it difficult to identify the hymn being introduced. “One is reminded of the

fact that in 1701 the ministers decided to hang boards with the hymn num-

bers in St. Mary’s Church, because ‘from the organ playing beforehand, the hymns can be recognized by only a few.’” [Snyder, 1987, p.270]

Compare the original melody composed by Luther for “A Mighty For-tress Is Our God”:

with Buxtehude’s embellished version (the pitches of the original melody are marked with +’s).

53

German chorales almost invariably had the form A A B (or Bar-form),

which meant that the composer of a chorale prelude could simply have re-

peated the A section, but Buxtehude prefers instead to offer a different em-bellishment:

In the chorale preludes of Dietrich Buxtehude we observe a creative

tension between craftsman and composer. The chorale preludes of lesser

composers served the church well as simple introductions that clearly iden-

tified the chorale about to be sung by the congregation. But Buxtehude’s

composer mind led him to investigate musical possibilities that carried his

work beyond mere craftsmanship, even if the resulting preludes became too

long or ornate for liturgical purposes. J. S. Bach would run into trouble

with church authorities for the same reason as he composed chorale prel-

udes up to ten minutes long. In addition to straightforward chorale prel-

udes, such as “Ein feste Burg,” Buxtehude also composed sets of variations on chorale melodies as well as elaborate chorale fantasias.

54

Buxtehude’s Achievement Highly elaborated treatments of the chorale melody (which his con-

temporaries almost always left unornamented) Variety of chorale treatments, including chorale preludes, chorale

variations and chorale fantasias

Music from the Baroque period onward seems more familiar to our

ears than music from the Medieval or Renaissance periods. The period

from 1600-1900 is called the Common Practice period because of certain

fundamental principles of harmony governing music during this era. Music

in the Common Practice period is called tonal, that is, based on a major or

minor key, instead of modal, that is, based on one of the church modes. A

single note—the leading tone—is all that separates tonal and modal music, but that single note, marked by an X in our example, has great significance.

Now look at the plainsong we considered earlier, “Veni creator gentium”

Take particular note of the cadence, which has no leading tone. The ab-sence of the leading tone gives plainsong its “otherworldly” quality.

Music from the common practice period is also based on chordal pro-

gressions. During the Baroque period these harmonies were accentuated

by the basso continuo, a combination of a bass instrument, such as the

cello, playing the bass line, and a keyboard instrument, such as the organ or harpsichord, playing chords.

55

Even after the basso continuo ceased to be used, music of the common

practice always carried implied harmonies, whether actually spelled out in chords or not.

Finally, the chords employed in the common practice period are ar-

ranged hierarchically. Each chord has an assigned value in the hierarchy

(where I is the strongest, V the second strongest, ii the third strongest, vi

the fourth strongest), and each phrase of the music tends to proceed from

weaker to stronger chords. Consider the end of the chorale “Ein feste

Burg.” The progression of harmonies vi – ii – V – I is one of the most com-

mon ways of marking the end of a phrase or a composition.

The same principle applies in minor mode, as in this cadence from Purcell’s

aria, “When I am laid in earth”:

56

Music of the common practice period always moves forward to a

clearly-identifiable goal. The reason that medieval and Renaissance music

sounds strange to our ears is that this music lacks the markers that we find

in music from Bach to Beethoven to Brahms: a leading tone, an underlying

chordal framework, and a clear progression of chords from weak to strong.

Antonio Vivaldi

Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) spent much of his career as music direc-

tor at an orphanage in Venice. The institution maintained an all-female or-

chestra for which Vivaldi composed numerous concertos. During the Ba-

roque period instrumental music began to assume an equal footing with vo-

cal music, notably in the concerto grosso. The word “concerto” comes from

the Italian “concertare” meaning either to join forces (in the sense of a

“concerted effort”) or to strive against. In either case a concerto comprises

two groups: the orchestra as a whole (called the ripieno, or tutti) and the

soloists. In Vivaldi’s Concerto Grosso in A Minor, Op. 3, No. 8 (1712), the

solo group includes two violinists, whom Vivaldi carefully makes stand out from the rest of the ensemble.

The first movement of a concerto grosso most often adopted ritor-

nello form, based on an alternation between a repeated refrain, or ritor-

nello, played by whole ensemble, and episodes played by the solo group. It

was not considered necessary to repeat the entire ritornello each time—of-

ten a fragment would suffice. In general, the first and last ritornellos would

appear in the tonic key (the key of the piece), the first departure from the

main key would be in the dominant or (in this case) the relative minor, with the other departures in related keys.

57

In these relationships we observe one of the basic principles of tonal music:

a chord from the key of the piece could be extended to produce an entire

key area, as we see in the following examples, taken from the first move-ment of the concerto.

TONIC (A minor)

RELATIVE MAJOR (C major)

58

SUBDOMINANT (D minor)

Being able to identify these passages as extensions of chords brings you well

along the way to “structural hearing,” the musical equivalent of seeing for-ests and not just individual trees.

Antonio Vivaldi (1680-1743) evidently found the concerto format con-

genial, for he composed more than 500 concertos. Vivaldi’s music tends to

be made up of brief cells, as we see in the construction of the ritornello re-frain.

59

The sequence merits particular mention since it is an essential device

not only for Vivaldi but for Baroque music in general. As seen in measures

6-8, a sequence consists small bit of musical material repeated at different

pitch levels. Once a composer has set the pattern in motion, it could be re-

peated indefinitely, but in the usual practice the material would appear only

three times, the third time ending in a cadence, most often a progression of dominant to tonic chords, or perfect cadence.

An outline of the entire first movement of this concerto shows how

Vivaldi uses a few basic cells to spin out the finished product. We also ob-

serve the interpenetration of material between the ritornello and the solo sections.

Outline of First Movement Ritornello 1 (tonic): cells a, b, c, d, e Solo 1

60

Ritornello 2: cell e only Solo 2: begins like Solo 1, the soloists exchanging their parts Ritornello 3 (relative major): phrase derived from Solo 2, cell c, new ca-dence Solo 3 (subdominant): derived from cell b Ritornello 4: cell a only Solo 4: derived from cell b Ritornello 5: cell d Solo 5: derived from Solo 2 Ritornello 6 (tonic): cell a Solo 6: derived from Solo 4 Ritornello: cell b, c, e, interpolation from Solo 3, e

Vivaldi perfected techniques, including the use of melodic cells and se-quences, that permitted him to turn out more than five hundred concertos.

Vivaldi’s Achievement Complete mastery of the concerto grosso format (Vivaldi composed

more than five hundred concertos)

Inventive musical structures through the combination and recombi-nation of brief melodic cells

Dramatic tension between soloist(s) and tutti

Johann Sebastian Bach

The nature of musical composition during the Baroque period, as

during the Renaissance, depended in large measure on the requirements of

a composer’s employment. Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) composed

several hundred church cantatas as part of his duties as Cantor of the Thomasschule in Leipzig.

A cantata may be regarded as a sacred opera lacking costumes, scen-

ery or props. Like an opera, a cantata consists of recitatives, arias, ensem-

bles and choruses. As in opera, a recitative might convey the “action,” or

story from the Bible, while the aria allows the soloist to reflect on or offer

an emotional response to the story. Bach’s Cantata 140, Wachet auf, ruft

uns die Stimme (1741), is based on the parable of the Wise and Foolish Vir-gins recounted in Matthew.

61

Then the Kingdom of Heaven will be like ten virgins, who took their

lamps, and went out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were fool-

ish, and five were wise. Those who were foolish, when they took their

lamps, took no oil with them, but the wise took oil in their vessels

with their lamps. Now while the bridegroom delayed, they all slum-

bered and slept. But at midnight there was a cry, "Behold! The bride-

groom is coming! Come out to meet him!" Then all those virgins

arose, and trimmed their lamps. The foolish said to the wise, "Give us

some of your oil, for our lamps are going out." But the wise answered,

saying, "What if there isn't enough for us and you? You go rather to

those who sell, and buy for yourselves." While they went away to buy,

the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to

the marriage feast, and the door was shut. Afterward the other virgins

also came, saying, "Lord, Lord, open to us." But he answered, "Most

certainly I tell you, I don't know you." Watch therefore, for you don't

know the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man is coming. — Matthew 25:1-13, World English Bible

The first movement of the cantata takes its text and basic thematic material from Philip Nicolai’s chorale.

1. Choral

Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme,

der Wächter sehr hoch auf der Zinne,

wach auf, du Stadt Jerusalem.

Mitternacht heißt diese Stunde,

sie rufen uns mit hellem Munde,

wo seid ihr klugen Jungfrauen?

Wohlauf, der Bräut’gam kömmt,

steht auf, die Lampen nehmt,

Alleluia!

Macht euch bereit

zu der Hochzeit,ihr müsset ihm

entgegengehn.

1. Chorus

Awake, calls the voice to us

of the watchmen high up in the tower;

awake, you city of Jerusalem.

Midnight the hour is named;

they call to us with bright voices;

where are you, wise virgins?

Indeed, the Bridegroom comes;

rise up and take your lamps,

Alleluia!

Make yourselves ready

for the wedding,

you must go to meet Him.

Even before Bach’s harmonization, Philipp Nicolai furnished a number of

expressive elements in the chorale melody. The poem evokes a chivalric

dawn-song, “where the watchman on the ramparts of the knight’s castle in-

terrupts the silence of the night by his horn call which warns the lovers that

62

dawn approaches and they must part.” (Herz, 1972, p.56). The chivalric

watchman is transformed, in Nicolai’s poem, into a sacred watchman who

announces the coming of Christ, the bridegroom. Nicolai’s melody repre-

sents the horn call by a figure based on the triad.

The melody reaches its highest point on the word “hoch” (“high”) which de-

scribes the watchman’s tower. Bach reinforces this imagery by using an ac-

tual horn to double the chorale melody sung by the sopranos.

Bach entrusts to the three lower voices a musical commentary on

each phrase of the chorale. These accompanying voices wait two measures

before decorating the first phrase of the melody.

63

They wait only a single measure before decorating the second phrase in an

ascending figure to accompany “the watchman on high.”

They enter at the same time as the sopranos to decorate the third phrase

with their cries of “wake up!”, an acceleration suggesting the great excite-

ment of those who await the entry of the bridegroom.

64

At the order to arise and take their lamps, the accompanying voices cannot

wait any long and enter even before the soprano melody.

The word “alleluia” of the poem serves as an excuse for Bach to interpolate

a jubilant section by the lower voices (m.135), who sing in a brief melis-

matic fugato for fifteen measures before the entry of the soprano.

65

One hesitates to assign specific meanings to instrumental music, but

the orchestral accompaniment, although independent of the vocal music,

also serves to convey the affect of the movement, and one can at least sug-

gest the nature of its participation. The dotted rhythm at the beginning of

the instrumental ritornello creates the impression of a festive march who

marked accents are appropriate to the arrival of an important personage.

The hesitations of the second motive (m.5) contrast with the insistent regu-

larity of the first and could perhaps be associated with the timidity of the

young women. A third motif (m.9), in ascending 16th notes is associated

with the rising movement of the text (“wake up,” “high up in the tower,”

“stand up”).

These three motives are occasionally implied in the accompaniment

of the choral sections, but the musical material of the voices remains inde-

pendent of that of the instruments. The great accomplishment of Bach in

66

this movement is the amalgamation of chorale melody, choral accompani-

ment, and orchestra into a unified structure in which every detail conforms to the overriding affect.

