Comps: Complete Terms Practice Sets

Berberian, Cathy

First wife of Luciano Berio. A remarkable singer, she was the inspiration of some of Berio's most impressive vocal works: Thema (Omaggio a Joyce) 1958, Circles (1960), Passaggio (1963), Recital I (for Cathy) 1972, among others

chanson de geste

"song of deeds." An epic narrative poem recounting the deeds of national heroes, sung to a simple melodic formula. One of the earliest secular songs - transmitted orally and not written down until much later. Virtually none of the music survives. The most famous chanson de geste is the eleventh-century Song of Roland.

Geisslerlieder

German flagellants' songs of the 14th c. - related to laude. In medieval music, the Geisslerlieder, or Flagellant songs, were the songs of the wandering bands of flagellants, who overspread Europe during two periods of mass hysteria: the first during the middle of the 13th century, and the second during the Black Death in 1349. The music was simple, sung in the vernacular, often call-and-response, and closely related to folk song.

immutable system

Greater Perfect System plus the option of adding the synemmenon tetrachord from the Lesser Perfect System

Marchettus of Padua

Pomerium, 1318. Describes the basis of the Italian system of notation, which involved dividing semibreves into groups set off by dots, with letter signs to indicate various possible combinations in duple and triple subdivisions. This system was convenient for the singing of florid melodic lines.

ballata

the Italian counterpart to the French virelai. Originally a dance song (late thirteenth century), it is derived from the cantiga and lauda and became a popular fourteenth-century fixed form. The dance had words set to it and assumed the following form: reprisa(A) verse (piedi (bb) volta (a) reprisa (A) etc. This was the last of the Italian forms to assume the guise of polyphony.

magnificat

the Vespers canticle Magnificat anima mea Dominum is the only Office that admitted polyphonic singing from early times.

synemmenon

the alternate tetrachord in the Lesser Perfect System which comprises the notes A-Bb-C-D thus forming a conjunction between the third and fourth tetrachords. Adding this tetrachord as an option to the Greater Perfect System formed the Immutable System (see handout).

Gloria Patri

the doxology which usually follows the last verse of a psalm. In chantbooks, the doxology is represented by the abbreviation EUOUAE. The doxology was added to these chants in order to further "Christianize" them.

Introit

the first section of the Roman-Catholic mass (part of the Proper). The music originally consisted of an entire psalm with antiphon (antiphon - psalm verse - antiphon - psalm verse - antiphon - psalm verse - antiphon -doxology - antiphon) but was later shortened to just one verse (antiphon - verse - doxology - antiphon). The music of the Introit was meant to accompany the entrance of the priest.

choirbook format

the format in which most Medieval and Renaissance vocal music was written. Choir books had the parts for the various voices on facing pages, rather than in different books altogether (partbook format) or fully integrated (modern score format).

isorhythmic motet

the increase in scale of the motet at the end of the 13th c. demanded a large-scale organizing technique. Isorhythm was developed, with the rhythmic pattern, or talea, and the tenor melody, or color, relating to each other in varying ratios, which may or may not line up in the middle.

Montpellier Codex

the largest and most sumptuous of the original motet manuscript sources from motets of 2nd half of the 13th C. Probably compiled c. 1300. Only polyphonic motets occur in this text. Such motets include French and Latin double motets, Latin triple motets, macaronic double motets, Fr. 2-pat motets. There are no isorhtyhmic motets, and examples though anonymous have eventually been attributed to Adam de la Halle, Petrus de Cruce, and even works of Perotin.

rondeau

the most intricate of the formes fixes and the first to assume a distinctive formal shape. Monophonic forms occur in the Roman de la Rose (early 13th c.) and polyphonic forms were written at the end of the century by Adam de la Hale. The basic form is A B a A a b A B, but it came to be expanded by Machaut through the additions of melismatic writing and additional lines of text. These larger rondeaux were known as rondeau quatrain when the refrain (A) comprised four lines, cinquain when it comprised five, etc.

centonization

the notion, borrowed from Byzantine music, that melody be constructed of short motives or "building blocks" similar to those associated with the oktoechos (see Middle Ages). This conception of melody is evident in some western chant.

Mass

the principal service of the Catholic church. (The word is derived from the closing phrase, "Ite, missa est," or "Go, the congregation is dismissed"). The full ceremonial form is the High Mass (missa solemnis), which includes considerable chanting by a Celebrant, a Deacon, and Subdeacon, along with chanting or polyphonic singing by the choir and/or the congregation. The Low Mass is a shortened form which is spoken rather than sung. The Mass is three-part, consisting of the Introductory, the Liturgy of the Word, and the Liturgy of the Eucharist. The parts which are variable are called the Proper, while those that stay the same are called the Ordinary.

Brecht, Bertolt

German poet and philosopher who colaborated with Kurt Weil. Some of their enormous successes include Three Penney Opera, Seven Deadly Sins, and Mahagony. These were similar to our Broadway musicals, but they incorporated an alienation effect for political commentary amidst the cabaret style.

refrain

Short popular melodies quoted in French motets, found in the triplum or motetus. Developed mid-13th c.

soggetto cavato

"Carved subject" A device used twice by Josquin (1st half of 15th C.) in his Masses. The CF is determined by the vowel sounds of a patron's name. The vowels are fit to conform (as closely as possible) to solmization syllables. These solmization syllables (ut, re, mi, etc.) then form the ostinato bass (CF) for the enitre Mass. Example: Josquin's Missa Hercules dux Ferrariae

Märchenoper

"Märchen" meaning "tales"; pieces of music with some suggestion of traditional or legendary forms. "Oper" meaning "opera."

Schoenberg, Arnold

"Serenade, Opus 24" -section titled "Sonett" was the first 12-tone piece. Three Piano Pieces, Op. 11 was his earliest consistently atonal opus, and the first ones to be published. IMPORTANT! see Poultney

Rore, Cipriano da

(1516-65) A Flemish composer who worked in Italy and was a leading madrigalist of his generation. He was an important innovator who set the trends that the madrigal was to follow in the second part of the century. Dedicated to the poetry of Petrarch, de Rore's central aim was to express the meaning of individual words and hence of the poem as a whole, through the use of extroverted rhetorical devices.

Schütz, Heinrich

(1585-1672). German composer; the greatest German composer of the 17th century and the first of international stature; through the example of his compositions and through his teaching he played a major part in establishing the traditions of high craftsmanship and intellectual depth that marked the best of his nation's music and musical thought for more than 250 years after his death; composed such as Symphoniae sacrae, Cantiones sacrae, Geistliche Chor-Musik, Magnificat, 3 passions (St. John, St. Matthew, St. Luke).

Schein, Johann Hermann

(1586-1630). German composer and poet; an important predecessor of Bach, both as Leipzig Thomaskantor and as a gifted composer; one of the first composers to graft the style of the Italian madrigal, monody and concerto on to the traditional elements of Lutheran church music.

Pachelbel, Johann

(1653-1706). German composer and organist; one of the leading progressive German composers of his time; Hitherto admired mainly as a composer of organ and other keyboard music he can, as a result of recent research, be seen also as a leading composer of Protestant church music; He was one of the few 17th-century composers whose name was never entirely forgotten. His fame as a teacher was not local, and though he never left Germany he was revered far beyond it; composed liturgical/non-liturgical organ music, chamber, and vocal music. Some are designated as 'organ' music uncommon to the Baroque era.

Scarlatti, Alessandro

(1660-1725). Italian composer, noted especially for operas and cantatas; reputed founder of the Neapolitan school of 18th-century opera; the melodic range of an aria seldom exceeds a 9th or 10th; prevailing movement by step; chromatic inflection of the line at the approach of an important cadence, especially in slow arias; composed serenatas, oratorios, masses, cantatas, instrumental music; was a teacher and theorist as well.

Fux, Johann Joseph

(1660-1741) Wrote Gradus ad Parnassum (Steps to Parnassus; 1725). This treatise is a codification of Palestrianian counterpoint. Represents "stile antico" in opposition to Monteverdi and "stile moderno."

Scarlatti, Domenico

(1685-1757) Italian Pre-Classic composer and son of Alessandro Scarlatti. He is mostly remembered for his harpsichord sonatas, of which he wrote over 550. His sonatas are short, one-movement works, mostly binary in form, with two repeated parts (tonal scheme: I-V;V-I). Thus, they are similar to the Baroque suite movement; however, unlike a Baroque suite movement, Scarlatti's sonatas often employ more than one "theme," a kind of predecessor to the thematic dualism in the Classic sonata form.

Süssmayer

(1766-1803) a pupil of Mozart who completed Mozart's Requiem Mass, K. 626.

tonadilla

Spanish. A type of short comic opera that was popular in Spain from about 1750 to 1850. Replacing the older and more complicated zarzuela, the tonadilla originated much as the Italian comic opera did, that is, as a humorous interlude inserted in a serious play or opera that eventually became an independent work.

Rochberg, George

(b. 1918) A composer who integrated pre-existing music into his compositions (Nach Bach, for example). Rochberg's music uses and often alludes to tonal music without being tonal itself.

Johnston, Ben

(b. 1926) American composer and theorist. He studied privately with Partch. He has composed in a variety of styles, (serial, electronic, aleatory, microtonal), but is especially associated with works in just intonation. Works include a rock chamber opera (Carmilla, 1970), theater pieces, ballets, incidental music, several string quartets, a sonata for microtonal piano (1965), other instrumental music, choral music and songs, and music for films and exhibitions.

Ludwig Senfl

(ca. 1486-1542 or 43) Isaac's Swiss pupil who worked chiefly at the Bavarian court of Munich. He is known to have completed Isaac's enormous Choralis Constantinus. His Masses and motets are rather conservative in style. He was an ecelcic composer, comfortable in many styles, sacred and secular. He wrote many German lieder and quodlibets, and was well versed in Franco-Flmish polyphony.

Sermisy, Claudin de

(ca. 1490-1562) Along with Janequin, Sermisy is associated with the Parisian chanson of the 1530's and 1540's. Most of his chansons are straightforward lyrical miniatures, set syllabically with short melismas; the melodies closely follow the rhythms of the words they set. Sermisy excelled at composing delicate and sophisticated love songs.

Gombert, Nicholas

(ca. 1495-ca. 1556) Supposedly a pupil of Josquin, Gombert was an official of the chapel of the Emperor Charles V. He exemplifies the northern motet style of the period 1520-1550 (he wrote more than 160). His style involves a generally smooth and uniformly dense texture, without many rests, with most dissonances carefully prepared and resolved.

Frederick the Great

18th century King of Prussia. Adhered to the humanitarian ideals of the Enlightenment. C.P.E. Bach served in his court in Berlin from 1740-1768. Here he published the Prussian Sonatas for clavichord. The North German school of composers (Graun and C.P.E. Bach) centered around Frederick the Great who was also a composer. They were important in initiating thematic development and contrapuntal textures into the three movement symphony.

rhapsody

A title used by 19th- and 20th-century composers for a relatively short composition, free in form and expressing a particular mood. It is virtually the same as a fantasy; some based on "national" idea-such as Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies for piano, Georges Enesco's Rumanian Rhapsodies and Ravel's Rhapsody espagnole; others, the title seems to refer to the free form of the music, such as Brahms's rhapsodies for piano and Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue for piano and orchestra; others are based on a tune from folk music or by another composer like Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini; still others are named for their poetic quality as in Brahms's Alto Rhapsody on part of a poem by Goethe.

Dodekachordon

A treatise by Swiss theorist, Glareanus, pub. in 1547. It systematically expands the eight church modes to twelve (adding modes based on A and C). Glareanus justified his new modes by appeal to classical authority.

Nuove Musiche

This phrase has two meanings. Specifically, it is the title of a collection of arias and madrigals published by Gulio Caccini in 1601 featuring music with the new, monodic style of recitative with basso continuo. Generally, in refers to the style of music becoming popular in the 17th c. This new style grew out of Monteverdi's seconda prattica and the musings of the Florentine Camerata. It marked the beginnings of opera, oratorio, and cantata, as well as the Baroque period in general.

diastema

Aristoxenus's notion of musical space. Aristoxenus divided musical space into two kinds: continuous (glissandi, no separate pitches per se) and discrete (our modern notion of pitch space). Discrete intervals were visualized as having space or distance between them, comprising a interval, or diastema.

dramma giocoso

Around the middle of the century, a refinement of the comic opera libretto took place, largely owing to the Italian dramatist Carlo Goldoni; plots of a serious, sentimental, or pathetic character began to appear, as well as the traditional comic ones. Consequently, the term opera buffa was replaced by dramma giocoso, i.e. a pleasant, cheerful, and non-tragic drama. Examples of dramma giocoso include Piccini's La buona figliuola of 1760, several of Haydn's operas, and Mozart's Don Giovani.

Hermannus Contractus

Benedictine monk, musician, and theorist alive in the first half of the 11th c. Composed many antiphons including Alma Redemptoris Mater and wrote an important treatise which dealt systematically with modes.

concerto grosso

Written for several soloists who often form a concertino (or little concerto) in the texture of the trio sonata and orchestra. Baroque and Classical periods. Antecedents: Canzona, sonata, and trio sonata. Texture alternates bewteen ritornello and soloists. Evolved to solo concerto. (Ex: Exactly 20 years apart and bearing the same opus number: 1714, Corelli Concerti grosso, Op. 6; 1734, Handel's Grand Concertos, Op. 6)

Royal Academy of Music

London association of nobleman, supported by the king, founded in 1718-19 for the promotion of Italian opera (in London at Handel's time).

cauda

Long, textless passages at the beginning, end, or before important cadences of polyphonic conductus. These often introduced rhythmic contrasts and featured preexisting clausulae.

The Beggar's Opera

John Gay, 1st perf. London, 1728. An English ballad opera which enjoyed tremendous success, this piece poked fun at Italian opera. It consists mainly of popular tunes and some numbers parodied from familiar operatic airs. Its success was indicative of the English reaction against foreign opera, which led Handel to turn from opera to oratorio in the latter part of his life.

Missa prolationum

Ockeghem's Mass written in mensuration canon

Adam de la Halle

the last and greatest of the trouvères. Author of Jeu de Robin et de Marion (ca. 1284). This work contains both monophonic and polyphonic chansons.

psalmody

the practice of monophonic (often antiphonal) psalm singing. This is the oldest western musical tradition and evolved in three phases. Psalmody in the Jewish temple was often loud and boisterous, accompanied by loud instruments and dancing. After the Roman destruction of the temple (70 A.D.) psalmody in the synagogue was quiet and introspective with no instruments or dancing. Finally, Christian psalmody borrowed many of its characteristics from synagogue psalmody (no instruments or dancing) and may have even borrowed a number of the psalm melodies (this point is disputed).

contrafactum

the practice of replacing a given text with another in a different language. This often took place between French and Latin in the medieval motet.

sonata

the preferred name for an independent piece of several movements for few parts with basso continuo.

Squarcialupi Codex

a copious source of Italian polyphony from the 14th c. Named after a former owner, a Florentine organist, it was probably copied ca. 1420. It contains 352 different pieces, mostly for two and three voices, by twelve composers. It includes portraits of each composer. Three types of composition are included: madrigal, caccia, and ballata.

De Stijl

a group of artists located in the Netherlands which took its name from its monthly publication, begun in 1917. De Stijl promoted an art of almost mathematical purity, based on the dimplest geometrical shapes. This was a new objectivity which was an outgrowth of th post-war Dadaist movement.

waldhorn

a hand horn

hocket

a popular medieval technique which featured a melodic line being split up in short note values between two or more voices. One voice would rest while the other sang and vice versa. This practice involved many short rests interspersed with quick notes and resembled hiccupping (thus the name). It frequently marks the end of a talea in an isorhythmic motet, and was said to be favored among hot-blooded young men because of its quick tempo. Found often in secular conductus and motets of the 13th c. and, more often, the fourteenth century.

phase technique

a prominent technique in the music of Steve Reich since 1967 (Piano Phase) in which two or more melodic lines comprising the same rhythm are presented together and then one line subtley accelerates until it is one time-unit out of phase with the other. This acceleration occurs enough times to bring the two lines back to the unity of the original presentation. Concentration is on the interaction of rhythms and rhythmic nuances rather than melody, pitch, or teleology. Violin Phase and Clapping Music are two other important phase compositions of Reich.

sarabande

a slow and stately dance cast in triple meter (often 6/4 or 3/2). It is often the primary vehicle for expressiveness in the Baroque instrumental suite.

strophic variation

a style of strophic aria in which the composer uses the same harmonic and melodic plan for all of the strophes.

Guido d'Arrezo

author of the Micrologus (ca. 1025-1028). Credits Boethius with attributing musical intervals to mathematical ratios. Used the monochord to illustrate this. Departs from Greek theory in constructing scales not based on tetrachords; his modes have no connection with the tonoi or harmonia.

Metastasio, Pietro

Poet and librettist. Important figure in early 18th century opera reform. Extracted the humorous portions of opera and standardized the form that came to be known as "Metastasian." Some of the features: three acts, six characters, historical subject matter, and exit da capo arias that end each scene. His predecessor was Apostolo Zeno. The were both disturbed by the corruption of the literary aspect of opera and wanted to purify it.

vox principalis/organalis

"principle voice" has orig. melody, and "organizing voice" is added voice in organum.

seconda prattica

(Late 16th, Early 17th C's.) The term coined by Monteverdi's brother for the new concerns regarding music's relation to text. In the "prima prattica" (first practice), perfection of harmony was considered above the importance of text (e.g. Ockeghem, Josquin, de la Rue, Mouton, Crecquillon, Gombert, others). Seconda prattica's goal was to make the words the master of the music and not its servant. It is chiefly concerned with the expressive setting of the text (e.g. de Rore, Marenzio, de Wert, Peri, Caccini, and Monteverdi). This practice raised music and text (songs, motets, madrigals) to new levels of expression.

votive antiphon

: Any of the 4 important antiphons for the Blessed Virgin Mary (Marian antiphons) sung at the end of Compline, or a polyphonic setting of one of these. The 4 Marian antiphons are "Alma Redemptoris Mater," "Ave Regina caelorum," "Regina caeli laetare," and "Salve Regina." These date from the 11th C and after. They are rather more elaborate than the antiphons of the Psalms and canticles, and have been set polyphonically by numerous composers, especially in the 15th and 16th C's.

Choralis Constantinus

A three volume collection of four voice polyphonic settings of Mass Propers composed by Heinrich Isaac between 1450-1517.

sonata da camera

: [It., chamber sonata or court sonata]. A work for instrumental ensemble, prevalent from the 1650s through the 1740s. Written for one or more melody instruments, normally of the violin family, and basso continuo, it was associated with the dance throughout the 17th century; Corelli's opp. 2 & 4.

dodecaphonic

: synonomous with serial, music in shich a series of tones generates the entire structure of a composition.

Bay Psalm Book

: the first American Psalter, and the first book printted in the New World in 1640.

perfection

: three-beat unit in Franconian rhythm, comprising three tempi or beats.

fauxbourdon

A 15th century French technique of composition in which two voices are notated. A third voice is improvised a fourth below the top voice, creating parallel six chords. An example is Dufay's chant hymn Conditor alme siderum.

Folia

A dance song of Spain in the early 17th century with wild singing and dancing. In the Baroque, composers wrote variations on the Folia, including Corelli

gigue

A fast-paced dance which is usually cast in triple and/or compound meters (3/4, 6/8, 9/8. 12/8). The gigue often closes the Baroque instrumental suite.

Purists

A group centered in France and led by the architect Le Corbusier. The group reacted to the absurdity of Dada and idealized simplicity, the use of industrial materials, and the importance of these materials in influencing design decisions. He characterized a house as "a machine to live in." The group's periodical was entitled L'Esprit nouveau (first issue 1920).

Meistersingers

A member of the guilds of the 14th to 16th century formed to perpetuate or emulate the tradition of the Minnesinger, the Medieval German lyric singers and poets.

chansons

A polyphonic work in longer note values with a secular text in the vernacular in other voices. These were composed by Agricola, Josquin, and others. They belong to the tradition of the polytextual motet of the 13th century.

combinatoriality

A property of symmetry which may be displayed by a series or other set. For example, a 12-note series may be said to exhibit "inversional hexachordal combinatoriality" if the first hexachord of one of its forms has the same content as the second hexachord of an inverted form. It is merely a way of relating serial forms within a work. It is also possible for a series to show hexachordal combinatoriality with retrograde or retrograde inversion forms; an "all combinatorial" series is one in which all three relations of hexachordal combinatoriality are present (inversion, retrograde, and retrograde inversion). The creative uses of combinatoriality have been most thoroughly exploited by Milton Babbitt.

Thompson, Virgil: (1896-1989)

American composer He spent time in France studying with Nadie Boulanger and met Satie, Cocteau, and "Les Six." He met Gertrude Stein and began to collaborate. They collaborated on Susie Asado, Preciosilla, Capital Capitals, and an operas Four Saints in Three Acts.and The Mother of Us All (based on the life of Susan B. Anthony). His music often makes allusions to Protestant hymns, popular song, and folk dances. His instrumental works include a violin sonata, two string quartets, a series of instrumental potraits of friends, and others.

galant style

An elegant, courtly style associated with pre-Classic and Classic Era music. It is characterized by an emphasis on melody made up of short-breathed, often repeated motives organized in two-; three-, and four-measure phrases combining into larger periods, lightly accompanied with simple harmony that stops for frequent cadences but freely admits seventh and diminished seventh chords.

motto aria

Baroque aria beginning with a brief and usually emphatic phrase from the singer (the 'motto'), preceding the opening orc. ritornello. Normally the same phrase follows the ritornello, beginning the aria proper. The device is used to avoid, in a strong dramatic situation, the tautology of a long ritornello before the singer expresses himself. Ex.: include Eduige's aria 'La farò' from Act 1 of Handel's Rodelinda and Oberto's 'Barbara!' from Act 3 of Alcina.

Marian antiphons

Four late antiphons composed to honor the virgin Mary.

L'Art de toucher le clavecin

François Couperin's treatise (1716) on clavecin performance, with detailed instructions for fingering and execution of the agréments. (ornaments?)

opéra comique

French form of comic opera. Musical numbers separated by spoken dialogue.

Attaingnant, Pierre

French music printer who published more than fifty collections of chansons in Paris between 1528 and 1552, about 1,500 pieces altogether, including works by Sermisy and Janequin. Attaignant was the first to apply single impression printing on a large scale.

Gebrauchsmusik

German: "music to be used," "utility music." A term invented in the 1920s for music to be played ("used") at home by amateurs instead of in a concert hall by professional performers. Among those who felt that home performance had been neglected was the composer Paul Hindemith, who along with others wrote music specifically for this purpose. To make home performance easier, such compositions call for small groups of players and are not too lengthy or technically difficult. Moreover, they often allow for substituting different instruments when the ones called for are not available. Hindemith's Gebrauchsmusik compositions include a children's opera, Wir bauen eine Stadt ("We Are Building a City," 1930); Spielmusik ("Music for Playing") for strings, flutes, and oboes; and a set of easy duets for two violins.

Rinaldo

Handel's first London opera, produced in 1711. The opera is in the Italian style.

Hans Sachs

He wrote more than 6000 songs, mostly set in notes of equal length, syllabically declaimed except for the more or less elaborate melismas, (Blumen), which decorate the beginnings of lines and important points of articulation.

Craft of Musical Composition, The

Hindemith's composition textbook. In it he explains his system of composition based on dissonance classifications for differnet sonorities (ranked 1 through 6). his belief was that music should began simply (triad) and move to a point of maximum dissonance (climax) and ultimately return to simplicity (which is why his pieces always end with a major triad!). The book is characterized by its rigor and systematization - almost to the point of dogmatism. Hindemith wished to extend the rules of traditional tonality, rather than breaking them altogether. Thus, the triad remained the foundation of his work.

Kuhnau, Johann

His death in 1722 opened up the cantor position at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig that JS Bach filled.

dithyramb

In ancient Greece, a song in honor of Dionysus. Aristotle described tragedy as having developed from the dithyramb. As a title for works of the 19th and 20thc., the term suggests music of a passionate, Dionysian character.

Florilegium

Muffats' collection of orchestral suites (1695 and 1698). The second part includes an essay about French bowing and ornaments. The dances of the suites are patterned after Lully.

Hausmusik

Music for leisure time at home. This became popular in the four-hand piano music, "table music," and songs for solo voice and piano which a number of classic-era composers produced for the enjoyment of their friends and family. Mozart, in particular, wrote a great deal of Hausmusik.

Bachianas brasileiras

Nine works by Villa-Lobos that combine elements of Brazilian folk music with the spirit of JS Bach's counterpoint. Each is a suite with two titles, one reflecting the Baroque influence, and the other referring to a Brazilian popular form. Composed over aperiod of 15 years (1930-45). Each work is for a specific ensemble ranging from orchestra to8 cellos to flute and bassoon. Four of them are for orchestra. Two are for piano and orchestra.

Mass

One of the most important genres for Ren. composers, especially Palestrina. Settings in the Renaissance were on the Ordinary texts. There were three primary techniques: cantus firmus, paraphrase, and parody.

serenade (divertimento, cassation, and nocturno)

Originally interchangeable designations for chamber pieces, (even among Haydn's early chamber music). (Note that here, "chamber music" does not always mean one player per part). Gradually, a distinction was made between light and purely entertaining music (with the above titles) and more "serious" works, which were normally called trio, quartet, etc. The serenade was usually based on the standard Classical three-movement (FSF) instrumental piece, with added marches, minuets, and movements with featured soloists. They were often commissioned for a special occasion. Mozart's six Salzburg serenades are festive, large-scale pieces for orchestra, and his three Viennese serenades are for six to thirteen winds; some serenades are for small groups. Cassations are informal pieces usually intended for performance outdoors, and were most common in Austria.

Trent codices

Seven manuscript volumes of 15-th century polyphonic music discovered in the library of the Cathedral of Trent (in northern Italy). Over 1,500 compositions are included in these volumes. It is by far, the most extensive collection of 15-th century music. About 75 French, English, Italian, and German composers are represented, including: Dunstable, Power, Ciconia, Dufay, Binchois, Ockhegem, Busnois, and Isaac.

Petrucci, Ottavino de'

Printed the first collection of polyphonic music from musical type in Venice in 1501, the Harmonice musices odhecaton A. In all, the Odhecaton consisted of three volumes of polyphonic chansons from the late 15th c., including music by Josquin, Agricola, and Compère. By 1523, he had published 59 volumes (including reprints) of vocal and instrumental music (including chansons, Masses, motets, frottole, and laude), using the method of triple impression.

Musica Nova

Published in 1559, it is a collection of 25 Madrigals on sonnets by Petrarch composed by Willaert. It includes the famous settting Aspro core.

tetraktys of the decad

Pythagorean pyramid diagram comprising ten dots used to illustrate the numbers 1 through 4 and the manner in which they can be combined to form the ratios of the string lengths which, when combined, form consonant sonorities

Oper und Drama

R. Wagner's writing that exclaims his music drama highly as the future art, and he set the order of each jenre of art from lowest to highest, such as gardening, construction, sculpture, painting, music, poetry, philosophy/religion. He boasting attitude is well reflected in this book which considered the audience "not able to understand his music" and his art is the pioneer for the future art.

Sand, George

Real name Aurore Dudevant. A 19th century woman writer, a masculine character compared to F. Chopin's feminine character. They fell in love and went to Majorca for a love-affair refuge and Chopin's composition in 1838, where Chopin completed his 24 Preludes for piano. Later they broke up due to Sand's child problem, and eventually remained comradship.

Tone poem

Similar to symphonic poem (an orchestral piece accompanied by a program, i.e., a text, generally poetic or narrative in nature, which is meant to be read by the audience before listening to the work.); the term tone poem was preferred by Richard Strauss; with Richard Strauss, the genre reached its culmination, in such works as Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche (1894-95) and Also sprach Zarathustra (1895-96). Skill in motivic manipulation, orchestral invention, and tonal coherence enabled Strauss to create the longest examples of the genre still in the standard repertory and the ones that are perhaps the most detailed in their programmaticism. The "realism" sometimes protrudes in his later tone poems, e.g. Eine Alpensinfonie (1915), after which he abandoned the genre until near the end of his life (Metamorphosen, 1944-45).

Lesser Perfect System

Similar to the Greater Perfect System, the Lesser employs a conjunct third tetrachord spelled A-Bb-C-D and a disjunct fourth tetrachord (see handout). Allowed the intro of Bb into the musical system. Later scholars (Aristides) associated the ease of moving up to the third conjunct tetrachord with easy virtue and soft effeminacy.

Zwingli, Ulrich

Swiss Protestant before Clavin who, although he was a cultivated musician himself, was determined to keep music out of church services; he even sanctioned the destruction of Swiss organs.

thematic transformation

The alteration of themes for the sake of changing their character while retaining their essential identity. It differs from development in that the resulting theme is likely to be treated with as much independence as the original. This procedure was used by Berlioz in Symphonie fantastique, and especially by Liszt in his symphonic poems. Wagner's use of the leitmotif is closely related.

Technique de mon langage musical

The book by Olivier Messiaen, written in 1944. He is known for the technique of "added value," and the use of nonretrogradable rhythms, rhythmic pedals and canons, and polyrhythmic textures. He is also noted for the progressive transformation of one rhythm to another, coloristic approach to harmony, and modes of limited transposition.

Union of Soviet Composers

The single most important musical organization in the Soviet Union. The government sponsored organization was established in 1932 in reaction to a group of young composers headed by Shostakovich. The idea was to end the permissive period of music making and control Soviet culture. This move was reinforced by the official condemnation of Shostakovich's opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District.

Medici, Lorenzo de

The well loved banker, who unofficially ruled Florence in the late 15th century and who promoted carnival songs. After his death, the infamous reforms of Savanorola began, which led to many carnival songs being transformed into religious lauda.

Bayreuth

Theater designed by Wagner to his own specifications for the performance of his works, in the Bavarian town of Bayreuth. The theater was finished in 1873, and the first Bayreuth Festival took place in August of 1876 with a full performance of The Ring.

Burgundian chanson

Three voice songs with French text in the upper voice only. Especially settings of the rondeaux. Composers: Dufay, Binchois, and Busnois (from the Burgundian court). Style influenced by the English, thus smooth rhythms and lots of 3rds and 6ths. Examples: Dufay Je requeir a tous amoureux and Binchois Je ne vis onques.

Ladies of Ferrara

Three women singers at the court of Ferrara who were famous for their virtuosic expressivity. The principal composer for three ladies was Luzzasco Luzzaschi, a pupil of de Rore. Their prominence is indicative of the rise of the solo singer after 1570.

Volkstümlichkeit

i. e. Volkstümliches Lied: The folklike lied cultivated by composers such as Schulz, Reichardt, and Zelter beginning in the later 18th century. Such songs were often marked im Volkston.

eclogue

pastoral poems, often pathetic in tone. Capitoli are associated with lyrical or dramatic eclogues

endless melody

Wagner's ideal, outlined in Oper und Drama, of musical continuity, and avoidance of cadences, creating a sense of continuous melody.

prosula

prose text added to an already existing, but non-texted, chant melisma. Usually set syllabically. Prosula underlines the meaning of the original chant. Often added to jubilus of Alleluia.

Goliard songs

the earliest examples of secular songs. The Goliard songs were written in Latin and date from the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The songs were written by the wandering Goliard monks and often deal with wine, women and satire. Orff adapted some of these songs in his Carmina Burana.

tactus

the fifteenth and sixteenth-century term for beat, both in terms of tempo and the conductor's beat.

Benedictine Abbey of Solesmes

important because the monks of this abbey edited the various Roman liturgical chants in the 19th century. The Solesmes versions were officially approved by the Vatican and are the versions most often seen and heard nowadays.

atonal

nontonal music; refers to pre-twelve tone music of Schoenberg and his followers. Schoenberg preferred the term "pantonal."

cornetto

"brass" instrument of wood or ivory. It came in three sizes and comprised a mouthpiece attached to a straight, conical tube, punctuated by finger holes. It was used primarily in church and chamber music from 1550 - 1700.

stile concitato

"excited style"; a style invented by Monteverdi, in which there was a rapid reiteration of a single note, either with quickly spoken syllables in the voice or instrumentally as a string tremelo. It was usedfor warlike sentiments and actions.

fugue

"flight." The most fully developed procedure of imitative counterpoint in which the theme is stated successively in all voices of the polyphonic texture. Typicalfour voice form: In the exposition, the fugal subject is presented alone in one voice, then imitqated or answered, usually in the dominant by a second voice. It can be tonal (different intervals) or real (exact intervals). Usually the third voice enters on the tonic and the fourth in the dominant. After statements of the subject, each voice continues with a countersubject until a cadence. An episode follows, borrowing material from the subject. The subject enters again, either in alone or in a complete reexposition. The episodes and subject presentations can alternate several times until a final section with the subject in the tonic.The supreme examples are Bach's Well Tempered Clavier and Art of Fugue.

tonus peregrinus

"wandering tone"- the ninth psalm tone which does not correspond to a church mode.

Neue Zeitschrift für Musik

("New Music Journal") A music magazine founded in 1840 by Robert Schumann and taken over by Franz Brendel in 1844; a tool of young musicians against musical mediocracy; Chopin was introduced through this magazine as well as Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Brahms and more; more than hundred reviews; poetic language ,technical terms, imaginary fugires; in 1853, last article "new path."

Sturm und Drang

("Storm and Stress") a term from German literature which is applied to music of the 1770's and 1780's [New Harvard says 1765-75], a sort of outgrowth or late phase of Empfindsamkeit. Literature in this style stresses great emotional intensity and passionate, violent outbursts (e.g. Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther, 1774). Several of Haydn's symphonies (and his string quartets from the same period) represent the musical version of this style, including No. 44 in E minor, (the "Mourning" Symphony), and No. 49 ("La Passione") in F minor. Characteristic of these works are: minor keys; stormy, restless, or agitated moods; abrupt dynamic changes; use of canon and other contrapuntal devices; and the element of surprise, harmonic and other. German opera and other stage music of the 1770's, notably the melodrama, were influenced by the Sturm und Drang trend.

style brisé

("broken style") A free texture in which inner voices enter at will to fill in the gaps between chords. First used by lutenists and later appropriated by keyboardists.

air de cour

("court song") A short, strophic, and homophonic chanson, often with refrain, which first appeared in France around 1550. Initially called vaudeville, it was usually performed as a solo or duet with lute accompaniment. Some were used as chamber music, while others were used for court ballets. Characteristic of the air de cour is the constant shift between duple and triple meters. Airs de cour traditionally applied the practice of "doubling," or varying the second statement of each section.

piacevolezza/gravita

("sweetness" or "grace"/"majesty" or "dignity") two qualities singled out by poet Pietro Bembo as appropriate for being expressed by the sounds and rhythms of words. Bembo's analysis of poetry opened the way for musical settings in which more attention was paid to the way music can establish the reading of a poem. This attitude was instrumental in the development of the madrigal.

chorale prelude

(1) In a general sense, the same as an organ chorale. (2) A short setting for organ of one strophe of a chorale, which serves as an introduction to a congregational rendering of the chorale. The melody, which may be embellished, is presented over a polyphonic accompaniment. The chorale prelude was developed in the late 17th C, mainly by North German composers (e.g. Böhm, Buxtehude, JC Bach) and reached its culmination in JS Bach's 45 examples in the Orgelbüchlein, mostly written in the decade 1710-20. Several of Bach's pupils continued the tradition, but the term was not much used after 1750. It was revived in the 19th C by Brahms and Reger. chorale variation: Variations on a chorale melody, usually for keyboard. The form was popular in the early 17th C, and there are several by such composers as Sweelinck and Scheidt. Later, the term chorale partita was used, for examle by Bach. Buxtehude wrote a set of variations on "Auf meinen lieben Gott" employing the secular dance forms of the suite, and his example has been followed in the 20thC by Ernst Krenek.

Phillipe de Vitry

(1291-1361) Bishop of Meaux, and French composer and poet, he wrote a treatise on Ars nova, or the "new art"(1322-23), This new style included: acceptance of the duple division of long and brève along with triple, and the use of four or more semibrèves as equal to one brève, as Petrus de Cruce was doing in his motets.

versus

(12thc. Aquitaine) A musical setting, monophonic or polyphonic, of a poem written in rhymed, rhythmic verse. Often used as processional music in a church or monastery or to cover liturgical movements within the service. Strophic or through-composed, they use a variety of compositional techniques: repetition, antecedent/consequent phrases, and concise to elaborate syllabic setting.

Roman de Fauvel

(1310-16?) Earliest 14th c. musical document from France, this is a manuscript containing the satirical poem Roman de Fauvel, and 167 pieces of music, mostly monophonic: rondeaux, ballades, chanson-refrains, and some plainsong, but also 34 polyphonic motets. Texts include denunciations of the clergy and allusions to contemporary political events.

Dunstable, John

(1390-1453) His contemporaries and successors in England and on the continent recognized him as the foremost English composer of the 15th century. Marin le Franc noted the considerable influence of his music and style on Dufay, Binchois, Ockeghem, and Busnois. Most works are in three voices, except the four voice isorhythmic motets. His works are mainly known through continental sources and feature smooth rhythms and consonant thirds and sixths. Example: Missa Rex seculorum (isorhythmic).

Binchois, Gilles

(1400-1460) Worked in the bugundian court in the early part of the 15th century. Martin le Franc paired Dufay and Binchois as the two leading composers of the day and found the influence of Dunstable (smooth rhythm and consonant sonorities) in their work, because of the English occupation of France. He is primarily known for his secular music, about 60 rondeaux for 3 voices and top voice dominant. Many pieces are in fauxbourdon. An example of a rondeaux is Je ne vis onques.

Dufay, Guillame

(1400-1474) His contemporaries regarded him as one of the greatest of their age. He was influenced by John Dunstable and the English style. His sacred music can be divided into three categories: 1.) hymns, antiphons, Mass movements, and some motets written in the treble-dominated style in which a borrowed melody is often placed in the top voice and often in fauxbourdon 2.) musically complex motets in four parts which are isorhythmic or polytextual 3.) Mass pairs or cycles unified by mode, mensuration and head motives. He also wrote a lot of secular songs in three voices with French text (rondeau predominates). Examples: Missa Se la face ay pale (secular cantus firmus from his own chanson) Missa L'homme arme (secular tune) Missa Ave Regina caelorum. (paraphrase).

Busnois, Antoine

(1430-1492) Composer in the service of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. He wrote 30 chanson, most for three voices with French texts in the formes fixes, especially the rondeaux. His Missa L'homme arme may be the first of the "Armed Man" masses, and is surely one of the most influential of its kind. It is a strict cantus firmus mass with non-imimative counterpoint in various textures. His contemporaries considered him second only to Ockeghem.

Gaffurio, Francino

(1451-1522) A musican scholar who wrote about Greek learning and theory in Theorica musice (Theory of Music, 1492), Practica musice (The Practice of Music, 1496) and De harmonia musicorum intrumentorum opus (A Work concerning the Harmony of Musical Instruments, 1518). They were the most influential writings on music of the late 15th and early 16th centuries, and stimulated new thoughts on modes, consonace and dissonance, the tonal system, tuning, word-music relations, and the harmony of music, man, and cosmos.

Encina, Juan del

(1468-1530) Spanish composer who worked for the Duke of Alba. Important in the development of Spanish theatre. Most of his works are secular and polyphonic. Most are villancicos and are contained in the Cancionero musical de Palacio.

Aaron, Pietro

(1480-1550) Theorist. His controversial writings include an important discussion of the application of the theory of modes to polyphonic compositions. Other topics include counterpoint and cadence formation in four voices. He was attacked by Gaffurius and defended by Spataro.

musica ficta

(14th c.) the use of notes raised or lowered through accidentals or in performance. Such changes are not always noted, as musicians of the time were expected to be familiar with the rules governing the practice. Sometimes changes would be made simply because they sounded good, but most changes involved cadential figures and avoidance of unwanted dissonance.

Calvin, John

(1509-64) leader of the Reformation in Fr. who opposed the retention of elements of Catholic liturgy and ceremonial much more strongly than Luther did. Prohibited the singing of texts not in the Bible. The only notable musical productions of the Calvinist churches were the Psalters, rhymed metrical translations of the Book of Psalms.

Gabrielli, Andrea

(1510-1586) Uncle of Giovanni Gabrielli, he became the organist at St. Mark's in Venice in 1566 and held the position until he died. He was one of the first Italians whose works were able to escape the Netherlandish style. Such music tends to be homophonic, syllabic, polychoral, and sonorous. He composed in nearly every genre: madrigals, sacred vocal music (Masses, Psalms, motets, concerti), secular vocal works, and many instrumental compositions. Most significant is his contribution to the new concertato style, canzonas, ricercare, and other intabulations for keyboard.

Vicentino, Nicola

(1511-1572) One of the "Classical madrigalists" of the late sixteenth-century who followed in the footsteps of Willaert. Also a copmoser of instrumental canzoni. Vicentino was known for extoling the virtues of the underused chromatic and enharmonic tetrachords from the Ancient Greek Greater Perfect System. He built a number of instruments capable of playing in these new pitch schemes and influenced the compositions of Lasso (one very chromatic composition of Lasso was the Prophetae sibyllarum). In general, however, Vicentino's notions of full chromaticism did not catch on with other mid-sixteenth-century composers.

