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Prelude • The boundary dates for the Baroque era are 1600 and 1750. • These dates are only approximations. • Unifying characteristics – Conventions for organizing music – Common ideas about how music should sound – Belief that music should move the listener

Prelude The boundary dates for the Baroque era are 1600 and 1750. These dates are only approximations. Unifying characteristics – Conventions for organizing

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Prelude

• The boundary dates for the Baroque era are 1600 and 1750.

• These dates are only approximations.• Unifying characteristics– Conventions for organizing music– Common ideas about how music should sound– Belief that music should move the listener

Prelude

• Musicians in 1600 deliberately cultivated new music.

• New idioms: basso continuo, monody, recitative

• New styles: unprepared dissonances, focus on solo voice or instrument

• New genres: opera

Prelude

• Italy dominated musical fashion.• By 1750, the musical language was Italian.• Florence hosted innovations that led to opera.• Rome influenced sacred music and was briefly

a center of opera.• Venice and Naples cultivated opera.• Composers at Saint Mark’s in Venice

influenced choral and instrumental music.

CHARACTERISTICS OF BAROQUE MUSIC

Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643)

• Believed dissonant rules could be broken for dramatic effect.

• Cruda Amarilli uses unprepared dissonances to express words, such as cruda (“cruel”) and ahi lasso (“alas”)

Monteverdi, Cruda Amarilli

Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643)

• Debate– Artusi, a student of Zarlino, criticized Cruda

Amarilli.– He cited examples of unprepared dissonance

without referring to the text.– Monteverdi’s brother defended the second

practice (seconda pratica), in which music had to serve the text.

Rhythm

• Music was either free or metric; often the two were contrasted.

• Speechlike rhythms were used for recitative and improvisatory instrumental works.

• Rhythms were used to arouse affections.• Barlines, suggesting strong and weak beats,

became common.

Texture

• Polarity between bass and melody• Basso continuo (or thorough bass)– The music was notated with the melody and the bass

line.– Figures added to bass notes indicated chords other

than root position.– A cello, bassoon, or viola da gamba played the bass

line.– Keyboard or plucked instruments (such as the

chitarrone) played both bass and chords.

Harmony

• A variety of intervals were tolerated.• Conventions governed the treatment of

dissonances.• Chromaticism was incorporated into an

orderly scheme.

Opera

• Drama sung to continuous or nearly continuous music

• Staged with scenery, costumes, and action• Composed to a libretto (It: “little book”), a

play written in rhymed and unrhymed verse• The quintessential art form of the age, it was

the most common path to fame and fortune for composers and performers.

Opera

• The association of music and drama has a long history.– The choruses and lyric speeches in Greek plays

were sung.– Medieval liturgical dramas were performed with

music.– Renaissance plays often incorporated songs or

sung choruses.

The Florentine Camerata

• A group of scholars in Florence who discussed literature, science, and the arts.

• Members– Count Bardi, the host– Vincenzo Galilei (ca. 1520s–1591), theorist and

composer, father of the famous astronomer– Giulio Caccini (ca. 1550–1618), a composer of the

1589 intermedi

The Florentine Camerata of Jacopo Corsi (1561–1602)

• This later camerata also discussed ancient and modern music.

• Significant members– Ottavio Rinuccini (1562–1621), poet– Jacopo Peri (1561–1633), composer

• They believed that Greek tragedies were sung in their entirety.

L’EURIDICE (1600)

Librettist and composers

• Rinuccini wrote the libretto.• The text was set by both Peri and Caccini.– The first performance contained music from both

versions.– The two published their music quickly in an

attempt to be credited with the “first” opera.

Story

• Based on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice• A happy ending was added.• The story demonstrates music’s power to

move the emotions.• Orfeo persuades the underworld to restore

Euridice to life through song.

Music

• Caccini’s setting is melodious and lyrical.• Peri’s is better suited to drama.– He varied the musical style according to the

situation.– The melodies resembled speech.

Music

• Recitative– Created for dialogue portions of the drama– Peri sought to bridge Greek ideas of pitch in

speech and intervallic (diastematic) pitch in song.– The basso continuo sustains a chord as the singer

moves between pitches that are consonant and dissonant against it.