The structure of the opening movement combines the A A B form of the German chorale with the ritornello form of an Italian concerto grosso.

Ritornello orchestra

A choir

Ritornello orchestra

A choir

Ritornello orchestra

B choir Ritornello orchestra

This movement may be described an amalgamation of national styles. The

dotted rhythms, typical of the French overture associated with the entrance

of a monarch, represent Bach’s effort to elevate Jesus above a mere bride-

groom. The ritornello form derives from the Italian concerto grosso. The

overall cantata format, although of Italian origin, became a standard ele-ment of German Lutheran church services.

The overall symmetrical structure of the cantata illustrates the Ba-

roque preference for rational systems. Bach was particularly fond of the arch-form as a basis for his musical architecture.

Chorale (chorus)

Recitative & Aria (soprano-bass duet)

Chorale (tenor solo)

Recitative & Aria (soprano-bass duet)

Chorale (chorus)

The choral presentations of the chorale in the outer movements balance the

pairing of recitative/aria, with the whole structure centering on the solo presentation of the choral.

Bach’s Achievement Virtuoso mastery of counterpoint (the art of combining multiple

melodic lines)

Assimilation of diverse styles for expressive purposes

67

Creation of large-scale musical structures, often symmetrical As a symbol to incorporate all our ideas on Baroque music, it may be

useful to recall the figure of Louis XIV, the Sun King, who ruled France for more than 72 years and famously declared “L’État, c’est moi.”

This embodiment of absolute power vested in a single individual, Louis XIV reminds us of three essential aspects of Baroque music:

1. The doctrine of affections, which declared that each movement of a com-position should have a single affect, or expressive mood.

2. The presence of a single, strong driving rhythm in each movement of a Baroque composition.

3. Most important, the allegiance of every note and chord in a Baroque

composition to a single tonal center, and the implacable forward impulse of

harmonic progression to a final cadence on that center.

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as illustrated in the final cadence of the closing chorale in Bach’s Cantata 140:

69

Chapter III. The Classical Period

The Classical Period coincides with the climax of the Enlightenment,

an era that relied on reason to liberate humanity from both ignorance and

religious dogma. The art of this period tended to favor rationality, propor-

tion, and balance, as we see in Thomas Jefferson’s design for Monticello (1772).

The so-called “enlightened despots” of this period included Joseph II

of Austria, who created a civil service based on merit, abolished serfdom,

reformed the legal system, extended religious toleration, established com-pulsory education and ended capital punishment.

The Classical Period in music replaced the Baroque doctrine of affec-

tions with the sonata principle, based on the reconciliation of opposing

forces. The sonata principle may perhaps be best understood as an expan-

sion of the concept of dissonance. In Medieval and Renaissance music a

dissonant interval resolves to a consonance, as we see at the end of the sec-ond section of the Agnus Dei in Josquin’s Missa Pange lingua:

70

In the last measure, the dissonant interval of the seventh resolves to the

consonance of the octave. Baroque music expanded the notion of disso-

nance to include a dissonant chord resolving to a consonance, as we see at

the end of Bach’s Cantata 140 where a dominant 7th chord resolves to a tonic chord.

The sense of harmonic dissonance becomes clear if we pause on that penul-

timate chord: we feel an almost irresistible urge to resolve the dissonance by moving to the tonic.

The Classical Period further expanded the notion of dissonance in the

sonata principle: musical material presented in a key area other than the

tonic constitutes a dissonance that must eventually be resolved by restating

the material in the tonic key. The sonata principle may be understood us-

ing familiar terms of drama: conflict, intensification, and resolution. Each

aspect of the conflict corresponds to one of the main divisions in sonata form: exposition; development; and recapitulation.

Sonata Form in Terms of Drama Exposition Development Recapitulation

establishes the tonic key, then presents the conflict (material not in the tonic)

intensifies the conflict by movement through various key areas

resolves the conflict by re-stating the “dissonant” ma-terial in the tonic

The sonata principle may also be understood in terms of contrasting thematic material, the way that sonata form used to be taught in textbooks.

71

Sonata Form in Terms of Thematic Material Exposition Development Recapitulation

First theme in the tonic key; second theme in an-other key (usually the dominant or relative ma-jor)

Movement through various key areas, usually based on partial statements of mate-rial from the exposition; ends in a retransition pre-paring for the return to the tonic

Statement of all material in the tonic key area. May end in a coda (tailpiece) firmly re-emphasizing the tonic

This description of sonata form gets into some of the details of tonality.

The second theme is usually in the dominant key. If the main material is in C major, the second theme would be in G major.

This description also mentions the “coda,” typically a brief passage of tonic and dominant chords firmly re-establishing the main key of the piece.

One can also describe sonata form in terms of harmonic events, with-out even mentioning themes.

Sonata Form in Terms of Harmonic Events Exposition Development, Recapitulation,

Coda Modulation from the tonic to the dominant Final cadence in the new tonality

Well-marked return to the tonic; Final cadence in the tonic

From this perspective, a sonata movement has only two main sections: in

the first, we move away from the tonic; in the second, we return to the tonic.

But underlying all of these descriptions is the basic sonata principle: musi-

cal material presented in a key area other than the tonic constitutes a disso-

nance that must eventually be resolved by restating the material in the tonic key.

72

Before turning to an actual example of sonata form, it may be useful

to offer one final perspective, a contrast between sections of harmonic sta-bility and sections of harmonic fluctuation.

Sonata Form in Terms of Harmonic Stability Stable Harmony Fluctuating Harmony

The presentation of the thematic material in the exposition and the recapitula-tion. (The themes are presented in bal-anced phrases and remain entirely in a single tonality.)

The modulation away from the tonic in the exposition; the movement through various tonalities in the development; and the remodulation to the tonic toward the end of the development. (The tonality in these regions is unstable, and the structure of phrases shows the baroque principles of sequence, transposition and inversion.)

Joseph Haydn

Joseph Haydn (1732-1809), known as the “father of the string quar-

tet,” composed some 84 quartets of which the majority were written during

his service to Prince Esterhazy, a Hungarian noble patron of the arts. The

string quartet, with four independent musical lines, proved to be a useful

medium for an expanding harmonic vocabulary which increasingly used

chords involving four different pitches. “Despite the undoubted pre-exist-

ence of the medium, it is not inaccurate to portray Haydn as ‘inventing’ a

version of the string quartet that laid the compositional, aesthetic, and cul-

tural foundations of the genre for subsequent composers … and for western musical culture more broadly.” [Hunter, 2005, pp.112-113.]

Much of the first movement of Haydn’s String Quarter in C Major, Opus 76, No. 3, fits our descriptions of sonata form.

Exposition

Theme I

transition to dominant

Cadential theme in dominant

Development

Theme I motif in various keys

Recapitulation

73

Theme I

Transition material remains in tonic

Cadential theme in tonic

Coda

Cadential theme in tonic

The first theme is clearly in C major.

You may observe that there is no Theme II as such. Haydn’s so-called

“mono-thematic” use of sonata form shows the inadequacy of a description

based solely on thematic material. But if we recall the underlying principle

of sonata form, we see that it fits for Haydn. There is a cadential theme in

the dominant at the end of the Exposition.

This musical material that appears in the dominant in the Exposition ap-

pears in the tonic in the Recapitulation, thus satisfying the requirement

that musical material presented in a key area other than the tonic consti-

tutes a dissonance that must eventually be resolved by restating the mate-

rial in the tonic key.

But so far we have presented only a partial outline of the movement.

Haydn loved musical games and surprises—you are probably familiar with

his “Surprise” symphony—and the Quartet in C Major contains several. The following outline marks Haydn’s “surprises” in italics:

Exposition

Theme I

transition to dominant

Cadential theme in dominant

74

Dominant minor (g minor) E♭major augmented 6th

chord in G

Cadential theme in dominant

Development

Theme I motif in various keys

Rustic dance on drone in E major

Recapitulation

Theme I

Transition material remains in tonic

Cadential theme in tonic

Coda

A♭major augmented 6th chord in C

Cadential theme in tonic

At the end of the Exposition, just when we thought we were safely estab-

lished in the dominant G major, the music veers off into the distant key of

E♭major before returning to the dominant.

The development section includes a rustic dance over a drone in the cello.

When we get to the Coda, usually just a series of tonic and dominant chords

to round of the movement, Haydn suddenly takes us into A♭major before

turning it into an augmented sixth chord—as if to say, “No, just fooling”—and brings us back to the home key.

75

Haydn’s games and surprises, although modest in length, break new

ground. Sonata form, as we have seen, is based on a polarity between tonic

and dominant, key areas a fifth apart. Haydn hints at relationships based

on thirds--C to E♭, C to E and C to A♭—that composers in the 19th century

would explore more thoroughly.

Haydn may be noted for his ability to create large structures from

simple, brief motives; for his idiosyncratic use of the sonata principle (par-

ticularly the so-called “monothematic sonata form”); and perhaps most en-

dearingly, his sense of humor in music.

Haydn’s Achievement Progenitor of the string quartet, of which he composed more than

eighty Idiosyncratic use of the sonata principle, including “monothematic”

sonata form and innovative tonal relationships

Playful attitude toward the conventions and expectations of the Classical Period

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) enjoyed a reputation as per-

former and composer for virtually his entire life. By the time he composed

The Marriage of Figaro in 1786, he was able to earn his living in Vienna

composing piano concertos and operas, with occasional income from noble

patrons.

Just as political units tended to encompass larger and larger territo-

ries, so Mozart created ever larger units in opera. Before Mozart, opera

composers wrote individual set pieces--arias, duets, or small ensembles--

each one coming to a conclusion and separated from the next set piece by

recitative. Mozart expanded the finale of an act to the point that it lasted

half the act, and unrolled continuously. The librettist Da Ponte describes

the importance of the finale: “The finale … is a sort of little comedy in itself.

… This is the great occasion for showing off the genius of the composer, the

ability of the singers, and the most effective “situation” of the drama. …

Every style of singing must find a place in it. In this finale it is a dogma of

theatrical theology that all the singers should appear on the stage … to sing

solos, duets, trios, sextets … and if the plot does not allow of it, the poet

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must find some way of making the plot allow of it.” [Quoted in Steptoe,

1990, p.173]. Basil Deane describes the finale as “what is surely one of Mo-

zart’s most monumental achievements. … In its scale, its complexity and its

integration of dramatic and musical meaning, it is without precedent, and has never been surpassed.” [Deane, 1983, p.23]

Consider Act III of Dido and Aeneas (1689):

B♭: Song & Chorus (Come away, follow sailors)

Sailors’ Dance

B♭: Recitative and Song (Our next motion must be to storm)

Chorus (Destruction’s our delight)

B♭: Witches’ Dance

g: Recitative

B♭: Chorus (Great minds)

Recitative

g: Song (When I am laid in earth)

g: Chorus (With dropping wings)

The individual pieces are in related keys (G minor is the relative minor of

B♭ major) but remain separate numbers.

Now let us consider the Act II finale from The Marriage of Figaro,

composed a century later. In the story, Count Almaviva has designs on Su-

sanna, his wife’s maid, engaged to be married to his servant Figaro. Him-

self an unapologetic philanderer, the Count becomes livid at the thought

that his wife might have a lover. In the finale to Act II, the Count enters his

wife’s dressing room, convinced that she has concealed this supposed lover in her closet.