Palestrina, Giovanni Puerluigi da

(1525 or 26- 1594) Spent his entire career at Rome. Wrote mostly sacred music, including 104 Masses, about 250 motets, many other liturgical compositions, and around 50 spiritual madrigals with Italian texts. His approximately 100 secular madrigals are conservative. Palestrina supervised the revision of the music in the official liturgical books to accord with the changes made by order of the Council of Trent. His music epitomized the sober, conservative aspect of the Counter-Reformation. His individual lines tend to have an almost plainsong quality in that their curve often describes an arch, and the motion is mostly stepwise, with infrequent and short leaps. Purity of line is matched by purity of harmony, indicated by his almost complete avoidance of chromaticism. Vertically, the voices meet at the downbeat, except for the use of suspensions. Dissonances may appear between downbeat and upbeat, provided the motion is stepwise. Palestrina practiced an exception to this rule which was later known as the cambiata. Palestrina's style is what 17th century musicians had in mind when they spoke of stile antico.

Lasso, Orlando di

(1532-94) Chief among the international composers in Germany in the 16th c., he composed madrigals, chansons, and motets, and his works totalled over 2000. His style, in contrast to Palestrina's restrained and classic nature, was more impulsive, emotional, and dynamic in temperament. In his motets both the overall form and the details are generated from a rhetorical, pictorial, and dramatic approach to the text. His motet Tristis in anima mea is an excellent example. His later life was devoted almost exclusively to setting sacred texts in a style more somber than that of his youth. Franco-Flemish counterpoint, Italian harmony, Venetian opulence, French vivacity, and German gravity are all found in his works.

Bardi

(1534-1612) member and host of the Camerata in Florence starting in the 1570's. (see "Camerata," Renaissance terms.) Wrote that the melody and rhythm should follow the text.

Artusi

(1540-1613) Composer and theorist. In his dialogue, L'Artusi overo delle imperfettioni della moderna musica, (1600), Artusi criticizes Monteverdi's contrapuntal licenses, particularly his apparent freedom with dissonances, which Monteverdi considered part ofthe "second practice."

Council of Trent

(1545-1563) Part of the Counter-Reformation, held to formulate and give official sanction to measures for purging the church of abuses and laxities. Concerning church music, complaints were heard regarding its frequently secular spirit, excessive complexity which obscured the words, bad pronunciation, carelessness, and irreverant attitude of the singers. However, the pronouncement of the Council was extremely general, and touched on no technical points: neither polyphony nor the imitation of secular models was specifically forbidden. One piece that shows a clear affect of the C-R was Palestrina's Missa Papae Marcelli.

Caurroy, Eustach du

(1549-1609). A French composer who became sous-máitre of the royal chapel. His Victimae Paschali laudes is marked by a number of French traits. The work is written for two choirs, one a full four-voice choir and the other comprising three soloists. These choirs eventually unite at the end of the work. The alternation of grand choeur and petit choeur became a norm in seventeenth-century France for most of the music written for many voices. The work is composed using faultless stilo antico counterpoint. Caurroy was also an adherent of the tenets of musique mésurée à l'antique and as such strove to retain the qualities rather than the stresses of the Latin text. his music is also marked with a thick web of syncopations and suspensions and a tendency to avoid cadneces until the ends of double versicles.

Caccini, Giulio

(1551-1618) Le nuove musiche (1601); singer and composer who was one of the creators of early opera. Like Peri, he set Rinuccini's L'Euridice. Peri, Caccini, and Cavalieri all strove for a kind of song that was intermediate between spoken recitation and singing (this led to the recitative style). Caccini developed a mainly syllabic style that, while aiming for clear and flexible declamation of words, nevertheless admitted certain embellishments of the melodic line, adding an element of vocal virtuosity. Caccini wrote two types of songs: airs, which were strophic, and madrigals, which were through-composed.

Gabrielli, Giovanni

(1553-56) Nephew and pupil of A. Gabrielli, he was the successor at St. Mark's in Venice. His influence was powerful in continuing the new concertato style and establishing the new monody. Purely instrumental music is prominent in his output, including ricercares, canzonas, and sonatas (some for multiple choirs of instruments). His most substantial collections are his Sacrae Symphonie I, II, III which contain both instrumental pieces and motets. He had significant influence on Heinrich Schutz and developments in Germany.

Morley, Thomas

(1557-1602) English composer particularly concerned with cultivating the English madrigal. Many of his madrigals are Italian madrigals with new texts and slight changes. It was through his efforts as an editor and composer that the Italian madrigal came to be well-known in England. He studied with Byrd. Sing we and Chant It and Now is the Month of Maying.

Forme, Nicholas

(1567-1638) Favorite composer of Louis XIII in France. Important contributions of French sacred music. Lightened the style with chasonlike rhythms, madrigalistic word painting, and metrical freedom.

Tomkins, Thomas

(1572-1656) An accomplished English composer of anthems, services, and madrigals. When David heard that Absalom was Slain calls forth mighty chromaticism (as does a piece by the same name by Weelkes). His anthem, "Arise, O Lord, into thy resting place" dramatizes the text with a variety of rhetorical devices (including a melody that remains around the same pitch for eight bars to illustrate "resting point"). He was from a musical family and workes as Master of Chorister at the Worcester Cathedral as well as organist at the Chapel Royal in London.

Weelkes, Thomas

(1576-1623) An accomplished English composer of anthems, services, and madrigals. His When David heard that Absalom was slain calls forth mighty chromaticism (as does a piece by the same name, composed by Tomkins). This religious text in a madrigal setting has been referred to as "sacred madrigal." Especially effective in the above mentioned work is Weelkes use of rhythm of David's sighs and dejected laments. Weelkes worked as organist in both the Winchester College and Chichester Cathedral.

Gibbons, Orlando

(1583-1625) Often considered the father of Anglican church music. The Anglican Church separated from the Roman Catholic church in 1532, but it wasn't until later that English was used in the liturgy and worship. One of the "virginalists" (English keyboard composers of the late 16th century like Bull and Byrd)

Scheidt, Samuel

(1587-1654). German composer and organis; An important member of the first generation of Baroque composers in Germany, he distinguished himself in both keyboard and sacred vocal music, combining traditional counterpoint with the Italian concerto style.

Rossi, Luigi

(1597-1653). Italian composer, singing teacher, lutenist and keyboard player; was a conspicuous figure on the musical scene both in Italy and, for a time, in France; he was one of the finest composers of chamber cantatas in the Baroque period and the leading composer of vocal music in the Rome of his day. About 300 cantatas survive; Rossi played a significant part in the development of opera. Two features in particular: one as grand, festive, extravagant spectacles, choruses, ballets, many characters and scenes, much intrigues and comic episodes; the other as a new, warm lyricism in many arias. Emotive, well-shaped and beautiful melodies prevail, especially in Orfeo.

Tenorlieder

(15th-mid 16th C's) The basic form of German secular song at this time. The word "Tenor" refers not to the voice-part of that name, but to the borrowed tune, or CF, which was the only part to be underlaid with the complete text. This "Tenor" was at first usually sung by the top voice (of 3) and accompanied by instruments, but later, when 4-part writing became the norm, moved down to the tenor voice proper and frequently received vocal accompaniment. However, there was no fixed rule regarding the position of the borrowed tune.

Rospigliosi, Giulio

(1600-1669). It. librettist; the most important librettist of his day for Roman opera. He created the genre of sacred opera and wrote the librettos of the earliest significant comic operas. His libretti are celebrated for the quality of poetry, skillful adjustment to the demands of staging and music, introduction of comic roles, and a human realism derived from late medieval literature (i.e. Dal male il bene is based on Boccaccio) and from Spanish drama.

Gaultier, Denis

(1603-72) Represents the culmination of lute music in the early 17th century. The collection La Rhétorique de dieux (The Rhetoric of the Gods) contains twelve set of dances. Each set has an allemande, courante, and sarabande. Ennemond Gaultier (1575-1651) was another important lute composer. Famous example is La Poste.

Froberger, Jakob

(1616-67) The most renowned German keyboardist of his day. He was a cosmpolitan, being influenced by the Italians (student of Frescobaldi) and the French. The pieces showing Italian influence are the toccatas, ricercares, and canzonas. The French influence is evident in the suites of clavier. The suites are among the first to use the standard group of dances: allemande, gigue, courante, and sarabande. The gigue was moved to the end of the suite and this became the classic Baroque dance suite.

Lully, Jean-Baptiste

(1632-1687) A native of Florence who travelled to France at fourteen, Lully composed instrumental music for Louis XIV and was a member of the 24 Violons du Roy before he led his own petits violins. Lully thus quickly absorbed the rich French heritage of orchestral music. As a dancer, Lully also compsed a number of ballets de cour, including overtures, airs and récits. Lully collaborated with Molière and Corneille in a series of ballet comedies and one ballet tragedie which combined French and Italian styles. His real area of mastery, however was the opera. His librettist, Quinault, also achieved a satisfactory union of French and Italian elements. Lully's music features a sharp contrast between recitative and air, though the middleground of arioso also appears. Quinault's verse often necessitated a changing meter with alternating bars of 3/4 and 4/4. Lully also wrote empassioned speeches in a type of recitative that featured halting rhythms and augmented and diminished intervals. Lully's airs are usually pleasant but not emotionally charged. They often feature only solo voice with basso continuo, though a two-violin ritornello is sometimes included. Lully's instrumental writing in the operas featured a five-part orchestra (rather than the traditional Italian scoring for two treble voices plus bass) and distinguished between the petit choer (the counterpart of the Italian concertino) and the grand couer (the ripieno which included the twenty-four violins and occasional wind and percussion instruments). Lully and Quinault eventually moved away from the Italian tragicomedy and developed a new French genre, the tragédie lyrique.

Quinault, Philippe

(1635-1688). French dramatist, librettist and poet; was in the select group of poets chosen to pay continual homage to Louis XIV; 15-year collaboration with Lully. By both temperament and artistic inclination, Quinault was ideally suited to collaboration with Lully; generally more galant than heroic or tragic; Armide's librettist; he was expected to observe unity of action.

Torelli, Giuseppi

(1658-1709)Torelli was responsible for the crystallization of mature Baroque concerto form. He built upon the innovations of Corelli, but in his twelvel concerti of Op. 8 (6 for one violin, 6 for two violins) one finds the stereotypical fast-slow-fast succession of movements, the ritornello form, and virtuoso flights of the soloist. Torelli's style, along with that of Albinoni and Vivaldi, provided for a second wave of Italian influence on the German concerto (evident in the works of Bach).

Purcell, Henry

(1659-1695). Composer, organist and bass and countertenor singer; one of the greatest composers of the Baroque period and one of the greatest of all English composers; technically mastered canon and ground bass. His early music tends to be conservative like Monteverdi's: he never abandoned chromaticism, but as he became acquainted with the directness and relative simplicity of Italian music he tended to use it much more as a melodic feature within the framework of diatonic tonality. He drew particular attention to the Italians' use of the diminished 7th and the Neapolitan 6th, both of which are basically modifications of diatonic harmony. The range of Purcell's invention/compositional diversity is remarkable, but little of it is performed now.

Couperin, François

(1668-1733). A French composer of works for keyboard. Couperin tittles all of his pieces ordres. These were collections of shor pieces which may have been intenede for suite-like performance. Pieces in the same ordre are linked by key and in particular, Couperin used the under-utilized sharp keys (A,E,b, and f#) in his music. Many of the pieces in the ordres bear programmatic titles. Many are also recognizable dance movements, though others are more abstractly linked to the dance. Echoes of the Lullian opera, the theater of the fairs, and popular music all occur in Couperins ordres, filled out iwth copious use of French ornaments.

Telemann, Georg Phillip

(1681-1767) Perhaps the most under-rated composer of the Baroque era - in his day he was more famous than Bach and was actually the town council's first choice for cantor of St. Thomas in Leipzig! He composed an enormous body of music, including 40 operas, 12 cantata cycles for the liturgical year, passions, overtures, suites, concerti, and orchestral works numbering in the hundreds.

Rameau, Jean-Philippe

(1683-1764). Fr. composer/theorist. A close contemporary of J.S.Bach, Handel, Domenico Scarlatti and Telemann, he was the leading Fr. composer (particularly of dramatic music) of his time and an important innovator in harmonic theory; among his 65 keyboard pieces many sound well on the piano because of his attempts to use his keyboard as a sustaining instrument; most works are in binary form; his sacred music is the least important part of his output except for his cantatas; wrote large number of different dramatic genres: tragédie lyrique (i.e. Castor et Pollux, Hippolyte), comédie-lyrique, opéra-ballet, comedie-ballet, pastorale, acte de ballet, and divertissement.

Bach, Johann Sebastian

(1685-1750) Bach served as organist at Arnstadt (1703-07) and Mühlhausen (1707-08), as court organist and later concertmaster in the chapel of the duke of Weimar (1708-17), as music director at the court of a prince in Cöthen (1717-23), and as cantor of St. Thomas's school and music director in Leipzig (1723-50). He composed in almost all forms of his time, except for opera. During his time at Arnstadt, Mühlhausen, and Weimar, he wrote mostly organ compositions, including chorale preludes, several sets of variations on chorales, and some toccatas and fantasias which show influences of Buxtehude. At Cöthen, he wrote no church music, but rather clavier (The Welll-Tempered Clavier, Part I, 1722), or instrumental works (including the Brandenburg concerti, and the works for solo violin and solo cello), music for instruction and for domestic or court entertainment. At Leipzig, he wrote his cantatas and other church music, as well as the Goldberg Variations. His style exhibits a mastery of counterpoint and a fusion of Italian, French, and German characteristics. Other elements of his style include the concentrated and individual themes, the copious musical invention, balance between harmonic and contrapuntal forces, strength of rhythm, clarity of form, grandeur of proportion, imaginative use of pictorial and symbolic figures, intensity of expression always controlled by a ruling architectural idea, and the technical perfection of every detail. (Grout).

Handel, Georg Friederich

(1685-1759) A German composer who studied in Italy and eventually settled in London. His musical career was begun in Hamburg where he staged his first opera, Almira (1705). This opera featured German recitatives and airs with Italian arias! Bilingual operas were actually quite normal during this era of international musical styles drawn from a number of national traditions. Four years in Italy converted Handel almost wholly to the lyric Italian style of writing. In 1710 he ventured to London and staged over forty operas there between 1711 and 1741. Famous operas by Handel include Guilio Cesare (1724) and Alcina (1735). Most are in the Italian style and feature as libretto subjects: Roman history, mythology and legend, medieval romances, and Renaissance epics. In 1728 Handel began facing financial ruin when his supported George I died and the new genre of ballad opea (John Gay's The Beggar's Opera) gained in popularity. Though Handel continued writing operas until 1741, he never enjoyed the financial successes of his early years. Handel also composed numerous oratorios ranging from those lacking in dramatic thread (Messiah, Israel in Egypt) to virtual operas (Semele). The chorus is featured more in the oratorio than in the opera and its English style grew out of Handel's familiarity with the English anthem. Handel also composed a number of instrumental works, including Concerti Grossi based on those of Corelli, instrumental suites (Water Music, Royal Fireworks Music), and keyboard works (he taught figured bass realization to the princess Anne).

Geminiani, Francesco

(1687-1762) One of Corelli's pupils who had a long career as virtuoso and composer in London. He published The Art of Playing on the Violin, which embodies the techniques of Corelli and other Italian masters of the early 18th century. He wrote solo sonatas and concerti grossi in the style of Corelli.

LeClair, Jean Marie

(1697-1764) A French composer who, like Couperin, combined the new style of Corelli with a native flair for simple melody, nourished by the air de dance and tastefully laced with turns and trills. This style is featured in his instrumental sonata writing.

di Capua, Rinaldo

(1705-1780). Italian composer. Information about his life is scarce and sometimes unreliable; mainly lived and worked at Rome; 32 stage works: opera seria, comic opera; His qualities as an instrumental composer are revealed in his sinfonias, or ouvertures, in which he contributed to the development of the Classical symphony-sonata. The first movement departs from the old binary form of the Baroque and tends to have bithematic structure, with signs of a subsidiary thematic group, and tripartite structure with a sizable central development section. The second movement becomes a bipartite song form.

Richter, Franz Xavier

(1709-89) Composer and singer who composed symphonies in the "Mannheim style" (he was associated with the Mannheim orchestra from 1747-69). His symphonies are in three movements, occasionally with a minuet as a last movement, and with cantabile themes and orchestral textures typical of the Mannheim style.

Pergolesi, Giovanni Battista

(1710-36) Important work: La serva Padrona. It was written to be performed with Il prigioner superbo, which set off the guerre des bouffons. It represents comic opera and the new gallant style, characterized by short regular phrases (antecedent/consequent), simple melodies with a clear distinction from the acc.

Bach, Wilhelm Friedemann

(1710-84) Eldest son of JS Bach, Friedemann was also an accomplished organist, well-trained in the strong tradition of organ improvisation Some of his compositions are conservative, while others pay tribute to Empfindsamer Stil and style galant. The most outstanding features of his music are freedom in details of harmony, melody, and rhythm, contrasts of mood, and occasionally an intensely personal, almost Romantic emotion, which presages the 19th century.

Gluck, Christoph Willibald

(1714-87) Synthesized in his operas Italian melodic grace, German seriousness, and the stately magnificence of French tragédie lyrique. Collaborated with poet Raniero Calzabigi (1714-95) to produce at Vienna Orfeo ed Euridice (1762) and Alceste (1767). Gluck attempted to remove the abuses of Italian opera of the time, such as the converntions of the da capo aria, and excessive ornamental variation which show off the singer's technical virtuosity. Instead, Gluck strove to make the music serve the poetry, to make the overture an integral part of the opera, to adapt the orchestra to the dramatic requirements, and the lessen the contrast between aria and recitative. After the War of the Buffoons, Lully and Rameau gradually lost favor, and Gluck was the first big composer since them to succeed with French opera in France.

Bach, Carl Philip Emanuel

(1714-88) Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments (Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen, 1753 and 1562). CPE Bach composed in the Empfindsamer Stil, a singing expressive style well suited to the clavichord, with its light, gentle tone. In addition to keyboard sonatas, CPE also composed songs, concertos, chamber music, symphonies, and choral works. He worked for a while at the court of Frederick the Great, after which he succeeded Telemann in Hamburg.

Calzabigi, Raniero

(1714-95) the Italian poet who collaborated with Gluck to produce at Vienna Orfeo ed Euridice (1762) and Alceste (1767). Both composer and poet sought to reform opera by bringing out the essential dramatic qualities of the subject, avoiding the complications and subplots common in opera seria. Calzabigi did decide to give the story a happy ending (lieto fine), brought about by the interference of Amor, a deus ex machina who once more returns Euridice to the living.

Ariadne musica

(1715) a collection of keyboard preludes and fugues in nineteen different major and minor keys by J.K.F. Fischer. Pieces such as these served as training in composition and performance. This set of pieces did not imply equal temperament, as certain keys were avoided.

Stamitz, Johann

(1717-57) Among the first generation of Mannheim composers, and one of the foremost early classical symphonists (60 of his symphonies are extant). He also wrote concertos, a Mass, vocal music and chamber works. He established great discipline in the Mannheim orchestra, and insisted on uniform bowings. He probably established the Mannheim custom of leading the orchestra from the concertmaster's chair, rather than from the harpsichord. In his symphonies, he used several devices typical of the Mannheim style: the "rocket" beginning, a theme composed of triadic (rising) figures; the Mannheimer Waltz, a "steamroller" effect achieved by ostinato repetition of a phrase with gradual addition of instruments; and of course the so-called "Mannheim crescendo."

Breitkopf, Johann Gottlob Immanuel

(1719-1794) One of the most versatile figures in the history of German publishing and printing. The Breitkopf firm, founded by Immanuel's father in 1719, achieved greater importance by Immanuel since he took it over in 1745. He invented new typographical models. His divisible and movable types, introduced in 1754-55, improved by Telemann, Mattheson, Leopold Mozart, Haydn, Carl Stamits, Reichardt, C.P.E.Bach, and J.A.Hiller were published by this the system of printing notation, and therefore music could be published in much larger editions henceforth. Virtually all notable composers of the second half of the 18th century attempted to have at least a few works printed or published by the Breitkopf firm. Works firm. Breitkopf published catalogues of all available works, including a thematic index, between 1760 and 1787. This is invaluable to music bibliography. His friends included notable scholars and musicians such as Lessing and Winckelmann, and young Goethe also visited his home. On his death he was praised as a 'sage and philanthropist'. In 1795, Gottfried Christoph Härtel (1763-1827) joined the firm, and in 1796 he took it over instead of Immanuel's sons who minded taking over the firm, and had the name Breitkopf-Härtel henceforth.

Benda, Georg

(1722-1795) Bohemian composer. who worked as Kapellmeister at the court of Frederick III. After the latter's death, he switched from writing sacred music to writing theater music, including singspiels such as Der Jahrmarkt (1775) and Romeo und Julie (1776) and melodramas such as Ariadne auf Naxos (1775) and Medea (1776). The latter two works were praised by Mozart. His works included 15 stage works, many sacred cantatas and oratorios, songs, ca. 30 symphonies, concertos, and solo keyboard works.

Gossec, François-Joseph

(1734-1824) A French composer who studied under Stamitz when the latter was in Paris (1754-55). His music often features large wind sections. He composed a number of patriotic songs after the Revolution, including the Marseillaise. He became directeur de la musique des fêtes nationales. His muis is often noisy and constructed for the enjoyment of the masses, rather than the elite upper classes. His ideal of musical expression (patriotism or despair in the Funeral March) was a precursor to theemerging Romantic style.

Bach, Johann Christian

(1735-82) Nicknamed the "Milan Bach," JC Bach spent several years training in Italy, after which point he went to England (he is also called the "London Bach"), where he became music master to the Queen. He was an ealry influence to Mozart, who arranged some of his piano sonatas as concerti. His style is marked by small design, elegance, and graceful melodies. His music had popular appeal, especially to amateurs, who found the sonatas easily playable.

Albrechtsberger, Johann

(1736-1809) Organist at Melk and later court organist in Vienna, he was known best for his theoretical writings, including a famous treatise on composition published in 1790. He taught Beethoven counterpoint for a year after 1794. He also wrote much sacred music including a concerto and preludes and fugues for organ.

Dittersdorf, Karl

(1739-1799) a Viennese violinist and composer remebered for his Singspiels (Doktor und Apothekar)and instrumental works. He was a friend of Haydn's and wrote a number of programmatic works (among them one based on Ovid's Metamorphosis).

Vanhal, Johann

(1739-1813) A prolific and successful composer in Vienna who was acquainted with both Mozart and Haydn. Burney calls his symphonies "masterworks of their kind."

Boccherini, Luigi

(1743-1805) A distinguished virtuoso cellist and composer of chamber music, who worked chiefly at Madrid. His output includes about 140 string quintets, 100 string quartets, 65 trios, about 30 symphonies, and some sonatas, besides other chamber and orchestral music. His style displays graceful melodies and variety in the formal design. His cello parts are often rhythmically complex and highly ornamented.

Hässler, Johann Wilhelm

(1747-1822) A prolific composer of sonata forms in the Classic period. These wroks include pieces in the galant style as well as the more ambitous Deux sonates instructives featuring tighly knit motivic material and frequent modulations. Engaged in a piano competition with Mozart in Dresden.

Vogler, Georg Joseph

(1749-1814) "Abbé Vogler" was an organ builder who designed and added new ranks of pipes that approximated various orchestral timbres. He called his organ an "Orchestrion." In general, though, the development of the organ did not keep up with contemporary style changes, and most organ builders did not concern themselves with the new orchestral sounds until the 19th c.

Koch, Heinrich Christoph

(1749-1816) His Versuch einer Anleitung zur Composition (Introductory Essay on Composition, 1787) described the form of the first movement of a classical sonata, now known as sonata form or sonata-allegro.

da Ponte, Lorenzo

(1749-1838) Italian poet and librettist. His librettos for Mozart included Le nozze di Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787), and Cosi fan tutte (1790). He wrote about 50 librettos in all. He died in New York, where he taught Italian language and literature at Columbia College; he brought Don Giovanni to New York in 1825.

Reichart, Johann Friedrich

(1752-1814) German composer and writer whose close contact with Goethe resulted in many songs. His songs tend to be strictly strophic, particularly the earlier ones; variety is attained only through the singer's interpretation of the text's changing emotional content. His later songs have some variety between the stanzas. Keyboard parts are of the older Klavierlied style: a spare bass that outlines the simple harmonies and a right hand that doubles the melody. This simple, strophic song atyle is typical of the "Second Berlin School" of song-writing.

Clementi, Muzio

(1752-1832) A composer and v irtuoso keyboardist who once performed in a piano competition against Mozart and who briefly taught composition to Beethoven. Of the classic era keyboard composers he comes closest to Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven in stature and, during his lifetime, was extremely successful not only as a performer and composer but also as a conductor and publisher. He lived in England for his entire adult life. His piano music (sonatas, sonatinas, four-hand music, etc.) demonstrates many of the traits of mature classicism including brilliant passagework, alberti bass, left-hand octaves, and Sturm and Drang styles.

Clementi, Muzio

(1752-1832) Italian composer, music publisher, and pianist. After engaging in a virtuoso competition with him for the amusement of Emperor Joseph II, Mozart was impressed with his piano technique, but found his playing mechanical. He wrote mostly for the piano (100+ sonatas, some accompanied, and 4-hand piano music), but also two completed symphonies and a piano concerto. He settled permanently in London, where his publishing firm thrived (in 1807, he acquired rights to issue five of Beethoven's latest works). John Field was his pupil.

Zumsteg, Johann Rudolph

(1760-1802) Primarly known for his work on cultivating the lied in Germany. He wrote over 300 songs and had a significant influence on Schubert and his contribution to lieder.

Dussek, Jan Ladislav

(1760-1812) Pianist and composer; son of Jan (Josef) Dussek (organist and composer). Lived in many places and traveled much, such as Prague, Amsterdam, Hamburg, St. Petersburg, Paris, and England. Dussek was one of the early touring concert pianist. He wrote most of his works for piano or included piano. His early works are in Classical style but his last twenty years show Romantic characteristics in the expression markings, the use of full chords, the choice of keys, and the frequent modulations to remote keys and in the use of altered chords and non-harmonic notes. His harmony includes a wider range of chords and is considerably more chromatic than that of Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven. His piano music is in general fuller in texture than that of C.P.E.Bach, Mozart or Haydn. He showed A predilection for modulating to the key a semitone above or below. His piano style is often brilliant and virtuoso in character which anticipate piano writing later in the 19th century. His works were remarkably popular in his lifetime. Most were reprinted at least once, some up to ten times (some had three different editions by Breitkopf & Härtel alone). After his death, though, he quickly fell into disregard. Between 1860 and 1880 a revival of interest in Dussek brought about new editions of the piano sonatas by Breitkopf & Härtel and Litolff, as well as many performances of them, particularly in London.

Beethoven, Ludwig van

(1770-1827) Composer born in Bonn; later lived in Vienna. He took some composition lessons with Haydn and Albrechtsberger, and perhaps a few with Mozart. He was known for his talent in improvising on the piano. His patrons included Viennese aristocrats such as Prince Karl Lichnowsky and Prince Franz Joseph Lobkowitz. He started to lose his hearing in 1801, which led him to write the Heiligenstadt Testament. Traditionally, his works have been divided into three periods: Early (-1801), including op. 18 string quartets, the Pathetique sonata (op. 13), and First and Second Symphonies; Middle or "Heroic" (1802-1811), characterized by larger scope and scale, including the "Eroica" Symphony (No. 3), the Fourth through Sixth Symphonies, the Waldstein sonata (op. 53), the triple concerto, and his only opera, Fidelio (text by Sonnleithner); and Late, "transcendental," or "spiritual" (1812-1827), including the Eighth and Ninth Symphonies, the Diabelli Variations, the Hammerklavier sonata (op. 106), string quartets opp. 127-135, and Missa Solemnis. Along with nine symphonies, five piano concertos, one violin concerto, 15 string quartets, 32 piano sonatas, 10 violin sonatas, and 5 cello sonatas, he wrote vocal music, music for wind band, a wind octet, and a "Battle Symphony" Wellington's Victory (op. 91, 1813).

Hegel

(1770-1831) German writer and philosopher who wrote Lectures on Aesthetics (pub. p.h. 1835-38). He portrayed the arts as the embodiment of Geist, which refers both to the human mind and the entire universe. He described a progression of arts from "symbolic" arts, such as architecture, to "classical" arts such as sculpture, and finally to the "romantic" arts: painting, music, and poetry, in ascending order. For Hegel, the ideal was spiritual content over form. Music which is supported by poetry is thus strengthened.

Lobkowitz

(1772-1816) A prince and patron of Beethoven, to whom the "Eroica" symphony was dedicated. When Napoleon's troops captured Vienna in 1805, Lobkowitz's palace was one of those occupied.

Tomásek, Václav Jan Krtitel

(1774-1850). Bohemian composer and teacher. He was the major figure connecting the Czech Classical tradition of émigré composers and the 19th-century nationalist school. In his lifetime he was the focal point of Prague musical life, and his influence was spread by his many pupils as well as his widely published compositions. He is a figure of the Classical-Romantic transition. His starting point was Mozart; was a father of the short character-piece that became an integral part of the Romantic keyboard tradition. The sudden reappearance doubling in 3rds and 6ths are often found in Schubert as well; some stylization of folk melodies exist; 70 per cent of his songs were written to German texts, including Goethe's Erlkönig. Fairly mane are on same poems as Schubert's songs.

Hoffmann, ETA

(1776-1822). German writer and composer. His fantastic tales epitomized one aspect of Romanticism, especially the fascination with the supernatural and the expressively distorted or exaggerated. As a critic, he placed his sharp mind at the service of a consistent view of Romanticism, and wrote vivid and forceful reviews of the music of his time. His works as a composer has been neglected. He was also a gifted artist (sketches and caricatures). He influenced several generations of artists, writer and composers. His reviews of Beethoven's works for the AMZ, which were widely read and contributed greatly to his contemporaried' understanding of the breakthrough contained in the composer's style. His reviews for the AMZ mark the end of the old fashioned doctrine of the Affections in music aesthetics; whose works were used in R. Schumann's compositions such as Kreisleriana, Op. 16, and Humoresque, Op.20. The story contains two opposite personalities: Prolestan and Oisebius. Thus, Schumann's music on this story carries the contrasting qualities which switch around pretty often, and therefore demands a highly trained skills from the performers.

Hummel, Johann

(1778-1737) A student of Mozart's and Haydn's successor at the palace of the Esterházy family. He was a virtuoso pianist and wrote a number of brilliant piano sonatas and concertos. These works tend more towards the pianism of the 19th century than the Classical style. He also wrote a number of chamber works and orchestrally-accompanied sacred music. His music remains in the canon in Germany and Austria even today.

Hummel, Johann Nepomuk

(1778-1837). Austrian pianist, composer, teacher and conductor. He was considered in his time to be one of Europe's greatest composers and perhaps its greatest pianist. As a composer he stands on the borderline between epochs. His repitation now is that of a virtuoso specialist in piano music - somethinf of a 19th-century trait. This view of him, however, is grossly incorrect. His work embraces virtually all the genres and performing media common at the turn of the century: operas, Singspiels, symphonic masses and other sacred works. occasional pieces, chamber music, songs and of course, concertos and solo piano music, as well as many arrangements. Only the symphony is conspicuosly absent (and this fact alone testifies to his deeply felt rivalry with Beethoven). His extraordinary zbility to respond to the needs of the musical market-place is illustrated by his relationship with George Thomson, the Edinburgh folksong collector. Yet, Hummel, like Beethoven, was a composer whose music normally demanded the highest virtuosity. Stylistically, his music is among the finest of the last years of Classicism, with vasically homophonic textures, well-spum, ornate Italianate melodies, andvirtuoso ecbroidery supported by modernized Alberti accompaniments. His music reached the highest level accessible to one who lacks ultimate genius. Yet while his compositions have not fulfilled the promise of immortality, they and his style of performing had a lasting importance.

Field, John

(1782-1837) Irish virtuoso pianist, composer, and student of Clementi. He spent most of his career in Russia. His short piano pieces, representing the bulk of his oeuvre, were to influence Liszt, Chopin, and others. His fifteen nocturnes for piano were apparently the first such pieces; they generally have lyrical, lavishly ornamented melodies for the right hand supported by wide-ranging arpeggiated accompaniment, and slow harmonic movement. Tonic pedal points allow for lavish pedal use, which Schumann later singled out as Field's prime contribution to Romantic musical style. He also wrote piano concertos and a few piano sonatas.

Paganini, Niccolo

(1782-1840). Italian violinist and composer. By his development of technique, his exceptional skills and his extreme personal magnetism he not only contributed to the history of the violin as its most famous virtuoso, but drew the attention of the Romantic composers, notably Liszt, to the significance of virtuosity as an element in art.

Kalkbrenner, Friedrich

(1785-1849). French pianist, teacher and composer of German extraction. He undoubtedly had an overweening fondness for honours and a well-developed sense of his own superiority; he also had a mercenary streak to his nature. On the other hand, he was cultured, sociable and amiable. He was one of thefirst performers to achieve an independent international career and, for at least a decade, enjoyed unprecedented success. His playing has outstnading for its masterly clarity and beauty of tone. His public performances were confined alnost exclusively to his won works, as was customary at that time; As a teacher he lest a lasting influence: 'Kalkbrenner's technique' - parallel to the keyboard, the forearm rested, the independence of fingers; among his pupils were Mme Pleyel, George Osborne and Camille Stamaty. The latter two did a great deal to publicize his Méthode; Stamaty used it in teaching the young Saint-Saëns; A prolific and varied composer, he concentrated mainly on the piano; virtuosity; use of the whole range of the keyvoard and of octaves, particularly in the left hand. His work sometimes foreshadows Chopin; his pianistic writing prefigures that of Saint-Saëns in its paucity of counterpoint, its abyndance of rhetorical formulae and its use of ornamentation and virtuoso figuration in an eadily recognizable melodic framework.

Weber, Carl Maria von

(1786-1826). Composer, conductor, pianist and critic. An important founder of the Romantic movement in Germany, he was also one of the leading composers. By his example, especially with the success of Der Freischütz in 1821, he happened to form a new enthusiasm for German opera. Composers and audience alike, and as a gifted and versatile Kapellmeister and an articulated critic, he set new standards of performance and stimulated new ideas. One of the most brilliant pianists of his age, his music and his ideas influenced many composers, most significantly Wagner.

Carnicer, Ramón

(1789-1855) The most admired Spanish composer of the first half of the century. He wrote operas in an Italian style to Italian librettos, several of them, such as Cristoforo Colombo (1831), by Felice Romani.

Czerny, Carl

(1791-1857) Bohemian pianist, teacher, and composer born in Vienna; pupil and friend of Beethoven. He became rather well-to-do from his teaching; he taught Beethoven's nephew and Liszt. He is remembered for his prodigious output of keyboard excercises, and for his observant reminiscences of Beethoven. He also edited keyboard music of Bach and Scarlatti, and made piano arrangements of many works of Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart, etc.

Scribe, Eugene

(1791-1861). French dramatist and librettist. One of the most prolific and influential librettists of the 19th century; wrote the libretto for Rossini's Le comte Ory; in his earlier period he wrote for opéra comique, and later contributed to French grand opera. Within a clever dramatic framework Scribe brought together all the elements that characterize the Romantic novels and dramas popular in the first half of the 19th century: emotion runs riot, love is always passionate and frequently tragic, stirring conflicts between races, religions and classes in a period setting (mostly Middle Ages or Renaissance). His librettos were set by Auber, Bellini, Donizetti, Gounod, Halévy, Offenbach and Verdi.

Meyerbeer, Giacomo

(1791-1864) German composer of French Grand Opera. Showed early promise as a pianist, playing Mozart's D minor concerto in public at the age of 7. On the advice of Salieri, Meyerbeer went to Venice to study composition for the voice. Composed several operas in the Rossinian manner, all of them successful in Italy but despised in Germany, where Weber was "king." At age 25 he became dissatisfied with the Italian style and moved to Paris. He met Scribe (famous librettist) and wrote his first grand opera, Robert le diable, spectacular in its scenic effects and brilliant orchestration. This made him the most famous and prosperous opera composer of the time, a fact confirmed by the even greater success of Les Huguenots (1836). Again this was less because of its mucical qualities than its dramatic and scenic flair, which can only be compared with that of the Hollywood film epics of the 1930's. His last opera, L'africaine, was never put on in his lifetime but was performed a year after his death. (His slow output toward the end of his life was caused by a perfectionism which made him constantly revise and to insist on obtaining exactly the right cast.)

Rossini, Gioachimo

(1792-1868) One of the greatest composers of Italian opera buffa. He influenced Schubert, Weber, and Meyerbeer. He began the trend against singer improvisation by writing out vocal ornaments. He wrote 37 operas. His style features memorable melodies with simple accompaniment, extreme contrast,s orchestral color (the orchestra often has the melody while voices declaims in recitative style), and his famed crescendo (progressive addition of parts and dynamics, repetitions of a phrase at a higher pitch level). Rossini was important for raising the orchestral standard throughout Italy and brought the freedom of opera buffa to opera seria. His one grand opera is William Tell. He composed the Barber of Seville in two weeks.

Schindler, Anton

(1795-1864) Violinst, conductor, and writer. He became Beethoven's secretary in 1820 and all nine of the symphonies under Beethoven's supervision.

Loewe, Carl

(1796-1869) A conservative German composer who is best known for his ballads for voice and piano. He favored texts by Goethe and Herder, and showed a special fondness for the horrific and the supernatural. His musical style is similar to that of Zumsteeg and early Schubert. He also wrote five operas and several oratorios.

Schubert, Franz

(1797-1828). An Austrian composer who is remembered for his songs, symphonies, chamber music, and piano works, which show a remarkable gift for creating lovely melodies. He wrote some of the finest examples of the Lied ever written, among them "Gretchen am Spinnrade', "Dear Erlkönig," and the song cycles Die schöne Müllerin and Die Winterreise. In terrible poverty, he composed more than six humdred songs, eight symphonies, a great deal of chamber music, and many works for piano including piano duets. In style, his music bridges the classical and romantic periods. His harmonies show more chromaticism than that of Mozart and Beethoven, ans occasionally hifting from major to minor and back again.Schubert's songs have lovely melodies and the piano accompaniment is elaborated. He selected the poems of great beauty, often by outstanding poets such as Heinrich Heine, and made both melody and accompaniment fit the words; some of his well known works are Unfinished Symphony, Symphony in C, string quartet in A minor (1824) and the String Quartet in D minor (1826-28, known as Der Tod und das Mädchen, or "Death and the Maiden"), the Piano Quintet in A, op. 114 ("Trout Quintet"), Octet in F (1824), and for piano, the Wanderer-Fantasie, Impromptus, Momets musicals, Valses sentimentales, Valses nobles, and Deutsche Tänze. His last songs were published after his death under the title Schwanengesang.

Donizetti, Gaetano

(1797-1848) A bel canto Italian opera composer of a slightly younger generation than Rossini. He first wrote instrumental and church music and then began a long a fruitful relationship with the librettist Felice Romani (I Pirate in Milan 1822). His first opera to attract international attention was Anna Bolena (1830). Donizetti, like all noted Italian opera composers of this era, accepted an invitation to the Théâtre Italien in Paria, for which the best of his late works were written. Italian composers of Donizetti's generation turned more towards opera seria which featured internal scenes comprising scena ad aria, unaccompanied secco recitative, accompanied arioso for dramatic highpoints, and stylized, musically less-satisfying arias which often evoke the stereotypical sforzando chords marking the end of the orchestral introduction and the "big guitar" strumming sound to accompany the solo voice. Donizetti's harmonic language tended to be quite simple and his use of melody more stereotyped and less adorned than that of Bellini. In addition, Donizetti's recitative tends to be more flexible than Bellini's but less apt to burst into arioso style.

Bellini, Vincenzo

(1801-1835) Italian composer of ten opera seria. Student of eminent opera composer Zingarelli. His principal librettist was Romani. His last opera, I puritani, composed for the French stage, was to a text by Italian exile poet Count Carlo Pepoli. He composed almost no nonoperatic music after his student days. Norma (1831) is today the best known of his operas. Subjects are typical of Romantic opera: hopeless love, violent deaths, etc. His arias are more variable than those of Donizetti, with sinuous, decorated melodies, but his recitative is less flexible than Donizetti's.

Hugo, Victor

(1802-85) French poet, novelist, and playwright who was part of a Parisian group of artists that included Liszt. In the preface to his play Cromwell (1828), he challenged the Classical prescriptions for language and manners. Hernani of 1830 caused an uproar, because of Hugo's violation of "the unity of place," his breaking of established poetic rules, and his use of every-day speech for exalted characters. His followers in this debate included the musicians Berlioz and Liszt.