– Consonances occur on all stressed syllables.– Recitative sounds spontaneous and speechlike.

L’ORFEO (1607)

Claudio Monteverdi

• Inspired by these early operas, he composed Orfeo within the decade.

• It became the first opera to achieve a permanent place in the repertory.

• Based on a libretto by Striggio, it tells the same story as Euridice.

• Monteverdi mirrored the variety of musical styles of the earlier works.

• The recitative style is derived from Peri.

Distinctive qualities

• Recitatives achieve more continuity and a longer line.

• Greater variety through solo airs, duets, choruses, and dances

• Ritornellos, recurring instrumental sections, help organize the music.

Opera in rome and venice

Opera in Rome and Venice

• Rome became the center for opera in the 1620s.

• The range of topics expanded to include epics, saints’ lives, and comedy.

• Important figures– Giulio Rospigliosi (later Pope Clement IX) was the

most prolific librettist.– Stefano Landi (1587–1639) composed Sant’

Alessio (1632) on a libretto by Rospigliosi.

Opera in Rome and Venice

• Stage effects were spectacular, e.g., flames consuming devils.

• Recitative and aria became more clearly defined.– Recitative became more speech-like.– Arias became melodious and were usually

strophic.

Opera in Rome and Venice

• Castrati– Men who had been castrated before puberty sang

treble parts in church because women were not permitted to sing in church.

– In Rome, women were not permitted on stage; castrati sang treble roles.

– Later, castrati sang outside of Italy but only in male roles.

Venice

• Public opera houses– Teatro San Cassiano opened as the first public

opera house in 1637.– By the end of the century, there were nine stages

devoted to opera.

• Visitors who celebrated carnival season from December 26 through Lent attended operas in public theaters.

Monteverdi

• Monteverdi moved to Venice in 1613, becoming maestro di cappella at Saint Mark’s.

• While in his seventies, he composed three new operas, two of which have survived.– Il ritorno d’Ulisse (The Return of Ulysses, 1640) is

based on Homer’s Odyssey.– L’Incoronazione di Poppea (The Coronation of

Poppea, 1642) is based on a historical subject: Roman Emperor Nero’s second marriage.

Italian opera characteristics

• The basic qualities of Italian opera would be unchanged for two hundred years.– Concentration on solo singing– Separation of recitative and aria– Distinctive styles and forms for arias

• Music was no longer the servant of poetry.• Interest focused on the visual elements, arias,

and star performers.

Sacred music

• Catholic music from southern Europe developed new genres.– Sacred vocal concerto– Oratorio

• Lutheran church music spread through northern Europe.

• Instrumental music found a place in religious circles.

Influences

• Changes in intellectual and artistic realms influenced music.– Musicians expanded their vocabulary to meet new

expressive needs.– Composers poured more intense and varied

emotions into their works.– By midcentury, harmony, tone color, and form

had created a common musical language.

Cantata

• New genre of vocal chamber music, originally meaning “piece to be sung” (from Italian, cantare)

• Characteristics (mid-seventeenth century)– A secular composition on a lyrical or dramatic text– Usually for solo voice and continuo– Contains several sections of recitative and aria

• Main composers: Rossi, Carissimi, and Barbara Strozzi

Oratorio

• A religious dramatic music incorporating narrative, dialogue and commentary– Performed during Lent– Called “oratorio” because they were most often

performed in the prayer hall (oratorio).– Developed in Rome in the seventeenth century– Early librettos were in Latin or Italian.

Oratorio

• Differences from opera– Seldom staged– Used a narrator called a storicus (storyteller) or

testo (text)– The chorus took on different roles and functions.

• Giacomo Carissimi (1605–1674) was the leading composer of Latin oratorios.

Oratorio

• Jephte (ca. 1648) by Carissimi– Biblical text from Judges 11:29–40 with some

paraphrasing and added material– Jephthe promises God that he will sacrifice

whatever creature first greets him on his return home if God will help him defeat the Ammonites.

– His only daughter is the first to greet him.– After a dialogue, she sings a lament followed by a

responding chorus.