Mozart makes use of a number of musical devices to describe the in-dividual characters. Dotted rhythms convey the Count’s anger.

The Countess mimics the Count’s phrase, insisting that he is the victim of blind jealousy.

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The Countess and Susanna sing in parallel 3rds (an operatic convention for

agreement), telling the Count that if he expects to be forgiven, he must

show forgiveness.

Figaro enters, singing a dancelike tune announcing that the wedding prepa-

rations have been made. His entrance “injects a sudden change of mood

between these episodes, emphasized by the use of a rustic 3/8 dance

rhythm and bright orchestral timbre. The key is of G is appropriate for

peasant music of this type, and is used by Mozart for bucolic choruses on

other occasions.” [Steptoe, 1990, p. 176]

The drunken gardener is accompanied by triplets in rapid tempo while he

sings in a duple figure.

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Marcellina and her companions tell about Figaro’s legal complications in a

patter-like rhythm.

Now consider the tonal design of the Act II Finale:

E♭: (Allegro) Count & Countess. Count threatens to kill whoever is in the

closet (Duet)

B♭: (Andante con moto) Susanna emerges from closet. Countess demands

apology from Count (Trio)

G: (Allegro) Figaro enters to say that the band is ready for the wedding

(Quartet)

C: (Andante) Count demands explanation for the anonymous note accus-

ing his wife of infidelity. (Quartet)

F: (Allegro molto) Gardener says he saw someone jump from the window

B♭: (Andante ma non troppo) Gardener presents papers found in garden

(Quintet, after which Gardener exits)

E♭: (Andante assai) Bartolo, Basilio, and Marcellina present document

showing that Figaro must repay his debt to Marcellina or marry her (Sep-

tet) (ends Prestissimo)

In the course of the Finale, the number of singers gradually increases from

the opening duet to the closing septet. The tonal design displays a strong

resemblance to sonata form.

Exposition (E♭-B♭)

Development (G-C-F-B♭, movement by descending perfect 5ths),

Recapitulation (E♭)

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Mozart even draws musical connections between the “exposition” and the

“recapitulation.” At the beginning of finale, the Count’s anger and determi-

nation are conveyed in dotted rhythms:

At the end of the finale, the arrival of Marcellina, Basilio and Barolo, press-

ing Marcellina’s case against Figaro, portrays the same anger and determi-

nation with the same rhythm:

In the second section of finale, the Count is dismayed by appearance of Su-

sanna when he’d expected to see a concealed lover. We hear Susanna and

Countess united (same rhythm, singing in parallel thirds), against the

Count:

At the end of the finale, Mozart again uses similar rhythms to suggest the

alliance of Susanna, the Countess and Figaro against Marcellina, Basilio,

Count and Bartolo (in their “determination” rhythm):

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Mozart’s opera finales represent a continuing drive toward consolidation

and unified musical structures. Mozart’s music epitomizes the clarity, pro-

portion and balance characteristic of the Classical Period. His apparently

limitless inventiveness is employed to good use in opera both to depict indi-

vidual characters and to communicate the relationships between characters or groups of characters.

Mozart’s Achievement

Amalgamating the individual movements of a “number opera” into a continuous rational structure

Achieving characterization through the coordination of solos and ensembles

Extending the structure of the sonata principle to opera

Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) more or less created the position

of composer as artist. He drew his income from a number of sources, in-

cluding public performances, the sale of his works for publication, and the

81

support of noble patrons. But unlike composers of the Renaissance, accus-

tomed to producing music on demand for occasions of the court, Beethoven set his own course, demanding recognition on his own terms.

Alterations in a political map can be gradual or cataclysmic. If

Haydn’s and Mozart’s experiments may be compared to boundary adjust-

ments, Beethoven’s assaults on musical conventions had the effect of a ma-

jor war. “Beethoven understood sonata form not as fundamentally comic

or lyrical, in the way of Haydn and Mozart, ending in a reconciliation of dis-

similarities, but rather as heroic struggle, in which an essentially single mu-

sical force, defined by a guiding motif, would push towards a triumphant

conclusion in the principal key. Hence the increased importance of the de-

velopment section, as the chief scene of challenge and conflict.” [Griffiths, 2006, p.155]

Assaults on Form

Great increase in length: three transition themes; two closing themes

New material in development

Coda becomes a second development section)

Beethoven’s assault on form can be seen in the gigantic length of his third

symphony (the so-called Eroica), whose first movement alone lasts longer

than most entire symphonies by Mozart and Haydn. Every section of the

sonata structure is extended: the transition from Theme I to Theme II in-

cludes three transition themes; the closing section after Theme II includes

two closing themes; Beethoven even introduces a new theme in the devel-opment section, a two-part counterpoint in the distant key of e minor.

Beethoven transforms the coda, formerly a few chords to mark the end of a movement, into a second development section.

Assaults on Rhythm

Off-beat accents

Contrametrical patterns

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Suppression of main beat (syncopation)

Beethoven’s assaults on rhythm constitute the most immediately

striking aspects of his musical style. Many of the first-movement themes

feature off-beat accents, or entrances off the beat, as in the case of the first transition theme.

Beethoven delights in constructing contrametrical pattern s, such as a pat-

tern of two beats in a meter of three beats.

83

Beethoven upsets the rhythm by suppressing the main beat, as in that pas-

sage which concludes with another contrametrical pattern.

Beethoven combines all of these procedures at the climax of the develop-

ment, leading to dissonance of dominant 9th chord of distant key of e mi-

nor.

Assaults on Tonality: Anomalous D♭

84

Exposition: resolves upward, return to tonic

Recapitulation: resolves downward, leading to “heroic” version of

main theme

Coda: stepwise motion E♭-D♭- C

Beethoven’s assault on tonality frequently takes the form of an unex-

pected note early in a movement, creating a tonal conflict that the com-

poser exploits during the remainder of the movement. The first movement

of the Third Symphony contains an anomalous D♭ that in its first appear-

ance resolves upwards, returning to E♭, the key of the piece. We notice that

this tonal disruption is accompanied by a rhythmic disrupting in the form

of a syncopated figure in the violins.

At the corresponding spot in the recapitulation, the D♭ moves downwards,

leading to the so-called “heroic” version of the main theme in F major.

In the coda, D♭ serves as a passing key area between E♭ and C.

85

This final use of the D♭ directly violates the rules governing harmonic pro-

gression in the Classical Period. It may be thought of as the musical equiva-

lent of leaving the established roads and cutting directly across fields to reach one’s destination.

The following “roadmap” may be of assistance in listening to this co-

lossal first movement.

EXPOSITION

Opening tonic chords,

Theme I (tonal disruption—C#—resolves upward)

Rhythmic disruption (offbeat accents, contrametrical patterns, step motive)

Theme I (tutti)

Transition theme 1 (accent on 2nd beat)

Transition theme 2

Transition theme 3

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Theme II (each instrument enters on 2nd beat)

Closing Theme 1 (offbeat accents, followed by contrametrical patterns and

suppressed downbeat)

Closing Theme 2 (ties weaken downbeat)

DEVELOPMENT

Transition theme 1 (accent on 2nd beat)

Theme I fragment (progression: c-c#-d)

Theme I motive combined with Transition theme 3

Brief fugal development on Transition Theme 1

Extended rhythmic disruption: clash between duple and dislocated triple

meter ending in dissonant chord

Development theme (two-part counterpoint in the distant key of e minor)

Theme I expanded upwards: C-Db-Eb

Development theme in eb

Theme I* (heroic version) with step motive

Retransition (ends with premature entry in the horn)

RECAPITULATION

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Theme I (tonal disruption--C#--resolves downward, leading to heroic ver-

sion; syncopated passage has disappeared!)

Transition themes 1, 2, and 3

Theme II (in the tonic key of Eb)

Closing themes 1 and 2 (contrametrical patterns as in exposition)

CODA

Theme I fragment (Db as passing tone between Eb and C)

Development theme)

Step motive

Theme I (heroic version combined with Transition theme 3)

Brief passage on Transitions theme 2

Long passage of tonic and dominant chords ending with Step motive

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Beethoven’s Achievement Assaults on form: vast expansion of sonata form through length-

ened development section and treatment of coda as a second devel-opment section

Assaults on rhythm: offbeat accents, contrametrical patterns, sup-pression of main beat (syncopation)

Assaults on tonality: startling departures from the norms of func-tional harmony (leads to weakening of tonal system)

Beethoven, like Dufay, can be considered a watershed figure belong-

ing to two eras. We have included Beethoven, along with Haydn and Mo-

zart, in the Classical Period since the majority of his work employs the gen-

res associated with that era: symphonies, concertos, overtures, sonatas,

string quartets, and an opera. But if the Romantic Period can be character-

ized as an Age of Revolution, strong arguments can be made for considering

Beethoven among the Romantics. Beethoven extended the norms of the

Classical Period and, along the way, broke new ground for composers of the

nineteenth century to explore. Beethoven invented many of the forms most

closely associated with the Romantic Period, including the program sym-

phony, the song cycle, and the character piece for piano. One can imagine

the exasperation in Schubert’s voice when he wrote, “Who can do anything more after Beethoven?”

Our presentation of the Classical Period has focused on the sonata

principle and in may be worthwhile to summarize this presentation with

two observations on that topic. The first is the ubiquity of the sonata prin-

ciple in virtually every genre: symphonies, concertos, overtures, sonatas,

string quartets, even—as we have seen with Mozart—opera. This principle

so informed musical thought of the Classical Period that composers habitu-

ally organized the structure of their compositions according to its underly-

ing assumption: any musical material presented in a key area other than

the tonic constitutes a dissonance that must eventually be resolved by re-stating the material in the tonic key.

The second observation has to do with the reign of the tonic over

every harmonic event of a composition. In music of the common practice

period—roughly 1600 to 1900—every chord can be related to the key of the

piece, or tonic. The sonata principle evokes the powerful relationship be-

tween the two most important harmonies: the tonic and the dominant.

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The expansion of the harmonic realm into other areas tends to weaken the

fundamental influence of the tonic. You can think of the situation as com-parable to the expansion of the Roman Empire.

The farther the boundaries of the empire extended from its center, the

longer it would take to communicate to its extremities, and more im-

portant, the less likely that the members of the garrison army would feel any direct, personal loyalty to Rome.

As composers explored more and more distant key relationships, the

weaker the hold of the tonic over the whole harmonic framework. The end

would not come for another century, but that anomalous D♭in the seventh

measure of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony represents an important event in the ultimate breakdown of the tonal system.

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Chapter IV: The Romantic Period

The 19th century may be regarded as an era of revolution, beginning

with the storming of the Bastille in 1789 and continuing with revolutionary activity throughout Europe in 1848.

The fall of the ancient régime led to an exploration of alternative political

systems including democracy, communism and socialism. The Industrial

Revolution, which traces its roots back to the 18th century, saw machinery

multiplying the availability and reducing the cost of material goods, but the factory system tended to make workers part of the machinery.

91

In science, the theory of evolution overthrew the prevailing view of geologi-

cal and natural history, inviting a new perspective on humanity and its place in creation.

Literature saw the overthrow of rationalism in favor of exploring the subconscious.

92

The art of this period is notable for overthrowing clarity and liberating color

as a means of expressing emotion, viewing nature as a source of mystery

rather than a source of law.