Berlioz, Hector

(1803-69) Medical student-turned-composer and leading spokesman for musical Romanticism in France, he campaigned on behalf of Beethoven, Weber, and Gluck. He also wrote articles and reviews for periodicals of Paris. After three failed attempts, he finally won the Prix de Rome in 1830, with his cantata La Dernière Nuit de Saranapale. His most famous work was also his first major one, the programmatical Symphonie fantastique, with its recurring idée fixe, and distinct autobiographical associations (the hero and beloved of the piece represent him and the actress Harriet Smithson, whom he had not even met when the piece was first performed). Berlioz sought to connect his music with its program by imitating musical sounds that already have fixed associations, and by expressing emotions musically. Berlioz was noted for his novel writing for orchestra. He published his comprehensive Grand Traité d'instrumentation et d'orchestration in 1844. His Harold in Italy, symphony for viola and orchestra, was commissioned by Paganini, who never played it because it wasn't flashy enough. Other works include operas (such as Les Troyens, 1856-8); other program symphonies; sacred music; other choral and vocal music; and songs.

Glinka, Mikhail

(1804-1857) the composer acknowledged as the founder of Russian opera, who, after a modicum of formal training in Italy and Germany, produced the opera, A Life for the Czar (1836). This work blended the current styles in French and Italian serious opera with a nationalistic Russian flavor (due to the inclusion of folk and folk-like melodies). Repetitions of tiny melodic modules, irregular meters (5/4), and pentatonic construction give these national moments their Russian flavor. A special musical technique was developed in Glinka's later operas in which constant repetitions of a simple line against a perpetually changing accompanimental background is used to good effect. Glinka's meeting with Balakirev in 1855 seems the starting point for Balakirev's fatherhood of the "mighty five." In fact, Balakirev's early style seems to owe a great debt to Glinka's operatic compositions.

Mendelssohn, Fanny

(1805-1847). Felix's sister; received an excellent musical education at home with her brother, and also became a composer. She published four books of songs, a collection of part songs, and Lieder ohne Worte for piano, and is believed to have excercised considerable influence on her brother's composition.

Mendelssohn, Felix

(1809-1847). A German composer and conductor remembered mainly for his songlike melodies and his beautifully constructed compositions in a number of musical forms. He showed his great talent at an early age, giving his first piano recital at nine, and composing the overture to Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream at seventeen; his last three symphonies are in the standard repertory today (No. 3, the Scotch; No. 4, the Italian; and No. 5, the Reformation ); the concert overtures Die Hebriden ("The Hebrides," or "Fingal's Cave") and Meerestille und glückliche Fahrt ("Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage"); two piano concertos; Violin Concerto; oratorios St. Paul and Elijah; eight books of Lieder ohne Worte ("Songs Without Words"); dozens of songs; and numerous chamber works. As a conductor of Gawandhaus Orchestra, he helped found a conservatory in Leibzig; helped revive the music of Bach, conducting a performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion in 1829.

Nicolai, Otto

(1810-1849) German composer and conductor of Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and opera conductor in Berlin, best known for his charming opera, Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor ("The Merry Wives of Windsor"). It was written in the year of his death, and its mixture of delicate orchestral tone painting in the Mendelssohnian way, tunefuleness, and Italiantate skill in the ensembles has ensured its place in the repertory in Germany.

Schumann, Robert

(1810-1856). A German composer who is remembered chiefly for his songs and piano music, in which he proved to be one of the great masters of Romanticism. His music combines songlike melody with complex rhythms and, from time to time, strongly dramaticelements. Schumann himself felt his personality to be divided between a gentle, poetic nature and a strong, impulsive one. For musch of his life he lived in fear of a mental breakdown , and he finally died in a mental institution, at the age of forty-six.

Piave, Fransesco Maria

(1810-1876) Poet and librettist. Met Verdi in the early 1840s and wrote libretti for ten of Verdi's operas. A few are: Macbeth, Rigoletto, La traviata, and La forz del destino.

Wesley, Samuel Sebastian

(1810-1876). Composer and organist. He was the greatest composer in the English cathedral tradition between Purcell and Stanford; In the anthems, Wesley was free to choose his texts: he allowed himself much greater license than had been usual, putting together verses or even portions of verses from different parts of the Bible, mixing the Bible and prayer book translations of the psalms, sometimes incorporating parts of the liturgy or even a metrical psalms. This made possible of the defined shape, imagery, dramatic contrasts and climaxes, and led to avoid all 'dead' or perfunctory passages; His strong evangelical feeling for the biblical words was closely bound up with his musical sensibility. Because of this, his anthems convey a glowing sincerity that is seldom evident in the music of his immediate predecessors or of his successors; Wesley is not easy to place in the general context of European music. His cathedral music is very specifically English, and bears no reference to the situation on the Continent, where it has never been well known. His innovations, bold and indeed courageous in the Anglican context, are not very advanced compared with those of Berlioz, Schumann and Chopin. Yet he made string individuality; Works include Ascribe unto the Lord, Blessed be the God our Father, and Let us lift up our heart.

Chopin, Frederick

(1810-49) Polish pianist and composer who settled in Paris. Unlike Liszt, most of his performing career was in private salons rather than on the concert stage; he also supported himself through printing his works. He composed almost exclusively for his instrument: other than piano solos, his works include two piano concertos, a few other works for piano and orchestra, a piano trio, a cello sonata, and nineteen Polish songs. His solo piano works avoid the extramusical associations typical of Liszt, and most fall into neat musical categories: three sonatas, 24 Preludes (in all the major and minor keys, a conscious imitation of Bach), two sets of Etudes, 22 nocturnes, four ballades, three impromptus, a Fantaisie-Impromptu, and music derivative of dance (Mazurkas, Polonaises, and Austrian Waltzes). His style is characterized by an exploitation of the romantic piano sonority and a proclivity for obscuring tonal syntax by means of linear chromatic motion (ex.: Prelude No. 4, op. 28, E min.).

Liszt, Franz

(1811-1886). A Hungarian composer and pianist who was one of the great figures of 19th-century omantic music. Famous in his day as a masterful piano virtuoso and for the brilliant compositions he wrote for this instrument, Liszt today is also remembered as the inventor of the program symphony and symphonic poem. A love affair with a married countess resulted them live together, and later their daughter Cosima married R. Wagner. By settiling down in Wemar in 1848, he made the city a great cultural center (his Loengrin composition and Berlioz'sfirst performances in Germany). His early piano music was technically dazzling, with its scale passages in octaves and tenths, chains of trills and arpeggios, and chromatic chod changes, but later he became more interested in the piano's expressive qualities. Breaking with the forms of the classical period, such as the sonata, he wrote pieces in free form, with such titles as'Rhapsody," "Fantasia," 'Nocturne," "Elégie," and "Ballade."He foreshadowed the innovations of Wagner, and some think, perhaps even the atonal melodies and polytonal harmonies of the 20th century, in his use of cyclic structural device and his experiments with chromatic harmonies and uncnventional melodies; wrote dozens of piano transcriptions; in Weimar, he made a new orchestral form, symphonic poem: Les Préludes, Prometheus, Mazeppa and Die Hunnenschlacht ("The Battle of the Huns"); program symphonies: Faust Symphony and Dante Symphony. After eleven years at Weimar, he went to Rome, where he took religious orders and composed a number of large choral works, including the oratorios Die Legende der heiligen Elisabeth ('The Legend of St. Elizabeth"), Christus, and the Humgarian Coronation Mass.

Thalberg, Sigismond

(1812-1871). German or Austrian pianist and composer. From the age of 14 he appeared with great success as a salon pianist, and at 16 his first compositions were published. In 1836-37 he won considerable success and renown in Paris. Liszt returned from Switzerland to challenge Thalberg's position as the leading virtuoso in Paris, and wrote an article in the Revue et gazette musicale harshly criticizing Thalberg's compositions. This arose an animated controversy between Liszt and Fétis, who considered Thalberg the greatest living pianist. Berlioz joined on the side of Liszt. Later princess de Belgiojoso ended this tension by making them cooperate-composing each variation of a theme in turn. Thalberg toured as far as Brazil and Havana, and lived for several years in USA. He was the greatest virtuoso pianist in mid-19th century with Liszt. Schumann praised Thalberg's variations on Norma, but his compositions are of questionable value. théâtre lyrique: Founded in middle of the 19th century and thrived for about 2-20 years or so. Produced operas like Gounod's Faust and Romeo et Juliet. The term "lyric opera," though frequently used, does not indicate a distinct genre, though the operas given at the Théâtre lyrique were generally smaller and more intimate than grand opera.

Wagner, Richard

(1813-1883). Composer. Receptive to literary, philosophical and political as well as musical influences, he began as the author and composer of operas in the German Romantic manner, enlarged the expressive powers of the genre with Der fliegende Holländer, Tannhäuser and Lohengrin, and created a new synthesis of music and drama on the largest scale in his vast tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen, as well as in Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and Parsifal. The difficulty of staging these adequately prompted him to construct the theatre at Bayreuth that is still used for the presentation of his works under ideal conditions. His expressive recourses included an increased and more refined use of a greatly augmented orchestra, the training of a more dramatically powerful kind of singer, the extension of thematic and motivic development to assure a newly important, imaginative and structural role, and a widened range of chromatic harmony. He pursued his artistic aims with ruthless determination in his public and private life as well as in his many critical and theoretical writings. The most controversial figure of the 19th century, initiating and generating vigorous polemics, he is now accepted as one of the outstanding composers in the history of music, one whose works may be said to crown the musical achievements of German Romanticism.

Verdi, Giuseppe

(1813-1901). Italian composer. Several of his operas have from the time of their first performances remained in the international repertory in a sustained way unmatched by those of any other composer save Mozart and Wagner. From the start, he had the opera composer's most necessary gift, the ability to write melodies that communicate a character;s emotions and stir emotion in those who listen. During a long career, he acquired a command of instrumentation and of musical and dramatic form that enabled him to express, with ever-increasing subtlety and eloquence, his well-defined ideas about what an opera should be and do; composed well-known operas such as Nabucco, Rigoletto, Il trovatore, La traviata, Don Carlos, Aida, Otello, and Falstaff.

Bennett, William Sterndale

(1816-1875) English composer and virtuoso pianist who studied composition at the Royal Academy of Music. His first piano concerto aroused the interest of Mendelssohn. In 1849 he founded the Bach Society, which he conducted, giving the English premiere of the St. Matthew Passion. He composed piano concertos, symphonies, concert overtures, piano pieces, cantatas, and sacred music. His sacred cantata, The Woman of Samaria (Birmingham Festival, 1867) is typical of this genre in that it is deliberately written in a style simple enough for satisfactory performance by amateurs, with plain narrative recitative aternating with set pieces in simple diatonic style.

Gounod, Charles

(1818-1893) The best-remembered of the composers of opéra lyrique was Charles Gounod, a product of the Paris Conservatoire. He also wrote a great deal of church music, piano and instrumental ensemble music, and some 200 songs in various languages. His initial and greatest triumph was Faust first heard (with spoken dialogue) at the Théâtre lyrique in Paris in 1859. The declamatory singing in this composition is most satisfying. Faust and Mephistopheles,particularly, converse in a style that is faithful to natural speaking accents. The set pieces are tuneful, but perhaps a bit superficial with very simple, stereotyped harmonic language. While this piece seems to betray little of Berlioz's earlier work with the same material, Gounod's Romeo and Juliet offers more evidence for Gounod's earlier acquaintance withthis work.

Offenbach, Jacques

(1819-1880) French composer/conductor most known for his light, entertaining operettas. Began career as cellist in the orchestra of the Opéra-Comique (1840's) and was appointed conductor at the Théâtre Français in 1850. In 1855 he rented a small theater for performances of his own works. The theater became known as the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens and from then until 1867 he dominated the fashionable musical scene. He satirized politics, foibles, and epitomized the developing cosmopolitanism and moral licence in his operettas. Among his greatest sucesses are La belle Hélene, La vie Pariesenne, La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein, La Périchole, and the 1877 five-act opera Les contes d'Hoffmann.

Schumann, Clara

(1819-1896). She married Robert in 1840; she had made her debut as a pianist at the age of nine and four years later begun to tour Europe regularly. Except for the years during which she bore their seven children, she continued to tour regularly for more than fifty years. She alos taught piano, and she directed several music schools. Much of her time and energy were devoted to promoting her husband's music; she saw to it that his works were published and performed, and she played much of his piano and chamber music herself. She also played much of the music of Brahms, her lifelong friend. Her won compositions include a piano concerto, chamber works, including Piano Trio in G minor, numerous shorter piano works, and songs.

Franck, César

(1822-90) Belgian-born organist and composer who gathered a faithful group of students (including Duparc and Chausson) who campaigned for the cause of avant-garde music, creating a schism between them and the "reactionaries" led by Saint-Saëns. After hearing the Tristan Prelude in 1874, he converted to a strongly chromatic idiom, evident in his organ compositions and symphonic poem, Les Eolides. Despite this chromaticism, the tonal roots of his music remain clear. His most famous pieces are his later ones: the oratorio Les Béatitudes,(1879), the Piano Quintet (1879), the Symphonic Variations for piano and orchestra (1885), the Symphony in D minor (1888), the Violin Sonata in A (1886), and his single String Quartet (1889).

Smetana, Bedrich

(1824-1884). A Bohemian (Czech) composer who is remembered for his operas, symphoniec poems, and other instrumental and vocal works in which he used the traditional subjects and musical idioms of his country. His best-known work is the opera The Bartered Bride. Making a living out of conducting, he suddenly became deaf in 1874 and was forced to resign from the Prague Opera. He continued to compose, however, producing the best of his symphonic poems, a series of six works entitled Má Vlast ("My Country"), as well as his first string quartetm entitled From My Life (in the manner of program music), and others. Eventually he was confined to a mental institution, where he died a few months later.

Cornelius, Peter

(1824-74) Friend of Wagner. Composed two worthy dramatic works: Der Barbier von Bagdad (1858) and Der Cid (1865). Neither survived a few performances (it was difficult to outshine Wagner).

Bruckner, Anton

(1824-96) Austrian organist and composer who wrote many sacred works, nine numbered symphonies (the last is unfinished), and two earlier symphonies. His sacred music shows the influence of Mozart and of the Caecilian movement, which urged the emulation of older styles of church music, including Gregorian chant and sixteenth century polyphony, especially that of Palestrina. Bruckner often juxtaposed this older style with passages in more modern, late Romantic style, as in his Mass in E of 1866. Bruckner openly admired Wagner, dedicating his third symphony to him, and thus he unwittingly became a focal point in the Wagner-Brahms conflict. His symphonies are all in four movements, the first and last normally in extended sonata-allegro form. His scherzos often are influenced by upper Austrian folk music. Often the outer movements are thematically related. His first movements almost always grow out of "nothing," a soft indistinct harmonic or tremelo in the strings. His symphonies have a feeling of monumentality achieved through a slowing of usual musical processes, through great stretches of leisurely development and expansive sections of static harmony.

Hanslick, Eduard

(1825-1904) Progressive music critic in Vienna. Schumann invited him to Dresden, where he heard Tannhäuser, of which his positive review began his career as a critic. He later championed Brahms, and developed an antipathy towards Wagner, Liszt, and Berlioz. In retaliation, Wagner identified Hanslick with Beckmesser in Die Meistersinger. He wrote Vom Musikalisch-Schönen (On the Beautiful in Music), which described his anti-Wagnerian aesthetic.

Gottschalk, Louis Moreau

(1829-69) Virtuoso pianist and composer from New Orleans (he was half Creole) whose elaborations of Creole melodies first excited French audiences in 1844. His piano piece, The Last Hope (1855), was one of the most popular parlor pieces of the time.

Bülow, Hans von

(1830-1894) Pianist and conductor whose wife Cosima (daughter of Liszt) left him for Wagner in 1870. He studies piano with Wieck and Liszt. He was a supporter of the New German School of Wagner and Berlioz, conducting the premieres of Tristan (1865) and Die Meistersinger (1868). He also composed symphonic and piano pieces, and edited much piano music by other composers. (1830-1894). German conductor and pianist. At age of 9 he began studying with Friedrich Wieck. He met Liszt at Weimar in 1849. Writing in a democratic political journal Die Abendpost, he made himself a leading figure of the new German school. Impressed by his gifts, Wagner himself obtained some conducting experience for him in Zurich, and in St. Gall (1850-51). Liszt praised Bülow as one of the greatest 'musical organisms' to have come his way. He married Liszt's daughter Cosima in 1857 who eventually left him for Wagner in 1869; The essential quality of Bülow's playing was identified as 'passionate intellectuality' by Dann Reuther. Clara Schumann (whose playing he despised) found him too 'calculated'. Amy Fay called him 'a colossal artist'. Bülow premiered Tchaikovsky's first piano concerto in Boston in 1875. He had humor, and at the same time disdainful manner to audience: he liked to have two pianos on the stage at a recital to present his face or back to the public at whim; had superb technique in his age; devoted to Beethoven. Played last five sonatas in one concert, and played 9th symphony twice in an evening; introduced five-string basses, the Ritter, viola, and pedal timpani in the orchestra; insisted on standing-up and playing to the orchestra. His piano works are technically demanding, reflecting the manner of Liszt in their bravura and some of the thematic handling; made editions of keyboard works by Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Cramer, Domenico Scarlatti, Weber, and others.

Brahms, Johannes

(1833-97) German composer, who was praised glowingly by Schumann in the Neue Zeitschrift, thus pitting him against the "New German School" of Liszt and Wagner. His style tends to be more conservative and "classical" than that of many of his contemporaries, especially in terms of form. His music shows a preference for dense sonorities with many parallel sixths and thirds, frequent pedal points, "flat side" harmonies, and metric displacement. His works include four symphonies, a violin concerto, two piano concertos, a double concerto for violin and cello, string quartets, quintets, and sextets, piano trios, quartets, and a quintet, a trio with horn, a trio with clarinet, sonatas for solo piano, violin, cello, and clarinet, songs, chorale preludes for organ, and other orchestral and choral works (including his Ein Deutsches Requiem).

Cui, Cesar

(1835-1918) A Russian military engineer and composer of Lithuanian birth and French descent, now the least known of "The Five." He wrote six full-length operas and a number of shorter dramatic works. Though he wrote many articles in favor of Russian musical nationalism, his music shows very little influence from Russian folk music or subject matter. He also wrote short piano and chamber compositions.

Saint-Saens, Camille

(1835-1921). A French composer who is remembered for just a few of his hundreds of compositions. Of his dozen or so operas, only Smason et Dalila (1877) is part of the current repertory os most opera houses. Aosl well known are his instrumental suite, Le Carnival des animaux ("The Carnival of the Animals") in 1886; the symphonic poem Danse macabre ("Dance of Death"); and his Cello Concerto no. 1. He became very influential in the French musical world, by performing as a pianist and organist, teaching (among whom Gabriel Fauré), founding a national music society to encourage Freanch composers, conducting, and writing a number of books (most of them on music, but also two books of poems). His compositions are in the romantic tradition of Liszt and other 19th century composers. He was particularly skilled at orchestration, and his use of instruments often reveals a delightful sense of humor.

Balakirev, Mily

(1837-1910) Russian composer who organized and led "The Five." After meeting Glinka in 1855, he started to champion Russian music. He helped to establish the New School of Music, a rival to the St. Petersburg Conservatory. Despite his support of Russian music, his own compositions seem surprisingly untouched by Russian nationalist principles. He wrote mostly orchestral music (including two Overtures on Russian themes and the symphonic poem Tamara), songs, and a few piano works.

Bizet, Georges

(1838-1875) French pianist and compser of the well-known opera Carmen (1875), which was received with hostility during his lifetime, due to the earthiness of its subject. The heroine is a bold, seductive gypsy woman, and the music includes songs and dances imitative of Gypsy music, such as a seguidilla and the habanera; there are also elements of the suave style of opéra lyrique, as well as of Italian opera (the Toreador Song). His most important student composition, the Symphony in C, shows the influence of Gounod. He won the Prix de Rome in 1857. Other than operas, he wrote an overture, piano pieces, and songs.

Mussorgsky, Modest

(1839-81) Russian army officer, civil servant, and member of "The Five." Many of his works remain incomplete, due to his alcoholism and disordered life. His piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition, which was later orchestrated by Ravel, effectively shows his propensity for dramatic scenes and visual stimuli. He was influenced by "realism," which encouraged a direct and unadorned presentation of subjects from ordinary life, such as the Russian peasant. This theory led to several unfinished operas and to a number of songs, which are characterized by a severely naturalistic (thus syllabic) declamation that persisted in later songs. It was also to prove useful in parts of Boris Godunov, his only completed opera. It is in his songs that he developed his idiosyncratic harmonic style, which included frequent use of tonic pedals and unresolved dissonant sonorities. The libretto for Boris Godunov was constructed by Rimsky-Korsakov from Pushkin's play of that name and from a play by Karamzin. Like the operas of Rimsky-Korsakov, Boris Godunov is basically a loose assemblage of tableaux, which the composer connects musically through the use of specific melodic and harmonic motives associated with dramatic acts and persons.

Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Il'yich

(1840-1893). He stands outside the nationalist circle of composers around Balakirev. His formal conservatory training instilled in him Western-oriented attitudes and techniques, but his essential nature, as he always insisted, was Russian, both in his actual use of folksong and in his deep absorption in Russian life and ways of thought. His natural gifts, especially his genius for what he called the lyrical ideal, the beautiful, self-contained melody, give his music a permanent appeal; it was his hard-won but secure and professional technique, and his ability to use it for the expression of his emotional life, which enabled him to realize his potential more fully than any of his major Russian contemporaries; he had a period of High nationalism (1870-1874) - use of folksongs in larger works such as Romeo and Juliet..

Tausig, Carl

(1841-1871). Polish pianist and composer. He was brought to Liszt at Weimar by his father, a professional pianist and a pupil of Thalberg, when he was 14. Tausig quickly became Liszt's favorite. Tausig was the most gifted and most famous of the first generation of Liszt pupils. His manner of playing the piano its best was grand, impulsive and impassioned, yet no longer with a trace of eccentricity. His tone was superb, his touch exquisite, and his technical dexterity and endurance astonished even experts: Liszt said Tausig had 'fingers of steel'. His repertory was varied and extensive; he played by memory; He composed a few piano pieces such as Etudes de concert and Tarantelle. He arranged, transcribed and fingered many works including Wagner's Die Meistersinger. His Tägliche Studien, transposing chromatic finger exercises, posthumously revised and edited by Heinrich Ehrlich, remain invaluable.

Dvořák, Antonín

(1841-1904) Czech composer and violist/violinist. Due to the support of influential people such as Brahms and Hanslick, he achieved a considerable reputation relatively early, which was rare for a composer of a "peripheral" nation. He traveled to England and Russia, and spent three years in the U.S. His earliest style relies on the classical models from Beethoven and Schubert, and in general his work is of a conservative cast. He was sporadically influenced by Wagner, as is evident in a few of his early symphonies, such as the second, with patches of advanced Wagner-like orchestration. Dvořák was also strongly influenced by the folk music of his native Bohemia; this is evident in his use of the modal-sounding flat seventh in minor, drone accompaniment, and stark root-position sonorities. He wrote in a wide range of genres, but he made his mark most decisively in the traditional large instrumental genres: symphony, string quartet, and chamber compositions with piano. He also wrote piano pieces, concerti one for cello and one for violin), songs, an oratorio, cantate, and operas (Rusalka (1900) is the most famous).

Chabrier, Emmanuel

(1841-94) French composer of operas who adopted the Wagnerian manner, despite the dominance of the opéra lyrique in France. His Gwendoline (1886) has a prominent love duet often thought to be reminiscent of Tristan, and a general conflagration at the end recalls the Ring. Though in Gwendoline there is much Wagnerian chromaticism, Chabrier's style was more typically reminiscent of Debussy, with a coloristic use of augmented chords and the juxtaposition of root-position chords in nonfunctional successions.

Massenet, Jules

(1842-1912) French composer of highly popular operas that made him one of the richest musicians of his time. Hérodiade (1881), Manon(1884), Le Cid (1885), Werther (1892), and Thais (1894) show his gifts at their best, being works of charm and theatrical effictiveness. Entered Paris Conservatoire at age 9, specializing in piano. 11 years later won the Prix de Rome (largely on the recommendation of Berlioz). Became youngest member of the French Académie (at 37), eventually becoming its President. Taught in the Conservatoire and had a number of distinguished pupils, including Hahn, Koechlin, and Schmitt.

Boito, Arrigo

(1842-1918) Librettist and composer. His collaboration with Verdi led to Simon Boccanegra (1881), Otello (1887), and Falstaff (1893). In order to compress the action of Otello to suit the dramatic needs of opera, he cut the first act of Shakespeare's Othello.

Grieg, Edvard

(1843-1907) Norwegian nationalist composer, whose best works are his short piano pieces, songs, and incidental orchestral music to plays(including Ibsen's Peer Gynt, 1876). His handling of larger forms was less successful; longer pieces include a piano concerto in A minor, a piano sonata, three violin sonatas, a cello sonata, and a string quartet that apparently influenced Debussy in his own quartet. Grieg tends to write consistently in two and four-bar groups. His nationalism is most apparent in some of his vocal works, and some of his piano works, with their Norwegian folk elements of modal melody and harmony (Lydian raised fourth, Aeolian lowered seventh, etc.), drone basses, etc. His piano style is reminiscent of that of Chopin.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

(1844-1900) German philosopher. In his early years he was a friend of Wagner, although later he was to turn against him. Nervous disturbances and eye trouble forced him to move from place to place in a vain effort to improve his health until 1889, when he became hopelessly insane. He was not a systematic philosopher but rather a moralist who passionately rejected Western bourgeois civilization. He regarded Christian civilization as decadent, and in place of its "slave morality" he looked to the superman, the creator of a new heroic morality that would consciously affirm life and the life values. That superman would represent the highest passion and creativity and would live at a level of experience beyond the conventional standards of good and evil. His creative "will to power" would set him off from "the herd" of inferior humanity. His thought had widespread influence but was of particular importance in Germany, where a perversian of his thought lended philosophical justification for the doctrines of Nazism. Among his most famous works are The Birth of Tragedy, Thus Spake Zarathustra, and Beyond Good and Evil.

Rimsky-Korsakov, Nikolay

(1844-1908) Russian naval officer and youngest member of "The Five." Though he had very little professional training in music, he became professor of composition at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. His vivid orchestral colors are especially evident in his best known works: Capriccio Espagnol, the symphonic suite Scheherazade, and the Russian Easter Festival Overture. His principle melodic lines tend to be cast in bold relief with coloristic but unobtrusive accompaniment; this technique is outlined in his treatise on orchestration, compiled from 1871 until his death. He wrote a total of fifteen operas, many of which include subjects of fantasy and enchantment, such as Snow Maiden, after a poem on Slavonic mythology, and Sadko, which draws on Russian legend. The structure of his operas tends to be based on series of static tableaux rather than goal-directed drama; crowd scenes are prominent. His musical style is varied, ranging from stark, realistic declamation to ornate, post-Wagnerian chromaticism of Kashchei the Immortal (1901).

Sarasate, Pablo de

(1844-1908). A Spanish violinist and composer who is remembered mainly for his virtuoso playing. Numerous composers wrote violin compositions especially for him, among them Édouard Lalo (Symphonie espanole ) and Max Bruch (Schottische Fantasie and Violin Concerto no. 2). Most of Sarasate's own compositions are of slight quality, but one of them, Zigeunerweisen ("Gypsy Melody"), has remained quite popular.

Fauré, Gabriel

(1845-1924) The most individual voice among the fin de siècle French composers was that of Gabriel Fauré. Though at students and lifelong associate of Saint-Saëns, Fauré's personal style has little to do with either the emergent French classicism or the chromatic idiom of Wagner and Franck. Some piano works betray a debt to Chopin but with a strong individual bent but his real proving ground was the French song or melodie. His songs chronicle a growing sensitivity to text-music relationships and an increasingly individual harmonic style which strains the limits of tonal syntax. Root-motion by thirds, seventh and ninth chords in new contexts, and whole tone sounds all appear in the melodies of Fauré.

Fauré, Gabriel

(1845-1924). A French composer and teacher; his music represents a transition from music represents a transition from 19th-century romanticism to the idioms of the 20th century. For many years a church organist and for fifteen years director of the Paris Conservatory, Fauré taught such outstanding musicians as Ravel, Enesco, Florent Schmitt, and Nadia Boulanger. His own compositions are noted for a highly original treatment of harmony, careful use of counterpoint, and , in his songs, the meticulous fitting of words to music. Although he made free use of dissonance, Fauré never abandoned tonality. His best-known songs, numerous piano pieces (preludes, nocturnes, barcaroles, impromptus), and a large amount of chamber music, of which the best examples are two quartets for piano and strings, two piano quintets, and a string quartet composed shortly before his death.

Parry, Hubert

(1848-1918) English composer and teacher. His Piano Concerto in F# minor brough him public attention in 1878. He wrote a series of oratorios, Judith, Job, and King Saul. The 1880s and 90s were his most productive years. He wrote four symphonies, Smphonic Variations, incidental music, an opera (Guinevere), and many choral works. He taught at the Royal College of Music from its opening and was its second director. He published Studies of the Great Composers, the widely read The Art of Music (2nd edition titled: The Evolution of Art Music), Style in Musical Art, and more.

d'Indy, Vincent

(1851-1931) Fr. composer who conducted at Lamoureux with Chabrier. Saunch Wagnerian admirer and wrote the libretti for his own operas Fervaal and L'Etranger. Text setting in Fervaal is almost completely syllabic and the music is continuous throughout, though there is some distinction between recitative and arioso. D'Indy's harmonic language mixes "impressionistic-sounding" juxtaposed diatonic chords with roots a tritone apart, augmented triads, and altered-seventh sonorities with Wagnerian chromaticism, symptomatic of French music at the fin de siècle.

Stanford, Charles

(1852- 1924). British composer, teacher and conductor. His name is linked with those of Parry, Parratt and Elgar in referring to the late 19th-century renaissance in English music. It is arguable both that Stanford made the greatest contribution to this renaissance, and that the labels of 'Victorian' and 'Edwardian' apply less to his music than to that of the others. His heritage of Irish folklore, folk music and mysticism was latent beneath the training and experience he gained abroad; it saved hom from that insularity of outlook which had pervaded English music since Handel's time. This outward-looking characteristic was fostered by his friendship and meetings with such leading figures as Brahms, Joachim, von Bülow and Saint-Saëns, and linked with his encyclopedic lnowledge of the whole field of musical literature, past and present. His contacts with the leading European musicians are attested by the collection of 177 letters and papers in his 'Autograph book'. His achievements and influence were prodigious; they may be summarized under four headings. First, he swept away the empty convertions and complacencies which had debased Ebglish church music since Purcell. Second, he set a new standard in choral music with his oratorios and cantatas, which provided an incentive for amateurs and professionals alike at every major British festival: The Revenge, the Stabat mater, Songs of the Sea and sonfs of the Fleet. Third, in his partsongs, and still more in his solo songs with piano, he reached near perfection both in melodic invention and in capturing the mood of the poem; Plunket Greene (1921). The fourth was the most powerful influence on Britsih music and musicians, that of the paramount teacher of composition. The memorial tributes of 16 of his pupils provide not only a balanced assessment of Stanford the teacher, but also a revealin charcter study. His tuition benefited almost every Tritish composer from Charles Wood to Lambert. The list includes Vaughan Williams, Holit, Coleridge-Taylor, Boughton, Ireland, Bridge, Butterworth, Bliss, Howells, Benjamin and Moeran, to quote only a few of the best-known names; He had a greatest faith in the value of opera than had most of his countryman at the time: Shamus O'Brien.

Humperdink, Engelbert

(1854-1921) His Hänsel und Gretel (1893), with its mix of innocent melody and Wagnerian orchestral textures, was the only opera other than those of Wagner that strongly appealed to the German public before the turn of the century. Humperdinck was for a time an assistant of Wagner's at Bayreuth.

Janáˆcek, Leos

(1854-1928). A Moravian (Czechoslovakian ) composer and teacher whose music ranks with the finest produced in his country, particularly works he wrote after about 1900. He became very interested in folk music. From his studies of folk song he derived a complex theory of harmony, which he applied in his own works. Also he adopted the characteristic intervals and scales of Slavic folk music, as well as the device of insistent melodic repetition, which he used with dramatic effect in his own work, especially in his operas. Among the best of Janácek's compositions are the operas Jenufa, Kata Kabanová, The Cunning Little Vixen, and From the House of the Dead, Slavonic Mass, Concertino for piano and chamber orchestra, and numerous chamber works and folk song arrangements. (1854-1928) Moravian composer. Like Bartok and Kodaly, he collected the folksongs of his country, Northern Moravia; he became an important authority on folk music, publishing a great many editions and collections of folk tunes and writings on the subject. He composed several operas, the most famous of which is Jenufa (1904). He also composed symphonic works, chamber music (including two string quartets and a violin sonata), and works for male chorus. His musical influences include Moravian folk songs, the "speech-melody" of Mussorgsky, and music of the French impressionists.

Shaw, George Bernard

(1856-1950). Irish dramatist, novelist, critic and polymath. His collected writings on music stand alone in their mastery of English and compulsive readavility. He made many foes, of any on the ground that to him poor performance was a personal insult to be treated accordingly, but an exact knowledge of the law of libel earned for his pen a subjective licence without parallel in music criticism. Most of his judgments have stood the test of passing years. He claimed he had learnt force of assertion from Handel, and from Mozart the ability to say important things conversationally: 'Don Giovanni' was his nickname in the early London days, and Mozart's opera haunted his work from the short story of 1887, Don Giovanni Explains, to Man and Superman of 1901-3.

Elgar, Edward

(1857-1934) The first strong native-English composer to appear on the scene since the early 18th century. His only major composition written in the 19th century was the Enigma Variations (1899). Some of Elgar's orchestral textures are remeniscent of Brahms, but his harmonic language comes closer to mature Wagnerian style.

Elgar, Edward

(1857-1934). An English composer; the first English-born composer of international importance since the death of Purcell in 1695. Elgar's most successful works are his Pomp and Circumstance marches, the oratorio The Dream of Gerontius, the Variations in an Original Theme (or Enigma Variations), and his Cello Concerto. His music in general follows the forms and harmonic traditions of the 19th-century romantic composers, which he used with technical skill and a fine gift for melody.

Leoncavallo, Ruggiero

(1858-1919) Italian composer of operas in the verismo style. He wrote libretto and music for I pagliacci, (Milan, 1892, Toscanini conducting). The music for this opera is characterized by rich harmonic language, with many V7 and o7 chords, and a continuous flow, blurring the lines of recitative and arioso.

Puccini, Giaccomo

(1858-1924) A performance of Verdi's Aida in 1876 inspired him to be an opera composer. Studied with Bazzini and Ponchielli. La bohéme, first produced by Toscanini was not immediatly successful. His first famous opera was Tosca. Others are Madame Butterfly, andTurandotte (completed by Franco Alfano). His style is characterized by intense lyricism and theatrical flair. Tosca is a good example of Italian verismo, or realism. Verism focuses on real life situations.

Wolf, Hugo

(1860-1903). Austrian composer. He intensified the expressive vocabulary of the lied to a pitch never since surpassed. By his musical sensitivity to poetic values and meanings, which he embodied in each separate aspect of song - vocal declamation, keyboard technique, harmonic nuance, etc. - he was able, like Schubert before him, to condense the dramatic intensity of opera into the song form; The genres of his compositions are songs published and many unpublished, operas, choral works with and without accompaniments, orchestral, chamber, and piano music. He also had some critical writings.

MacDowell

(1860-1908) An American composer who lived and studied for ten years in Germany. Among his best known works are the Second Piano Concerto, in D minor, and the last piano sonata (the Keltic, dedicated to Grieg). His music tends to include titles or poems which suggest musical moods and pictures, somewhat reminiscent of Grieg; MacDowell's general style is similar to that of Grieg. His compositions include songs, choruses, symphonic poems, orchestral suites, piano pieces and studies, four piano sonatas, and two piano concertos.

Albeniz, Isaac

(1860-1909) Spanish composer and pianist. He studied in the Americas, Great Britain, and Leipzig, as well as Madrid. He studied piano with Liszt and composition with Dukas and d'Indy. In 1891 he started a lucrative operatic collaboration with a London banker in 1891; they produced four operas together. His best-known works are for the piano, and they often evoke Spanish scenes through the use of melodic and rhythmic gestures derived from Spanish folklore. Other works include several orchestral works, a piano concerto, and songs with texts in Spanish, Italian, French, and English.

Mahler, Gustav

(1860-1911) Austrian composer and conductor. His 10 symphonies are among the finest monuments to the declining years of the Austro-German domination of European music and adumbrate developments which were to revolutionize the Viennese tradition in the works of Berg, Schoenberg, and Webern. In four of the symphonies he used the human voice and achieved a synthesis of song and symphonic form which, though not unique, has remained inimitable. He was a great conductor, especially of opera, his decade as director of the Vienna Court Opera being regarded as the zenith of that house's achievement.

Mahler, Gustav

(1860-1911) Austrian composer and conductor. In 1897, he became music director of the Vienna Court Opera, and brought the company to new heights. He can be seen as the last major link in the chain of Austro-German symphonic composers. He extended trends in the development of the symphony, including a tendency toward greater length, a lyricism from Schubert and Bruckner, and the inclusion of voices in his second, third, and fourth symphonies (in the tradition of Beethoven's Ninth). He tended toward constant variation in his music, continuously evolving new material out of old. His music tends to avoid accompanimental "filler" in favor of an essentially polyphonic texture, influenced by Bach. His harmonic language is relatively conservative, but tonally, his music is more exceptional: complete works, and even individual movements, no longer necessarily define a single key, but explore a range of related and interconnected regions, often closing in a different key from the one in which they began. His symphonies are also pervaded by music of a popular, even "vulgar" quality, as is evident in his first Symphony, with its inclusion of Frère Jacque in minor and Klesmer music. His music is marked by a high degree of disjunction and juxtaposition. Though he wrote no chamber music or operas (he did complete Weber's sketches for the comic opera Die Drei Pintos), his works included Nine finished Symphonies, one unfinished symphony, lieder, the cantata Das klagende Lied, the songs with orchestral accompaniment Das Lied von der Erde, and some settings of poems from Des Knaben Wunderhorn.

Debussy, Claude

(1862-1918). A French composer who had great influence on the development of 20th-century music; the founder and main representative of the style called Impressionism. He began his musical studies on the piano, for which he later composed some of his best works; in 1884 won the Prix de Rome with his cantataL'Enfant prodigue ("The Prodigal Son"); interested in the works of impressionist painters and, even more, in the poetry of Paul Verlaine, Pierre Louÿs, and Stéphane Mallarmé. This led Debussy to a completely new style of music, first exemplified in his famous Prélude a l'aprés-midi d'un faune ("Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun"), after a poem by Mallarmé. In this work Debussy tried to create a kind of music based on a single uninterrupted theme rather than on shorter, more conventional themes or motifs (melodic figures). In such music, the evocation of mood, atmosphere, and color are all-important. Debussy achieved quite subtle effects by means of various technical devices, including careful choice of instruments for their particular tone color, and the use of an Oriental five-tone scale, the whole-tone scale, dissonant harmonies, parallel chords, and unusual shifting harmonies; His notable works are such as Nocturnes, La Mer, and Images (includes Ibéria ), a string quartet, the opera Pelléas et Mélisande, more than fifty songs, and piano music: Estampes, Images, Children's Corner, two books of Préludes, two books of Études, and Suite bergamasque , which includes the famous Clair de lune ("Moonlight").

Delius, Frederick

(1862-1934). An English composer. His music combines features of both romanticism and impressionism, as well as making use of native English materials. His best works are short pieces portraying the English countryside, such as his On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring and The Walk to the Paradise Garden (from his opera A Village Romeo and Juliet). He also adapted various folk elements to his music, as in Appalachia (he lived in the US for a year), Brigg Fair, and North Country Sketches. Although the forms he used were those of the romantic period, Delius employed a number of devices made popular by the impressionists, notably dissonant harmonies and the whole-tone scale.

Mascagni, Pietro

(1863-1945) Italian composer and competent conductor of orchestral music as well as opera. When Toscanini resigned from La Scala as a protest against Fascism, Mascagni took over certain of his duties. Most famous for his one-act opera, Cavalleria rusticana (1888). Possessed genuine flair for popular melody approaching Italian folk-song. Wrote with rich orchestral sounds, and real (as opposed to intellectually observed) passion. His opera Iris (1899) was his second and only other real success. It is a piece with a Japanese setting, which exploits exoticism several years before Puccini's Madama Butterfly.

Nielsen, Carl

(1865-1931) Danish composer and contemporary of Sibelius. Like Sibelius, he built his work firmly upon the foundation of the 19th c. symphonic tradition, renouncing the innovations introduced by other composers. His six symphonies are true to established classical formal categories, with triadic models supporting a traditional tonal structure. His music generally avoids excessive chromaticism, favoring lightness and textural transparency, which creates an almost "Classical" character quite different from the earlier Russian and German symphonists, and from Sibelius. He also composed two operas, concertos for violin, flute, and clarinet, and chamber works, including a woodwind quintet.

Sibelius, Jean

(1865-1957) A Finnish composer working during the period of Finland's increasing sense of national status and separation from Russia. Most of Sibelius's early works are symphonic in construction and are all based on programmatic conceptions inspired by Finnish national literature. After these early works, the seven symphonies of Sibelius dominated the remainder of his creative life. Sibelius remarked that he admired the severity of style and profound logic linking the motives of a symphony (unlike Mahler's vision of symphony-as-world). Sibelius uses no actual folk melodies in his music, though it still retains a national character due to the dark orchestral colors, and use of modal scales.

