François Couperin 1668-1733

L’art de toucherle clavecin

Questions of ornamentation

Is the ornament diatonic, or does it require an accidental?

Does it precede the main note or fall on the beat?

Is it fast or slow?

If slow, what proportion of the main note does the ornament require?

Does the stress lie more on the ornament or the main note?

Antonio Vivaldi

Venetian composer

Holy Orders in his early twenties.

Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741)

il prete rosso - “The Red Priest”

Girls’ orphanage in Venice

Composer in one of four of the most important music schools of Italy (and Europe)

Vivaldi’s Musical Style

Vivaldi is credited for helping to free instrumental style from vocal style.Each piece is used as a teaching tool to create virtuosity in the players of the orphanage and music school.Vivaldi boasted that he could write a concerto faster than the copyist could copy it!

Vivaldi’s Musical Style

Rapid scale patterns

Arpeggio: the outlining of a chord’s root, third, fifth and octave.

Change of register. High Low

Tessitura: range of an instrument

Creating contrasting timbres by blending different instruments together. (sonority)

The Four Seasons: Spring

La Primavera: The Spring

Programmatic Concerto:

Program Music: Music that is inspired by prose, poetry, painting, or a scene or event in the mind of the composer.

The Four Seasons: Spring

Program: the actual thought, poetry, or prose.

La Primavera describes with music a poem from The Contest Between Harmony and Inspiration… attributed to the composer.

Spring – Concerto in E Major

AllegroSpringtime is upon us. The birds celebrate her return with festive song, and murmuring

streams are softly caressed by the breezes.Thunderstorms, those heralds of Spring, roar, casting their dark

mantle over heaven,Then they die away to silence, and the birds take up their

charming songs once more.

LargoOn the flower-strewn meadow, with leafy branches rustling

overhead, the goat-herd sleeps, his faithful dog beside him.

AllegroLed by the festive sound of rustic bagpipes, nymphs and

shepherds lightly dance beneath the brilliant canopy of spring.

La Primavera: First movement

Joyful spring has arrived (the Spring theme: Ritornello)The birds greet it with their cheerful song.And the brooks in the gentle breezes.Flow with a sweet murmur.The sky is covered with a black mantle, and thunder and lightening announces a stormWhen they fall silent, the birds take up again their melodious song.

Ritornello form

R1 S1 R2 S2 R3 S3 R4 S4 R5 S5 R6

Songof

birds

Murmuringstreams

How is S2

NOT consistentw/ the form?

Thunder

lightning

Songof

birds

Vivaldi’s Concerto, Mvt 1

CompositionsOver 500 concertos

46 operas

sinfonias

73 sonatas

chamber music

sacred music

Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764)

Foremost French musician of

18th century

Rameau: Music Theory

Treatise on Harmony (1722)

Coined the terms tonic, dominant and subdominant

harmonic progression through falling 5th (or rising 4th)

chords maintain their identity regardless of inversion (harmony is based on root progression, regardless of lowest note)

Rameau: Music Theory

the chord is the primal element in musica chord maintains its identity in all inversions basse fondamentale or root progressionTriadic relationships: tonic, dominant, etc.Hierarchial function of triadsPivot chord modulation

Rameau - theory II

3. Triadic relationships - tonic, domininant, etc.

4. Hierarchial function of triads

5. Pivot chord modulation

Hippolyte et Aricie (1733)

music almost programmatic (rough sea, high winds

“Ah! faut-il”

tragédie lyrique

monologue

Exposed to greatness

Alexandre-Jean-Joseph Le Riche de la Poupliniere (a rich tax collector) became Rameau’s patron

Poupliniere’s gatherings included Voltaire, Rousseau, and Casanova

Rameau and Voltaire

Lullistes versus Ramistes

Rameau: “subverter of the good old French opera tradition of Lully”

more expressive, dramatic (due to more chromatic harmonies)

innovative orchestration (more winds)

increase in homophonic sections (Classical period is right around the corner)