Franz Schubert

In describing music of the Classical Period, we compared the absolute alle-

giance of every to a tonal center to the absolute monarchy of Louis XIV.

The development of chromatic harmony in the 19th century tended to

weaken the tonal system. The Romantic Period also saw a new relationship develop between music and literature.

93

We shall explore this new relationship as manifested in song, the pro-

gram symphony, music drama, and opera. Songs, of course, existed long

before the 19th century, but composers such as Franz Schubert (1797-1828)

created a new vocabulary of musical expressiveness to serve poetry. Schu-

bert never enjoyed the aristocratic patronage of Haydn or Beethoven, but

depended on friends for support, with occasional income from teaching.

He managed to produce a substantial number of compositions during brief lifetime, most notably his composition of songs, or Lieder.

Schubert’s Erlkönig (or the Erl King, 1815) sets a poem of Goethe.

Original German Literal Translation Adaption

Wer reitet so spät

durch Nacht und

Wind?

Es ist der Vater mit

seinem Kind;

Er hat den Knaben

wohl in dem Arm,

Er faßt ihn sicher, er

hält ihn warm.

"Mein Sohn, was birgst

du so bang dein

Gesicht?"

"Siehst, Vater, du den

Erlkönig nicht?

Den Erlenkönig mit

Kron und Schweif?"

"Mein Sohn, es ist ein

Nebelstreif."

"Du liebes Kind, komm,

geh mit mir!

Gar schöne Spiele spiel'

ich mit dir;

Manch' bunte Blumen

Who rides, so late,

through night and

wind?

It is the father with

his child.

He holds the boy in

the crook of his arm

He holds him safe, he

keeps him warm.

"My son, why do you

hide your face so anx-

iously?"

"Father, do you not

see the Elfking?

The Elfking with

crown and cloak?"

"My son, it's a wisp of

fog."

"You lovely child,

come, go with me!

Many a beautiful

game I'll play with

Who rides there so late

through the night dark

and drear?

The father it is, with his

infant so dear;

He holdeth the boy

tightly clasp'd in his

arm,

He holdeth him safely,

he keepeth him warm.

"My son, wherefore

seek'st thou thy face

thus to hide?"

"Look, father, the Elf

King is close by our side!

Dost see not the Elf

King, with crown and

with train?"

"My son, 'tis the mist

rising over the plain."

"Oh, come, thou dear in-

fant! oh come thou with

me!

For many a game I will

94

sind an dem Strand,

Meine Mutter hat

manch gülden

Gewand."

"Mein Vater, mein Va-

ter, und hörest du

nicht,

Was Erlenkönig mir

leise verspricht?"

"Sei ruhig, bleib ruhig,

mein Kind;

In dürren Blättern säu-

selt der Wind."

"Willst, feiner Knabe,

du mit mir gehen?

Meine Töchter sollen

dich warten schön;

Meine Töchter führen

den nächtlichen Reihn,

Und wiegen und tanzen

und singen dich ein."

"Mein Vater, mein Va-

ter, und siehst du nicht

dort

Erlkönigs Töchter am

düstern Ort?"

"Mein Sohn, mein

Sohn, ich seh es genau:

Es scheinen die alten

Weiden so grau."

"Ich liebe dich, mich

reizt deine schöne Ge-

stalt;

Und bist du nicht wil-

lig, so brauch ich

you;

Some colourful flow-

ers are on the shore,

My mother has many

golden robes."

"My father, my father,

can't you hear,

What the Elfking qui-

etly promised me?"

"Be calm, stay calm,

my child;

The wind rustles

through dry leaves."

"Do you want to come

with me, dear boy?

My daughters shall

wait on you fine;

My daughters lead the

nightly dances

And will rock and

dance and sing you to

sleep."

"My father, my father,

can't you see there,

The Elfking's daugh-

ters in the gloomy

place?"

"My son, my son, I see

it well:

The old willows they

shimmer so grey."

"I love you, your beau-

tiful form entices me;

And if you're not will-

ing, I shall use force."

play there with thee;

On my strand, lovely

flowers their blossoms

unfold,

My mother shall grace

thee with garments of

gold."

"My father, my father,

and dost thou not hear

The words that the Elf

King now breathes in

mine ear?"

"Be calm, dearest child,

thy fancy deceives;

the wind is sighing

through withering

leaves."

"Wilt go, then, dear in-

fant, wilt go with me

there?

My daughters shall tend

thee with sisterly care

My daughters by night

on the dance floor you

lead,

They'll cradle and rock

thee, and sing thee to

sleep."

"My father, my father,

and dost thou not see,

How the Elf King is

showing his daughters to

me?"

"My darling, my darling,

I see it aright,

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Gewalt."

"Mein Vater, mein Va-

ter, jetzt faßt er mich

an!

Erlkönig hat mir ein

Leids getan!"

Dem Vater grauset's, er

reitet geschwind,

Er hält in Armen das

ächzende Kind,

Er reicht den Hof mit

Müh' und Not;

In seinen Armen das

Kind war tot.

"My father, my father,

he's grabbing me now!

The Elfking has done

me harm!"

The father shudders;

he rides swiftly,

He holds the moaning

child in his arms.

He can hardly manage

to reach his farm;

In his arms, the child

was dead.

'Tis the aged grey wil-

lows deceiving thy

sight."

"I love thee, I'm charm'd

by thy beauty, dear boy!

And if thou aren't will-

ing, then force I'll em-

ploy."

"My father, my father,

he seizes me fast,

For sorely the Elf King

has hurt me at last."

The father now gallops,

with terror half wild,

He holds in his arms the

shuddering child;

He reaches his farm-

stead with toil and with

dread,--

The child in his arms he

finds motionless, dead.

Goethe’s poem displays the Romantic treatment of nature as a mysterious

realm as well as the Romantic taste for the supernatural.

The story includes four personages: a narrator, who speaks in the first and

last stanzas; the father, who tries to reassure his son; the Erl King, whose

words are put in quotation marks, and the son, the only one able to see the

Erl King. The father tries to find a logical explanation for his son’s fears:

the rising mist, the wind murmuring among dry leaves, old gray willow

trees. Yet when the son says that the Erl King has hurt him, the father

shudders with horror. The Erl King tries to woo the son, first with the hope

of games, and then with the more powerful charms of his young daughters. He finally uses force to take the young boy’s life.

96

We note Goethe’s expressive use of rhythm. The striking rhythm of

iambs and anapests evokes a galloping horse: “Wer reitet so spät durch

Nacht und Wind?” and “Mein Vater, mein Vater, und hörest du nicht?” Es-

sentially the text maintains a simple, almost folkloric, style, as if one were reciting a legend.

Stanzaic songs of the 18th century, which used the same music for

each stanza of the text, in the manner of a hymn, offered few opportunities

to give musical expression to details of the poetry. Schubert’s through-

composed songs, by varying the music for each stanza, permitted a much

more sensitive treatment of the text. The through-composed style allowed

Schubert him to clearly distinguish the personages: the words of the son

are in a high tessitura while those of the father are lower.

97

The Erl King always sings pianissimo in the major mode, in contrast with

the predominant minor mode of the song.

98

The musical setting loses the strong rhythmic impulses of Goethe’s

poem, but Schubert compensates for this by transferring the galloping

rhythm of the horse to the piano accompaniment, expressed by the con-

stant beating triplets whose rhythm stops only when the father arrives

home only to discover the child dead in his arms. The accompaniment also

presents a menacing figure in the left hand which disappears in calm mo-

ments and returns to suggest inexorable fate.

We must also take note of Schubert’s expressive use of harmony. The

boy’s cries of alarm, “Mein Vater, mein Vater,” are sung to a diminished

seventh chord, traced in the bass, whose affective quality is heightened by

the dissonance of the ninth between the voice and the right hand of the pi-

ano, and between the two hands of the piano. The increasing urgency of the

cries is expressed by the ascending tessitura with each reprise and by the

increasing dynamic level from mezzoforte to forte to fortissimo.

99

Schubert drew on all the resources at his disposal—melody, rhythm, har-

mony, texture—to give musical expression to his chosen text. The com-

poser of more than six hundred songs, Schubert contributed to the develop-

ment of this genre with through-composed songs, adventurous harmonies, and continually inventive piano accompaniments.

Schubert’s Achievement Replacing stanzaic songs with through-composed songs to permit

greater expressivity

Inventive accompaniments set the mood of a song and convey indi-vidual details

Use of variation in tessitura and harmony for characterization

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Hector Berlioz

Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) abandoned the career in medicine that

his father intended for him in order to study music at the Paris Conserva-

toire. Berlioz is best known for the program symphony, in which a literary

adjunct forms an essential part of the music. Berlioz described his Sym-

phonie Fantastique as “episodes in the life of an artist, a fantastic sym-

phony in five parts.” He explains his use of the program: “The composer’s

intention has been to develop various episodes in the life of an artist, in so

far as they lend themselves to musical treatment. As the work cannot rely

on the assistance of speech, the plan of the instrumental drama needs to be

set out in advance. The following program must therefore be considered as

the spoken text of an opera, which serves to introduce musical movements and to motivate their character and expression.”

“That a symphony could be inspired by a ‘poetic idea’ was something

Berlioz surely learned from Beethoven. … But that a symphony could be so

unreservedly autobiographical and self-confessional, in the manner of con-

temporary French and English literature (where novels of this type had

been popular for some years), was fresh to music at that time. Thus the

symphonic exposé of Berlioz’s unrequited love for the Irish actress Harriet

Smithson marked a new fusion of music and literature in the nineteenth

century.” [Langford, 2000, pp. 53-54]

A recurring melody, known as the idée fixe, appears in all five move-

ments of the symphony. “A young musician … sees for the first time a

woman who embodies all the charms of the ideal being he has imagined in

his dreams, and he falls desperately in love with her. Through an odd

whim, whenever the beloved image appears before the mind’s eye of the

artist it is linked with a musical thought. … This melodic image and the

model it reflects pursue him incessantly like a double idée fixe.”

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Berlioz calls the fifth movement of the symphony the Dream of a

Witches’ Sabbath. “He sees himself surrounded by a foul assembly of sor-

cerers and devils, come together to celebrate the sabbath. They call afar. At

last the melody arrives. Hitherto it had appeared only in graceful form, but

now it has become a vulgar tune, trivial and mean; it is the loved one com-

ing to the sabbath to attend the funeral procession of her victim. She is

now only a prostitute, fit to take part in such an orgy. Then the ceremony

begins. The bells ring, the whole infernal crew prostrate themselves, a cho-

rus sings the plainchant sequence of the dead (Dies irae), two other cho-

ruses repeat it, parodying it in burlesque fashion. Then finally the sabbath

round-dance begins to whirl; in its most violent outburst, it mingles with the Dies irae, and the dream is over.” [Cone, 1971, p.9]

“The ‘Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath’ moves much further away from

traditional symphonic structures. Here the narrative of the program is mir-

rored in the sectional through-composed form of the music.” [Langford, 2000, p.57]

102

Berlioz employed all the effects of the orchestra, and invented a num-

ber of new ones, to give expression to his underlying program. In his Trea-

tise of Instrumentation (1844), the first work on orchestration, Berlioz sys-

tematically investigated the technical and tonal possibilities of each orches-

tral instrument. The Symphonie fantastique demanded a substantial ex-

pansion of orchestra (four bassoons, four horns and four timpani in place of

the two usually associated with the classical orchestra) and the introduction

of a number of new orchestral instruments (piccolo, clarinets in C and E

flat, English horn, two keyed cornets, two harps, two trombones, two tubas,

cymbals and a bass drum). Berlioz created novel orchestral effects, such as

the division of the upper strings into eight parts to create an atmosphere of

mystery at the beginning of the movement, and the unusual technique of

col legno battuto, in which the string players bounce the wood of their bows

off the strings, to suggest the sinister and supernatural quality of the Sab-bath Round.