Sibelius, Jean

(1865-1957). A Finnish composer who was his country's leading nationalist composer. Of his works, the best known are the long ones, principally his seven symphonies and his symphonic poems. He also wrote a great many piano works and songs. Sibelius's music is largely traditional in the treatment of melody and harmony. Although he used folk elements, he never actually quoted folk songs. Among his most popular works are his Symphony no. 2, the symphnic poems The Swan of Thonela, En Saga, Karelia, and Finlandia, the string quartet entitled Voces intimae, and a Violin Concerto. All these were written before 1930; for the last thirty years of his life Sibelius produced little music of note.

Satie, Erik

(1866-1925) The French composer who most set the tone for the rejection of German Romanticism in France. He attended the Paris Conservatory but achieved little in his studies. His harmonic language (evident in the Gymnopédies for Piano) is diantonic but not tonally-directed and probably derived from Chabrier and Fauré. He joined the French branch of the Rosicrucian Brotherhood, a mystical religious group based on the secret societies of the Middle Ages. He wrote a number of compositions for this group. Many of Satie's scores have humorous titles or humorous and engimatic verbal indications ("Slow down politely"). His most famous work was the multi-media production of Parade he put on with Jean Cocteau.

Grenados, Enrique

(1867-1916). A Spanish composer and pianist, remembered mainly for his piano compositions, which reflect the traditional rhythms and melodies of his native land. His finest work is a suite for piano, Goyescas.

Pfitzner, Hans

(1869-1949) A German composer famous in his own country, but not outside of it. His compositions never pass beyond the limits of late Romantic tonal and harmonic practice. His best-known work is the opera Palestrina (1915) about an apocryphal event in Palestrina's life. Pfitzner was a staunch conservative who defended the principles of Romantic music (expression and feeling) vs. what he saw as the calculating and intellectual music of the 20th century. His most important polemic was the pamphlet Futuristengefahr (danger of the Futurists) written in 1917 as a rebuttal to Busoni's New Esthetic of Music.

Scriabin, Alexander

(1872-1915). A Russian composer who is remembered for piano music and orchestral works in which his novel harmonies foreshadowed the revolutionary atonality of Schoenberg. Although Scriabin's works created a sensation when they were first played, for a time they were seldom performed. Scriabin was a virtuoso pianist, and his earlier works, particularly short piano pieces (mazurkas, impromptus, études), are in the tradition of Chopin. Gradually he became more experimental, especially in longer works, among them his three symphonies, piano concerto, and two long orchestral compositions, Poem of Ecstasy and Prometheus-The Poem of Fire. In the last, he based the harmony on a single chord, C-F#-Bb-E-A-D, which is characteristic of his later works in that it proceeded by fourths instead of the conventional thirds (triadic harmony). This chord is sometimes called the mystic chord. In his emphasis on dissonance and his lack of reference to a single tonal center (key), Scriabin was proceeding 20th-century composers after Schoenberg.

Skryabin, Alexander

(1872-1915)The Russian composer who most consequentially carried out the tradition of late-ninettenth-century Russian musical experimentation. Skryabin, unlike the other experimentalists, was not a nationalist. He received a conservative education at the Moscow Conservatory. Most of his early works were for piano, and, by the turn of the century they seem to have included tonal closure merely as a convention. Skryabin's final break with tonality occurred with Prometheus, an extended orchestral work. Along with Prometheus, a number of the later piano sonatas and short piano pieces are all based on the "mystic chord." Characteristic of this music is the fact that melody and harmony are derived from the same source. In the words of the composer "Melody is dissolved harmony; harmony is vertically compressed melody."

Vaughan-Williams, Ralph

(1872-1958) The foremost English composer in the first half of the 20thcentury. He was motivated by national and cosmopolitan sources (English folksong, hymnody, and English literature - as well as Bach, Handel, Debussy, and Ravel). He is widely known for his composition of new hymns, one being Sine nomine for the hymn For All the Saints. Other important works are the Sea Symphony (with voices), Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis, the London Symphony, the Pastoral Symphony, and his many songs.

Reger, Max

(1873-1916) His first works were chamber music, lieder, and piano pieces. He was particulary successful with his organ works, however, and was highly regarded as an organist. Although he was Catholic, he worked on Lutheran chorales in the Bach tradition. Among his later works is his best-known orchestral pieces, Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Mozart, which combines both progressive and conservative elements, making it hard to place in a musical niche. Reger and Hans Pfitzner are the two primary Post-Romantic German composers. His harmony is mostly a post-Wagnerian style of extreme chromaticism, but his large works are confined to the bounds of Baroque and Classical strict forms.

von Hoffmannsthal, Hugo

(1874-1929) Viennese poet, dramatist, and librettist. He wrote libretti for a number of Richard Strauss's works, including: Elektra (1909), Der Rosenkavalier (1909-10), Ariadne auf Naxos (1912), et al.

Holst, Gustav

(1874-1934). A English composer and teacher; his works reflect both his interest in occult Asian subjects (he learned Sanskrit in order to read the Hindu scriptures) and in early English music. His most important compositions are the orchestral suite The Planets, St. Paul's Suite for string orchestra, and Choral Fantasie.

Ives, Charles

(1874-1954). An American composer; studied at Yale; won the 1947 Pulitzer Prize in the 3rd Symphony; combinin a true expression of American tradsition with daring experiments; on the one hand he quoted American hymns, popular songs , dance tunes, and marches, emplyong mainly of the conventional tonal forms of 19th century, in the other, he used conflicting hythms and keys at the same time (polyrhythm and polytonality), dissonant harmonies, tone clusters, microtones, and optional voice-partsl the best known compositions include his four symphonies, Concerd Sonata for piano, Three Places on New England for orchestra, andThe Unanswered Question for a chamber ensembele. (1874-1954) American composer, organist, and insurance salesman. He admired the music of Bach, and had a strong appreciation of American vernacular musics. At Yale, he studies with Horatio Parker. Ives explored atonality and serial procedures, polymetric and polyrhythmic constructions, experiments with quarter-tones, use of space as an important compositional element, and layered polyphony. His collage techniques later influenced Berio and others. He frequently quoted American tunes, such as hymn tunes, marches, and songs of Stephen Foster. His works include several symphonies, a collection of 114 Songs, and the Concord Sonata. His subject matter was often a nostalgic reflection on the New England of his childhood.

Ravel, Maurice

(1875-1937) Ravel once stated that his aim as a composer was to achieve technical perfection. This is surely audible in his stereotypically French attention to clarity and detail. Man y of his works feature exotic (Schérézade, Rapsodie espagnole), jazz (Violin Sonata, Piano Concerto in G) and antiquated (Tombeau de Couperin, La Valse) musical styles, forms, and gestures. He was a virtuoso orchestrator (Pictures at an Exhibition, Bolero). His music owes a great deal to Debussy in its use of freely employed nan-harmonic tones and richly extended triadic harmonies, though his style is more firmly rooted in traditional functional tonality. Ravel was more an "updater" than an innovater. He was out of phase with current trends (too late for traditional tonality, too early for neo-classicism) and prefered to polish rather than create anew.

Falla, Manuel de

(1876-1946). The foremost Spanish composer of this time. He is particularly known for his use of traditional Spanish music, much of it very old, in his own music. His first great success was the opera La Vida breve ("Life is Short"), which won the prize in a contest held in Madrid in 1905. Beginning in 1915, de Falla began his most productive years with the ballet El Amor brujo ("Love, the Sorcere") and a work for piano and orchestra, Noches en los jardines de Espana ("Night in the Gardens of Spain"); both combine Spanish folk elements with some of the methods of the French impressionist composers. Before 1915, de Falla had used the folk music and highly colorful rhythms of the province of Andalusia, elements of which are found in the highly successful ballet, El Sombrero de tred picos ("The Three-cornered Hat"). His El Retablo de Maese Pedro ("Master Pedro's Puppet Show"), an opera for marionettes, reflects the more formal and elegant elements of the folk music of Castile. In Siete Canciones popilares espanolas ("Seven Popular Spanish Songs," 1914), he used the actual folk melodies as well as the ryhthms and style of folk music.

Kodaly, Zoltan

(1882-1967) Hungarian composer, music educator, and ethnomusicologist (together with Bartok, he compiled, organized, and edited the vast body of Hungarian folk song). His works include the opera Hary Janos (1926), as well as other vocal and instrumental works, including a sonata for solo cello. He wrote numerous singing and reading exercises, and served as honorary president of the International Society for Music Education.

Malipiero, Gian Francesco

(1882-1973) Italian composer and musicologist. He was influenced by early Baroque Italian composers, and even Gregorian chant; he reacted against 19th-century Italian opera. In his music, the harmony is often triadic in foundation, but traditional functions are avoided in favor of a sort of neo-modality. The music's freely developing formal character results from the succession of clearly differentiated, essentially lyrical musical segments. His output includes 11 symphonies, 6 piano concertos, and a large number of stage works (including over 30 operas), as well as chamber and piano music.

Webern, Anton

(1883-1945) One of Schoenberg's disciples. Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern are the second Viennese school and the first exponents of twelve-tone music. His Six Pieces for orchestra use Klangfarbenmelodie, where a motif or phrase is distributed among several instruments. His style is economic and concentrated, often with mitative counterpoint (often strict canon). Textures are very thin, rhythms are complex, and the sound rarely rises above a forte. His instrumentation is often unusual. Often movements are very short as in Six Bagatelles for string quartet and Five Pieces for Orchestra. The language is very compressed, demanding a lot of attention from a listener.

Hauer, Josef Matthias

(1883-1959). Austrian composer and theorist. The central concept of his theory was "Melos," to which "Rhythmus" functioned as a counter-concept; Melos was associated with atonal music and Rhythmus with tonal music. For him Melos was the only true, objectively immanent and fundamental law of music. He detested all are that expressed ideas, programs of feelings, demanding a purely spiritual, supersensual music composed according to impersonal rules. On a definite arrangement of the 12 pitch classes: the "Constellation," or "Grundgestalt" ("basic shape"); unordered pair of hexachords. From 1921, he was extraordinarily productive by writing works of 12-note notation of his own devising. Hauer's insistence on his priority in the discovery of 12-tone composition developed theoretically in the Deutung des Melos (1923), vom Melos zur Pauke (1925) and Zwölftontechnik (1926).

Varese, Edgard

(1883-1965) A pioneer of new music, he explored new musical sound. He was the first composer to exploit percussion and raise rhythm to an equal plan with pitch. His most famous piece for percussion ensemble is Ionisations.

Villa-Lobos, Heitor

(1887-1959) Brazilian composer. Represents nationalism in Latin America. His best known works are the 14 Choros a series of compositions for various vocal and instrumental combination. The pieces use Brazilian rhythms and sonorities. Other important works are the Nonet, the Rudepoema for piano (dedicated to Rubinstein) and Momoprecoce for piano and orchestra.

Prokofiev, Sergei

(1891-1953) Born to musical parents, Prokofiev graduated from the St.l Petersburg Conservatory in both composition and piano. His style is primarily anit-Romantic and anti-emotional. His Classical Symphony, meant to evoke the style of Haydn, betrays his sympathy for Neo-classicism. In 1918, Prokofiev left Russia to settle in Paris. He did not resettle in Russia until 1936. After this time he succumbed to Party pressure and towed the party line of the communsit regime. Though biographers have attempted to demonstrate that Prokofiev was anti-Party, these attempts have not been as successful as with Shostakovich. Prokofiev wrote a great deal of music for the piano, the orchestra (seven symphonies, two violin concerti, three piano concerti), the ballet (Romeo and Juliet, Love of Three Oranges), and films (Lieutenant Kijé).

Honegger, Arthur

(1892-1955). A Swiss composer who lived mostly in France and became a member of an influential group called Les Six. One of Honegger's first great successes was Pacific 231 (1924), a tonal portrayal of a locomotive, which audiences hailed as a perfect picture of the modern machine age. Honegger, however, abandoned this type of realistic music soon afterward. A master of choral composition, he returned to the style of an earlier work, the oratorio Le roi David ("King David," 1921), producing such works as the dramatic oratorio Jeanne d'Arc au bucher ("Joan of Arc at the Stake"). His music is noted for its regular highly accented rhythms and effective use of counterpoint.

Milhaud, Darius

(1892-1974) French composer, member of Les Six. Collaborated with Satie on the notorious Musique d'ameublement. His collaborations with Cocteau included Le boeuf sur le toit (1919). His ballet score, La Création du monde (1923) was one of the first concert works significantly influenced by American jazz. His somewhat irreverent attitude toward composition found expression in such works as his three so-called "minute operas," light-hearted dramatic works which each last only ten minutes. In his piano suite Saudades do Brasil (1921), he used polytonality, a simultaneous combination of two or more keys. His works include 15 operas, 17 ballets, 13 symphonies, 18 string quartets, numerous orchestral scores (including over 20 concertos), chamber works, songs, choral music, and incidental music for film, stage, and radio. minimalism: basically an American style based oon highly repetitive use of the simplest compositional means. Emphasis is on very small changes from the literal repetition. Philip Glass.

Hindemith, Paul

(1895-1963). A German composer who became one of the outstanding musical figures of the first half of the 20th century. He left Germany for the US during the 1940s and later became a United States citizen. He developed various styles in more than forty years as a composer. His early works, such as Suite 1922 for piano, reflect his rebellion against the 19th-century romantic tradition, expressed mainly in his use of dissonant harmonies. Gradually he began to adopt elements of the music of earlier periods, particularly the counterpoint of the baroque and the polyphony of the Renaissance. Active as a teacher and theorist, Hindemith was also an excellent violist, and he began to write for older instruments (such as the viola d'amore) and to perform in and direct presentations of early music. At the same time he formed new views concerning the composer's place in society, coming to believe that music should be directed to the people who listen to it and perform it, not just to composers and professional musician. He became a leading advocates of Gebrauchsmusik, and during the 1920s and 1930s he wrote many works for soloists and small ensembles to be performed by amateurs and students. Among these are sonatas; chamber works, a children's opera Wir baueb eine Stadt. His major works include the operas Cardillac, Mathis der Maler, and Die Harmonie der Welt, a symphony based on Mathis der Maler; Ludus Tonalis, a set of 12 fugues for piano; also wrote an imp. 2-vol. book on composition, Unterweisung im Tonsazt ("The raft of Musical Composition").

Orff, Karl

(1895-1982) German composer and music educator. Unlike many other composers under the Nazi regime, he was somewhat successful in fashioning a style that was simultaneously simple enough to please the authorities, and nevertheless clearly individual and in significant respects original. His scenic cantata Carmina burana (1937), a setting of somewhat ribald medieval Latin and German songs, represented the first emergence of his characteristic style; in it, simple syllabic settings are projected through elemental chant-like melodic figures, repeated incessantly to the percussive accompaniment of static, block-like triadic figures. His works after Carmina burana are mostly for the stage, with dramatic content presented in detached and objective, rather than personal and psychological, terms. In his later theater works, everything is geared to a highly stylized rhythmic projection of the text. His educational work with children led him to develop special, easily playable instruments, and a set of graded materials, (including exercises, folk tunes, and dances), published under the title Orff-Schulwerk.

Hanson, Howard

(1896-1981). American composer, teacher and conductor of Swedish ancestry. In 1924, appointed director of the Eastman School till 1964; developed it in one of the finest university conservatories in the America by broadening the curriculum, orchestra, and teachers; conducting début in 1924; a neo- Romantic composer-cited Sibelius and Grieg as powerful influences on his lyrical and harmonic style, and Respighi on orchestration; structural unity reflects Palestrina and Handel; Lux aeterna - quoted from Gregorian chant; features rhythmic vitality and tonal richness, gaiety and humor.

Sessions, Roger

(1896-1985) Born in Brooklyn, he graduatedfrom Harvard at ninetten and then studied at Yale. The largest influence on the young Sessions, however, was the Swiss Jewsih composer, Ernest Bloch. Sessions studied and worked with Bloch in the early 20s at the Cleveland Institute of Music. He then went on to an eight-year residency in Italy and Germany. He later returned to the U.S. and taught composition at a number of institutions. Many of his students were very important copmosers (Babbitt, Del Tredici). Sessions' musical output is small but his works are quite substantial in terms of both length and content. His music started out Neo-Classical in focus (somewhat like Copland), but moved away from Stravinsky and more towards Schoenberg. Much of his music is very expressive and personal in nature (not a Neo-classic trait!). Sessions felt that music should not be popular in nature and moved toward ever-increaing complexity in his works, but his style remained the same. Even his first twelve-tone work (Sonata for Unaccompanied Violin) remains its expressive quality. Sessions is the best symphonist produced by America and many of his works (though complex, difficult, and not often performed) trace a direct line back to 19th-century German Romanticism.

Gershwin, George

(1898-1937). An American composer; the first to succeed in combining American popular and serious music. Gershwin's earliest success was the immensely popular song "Swanee," which he wrote at the age of nineteen. His first important serious composition was Rhapsody in Blue for piano and jazz orchestra, first performed (with the composer as soloist) in 1924. Gershwin wrote musical comedies and popular songs, as well as serious concert pieces. To his popular music he brought the craftsmanship of a trained musician; to his serious music he brought elements from ragtime, jazz, the black tradition of spirituals and blues, and the Latin American dance rhythms so popular during the 1920s and 1930s. His best-known works are the symphonic poem An American in Paris, the Concerto in F for piano, the folk opera Porgy and Bess, and the musical comedies Lady Be Good, Strike Up the Band, Funny Face, Girl Crazy, and Of Thee I Sing.

Harris, Roy

(1898-1979). An American composer whose music is noted for its skillful use of counterpoint. Harris employed traditional tonal material but avoided the use of key signatures; in effect, he wrote in a key without saying so. Sometimes his themes are based on American folk songs, although the tunes are usually no longer recognizable. The most successful symphony of his is No. 3 (1938). His works also include many chamber compositions, several ballets, choral music, and numerous pieces for piano.

Poulenc, Francis

(1899 - 1963) One of Les Six, Poulenc probably embodied the ideals of Les Six (as espoused by Cocteau) better than anyone. He was largely self-taught in composition and his style tends to be triadic and simplistic with a decidedly lyric quality best suited to his composition of many fine songs. His music changed style after his return to Roman Catholicism in the 1930s and he concentrated on many religious works (Gloria and Stabat Mater) and opera (La Voix Humaine - for one singer alone is his best-known). These later works established his prominence in the musical world more than his earlier, more frivolous works.

Weill, Kurt

(1900-1950) One of Germany's leading dramatic composers. He often collaborated with Bertold Brecht, the communist poet and playwright. Die Dreigroschenoper (The Three Penny Opera - an adaptation of Gay's Beggar's Opera), and The Seven Deadly Sins were outcomes of this collaboration. He incorporated a lot of popular music elements. Most of his music was meant as social commentary and a means to motivate people to fight opression.

Krenek, Ernst

(1900-1991) Austrian composer. His "jazz opera" Jonny spielt auf (1926) was one of the most successful products of the 1920's Zeitoper trend; in it, he returned to the tonal idiom, combining the cantilena style of Puccini with jazz elements. His style has varied quite a bit, from neo-classicism inspired by Les Six, to a neo-Romanticism inspired by Schubert. He also used integral serialism in some of his music, as well as experiments in indeterminacy. His output includes several operas, orchestral works, chamber works, and vocal music.

Partch, Harry

(1901-1974) American composer, instrument maker, and performer. His works draw on American folklore, immigrant culture, Christian hymns, and Native American, African and eastern cultures; he outlined his esthetic in a book, Genesis of a Music (publ. in 1949). His interest in alternate tuning systems (his 43-note scale could produce pure, untempered consonances), and the construction of instruments on which his tunings could be conveniently employed, influenced microtonal composers such as Ben Johnston, as well as composers of mixed-media works and the minimalists. Most of his works involve actors and dancers as well as musicians; he also wrote music for films. His Li Po Songs (1930-33) were his first work in his new style; the voice inflects the words in a speech-like, chanting manner, and is accompanied by "adapted" viola.

Walton, William

(1902-1982) Largely self-taught in composition, Walton did study for a time at Oxford but never received his degree there. Walton collaborated with the Sitwells (poets) on his first work, Façade (1922) which was a series of poems set to music (like Pierrot) for drawing-room entertainment. The style is quite similar to that of Les Six, thus differentiating Walton from contemporary English composers. His later works, however, tended to be more traditional and stemmed from his orchestral heritage from Elgar. These included the Viola Concerto and the Symphonies. Walton produced relatively few compositions, being a slow and methodical worker. He wrote a famous oratorio (Belshazzar's Feast again with text by Osbert Sitwell), two operas, some scattered orchestral pieces, and a few chamber works.

Shostakovich, Dmitri

(1906-1975) From his earliest years, Shostakovich believed that music should have an ideological function and he strove to reach as large an audience as possible. His fateful opera, Lady MacBeth of the Mtsensk District, met with initial success but was later the cause for his being attacked by the Party in Pravda. Soviet music from this point forward (1936) took a very repressive tone. Shostakovich entitled his Fifth Symphony the composer's "creative answer to justified criticism." Shostakovich's style features an essentially tonal language, but one which is extremely chromatic and features the use of "dissonant counterpoint." His music also displays an amazing array of affects, ranging from despair (Symphonies 5, 8, and 10, String Quartet 8) to gaiety (Symphonies 9, 15)

Pierrot Lunaire

(1912) Schoenberg's famed setting of twenty-one poems by the French poet, Albert Giraud. The work is set in German for Sprechstimme (half-speaking, half-singing vocal production) and five instruments (piano, violin, flute/alto flute, cello, clarinet/bass clarinet). Giraud's poems express madness and decadence and fit nicely with the eerie quality of Sprechstimme. All twenty-one poems have different instrumental combinations and only in the final one are all seven used. Several of the movements (Die Nacht - passacaglia on a three-note cell; Der Mondfleck - double canon, retrograded after the midpoint) feature use of contrapuntal techniques, marking a move away from Schoneberg's earlier, free style.

Ginastera, Alberto

(1916-1983). Argentine composer. His oeuvre has an unbroken continuity, in that each new development is an extension or elaboration, and the whole bears the stamp of a string personality and an inflexible creative will. The principal distinction to be observed is that between works of Argentine character and others; has three periods: objective nationalism, which directly uses Argentine folk elements as in música criolla; subjective nationalism, in which the folk elements are not explicit as in his String Quartet no. 1 (1948) and Piano Sonata (1952); and neo-expressionism which began with Quartet no. 2 (1958), his first entirely serial work. Tragic and fantastic elements are prominent in his operas, as are all the characteristically expressionistic features; Don Rodrigo (1964) in which he exploited 12-note techniques; Bomarzo, Beatrix Cenci.

Zimmerman, Bernd Alois

(1918-1970) German composer. His opera Die Soldaten (1965) gave him international stature. It combines serialism, expressionistic orchestration, jazz interludes, Bach chorales, Gregorian chant, and other styles in a "pluralistic" texture. He applied collage to other works as well.

Xenakis, Iannis

(1922-) Greek composer who explored new timbres of traditional instruments. He also focused on finding new ways in which mathematical structures could be realized into musical sound. His work Metastasis is based on the Fibonacci series. He also experimented with electronic music, aleatoric music, and computer music to carry out mathematical equations.

Feldman, Morton

(1926-1987). American composer. In 1950s he was closely associated with Cage, Brown, Wolff and Tudor, and with the abstract expressionist painters in New York. Influenced by the visual artists more than that by any musician, he composed pieces immediately recognizable for their extreme point-style scoring and their subdued dynamic range. At the same time he invented new means of notation to give certain freedom in performance, i. e., in Projection series (1950-51), he introduced graph notation; in Durations series (1960-62), he used precise notation but to make duration relatively free.

Young, La Monte

(1935) One of the pioneers of the minimalist movement. His work The Tortoise: His Dreams and Journeys (1964) was an improvisation in which instrumentalists and singers come in and out on various harmonics over a fundamental played as a drone on a synthesizer. He also experimented with works that had verbal instructions and no notes (Composition, 1960). Further experimentation was with intonation systems.

Zappa, Frank

(1940-1993) Rock song writer who was first recognized with the band Mothers of Invention. Beginning in the 1980s, he was involved in avante-garde composition and performance. His album, Jazz from Hell was written on the synclavier. He was also a powerful lobbier in Congress against censorship in music.

Musica/Scolica enchiriadis

(9th c.) An anonymous treatise and textbook in dialogue form. Earliest source in which organum is described, both parallel and oblique. They describe organum as a well-established practice, suggesting that organum had been around since the eighth century and possible earlier.

Cowell, Henry

(American, 1897-1965) Composer. At age 15 he gave his first performance as a composer-pianist in San Francisco; his program included The Tides of Manaunaun (1912), in which he introduced "clusters" of notes to be played with the fist, palm, or forearm. Later he used the inside of the piano in such pieces as The Banshee (1925), which is played throughout on the strings. These and other works formed the repertory for his concert tours of Europe and America during the 1920's and '30's. After the publication of his influential book New Musical Resources (1930) he did not stop experimenting. He introduced "elastic" forms in works like the String Quartet No. 3, requiring the performers to assemble given fragments in any order. He devised a machine, the rhythmicon, for realizing the complex rhythms he was demanding in his music. His orchestral musical output was prodigious: 20 symphonies, some of which use Persian, Indian, and Japanese instruments.

Copland, Aaron

(American, 1900- ?1991?) Composer. Studied with Boulanger in Paris (1921-4), gaining a facility for neoclassicism which he skilfully and brashly combined with jazz in his Piano Concerto (1926). This and other works, including the Dance Symphony (1925) and Piano Variations (1930), quickly gained him a reputation in America as a daring modernist. Three ballets in which he used American material: Billy the Kid (1938), Rodeo (1942), and Appalachian Spring (1944). The last of these gained enormous popularity in its orchestral version and proved that Copland had found a distinctively American style, spare in harmony and sensitively colored. His Third Symphony (1944-6) was an attempt to use that style on the most ambitious plane, but his abstract works have more usually employed a less populist manner: the orchestral works Connotations (1961-2) and Inscape (1967), for instance, make a personal use of Stravinsky-like serialism.

Anderson, Leroy

(American, 1908-1975) Composer of Swedish origin. Trained at New England Conservatory from age 11, then attended Harvard for training in languages as well as music. In 1935 he became a freelance composer and arranger working mainly for Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra which he occasionally conducted. His international reputation was established in his light music with such works as Jazz Pizzicato (1939), Sleigh ride (1950), and The Typewriter (1953). His works are often humorous with clever orchestration.

Carter, Elliott

(American, b. 1908) This composer studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger and returned to America a fluent neoclassicist. His early works, which include the ballet Pocahontas (1936-9) and the Holiday Overture (1944), show a post-Stravinsky style characteristic of American Boulanger students, but with a thythmic life that is Carter's own. With the Piano Sonata (1945-6) there began a process of growth which reached fruition in the First String Quartet (1951). In this period, he extended his harmonic range, introduced a new rhythmic fluidity by means of metric modulation, and began to create forms which are conversations of musical character, these being defined by their harmonic nature. From 1955 (including such works as Concerto for Orchestra (1969), two more string quartets, a Piano Concerto, and the Symphony of Three Orchestras), the neoclassical inheritance has been left far behind; the languate is tough but elegant, complex but inviting because the musical ideas are so pregnant. A volume of Carter's Collected Writings was published in NY in 1977.

Cage, John

(American, b. 1912) Studied composition with Cowell in NY and Schoenberg in LA. Stimulated by his colleagues in NY (David Tudor, Morton Feldman, Earle Brown and others) he introduced chance procedures into music. The material of Music of Changes for piano (1951) was determined by coin tosses, while the notorious 4'33" (1952) is silent: the work consists of whatever environmental sounds can be heard. During the 1950's Cage's innovations gained him international interest, and he extended his field of composition to include "happenings" (Theatre Piece, 1960), graphic scores (Fontana Mix, 1958), live electronics (Cartridge Music, 1960), and the combination of the most varied events (Variations IV, 1963). In 1969 he returned to straightforward, notated composition with Cheap Imitation for piano and orchestra, but he has continued to produce aleatory and electronic pieces as well.

Babbit, Milton

(American, b. 1916) Composer, scholar of mathematics and music. Teaches at Princeton. Had notable influence on musical thought not only as composer but also as teacher and theoretician. Consistently expounded a view of serialism as a musical system whose properties he has elucidated with the aid of terminology derived from mathematics (e.g. combinatoriality, set). His wors are very elaborately structured, with serial methods being used to determine not only pitches but also rhythmic aspects and formal shapes; often the result is a cogent musical construction in which every detail counts. Among his compositionsare four string quartets and various other chamber pieces, piano works (Partitions, 1957;Post-Partitions, 1966), songs, and tape pieces in which he has used the RCA Synthesizer(Ensebles for Synthesizer, 1962-4).

Brown, Earle

(American, b. 1926) Influenced by and associated with Cage, Jackson Pollock, and Alexander Calder. He is known for his unusual musical notation. His first graphic score, December 1952 (1952), is a design of thin black rectangles on a white ground. In 25 Pages (1953) he provided material which can be used in any manner by from one to 25 pianists. When he came into contact with mambers of the European avant-garde, he returened to conventional notation, though often in mobile forms. Available Forms II (1961-2), for instance, has a variety of musical events to be set in order by two conductors, each working independently of the other with a group of 49 players.

Crumb, George

(American, b. 1929) Slow to reach maturity as a composer, he found his voice in the Five Piano Pieces (1962), since when he has made much use of special instrumental effects in the creation of atmospheric sound imagery, often macabre or nocturnal. Representative works include Anceient Voices of Children for soprano, treble, and ensemble (1970), Black Angels for string quartet with electronics (1970), and Makrokosmos I-II for piano (1972-3).

Berg, Alban

(Austrian, 1885-1935) Berg applied the 12-tone method with freedom and frequent recourse to traditional forms, creating an individual style with a post-Romantic warmth of expression.A staunch defender of Schoenberg, he was one of the founders of the Society for Private Musical Performances in Vienna. He composed 2 operas (Wozzeck, 1921; Lulu, 1935- orchestration unfinished) that are among the last that have entered the standard repertory, and his Violin Concerto and Lyric Suite have dones so as well. His classical approach to form and his frequent use of tone-centers have helped to make his works more widely accepted and performed than those of Schoenberg or Webern. Student of Schoenberg. Worked briefly for Universal Edition, a music publishing firm. Wrote articles and gave lectures on new music. Taught privately in Vienna.(Piano Sonata, Op. 1, Violin Concerto 1935, several art songs some with orchestral accompaniment, 2 string quartets- including the Lyric Suite)

Biber, Heinrich

(Bohemian, 1644-1704) Composer and violinist, the most famous virutoso of his age. 1670- service of the Kapelle of the Archbishop of Salzburg, evenutally becoming Kapellemeister in 1684. An important precursor of JS Bach- he used high positions, new modes of bowing, multiple stopping, and unconventional tunings (scordatura) to produce the illusion of counterpoint (in his violin compostions). 16 Mystery Sonatas are notable, not so much programme music as evocations of the moods of biblical scenes. One opera is extant. His church music employs a capella and concertato forces, the latter being used to especially good effect in the F minor Requiem, scored for trombones, strings, solo and ripieno voices, and solo violin.

Bernhard, Christoph

(Born in present-day Poland/Germany, 1628-1692) German composer, theorist. 1649- singer in the court under Schütz in Dresden. Stayed in Dresden most of life, eventually becoming Kapellmeister. Composed a funeral motet at the request of Schütz and was performed at the ceremony in 1672. Most important: musical treatises (The Treatises of Christoph Bernhard and An Augmented Treatise on Composition or Tactatus compositionis augmentatus), noteworthy for their classification of the styles of Baroque music according to purpose- church stylus gravis, the "Palestrina style," and the new chamber style of Monteverdi stylus luxurians, where language is master of the music.

opera buffa

(Comic opera) The opera reforms of the early 18th century removed the comic scenes from operas and made them independent works. The intermezzi became opera buffa, a genre separate from opera seria. Distinct musical procedures emerged that point the way from Baroque to Classical, like basing a piece on short motives that could be easily repeated or interrupted. Unlike opera seria, opera buffa uses duets, trios, quartets, and larger ensembles. National variety of comic opera are Italian opera buffa, French Opéra comique, and German Singspiel. Examples of opera buffa are Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Cosi fan tutte.

Buxtehude, Dietrich

(Danish, 1637-1707) Organist and composer. 1668- organist of St. Mary's, Lübeck, a post he held until the end of his life. There he continued the series of Abendmusiken (evening concerts taking place on 5 Sundays in the year) which Tunder (his predecessor at St. Mary's) had begun in the 1640's. Buxtehude's fame as a virtuoso organist was such that Bach travelled more than 200 miles (apparently on foot!) to hear him play. Buxtehude's style was an important influence on many young North German composers, especially Bach, who took Bux's sacred vocal and instrumental music as his principal model. Bux wrote 120 sacred vocal pieces, including oratorios for the Abenmusiken, cantatas, chorales, and arias: his cantatas (In dulci jubilo and Jesu meine Freude are probably the best known) follow the tradition of Schütz. His organ works- preludes (toccatas) and fugues, chaconnes, a passacaglia, chorale preludes, chorale fantasia, and chorale variations- are unsurpassed and represent a perfect fusion of the complex contrapuntal North German style and the brillian keyboard style of Froberger. His other keyboard pieces (suites, canzonas, variations, etc.) are less important. His instrumental chamber music includes 14 trio sonatas.

Affektenlehre

(Doctrine of the Affections) Baroque composers (in general) strove to "affect" the emotions of the listener through musical means. One movement was devoted to stirring up one affect. (Affects were seen as a physical as well as an emotional phenomenon.) This aesthetic can be seen as an extension of the Renaissance musica reservata, and later developed into the more dynamic and unstable emotionalism of Empfindsamkeit.

panisorhythm

(Early 15th C.) A Northern practice (France and England) of using isorhythm in all voices of a motet. Dunstable wrote 12 motets, 10 of which are panisorhythmic; Dufay uses panisorhythm up to 1420's. Importance: Panisorhythm was a logical evolution from isorhythm. Its musical importance lies in the fact that it reached a degree of complexity and perfection which could not be heightened or improved. As compositions became longer, difficulty of listening to and composing such works led to a move in the 1450's to abandon isorhythm in favor of clear textures and audible texts. (Dufay's motet Vasilissa, ergo gaude)

pervading imitation

(Early 16th C. in continent, Late 16th C. in England) The practice by the composers of the Post-Josquin generation of creating a continuous flow of sound, held together by all possible permutations of the technique of imitation. The character of the imitation that pervades the texture changes: some are long, some are compressed; in some points each voice imitates the others exactly, in others, only a charcteristic interval or general shape suffices. It is important because the layout allowed composers to arrange and re-arrange the details of texture in an infinite number of ways. (Gombert's motet, Ave salus mundi, and Tallis' motet Salvator mundi I.)

countenance angloise

(English guise) Coined by Martin le Franc in a poem which describes the new musical style of Dufay and Binchois as being influenced by the smooth and consonant style of the English composers like Dunstable.

Byrd, William

(English, 1543-1623) One of the greatest English composers of the 16th century. Throughout a difficult religious period in England as a catholic, he remained in favor with the court, composing both Protestant and Catholic service music. He studied with Thomas Tallis, with whom he published the first of 3 Cantiones Sacrae, collections of Latin motets. He also wrote In nomines, song, consort music, and virginal music. Possibly his most important contributions were his motets, many of which were in the Netherlandish polyphonic style. His Protest Motets are good examples and reflect his struggle as a Catholic in Protestant England

Blow, John

(English, 1649-1708) Composer. Organist of Westminster Abbey in 1668 and royal "musician for the virginals" the following year. 1674 - Master of the Children at the Chapel Royal until his death. Taught Purcell. May have earned the first Doctor of Music by the Archbishop of Canterbury (1677). Fluent composer of anthems and services, master of the festive verse anthem. Contrapuntal style, using English false relations and "old-fashioned" harmonies, is frequently extremely expressive. His odes contain powerful music, especially the masterly Ode on the Death of Mr. Henry Purcell (published 1696) for countertenor duet, two recorders, and continuo. (Anthems by Blow: ?????)

Britten, Benjamin

(English, 1913-76) Composer, pianist, conductor. He was the outstanding British musician of his generation both as creator and as executant, for his brilliance as a pianist (esp. as accompanist) and as an interpreter of his own and other composers' music. Peter Grimes was written in 1945 and was immediately hailed as the first indisputably great English opera since Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. He reached his widest audience when his War Requiem was performed for the dedication of Coventry's new cathedral in 1962. This large-scale choral work combines Latin Mass with war poems by Owen.

Cardew, Cornelius

(English, 1936-1981) Composer; arranger of numbers from Peking operas, rebolutionalry songs, etc.; author of Treatise Handbook; editor of a number of publications including Stockhousen Serves Imperialism, 1974. Served as assistant to Stockhausen, particullarly on the score of Carré for four choral-orchestral groups. Stockhausen had an influence on his first works, but from 1960 he moved more toward Cage, this period culminating in the beautifully drawn Treatise for unspecified forces. In 1969 he founded the Scratch Orchestra, a group of amateurs who gave rough and ready performances of music new and old.

Power, Leonel

(English, b. circa 1370-1445) Composer employed at Canterbury Cathedral. Some 50 liturgical works have survived, as well as a treatise on discant. judging by the large quantity of his music which appears in the Old Hall Manuscript, it seems likely that he was in some way associated with its compilation. Power was a pioneer in the development of the cyclic Mass; his Missa Alma redemptoris mater is the earliest known example of the genre. His music, like Dunstable's, was advanced for its time in its use of full chordal sonority, and was both popular and highly influential on the Continent during the first half of the 15th C.

Taverner, John

(English, c. 1490-1545) Composed many fine Masses (e.g. the six-part Corona spinea and Gloria tibi Trinitas) in a large-scale fesivel manner, not only showing great contrapuntal skill but also making a splendid sound. His smaller-scale Masses point the way to the simpler style of church music which was to become common later in the century. Best of all are the three antiphons to the Blessed Virgin Mary- vast polyphonic edifices worthy of the Oxford Lady Chapel they were probably inteneded for. The famous section from the Sanctus of Missa Gloria tibi Trinitas was often tabulated for keyboard and other instruments, too, and played an important role in the development of instrumental music in Britain.

Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen

(Essay on the true art of playing keyboard instruments, parts I and II published in 1753 and 1762) C.P.E. Bach's treatise on keyboard technique and musicianship in general. Along with Quantz's treatise for the flute and Leopold Mozart's treatise for the violin, it is among our best sources of information about musical practices of the mid-18th century.

Ockeghem, Johannes

(Franco-Flemish, 1410-1497) Composer. It is possible that he received his early training as a choirboy in Bruges and that he was a pupil of Binchois, perhaps even of Dufay as well. Tinctoris praised him as a composer and said that Ockeghem possessed the best bass voice he had ever heard. (That explains Ock's affinity for low voice ranges, not only in bass part, but in all voices.) His career was spent largely in the chapel of 3 successive kings of France from 1452 to 1476, perhaps even to 1495 (Charles VII, Louis XI, Charles VIII). From about 1454 on, he was the highly esteemed master of the chapel. Among his honors received from the King of France were appointments as treasurer of St. Martin-de-Tours and canon at Notre Dame Cathedral. Ockeghem was the leading composer of the generation between Dufay and Josquin. He is best known today for his Masses. Little of his music has survived: 14 Masses, 9 motets, 20+ chansons. His style is characterized by its rich contrapuntal textrue, in which the various voices are of more or less equal importance. Imitation is not used extensively; instead, independent melismatic lines combine to produce an ever-changing effect. Missa Prolationum uses double mensuration canons. Missa Cuiusvis Toni can be sung in any mode merely by changing the clefs. His Missa Caput broke away from Dufay's Missa Caput in 3 important ways: (1)Ockeghem placed the CF in the bass voice; (2)although he retatined a mixolydian CF, the Mass is in the dorian mode; (3)he employed the CF only once in the Kyrie, combining the two versions of Dufay into one, with some omissions.

Tinctoris

(Franco-Flemish, 1435-"1511") Contemporary of Dufay, Theorist, Composer (5 settings of the Mass). Wrote first published dictionary of musical terms in 1495, Terminorum Musicae diffinitorum. His writings are a valuable source of information for instruments, performance practice, notation, etc. of the late 15th C. (Renaissance) His "middle" treatises cover principal subjects of theory (aesthetic, religious, educational, therapeutic value of music, mensural notation, solmization, art of singing, flute and lute playing). His last 2 treatises are about the art of composition (church modes, principles of consonance, dissonance, counterpoint, composition vs improvisation). It is assumed that the musical examples from his treatises are that of his own composition.

rondeau (French)

(French) A significant Medieval type of vocal chanson of the form ABaAabAB; one of the formes fixes or refrain forms. (Formes fixes= ballade, ballata, madrigal, rondeau, virelai.) Each of the 8 lines of text corresponds to repetition of music as follows: Line 1=A, 2=B, 3=a, 4=A, 5=a, 6=b, 7=A, 8=B. Capital letters represent the musical refrain; the 4th line (A) is a partial statement of the refrain and builds tensions as the listener's expectations of B (second half of refrain) are thwarted until the last line (8=B). Sometimes this last line conatins an unexpected "punch line," often humorous, sometimes grim. Example: Dufay's Adieu ces bons vins

Chambonnières, Jacques Champion de

(French, 1672-?) Composer of harpsichord music and famous as harpsichord player. Retired from the court of Louis XIV due to intrigues. He is a founder of the French school of harpsichord composers. In 1670 two books of his Pièces de clavessin were published. They consist mainly of dances in the style brisé arranged in suites. Some have titles, but there is no suggestion of program music. Their delicate and elegant style reveals much o f the man whose "beauty of rhythm, fine touch, lightness and rapidity of hand" were admired throughout Europe.

Boulanger, Nadia

(French, 1887-1979) Conductor and famous teacher in France. Studied at Paris Conservatory with Fauré and others. First woman to conduct an entire program for the Royal Philharmonic Society (1937). Active in reviving Monteverdi. At the Paris Conservatory and subsequently at her own American Conservatory in Fontainebleau she was responsible for training many distinguished composers, particularly from the US- Elliott Carter, Copland, and Roy Harris. Her sister, Lili was the first woman to win the Prix de Rome. Lili might have won more fame had she not died at the age of 25.

Boulez, Pierre

(French, b. 1925) French composer, conductor. Studied at Paris Conservatory with Messiaen. His first works, which include 2 piano sonatats (1946 and 1948) and a cantata, show his early musical style on the basis of Schoenberg's serialism, the rhythmnic methods of Stravinsky and Messiaen, and Webern's tightly integrated approach to composition. With the first book of Structures for two pianos (1951-2) he achieved a definitive conjunction of th methods of his predecessors, creating and transcending a "total serial" style in which every musical aspect- pitch, duration, loudness, and attack- is organized according to serial rules. His Third Piano Sonata introduces chance into the music (influence of Cage). The second book of Structures (1956-61) permits various kinds of aleatory mobility. Equally striking here is the finesse of Boulez's orchestration. His last period of composition continues to be "works in progress." Of his works since 1962 only the orchestral Rituel (1974-5) has been published in a complete form. The decrease in composition led to a push toward conducting. He also continues to be quite active as the director of the IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoutstique/Musique) in Paris. His career is multifaceted: composer, theorist, pianist, conductor, and propagandist.

Charpentier, Marc-Antoine

(French, c. 1645-1704) Composer of church music, sacred dramas, cantatas. Studied in Rome with Carissimi at the German College. On returning to Paris he was seriously hampered by French nationalism, which was opposed to his Italiantate style- Lully, especially, saw him as a serious rival throughout his own lifetime. Employed by Molière (after Lully's collaboration ended) and wrote incidental music for the Comédie Française. Worked also for the royal family, the Jesuits, and the church St. Louis, before becoming maître de musique at Saint-Chapelle in 1698. He was Lully's most important contemporary in France, and his church music is especially attractive- splendid grand motets (often using double choir), 11 Masses (from rich polyphony of old, to the harmonization of carol tunes in the well-known Messe de minuit pour Noël, early 1690s). His dramatic cantata Orphée descendant aux enfers shows what he might have done with opera had he been given the chance.

Des Knaben Wunderhorn:

(Ger. "The Youth's Magic Horn") A group of German folk-song texts collected and published in three volumes (ca. 1805-8) by von Arnim and Clemens Brentano. Mahler composed settings of a number of these texts, both as songs (some with orchestral accompaniment) and in several of his symphonies, including the second, third, and fourth.

Bartok, Bela

(Hungarian,1881-1945) Perhaps the foremost 20th-C representative of nationalism in music, he made major contributions to the standard repertory of the symphony, the concerto, piano music, and the string quartet. After 1930, when his works were more widely known, his music provided inspriation for other nationalist composers. Not primarily interested in innovation, the composer succeeded in bringing authentic folk elements into an unprecedented synthesis with the techniques of traditional art music. He did extensive research into East-European folk music, publishing 5 books and many articles as well as recording and transcribing more than 9000 folksongs, largely from Roumanian, Slovak, and Hungarian sources. Educated, and later taught at, the Budapest Academy of Music. His reputation as a concert pianist grew with regular tours that began after 1924. In 1940 he emigrated to the US to escape political persecution but encountered financial difficulty and illness. Several of his best-known masterpieces were composed during these late years. (Mikrokosmos and 3 concertos for piano, Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta 1936, Concerto for Orchestra 1944, Six string quartets.)

ricercar

(It., form ricercare, "to seek") A type of instrumental piece (solo or ensemble) during the 16th and 17th c. There are 3 main divisions just before its evolution to sonata and fugue: (1) Early- these were improvisatory in style, often for solo instruments such as lute or bass viol. Resembled prelude of the 16th c; no distinct shape, more like an exercise, having little musical interest. (2) Middle- these were duos written for the instruction of beginners in part music; exercises in sight reading, perhaps for singers as well as instrumentalists. (3) Late (from 1550-1600)- the best-known and most durable kind; equivalent of the vocal motet. The difference between the motet and the ricercar are that the instrumental pieces use a wider range of melody and fewer themes (sometimes ricercars are even monothematic). At first they were mainly written in four parts, but A. Gabrieli wrote one for 8 instruments and there were many keyboard transcriptions which added ornaments but preserved the basically polyphonic structure. Frescobaldi wrote several. (4) Evolution- From 1610, motet-like instrumental pieces are more often called "sonata" (e.g. G. Gabrieli's Sonata pian'e forte) and the term "ricercar" tends to be associated with works which display some form of contrapuntal learnedness (e.g. Bach's Musical Offering, 1747). There, as was almost traditional by this time, the two ricercari are placed among a set of canons and are fugal in style. It is difficult by this stage to say how these differ from fugues, if in any way at all.

Zarlino, Gioseffo

(Italian, "1517"-1590) The leading Italian theorist in the 16th C. Maestro di cappella at St. Marks in 1565 and remained in that post until his death. Famous for a series of large treatises, in which he tried to elucidate Greek music theories, as well as teach practical matters such as counterpoint. Among his most influential ideas were the concpt of word-painting as used in later madrigals; the different emotional qualities of major and minor chord; and the suggestion of dividing the scale into equal intervals, as later developed into equal temperament. (Le istitutioni harmoniche "The Principles of Harmony")

Carissimi, Giacomo

(Italian, 1605-1674) Composer. One of the finest of the 17th century and of great importance in the history fo the oratorio. Maestro di cappella at the German College in Rome from 1630 until death (declined to be Monteverdi's successor at St. Mark's!). His reputation rests on his religious dialogues and oratorios, in which he adopted the operatic idiom of Monteverdi to the purpose of sacred drama. For the most part he set Latin texts, taking Old Testament stories and bringing the characters alive with remarkable vividness. The seascape in Jonas and the elegiac beauty of the sacrifice in Jephte are good examples of his dramatic power, in which he uses not only the expressive aria and arioso developed by Monteverdi in his later operas, but also the sonorous madrigalian choruses favored in Rome. He also composed Masses and motets, some quite old-fashioned (as in his Missa L'homme armé- the last work to be based on this 15th-C tune) and some in the more modern concertato style. He also wrote 100+ cantatas.

Bononcini, Giovanni Maria

(Italian, 1642-1678) Father of Giovanni Bonocini. Wrote some attractive chamber music and was one of Corelli's most important predecessors in the composition of trio sonatas and the development of idiomatic writing for the violin. Wrote a treatise on counterpoint which was widely known in Germany in the 18th c.

Corelli, Arcangelo

(Italian, 1653-1713) Violinist and composer. 1675 moved to Rome where he remained the rest of life. By 1700 he published 5 volumes of chamber music which were to make him one of the best-known composers of his time (0pus 1-5: trio sonatas and violin sonatas). At the end of his life, he prepared his Op. 6, a set of 12 concerti grossi, for publication, but they may date from much earlier, being stylistically offshoots from his sonatas. He was one of the 1st composers to vary the keys in a binary mvt in a meaningful way.

Bononcini, Giovanni

(Italian, 1670-1747) Eldest son of GM Bonocini. Primarily an opera composer. Worked in several cities: Modena, Bologna, Naples, London, Paris, short visit to Lisbon, final years in Vienna, but died back home in Modena. He was one of the resident composers of the newly founded Royal Academy of Music (London, 1720's). Operas written in London were very successful (Griselda) and were competitive with Handel's at the time. The styles of the two were quite distinct- Bonocini's arias are at their best when simple and tuneful, while Handel tended to write in extended forms and with elaborate orchestral accompaniments. One of the first perpetrators of plagiarism: tried to pass off a composition by Lotti as his own. The scandal forced him to leave London.

Cherubini, Luigi

(Italian, 1760-1842) Italian composer who spent most of his career in France (also died in Paris). Educated in Florence (wrote several Masses and an oratorio there), London, (2 operas), then lived in Paris for rest of life. Known principally as a composer of operas, Lodoïska (1791) made him famous. After Fr. Rev., which he dutifully supported, he joined the faculty of the Paris Conservatoire (then just formed in 1793 for the training of military bands). 1805 visited Vienna and met Beethoven and was greeted enthusiastically by Haydn. Several of his operas were staged there, but when Napoleon invaded Austria, Beethoven ordered Cherubini to return to Paris. In 1809 and following, all of his important works are sacred except for an opera, a set of string quartets, and a symphony. With the fall of Napoleon Cherubini's material situation began to improve. 1816 was appointed, with Le Sueur, to the chapel of Louis XVIII. He was made director of the Conservatoire in 1822. After 1837, he abandoned composition to devote life to teaching- pupils include Auber, Halévy, and Boieldieu.

Busoni, Ferruccio

(Italian, 1866-1924) Italian pianist and composer who settled in Berlin. Was an addict of Bach's music at a time when Italian composers and pianists hardly knew it. In spite of his ambitions to devote his life to composition, he was best known as a virtuoso with a special interest in Bach and Liszt, and as editor and transcriber of the former's keyboard works. In his later years, he was considered a superb interpreter of third period Beethoven. (Doctor Faust- opera; He is famous for his remarkable piano arrangement of Bach's D minor Chaconne for violin.)

Casella, Alfredo

(Italian, 1883-1947) This composer studied with Fauré at Paris Conservatory. In 1902 he began his career as a pianist and conductor. His works from this period show the expedted influences of Debussy, Ravel, and early Stravinsky, but also, more unusually, those of Mahler and Strauss (Notte di maggio for voice and orchestra, 1913.) After WWI Casella was quick to take up Stravinsky's neoclassical approach. he composed diveritmentos based on earlier music, and also a host of original works using older forms, beginning with the Concerto for string quartet and Partita for piano and orchestra (1923-5). While composing his large output Casella was also active as teacher, concert organizer, and promoter of new music.

Berio, Luciano

(Italian, b. 1925) This leading contemporary Italian composer has drawn inspiration for his compositions from a wide range of sources, including anthropology, electro-acoustic research, ethnomusicology, phonetics, and experimental tradtitions of the theater. Early works reveal influence of Neo-Classicism (Magnificat, 1949) and serialism (Five Variations for piano, 1953). Electronic music was next (Perspectives, 1957). Virtuosic studies for large orchestra followed Sinfonia, 1969). Berio spent the '60's and early '70's in the US, generally teaching composition at Juilliard until 1973. From '74 until '80 Berio worked at the electronic music studio at IRCAM in Paris, where he supervised the creation of a revolutionary system permitting the use of live electronic sound (Sequenza IX, 1980). In 1987 he established his own research institute in Florence, called Tempo Reale, dedicated to bringing electronic sounds into live contact with traditional instruments.

Chávez, Carlos

(Mexican, 1899-1978) Self-taught composer. Conductor of the Mexico Symphony Orchestra (1928-48) and director of the Mexican National Conservatory (1928-35) he did much to invigorate musical life in his home country, while his international tours as a conductor took his own and other Mexican music to the world. Many of his works, including the last of his six symphonies, the Sinfonia india (1961), evoke the ritual splendor of pre-Columbian America, with vigorous rhythms, intricate percussion scoring, and atmospheric woodwind solos. Among his literary works are the books Towards a New Music: Music and Electricity and Musical Thought.

Strambotti

(Singular "strambotto") A type of poem used around 1500 in frottole and madrigals. Each verse usually had eight lines of 11 syllables, with a rhyme scheme abababcc. Musical settings of the strambotto often have only two phrases, each to be repeated 4 times in alternation; a separate phrase for the final couplet may be included. The strambatto is sometimes through-composed, however.

Victoria, Thomas Luis de

(Spanish, c. 1548-1611) One of the 3 greatest Spanish polyphonists of the 16th C. Spent many years in Rome, and his music relfects the contact he had with Palestrina. Spent entire life envolved with church music and eventually became a priest. Wrote about 20 Masses, 45+ motets, and a number of other compositions with liturgical functions; wrote no madrigals nor any other secular music of any kind. His music is devout, pious, and intense. He is important because of his influential belief that music must not rely on pre-existing sources (i.e. no secular CF's), but must reveal and intensify literary meanings. His music is distinguished by its clarity and internal logic, yet genuinely dramatic flair. (Examle: Missa Laetatus sum for 12 voices, i.e. 3 choirs; parody on own motet.)

Petrus de Cruce

(active ca. 1270-1300) Wrote motets in which the triplum attained a faster speed than the lower voices, breaking the long notes into shorter and shorter values. Thus, the voices are tiered from bottom to top into slow, medium, and fast values.

Office

(also Canonical Hours) First codified ca. 520, the Offices are celebrated every day at stated times in a regular order: Matins (predawn), Lauds(sunrise), Prime, Terce, Sext, Nones (6 am, 9 am, noon, and 3 pm), Vespers (sunset), and Compline (after Vespers). Consists of prayers, psalms canticles, antiphons, responses, hymns, and readings. Music for the Offices is found in the Antiphonale. Musically, the Offices involve the chanting of psalms with their antiphons, and the chanting of lessons with their responsories. Matins, Lauds, and Vespers are the most important musically. Vespers is the only one which admitted polyphonic singing from early times.

symphonie concertante

(also sinfonia concertante) a type of concerto for two or more solo instruments (normally strings or winds) and orchestra. Though called symphonies, these works belong, with few exceptions, to the history of the concerto. They are in two or three movements, the first in Classical ritornello or ritornello-sonata form, the last typically in rondo form. The style tends generally toward the light and popular rather than the heroic or grand. The earliest examples date from the late 1760's. The genre is not connected with the Baroque concerto grosso [New Harvard]. The form was popular between 1770 and the early 1800's, especially in Paris. Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola K.364 (Salzburg, 1779) is one important example.

Petrassi, Goffredo

(b. 1904) Italian composer. In compositions such as his Partita for Orchestra (1932) and his First Concerto for Orchestra (1934), he adopted a diatonic, neo-classical style derived from Stravinsky and Casella. Later, however, he put more emphasis on chromaticism, and eventually adopted the twelve-tone system, which he used in the Second Concerto for Orchestra (1952). More recently, he has favored an uncompromisingly chromatic and atonal language that, while not strictly serial, owes much to the stylistic innovations of the post-World War II generation. For instance, the String Trio (1959) is athematic in conception and emphasizes textural and timbral features.

Perle, George

(b. 1915) American composer and theorist. Most of his works reflect his theory of twelve-tone tonality, which incorporates hierarchic relations among pitch classes and chords analogous to those found in tonal music; this theory of twelve-tone composition is described in his book Twelve-Tone Tonality, (1977). He also wrote a study of the music of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern. His works include orchestral music, chamber music, piano music, and vocal and choral music.

Shapey, Ralph

(b. 1921) A distinctive and innovative composer who does not concern himself with schools and musical fashions. He studied composition with Stephan Wolpe during the late 1930s and from him developed a committment to total chromaticism, including an unsystematic use of twelve-tone procedures. Varèse was another strong influence - lending Shapey a love of sound as physical object. Shapey's compositions are more concerned with combinations of sounds rather than transformations or development of sound. His String Quartet No. 6 is an excellent example of this "spatial" approach to music.

Foss, Lukas

(b. 1922). A German-born American composer, pianist, and composer; his music combines a variety of styles, among them neoclassicism, romantic lyricism, and American folk elements. In late 1950s, he began to use various styles, experimenting with improvisation (in his suite, Time Cycle, 1960), aleatory music, serial techniques, and quotation and collage (Baroque Variations, 1967 borrows from Handel, Scarlatti, and Bach). From 1970 to 1990 Foss devoted himself more to conducting.

Ligeti, Gyorgy

(b. 1923) Transylvanian composer who studied in Hungary. Like Penderecki, he worked with clusters, but unlike Penderecki (who treated clusters as "solid" blocks of sound made up of undifferentiated individual parts), Ligeti formed his clusters from separate components that changed constantly to produce subtly transforming internal patterns. In this type of composition with planes of sound, or Klangflächenkomposition, the clear articulation of melody, harmony, and rhythm are abandoned (though still notated) in favor of the timbre and texture of the sound itself. Ligeti's Atmosphères (1961) is in this style. Some of his later compositions use microtones.

Henze, Hans Werner

(b. 1926). A German-born composer who first became known for his operas. Using dissonant harmonies and, for a time early in his career, melodies based on a twelve-tone series, Henze concentrated on the inner reality of his characters, in the manner of the earlier expressionist works. The formal structure of the operas tends to be strict, and occasionally there are direct allusions to older musical forms (i. e., Bach chorale in The Bassarids). In 1950s he moved permanently to Italy. In 1960s he became a strong admirer of revolutionary socialist principles, which inspired the oratorio Das Floss der Medusa ("Medusa's Raft") of 1968 and his Sixth symphony which quotes protest songs; he had neoclassic style in some of his works; he continued to champion the underprivileged and oppressed and to attack fascism and militarism.

Dahlhaus, Carl

(b. 1928). German musicologist; in 1966 he completed Habilitation, a fundamental study on the development of tonality. His writings cover a broad spectrum but centre mainly on theory, analysis, music aesthetics and its history. He focused on 15th- and 16th- century music, particularly that of Josquin; also worked on modern and contemporary music; besides, he functioned as an important stimulus to research into 19th century music by being the editor of the anthology Studien zur Trivialmusik des 19. Jahrhunderts (1967). His writings and editorial activities in Wagner's music have brought about a renewal of Wagner scholarship. A constant theme of Dahlhaus's writings and research is the present conception of music and its place in the modern world.

Kagel, Mauricio

(b. 1931) Argentinean composer. Apart from music, he is known for his films and plays, riding the crest of the avant-garde in all three areas. His music often incorporates theatrical elements, mixing actors and musicians or requiring actions of the musicians themselves; as in Cage, it often satirizes the performance act itself. In addition to exploring new instrumental timbres, he has delved into musique concrète, new vocal techniques, and electronic composition. He has also based works of the music of Beethoven (Ludwig van, 1968; made into a film in 1969) and Brahms (Variationen ohne Fuge, 1972). Other works include operas and radio plays.

Penderecki, Krzysztof

(b. 1933) Polish composer. His early works, such as Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima (1960), for strings, illustrate his experimentation with sound blocks, or "clusters," colors, and textures to create formal structures. He later explored ritualistic traditions such as religious services, such as in Utrenia, which uses the text and format of the Orthodox Christian rite dealing with burial and resurrection. From 1974, his style is characterized by a rich lyricism and Romantic orchestration, moving toward modality and tonal centricity and away from serialistic devices. This last period includes such works as the Concerto for Cello and Orchestra No. 2 (1982), written for Rostropovich. His works include operas, choral music, instrumental works, chamber works, and music for electronic tape.

Schnittke, Alfred

(b. 1934) A musical pluralist Russian composer who has used styles and quotations from many different historical periods, both to "tweak" the listener and to create a tragic quality. This tragedy arises out of the fact that tonality is a beautiful way to write music and it can never be returned to.

Davies, Peter Maxwell

(b. 1934). An English composer; known for his highly dramatic music. His earlier works, particularly his music theater pieces of the late 1960s and early 1970s, are expressionist in style. Both Eight Songs for a Mad King (1969) and Miss Donnithorne's Maggot (1974), for solo voice and small instrumental ensemble, feature a crazed, obsessive individual; in the former work, the king screams and wheezes and mumbles his way through a four-octave span. Similarly Missa super l'homme arme (1968; rev. 1971) and Vesalii Icones (1969), for soloist (singer in the former, dancer in the latter) and instrumental ensemble, represent violent attacks on religious hypocrisy. These show his frequent borrowing from the Middle Ages and Renaissance, which he sometimes quotes directly and at other times simply alludes to or imitates stylistically, using plainsong, church modes, or hocket. Occasionally he also used magic squares - medieval puzzles of mystically or mathematically related numbers - to determine the formal structure of pitches or rhythms. Other important works are Shakespeare Music (1964); the operas Taverner (1972), The Lighthouse (1980), and Resurrection (1988); for chamber ensemble, Ave maris stella (1975), A Mirror of Whitening Light (1977), and Image, Reflection and Shadow (1982); three symphonies (1976, 1980, 1984); and the music theater piece Le Jongleur de Notre Dame (1978), a setting of the old story for voice, juggler, chamber ensemble and a children's band.

Pärt, Arvo

(b. 1935) Estonian composer. He has moved through a variety of styles, from the influence of Prokofiev, to serialist techniques, to experiments with aleatoric devices. In some works, he has freely quoted from specific works of past composers or from past musical styles, especially medieval, pre-modern, music. The tinntinnabuli style of pieces such as his Tabula Rasa (1977) is akin to American minimalism, in that he arpeggiates "bell" or "tinntinnabuli" voices endlessly over long pedal drones, thus prolonging a single consonant triad, which resonates unendingly through the entire piece. His devout Eastern Orthodox Christian beliefs are represented in many of his works, some of which link rhythm and melody to iconic representations of, say, the Cross, or to exotic number symbolism.

Riley, Terry

(b. 1935) Perhaps the first composer to experiment with repeating tape loops. He was the composer of the semial work, In C, in the 1960s. This piece is based on fifty-three standard patterns of 18th-century tonal music, all in C Major. Performers then paly these snippets in any sequence with any number of instruments performing at the same time. The surface rhythm is strictly dictated by regular eighth-note Cs played on the upper register of the piano. The other performers, however, play their excerpts at their own rates of speed, repeating each one until they desire to pass on to the next. Riley has likened this music to a "hall of mirrors." Since In C, Riley has been exploiting his early jazz training and interest in music of Indian music along with tape display in his recent works.

Eaton, John

(b. 1935). American composer; his composition teachers included Babbitt, Cone and Swssions; his earlier career was as a jazz pianist; received three American Prix de Rome (1959, 1960, 1961), two Guggenheim Fellowships (1962, 1965); he has utilized the varied resources of electronic instruments with exceptional originality and virtuosity. He has been closely identified with the syn-ket, a type of electronic synthesizer invented by Paolo Ketoff in 1964, which has several keyboards sensitive to pressure and sliding movement. Eaton's Concert Piece for Syn-ket and Symphony Orchestra was first performed in 1966 at Tanglewood by the Boston SO conducted by Schuller. The premiere of his opera Heracles took place in April 1972 at the opening of the Musical Arts Center at Indiana University.

Reich, Steven

(b. 1936) Reich participated in the first performance and recording of Riley's In C and like Riley developed a compositional style heavily predicated on repetition. His first works were with tape loops and out of this grew his innovations with phase technique. Most of his music features brief diatonic figures, steady rhythmic pulsation and percussive attacks played with machine-like accuracy. During the 70s Reich explored additive music in which melodic patterns are gradually built up or broken down by substitution pitches for rests or vice versa (Drumming, 1971). Most recently Reich has become interested in enrichment of musical language through polyphonic and harmonic textures. Newer works like Vermont Counterpoint and Tehillim work with larger instrumental forces and sound more traditional due to their dependence on contrapuntal techniques.

Glass, Philip

(b. 1937). An American composer who first became known for his minimalist music, based on extensive repetition, rhythmic regularity, and conventional tonal harmony. In the late 1960s Glass founded his own eight-member ensemble of electric keyboards (synthesizer, organ, piano), amplified wind instruments, and voices, for which most of his compositions were written. In the mid-1970s Glass also began writing operas. The first was Einstein on the Beach (1976), in collaboration with playwright-director Robert Wilson, who contributed the scenario and assisted with staging and sets. Well received in Europe, it received its American premiere at the Metropolitan Opera and shocked audiences with its text of solfege syllables, numbers that limned the rhythmic structure of the music, and interior monologues. The music of this four-and-one-half-hour work was more complex than Glass's earlier pieces; he used more chords and keys and richer tone colors and textures, although the harmonies were still tone and the melodic patterns were relentlessly repeated. His next opera, Satyagraha (1980), is a series of tableaux about the life of Mohandas Gandhi in Africa, scored for orchestra, soloists, and chorus. The action was not realistic, and the libretto, in Sanskrit, is based on the Bhagavad-Gita. It is followed by the opera Akhnaten (1984), a series of meditations (in Egyptian, Hebrew, and Akkadian) on the Egyptian pharaoh, linked by a narrator who speaks in the language of the audience. Other major theater works of Glass's include the film score Koyaanisqatsi (1982); the music theater piece Photographer (1982); and the suites North Star (1977) and Glassworks (1981) for his ensemble, which often performed for rock and jazz audiences as well as for listeners interested in experimental serious music.

Rzewski, Frederic

(b. 1938) and American composer who adopted a popular style out of political convictions. He espouses musical realism which directs music to a large and diverse audience and takes it out of the concert hall arena. A famous piece of his is The People United Will Never Be Defeated! (1975) which features traditional tonal writing and flashy virtuoso passages. The motivic developmenst betray Rzewski's wide experience with the techniques of serialism. The piece itself is a set of thiry-six variations for piano and is based on a popular tune by the Chilean Sergio Ortega which had become something of an anti-imperialist icon.

Anderson, Laurie

(b. 1947) One of the main "performance artists" of the later 20th century. Anderson wrote music that was primarliy designed to be performed by herself and would change fairly drastically if performed by another musician. Her idiosyncratic approach to performance is extended to violin-playing, piano-playing, and singing. Much of her work is influenced by popular genres and utilizes multi-media. Her song cycle United States, features film, slides, props, lighting, electronically-altered voice, stylized body gestures, violin playing, story-telling, poetry, and bits of singing in a two-evening long solo entertainment that is a pop-art collage and a serious commentary on modern technology and ther pursuit of the American dream.

Tippet, Sir Michael

(b.1905) British composer who wrote in nearly every genre and many styles. Many of his works draw on other musics, like African American sprituals, blues, English folk song, etc. Late works draw on avante-garde music. His Symphony #3 uses the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven to make a statement about the breakdown of Enlightenmen/ humanist ideals.

cori spezzati

(broken choir) This practice is particularly associated with the Venetian school, and in particular Willaert, Andrea and Giovanni Gabrielli. It was inspired by the architecture of San Marco in Venice. It was cultivated throughout Europe and found in the music of Palestrina, Victoria, Lassus, Schutz, and others.

des Prez, Josquin

(ca. 1440-1521) His works include about 18 Masses, 100 motets, and 70 chansons and other secular works. His Masses are the most conservative of his works; most use a secular tune as cantus firmus. His Masses also demonstrate his prowess with technical devices and procedures, such as the imitation Mass. In his motets, he was known for the care he took to suit his music to the text, and he is associated with the mid-sixteenth century stylistic development called musica reservata.

Agricola, Alexander

(ca. 1446-1506) contemporary of Josquin represented in the Odhecaton. Succeeded Busnois at the Burgundian court. He wrote mostly secular music, including 80+ chansons which are closer in style to Busnois than to Josquin's newer equal-voiced polyphony. He also wrote eight Masses, which generally treated the cantus firmus freely. He tended to write quick, nervous lines composed of short motives rather than long lyrical melodies.

Isaac, Henry

(ca. 1450-1517) Flemish composer who worked in Florence, Vienna, and Innsbruck. Isaac absorbed into his own style many musical influences from It., Fr., Ger., Flanders, and the Netherlands, so that his output is more fully international in character than that of any other composer of his generation. He wrote many songs with French, German, and Italian texts, as well as some canti carnascialeschi. His sacred compositions include thrity settings of the Ordinary of the Mass and a cycle of motets based on the liturgical texts and melodies of the Proper of the Mass (Choralis Constantinus- several volume of 4-voce polyphonic settings of Mass Propers)

Obrecht, Jacob

(ca. 1452-1505) Flemish contemporary of Josquin who worked at Cambrai, Bruges, and Antwerp, and made several trips to Italy. His works include 29 Masses, 28 motets, and a number of chansons, songs in Dutch, and instrumental pieces. Most of his Masses are built on canti firmi, though the treatment of the cantus firmus varies greatly. His Masses also use frequent canonic passages.

Compère, Loyset

(ca. 1455-1518) contemporary of Josquin who is represented in hte Odhecaton. Composed mostly elegant courtly music and specialized in small lyric forms like chansons, using several diverse manners of composition. Stylistically, he tends towards concise, clear-cut phrases. Some of his chansons modify older Burgundian traditions in ways that suggest he was aware of more modern attitudes toward text setting and textural homogeneity.

Rue, Pierre de la

(ca. 1460-1518) Composer of the Burgundian court. His music is impressive for the great individuality of its single lines and the complex interaction among them. La Rue shunned musical rhetoric, but he did tend to express the general mood of the poem. His somber counterpoint is neither as tonally focused nor as rhythmically driving as that of his Italian counterparts.

Janequin, Clément

(ca. 1485-ca. 1560) French composer particularly celebrated for his long descriptive Parisian chansons, similar to the Italian 14th c. caccie, with onomatopoeic imitations of bird-calls, street cries, etc. In general the Paisian chanson ws a ne stle cultivatd in the 1520's with a repetitve form, lively rhythm, homophonic and syllabic settings and light-heatretdd content. His works tend to express the vivacious or irreverent side of the esprit gaulois. He and Sermisy were prominent in the first of Attaingnant's collections, and both were associated with the Parisian chanson of the 1530's and 1540's.

Willaert, Adrian

(ca. 1490-1562) A Flemish composer who spent much of his career as director of music in St. Mark's church at Venice, Willaert was a pioneer in bringing text and music into a closer rapport. His pupils include Zarlino, de Rore, Vicentino, and A. Gabrieli. In his sacred compositions, the text determines every dimension of the musical form. He was one of the first to insist that syllables be printed carefully under notes. We may assume that the rules for text underlaying set forth by his pupil Zarlino were based on his practices and teachings.

de Morales, Cristobal

(ca. 1500-53) the most eminent Spanish composer of the early sixteenth century and member of the papal chapel from 1535 to 1545. Spanish sacred music was marked by a particular sobriety of melody and moderation in the use of contrapuntal artifices, together with a passionate intensity in the expression of religious emotion. Morales wrote 22 Masses, 16 Magnificats, a set of Lamentations, and over 80 motets. Like the other major figures of the post-Josquin generation, he valued continuity and a compact dense texture over clearly articulated formal divisions and transparent sonorities. He made extensive use of imitation. He rarely interrupted the flow of the polyphony with declamatory chordal passages.

Clemens non Papa

(ca. 1510-ca. 1556) A Flemish composer of the generation after Josquin. He worked in Bruges and various Netherlands churches. He composed chansons, 15 Masses, over 200 motets, and 4 books of psalms (Souterliedeken) with Dutch texts, written in simple 3-part polyphony and using tunes of popular origin. His motets are similar to Gombert's, but with clearer phrase definition, melodic motives shaped to the meaning of the words, and attention to modal definition through cadences and melodic profile.

Moulinié, Etienne

(ca. 1600-1669) a French composer of motets. Mouline wrote the first collection of sacred music pubished in France to have a basso continuo. This collection, Meslanges de sujets Crestiens...avec une basse continue, was published by Ballard around 1650. Some of Mouline's motets were influenced by the air de cour, while others show decidedly Italian traits, derived from the music of Viadana, the inventor of figured bass. The motets are scored for alternating chorus and soloists, but many of the solo récits are left bare in terms of accompaniment which is why figured bass worked well to provide harmonic support to these solo lines.

Notker the Stammerer

(ca. 840-912) A monk of St. Gall who claimed to have invented the sequence when he began to write words syllabically under certain long melismas as an aid to memorizing the tune.

Schobert, Johann

(d. 1767) a German composer well established in Paris when the Mozarts journeyed there in 1763. Mozart was influenced by his sonatas for violin and piano, of which the violin parts are often dispensable, providing little more than a doubling of the upper line of the keyboard part and occasional rhythmic accents. In other words, the violin part was accompanimental, if not altogether unnecessary. Schobert's sonatas consist of three movements of various types and sequence, normally beginning with an allegro. Mozart's early violin sonatas show some influence from Schobert, but later works involve the violin substantially.

Tuotilo

(d. 915) a monk from the Monastery at St. Gall, who was distinguished for his trope

Tromboncino, Bartolomeo

(d. ca. 1535) One of the most distinguished frottolists, who worked in Mantua and was supported by Isabella d'Este after he murdered his unfaithful wife.

pastourelle

(pasrorela) troubadour form of poetry (vers) which portrays the often witty dialog between a shepherdess and a knight who tries to seduce her.

partita/chorale partita

1. In the late 16th and 17th c., a variation, usually one on a traditional melody such as the romanesca or passamezzo. This meaning was continued in the chorale partitas of Georg Böhm and Bach. 2. In the Baroque period, a suite. The earliest known use of the term in the sense occurs in Johann Kuhnau's Neuer Clavier Übung erster Theil, bestehend in sieben Partien (1689). The best-known are Bach's solo violin and keyboard partitas. 3. In the early Classical period, a type of multimovement instrumental work. Many Classical partitas consist of abstract movements. Mostly for solo instruments, but a fair number of orchestral partitas also exist.

Franconian motet

13th c. Composers introduced differences in style between each voice of the motet, so that each is in a different rhythmic mode, usually slow to fast from the bottom up.

trovatori

13th c. Italian court musicians following the tradition of the troubadours.

Salomon

1749-1815) German violinist, impresario, and composer. He went to London as a virtuoso performer, and then turned to conducting and promoting concerts. He secured Haydn's trips to London in 1790-91 and 1794-95, for which the "London" symphonies were written. His works include operas, other vocal music, several violin concertos, and chamber music.

orchestral concerto

20thC version of the concerto grosso; a Neoclassical concept- Bartok Concerto for Orchestra(1944), Berg Chamber Concerto

Mouton, Jean

: (1459-1522) French composer and contemporary of Josquin who served in the royal chapel under two kings: Louis XII and Francis I. His style emulates that of Josquin. His Masses and motets are remarkable for their smooth-flowing melodic lines and skillful use of various unifying devices. He was the teacher of Willaert.

d'Este, Isabelle

: (1474-1539) marchioness of Mantua and enlightened patroness of the arts, who greatly stimulated the development of the frottola. She employed Marco Cara, as well as Tromboncino, even after he had murdered his wife. Her active support of the frottolists substantially aided their efforts to establish a truly Italian style of composition.

Borodin, Alexander

: (1833-87) Russian chemist and medical researcher, and member of "The Five." He is known now for only a few works, including two string quartets, In the Steppes of Central Asia, three symphonies (the third completed by Glazunov), and the opera Prince Igor (which includes the famous Polevetsian Dances). He was championed by Liszt, to whom In the Steppes is dedicated. Due to the patronage of a Belgian countess, his works were performed in Europe. In general, his music shows the influence of Mendelssohn and also of the cosmopolitan parlor style familiar all over Europe; at the same time, he incorporated melodic inflections of Russian folksong.

Arpeggione

: A bowed guitar invented by J.G. Staufer in 1824. It is cello-sized, with curved bridge and fingerboard, fretted neck, and six strings tuned like those of a guitar. Schubert's Sonata in A minor, D. 821 (1824) was written for the arpeggione, but is now often played on the cello.

musique mesurée à l'antique

: A late sixteenth-century French phenomenon in which long and short word syllables were set by long and short notes in the ratio 2:1. This was an attempt to reunite the intimate relationship between music and poetry of ancient Greece. It was first used by Jean Antoine de Baif and was taken up in his Académie de poésie et musique (founded 1570) which included CLaude le Jeune, Thibault de Courrille and others. This style persisted into the seventeenth century by composers of the air de cour.

Zeitoper

: German for "opera of the time." This referred to the practice of writing libretti which feature modern people in contemporary situations. A good example is Hindemith's Neues vom Tage (News of the Day, 1929) in which ther is an office scene with twelve typewriters contributing to the music and a woman who sings an aria from a bathtub.

tone cluster

: One of the new timbres of the 20thcentury. Tone clusters were first used on the piano by Henry Cowell in the 1920s in pieces like Tiger and later by John Cage in his prepared piano pieces.

Teatro S. Cassiano

: the first theatre to which paying public was admitted, a decisive step for the history of opera, since until then it depended on wealthy or aristocratic patrons. Venetian inaugurated there in 1637 with the production of Andromeda, by librettist, composer and theorbo player Bendetto Ferrari, and composer Francesco Manelli.

Véron, Louis

A 19th c. journalist, director; a representative voice of middle class; art and science; opera director, same sentiment, pretty decorative such as dances; emphasizes on spectacle, not the music itself; performances were successful-popular: it was a paradise of people hard of hearing difficult/serious music; negotiations for government, new reign, tranquil society, stability of government; he hired only the best such as F. Halévy and F. Habeneck.

Cocteau, Jean

A French poet and author of the early 20th century. He brought forth an influential essay in 1918 entitled "Cock and Harlequin" in which he said that "Satie teaches what, in our age, is the greatest audacity - simplicity." He warned not only against the influences of German music (Wagnerian fog) but also the impressionistic leanings of his own countrymen (Debussian mist and theatrical mysticisms ("Rite of Spring"). Cocteau extoled the virtues of "everyday" music which would have the flavor of the street, the circus, and jazz. Cocteau not only helped Satie's rise to fame, but he also penned a ballet, which Satie set to music and which the Ballet Russe performed. It was entitled Parade, which featured jazz music and the antics of street entertainers and acrobats.

Missa Papae Marcelli

A Mass by Palestrina that contains many of the traits approved by the Council of Trent in 1563. It is not based on a secular model and makes the text very intelligible.

motto Mass

A Mass which is unified by the recurring use of a musical idea at the opening of each movement. Dufay's Missa Se la face ay pale.

cantus firmus Mass

A Mass which uses a borrowed melody in strict form as the foundation for the work. An example is Dufay's Missa L'homme arme super voces musicales.

paraphrase Mass

A Mass which uses a preexistent melody (chant, chanson, or motet) and freely adapts and embellishes it in the Mass setting. Often the cantus firmus is cut up amongst sections or movements and is altered with regard to rhythm and/or pitch. Josquin, Victoria, and Palestrina all composed a number of paraphrase Masses. A good example is Palestrina's Missa Aeterna Christi munera.

parody Mass

A Mass which uses a preexistent polyphonic work as a model. Generally each phrase is quoted before the new work continues in free counterpoint. Palestrina's Missa Papae Marcelli.

Esterhaza

A beautiful castle in Neusiedel Lake which became the ancestral home of the Esterhazy family. Today it lies in Hungary, not far from the Austrian city of Eisenstadt. The palace was built by Nicholas I who was a great patrom of the arts and attempted to emulate court life in Vienna and Versailles at Esterhaza. The palace soon became known as a cultural center and attracted many distinguished guests, including the empress herself in 1773. In terms of music history, Esterhaza is impoertant because it served as Haydn's residence for many years while her bore the title of Kappelmeister at Esterhaza. Many of his middle-period works were composed for this court. Though Haydn was well-paid, he did fell isolated at Esterhaza and later in his employ there, took frequent leaves to visit Vienna and England.

guerre des bouffons

A bitter dispute via pamphlets over the "vitues" of Italian opera. This deabte took place in Paris and was sparked by a late-run performance of Pergolesi's La serva padrona. Followers of Lully detested the foreign Italian style and attacked it whereas composers such as Rameau and Rousseau supported the growth of Italian style opera in France.

formes fixes

A collection of poetic formes particularly of the 14th and 15th c. that became popular for the setting of medieval secular song. These formes had a fixed number of lines and syllables per line as well as rhyme scheme rather than being free or mutable in structure like the ode or lai.

hexachord

A collection of six pitches. Hexachords are important in the history of solmization and in 20thcentury twelve tone theory. Solmization by means of hexachords prevailed from the 11th century with its development by Guido through the 16th century. According to Guido's system, there were three hexachord (C, F, G) that could be used and overlapped in order to create the "gamut." Pitches in the hexachords were considered music recta, and pitches not in the hexachords were musica ficta.