Berlioz showed considerable inventiveness in giving musical expres-

sion to the program. He made full use of pre-existing musical associations,

such as the infernal reputation of the tritone (known since the Middle Ages

as diabolus in musica), the Dies irae, the hymn chanted at funeral rites in

the Roman Catholic church, and the bells, a sonority generally associated

with the church. The fifth movement opens mysteriously with a tritone fol-

lowed by diminished seventh chords descending by semitone. In contrast

to music of the Classical Period, in which every chord was clearly related to

the tonic, Berlioz’s so-called “non-tonic opening” leaves us at a loss to know

what key the piece will be in.

Berlioz ingeniously conveys the sacrilege of a black Sabbath by de-

forming a sacred melody. Three phrases of the Dies irae are presented, one

after the other, first in long notes played by the tubas and bassoons

103

then in diminution by the horns and trombones

and finally in double diminution in an irreverent rhythm by the winds.

Berlioz further deforms the melody of the idée fixe by the use of the grating

and mocking timbre of an e flat clarinet, accompanied by a clarinet in c, two

oboes, bassoon and piccolo.

In the music of Berlioz we take note of a new element. In addition to

melody, rhythm, harmony and form Berlioz exploits sound in ways un-

known to his predecessors. The music of Bach, by contrast, seems to exist

more or less independently of its timbre, or tone quality. Bach’s music has

been successfully transcribed for virtually every imaginable combination of

instruments, even for electronic synthesizer, without substantial loss of in-

tegrity. For Berlioz, by contrast, tone color—the quality that makes one in-

strument sound different from another—takes on an importance compara-

ble to the traditional elements of melody, rhythm, harmony and form. The

104

exploration of pure sound, one of the characteristic features of the modern era, has its roots in the music of Hector Berlioz.

Berlioz’s Achievement Exploration of instrumental capabilities and new instrumental ef-

fects

Exploitation of musical associations, both traditional (e.g., Dies irae, tritone, bells) and original (e.g., idée fixe)

Innovative treatment of harmony: non-tonic openings; unconven-tional key relationships; unusual progressions

Richard Wagner

The glorification of the subconscious, one of the characteristic traits

of the Romantic Era, finds its most prolific proponent in Richard Wagner

(1813-1883). In his treatise Opera and Drama (1851) Wagner insists that

the plot an opera must come from myth, a source at once naïve, anony-

mous, pre-intellectual, and created by the people themselves. The story of

his music drama Tristan und Isolde (1865) comes from a Celtic legend. Ac-

cording to Wagner, these mythic plots should be expressed in symbols, be

they objects or personages. In Tristan und Isolde, for example, the love-po-

tion becomes a symbol for the conscious recognition of a pre-existing

unacknowledged love. In Wagner’s music dramas, the interior drama un-

folds in the orchestra, and not in the events on the stage. Music drama thus combines opera and symphony.

Wagner’s ideas about the language of music drama reflect his preoc-

cupation with the subconscious. In creating his own librettos, Wagner de-

liberately eliminated conjunctions and prepositions, which convey no emo-

tive force. In place of rhyme, which he considered to be an intellectual rela-

tionship, Wagner preferred Stabreim (alliteration), an intuitive relationship appealing directly to the subconscious.

Stabreim in Tristan und Isolde

Dem Tage! Dem Tage!

Dem tückischen Tage,

Dem härtesten Feinde

Hass und Klage!

The day! The day!

Hate and detestation

Of the envious day,

The cruellest foe!

105

Wie du das Licht,

O könnt’ ich die Leuchte,

Der liebe Leiden zu rächen,

Den frechen Tage verlöschen!

Would that, as you quenched the

torch,

I could extinguish the glare

Of importunate daylight!

This brief extract from the Act II love duet between Tristan and Isolde also

illustrates Wagner’s use of symbolism, in which Day represents honour,

faithfulness and the conventional world, while Night stands for the love be-tween Tristan and Isolde, to be achieved only in the realm of death.

Wagner produced his so-called “endless melody” by avoiding ca-

dences, which mark temporary points of arrival, in order to postpone the

arrival until the end of the opera (five hours, including intermission). With

Wagner dissonances “resolve” to lesser dissonances rather than conso-

nances, as we see in the opening to the prelude to Tristan und Isolde where

the so-called “Tristan chord,” perhaps the most celebrated chord of the 19th

century, “resolves” to a dominant seventh chord.

Robert Bailey suggests that “the later nineteenth century ought to be looked

upon as a period which expanded the concept of consonance, rather than as

a period which expanded the treatment of dissonance.” [Bailey, 1985, p.125]

Wagner weakens the forward impulse of music to the point that one

can no longer describe the structure of his music dramas in terms of the

traditional architecture of phrases, periods, divisions and movements, each

denoted by cadences. The linear logic of sonata form has been replaced by

a kind of global form in which individual musical ideas can be compared to

lines of longitude on a globe. Each musical idea connects with all of its rep-

etitions without participating in a conventional architectural scheme. If we

denote the opening of the opera as Motive A, five additional motives can be identified.

106

Motivic Material in the Tristan Prelude

Motive A

Motive B

Motive C

Motive D

Motive E

Motive F

We observe that the chord progressions in these motives are defined by

voice-leading (semitonal movement) rather than by functional relation-

ships. Each chord “slides” to the next instead of following a logical root progression.

In the music drama, each of these bits of melodic material constitutes

a leitmotif, a musical fragment symbolizing a character, an object, or an

idea. The principle of the leitmotif becomes for Wagner the key to the

problem of large-scale form. Wagner’s innovation is to have extended a

107

network of leitmotifs over an entire work, to the point that they become al-

most omnipresent. Form in Wagner is thus defined as a woven material ra-

ther than an architectonic structure. A schematic drawing may help us to

see how this principle operates in the Prelude to Tristan und Isolde. [Jack-

son, 1985, p.276]

Structure of the Tristan Prelude Motive A Motive B Motive C Motive D Motive E Motive F

1 -17 17-24 25-28 28-32

32-36 36-44

45-48 48-54

55-63 63-74

74-83

83-89 89-94

94-100

101-106

Wagner’s legacy lies not simply in expanding the vocabulary of chro-

matic harmony but in inventing a new syntax to replace the organizing

principles of the Classical Period. Wagner’s use of harmonic progressions

based on voice-leading instead of traditional functional harmony allowed

him to create musical structures of unprecedented length, but also served to weaken the fundamental principle underling the common practice period.

Wagner’s Achievement Musical structures of unprecedented length based on a symphonic

web of leitmotifs (global form)

Harmonic progression based on voice-leading instead of functional harmony (weakens tonal system)

Expansion of harmonic vocabulary and consonance/dissonance re-lationships

Giuseppe Verdi

Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) enjoyed great popularity in Italy not only

for his operas but for the identification of his name with the nationalist

movement for liberation from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The letters

served as an acronym for Viva Vittorio Emanuele Re D'Italia (Viva Victor Emmanuel King of Italy).

108

Verdi employed his orchestra to set scenes in addition to accompany-

ing singers. To evoke a terrible storm at the outset of the opera, Otello

(1887) uses the peculiar effect of “beating” produced by depressing the

three lowest chromatic notes of an organ simultaneously. The resulting

rumble through the opera house may be compared to the special sound ef-

fects currently employed in movie theatres. High woodwinds and pizzicato strings evoke the sparks of a campfire later in the first act of the opera.

If Wagner achieved operatic continuity by abolishing the individual

units of the number opera, Verdi did so by linking the numbers as if turning

the boundaries into dotted lines. The Drinking Song in Act I of Otello

(1887) illustrates the method. In transforming Shakespeare’s play into an

operatic text, the librettist Boito reduced nearly 3500 lines of text to a li-

bretto of under 800 lines, and created a number of set pieces in which

Verdi could depict character through action rather than words. Boito man-

ufactured the Drinking Song on the basis of a single line in Shakespeare’s

play: “And let me the canakin clink.” In the Drinking Song we see how the

109

villainous Iago plays on other people’s weaknesses. Knowing Cassio’s ina-

bility to hold his liquor, Iago employs the simple-minded Roderigo in a plot

to get Cassio drunk, then provoke him into a fight that will force Otello to dismiss him as captain, the post that Iago covets for himself.

Iago’s Drinking Song “is not a static piece embedded in a scene if ac-

tion; rather it carries the action within itself. For this purpose Verdi uses a

type of bar-form … in which there is room for Cassio’s stammering, his

growing intoxication, Iago’s asides to Roderigo and the amused reactions of

the crowd, and always from the steady development of one idea to another,

the recurrence of the refrain giving unity to the design.” [Budden, 2008, p.297]

Verdi associates two musical details with Iago, the chromatic scale

and the trill. A descending chromatic line keeps returning in the refrain of the drinking song.

110

The trills appear in the material connecting one stanza to the next.

111

After establishing the pattern of alternating solos and refrains in the first

two stanzas, Verdi uses distortions in the third stanza to offer a musical de-piction of inebriation.

Iago: first half of stanza

Cassio: comes in nine measures too soon, interrupting Iago

Iago: second half of stanza, but to the music of the first half—he is ev-

idently confused

Cassio: second half of stanza, but in the wrong place and in the

wrong key

Chorus starts to laugh

Iago advises Roderigo to provoke Cassio

Chorus increases its laughter

Iago finally pulls the chorus together with the second half of the re-frain

112

Italian opera traditionally distinguishes between recitative as a means

of narrating essential elments of the plot and aria as an opportunity for in-

dividual characters to express their emotions in response to developing dra-

matic situations. Verdi modifies this practice by reducing the amount of re-

citative devoted to narrative purposes and, wherever possible, carrying out

the exposition of the plot through direct action, as illustrated in the Drink-ing Song.

Verdi’s Achievement Conventions of Italian “number opera” blended into continuous

music with set pieces connected by passages of parlando (speech-like singing)

Characterization through dramatic action instead of static arias

Imaginative orchestration to set the scene

Verdi and Wagner, born in the same year, display considerable differ-

ences in their approach to opera. Verdi clearly situated himself in the

three-hundred year tradition of Italian opera. Wagner, self-consciously cre-

ating what he termed the “artwork of the future,” rejected tradition. Verdi

wrote operas in which singers and vocal melodies occupied center stage.

Wagner wrote music dramas in which the primary musical material ap-

peared in the orchestra. Verdi wrote continuous music by connecting the

traditional numbers of Italian opera. Wagner wrote continuous music by

replacing the traditional structure of musical architecture with a new con-

ception of musical form. Using the analogy of grammar, Verdi replaced pe-

riods with semicolons while Wagner more or less eliminated periods alto-gether.