Das Wohltemperirte Clavier

A collection written by J.S. Bach in two volumes. Each volume contains an prelude and fugue in all twenty-four major and minor keys. Many of these pieces appear to have grown out of pedagogical exercises Bach set for his children and students. The title itself probably does not refer to equal temperament as we know it. Rather, it refers to a version of mean-tone tuning used during Bach's time. Bach's work obviously inspired later composers like Chopin, Hindemith, Shostakovich, etc. who wrote similar collections in all twenty-four keys.

cantata

A composite vocal genre of the Baroque era, consisting of a succession of recitatives, ariosos, and set-pieces (e.g. arias, duets, and choruses). A cantata may be either secular or sacred in subject matter and function, and its treatment may be lyrical, allegorical, or dramatic (although almost never actually staged). Cantatas range from intimate, small-scale works for solo singer or singers and restricted accompanimental forces (sometimes called chamber cantatas, e.g., A. Scarlatti's secular cantata for soprano voice with continuo acc., Lontan' dalla sua Clori) to large ones with chorus and orchestral acc (JS Bach's Cantata No. 80, Ein'feste Burg ist unser Gott for singers [SATB] and soloists, 2 oboes, strings in 4 parts, 3 trumpets, 2 oboes, and timpani). Such large cantatas were often composed to celebrate or commemorate specific events. The cantata originated early in the 17th c in Italy, where the term was first used simply to indicate a piece to be sung (as oppoesed to "sonata," to be played on instruments). The most frequently performed cantatas today are those of Bach; they are sacred works with German texts and were intended for performance during Lutheran church services. The typical Bach cantata employs several soloists and chorus and is accompanied by a small orchestra.

canon

A compositional technique in which one voice strictly imitates another in both pitch and rhythm. Canon was a popular technique among the Northern composers in the Renaissance. The earliest example is in the English round, Sumer is icumen in. Genres that include canons are the Italian caccia, the French chace, and the Latin fuga. Dufay, Josquin, Palestrina, de La Rue and others all wrote canons.

passacaglia

A continuous variation form, principally of the Baroque, whose basso ostinato formulas originally derived from ritornellos to early 17th-c. songs. These passacaglias or ritornellos were played on the guitar between stanzas or at the ends of songs, where they were repeated many times, probably with improvised variations; the practice began in Spain [Sp. pasacalle] and quickly moved to Italy and France. The passacaglia then developed in a way quite similar to the chaconne. Its four-bar ostinato became the basis for long sets of continuous variations as well as vocal pieces. Early differences between chaconne and passacaglia were the particular chord progressions: the passacaglia tended to be in minor, with a I-IV-V or I-IV-V-I pattern. The bass lines themselves might change in successive phrases, or extra harmonies might be inserted, but these variants fell within a limited set of formulas. One of these formulas is the descending tetrachord used in so many operatic laments but appearing as well in pieces titled passacaglia (i.e. Biber, Passacaglia in G minor for solo violin). Bach's Passacaglia in C minor for organ BWV 582 is well-known 18th-century passacaglia. This format was picked up by 20th-century composers in non-tonal or serial pieces (i.e. Webern, Passacaglia op. 1; Schoenberg, Pierrot lunaire op. 21, "Nacht"; Berg, Wozzeck, act 2, sc. 4; Stravinsky, Septet).

Gradus ad Parnassum

A counterpoint textbook written by J.J. Fux geared toward writing music in the prima prattica style. The lessons in the book follow the species approach to counterpoint and are given by means of a dialogue between Aloysius (the Master) and Josephus (the student). This book has remained in print until the present day and was used as a training manual for a number of Classic-era composers including Mozart and Haydn.

csárdás

A descendent of the Verbunkos, the csardas is a Hungarian dance form first known about 1840 almost exclusively in the ballrooms of Pest, the Hungarian capital. The Verbunkos was a style of dance music sometimes used for military recruiting, with alternating slow and fast sections (lassu and friss), sharply accentuated rhythms with many dotted figures and triplets, and colorful violinistic ornamentation and paraphrase.

alla Turca

A fad in 18thc. Austrua to write compositions in a stylized Turkish flavor. This stems from the presence of Turkish military (Janissary) bands not long before, when the Turks advanced across Eastern Europe, and laid siege to Vienna. Janissary bands typically used clarinets, trumpet, triangle, piccolo, large drum, and two cymbals, in addition to the oboes, horns, and bassoons of the "ordinary field music." Mozart uses this Turkish style in his A major Sonata, K. 331; Janissary elements in this piece include static harmonies, alternation between major and minor, and heavy, jangling bass chords.

gamelan

A general name for a classical Indonesian orchestra, of which there are many different kinds, as well as for its music. Indeed, a gamelan may be unique, made up not just of certain kinds of instrument but of specific instruments that have been played together for many years; such a group is often given a proper name, just as a person is. Some of the gamelan still used in Java today are a thousand years old. Javanese music uses two kinds of scale system, a five-tone system called sléndro and a seven-tone system called pelóg. A complete gamelan consists of two sets of instruments, one set of pelóg and another of sléndro. Altogether there may be as many as eighty instruments, played by about thirty performers. The most important are the percussion instruments, consisting of gongs, drums, xylophones, and kettles. zTexture is dense. The central melodic theme is played by metal xylophones. Two leaders: the largest drum for tempo changes; a fiddle for melodic variations.

Society for Private Musical Performances

A group founded by Schoenberg in 1919 in Vienna to perform a wide range of new music, encompassing such varied composers as Debussy, Bartok, Reger, and Schoenberg and his pupils. The idea was to present contemporary music in a setting conducive to its proper appreciation. Compositions were carefully rehearsed, difficult works were repeated, publicity was avoided, and critics were barred. The Society only lasted three years, but it furnished an early reflection of the isolation of "new music" from "official" concert institutions.

Pleiade

A group of poets in mid-16th c. France who led the discussions about music in the ancient world. Joachim du Bellay outlined the group's aims in his treatise, La Deffence et illustration de la langue françoyse (1549), in which he urged poets to imitate classical forms and meters. Other members include Pierre de Ronsard, who stressed Plato's ideas of the ethical and moral quality of music, and Jean-Antoine de Baïf, who devised the "vers et musique mesurés à l'antique."

partial signatures

A key signature in which at least one accidental is omitted. It was common in the Renaisance when the "missing" accidental would not be in use in all vocal parts. In baroque music partial signature still ocurred, in minor keys with fewer flats than we now associate with their keys. For example, a key of c minor was often written with 2 flats, since the Ab was frequently raised to an A natural in a naturally ascending melodic scale. One such Renaissance example is Josquin's motet Absolon fili mi, where some voice parts range in keys signatures from 2-4 flats.

chitarrone

A large lute with extra bass strings, the chitarrone was the preferred instrument for realizing the thoroughbass accompaniment to a recitative or aria in the early 17th c.

canzon villanesca all napoletana

A lighter variety of song cultivated in Italy in the 16th century. It is a peasant song that appeared around Naples in the 1540s. It was a three voice, strophic, lively piece in a homophonic style. Composers often deliberately used parallel fifths to suggest the country, rustic character. It eventually grew to resemble the madrigal and lost its identity.

Fitzwilliam Virginal Book

A manuscript containing nearly 300 wokrs for virginal (small harpsichord) from ca. 1562 to ca. 1612. It includes dances, arrangements of songs and madrigals, preludes, and set of variations by the principal English composers of keyboard works of the period like William Byrd and John Bull.

Cecilian movement

A movement within the Roman Catholic Church, especially in German countries, to reform church music in the spirit of 19th-c. Romantic historicism. 18th-c. leagues named the old a capella style in the face of an increasingly secularized Baroque idiom, evolved under the influence of such theological reformers as bishop J.M. Sailer and Cardinal Newman into a widespread movement to cultivate Gregorian chant, vernacular hymnody, and composition in the style of Palestrina. In 1869, Franz Xaver Witt founded the Allgemeine Cäcilien-Verein, which published music deemed proper for worship and spawned similar societies in Europe and, notably, in the U.S. under John B. Singenberger.

opéra ballet

A musical dramatic form that flourished in France starting in the late 17th century. Composers were Campra, Mouret, and Montéclair. The genre mixes elements of ballet (instrumental pieces, dances) and opera (recitatives, arias, chorus). It was an expansion by the followers of Lully.

Jeu de Robin et de Marion

A musical play written by Adam de la Halle in about 1284. Contains a number of popular chansons (rondeau, ballade, virelai), some of which are polyphonic

primitivism

A musical trend evident in the music of the early twentith century (Bartok and Stravinsky). In this movement, countries that were less "advanced" artistically and lacked well-defined artistic goals often drew strength from their pasts and their sense of primitive folk beginnings. Uses of folk tunes, melodic grace notes (Stravinsky, Les Noces), unusual scalar formations (pentatonic and octatonic), assymetrical phraseology, and the sonorities of primitive of folk instruments all characterize this style. Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, though featuring no authentic folk tunes or dances per se, is the epitome of this style, both in terms of musical construction and programmatic content.

Orfeo

A mythical figure/story to be selected for several operas from Baroque through Romantic periods. Monteverdi composed La Favola d'Orfeo (Mantua, 1607: a prologue and five acts; libretto by Alessandro Striggio on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice), Gluck composed Orfeo ed Euridice (Vienna, 1762: opera in three acts; libretto by Raniero de Calzabigi; revised in 1774), and Offenbach's Orphée aux Enfers [Fr. Orpheus in the Underworld] (Paris, 1858: operetta in two acts; setting: Greek legend; revised in 1874).

Les Six

A name given in 1920 to a group of six French composers: Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Germaine Tailleferre, Georges Auric, and Francis Poulenc. They shared the aesthetic ideals of Erik Satie; Jean Cocteau was an advocate of Les Six. They came to symbolize the light and bubbly flavor of post-war France; their music was direct in approach, light in touch, and free of the pretensions of the concert hall.

lauda

A non-liturgical religious song of greatest importance in 13-15th century Italy. The lauda resembles the ballata with a refrain alternating with strophes. The earliest surviving example is from Jacopo da Bologna in the 14th century. Many of the carnival songs cultivated by Lorenzo de'Medici in Florence were changed to lauda by replacing the secular texts with religious one (contrafact). Savanorola played a large role in this practice. The peak of the genre's popularity was the early 16th century.

ordo

A phrase of one or more statements of a modal pattern that ended in a rest. They were described in terms of the number of repetitions in the pattern and the position of the concluding rest. A perfect ordo would end on the first note of the pattern, followed by a rest that substituted for the second half of the pattern.

Diaghilev

A renown figure in the early 20thcentury as a director of company Ballet Russe and other avant-garde movement groups. He selected Nizinsky, I. Stravinsky and many other artists/musicians (including E. Satie) for his avant-garde ballet: Petruschka, The Rite of Spring, and Prélude a l'aprés-midi d'un faune, among which the latter two evoked numerous cons- and pros- among the audience.

concerts spirituels

A series of French concerts in Paris, founded by the distinguished musician A.D. Philidor in 1725. Originally designed to provide music of a properly devotional nature during Lent and other holy days when opera was prohibited, the Concerts Spirituels soon offered a variety of vocal and instrumental music, both French and foreign, and continued as a standard of excellence in musical performance until the Revolution.

ordres

A series of harpsichord or instrumental ensemble pieces in the same key. F. Couperin coined the term in his four harpsichord books. Most of the pieces are in dance rhythms. Highly decorated, published between 1713-1730.

Sequenza

A series of pieces composed by Luciano Berio in the 1950s for a solo instrument or voice. These pieces were meant as virtuosic showpeices of newly-developed 20th-century techniques for the given instruments.

scena

A setting of a portion of a libretto for concert performance by a solo singer plus orchestra may be called scena ed aria, e.g. Beethoven's "Ah! perfido" or Mozart's "Misera, dove son."

Verismo

A style of operatic composition, prevalent in Italy in the 1890s, with repercussions extending to other European countries and later decades. Verismo in Italy began as a literary movement, exemplified by the novels and plays of Giovanni Verga, showing analogies with the naturalism of Zola and de Maupassant. The landmark veristic opera, Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana (1890), is based on a story by Verga. The veristic operas that followed, such as Leoncavallo's Pagliacci (1892), Giordano's Mala vita (1892), and Puccini's Il tabarro (1918), have certain traits in common. The settings are contemporary; the characters are often rural and generally impoverished; the passions run high and lead to violence. There is a tendency in these works to wed the sordid with the sensational; Verismo is also used, more loosely, to describe any of the operas by Mascagni, Leoncavallo, Puccini, Giordano, and Cilea, who were also collectively referred to as the young school (nuove giovane). The term then expands to include Puccini's Tosca, Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur, and Giordano's Andrea Chénier, although they have historical settings; Puccini's Madama Butterfly and Mascagni's Iris, which have exotic settings; and Puccini's La boheme, which sentimentalizes its characters in a way alien to ideals of realism or naturalism.

expressionism

A term borrowed from painting to describe certain kinds of 20th-century music written as though to express the innermost feelings of the composer or, in stage works, of the characters. Like expressionist paintings, which is distortion and exaggeration to picture a kind of inner reality, expressionist music often seems harsh and discordant, as well as emotional and dramatic. Outstanding examples are Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht ("Transfigured Night"), Pierrot lunaire ("Pierrot by Moonlight"), and Erwartung ("Expectation"), Berg's two operas, Lulu and Wozzeck, and, more recent, Harrison Birtwhistle's Punch and Judy (1966) and Peter Maxwell Davies's Eight Songs for a Mad King (1969). As might be expected, both texts and music of these stage works concentrate more on the psychology of the characters than on external events. Describes German and Austrian composers of the early 20thcentury like Schoenberg and Berg. They believed that art should reflect the inner soul of the creator. Rather than produce an accurate depiction of a scence, a composer should express his personal feelings toward it. This involved distorting reality. The painter, Kandinsky, produced expressionistic paintings. Schoenberg's Erwartung is the best example. The text describes psychic disintegration, with extreme expressive effects created by distorting traditional structures (tonality becomes atonality).

Gesamtkunstwerk

A term coined by Wagner in his essay Opera und Drama (1851). The meaning of the term is that poetry, scenic design, staging, action, and music are seen as aspects of a total scheme. This concept was of primary importance to Wagner's music drama which was an attempt at creating the ultimate art form which linked together all of the various arts (music, singing, dance, poetry, writing, paintin, sculpture, etc.) in one complete whole. Wagner believed this was a return to the artistic ideals of classical Greece and Rome.

Empfindsamkeit

A term referring to the mid-18th century style of "sentimentality" or "sensibility," a refined passionateness and melancholy that characterizes some slow movements and obbligato recitatives in particular. Expressed through surpirsing turns of harmony, chromaticism, nervous rhythmic figures, and rhapsodically free, speechlike melody, it is found in late concertos of Vivaldi and in symbiosis with the galant idiom in CPE Bach's keyboard sonatas.

cavatina & cabaletta

A type of aria. In 19th-c. Italian opera, the cavatina is the entrance aria of a principal singer. In 19th-c. French and German opera, a cavatine or Kavatine is a short aria in a moderate or slower than moderate tempo. Examples include cavatinas for the heroines in the last acts of Weber's Freischütz, Euryanthe, and Oberon, as well as Gounod's Faust and Bizet's La jolie fille de Perth and Les pêcheurs de perles. This type of aria was often paired with the more athletic caballeta, often featuring virtuosic soloistic displays such as the cavatina/cabaletta in Act III of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor. Often the first and lat parts of a 4-part scheme.

meantone temperament

A type of tuning in which perfect fifths are tuned slightly low (1/4 of the syntonic comma, or 22 cents) in order that five fifths (c-g-d-a-e) will arrive at an in-tune third (c-e). This system works well as long as one stays within the key with only one or two accidentals in them. However, more remote keys sound increasingly out of tune, and one fifth in particular, the wolf fifth (often Eb - G#) is quite bad. This system of tunig was in effect from ca. 1500 onward through the end of the Baroque and necessitated some of the Baroque developments in instrument-making (such as the divided keyboards on Baroque organs) which allowed for good intonation in all keys.

La Pouplinière

A wealthy Parisian msuic sponsor who provided for a long-lived semipublic series of concerts in the 1730s. Among his musical directors were Rameau, Stamitz, and Gossec. These concerts existed alongside other Parisian traditions, like the Concerts Spirituels of Philidor. These originally began as an outlet for the performance of proper devotional music during Lent, they quickly became a vessel for a dazzling display of both vocal and instrumental genres, French and foreign. These concerts maintained a standard of excellence until the Revolution.

nationalism

A widespread movement of the 19th century that emphasized national musical characteristics, especially as found in a country's folk songs, dances, and legends. The movement was associated with the political nationalism of 19th-century Europe, particularly in such countries as Russia, Bohemia (now a part of Czechoslovakia), Norway, Finland, Hungary, Rumania, Spain, and England. The earliest important example is Glinka's opera, A Life for the Czar, completed in 1836; Russian Five: Mussorgsky's opera Boris Godunov; Smetana's The Bartered Bride combines a plot based on an episode from Bohemian peasant life with folk dances and other elements of folk music; Grieg in Norway, Dvořák in Bohemia, and Sibelius in Finland composed with the materials from their native lands; Albéniz, Granados, and de Falla used Spanish dance rhythms; Janácek in Moravia; Bartók and Kodály in Humgary; Enesco in Rumania; Szymanowski in Poland; Elgar and Vaughan Williams in Great Britain; Chávez in Mexico; and Grofé in the US. By 1900 this movement had declined; The use in art music of materials that are identifiably national or regional in character. These may include actual folk music, and nonmusical programmatic elements drawn from national folklore, myth, or literature; mostly for the later 19th and 20thcentury music written by composers of peripheral countries; mainly on a view of German-speaking countries, but much German music in the Romantic period could be seen nationalistic. The most often mentioned countries (and composers) for nationalism include Russia (Glinka, the Five), Czechoslovakia (Smetana, Dvořák, Janacek), Norway (Grieg), Finland (Sibelius), England (Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Holst), Spain (Pedrell, Albéniz, Granados, Falla), Hungary (Bartók, Kodály), and the U.S. (H.F.Gilbert, Frederick Converse, Ives, Harris, Gershwin, Copland). In the middle third of the 20thcentury it lost some prominence as increasing numbers of composers, especially in the most influential cultural centers, turned to the techniques of twelvetone and serial music.

Il Combattimento di tancredi e Clorinda

A work by Monteverdi in stile rappresentativo, performed at Venice in 1624. It is a setting of a portion of Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, describing the combat between the crusader knight Tancred and the pagan heroine Clorinda, ending in her death. Most of the original text is straight narrative, which Monteverdi gives to the tenor soloist in recitative. The few short speeches by the main characters are sung by a tenor and soprano who are instructed to mime the actions described during the singing of the narrative. Monteverdi makes useof instrumental interludes and stile concitato in this work.

Mystic chord

Also known as Promethean chord. Name given to the chord c-f#-bb-e'-a'-d" (superposed fourths) by the Russian composer Skryabin. It forms the harmonic basis of many of his works, including the tone poem Prométhée (1911), from which work the chord takes its alternative name.

indeterminacy

Also, aleatory music, chance music. Music that involves elements of chance. Chance may be involved in how the composer writes the music, or in how it is performed, or in both. In composition, the pitches of the notes, their duration, intensity, and other features may be selected by a throw of dice, by following the drawing of a design, by mathematical laws of chance, or by some similar means. In performance, chance operated by leaving some elements of the music up to the performer. John Cage, Karlheins Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, and Henri Pousseur.

In nomine

An English instrumental genre of the 16th and 17th c. which all use the antiphon "Gloria tibi trinitas" as a cantus firmus. The section on "In nomine" was taken from Taverner's Mass to begin a tradition of compositions based on the piece. Composers include Byrd, Gibbons, Purcell and others.

faburden

An English technique of polyphonic vocal improvisation from 1430 until the late 16th c. In improvising, a borrowed melody from chant would be embellished by thirds and fifths below and parallel fourths above. In faburden, the preexisting melody was probably placed in the middle voice.

Vivaldi, Antonio

An Italian composer and priest. He was known as the "Red Priest" because of his fiery hair. He was one of the greatest and most prolific composers of concerti - some for solo or dou instruments, others for complete orchestra. Vivaldi was also a virtuoso violinist, violin teacher, musical director and choirmaster at the Pieta, a combination orphanage, nunnery, conservatory for girls in Venice. His style ranges from Baroque in his early compositions to galant in his late works. Many of his works exemplify standard concerto techniques (fast-slow-fast movement structure and concertino vs. ripieno with ritornello forms) but his style is individualistic. His music features additive construction in which short ideas are repeated and sequenced frequently and then strung together with similar constructions of different ideas.

Société Nationale de Musique

An attempt in 1871 to counter the pervasive influence of Wagner and the trend towards late Romantic chromaticism. This group was founded by a group of young comopsers including Sain-Saëns, Chabrier, and Fauré with the purpose of inspiring a musical renaissance of specifically French character. Particular emphasis was placed on resurrecting absolute music and returning to ideals of order, clarity, and restraint. The group finally split in the 1880s.

oratorio

An extended musical drama with a text based on religious subject matter. The oratorio originated in the 17th century. Throughout most of its history it was intended for performance without scenery, costume, or action. As a result, most oratorios place special emphasis on narration, on contemplation, and , particularly in the 18th, 19th, and 20thcenturies, on extensive use of a chorus. The Baroque oratorio finds its significant roots in certain late 16th- century motets, which, like some madrigals of the period, contain elements of dramatic narration and dialogue. This includes Haydn's The Creation, Mendelsshon's Elijah, Brahms' Requiem, and Britten's War Requiem (1962).

fantasia

An imaginative instrumental composition meant to sound improvised. In the 16th century, it was used synonymously with ricercare, which was an instrumental version of the motet.

opéra comique (Romantic)

An opera on a French tesxt with musical numbers separated by spoken dialogue. In the 19th century, these operas also incorporated serious or tragic events. An example is Bizet's Carmen. In this opera, the idea of "comique" does not refer to comic or humorous like the 18th century, but refers only to the presence of spoken dialogue.

opéra semiseria

An operatic genre, arising in the second half of the 18th century, in which both comic and serious elements are present. Ornate arias of opera seria are present, as well as ensemble finales of opera buffa.

chorale fantasia

An organ work in the free style of a fantasia based on a chorale melody. Chorale fantasias, many of the large-scale works, were composed by many north German composers of the 17th and 18th Cs, notably Buxtehude and Bach, and the genre was revived in the late 19th C by such composers as Reger.

French overture

An overture is originally an orchestra piece intended for an introduction to an opera or ballet or other dramatic works. In the French style, there are two parts: a stately slow section in duple meter with dotted rhythms and then a faster fugal section in triple meter. Sometimes there is a return to the slow section. These overtures first appeared in Lully's ballet Alcidiane and remained the standard type during the reign of Louis XIV. It was adopted by Germans and English.

Mannheim orchestra

Associated with the court of Mannheim, it was regarded as the finest orchestra in Europe during the 18th century. Important contributions include the extended crescendo passage, the "Mannheim sigh" (melodic appogiatura), the "Mannheim rocket" (an arpeggio them rising through several octaves), adapting and extending the Italian overture style to the concert symphony, earliest consistent use of four movements in the symphony, and the idiomatic treatment of the orchestra. Composers of the Mannheim school are students of Stamitz like Anton Fils, Christian Cannabich, and Carl Joseph Toeschi.

Pleyel, Ignaz

Austrian composer, music publisher ("Maison Pleyel"), and piano maker. Student of Vanhal in Vienna and Haydn in Eisenstadt. His brilliant and virtuosic sinfonia concertante in F was first performed in London for the Professional Concert, which resulted in a rivalry between him and Haydn. Today he is mostly remembered for his violin duets. He also wrote ca. 45 symphonies, chamber music for strings, and a number of concertos.

Symphonie Fantastique

Berlioz's composition; program music; idée fixe; his self-portrait in this story; Reveries-Passions, Un bal, Scene aux champs, Marche au supplice, and Songe d'une nuit du sabbat.

idée fixe

Berlioz's term for the recurring musical idea linking the several movements of his Symphonie fantastique and associated in its program with the image of the beloved. Symphonie fantastique: Berlioz's cyclic program symphony which includes the recurring idée fixe (see above) and the use of the Dies irae. Typical of the 19th century, the subject material is taken from the dream. The first movement is a modified sonata form; the second is a waltz; the third is a pastorale (an Adagio in two-part form); the fourth is the March to the Scaffold; and the fifth is an introduction and Allegro, which uses the various themes and the Dies irae, first singly and then in combination (as in the finale of Beethoven's 9th Symphony). Unity is achieved both through the recurring theme and through the evolution of the dramatic idea of the program.

Italian Opera (mid 17th c.)

By the mid-17th c., Italian opera had asumed the main outlines it was to maintain without essential change for the next two hundred years: 1) concentration upon solo singing with (for a long time) comparative neglect of ensembles and of instrumental music 2) separation of recitative and aria, and 3) introduction of distinctive styles and patterns for arias. This development was accompanied by a complete reversal in the relation of text and music: the Florentines had considered music accessory to poetry, while the Venetians treated the libretto as hardly more than a conventional scaffolding for the musical structure.

violin obbligato

Composers such as Schobert and Mozart wrote sonatas for piano with violin obbligato, or an accompanimental violin part which tended to double the right hand of the piano, provide rhythmic accents, or serve merely as accompaniment. Sometimes these added strings parts were unnecessary, added perhaps for the convenience of amateur musicians. Later, Mozart gave more equal prominence to the violin part in his violin and piano sonatas.

mensuration canon

Compositional technique in which the subject is transformed into different mensurations, making a complex web of the same subject in different rhythmic values. It was favored by the Netherlandish composers. Examples are Ockeghem's Missa prolationum and the L'homme arme Masses of Josquin and de La Rue.

Hába, Alois

Czech composer, theorist and teacher. The organ Fugue on H-A-B-A and the orchestral piece Mládi ('Youth') both written in 1913, already show freedom in their use of diatonic melody and harmony and in their treatment of thematicism. He took an active part in turning Czech music in a more adventurous direction; was a leading officer of several Prague music societies and a jury member and honorary member of the ISCM. During WW II he was persecuted as a progressive artist, but in 1945 he returned to musical life; he may justly be regarded as the originator of the use of quarter-and sixth-tones in Wistern art music. To realize this new music he pionered the construction of special instruments: three types of quarter-tone piano (1924-31), a quarter-tone (1928) and a sixth-tone (1936) harmonium, and a quarter-tpme clarinet (1924), trumpet (1931) and guitar (1943). His microtonal music empluts the same compositional techniques as his work in the semitone system and he has avioded opposing the two, In the preface to his Second Quartet op. 7 he wrote: "It is my concern to permeate the semitone system with more delicate sound nuances, not to abolish it ... to extend the possibilities of expression already given by the old system." Developing from microtonal usage in Moravian folk music, the mahor mode is stressed by quarter-tone and sixth-tone sharps, the minor by quarter-tone flats; in each case the result is to heighten the expressive effect: opera Marke ('The mother') is the masterpiece of his quarter-tone music.

Dada

Dada was explicitly "anti-art" - much of what the bizarre manifestos, the noise-poetry, the chance-poetry, the incomprehensible "simultaneous" poems in three languages at once, and the general obscenity and irrationality were about was a nihilistic and pessimistic negation of both "bourgeois society" and the (often overblown) claims of Modern Art to be able to change that society: E. Stie's Gymnopedie (1888), Sports et divertissements (1914), Sonatine buteaucratique (1917), Parade (1917), ballet realistique, and Relache (1924) ("No Performance Tonight").

Luther, Martin

Dissatisfied with the abuses of the Roman Catholic church, Luther nailed his complaints, in the form of 95 theses, to the door of the Schlosskirche at Wittenberg in 1517, thus unintentionally starting the Reformation in Germany. The Lutheran church retained much of the traditional Catholic liturgy, as well as much Catholic music, both plainsong and polyphony. But in order to involve the congregation more, they created chorales, congregational hymns in vernacular that could also be sunf at home in private. Sometimes the original Latin text was kept, but more often pre-existing Gr. devotional songs were adapted or new religious text was added to popular secular music via contrafactum. One such example is Isaac's Innsbruck Ich muss dich lassen that was adapted to O Welt, ich muss dich lassen.

Sarum chants

English chants (Anglican Chant). A simple type of harmonized melody used in the Anglican Church for singing unmetrical texts, principally the psalms and the canticles (when these latter are not sung in a more elaborate setting). The main principle is that of the traditional Gregorian tones, i.e. a short melody is repeated to each verse of the text; however, the typical "intonation" just before the "recitation" in Gregorian is usually omitted in the Anglican. The harmonizations of the Anglican are in 4 voices and use full triads frequently (very chordal, lots of 3rds). Considered to be an exclusively English product, this form of chant may be said to have had very near relatives in other countries, the closest of them being falsobordone. Examples: Tallis, Morley, Byrd, Gibbons.

chorale

English term for the strophic congreational hymns of the Protestant Church in Germany. The German word, Choral, from which it is derived, originally signified a plainchant melody sung chorally, but from the late 16th century its meaning was widened to include vernacular hymns. However, the term most commonly used for such hymns in early Reformation times was geistliche (or christliche) Lieder. Strictly speaking, the word "chorale" means both the text and the melody of a hymn, as a single unit, but not infrequently the term is used to describe the music only- either a single-line melody or a fully harmonized version as in the 4-part settings of Bach. Texts of Luther's 34 chorales are drawn from Psalms, Gregorian seasonal hymns, antiphons, Mass Ordinary, German sacred song, and nonliturgical Latin hymns. Tunes are adapted from secular sources or are composed on similar models. (Some secular songs even had rather vulgar overtones.) A great many chorale melodies are in bar form, and some show a relationship to the melodic procedures of the Meistersinger.

Tallis, Thomas

English, circa 1505-1585) In 1543 this composer was appointed to the court of the Royal Chapel where he remained for the rest of his life. In 1575 he and Byrd were granted a monopoly in music printing and later that year they produced the volume of Latin motets called Cantiones sacrae. He was brought up in the Catholic tradition, and his earlier music includes several Latin litrugical settings, often on a grand scale (e.g. Missa Puer natus est nobis). After the accession of Elizabeth he continued to set Latin texts, but in a more restrained sytle, showing the influence of the syllabic settings required by the Anglican church. Most of the tunes in his The Whole Psalter translated into English Metere (1567) are in current use as hymn-tunes, and the third one was made famous by Vaughan Williams in his Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis.

Ballet russe

Formed in 1909 by Sergei Diaghilev. Dedicated to the concept of total unity of production, he hired some of the world's finest artists to mount works for his company. Picasso was among his designers. Scores were commissioned from Stravinsky(Firebird, Petrushka, Rite of Spring), Debussy (Jeux), Falla, Milhaud, Satie (Parade, 1917), Ravel (Daphnis et Chloe), and others. A revolution was accomplished by Diaghilev's principal choreographers. Abstract ballet- classical dancing with no narrative- was introduced. Because of Diaghilev, ballet came to be regarded as a serious art and as a leading force in modern aesthetics. With his death in 1929, his toupe disbanded. Former dancers and staff scattered and founded what became internationally prestigious companies- the Ballet russe de Monte Carlo, Britain's Royal Ballet, and the New York City Ballet.

Baïf, Jean-Antoine de

French poet who wrote strophic French verses in ancient classical meters (vers mesurés à l'antique), substituting the ancient Greek and Latin quantities of long and short syllables for the modern stress accent. He was part of the group of poets and composers who formed the Académie de Poésie et de Musique under the patronage of King Charles IX. this musique mesuré later developed into the air de cour.

opéra bouffe

French. A 19th-century type of comic opera that is very similar ro an operetta. The best-known composer of such works is Offenbach.

concerto

From Italian "concertare," to joing together; also related to Latin "concertare," to fight or contend. A piece for soloist and orchestra. Conceived in the concertato contrast between opposing vocal and instrumental groups in the works of G. Gabrieli, the concerto concept took more definite form in the 17th-C sonatas and sinfonias for divided orchestra. Throughout the early Baroque period, the term concerto wascommonly used for Italian and German church music for voices accompanied by instruments, as in the Symphoniae sacrae of Schütz. The history of the concerto proper begins with the concerti grossi of Corelli:

Schubertiade

From about 1820 onwards, the home of Schubert's friend Josef von Spaun were the scene of informal music-making and Schubert was the main attraction. These became known as "Schubertiades." Many of Schubert's chamber works were written for home consumption.

Stabreim

German. 'bar-rhythm', 'alliteration'. Alliteration was the oldest German verse-forming principle, used for both euphony, cohesion and as a means of emphasizing conceptual connections. It was revived by Wagner, in Tristan und Isolde but with especial rigour in Der Ring des Nibelungen, as an answer to his need for a heightened poetic utterance that could link the sensuous and the conceptual: "the poet...has sought by the consonantal Stabreim to bring [his row of words] to the feelings understanding in an eadier and more sensuous form" (Oper und Drama ). Wagner's Stabreim normally consists of two or three alliterated Hebungen (String beats, ot arises ) with freely arranged, non-alliterative Senkungen (weak beats, or theses). Despite precedents in 14th-century English verse (Piers Plowman ), the use of the device in English opera has not been effective, whether in translation of Wagner (H. and F. Corder) or in original texts (Holst's Sita ); nor has it proved fruitfyl in German opera after Wagner.

Savanarola

Girolamo Savanarola (Late 15th C.) The friar, who at the death of Lorenzo in 1492, took charge of reforming the extravogent entertainments in Florence. With puritanical zeal, he fought against worldly frivolity including secular songbooks, trivial literature, and immodest clothing. As a result, few carnival songs survive and the best-known composers of these songs were foreigners- Isaac and Agricola. But the largest number of surviving examples were by a native Florentine monk/composer/organist: Coppini. Savonarola eventually encountered enough opposition to his ideas that he was hanged and then burned in the Piazza della Signoria in 1498.

baroque organ

Gottfried Silbermann (1683-1753) was an early 18th century organ builder who was trained in France and was influenced by the French full organ or plein jeu. German organ builders were also influenced by instruments in Antwerp and Amsterdam, which were based on the division of the pipes into various Werke. These organs had a richer sound and higher wind pressure than the sweeter Italian organs. Organ music reached a golden age in Germany during the late seventeenth and early 18th centuries, with composers such as Böhm at Lüneburg, Buxtehude at Lübeck, Zachow and Kuhnau in Saxony and Thuringia, and Pachelbel in Nuremberg.

Almira

Handel's first opera, composed at the age of nineteen, and performed at the Hamburg opera house in 1705. He remained in Hamburg, the principal center of German opera then, from 1703 to 1706, after which he went to Italy (1706-1710), where his opera Agrippina was performed in 1709.

bel canto

In Italian this literally means "beautiful singing." It is a term which applies to 18th-century vocal technique, with its emphasis on beauty of sound and brilliance of performance rather than dramatic expression or romantic emotion. Its early development is closely tied up with Italian opera seria (Scarlatti, Jomelli, et al). This term has also been used to apply to the compositional styles of Rossi and Carissimi, who cultivated a simple, melodious vocal style of songlike quality, without virtuoso coloraturas. Finally, the term also applies to the compositional style of the 19th-century Italian bel canto composers - Bellini, Rossini, and Donizetti.

cadenza

In music for soloist, especially a concerto or other work with accompanying ensemble, an imporvised or written-out ornamental passage performed by the soloist, usually over the penultimate or antepenultimate note or harmony of a prominent cadence. During a cadenza the accompaniment either pauses or sustains a pitch or chord. Although a cadenza may appear elsewhere, it most typically ornaments a prominent tonic cadence, such as one before a final ritornello or coda. If improvised, it may be indicated by a fermata in all parts, as in Mozart's Piano Concerto in Bb major (and many others by Mozart and other Classical composers, and even as late as Brahms). Improvised cadenzas were fine when the composer was also the performer; however, when others attempted to create their own versions, it was not always successful because of the disparity or conflict in style (Ex: Clara Schumann's cadenzas to Mozart's D minor Piano Concerto, though delightful, are too near her husband's manner not to seem out of place). Virtuosic cadenzas gained importance beginning in the Baroque era. Corelli often notated cadenzas in the first movements (Allegro) of his Violin Sonatas, Op 5. Torelli, Vivaldi, and JS Bach occasionally wrote them out in concertos. Italian opera singers placed cadenzas at any of the three vocal cadences in the standart 3-part aria, particularly the last. CPE and Quantz discussed the improvisation of cadenzas at length in their treatises on performance. As cadenzas became more elaborate, their thematic reference to the composition increased: late Mozart wrote optional cadenzas and Beethoven, too (Piano Concerto #3); Beethoven wrote obligatory cadenzas in his 5th "Emperor" Concerto. In the 19th C, obligatory cadenzas, often placed in unorthodox positions (e.g. Mendelsson Violin Concerto- changes position from end of Recap to end of Dev in 1st mvt), became a common feature of vocal and instrumental music, notably in piano works of Chopin and Liszt and the later operas of Verdi.

Grand opera

In response to the rising middle class, opera in France after 1820 strove to appeal to the uncultured masses by stressing the spectacular, with an increase in the number of ballets, choruses, and crowd scenes. Leaders of the school included the librettist Eugène Scribe (1791-1861), the composer Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791-1864), and the director of the Paris Opera Theater, Louis Véron, (1798-1867). Meyerbeer's operas in this style included Robert le diable, 1831, and Les Huguenots, 1836. Other composers of grand opera included Auber (La muette de Portici, 1828), Rossini (Guillaume Tell, 1829), and Jacques Fromental Halévy (La Juive, 1835). Grand opera was to influence later composers, including Bellini (I Puritani), Verdi (Les vêpres siciliennes, Aïda), Wagner (Rienzi), and even 20th century composers such as Milhaud (Christophe Columb) and Barber (Antony and Cleopatra).

madrigal

In the 14th C the madrigal was a form of 2 3-line stanzas followed by a 2-line rit. Unlike the treble dominated texture famous with Machaut, this was relatively more equal voiced, and followed a specifically It. kind of notation that was well-suited to the elaborate divisions of the beat in both voices. In the 16th century, the musical style was originally taken from the motet and often included Petrachan or Petrarchan inspired poetry. Early composers were Arcadelt, Festa, and Verdelot, composing madrigals for amateur singers. Later, Rore, Willaert, Gesualdo, Monteverdi, Luzzaschi, and Marenzio were increasingly more senstive to expressing the text. The music became increasingly more dissonant.

sacred concerto

In the 17th century, sacred works for voices and instruments were typically called concertos; secular works of similar character were more often entitled airs, musiche, cantatas, and so forth. Large-scale sacred concertos for chorus, soloists, and instruments were particularly common in Venice, appearing in collections by A. and G. Gabrieli and Monteverdi from the late 16th C. onward. More widely cultivated was the small sacred concerto for 1-4 solo voices, continuo, and (frequently) additional solo instruments.

solo song

In the 18th c., the rise of the middle class caused an increased demand for accessible music, and the solo song was suited to this niche. The rise of the piano, with its new, expressive possibilities, made it the favored accompaniment instrument. The "Second Berlin School" of song composers favored simple, diatonic melodies, strophic form, and light, often minimal accompaniment. This ideal was also favored by Goethe, who did not want his poems obscured by complex music; he preferred Zelter's settings of his poems to those of Schubert because Zelter's were less distracting from the poetry. Goethe did approve of melodic variants that would reflect changing moods and word meanings. Other early composers of solo songs include Zumsteeg and Reichardt.

intermezzo

In the 18th century, a comic work performed between the acts of a serious opera. Its origins lie in the intermedio and comic scenes of 17th century Italian opera. The reform of opera seria around 1700 separated these scenes into separate works. An example is La serva padrona which was intended to be performed with Il prigioner superbo. The use of the bass voice is an important feature.

piano

In the 18th century, there were two types of piano: the Viennese, with a light and rapid action, and a distinct, piercing, "nasal" sound; and the "English" piano, with a more powerful and sonorous but less bright sound. The English piano, which was developed in London starting around 1760, eventually developed into the 19th century piano, with its percussive and velvety sound. In 1781, the Scotsman John Broadwood joined the workshop in London (first run by Germans), and started the Broadwood piano manufactory.

carol

In the Middle Ages, the carol was an English song with a text often dealing with the Virgin Mary or Christmas. In the Renaissance, it was several things: 1. pieces associated with dancing and processions. 2.) religious carols with monophonic music similar to the lauda 3.) a polyphonic carol, either conductuslike or more elaborate polyphonic works composed in various forms like those of Davy and Cornysh.

character pieces

In the late 18th and 19th centuries, any of a wide variety of kinds of program music; now principally a short, lyric piano piece. The individual piece usually evokes a particular mood or scene, suggested more often than not by a descriptive title. The best-known Charakterstücke [Ger.] are Mendelssohn's op. 7 (1827) and Schumann's Davidsbündlertänze op. 6 (1837). The term derives from widespread discussion of the nature of character and characterization in vocal as well as instrumental music in the German lexical and aesthetic literature from the mid-18th century through the 19th; through the 1870s, some writers still made little distinction between program music and character pieces; The Romantic lyric piano pieces generally thought of as character pieces are such as Handstücke, Kinderszenen, Albumblätter, Bagatelles, Nocturnes, Impromptus, Intermezzi, Capriccios, Rhapsodies, Eclogues, and Novelletten; Song forms (ABA) were most common for individual pieces.

Futurism

Initiated by poet and dramatist Marinetti (1876-1942) in 1909; later, among the Italian visual artists flourished, such as in the works of a futurist painter Luigi Russolo. A few young musicians joined this: Franco Casavola (1891-1955), Nuccio Fiorda (1897-1975), Antonio Russolo (1877-1942), and Silvio Mix (1900-1927). Fiorda combined "intonarumori" ("noise-intoners") - series of cumbersome machines - with conventional instruments, as did A. Russolo (Luigi's brother) in Corale and Serenata (c1921).