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Chapter V. The Modern Period

The Modern Period may be described as an age of uncertainty marked

by a succession of cataclysms including World War I, the Spanish Flu, the

Great Depression, World War II, and a seemingly endless series of wars

since the end of that conflict. A new and awful term, “genocide,” has en-

tered our vocabulary, associated not only with the Holocaust but also with

the policies of Stalin, the Cultural Revolution in China, and the phenome-

non of “ethnic cleansing” that would include the massacres in Rwanda and elsewhere.

In science Einstein showed that time is not absolute but relative to the observer and that space is deformed by gravity.

114

Quantum physics described a subatomic world in which conventional ex-

pectations no longer apply. According to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Princi-

ple, you can determine the position of a particle or the velocity of a particle,

but not both. The more accurate your determination of the position, the more inaccurate your determination of the velocity.

Literature of the modern period raised challenges to the principles of

narrative, structure and style, including multiple points of view and multi-

ple styles within a single work.

Modern art raised challenges to the principles of perspective, style

and space, including multiple perspectives and multiple styles within a sin-

gle painting.

115

Psychology saw a rejection of the rational mind as the source of ulti-

mate control and explored the coexistence and conflict between the emo-

tional and rational minds.

Claude Debussy

In the history of western music Claude Debussy (1862-1918) occupies

a watershed position like Dufay or Beethoven. Debussy’s early composi-

tions clearly belong to the 19th century yet he has frequently been described as the “father of modern music” and it may be interesting to discover why.

Where we associate Bach with the creation of magnificent musical

structures, we tend to think of Debussy in terms of magical moments: the

sweep of a harp, or the sound of an unexpected harmony. Indeed, De-

bussy’s legacy for the Modern Period would seem to lie in the liberation of the musical moment.

116

A single four-measure passage from the Jeux de vagues movement of Debussy’s orchestra work La Mer (1905) captures these ideas.

In contrast to Wagner’s “endless melody,” Debussy’s melody strikes us as

fragmented or atomistic, like a single brushstroke on a canvas. The music

sounds strange to us because it does not belong to either the major or mi-nor scales. Instead, it comes from the Lydian mode.

117

The chords do not fulfill the expectations of functional harmony: instead they seem to exist outside of time.

This is still tonal music, but the tonality is defined by not functional har-mony but by a pedal point and an arpeggio on E.

This is not harmony that goes anywhere: it just sits there. Repetition also

negates forward progress: each measure is repeated, and then the whole passage is repeated, producing the pattern:

a a b b a a b b

Debussy defeats the forward impulse that we commonly associate with mu-

sic and thereby makes us concentrate on the individual moment instead of the relationship between moments, as we would in the music of Bach.

Debussy wrote about La Mer in a letter to André Messager: “You’re

unaware, maybe, that I was intended for the noble career of a sailor and

have only deviated from that path thanks to the quirks of fate. Even so, I’ve

retained a sincere devotion to the sea.” [Tresize, 2003, p.108] Jeux de

vagues, the second movement of La Mer, “slips easily from one wave-

shaped melodic idea to another, each seemingly generated by the underly-

ing harmony, as waves are by underwater tensions, and the sequence of

chords following no progression but drifting and circling, again like marine

118

currents. … Debussy wrote how he was feeling ‘more and more that music,

by its very essence, is not something that can flow inside a rigorous, tradi-

tional form. It consists of colours and rhythmicized time.’” [Griffiths, 2006, p.222]

When Debussy described his new conception of music to his harmony

teacher at the Paris Conservatoire, Ernest Guiraud said, “I am not saying

that what you do isn’t beautiful, but it’s theoretically absurd.” Debussy re-plied, “There is no theory. You have merely to listen.”

Debussy particularly enjoyed using the whole-tone scale, which not only lacks a leading tone, but has no semitones at all:

Passages in the whole-tone scale occur fleetingly in Jeux de vagues, like splashes of color.

So what holds this music together? One can reduce the music to a

succession of chords, but they hardly constitute the usual logical progres-sion to a well-defined goal.

119

If we consider the melodic material of Jeux de vagues, we find a bewilder-

ing assortment of fragmented themes which seem to grow out of one an-

other organically: hardly the well-ordered introduction, development and recapitulation of material that we associated with the Classical Period.

120

Jeux de vagues melodies

We see no evidence of linear form in this piece. The constant repetitions

create a static effect. The notes are like waves: they move, but the ocean it-self doesn’t go anywhere.

If we superimpose the melodic fragments on the harmonic framework

we arrive at a pattern similar to that of the Wagner Prelude to Tristan und

Isolde, a sort of global form in which bits of similar material connect with

each other like meridians on a globe. The music displays its own internal

logic, but a logic entirely different from the principles of organization un-derlying music of the common practice period from roughly 1600-1900.

121

“In Debussy’s most progressive music the tradition of continuous

symphonic development is replaced by a kaleidoscopic succession of brief

moments arranged not in a closed, linear progression, like beads on a

string, but in an open global array, like colored tiles in a mosaic.” [Wenk, 1983, pp.69-70]

Debussy’s Achievement: Redefining Musical Time

Repetition, pedal points and non-functional harmony weaken sense of forward progression

Special scales and global form weaken allegiance to a tonal center

Fragmentary melodies and splashes of color focus attention on the moment

Debussy has redefined musical time in a way that frustrates our ex-

pectations of forward impulse. Fragmentary melodies, static harmony and

global form all serve to focus our attention on the individual musical mo-

ment, and in this respect Debussy can truly be called the father of modern music.

122

Arnold Schoenberg

Imagine creating a piece of music in which melody and rhythm virtu-

ally vanish, in which harmony remains fixed from one measure to the next,

and the only thing to change is the timbre. Such a piece was actually com-

posed by Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951), with the title “Colors” and the

subtitle “Summer Morning by a Lake,” as part of his Five Pieces for Orches-

tra (1909). “Schoenberg had numerous second thoughts about the title of

the third piece, which was repeatedly renamed. ‘The Changing Chord,’

‘Color,’ ‘The Changing Chord (Colors on the Traunsee),’ ‘Colors (Summer

Morning on the Lake),’ and ‘Summer Morning at a Lake’ were all tried in various concert programs and editions of the work.” [Simms, 2000, p.74]

The Five Pieces “have organic structure, recognizable themes, an

overall key-centre, and harmonies that do, in their fashion, direct and

punctuate the flow of events; but one hears them first, as did their earliest

astounded audiences, in terms of frenzied activity and utter stasis, violent

dissonance and weird tone colours, incredibly complex polyphony and an

outpouring of diverse ideas bewildering in its fervor—and used to intensify,

not to render acceptable, the reality of the artist’s innermost vision.” [Mac-Donald, 2008, p.183]

Colors “is the works’ still central point—the stillness of the fixed state

that, held long enough, persuades a landscape to yield up all its secrets. It

is a musical enactment of the ‘gaze’: it does not represent a landscape in

sound, rather it represents the act of contemplating that landscape. There

are no themes. The ‘colours’ of the title are seen in the two instrumental

combinations that spell out the same chord. Blending imperceptibly from

one ‘chord-colour’ into the other, the harmonic content begins to change,

subtly, gradually, note by note … Then it comes to rest again, returning to the opening chord and its colours.” [MacDonald, 2008, pp. 184-185]

The piece begins with the following changes of tone color on a single five-note chord:

123

A B Flute 1 Flute 2

Clarinet 2 Bassoon 2

Viola 1 solo

English horn Trumpet 2 Bassoon 1

Horn 2 Bass 1 solo

The overall form of the movement is defined by graduate alterations in tim-bre:

Section A: two changes per measure

Section B: arpeggios and gradual introduction of new instru-

ments:

232: harp, horn 4, trombone 1; violin 2, trumpet 3

233: trombone 2, violin 1

234: oboe 2, horn 1

235: violas, oboe 1, trumpet 1

236: E♭clarinet, piccolo 2, celesta

237: horn 3

Section C: increasing fragmentation Section D: return to the rhythm of Section A

As with our example from Debussy, the harmony has nothing to do with

traditional functional relationships. The movement consists of a single

chord (A), its transpositions (A+1, etc.), and modifications. Essentially, this

single chord becomes the “tonic” of the piece, with transpositions and re-turns substituting for classical tonal relationships.

124

“Schoenberg later admitted that in it he had tried to capture the im-

pression of sunlight on the water of Lake Traunsee, as he had seen it once at dawn.” [MacDonald, 2008, p.185]

125

Schoenberg’s “Colors” further develops the ideas of non-functional har-

mony and suspended time that we observed in Debussy. Schoenberg him-

self explored a different road in the years that followed, but the emphasis

on timbre proved to be of fundamental importance in music of the Modern

Period. Gradual changes in a basic chord or chord progression can be seen as the key to Steve Reich’s Music for Eighteen Musicians.

Schoenberg’s Achievement Replacing functional harmony with transpositions and alterations

of a single chord Focus on the individual moment through changes on color on indi-

vidual chords

Suspension of melody and rhythm

Igor Stravinsky

The most significant piece of music written since 1900 remains the

ballet The Rite of Spring (1913) by Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971), composed

for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. This work combines the fragmented

melodies and static harmonies of Debussy with startling rhythmic tech-

niques that continue to have a striking effect even after a century. Stravin-

sky’s melodies, like those of Russian folksong, tend to be modal, narrow in compass, and constructed by adding and subtracting tiny melodic cells.

126

The famous bassoon solo that opens the work illustrates Stravinsky’s me-

lodic practice. Essentially it consists of a repeated descent of a minor third—C, B, A—ornamented with grace notes in varying rhythms.

127

The melody is modal—we notice that there is no leading tone.

The harmony of The Rite of Spring tends to be static: it doesn’t go anywhere. Stravinsky achieves this effect by ostinato patterns,

by pedal points,

and by repeated chords,

128

This last example, perhaps the most famous chord in 20th-century

music, consists of a dominant 7th chord on E♭ juxtaposed against an F♭

major chord. Either component sounds relatively tame on its own, but the

clash of the two harmonies produces a powerful dissonance. And this

chord never resolves: it just repeats itself. “The ‘Augurs of Spring’ with the

famous chord combining F♭ major and a dominant seventh chord built on

E♭, is generally accepted as being the first musical idea Stravinsky put

down for the work. The significance of this section is in its repeated state-

ments of this chord, which establish the importance of repetition and the harmonic stasis that results.” (Gloag, 2003, p.88)

Stravinsky’s rhythmic practices in The Rite of Spring continue to have

a startling effect, even after we understand how the effect is accomplished.

The example from “Augurs of Spring” given above shows Stravinsky’s use of

unpredictable off-beat accents. Like Beethoven, Stravinsky also makes use

of contrametrical patterns—rhythmic motifs that go against the prevailing

meter. In this example, Stravinsky introduces a pattern of six 8th notes in a 2/4 meter.

Perhaps the most unnerving of Stravinsky’s rhythmic practices is the use of

continually changing meters that prevent us from ever settling into a regu-

lar beat. The last movement of the work, the Sacrificial Dance, includes this

passage:

129

The ballet as whole is organized in sections marked by repetition of themes or distinctive chords.

Sectional Form Introduction (changing meter: 2/4, 3 /4, 4/4)

A: Theme A (bassoon) B: (melodic fragments) C: Theme B (oboe) A’: Theme A (anticipates ostinatos of next section)

The Augurs of Spring; Dances of the Young Girls

A: Famous chord (F♭ against E♭7), ostinatos (D♭-B♭-E♭-B♭), Themes C (trumpet) and D (bassoons) B: ostinato, Theme E (horn) and Theme F (trumpets) Coda: Theme E

Ritual of Abduction

A: (E♭7 against C7), Theme G (flute) (9/8)

B: (E♭7 against D), Theme G C: Theme H (upper woodwinds) B’: (F7 against D), no theme A’: Theme G (changing meter)

Stravinsky says that the basic idea of the work, a primitive ritual of

sacrifice in which a young girl is forced to dance herself to death, came to

him in a dream. The dissonant harmonies, unpredictable rhythms, and

hypnotic repetitions create a musical idiom quite distinct from the expecta-

tions of the common practice period. Stravinsky’s fragmentary melodies

and static harmonies lead one to focus on rhythm as an organizing force,

yet the composer artfully combines off-beat accents, contrametrical pat-

terns and changing meters to keep the listener constantly off-balance. Stra-

vinsky innovative use of sound, whether in large orchestras or in chamber music, continued throughout his long career.

130

Stravinsky’s Achievement Static harmony based on pedal points, ostinato patterns, and disso-

nance produced by juxtaposition of chords Musical development based on recombination of fragmentary me-

lodic cells

Unpredictable rhythms using offbeat accents, contrametrical pat-terns, and constant change of meter

Steve Reich

The music of Steve Reich (born 1936) appeals to many listeners who

otherwise reject works from the Modern Era. In contrast to the complexity

and dissonance of much 20th-century music, Reich’s compositions impress listeners with their directness and consonance.

The 20th century represents the first time that composers in the west-

ern tradition were able to hear and be influenced by music of other cul-

tures. Ethnomusicologists sought out and recorded examples of non-west-

ern music so that these new/old sounds reached a wide audience. De-

bussy’s many hours spent listening to Javanese music at the Paris World

Exhibition of 1889 helped to shape his ideas for redefining musical time.

We are so accustomed to thinking of time in strictly linear terms that it may

take us aback to recognize alternatives. Eastern thought tends to look at

time in terms of cycles: the cycle of the moon, the cycle of the seasons, a cy-

clical view of history in terms of rising and falling dynasties. Javanese gam-

elan music, based on repeated cyclical patterns of varying lengths, presents

a striking alternative to the western tradition of harmonic progression to a final goal.

Steve Reich developed his ideas of musical time both from studying

the music of Debussy and by immersing himself directly in the traditions of

Javanese gamelan music. His most celebrated work, Music for Eighteen

Musicians (1976) has no perceptible meter or melody. As a result, we tend

to focus on pure sound in the moment. Like Schoenberg’s Colors, the

changes of tone color in Music for Eighteen Musicians occur very gradually.

Steve Reich has written, “I am interested in perceptible processes. I want to

be able to hear the process happening throughout the sounding music. To

131

facilitate closely detailed listening a musical process should happen ex-

tremely gradually. By “gradual” I mean extremely gradual; a process hap-

pening so slowly and gradually that listening to it resembles watching a mi-

nute hand on a watch—you can perceive it moving after you stay with it a little while.” (Reich, Music as a Gradual Process, 1968)

The influence of Javanese gamelan music can be seen in the harmonic

organization of the piece, based on the rotation through a sequence of

chords, a cyclical rather than linear approach to harmony.

This harmony is diatonic—each chord comes from the A major scale—and

complex, since each chord has between seven and eleven pitches. The suc-

cession from one harmony to the next is quite subtle since each chord shares around four pitches with its predecessor.

“Reich has made no secret of the fact that his later music reintro-

duced the concept of a bass line that, if not truly functional in a tonal sense,

did at least have the function (which Reich traces back to Claude Debussy)

of modifying the perceived ‘roots’ of the complex pandiatonic sonorities above it.” [Fink, 2005, p.50]

Reich employs an alternation of instrumental groups, like Schoenberg’s

Colors, and uses an unusual combination of timbres: violin, cello, 2 clari-

nets doubling bass clarinet, 4 women’s voices, 4 pianos, 3 marimbas, 2 xy-lophones and metallophone (vibraphone with no motor).

132

133

In marked contrast to the dissonant harmonies and jarring rhythms

associated with early 20th-century music, the consonant chords and absence

of rhythm in Reich’s Music for Eighteen Musicians has a calming, other-

worldly effect not unlike that produced by plainsong. His repeated rhyth-

mic patterns and slow changes of harmony contribute to a redefinition of

musical time that may be regarded as one of the foremost characteristics of music in the Modern Period.

Reich’s Achievement Creating a style of music based entirely on harmony and sound,

eliminating melody and rhythm Creating a harmonic language based on rich, diatonic chords, elimi-

nating dissonance

Replacing linear form with cyclical patterns

134

VI. Conclusion

What overall observations can we make following our survey of thir-

teen centuries of music? One overall conclusion coincides with our

knowledge of the world in general: universal connectivity has made the

world into a global village and has made communication virtually instanta-

neous. The developments in polyphony that we traced in studying medieval

music took place over several centuries. Now one can call up music from

practically any time or place at will. This expansion has made it possible

for composers to be influenced by many different cultures, not simply by

their predecessors within the western tradition. This globalization of cul-

ture has also had a negative effect in helping to extinguish musical tradi-

tions in much the same way that the increasing adoption of English as a

global language has accelerated the extinction of local languages and dia-lects.

The accepted conventions of the common practice period constituted

a kind of musical lingua franca for three hundred years. No single system

has emerged to replace this framework. Composers of the Modern Period

have been compelled to create their own musical languages. The resulting

multiplicity of tongues makes it difficult to offer generalizations, but gener-

ally music of the Modern Period has elevated sound to occupy a defining

role equal in importance to melody, rhythm and harmony. Where instru-

mental music of the common practice period might have been “orches-

trated” after being conceived at the keyboard, many works of the Modern

Period make sound the principal defining element, to the point of suppress-ing melody or rhythm or harmony altogether.

The question of tonality, which provided a fundamental organizing

principle for music of the common practice period, remains unresolved in

the Modern Period. Debussy and Stravinsky used pedal points and re-

peated patterns to define a tonal center. Schoenberg used a recurring chord

to serve as a tonal center. Reich used a series of chords all drawn from the

same major scale to similar effect. Other composers endeavored to write

music which would have no tonal center at all, either through a systematic

avoidance of tonality or by writing music for percussion instruments which avoided the issue of pitch altogether.

135

The end of the common practice language has produced a divide in

which some audiences refuse to cross the threshold of the 20th century even

after its conclusion. Gone are the days when the appearance of a new Verdi

opera would be enthusiastically embraced by Italians in all walks of life.

Music has become ubiquitous—you can scarcely go anywhere without hear-

ing it—but new music of our own time has increasingly become the prov-

ince of a select few. Yet musical creativity continues unabated as compos-ers keep exploring new ways of creating art from sound.

136

Glossary

Anapest: in poetry, a metrical foot consisting of two short syllables fol-

lowed by a long one, e.g., “Twas the night before Christmas and all through

the house.”

Arch form: a symmetrical structure such as A B C B A

Aria: a lyrical movement for solo voice in opera, oratorio, or cantata

Ars Nova (or “new technique”): a treatise by Philippe de Vitry (ca. 1320)

advocating greater rhythmic flexibility in composition; also the style of

composition by composers like Machaut in the early part of the 14th century

Augmented sixth chord: an example of chromatic harmony associated

with 19th-century composers, named for the interval of the augmented sixth

between the outer voices.

Basso continuo: in Baroque music, the combination of a keyboard in-

strument, such as organ or harpsichord, and a bass sustaining instrument,

such as cello, to highlight the bass line and the basic chords underlying a

composition.

Cadence: in music of the common practice period, a harmonic pattern

marking the end of a phrase or composition.

Canon: a passage in which one voice imitates another exactly (e.g., “Row,

Row, Row Your Boat”)

Cantata: sacred opera without costumes or scenery

Chorale: a German hymn, such as “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”

Chorale prelude: a composition for organ intended to introduce a cho-

rale for congregational singing

137

Chromatic: melody or harmony that uses pitches from the chromatic

scale in addition to those of a given major or minor scale

Chromatic harmony: the use of chords, such as the augmented sixth

chord, requiring notes from the chromatic scale in addition to those of a

given major or minor scale

Chromatic scale: scale that includes all of the twelve semitones in an oc-

tave

Coda (or “tail-piece): in sonata form, a concluding section at the end of the

movement.

Col legno battuto: a string effect in which players bounce the wood of

their bows off the strings

Color: in pieces using isorhythm, the pitches drawn from plainchant

Concerto: a form in which a solo performer or solo group contrasts with

the main ensemble

Concerto grosso: a concerto for a small group of soloists (the concertina)

and orchestra (the ripieno)

Contrafactum: fitting sacred words to secular melodies (e.g. VU 586, “O

Danny Boy” becomes “We shall go out with hope of resurrection.”)

Contrametrical pattern: a rhythmic group that opposes the prevailing

meter, e.g., a two-note group in a movement in ¾ time

Counterpoint: the combination of two or more melodic lines

Da capo aria: an aria in two sections (A B), followed by a repetition of the

first section, to produce A B A

Development: the central section in sonata form in which musical mate-

rial is altered

Diatonic: belonging to a particular major or minor scale

138

Dies irae (Day of wrath): a plainchant associated with the Mass for the

Dead

Diminished seventh chord: an example of chromatic harmony widely

used by 19th-century composers, named for the interval of the diminished

seventh between the outer voices.

Diminution: the statement of a theme in shorter note-values

Doctrine of affections: in Baroque music, the rule that each movement

could express only a single emotion or “affect”

Dominant: the fifth degree of a scale, or the chord based on the fifth de-

gree (see Tonic)

Dotted rhythm: a dot written after a note increases its value by half.

Duple meter: organization of musical time in multiples of 2 (e.g., 2/4,

4/4)

Duplum: in medieval music, the part immediately above the tenor

Dynamics: indications of how loud or soft a musical passage should be

Equal temperament: a tuning system devised in the Baroque period

that permitted a keyboard instrument to play in any key; exploited by Bach

in his Well-Tempered Clavier

Exposition: the opening section of a movement in sonata form

139

Figuralism: a melodic, rhythmic, or harmonic depiction of a detail in a

text

French overture: in Baroque music, a two-part composition with a

stately slow section in duple meter with dotted rhythms followed by a faster

fugal section, usually in triple meter

Functional harmony: the hierarchical organization of chords in alle-

giance to the tonic chord

Ground bass: a repeated bass pattern used to organizing a musical com-

position, e.g., the aria “When I am laid in earth” from Dido and Aeneas

Hocket (Fr. “hiccup”): in music of the 13th and 14th centuries, the splitting

up of a melodic line between two voices so that one sounds when the other

is silent

Homophony: a musical texture in which all the voices move together, as

in a hymn

Iamb: in classical poetry, a foot consisting of a short syllable followed by a

long syllable, e.g.,

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Isorhythm: a compositional technique of the Ars nova in which a rhyth-

mic pattern (talea) was imposed on a section of plainchant (color), thus

be-comes

Leading tone: the seventh degree of a scale which lies a semitone below

the tonic and in tonal music often leads to or resolves to the tonic (see

Tonic)

Leitmotif: a melodic fragment associated with a particular personage or

object in a music drama

140

Lydian mode: a scale similar to the major scale but with a raised fourth

degree

Madrigal: a secular Renaissance composition, usually in four or voice

voices, characterized by a fondness for figuralism

Major scale: the pattern of whole steps and half steps produced by play-

ing the white keys on a piano beginning with C, or any transposition of this

pattern

Mass: the most important service of the Roman rite.