Société Nationale de Musique

It gave its first concert on 25 Nov. 1871; was another forum for contemporary music. Its first committee included Suaint-Saëns, and Bussinc, Castillon, Garcin and Lenepven, but in 1886 the first two resigned in protest against the intrusion of foreign works and Franck became de facto president, do be succeeded in 1890 by d'Indy. The society gave both chamber and orchestral concerts, its most noteworthy premiere being that of the Prélude a l'apres-midi d'un faune (1894). Although it continued its policy of performing new workd into the new century, its outlook soon became very conservative.

D-S-C-H

It is used as the four-note pc group 'D E-flat (Es, in German) C B (H, in German)', which denotes 'Dmitri Shostakovich'. Shostakovich used this motive in some of his compositions including his Violin Concerto Op. 77. Sometimes it is somewhat altered by diminished or augmented intervals, and this normally is interpreted as "Distorted self" under the opression of Stalin government.

canzona

It. for "song," but in fact the canzona was the most important instrumental genre of the late 16th c. Common practice for lutenists and keyboard players to make instrumental arrangements of the chansons of the Fr. composers who flourished 1520-1550. These chansons were especially good material for playing: lively rhythms (especially the common half note-quarter-quarter pattern), and tunes, coupled with a simple distinctive structure. At first the arrangers did little more than add a few trills at cadences, but later they embellished their models quite elaborately, thus transforming their nature completely. From the 1570s several composers in northern Italy wrote such pieces. They could be played either by an ensemble (typically consorts) or on a keyboard. The instruments offered greater range than voice, offering the potential for more complexity. By the 1590s the canzona was extremely popular, notably those by G. Gabrieli, who wrote for the large ensemble at St. Mark's, adapting the idiom of "cori spezzati" (split choirs) to bring a grand scale into instrumental music. Some of these works are extremely complicated in form, using rondo and even simple concerto patterns, with virtuoso parts for such instruments as cornetts and violins.

Dallapiccola, Luigi

Italian composer, pianist and writer, the principal pioneer of dodecaphony in Italy. His works combine the use of the twelve-tone technique with a love for melody and for the song and dance forms of early Italian music. Among his most important compositions are Variazioni per Orchestra ("Variations for Orchestra," 1954), the operas Volo di notte ("Night Flight") and Il Prigioniero ("The Prisoner"), which are more expressionistic, Tartiniana for violin and orchestra, based on themes by the 18th-century composer Tartini, and several song cycles.

Missa Ad Fugam

Josquin's stictly canonic mass which uses no borrowed material.

Versuch einer Gründlichen Violinschule

Leopold Mozart's treatise on violin playing and technique of 1756, one of a number of such treatises published around this time.

Music drama

Lohengrin is original in the way the symbols, expressed by thematic material stated in the overture, are used throughout the drama, coming together at the end in a kind of analogy to a symphonic recapitulation. It was this analogy with symphonic style which gave Wagner the opportunity of creating a new kind of opera, which he called the "music drama." Most important features of this new style: the subject-matter should be based on legend and deal with archetypal concepts applicable to mankind as a whole rather than to specific men (as historical subjects tend to do); the music should be constructed so as to follow the sense of the drama, and not impose its own pattern upon it (hence recitative and aria must be replaced by a continuous flow, halted by few cadences); and the use of"leitmotivs" in the orchestra (themes associated with the archetypal concept) for dramatic effect.

moment form

Momente is a work by Stockhausen for soprano, 4 choral groups, and 13 instrumentalists, composed in 1962-64. It is based on the combination of what he termed moments: brief units of musical time defined by a particular process. In a work in moment form, such moments may be combined in a variety of ways, perhaps at the discretion of the performers.

electronic music

Music made up of sounds created or manipulated by electronic devices, which are recorded and reproduced on magnetic tape or a digital storage medium, or are created and performed live at virtually the same time (and may simultaneously be recorded). A tape recording or floppy disk or circuit diagram thus corresponds to the written score of traditional music, and playing a tape or compact disk may correspond to a musical performance. Its early heavy reliance on tape led electronic music to be called tape music. Strictly speaking, electronic music differs from music concrete in that the sounds themselves are generated electronically by a device called a synthesizer. In practice, though, this distinction is not always maintained, for many composers of electronic music combine taped or live natural sounds with electronically generated sounds; in the early 1960s, voltage-controlled (or v-c) oscillator; in the mid-1980s, MIDI ("musical instrument digital interface")

program music

Music that attempts to express or depict one or more nonmusical ideas, images, or events. The composer usually indicates the "program" (the subject or subjects being evoked) by a suggestive title or preface, which may be quite vague or may be specific and detailed, i.e. Romeo and Juliet (Tchaikovsky), Liszt's Consolations, Schumann's 3 Romanzen op. 28, or Chopin's Tarantelle. Programmatic music has flourished at different times, but especially in the 19th century. The predominant genres of Romantic program music were the program symphony and the symphonic poem, concert overtures, character pieces for piano or small ensemble, and occasional pieces such as Smetana's From My Life (1876); Program vs. absolute music; three main compositional approaches are the expressive (i.e. "Chiarina" [Clara] in Schumann's Carnaval), the depictive (i.e. imitation of nature, human activities, or sounds or musical styles with strong associations such as chromatic ostinato basses in Monteverdi and Purcell, "sighing" two-note figures in Bach, and portrayal of primeval chaos in Haydn's The Creation), and the narrative. On this point, programmatic writing was well established in instrumental music by around 1700; The distinction between character pieces and program music is that program music, such as Schumann's Carnaval, Weber's Aufforderung zum Tanz, and Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique and Harold en Italie, have passages that may be puzzling unless the composer's program is taken into account.

Heiligenstadt Testament

October 6-10, 1802. The most striking confessional statement in the biography of Beethoven. The swings between melancholic and manic behavior which reflect the depths of the pain that Beethoven was enduring-that was sufficient enough to cause him to consider ending his life, are shown in a celebrated document that was found among his papers after his death, Heiligenstadt Testament.

Humphery, Pelham

One of the first Englishmen to be admitted to the new Chapel Royal in 1660. Humphrey went abroad (France and Italy) to study composition and his style reflects these foreign influences. He composed many anthems, most of which open with short instrumental preludes akin to French overtures (dotted rhythms, rich harmonies full of suspensions, and majestic cadence). Humphrey's text setting features the melodic continuity, steady rhythm, and harmonic momentum of récitatif mesuré. Italina influences are obvious in his chromaticism, free use of dissonance, and short-breathed exclamations. His O Lord My God is a good example of this mixed style.

Byrd, William: (1543-1623)

One of the greatest English composers of the 16th century. Throughout a difficult religious period in England as a catholic, he remained in favor with the court, composing both Protestant and Catholic service music. He studied with Thomas Tallis. He wrote In nomines, song, consort music, and virginal music. Possibly his most important contributions were his motets, many of which were in the Netherlandish polyphonic style. His Protest Motets are good examples and reflect his struggle as a Catholic in Protestant England.

canzona

Originally the canzona was an instrumental transcription (by Italian composers) of a French chanson. Later it referred to an instrumental work that used the chanson as a model, having repeated sections with contrasting meters and textures. An example is Gabrielli's Canzona per sonar Primi Toni. The ensemble canzona eventually gave way to the sonata, concerto, and other multi-movement genres of the Baroque.

stile antico

Palestrina's music has often been regarded as the model of classical Renaissance polyphony, especially in its controlled treatment of dissonance, though successive generations have varied considerably in their understanding of it. In the 17th century, his music was taken as the model for what was by then termed the stile antico (old style), but which was nevertheless still cultivated for some types of sacred music; the style of unaccompanied, largely diatonic, polyphonic vocal music.

Wieck, Friedrich

Piano teacher of Schumann, and father of Clara Wieck. He opposed his teenage daughter's marriage to Schumann, but the couple managed to marry in 1840, after going to court.

Mazurka

Polish. A Polish dance, in 3/4 meter, with a strong accent on the second or third beat of the measure. The mazurka spread throught western Europe in the mid-18th century, becoming immensely popular; a dance by four, eight, or twelve couples. In the 19th century the rhythms of tje mazurka attracted composers simply as an instrumental form. The most famous mazurkas are the fifty-two written by Chopin for piano; others were written by Tchaikovsky, Glinka, and Mussorgsky.

Davidsbund

Schumann frequently wrote of an imaginary League of David that was to oppose the Philistines of his day. In the first edition of his Davidsbündlertänze, each piece is signed E. or F. (or both) for Eusebius and Florestan, who represented, respectively, Schumann's pensive, introverted and impulsive, extroverted sides.

frottola

Secular solo song with accompaniment propogated by Isabelle d'Este in Mantua in the late 15th century and early 16th century. An important composer for the court was Marchetto Cara. An example is Hor venduto ho la speranza. It has the refrain-stanza form of the ballata (AaabA). The musical material is limited, using a varied form of the refrain for the stanzas.

integral serialism

Serial music is constructed according to permutations of a group of elements placed in a certain order or series. Integral serialism is an extension of classical Schoenbergian twelve-tone pitch techniques and it generally applies serial control to musical elements including pitches, durations, or virtually any other musical values. The leading figures in the early development of integral serialism were Stockhausen and Boulez in Europe and Babbitt in the U.S. The earliest composition to control both pitch and non pitch components through serial means was Babbitt's Three Compositions for Piano, written in 1947.

anthem

Settings of the Morning and Evening services, of psalms, and of pieces for the Offertory, Communion, post-Communion, and for special occasions. During the second half of the sixteenth century, two types appeared: the verse anthem, with "verses" for solo voices and instrumental accompaniment, alternating with "choruses" for hte full choir; and the full anthem, which was a choral motet in English.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

Seventeenth-century philospher and author, as well as composer (he penned an opera entitled, Le Devin du village). Rousseau penned many of the music-oriented entries in the new encyclopedie of Diderot, including the definition of baroque (which he speciously derived from the Italian, baroco, meaning confused and unnatural). Rousseau also sided with those favoring Italian opera in the guerre des bouffons over Pergolesi's La serva padrona.

villancico

Spanish songs ("counterpart" to Fr. chanson, Gr. lied, and It. madrigal). (1) In the 15th century, a variety of Spanish secular poetry, generally pastoral or amorous, often set to music as a popular dance-song. The poetic form was closely related to It. ballata and Fr. virelai. Many of the songs in the late 13th-C Cantigas de Santa Maria, though based on religious subjects, are villancicos in all but name. Some are simple and chordal, others are contrapuntal. Most are love-songs, but some have a religious theme. The most important early composer of villancicos was Juan del Encina, who wrote them for the entertainment of his employers. (2) After 1500, the villancico developed along two different lines: as solo songs with vihuela accompaniment (Milán); and as unaccompanied part-songs (Morales). By the mid century the polyphonic villancico had absorbed various elements from the Italian madrigal, but during the late 16th C the sacred villancico had begun to predominate. (3) The 17th-C villancico developed into a larte-scale composition resembling the cantata: elaborate choral movements with instrumental accompaniment, alternating with short solo songs accompanied by organ. Important composers of this type were José de Nebra, Cabanilles, and Durón. By the early 18th C the sacred villancico had become so unashamedly secular in medium that it lost its devotional context, and the form died out. (4) The Baroque villancico was cultivated in Latin America, especially Mexico. Such works resembled the cantata, with arias and choruses, and also began to incorporate folk-songs and to develop stylized offshoots such as the aguinaldo and the adoración.

cantigas

Spanish songs of praise to the Virgin. A manuscript prepared under the direction of King Alfonso el Sabio of Spain between 1250~1280 preserves more than 400 cantigas which resemble the music of the troubadours.

Fortspinnung

Spinning-out." A compositional process in which melodic materical is continuously derived from a brief figure, possibly by sequence to creat a continuous melodic line. Typically applied to Baroque textures, and clearly understood when contrasted with the balanced and regular phrasing of the Classical period. Many examples could be drawn from Corelli, Bach, Telemann, etc.

Glarean, Heinrich

Swiss theorist most famous for his treatise Dodecachordon (The Twelve-String lyre), in which a 12 mode system is advocated and its application to monophony and polyphony discussed. He added four new modes to the traditional eight (Aeolian and Hypoaeolian/ Ionian and Hypoionian). With this he claimed that he had reestablished the tonal system of Aristoxenus. He also showed how the music of Josquin utilized the powerf of the 12 modes by analyzing his motets.

l'homme arme

The "Armed Man," a secular tune that was used widely as a cantus firmus for polyphonic Masses from the second half of the 15th century. The first was written by Busnois. Other composers are Josquin, Obrecht, Ockeghem, La Rue, Palestrina, and others. In their settings with this tune, it seems as though one was trying to out do the next compositionally. The melody itself consists of many fourth and fifth leaps.

Mélodie

The 19th-century French term for "song," in fact the equivalent of the German Lied. Term probably first used by Berlioz in his Mélodies irlandaises of 1829. French composers thereafter adopted the term to denote not a simple air but the more complex "art song." The best-known mélodie writers are Fauré, Duparc, and Debussy. They chose verse from contemporary writers, including Victor Hugo, Verlaine, and Baudelaire, among a few older French writers such as Villon and Charles d'Orléans. Mélodies by Berlioz, Gounod, Franck, Saint-Saëns, Bizet, Duparc, Fauré, Massenet, Debussy, Hahn, Ravel, and many others constitute a school of song composition second only to that of the Lied. The vocal line of mélodies maintained a suppleness directly dependent on the individuality of the French language, and the kind of poetry chosen (influenced by Symbolist, Impressionist, Fauvist, Cubist, and other movements) inspired piano accompaniments which supported the general mood of the poem rather than being specifically realistic or minutely illustrative.

collage

The 20thcentury compositional technique of combining several incongruous and contrasting styles within a single composition. The ideology is "Everything is good, so let's have everything." Composers who are known for this technique include Ives, Satie, and Berio (Sinfonia).

Die Kunst der Fugue

The Art of the Fugue. This was the composition J.S. Bach worked upon. It features a series of fugues, all of which use the same subject. This work embodies the contrapuntal genius of Bach, as many of the fugues are double or even triple fugues and they feature a number of contrapuntal gmaes like inversion and retrograde. In a sense this was Bach's contrapuntal magnum opus - a veritable compendium of late Baroque fugal technique.

Cirillo, Bishop Bernadino

The Bishop who expressed, in his letter of 1549, disappointment with the music of his time, specifically the complexity of polyphonic music an its obscuring of the text in church. He encouraged musicians to rediscover the art of the ancients like the sculptors, painters, and architects did, nd doing so, would reclaim the power of classical modes in mving the affects of the listener. He points to Arcadelt's madrigal Ahime dove' l bel viso s the harbinger of a new expressive style.

jannisary band

The Turkish military band which became in vogue in Europe during the last part of the 18th century. The janissary band often featured wind instruments along with cymbals, the piccolo, triangle, drums. The music was heavily accented, shifted quickly between major and minor, and often featured jarring, accented dissonances which found their way stylistically into the Turkish music of the later-18th and early-19th centuries (Mozart Rondo Alla Turka and Beethoven 9, fourth movement Turkish march, for example).

Greater Perfect System

The ancient Greek pitch space, spanning two octaves which comprised four tetrachords plus an added note at the bottom (proslambenomenos). The names for the various notes came from the strings of the Greek kithara and were modified depending on which tetrachord they appeared in

concertato

The characteristic medium of the seventeenth century, which consisted of the mingling of voices with instruments such that the instruments are not merely doubling the voices but have independent parts.

trio sonata

The commonest type of Baroque instrumental chamber music. Written in three parts - two upper lines, normally in the same register, and basso continuo - it often includes a concertante bass as well. It requires four performers: two melodic instruments for the top lines, normally violins; a melody bass instrument (bass viol, violone, cello) that either reinforces the bass line of the continuo parr or, as a concertante part, participates in imitations with the upper parts; and a chord-playing instrument such as organ, harpsichord, or theorbo to realize the harmonies of the continuo. Until 1660s, occasional options in instruments were offered, such as cornetto for the violin, and trombone or bassoon for the stringed bass instrument. In the 18th century, flutes were often alternatives to the violin. Rossi and other composers.

performance art

The composer-violinist-vocalist Laurie Anderson (b. 1947) combines pop influence and mixed-media, (such as film, slides, props, lighting, electronically altered voice, stylized body gestures, violin playing, story telling, poetry, and singing) in many of her works. This characteristic has become a trend in recent music, and has given rise to the term "performance art." Others who engage in this type of performance include the "borderline" pop-singer Meredith Monk, and even minimalist composers such as Reich and Glass.

syntonic comma

The difference between four perfect fifths and two octaves plus a major third (amounts to 21.5 cents). This comma is responsible for discrepancies in tunings of thirds just as the Pythagorean (or diatonic) comma is responsible for discrepancies in tuning fifths.

collegium musicum

The earliest example of concert-giving in Germany and Austria. Founded in the 17th C, it was associated with the court- notably in Berlin (Frederick the Great, whose fine orchestra included Johann and Carl Graun, CPE Bach, and Quantz), and Mannheim (Elector Carl Theodor, whose orchestra was the model for the rest of Europe for 30 years under the leadership of Stamitz and others). It is similar to the Concert Spirituel which later occured in France in 1725; the big difference is that the concerts in France were for the public, not the court.

Mozart, Leopold

The father of the greatest musical genius who ever lived. Leopold was himself a composer, violinist, and instructor of some repute. He was also the author of the Gründliche Violinschule. Leopold had a very German background in terms of his musical education which was at odds with the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg's Italian musical tastes. He spent a great deal of time passing this background and his training on to his children, Maria Anna and Wolfgang. Part of the training for his children involved frequent and lengthy trips all over Europe

Tristan chord

The first chord sounded in Wagner's Tristan und Isolde and prominent elsewhere in the work: f-b-d#'-g#'. Although it can be described as a half-diminished seventh chord, its function in the terms of harmonic analysis has been a matter of dispute.

humanism

The intellectual movement of the Ren. The revival of ancient learning, in particular rhetoric, poetry, history, and moral philosophy. The movement pressed people to judge their lives, artworks, customs, and social and political structures by the standards of antiquity. In music, this translated into many things: The choice of a mode was a composer's key to the listeners' emotions; new rules derived for the control of dissonance; use of Pythagorean tuning.

Eton Choirbook

The largest source of English church music from the turn of the sixteenth century. It contains votive antiphons and Magnificats but no complete Mass cycles. Composers included in this volume are: Browne, Davy, Horwood, Lambe, and Wylkynson; as well as younger composers such as Cornysh and Fayrfax. Most of the music in the choirbook has a continuous full texture and uses cantus firmus or faburden in its structure ("conservative design and florid style"). Thus, the Eton choirbook is a good representative of some of the qualities of the growing English style in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.

solo concerto

The last type of concerto to develop, it had far reaching effects on virtuosity, manufacture of/improvements for instruments, construction of concert halls, and audience attendance. Became more of a show piece in the Romantic era- strictly to demonstrate virtuosity- than its more homogeneous beginnings in the Classical period.

continuo madrigal

The late madrigal in the 16th century and early 17th century was often set in the new style of monody with basso continuo accompaniment (Monteverdi, Caccini).

B.A.C.H

The letters of J.S. Bach's surname. If read in the context of German nomenclature for pitch, the resulting pitches are B-flat A C B-natural, which has been used in works (especially as a fugue subject) by various composers, including Bach himself (The Art of Fugue), Albrechtsberger, Schumann, Liszt, Reger, Piston, Casella, and Busoni.

masque

The masque was the English counterpart of the ballet de cour and emphasized dance and musical spectacle. Masques were given both publicly and privately in England during the 1630s-1650s. The masque was basically a theatrical event and served both as a deterrent, and later, as a forerunner of English opera (cultivated soon after the era of the masque by Henry Purcell. Cupid and Death by the poet James Shirley is an example of a representative masque. Music for this piece (produced a number of times) was written by both Matthew Locke and Christopher Gibbons.

Testimony

The memoirs of Shostakovich as related to and edited by Solomon Volkov. The volume has been surrounded with controversy regarding its authenticity. In the memoirs, Shostakovich attacks the Stalinist regime. Therefore, he did not allow it to be published until after his death. Mr. Volkov took great measures to get the book published in the West.

microtonal music

The modern interest in microtonal scales coincided with the search for expanded tonal resources in much mid-19th c. music. Halévy was the first modern composer to subdivide the semitone, in his cantata Prométhé enchaîné (1847). The first microtonal piece to use Western instrumental forms is a string quartet by John Foulds (1897). In 1892, Behrens-Senegalden published an account of his patented quarter-tone piano; in 1907, Ferrucio Busoni proposed a sixth-tone scale. Alois Hàba inaugurated a department of microtonal music at the Prague Conservatory in 1924. By 1917, American composers such as Hanson and Ives were experimenting with music for two pianos tuned a quarter tone apart. Mexican composer Julián Carrillo composed much microtonal music and, in 1930, he formed an ensemble to play them. Other composers who used or experimented with microtones included Bloch, Copland, Harry Partch, Lou Harrison, and Ben Johnston. Composers of electro-acoustic music have made the greatest use of microtones, because of the inherent flexibility and precision of some of the equipment.

Old Hall Manuscript

The most important collection of English sacred music before the Eton Choirbook. Copied in the early 15th C, it contains a repertory of 147 works composed during the period 1350-1420, in several styles: typical English chordal "descant" to canonic and isorhythmic styles of the continent. Among the composers represented, many of whom belong to the generation before Dunstable, the most important is Leonel Power. A modern edition was published in the Corpus mensurabilis musicae series in 1969-73.

Strauss, Johann

The name of two Austrian composers, father and son, who both are remembered mainly for their waltzes. Johann Strauss the Elder: (1804-1849). A violinist, conductor, and composer. In addition to waltzes, he composed many polkas and marches; "Radetzky' March; Johann Strauss the Younger: (1825-1899). A violinist and conductor who became known as "the Waltz King"; "The Blue Danube," "Tales trom the Vienna Woods," polkas abd other dances, operettas, Die Fledermaus and Der Zigeunerbaron.

Schiller, Johann von

The poet whose Enlightenment ideas of humanitarianism and brotherhood inspired Verdi, Schubert, Mendelssohn, and Beethoven. Beethoven used Schiller's Ode to Joy in the finale of the Ninth Symphony.

Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain

The powerful King and Queen of Spain in the 15th century. In 1492, they defeated the Moors and drove them out of Spain, and later drove out the Sephardic Jews. Everyone was forced to convert to Christianity. Many historical ballads and villancico (ABBA) were written telling these stories.

cantus firmus technique

The process in which a borrowed melody becomes the foundation for a new polyphonic work. The earliest use of cantus firmus borrowed from Gregorian chant and placed in the tenor voice. Later the cantus firmus could either be sacred or secular (Dufay L'homme arme, Josquin Missa Hercules dux Ferrarie) and can be used strictly, in isorhythm, or paraphrased

opera seria

The product of early 18th c. opera reform. The main librettists were Zeno and Metastasio. A Metastasian libretto is in three acts with each act having many scenes. Usually six characters and the subject matter is classical history or legend. Opera seria is dominated by the da capo aria, and thus the virtuosic singer. Regular alternation between recit. and aria. Instr. role is accompanimental. The idea was to purify opera as a literary genre. The libretto was much more important than the music. Composers: A. Scarlatti, Vivaldi, Handel. Ex: Handel's Giulio Cesare.

Goethe

The quintessential German Romantic poet. Goethe settled at the court of Weimar, but his poetry was known all over Europe and inspired some of the finest musical works of the 19th century, most of which were Lieder (Schubert, Schumann, Wolf Kennst du das Land) and operas (based on Goethe's Faust by Berlioz, Schumann, Liszt, Gounod, Wagner).

ritornello

The recurring tutti section of a concerto movement or a da capo aria. "Ritornello form" is common: typically in the 1st and last mvts of a late-Baroque or Classical concerto, based on an alternation of tutti and solo sections. Sometimes the principal formal event is the recurrence of the main theme in various keys.

ethnomusicology

The study of music in relation to the culture that produced it. The subject of such studies is frequently outside the Western (European and American) tradition, such as the music of China, Japan, the Arab countries, or various peoples of Africa. Until the 19th- century the music of non-Western cultures was regarded mainly as a curiosity ad was of taken seriously; indeed, for many years all such music, despite its enormous verity, was lumped together into one category called "exotic music." Toward the end of the 19th century, however, scholars began to apply to non-Western music the same careful methods of study they had been using for music of their own culture. One result has been the increasing influence of non-Western music in Western music, seen both in popular music - i. e., raga, rock, and reggae - and its serious music, as in the use of various non-Western scales, instruments, and rhythms: for instance, opera Turandot.

l'Institione harmoniche

Theorist Gioseffo Zarlino wrote this book in 1558. It is based on the teachings of Adrian Willaert. In the book, Zarlino focuses a chapter on how effectively to express the words of a text through music in conterpoint. These were the rules which Palestrina exemplified in his compositions. intabulation: an arrangement of a composition for keyboard or plucked strings notated in tabulature. Italian intabulations of French chansons resulted in canzonas. An important Elizabethan source of intabulated music is the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. Intabulation continued into the seventheenth century, often in style brise.

operetta

This developed as a separate genre in the 19th century. (In the 17th and 18th century, it was simply a small scale opera.) The originator is Offenbach. It is a popular form of entertainment made of spoken dialogue, song, and dance. Other operettas are Strauss Die Fledermaus. Gilbert and Sullivan is English operetta.

freemasons

This group valued rhe virtues of tolerance and brotherly love, the belief in dignity of the individual regardless of birth. The Freemasons were a fraternal order, or secret society, that attracted many of the leading firgures in politics, philosophy, nad the arts. The first Masonic lodge was established in the anticlerical attitude of London in 1717. Among members of the Masons were: Frederick the Great, Goethe, Haydn, and Mozart. The latter composed some music with decidedly Masonic ideals or motivations behind it, including the opera, The Magic Flute, and the Masonic Funeral Music (both off which feature the key Eb, the perfection of the mystical number 3).

stochastic music

This term is mainly applied to the music of Iannis Xenakis. Stochastic music is based on probability theory (and related theories such as the kinetic theory of gases). Individual details are not as important as the movement of large blocks of sound (Xenakis's "clouds" or "galaxies") just as the movement of individual atoms is not particularly important in considering the movement of a cloud. His work, Metastais (1954) is a good example of stochastic music. Stochastic music is somewhat reltaed to the idea of indeterminacy since it relies on statistics and averages to produce musical material.

Musica Transalpina

Title of 2 anthologies of Italian (i.e. transalpine) madrigals, with English words, edited and published in London by Nicholas Yonge. The first anthology (1588) contains madrigals , by Marenzio, Palestrina, Byrd, and Lassus, among others; the second (1597) contains 24, including examples by Ferrabosco, Marenzio, and Venturi. They were the first printed collections of Italian madrigals in England and had a great influence on English composers of the period.

Winchester Troper

Two 11th c. manuscripts, now at Cambridge University, which contain 174 two-voice organa, many of which are believed to have been written by Wulfstan. They are written in non-diastemic neumes. Precise transcription is impossible. This troper is the only source of actual performance repertoire of its time.

chaconne/passacaglia

Two ground bass patterns which were not associated with any poetic form. The chaconne was probably imported into Spain from Latin America; it was a dance song with a refrain that followed a simple pattern of guitar chords, which in Italian variations upon it were transformed into a bass line. The passacaglia originated in Spain as a ritornello, that is music having a certain pattern of guitar chords, played before and between the strophes of a song. It too evolved into a variety of bass formulas that were suitable for making instrumental or vocal variations. It was usually in triple meter and minor mode. 17th c. composers write both forms with a continually repeating four-bar formula in triple meter and slow tempo. In the 18th c.., the forms began to be confused.

Lied

Whereas lieder of the 18th c. were short, idyllic and strophic, 19th c. composers preferred a new type of song used by Zumsteeg (1760-1802), the ballad, which was long and often involved alternating narrative and dialogue, romantic adventure, and supernatural incidents. The greater length of the ballads necessitated greater variety of themes and textures, and thus some means of imposing unity on the whole. The contrasts of mood and the movement of the story were captured and enhanced by the music. The piano part rose in prominence, sharing the task of portraying the text.

Parisian chanson

While some composers, like Gombert, continued the trend towards a balanced polyphonic texture in their chansons, the late 1520's saw the emergence of an outwardly simpler style with Claudin de Sermisy as its chief exponent. The clearly shaped melodies and homophonic (or lightly contrapuntal) texture of these Parisian chansons, the basis for Janequin's remarkable series of descriptive works, later underwent considerable refinement, particularly with the influence of the madrigal. Composers such as Lassus introduced a greater degree of sophistication, a broader range of moods, and a more responsive portrayal of the text to produce a chanson style of fascinating subtlety and depth. Example: Lassus, Helas quel jour. (4-voice Parisian chanson in "madrigal" style, not 3-voice "ballade" style.)

Burgundian motet

With the motet, the Burgundian composers were interested in intellectual organization. Isorhythm was extended to panisorhythm. Dufay constructed Nuper rosarum flores with proportional rhythms in the cantus firmus.

sonata da chiesa

[It., church sonata]. A work for instrumental ensemble, prevalent from the 1650s through the 1770s. It has one to seven or more sections or movements, contrasting in meter, tempo, and texture, and is written for one or more melody instruments, normally of the violin family, and basso continuo. Though called simply sonata in most 17th-century publications, suggesting use outside the church as well, it is identifiable by a serious style, manifest in much fugal writing, by the relative scarcity of the dance movements characteristic of the sonata da camera, and by the common specification of organ as the continuo instrument. Late in the century the term was on occasion equated with sinfonia. With Corelli the form of the church sonata became standardized. Most have four movements: slow-fast-slow-fast. Composers of this kind include Vivaldi, Handel, Bach, and Telemann. Available evidence suggests that the church sonata, in part or as a whole, was used in Italy, and doubtless elsewhere, in the Mass of the Roman rite as a substitute of the gradual and communion, and at Vespers for Psalm antiphons. On occasion, church performances entailed doubling of parts, making them in fact orchestral performances.

zarzuela

[from zarza, bramble bush]. A Spanish theatrical genre characterized by a mixture of singing and spoken dialogues. Throughout its history, the zarzuela has included elements from the Spanish popular tradition; originated in the 17th century musical court plays, i. e., Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600-1681)'s plays; ca. 1710 to 1750, the zarzuela increasingly approximated the musical styles and conventions of contemporary opera seria, which quickly replaced zarzuela as the favorite court entertainment; after ca. 1710, zarzuelas were largely commissioned for the public theaters, and the demands of the theater-going public became more important than royal taste; around 1760, it became nationalistic; disappeared for roughly 50 years in Spain and during the Rossini epoch in Italian opera; In the 19th century, zarzuela was revived by Basilio Basili (1803-95) and Manuel Bretón de los Herreros (1796-1873), a declared enemy of Italian opera; young Spanish composers, the "groupo de los cinco" (group of five), who, in essence, founded the modern zarzuela genre; Francisco Asenjo Barbieri (1823-94), Rafael Hernando (1822-88), Joaquín Gaztambide (1822-70), Cristóbal Oudrid y Segura (1825-77), and José Inzenga (1828-91); it was called as the "national lyric-dramatic genre"; in the early 20thcentury, the zarzuela continued as popular theater and attracted many talented composers in Spain.

Verbunkos

[recruiting]. A Hungarian dance originating in the second half of the 18th century and used in the recruitment of soldiers until the advent of conscription in 1849; the dance and its associated music have nevertheless survived, principally in the closely related csárdás. Music was provided by Gypsy bands, who added their characteristic performing style to a repertory of folk tunes. The result was a central part of what is usually termed Gypsy music. At first largely improvised, music in this style reached a peak in the first part of the 19th century in the works of the violin virtuosos János Bihari (himself of Gypsy origin), Antal György Csermák, and János Lavotta. The verbunkos itself typically includes an alteration between a slow introductory section (lassú) and a section in a fast tempo (friss). Composers of art music drawing on this tradition include Liszt (Hungarian Rhapsodies), Brahms, Bartók, and Kodály.

Luther, Martin

a Catholic priest, whose journey to Rome prompted him to nail his ninety-five theses on the door of the church in Wittenburg. His reaction to simony and nepotism in the corrupt Catholic church lead him to unwittingly spearhead the beginnings of the Protestant Reformation in Germany in the sixteenth century. Luther enacted a number of changes in the mass and church service which included a vernacular translation of the Bible and the inclusion of music sung by the congregation (rather than solely by professional musicians). Luther also penned a number of monophonic settings of Psalms for the congregation to sing. These modal settings were later used by Baroque composers (most notably J.S. Bach) as melody lines for four-part chorales.

harmonie

a French word used to designate the wind band (often an octet) which many 18th-c. monarchs kept at their disposal. Harmonies comprised instruments such as oboes, English horns, clarinets, bassoons, horns, basset horns, and occasionally flutes. They were typically used for entertainment and often played divertimenti, cassations, serenades, nocturnes, etc. as dinner or socializing music. Mozart wrote a number of divertimenti for harmonies of varying instrumentations (including his Gran Partita). Mozart also arranged some numbers from his operas for harmonies (The Marriage of Figaro) and Beethoven arranged two of his symphonies (7&8) for this ensemble as well.

basso seguente

a bass line which is not figured, and which simply reproduces the lowest note of the texture at any moment, (and therefore is expendable).

Scivias

a book of Hildegaard von Bingen's visions which the Pope read and gave her a blessing for.

rescue opera

a category of opéra-comique in which the hero or heroine, threatened by a natural catastrophe, outlaw, or tyrant, is rescued at the last minute by a person of great courage. It was first popular in France at the end of the 18th century, and later taken up in Italy and Germany. The most famous example is Beethoven's Fidelio.

mystic chord

a chord used by Skryabin consisting of various types of fourths. It occurs prominently in his tone poem Prométhée op. 60 (1908-10).

suite

a collection of dance movements for solo instrument (Bach violin sonatas and partitas and cello suites, Froberger keyboard suites, Bach Enlgish, French, Italian suites, etc.) or chamber ensemble () or orchestra (Bach orchestral suites). The various movements are usually cast in closely related keys (and sometimes even with the same melody - Buxtehude) and follow a fairly standard progression, often beginning with an allemande or prelude, and concluding with the spritely gigue. The following are a smattering of the dances more often found in the Baroque suite.

Faust

a drama by Goethe, which inspired Liszt to write his Faust Symphony (1857), Berlioz to write his La Damnation de Faust (for orchestra and chorus, 1846), and Gounod to write his opera in five acts, Faust (1859), with a libretto by Jules Barbier and Michael Carré. Faust is the hero of several medieval legends, an old philosopher who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for knowledge and power

Mighty Five (Mighty Handful)

a group of Russian composers who banded together in the 1860's in response to the old-fashioned teaching of the St. Petersburg Conservatory. The group included Balakirev, Borodin, Cui, Musorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov. All but Balakirev, the leader and founder of the group, had unconventional training; they used folksongs and folk-tales in their music, with prominent modal elements. The group did not stay together long, as they really had no unity of style or doctrine; each moved on in different directions.

San Petrino in Bologna

a large cathedral that had long been a center of conerted music (since the beginning of the 17th c.). Cazzati was choirmaster there in the later part of that century (1657-1673)

Fitzwilliam Virginal

a manuscript of keyboard music copied in England between 1609 and 1619, which contains nearly 300 compositions written in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. It includes transcriptions of madrigals, contrapuntal fantasias, dances, preludes, descriptive pieces, and many sets of variations.

cambiata

a melodic figure in which a voice leaps a third down to a consonance instead of approaching it by step. Notable in 4th species 16th cpt.

fasle recapitulation

a moment in sonata form in which the principal thematic material returns, either too early, in the wrong key, or both. This "false" recapitulation is followed by the "real" recapitulation, thus placing the false recap in the development (usually near the end). Examples of false recaps. occur in the first movements of Beethoven's a minor string quartet and his Eroica Symphony.

Santiago de Compostela

a monastery in northwest Spain where there is located a manuscript of early florid organum. (12th c.)

double

a movement following one of the main suite movements in which the harmonic proggression and melody from the dance movement are elaborated through extensive use of passing tones, neighbor tones, and arpeggios. The double, thus provides a sort of variation upon the movement immediately preceding it.

leitmotif

a musical theme or motive associated with a particular person, thing, or idea in the drama. The association is established by sounding the leitmotif (usually in the orchestra) at the first appearance or mention of the object of reference, and by its repetition at each subsequent appearance or mention. Use of leitmotif is particularly associated with the operas of Wagner, but can also be found in those of Verdi and Weber. Ex. In Act I Scene 5 of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, the motive of Tristan's honor is introduced and identified by the sung text "Tristans Ehre, höchste Treu!" (Tristan's honor, highest truth). As Isolde drinks the love potion, a motive of a rising major sixth followed by a tritone is introduced, and becomes the motive for the love potion.

Singspiel

a musico-dramatic work with a German text, especially a work written in the 18th or 19th c. in which spoken dialogue alternates with songs and sometimes with ensembles, choruses, or more extended musical pieces. The setting is frequently rural, sometimes fantastic or exotic; the characters are often artisans or from the lower class and exhibit simpler or humbler virtues than characters from opera seria. Mozart's Singspiels include Entführung aus dem Serail (1782), and Die Zauberflöte (1791). There were two main schools of Singspiel: the Viennese (which included Mozart), and the North German, which was influenced by English and French comic opera. North German Singspiel composers included Johann Adam Hiller and Georg Benda.

Young Classicism

a name given by Busoni to his conception of a hoped-for new music which would take into accoutn all the gains of previous experiments and their inclusion in strong and beautiful forms. His system advocated the use of microtonal divisions of the octave, electronic instruments, new notational systems, and the "overthrow of the tyranny of the major/minor system." Young Classicism was a direct reaction to Romanticism and was somewhat prophetic, considering the Neo-classic developments which took place after WWI.

Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung

a newspaper devoted to musical life, founded in 1798 by Breitkopf und Härtel of Leipzig. Its mixture of articles on musical subjects, reviews of published scores and concerts (and, occasionally, books), correspondence reports from other cities, musical supplements, and publishers' advertisements quickly established the pattern for a host of similar journals that sprang up in all the principal cities of Europe.

emancipation of dissonance

a phrase coined by Schoenberg to describe his new style of composition after the First Chamber Symphony. Emphasis on non-harmonic tones becomes so extreme that these tones tend not to resolve at all. Dissonant harmonic complexes are no longer regulated by underlying triadic successions, but are "set free" as absolute harmonic entities, capable of standing on their own and related solely to one another rather than to a single harmonic type representing a universal norm. Pieces which exemplify this new style are the Second String Quartet (Op. 10), Das Buch der hängended Gärten (Op. 15) and the monodrama, Erwartung (Op. 17).

Dafne

a poem by Rinucci, which was set to music by Peri. This was produced in Florence as the first dramatic pastoral fully set to music in 1597.

eclogue

a poem in which shepherds converse. In classical antiquity, eclogues were written by Theocritus and Virgil, and in the 16th century they were sometimes written as plays and staged, thus forming an early part of the pastoral tradition on which early opera drew. The term has been used as a title for piano pieces with a pastoral character by more recent composers such as Tomasek, Franck, Liszt, and Dvořák.

Petrushka chord

a polychord of C major and F# major. Rite of Spring uses a polychord of Bb7 first inversion over Cb major.

melodrama

a popular type of entertainment with spoken text and pictorial accompanying music cultivated by Georg Benda and Zumsteeg. Procedures similar to those in melodrama are found in 19th c. Lieder.

Rococo

a problematic term borrowed from the visual arts, designating a style from France ca. 1690-1760; it is characterized by ornamental delicacy and graceful elegance. In music, the term is best used in relation to French music, particularly small-scale lute and harpsichord works (e.g., descriptive pieces of François Couperin), opéra-ballets, and French-influenced composers such as Telemann. Rococo style represented a shift in aesthetic from the lofty, serious style of Lully's tragédie lyrique to a lighter approach, favoring entertainment and embellishment rather than strong emotions. The opéra-ballets tended to lack a continuous plot, sacrificing drama for display. An example of this was Campra's L'Europe galante (1697). The Italian development of opera buffa is parallel to this trend. Rococo is often used to refer to the Pre-Classical period in general, with its lighter, galant aesthetic.

burden

a refrain, especially that of the 15th century carol. Also, In the 14th and 15th century England, it was the lowest part of a polyphonic piece, thus the term "faburden."

scherzo

a replacement for the minuet; normally in rapid 3/4 time and rounded binary form. As with the minuet, there is usually a contrasting trio, with return to the scherzo. Haydn used the term scherzo for the dance movements of his op. 33 quartets, but these do not differ much from the minuet. Beethoven wrote "true" scherzo movements. In the Seventh symphony, he expands the form by adding an additional trio and scherzo statement:S-T-S-T-S. The scherzo was a standard component of the Romantic and post-Romantic symphony.

metrical modulation

a rhythmic technique devised by Elliott Carter, and first employed in his Cello Sonata (1948). The term (not coined by Carter) is actually a misnomer, since what is changed is not meter but tempo; the basic pulse is altered by taking some fractional subdivision (or multiple) of its total value and treating that as a new pulse of different value. The result is a proportional shift in rate of pulse- in other words, a change of tempo.

reciting tone

a single note to which each verse of text in a psalm tone is rapidly chanted, also called the tenor. The note chosen depended upon the mode in which the psalm was chanted.

red notation

a special device used by Vitry and others which indicated a temporary shift from perfect to imperfect mensuration or vice versa.

double variation

a special kind of variation form, often found in late Haydn, in which two themes, often in different keys, and their variations alternate (A,B,A1,B1,A2,B2, etc.). Restatements of either of the themes in between the variations is a possibility

allemande

a stately dance in duple meter. Like the earlier pavane/galliard pairing, the allemande is often paired with a lively, triple-meter dance like the courante. The allemande often features a short upbeat and running notes which permeate the musical fabric in a pseudo-contrapuntal sort of texture.

ballad

a strophic narrative song, with sentimental text, usually in moderate or slow tempo, and often in a form consisting of two or more 16-measure strophes, each followed by an 8-bar refrain, the whole sometimes referred to as a ballad/refrain. 19th-c. examples include the ballads of Carl Loewe, modeled after the ballads of Zumsteeg.

tablature

a style of notation (primarily for lute) which shows finger placement on frets rather than pitches. Rhythm is notated above the score. Since the Renaissance, much music for other instruments (especially keyboard) was "intabulated" for lutenists to play. Intabulation thus made a great body of music available to the unschooled and musically "illiterate."