Melismatic: having more than one note for a given syllable of text

Minor scale: the pattern of whole steps and half steps produced by play-

ing the white keys on a piano beginning with C, or any transposition of this

pattern. Often the leading tone of the scale is raised.

Modal: associated with one of the church modes, e.g., the Lydian mode, as

contrasted with tonal, meaning based on the major or minor scale

Monophony: music consisting of a single voice, e.g., plainchant, or any

unaccompanied song

Motet: in medieval music, a brief composition for two or three voices with

a tenor drawn from plainchant; in Renaissance music, a polyphonic setting

of a sacred Latin text

Motif (motive): a brief melodic fragment, like the beginning of Beetho-

ven’s Fifth Symphony

Neume: any of the signs employed in the notation of plainchant

Non-functional harmony: the organization of chords by voice-leading

or the use of a pedal point

Off-beat accent: an accent that appears other than on the principal beat

of a measure (see the example under Contrametrical Pattern)

Opera: a drama that is primarily sung, accompanied by instruments, and

presented theatrically

141

Ordinary of the Mass: the fixed sections of the Mass: Kyrie, Gloria,

Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus, Agnus Dei. (As contrasted to the Proper of the

Mass, comprising sections associated with particular feasts)

Organum: Medieval polyphony usually based on a melody from plain-

chant

Ostinato: a repeated melodic pattern

Overtone scale: a special scale characterized by raised fourth and lowered

seventh degrees

Parallel organum: early form of Medieval polyphony in which the upper

voice moves in parallel fifths or octaves, note against note, with the under-

lying plainchant

Parallel thirds: two voices moving together separated by the interval of a

third

Paraphrase Mass: Renaissance polyphonic mass based on the repetition

and embellishment of a pre-existing melody, either sacred or secular

Parody Mass: Renaissance polyphonic mass that takes over the entire

texture of a pre-existing composition

Pedal point: a sustained note in the bass of a composition

Point of imitation: in Renaissance music, a melodic setting of a phrase

of text that is then imitated by each of the voices

Polyphony: more than one independent voice sounding simultaneously

Program symphony: in the 19th and 20th centuries, a symphony whose

melodic and harmonic ideas are based on an underlying piece of prose

called the program

Recapitulation: the final main section in a movement based on sonata

form

Recitative: a section of opera devoted to the presentation of text with

simple accompaniment

Rhythmic modes: brief rhythmic patterns used in medieval polyphony

as a means of coordinating the individual voices

Ripienist: in a Baroque concerto, a member of the larger ensemble, as

distinct from the soloist(s)

142

Ritornello form: the characteristic form of a Baroque concerto grosso,

based on the alternation of tutti (ritornello) and solo sections. The term “ri-

tornello” also refers to the recurring musical material played by the whole

orchestra

Semitone: or half-step, the distance between any two adjacent notes on a

piano keyboard

Sequence: the repetition of a musical phrase at different pitch levels

Static harmony: harmony that seems to remain in one place, produced

by using pedal points, repeated chords or ostinato patterns

Subdominant: the fourth degree of a scale, or the chord based on the

fourth degree (see Tonic)

Superius: the highest part in medieval or Renaissance polyphony

Syllabic: having one note for each syllable of the text

Syncopation: a momentary suppression of the main beat, frequently en-

countered in the music of Beethoven

Talea: in isorhythmic compositions, the rhythmic pattern imposed on a

section of plainchant (the color)

Temperament: a system of tuning in which pure intervals are slightly

modified in order to allow performance in more than one key

Tenor: in medieval music, the part containing the underlying plainchant

Tessitura: either the range or the placement of a melody (high or low)

Texture: a description of the number and nature of melodic lines in a

composition (polyphonic, monophonic, homophonic)

Through-composed: a song setting with different music for each stanza

of text

Timbre, or tone color: the character of a sound, as distinct from its pitch;

the quality of sound that distinguishes one instrument from another

Tonal: exhibiting the principles of functional (tonic-dominant) tonality, as

distinct from modal or atonal

Tonic: the principle note of a major or minor scale, or the chord based on

that note

Trill: a rapid alternation between two adjacent pitches

143

Triple meter: organization of musical time in groups of three (e.g., 3 /4,

3/8)

Triplum: in medieval music, the third part above the tenor

Tritone: the interval of the augmented fourth or diminished fifth, known

since the Middle Ages as “diabolus in musica” (the devil in music)

Trope: the interpolation of newly-composed text or music or both to an

official liturgical chant of the Latin church

Voice-leading: the conduct of the several voices in a polyphonic texture;

harmony based on voice-leading takes its logic from stepwise motion of in-

dividual pitches instead of the relationship of each chord to the tonic, as in

functional harmony

Whole-tone scale: a scale based entirely whole steps; associated with

Debussy

144

Repertoire

Medieval [19:30]

Plainsong, Kyrie Cunctipotens [2:00]

Tuotilo of St. Gall, Kyrie Cunctipotens trope (ca. 900) [3?] Cunctipotens genitor (St. Martial School, ca. 1125) [5:30]

Anonymous, En non Diu-Quant voi-Eius in Oriente (13th century) [3:00]

Machaut, Missa Nostre Dame (Kyrie, ca.1364) [6:00] Renaissance [24:00]

Dufay, Ave regina coelorum (ca. 1464) [8:30]

Josquin des Pres, Missa Pange Lingua (Agnus Dei; ca.1515) [7:30] Victoria, Missa O Magnum Mysterium (motet; Kyrie; 2nd half, 16th

century) [2:30, 2:00]

Weelkes, As Vesta Was from Latmos Hill Descending (1601) [3:30] Baroque [19:00]

Purcell, Dido and Aeneas (1689), “Dido’s Lament” [5:00]

Buxtehude, Ein feste Burg (2nd half, 17th century) [3:30]

Vivaldi, Concerto Grosso in A Minor, Op.3, No. 8 (1st movement, 1712) [4:30]

Bach, Cantata 140, Wachet auf ruft uns die Stimme (1731) (1st move-ment) [6:00]

Classic [46:00]

Haydn, String Quartet in C Major, Op. 73, No. 3 (1797) (1st move-ment) [7:00]

Mozart, The Marriage of Figaro (1786) (Act II Finale) [21:00]

Beethoven, Symphony No. 3 (1st movement, 1803) [18:00] Romantic [30:00]

Schubert, Erlkönig (1815) [4:30]

Berlioz, Symphonie Fantastique (Dream of a Witches Sabbath, 1830) [10:30]

Wagner, Prelude to Tristan und Isolde (1865) [11:00]

Verdi, Otello (Drinking Song, 1887) [4:00] Modern [23:30]

Debussy, La Mer (Jeux de Vagues, 1905) [7:00]

Schoenberg, Five Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 16 (Colors, 1909) [3:00]

Stravinsky, Le Sacre du Printemps (First 4 movements, 1913) [8:00]

Reich, Music for 18 Musicians (I. Pulses, 1976) [5:30]

145

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150

Index

A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, 51 Aeneid, 46 arch-form, 66 aria, 48 Aristotle, 45 Ars nova, 15 artwork of the future, 112 As Vesta was from Latmos Hill

descending, 37 Augurs of Spring, 128 Ave regina coelorum, 23 Bach, 60 Bar-form, 53 basso continuo, 55 Beethoven, 81 Berlioz, 100 bienséances, 43 Buxtehude, 52 canon, 28 cantata, 60 Charlemagne, 3 chorale prelude, 52 coda, 71 Codex Calixtinus, 8 cogito ergo sum, 43 col legno battuto, 102 color, 16 Colors, 122 Common Practice period, 54 concerto grosso, 56 contrafactum, 51 contrametrical pattern, 82, 128 dawn-song, 61 Debussy, 115 Descartes, 42 development, 70 diabolus in musica, 102

Dido and Aeneas, 46 Dido’s Lament, 46 Dies irae, 102 diminution, 29 dissonance, 70 doctrine of affections, 46 Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath, 101 Dufay, 22 duplum, 8 Elizabeth I, 35 endless melody, 105 English pastoral tradition, 35 Erlkönig, 93 Eroica, 82 Esterhazy, 72 exposition, 70 Feast of the Pheasant, 22 figuralism, 37 Five Pieces for Orchestra, 122 Florentine Camerata, 45 French motet, 11 French overture, 66 global form, 106, 120 Goethe, 93 ground bass, 48 Guiraud, 118 Hassler, 51 Haydn, 72 Hobbes, 42 hocket, 16 homophonic, 31 idée fixe, 100 isorhythm, 15 Javanese music, 130 Jeux de vagues, 116 Josquin des Pres, 26

151

Kyrie Cunctipotens Genitor Deus, 5, 16

La Mer, 116 leading tone, 54 leitmotif, 107 Leviathan, 43 linear perspective, 21 Louis XIV, 67 Luther, 51 Lydian mode, 116 Machaut, 15 madrigal, 35 Marriage of Figaro, 76 Messe de Notre Dame, 15 Missa O magnum mysterium, 32 Missa Pange lingua, 27 monody, 45 mono-thematic, 73 Morley, 36 Mozart, 75 Music as a Gradual Process, 131 music drama, 104 Music for Eighteen Musicians, 130 Musica transalpina, 36 Newton, 42 Nicolai, 61 non-tonic opening, 102 Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland,

51 O magnum mysterium, 31 off-beat accents, 82 opera, 45 Opera and Drama, 104 Ordinary, 17 organum, 8 Oriana, 37 ostinato patterns, 127 Otello, 108, 109 parallel organum, 7 paraphrase mass, 27

parody mass, 32 pedal point, 117, 127 Philip the Good, 22 Phillip de Vitry, 15 points of imitation, 27 polyphony, 7 Pope Gregory I, 3 Principia Mathematica, 42 program symphony, 100 Protestant Reformation, 51 Purcell, 46 recapitulation, 70 recitative, 48 Reich, 130 rhythmic modes, 11 ripieno, 56 Rite of Spring, 125 ritornello, 56 ritornello form, 56 Russian folksong, 125 Sacrificial Dance, 128 Schoenberg, 122 Schubert, 93 Shepherd’s Calendar, 35 sonata principle, 70 Spenser, 35 St. Martial organum, 8 Stabreim, 104 Stanzaic song, 96 Stravinsky, 125 string quartet, 72 Summer Morning by a Lake, 122 Symphonie Fantastique, 100 talea, 16 tenor, 8, 10, 11, 12, 14, 18, 22, 23,

24, 27, 30, 66, 138, 140, 143 Thomasschule, 60 through-composed song, 96 timbre, 103 Tinctoris, 22

152

tonal, 54 Treatise of Instrumentation, 102 Tristan chord, 105 Tristan und Isolde, 104 tritone, 102 trope, 6 Tuotilo of St. Gall, 6 Veni creator gentium, 51 Verdi, 109 Victoria, 30 Videntes stellam, 12

Virgil, 46 Vivaldi, 58 voice-leading, 106 Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme,

60 Wagner, 104 Weelkes, 37 Well-Tempered Clavier, 44 When I am laid in earth, 48 whole-tone scale, 118