Neo-Classicism

a tendency to employ the techniques and forms of pre-Romantic periods, principally Baroque and Classical. Commonly applied to works of Stravinsky like Pulcinella and The Rake's Progress. Features objectivity, motivic clarity, textural transparency, formal balance, tonal centricity, and reliance upon stylistic models. Ravel's La tombeau de Couperin. Other composers: Busoni, Falla, Prokofiev, Milhaud, Piston, Hindemith, Shostakovich.

consort

a term used in the 17th C for a small instrumental ensemble. A consort is said to be "whole" (e.g. a chest of viols or a nest of recorders) or "broken" (an ensemble with contrasting instruments).

deus ex machina

a theatric device used since antiquity in which the main character or the main plot was rescued by some sort of divine power or circumstance. This technique was often used to wrap up the plots of 18th -century comic operas.

rondellus

a type of conductus involving voice exchange between all three voices. Related to the voice-exchange motet, which uses the rondellus technique, either on a simple level, or on a larger scale.

statistical music

a type of music explained by Stockhausen as music which depends upon only approximate designations. Density of texture becomes so great that individual notes can no longer be accurately perceived - everything tends to melt together in a generalized, total effect. Obviously, one type of statistical music would be stochastic music.

monody

a type of solo song that developed about 1600 in reaction to the polyphonic style of the 16th c. and that is characterized by recitative-like design of the voice part and by thoroughbass accompaniment. Some of the earliest examples of true monody were published in Caccini's Le nuove musiche (1601).

récitatif mésuré

a type of vocal writing in which the passages involved approach the air in having a uniform meter but lack the repetition and closed form of the aria. This style of writing is abundant in the later operas of Lully.

double versicle

a versicle is a phrase or sentence of text. In the sequence, parallel versicles are often paired making a double versicle.

Sprechstimme

a vocal style halfway between singing and speaking. Calls for only the approximate reproduction of pitches. Often notated with an "x" on the notehead. Found in expressionistic music, particularly that of Schoenberg. (Pierrot lunaire)

single-texted motet

also known as the conductus-motet, defined by Johannes de Grocheo around 1300 as a three- or four-voiced motet in which the upper voices all sing the same text (in the same not lengths?), thus forming a conductus-like texture above the tenor.

responsorial psalmody

alternation in a psalm between the congregation or chorus and a soloist. In the early church, this was sometimes just a one-word response by the congregation between verses of a psalm (kyrie eleison).. By the ninth century it became exclusively a choral response to the soloist. In the Mass, the Gradual and Alleluia follow this form, while in the Offices there are the Great and Short Responsories.

romanesca

an air for singing ottave rime, consisting of a treble formula with a standard harmonization, accompanied by a bass. In many compositions based on the romanesca, only the bass is recognizable, so it is often referred to as a ground bass.

intabulation

an arrangement of a composition for keyboard or plucked strings notated in tabulature. Italian intabulations of French chansons resulted in canzonas. An important Elizabethan source of intabulated music is the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. Intabulation continued into the seventheenth century, often in style brise.

Monastery of St. Gall

an important centre for troping, where Tuotilo worked, as well as Notker the Stammerer

commedia dell'arte

an improvised comic genre popular in Italy from the sixteenth century onward. This theatric genre featured a number of stereotyped stock characters such as the vain lady, pompous military commander, deceitful servant, and bumbling physician. Such characters and the convoluted plots they participated in were later commandeered by 18th-century Italian comic opera librettists.

baryton

an instrument like a large viola da gamba with an extra set of resonating metal strings. Haydn wrote nearly 200 baryton peices for his employer, Prince Nicholas Esterházy, who played the instrument. Most of these pieces were in a trio combination with viola and cello.

tragédie lyrique

an opera genre in the last quarter of the 17th c. which represented the French turning away from It. Tragicomedy towards the Fr. classical tragedy. Quinault and Lully were leading composers, also called tragédie en musique. The political/romantic entanglements of It. opera cleared away in favor of a clear-cut plot line, embellished with a variety of marvelous and magical apparitions/transformations. Ex: Lully's Armide (1686) and Persée (1682).

Odhecaton

anthology of polypohonic music pub. in 1501 by Petrucci. This was the first instance in which polyphonic music was printed using movable type. Included in the Odhecaton is a wide variety of fifteenth-century music. 96 pieces are present and (mostly French chansons) by such composers as: Josquin, Isaac, Busnois, and Agricola.

Notre Dame

became a major cultural center through a confluence of political, religious, and educational events in the twelfth century. The Notre Dame School of composition (as embodied by Leonin and Perotin) became the source of an international style that remained in vogue until the fourteenth century. This style had its genesis in the music and liturgy of Notre Dame and featured not only the birth of organum purum but also the later codification of rhythmic notation, and the birth of the motet.

falsobordone

completely chordal harmonizations of psalm tones and other liturgical recitatives found especially in Spanish and Italian sources of the sixteenth century.

Gilbert and Sullivan

composers of English operettas which proved to be the most distinctive English musical dramas of the century. Sullivan (1842-1900) was an English music student who studied at the Leipzig conservatory at the same time as Grieg. In 1875 he first entered into partnership with W.S. Gilbert to wrote an one-act "afterpiece" to an Offenbach opera. Broad parody and witty absurditites in Gilbert's texts are matched by Sullivan's array of borrowed and adapted styles (ranging from Handelian recitative to Gounod-like sentimental airs, to Italian bel canto styles). These two men almost single-handedly created the tradition of the English operetta.

substitute clausula

discant clausulae written to replace sections in discant style in organa. At first, no words were added, but later, words were fitted to them. Eventually, these sections separated from the organa genre and developed into the motet

organum

earliest form of polyphony, first appears in sources ca. late 9th c. First, involves only parallel motion in perfect intervals. Then, oblique motion was added to avoid the appearance of tritones, and finally contrary motion was added. The vox organalis (the original chant melody) is usually above the vox principalis, but there is some voice crossing. The largest collection of 11th c. organum is in the Winchester Troper. First references to organum are in Musica enchiriadis and Scolica enchiriadis. In the early 12th c., florid organum (or organum purum) appears, in which the solo voice sings several or many notes to each of the plainchant notes. Later in the 12th and 13th c., when the voices moved in similar measured rhythm (according to the rhythmic modes), this was termed discant.

psalm tones

form of chant used for the recitation of prayers and readings from the Bible, on the border between speech and song. It consists of a reciting note or tenor to which each verse or period of the text is rapidly chanted. Upper or lower neighbors are used to bring out important words or syllables. May be preceded by a two- or three-note introductory formula called the initium. At the end there is a short melodic cadence.

toccata

from the Italian, tocar, to touch. This was an instrumental piece which grew out of its original function as a prelude. It is also the form most antithetical to the ricercare and fantasia, both of which tend toward slower tempi and more solemn expressions. The toccata was essentially a fast-paced technical piece. The first example occurs in a collection of lute music by Castiglione in Milan (1536). Keyboardists eventually made the tocatta their own, including composers such as Andrea Gabrieli, and later, Frescobaldi.

Romanesca

harmonic bass pattern often used as an ostinato in arie pour cantar and dance variations. It was of Spanish-Italian origin and was used from 1550 into the seventeenth century. The bass pattern also appeared frequently in early Baroque music as an ottavo rime, a possible setting for sonnets or other poetry.

Ut queant laxis

hymn set by Guido so that the notes C-D-E-F-G-A fell on syllables Ut through La. This was the basis of his system of hexachords.

Petronian motet

late 13th c. Petrus de Cruce wrote motets in which the triplum attained an unprecedented speed, through diuvisions of the breve into more than 3 semibrevesThis effectively resulted in a patter song where the top voice sings quite fast, the motetus moves somewhat slower, and the tenor sems to move in slow motion.

Schickaneder

librettist for Mozart's The Magic Flute. Like Mozart, he was a Freemason.

scordatura

literraly "mistuning." Often used for expressive or technical effects, and applying only to the mistuning of stringed instrument. Many of the sonatas by Biber feature scordatura. Composers used this technique into the 20thc.

sequence

long textless melismas which were used as extensions or additions to chant. Particularly added to the jubilus of the Alleluia. Called sequentia cum prosa when text is included

neumes

marks used for the notation of plain chant. Non-diastemic neumes indicate the melodic direction but not precise melodic intervals. Diastemic neumes grew out of the thirteenth-century French square notation and showed not only direction, but also precise intervals on a musical staff.

rota

medieval name for a round, particularly Sumer is Icumen in (which also features the use of a tenor pes).

Florestan, Eusebius, and Raro

members of the imaginary Davidsbund, which battled the Philistines of contemporary culture. Schumann used these characters in his essays and reviews against the prevailing musical taste in German society. Eusebius and Florestan represented, respectively, his pensive, introverted & impulsive, extroverted sides.

musica reservata

mid-16th c. term used to describe the "new" style of those composers who, motivated by a desire to give forceful and detailed reflection of the words, introduced chromaticism, modal variety, ornaments, and contrasts of rhythm and texture in their music. There is also the implication that such music was "reserved" for a particular patron's chambers. It is probably best represented by the music de Lassus.

aleatory

music in which the composer employs elements of chance, either in fashioning the composition itself or in prescribing conditions of performance, or both; also referred to as indeterminancy. The term "chance music" is preferred by many composers. The indeterminante aspect may affect the act of composition, the performance, or both. In the first instance, some random process, such as throwing dice (the original meaning of aleatory being "according to the throw of a die"), is used to fix certain compositional decisions; e.g., the choice of pitches or rhythmic values. In the second, the perforner makes certain compositional decisions in a given realization of a piece: e.g., the number of segments played or the order in which they are played or the specific pitches or durations used. Principally a phenomenon of the later 20thcentury, the music of John Cage is a notable example of aleatoic music. Music of Changes, a piano piece composed in 1951, was the first composition to be largely determined by random procedures. Other important composers of this style include Earle Brown, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Robert Moran.

musique concrete

music made on tape with sounds drawn from nature and man-made noises, and then sometimes altered electronially; as opposed to musical instruments. The first examples are by Pierre Schaeffer in Paris. Varese, Messiaen, Berio, Stockhausen, Cage, and Boulez followed.

trope

musical changes to a chant of the Proper or the Ordinary. Adds either musical melismas or text and music. originally a newly composed addition, usually in neumatic style and with a poetic text, to one of the antiphonal chants of the Proper (esp. the Introit). Later, such additions were also made to the ordinary (esp. the Gloria). Tropes served as prefaces to a chant or were interpolations of its text and music. They flourished in the 10th and 11th c., and died out in the 12th. The monastery at St. Gall was known as the center of troping.

pedes cum cauda

named by Dante, this is a form in which two pedes (feet) are followed by a cauda (tail). It appears throughout medieval music, and finds an analogy in the German bar form used by the Minnesingers which comprises two stollen and an abgesang. In either case, the two earlier parts (pedes or stollen) are similar, while the final part (cauda or abgesang) is dissimilar.

solo sonata

of the basic genre described above, the solo sonata was for two or more players (solo melody instrument and basso continuo).

Perotin

one of the Notre Dame School of composers - he was active around the turn of the 13th c. He supposedly edited the Magnus liber organi and was reputedly a fine composer of clausulae, discant, and quadrupla (better than Leonin). Perotin allegedly (according to Anonymous IV) composed many substitute clausulae to replace certain sections of Leonin's organum purum.

de Lalande, Michel-Richard

one of the four composers who won positions as sous-máìtre of the royal chapel in the famous national competition or concours of 1683. As the others died or retired one by one he took over their quarter-years and by 1714 was in complete control of the chapel. His sixty-four grands motets constitute the core of surviving repertory in this genre. One of the most famous is the De profundis. This work was written in 1683 for the repose of the soul of the Queen Marie-Thérèse. It's text features Psalm 129/130 (Out of the depths I cry to thee, O Lord!). The addition of verses Requiem and Et lux perpetua made this grand motet suitable for funeral and memorial services. de Lalande's writing shows a number of Italian traits (perhaps learned from his predecessor Charpentier) such as: frequent dissonant suspensions, freely-introduced dominant seventh chords, rich instrumental harmonies independent of the vocal parts, and ritornello-like introductory symphonies.

menestriers

one of the reasons France under Louis XIV resisted foreign musical influence was due to the menestriers. These were strong guilds of musicians whose strict rules of apprenticeship and accreditation made it difficult for outsiders to enter the musical profession. The central socail function ofthese musicians in France during the Baroque was to accompany court dancing and ballet entertainments.

L'incorinazione di Poppea

opera by Monteverdi (1642). The libretto was by Francesco Busenello. The work is a masterpiece for the stage and one of the best early-Venetian works. The chorus has all but disappeared in this work and aria, arioso passages, madrigal-like duets, and comic ariettes make up the bulk of the material. The drama is deeply passionate and concerns the Roman Emperor, Nero, his wife Ottavia, and his lover, Poppea. Monteverdi used the recitative as a vessel for the loftiest moments of drama and emotion (Ottavia's farewell to Rome), moving easily between it and aria texture. Monteverdi also uses stilo concitato to great effect to express anger in this work.

pitch continuum

or pitch-space - a term used by analysts of twentith-century music to describe the division of all audible musical space into half-step increments. Thus, pitch-space or the pitch continuum constitutes all audible musical pitches. It is distinguished from all audible musical sound (which is not divided into half-step increments) and pitch-class space (in which register is ignored and only the twelve pitch-classes are considered).

vaudeville

popular tunes which were the basis of the first French version of light opera, opéra comique, from around 1710 until the middle of the century, when vaudevilles were gradually replaced by ariettes, or original airs in a mixed French-Italian style.

Impressionism

refers to the tone-painting of Debussy. Impressionistic music is characterized by parallel chord movement, unresolved dissonance such as seventh and ninth chords, whole-tone scales, and subtle, unusual timbral effects. The idea is to present a general "impression" of a scene rather than its precise equivalent.

ballad opera

rose to prominence in England after the success of The Beggar;s Opera in London in 1728. Ballad opera, with its popular style, was a sign of the general reaction in England against foreign opera. Thomas Augustine Arne was the only other notable composer of opera in England in the 18th century, though many comic operas were produced by him and by lesser composers throughout the century.

Szene und Arie

scene and aria. A portion of an opera, usually consisting of one or more arias.

troubadours/trouvères

secular court musicians of the 12th and 13th c. Generally accomplished poets but amateur musicians. The troubadours were from Provence (S. France) and wrote in Provençal, or langue d'oc. They flourished in aristocratic settings, but not all were from the upper class. Before the 13th .,their poetry focused on the idea of courtly love. The Albigensian Crusade marks an end to the freedom of expression in Provence, and later troubadour writing reflects this. The poetry is written with the ars ritmica principles of line length, and is mostly set syllabically with moderate ornamentation. Poetic forms used include serventes, pastorela, alba, tenso, ballada, and dansa. Musical form is either oda continua or pedes cum cauda. Since it was primarily an oral tradition, extant sources are limited. In the mid-12th c., Eleanor of Aquitaine brought the troubadour tradition north, where it developed into the trouvère tradition. Trouvères wrote in langue d'oïl. Like the troubadours, they wrote in an aristocratic setting , but this changed somewhat with the rise of the middle-class in the 13th c. Trouvère music is better preserved than that of the troubadours; most sources date from latter half of the 13th c.

Stockhausen, Karlheinz

see Poultney

Stravinsky, Igor

see Poultney

mannerism

style used by deRore where the homogeneity of style valued in the Ren. was sacrificed for a melange which aimed to make the representation of the text more vivid and moving. De Rore would change from one rhythmic scheme to another, from diatonicism to chromaticism, from root chords to 6th chords, and from sharp keys to flat keys.

English

the Englilsh conception of motet is much more inclusive than that found on the continent. It includes not only the traditional cantus firmus motet, but also settings in motet style of a complete liturgical plainchant and motets on newly-composed tenors (motet on a pes). English motet featured more use of isomelism, isoperiodicity, and voice exchange. English compositions also featured more tonal unity and less rhythmic complexity (modes 2 and 3 are nearly non-existant) than their continental counterparts.

anthems

the English version of the motet. The full anthem is for chorus throughout, usually in contrapuntal style and unaccompanied. The verse anthem was for one or more solo voices with organ or viol accompaniment and with brief alternating passages for chorus.

courante/corrente

the French and Italian names, respectively for a lively, jumping dance in triple meter. The music often features quick-moving "running" notes. The Italian corrente is in 3/4 or 3/8 with a homophonic texture (melody predominates). The French courante is at a slower tempo and often switches between the duple and triple meters of 6/4 (accents on 1 and 4) and 3/4 (accents on 1, 3, 5). Its texture is more contrapuntal and melodic figures appear in all the voices. Bach typically used the French style courante in his suites, although curiously enough the Italian type occurs in many of the French suites!

missa longs/solemnis vs. brevis

the Missa Solemnis is the High Mass in its full form with all items sung as opposed to the Missa Lecta (or read Mass) and the Missa Brevis in which an abbreviated musical setting is provided (usually just the Kyrie and Gloria).

musical prose

the constant unfolding of an unbroken musical argument without recourse to the symmetrical balances produced by phrases or sections of equal length and corresponding thematic content (exemplified most clearly in the Classical formal unit known as a "period"). The result is a polyphonic texture in which all parts are equally developmental and motivically derived; harmonic "padding" is shunned. Along with "developing variation," this concept was used by Schoenberg, as in his First Quartet (1905).

developing variation

the continuous evolution and transformation of the thematic substance, strictly avoiding literal repetition. It is related to the concept of "musical prose." Both concepts are used by Schoenberg in his First Quartet.

mutation

the process whereby a certain note was taken as if it were in one hexachord and quitted as if it were in another, allowing a melody to exceed a six-note range, thus changing from one hexachord to another.

tenor

the voice (originally in plainchant) which holds the preexistent chant

stile rappresentivo

theater style inspired by the antique (ancient Greek) model of sung dialogue based on speech.

tempus

this was the principle that described the relationship of the breve to the semibreve (perfect - 3, imperfect - 2) in the fourteenth-century expansion of Franconian rhythms and notions of perfection vs. imperfection.

prolatio

this was the principle that described the relationship of the semibreve to the minim (major - 3, minor - 2) in the fourteenth-century expansion of Franconian rhythms and notions of perfection vs. imperfection.

St. Petersburg Conservatory

was founded in 1862 with Anton Rubinstein as the artist director. It has had many renowned prefessors, including Rimsky-Korsakov (1871-1908), Glazunov (1899-1925; from 1905 he was also director), Lyadov (1878-1914), Shteynberg, Vladinir Shcherbachovl Shostakovich and others. Among its graduates have been Shostakovich, Sviridov, Solov'yov-Sedoy, Dzerzhinsky, Balanchivadze, the musicologists Kushnaryov and Tyulin, the conductors Dranishnikovl Mravinsky and Melik-Pashayev, the organist Braudo, the pianists Sofronitsky, Yudina and Serebryakov and the singers Davïdova and Preobrazhenskaya. Many of these became professors at the conservatory.

motet

work of the Renaissance that combines a Latin sacred text in once voice (usually tenor or bass)

Magnus liber organi

(the Great Book of Organum) a cycle of two-part Graduals, Alleluias, and responsories written by Léonin for the entire church year. No longer exists in original form.

Motet

(begins ca. mid- 13th c.) a genre associated first with the Notre Dame school of Léonin and Pérotin, believed to have developed out of the separation of the clausulae from the organa. Words in rhymed Latin text were added to the upper voices. Named by a compound title consisting of the incipit (first few words) of each of the voices. Most were anonymous.

Leonin

(ca. 1159-1201) With Pérotin, part of the Notre Dame school. One of the first known composers of polyphony. Wrote Magnus liber organi (see below). In his organum, he juxtaposed old (florid organum)and new (discant clausulae) elements.

Landini, Francesco

(ca. 1325-97) Leading composer of the second generation of trecento composers in Italy. Especially known for his ballate and use of the "Landini cadence," in which the movement from a sixth to an octave is embellished in the upper voice by a descending second followed by a leap of a third. Wrote no music to sacred texts. Example?

modal rhythm

(codified by 1250) the system which 11th and 12th c. composers devised for the notation of rhythm. It was based on certain numbered rhythmic patterns, six in all, which corresponded to the metrical feet of Latin and French verse, I to the trochee, II to the iamb, III to the dactyl, IV to the anapest, etc. I and V were most common, while IV was rare. A melody in a certain mode should consist of an indefinite number of repetitions of the pattern , each phrase ending with a rest, which replaced the second note of the pattern. Usually, though, the system was more flexible.

conductus

11th to 13th c. monophonic song featuring a newly composed melody. May have originated as sacred songs used during the Mass when people were being conducted from one place to another, but they quickly became popular in secular circles. The lines are metrical and often paired by syllable length, beginning and ending with an unpaired line (ABBCCDDEE......N). By the end of the 12th c. the term conductus came to mean any Latin song (sacred or secular) of a serious character and with a metrical text. Polyphonic conductus were written by Pérotin and other composers of the Notre Dame era. Two, three, or four voices were used and the musical style was less complex than that of organum. Voices tended to remain in a narrow range and they all moved together in a similar rhythm (discant style - homorhythmic texture). Voice crossings were frequent and texts were set syllabically (except for cauda).

ballade

14th c. Very similar to pedes cum cauda form of troubadour/trouvère music, probably a derivative. The text consists of seven- or eight-line stanzas of which the first four lines are the pedes and the remaining lines are the cauda (which always includes a one line refrain at the end which is the same for all the stanzas). The pedes lines are usually set to two musical phrases, one with an open ending the other closed, followed by the cauda with a closed ending. The musical form for a stanza is then something like Ao, Ac, Bc. In Machaut's later ballades the closing cadences which occurs at the end of the pedes and on the refrain line of the cauda are musically identical.

Ptolemy

2nd century AD. He was an important mathematician and the most systematic of the ancient theorists. He laid out the various species of the consonances in terms of tones and semitones. He also represented a compromise between Pythagorean and Aristoxenian views of music. He believed in ratios, but also decreed that the perfect fourth must be a consonance since it sounds like one, thus admitting both mathematics and perception into the realm of musical judgment. Ptolemy also pared Aristoxenus's "excessive" thirteen tonoi down to seven.

lai

: longest of the medieval monophonic forms (often 15+ min.). Machaut's lais consist of twelve stanzas, the first and last sung to the same music. Each stanza is in two or four parts, with alternating ouvert and clos endings. Stanzas may vary in tonality. Typically monophonic, but some polyphonic examples. Similar to the chanson de geste and the Norse saga.

genera

: the three versions of the Greek tetrachord. All three span a perfect fourth, but the size of the pyknon (the bottom three notes) in each differs. The genera are: diatonic (E-F-G-A for example), chromatic (E-F-F#-A for example) and enharmonic (E-F#-F-A - F#= a quarter tone between E and F). Aristoxenus discusses "shades" of genera in which the actual intonation of the middle two notes is variable and genera are defined by "tolerance bands" of frequency for the various shades (see handout).

"harmony of the spheres"

An idea introduced by the Pythagoreans and later picked up by Plato that astronomy, music, and mathematics were one in the same. Thus the motions of the heavenly bodies caused actual sounds to occur and made a sort of celestial music.

monochord

A single string with a moveable bridge. Used by the Pythagoreans and many later musical scholars up through the Renaissance (and into the Baroque!) to demonstrate that string length ratios determined musical intervals.

monophony

A single-voiced texture probably prevalent in ancient music. Monophonic music could have been created by one singer or instrumentalist, or any number of musicians singing or playing in unisons or octaves.

Mensural notation

A system of notation established around 1260, remaining in use until about 1600. Initially, the three principal note values in use were the long, breve, and semibreve. The long was equal to three breves, and the breve equal to three semibreves. An additional fourth note, duplex long, was equal to two longs. By the 14th century, the minim was added and by the 15th century, the semiminima and fusa were also added.

heterophony

A texture assumed by modern scholars to have been prevalent in the ancient world in which one voice or instr. created a melody which was simultaneously sounded and embellished upon by a second voice or instr.

De Musica

Aristides Quintilianus' only surviving manuscript, probably written in the second or third century A.D. Attempts a compilation of all knowledge relevant to music. It is divided into theoretical, practical, and metaphysical sections. Mainly contains summaries of Aristoxenus's Harmonics and Rhythmics and Pythagorean mathematics. Practical music treats both performance (instrumental, odic, and theatric) and composition (melodic, rhythmic, and poetic). The metaphysical sections treat questions of musical philosophy, treating music as a form of emotional therapy and a servant of philosophy as well as ascribing a dualistic nature to musical materials (rhythm vs. melody, thesis vs. arsis, conjunct vs. disjunct tetrachords, etc.) often relating these dualisms to male/female or virtue/vice dichotomies.

isoperiodic motet

First developed in England, isoperiodicity indicates a rational phrase relationship between two or more voices. Around the turn of the 14th c., this technique was further developed so that a chosen phrase length permeates each part, but is offset to create a structure of overlapping phrases.

antiphon

In the Gregorian and other Western chant liturgies, it was generally a short melody on prose text in a simple syllabic style that served as a refrain in the singing of psalm verses or canticles. Antiphons are the most common of chants, with well over 1000 in any given source. Many of the antiphons, though, employ basically the same melody, with modifications made according to the text. Famous examples are the votive (in dedication to) Marian Antiphons (to the blessed Mary), which since the end of the 13th C, have been sung at the end of Compline. These are actually not true antiphons since almost by definition an antiphon is associated with a psalm or canticle.

Pythagorean comma

Purely-tuned octaves and fifths in the Pythagorean tuning system result in intonational discrepancies. (3:2)12 ≠ (2)7 and (9:8)6 ≠ 2 (that is, 12 pure fifths do not equal 7 octaves and six whole tones do not equal one octave, the way they do on a modern piano). In each case the discrepancy between these two ratios is 23.5 cents, the Pythagorean comma. Pythagorean comma (PC) defined in Pythagorean tuning as difference between semitones (A1-m2), or interval between enharmonically equivalent notes (from D♭ to C♯). The diminished second has the same width but an opposite direction (from to C♯ to D♭).

harmonia

The ancient scales or modes. There were seven harmonia which corresponded with the seven octave species. Each of the harmonia was given a different ethnic name (Dorian, Lydian, etc.) and was said to have a specific ethos. Theorists argued about whether the harmonia were fixed with regard to pitch (like our untransposed church modes, dorian is always on D) or not (major mode can be in any key).

Guillaume de Machaut

The leading composer of Ars Nova in France, he lived ca. 1300-1377. Famous as both a musician and a poet. His 23 motets continue the contemporary trends toward greater secularity, greater length, and much greater rhythmic complexity. He also wrote many monophonic songs, continuing the trouvère tradition. He often introduced rhythmic complexities into the formes fixes. His style features parallel fifths and pungent dissonances but uses more thirds and sixths and fuller sounds than the ars antiqua, though not yet approaching the countenance angloise. Two of Machaut's more famous compositions are the rondeau "Mon fin est mon commencement et mon commencement est mon fin," and the Messe de Notre Dame, a four-part setting of the Ordinary of the Mass.

Messe de Notre Dame

The most famous musical composition of the 14thc. is this four-part setting by Machaut of the Ordinary of the Mass together with the dismissal formula, Ite, missa est. It is important because of its spacious dimensions, four-part texture, and the fact that it is clearly planned as a musical whole.

Roman instruments

The most important Roman instruments were the tibia (analogous to the Greek aulos), tuba, cornu, and buccina (horns).

Greek instruments

The most important of the Greek instruments were the kithara, lyre, and aulos. The oboe-like aulos was often featured in Dionysian rites and was associated with a wild, orgiastic ethos and was often featured as a solo instrument or an instrument to accompany dance. The kithara and lyre were Apollonian stringed instruments, more intellectual than emotional in nature. They were more often used to accompany song, ode, and theater and featured a calming, soothing ethos.

Antiphoner

The music for the offices is collected in this book - also called antiphonale.

Timaeus

The only Platonic dialog known to the Middle Ages (via Cicero). Plato concerns himself in this work with "inner harmonies" (the Platonic musical ideal) and their manifestation in the natural world (music of the spheres, human music, etc,). This correlation led Plato to believe that music could be used to correct "discords" in the soul.

Gradual

a responsorial chant which used formulaic melodic construction. It was performed from the steps in front of the altar during the Catholic mass after the Epistle but before the Gospel. The Gradual uses only a single psalm verse without Doxology so the resultant form is: solo intonation and choral respond - solo verse - choral respond. An example of Gradual is the Easter Gradual, Haec Dies

Alleluia

a responsorial chant, which occurs just after the Gradual and just before the Sequence in the Catholic mass. The word Alleluia is a Hebrew word of praise. The typical format for the alleluia is to have a soloist sing the first section and then have the choir echo the soloist, extending this section with a melisma known as the jubilus. The entire form is as follows: Solo Alleluia-Choral Alleluia+jubilus-Solo verse(often with choral conclusion)-[solo alleluia]-Choral Alleluia+jubilus. Alleluias feature a highly integrated musical style with more internal repetition as opposed to the formulaic style of the Gradual

Egeria

a Spanish or Gaulish nun who made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem ~381-4 and described the liturgy in use there. From this we can draw inferences as to the readings, prayers, and chants used in ancient Christian services.

Liber Usualis

a book containing the most frequently used chants from both the Antiphonale (music for the Offices) and the Graduale (music for the Mass).

hymn

a chant form in which a number of stanzas of poetry each with the same number of lines, syllables per line, and rhyme scheme are all repeated to the same music.

jongleurs

a class of professional musicians appearing in the 10th c. They were singers of chansons de geste and traveled about the countryside performing this music. They were not poets or composers, though, and often sang the compositions of the tr ouvères and troubadours.

dynamic vs. thetic mese

a distinction made between the idea of a static mese, something like our notion of middle C on the piano, a note central to the usable range, and dynamic mese, something akin to our idea of tonic or scale degree 1 which moves depending on the key in use.

Graduale

a liturgical book which contains all the music for the Roman-Catholic mass (both Proper and Ordinary).

Euouae

a medieval abbreviation for the doxology (Gloria Patri) which was sung at the end of many antiphonal chants. The letters stand for the vowels (Us look like Vs) in "seculorum amen." It's a mnemonic which was used in medieval music to denote the sequence of tones in the "seculorum Amen" passage of the lesser doxology, Gloria Patri, which ends with the phrase In saecula saeculorum, Amen. In plainchant sources, the differentia, that is, the melodic formula to be sung at the end of every line of chanted psalmody, would be written over either the letters EUOUAE, or merely E----E, representing the first and last vowel of "seculorum Amen."

Guidonian hand

a mnemonic device attribute d (probably falsely) to Guido used for locating the pitches of the diatonic scale. Different joints of the fingers represented various hexachord pitches and solmisation syllables.

Daseian notation

a notational system of 9th- and 10th -c. European scribes. The tones of the scale are represented by signs derived from aspirant Greek letter symbols. Only a few symbols are used but they are rotated at different angles to indicate different pitches. This notational system was a precursor of Latin letter and staff notation.

ethos

a notion stemming from ancient Greek philosophy that music is capable of affecting mens' emotions, mental state, and behavior. Plato ascribes ethos to the various "modes," each of which has a different effect on the listener. Ethos was also ascribed to specific instruments, pieces, timbres, rhythms, etc.

tonoi

a sticky point with the ancient theorists. Some of them, like Aristoxenus, seem to have conceived of tonoi like we conceive of key. That is, the tonoi was an octave scale built upon one of the thirteen chromatic pitches (our twelve chromatic pitches plus one to complete a full octave). Others, like Ptolemy, argued that the purpose of tonoi was to bring into range one of the harmonia (or modes), thus there are only seven tonoi, since there are only seven modes. This conception of tonoi is more similar to our notion of mode or octave species.

cantilena style

a style in which one upper voice is prominent and is supported by two slower-moving lower voices. This style which was popular in the fourteenth century came to be used by many of the pre-Renaissance English composers along with fauxbourdon technique.

displacement technique:

a technique found in fourteenth-century French polyphonic songs in minor prolation (simple rather than compound time) in which consonance is displaced before or after the beat (syncopation) creating a highly dissonant and rhythmically charged sound.

discant

a type of medieval polyphony in which the two voices move in basically the same note lengths - a contrast to original style in which the vox principals holds sustained tones while the vox organalis moves quickly above. Also called discant clausula. English discant technique added two voices, one above and one below, a tenor, moving in parallel six-three chords (fauxbourdon).

mood

also known as modus, this was the principle that described the relationship of the long to the breve (perfect - 3, imperfect- 2) in the 14th-century expansion of Franconian rhythms and notions of perfection vs. imperfection.

Eleanor of Aquitaine

an important medieval political figure, her marriage to Louis VII of France in 1137 brought southern troubadours to Paris, admitting a southern element into the northern French trouvère-style music. Her later marriage to Henry of Normandy provided England with Eleanor's vast French holdings when Henry later succeeded to the English throne. Eleanor was also an early player in the developing aristocratic game of courtly love and had many prominent affairs.

Franco of Cologne

author of Ars musica mensurabilis, he codified mensural rhythm around 1280. This new rhythmic system shifted the beat from the longa to the breve, thus allowing semibreves to be the main beat dividers. This allowed Western music the potential for accentual rhythm based on stress and beat differentiation. His concept of "imperfections" eventually led to their use at all metric levels, thus allowing for notation of all meters and syncopation.

Aristoxenus

author of Harmonics and Rhythmics (mostly lost). Aristoxenus is important for his contrast with the Pythagoreans. He viewed intervals as diastema; that is, spatially conceived rather than mathematically conceived (as ratios) and declared perception more important than mathematics in making musical judgments (ex. re: consonance vs. dissonance for instance). He also divided the three genera of the tetrachord into various shades based upon tolerance bands of the frequencies of each of the four notes involved .

Jacob of Liège

author of Speculum musicae (the musical mirror ca. 1325) and defender of ars antiqua against the modern rhythmic advances propounded by ars nova composers

Plato

ca. 427 - 347 BC. Author of two dialogues which discuss music: Timaeus (see below) and the Republic (380 BC.). Plato's beliefs on music theory were basically Pythagorean. Socially, he believed music should be used only for education, in balance with gymnastics (mental vs. physical). Plato invokes the notion of ethos by proclaiming Dorian and Phrygian the only modes with beneficial effects on man. Plato strongly believed in simple music (no mixed modes!) used for education rather than complex or impressive music for entertainment.

estampie

dance forms found in England and the continent in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Featured pairs of phrases (puncta) the first with an open cadence and the second with a closed cadence. The fourteenth-century Italian istanpite was derived from the French estampie and is a slightly more complex variant of the same form.

incisio

described by John Cotton (John of Afflighem) as a musical comma - less conclusive than the clausula or musical period.

clausula

described by John Cotton as musical period that punctuates the conclusion of a complete musical thought. In late medieval Western music, a clausula (Latin "clause"; plural clausulae) was a newly composed polyphonic section for two or more voices sung in discant style ("note against note") over a cantus firmus. Clausulae eventually became used as substitutes for passages of original plainchant. They occur as melismatic figures based on a single word or syllable within an organum (a composition where one or more voices have been added to a plainchant melody to create polyphony). The text of a clausula differs from that of the plainchant melody underneath it. Each clausula is clearly delineated by a final cadence.

virelai

first appeared in France near the end of the 13th c. A three-voice example appears amongst the rondeaux of Adam de la Hale, monophonic examples appear in the Roman de Fauvel. The derivation of the form is unclear. It may come from the Cantigas de Santa Maria or from thirteenth-century Italian lauda. Its form is closely related to the Italian ballata, and like the ballata, the virelai often features dance-like elements. The form is as follows: refrain - verse 1 - refrain - verse 2 - refrain - verse 3 - refrain. Verses are cast in pedes cum cauda form. The two pedes use the same music, though sometimes the first has an open cadence and the second a closed cadence. The music for the cauda is the same as the music for the refrain. The overall form of a three-verse virelai then is: AbbaAbbaAbbaA (A = refrain, b = pedes, a = cauda).

copula

first mentioned in the Ad Organum Faciendum, this term refers to the last two notes of a phrase in two-part music which form a cadence. This term had a completely different meaning for the Notre Dame school. For them copula was a sort of midway texture between organum purum and discant style.

Pythagorus

leader of the ancient Greek Pythagoreans (5th-6th c. BC). None of his writings per se survive but we know that the Pythagoreans were responsible for the notion of expressing musical intervals in terms of ratios. For them, math, music, and astronomy were one and the same ("harmony of the spheres").

isomelic motet

late 13th c. practice of melodic repetitions corresponding to the repetitions of the tenor melody. May be considered a sort of medieval variation technique, with voice exchange and altered phrasing.

caccia

least fixed of the fourteenth-century Italian fixed formes. The only universal characteristic is the use of canon, though most caccias employ descriptive or programmatic texts. This is the Italian counterpart to the French chase. Most feature openings with two-voice canons over a sustained tenor, though there are examples without the tenor or in three-voice canon. Both caccias with realistic texts and those with madrigal-style texts employ forms with a first section (canon) which may be repeated and which is then alternated with a ritornello with a change of meter (which may also be canonic).

Aristotle

like Plato, extolled the virtues of music for education but also accepted it as a good form of relaxing entertainment (in Politics 330 B.C.). He believed that music contained strong ethos which imitated the passions and was capable of moving them. Aristotle saw training in performance as necessary to the development of musical judgment but he also warned against the empty technique of the virtuoso.

Ars subtilior

literally "subtle arts," it was a highly refined style of the late 14th C secular courts of southern France, that featured fantastic rhythmic complexity, melodically broken lines through the use of hocket, colored harmonies via musica ficta, and voices moving in contrasting meters and groupings. This kind of style necessitated a high degree of professionalism and training by the performers and was not for amateurs. One of the most accomplishd composers of this genre was Philipus da Caserta. A good example of this style appears in Senleches's Fuions de ci, a lament composed for the death of his patron, Eleanor of Aragon.

proslambenomenos

literally "the note we take as an extra." This note was added to the bottom of the Greek Greater Perfect System to fill out a complete two octave range.

laude

monophonic: sung in lay confraternities and by processions of penitents, with music of a vigorous, popular character, similar in form to the ballata. polyphonic: popular nonliturgical devotional four-part song, in Latin or Italian. Similar to frottola, generally syllabic, homophonic, and regularly rhythmic, with melody on top. Usually did not use chant themes or Franco-Flemish style.

madrigal

one of three types of secular Italian compositions represented in the Squarcialupi Codex (ca. 1420). Usually two-voice compositions with idyllic, pastoral, amatory, or satirical texts of two or three three-line stanzas set to the same music. A two-line ritornello follows each stanza. The madrigal tends to have melismas at the ends and sometimes beginnings of lines, similar to the style of earlier conductus

ars antiqua

the "old music" before the fourteenth century which stressed triple divisions of the beat and no more than three semibreves to one breve. Defended by Jacob de Liège in his Speculum musicae.

Johannes de Grocheo

theorist active around 1300, he states in his De Musica that church modes can only be applied to chant, not polyphony (because of the different ambitus of different voices). Defined the motet as a composition having a multiplicity of texts. He advised composing each of the separate polyphonic voices in turn and advised placing the motetus a fifth above the tenor and the triplum an octave above the tenor. He delineated a number of musical formes (including estampies and ductia) and also commented on the rhythmic relationship between tempus and perfection (three tempi in a perfection).

ars nova

title of a treatise by Philipp de Vitry (written about 1322-23). Also mentioned in the title of Jehan de Murs' Ars novae musicae. This term came to denote the style, which prevailed throughout France in the first half of the fourteenth century. Ars nova principles included: acceptance of the duple division of the beat and the use of four or more semibreves as equivalent to the breve (already featured in the motets of Pierre de la Croix). Jacob of Liège vigorously defended the "ars antiqua" of the thirteenth century against these "modern" trends in music.

Cleonides

translated Aristoxenus into Latin and delineated seven musical topics (notes, intervals, genera, scale systems, tonoi, modulation, and melodic composition) and discussed the various species of the consonances including naming the seven octave species with ethnic names (Dorian, Phrygian, etc.). These names do not match the church modes with which we are familiar.

Hildegaard von Bingen

twelfth-century German mystic who wrote a number of sequences which featured large ranges (sometimes over two octaves!). She was given a blessing by the Pope for her book of visions called the Scivius.