Music History Placement

Passio Music

A Passion cantata is a cantata that takes as its theme the Passion of Jesus Christ, i.e. the hours, days, or weeks leading up to and including his crucifixion. Some of the larger cantatas have been referred to as oratorios.

Camerata

A camerata is a small chamber orchestra or choir, with up to 40 to 60 musicians or choristers.

Alto instruments

Alto instruments: alto saxophone, french horn, english horn, viola, alto horn (trombone)

Discant

An early form of harmony used in the Medieval era (c. 1000-1200) which developed from organum. The descant was formed by adding a part or parts to the tenor, differing from organum in that the parts moved not only in parallel motion but also in oblique and contrary motion. In descant, all the voices move at approximately the same speed.

Ayre

An old term (often used by composers in Elizabethan England) for air.

Recitative

In an opera, oratorio, cantata, or other multi-movement vocal compositions, a recitative is a narrative song that describes some action, thought, or emotion. The recitative follows the natural flow of the language, and is more a speaking composition than a singing composition. The two styles of recitative are the dry (secco) style and the accompanied (accompagnato) or measured recitative (recitative misurato or stromentato) style.

Italy

Italy was the site of several key musical developments in the development of the Christian liturgies in the West. Around 230, well before Christianity was legalized, the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus attested the singing of Psalms with refrains of Alleluia in Rome. The earliest extant music in the West is plainsong,[2] a kind of monophonic, unaccompanied, early Christian singing performed by Roman Catholic monks, which was largely developed roughly between the 7th and 12th centuries. Although Gregorian chant has its roots in Roman chant and is popularly associated with Rome, it is not indigenous to Italy, nor was it the earliest nor the only Western plainchant tradition. Ireland, Spain, and France each developed a local plainchant tradition, but only in Italy did several chant traditions thrive simultaneously: Ambrosian chant in Milan, Old Roman chant in Rome, and Beneventan chant in Benevento and Montecassino. Gregorian chant, which supplanted the indigenous Old Roman and Beneventan traditions, derived from a synthesis of Roman and Gallican chant in Carolingian France. Gregorian chant later came to be strongly identified with Rome, especially as musical elements from the north were added to the Roman Rite, such as the Credo in 1014. Crucial in the transmission of chant were the innovations of Guido d'Arezzo, whose Micrologus, written around 1020, described the musical staff, solmization, and the Guidonian hand (image, right). This early form of do-re-mi created a technical revolution in the speed at which chants could be learned, memorized, and recorded. Much of the European classical musical tradition, including opera and symphonic and chamber music can be traced back to these Italian medieval developments in musical notation,[4] formal music education and construction techniques for musical instruments. Trecento music (Italian ars nova) Renaissance Era: The 16th century saw the advent of printed polyphonic music and advances in instrumental music, which contributed to the international distribution of music characteristic of the Renaissance. In 1501, Ottaviano dei Petrucci published the Harmonice Musices Odhecaton, the first substantial collection of printed polyphonic music, and in 1516, Andrea Antico published the Frottole intablate da sonari organi, the earliest printed Italian music for keyboard. Italy became the primary center of harpsichord construction, violin production started in Cremona in the workshop of Andrea Amati, and lutenist Francesco Canova da Milano earned Italy an international reputation for virtuosic musicianship. Baroque Era: The exact nature of ancient Greek musical drama is a matter of dispute. What is important, however, for the later development of Italian and European music is that poets and musicians of the Florentine Camerata in the late 16th century thought—in the words of one of them, Jacopo Peri—that the "ancient Greeks sang entire tragedies on the stage".[11] Thus was born the musical version of the Italian Renaissance: paying tribute to classical Greece by retelling Greek myths within a staged musical context—the first operas. The works emerged in this period with relatively simple melodies and the texts about Greek mythology sung in Italian. (Opera may have deeper roots in the Tuscan maggio drammatico tradition[12][13]). Three cities are especially important in this period in Italy: Venice, as the birthplace of commercial opera; Rome, for Palestrina's school of Renaissance polyphony; and Naples, as the birthplace of church-sponsored music conservatories. These conservatories evolved into training grounds, providing composers and musicians for Italy and, indeed, Europe as a whole. Claudio Monteverdi is considered the first great composer of the new musical form, opera, the person who turned Florentine novelty into a "unified musical drama with a planned structure. 19th Century: The 19th century is the age of Romanticism in European literature, art, and music. Italian opera forsakes the Comic opera for the more serious fare of Italian lyric Romanticsm. Although the generally light-hearted and ever-popular Rossini was certainly an exception to that, Italian music of the 19th century is dominated at the beginning by the likes of Bellini and Donizetti, giving to Italian music the lyrical melodies that have remained associated with it ever since. Then, the last fifty years of the century were dominated by Giuseppe Verdi, the greatest musical icon in Italian history. Verdi's music "sought universality within national character";[16] that is, much of what he composed in terms of historical themes could be related to his pan-Italian vision. Verdi was the composer of the Italian Risorgimento, the movement to unify Italy in the 19th century. Later in the century is also the time of the early career of Giacomo Puccini, perhaps the greatest composer of pure melody in the history of Italian music. Perhaps the most noteworthy feature of Italian musical form in the 19th century, and that which distinguishes it from musical developments elsewhere, is that it remained primarily operatic.

electrophones

such as theremins, which produce sound by electronic means.

Partita

1. A 16th and 17th century variation. 2. During the 17th and 18th century, this term came to be used by Baroque composers to denote a suite. 3. In the 18th and 19th century the term refers to a multi-movement composition consisting of dances and non-dance movements or entirely of non-dance movements. It was originally the name for a single-instrumental piece of music (16th and 17th centuries), but Johann Kuhnau (Thomaskantor until 1722) and his successor Johann Sebastian Bach used it for collections of musical pieces, as a synonym for dance suite.

Antiphon

1. A Catholic liturgical chant with a prose text associated with psalmody sung by two choirs in alternation. It is usually a response or refrain to a psalm or canticle verses. 2. The response made by one part of the choir to another, or one by the congregation to the priest in a Catholic service; also, alternate singing.

Isorhythmic

A Medieval principal of construction which was used most often in motets. This construction is based on a repeating rhythmic pattern in one or more of the voices. Isorhythm (from the Greek for "the same rhythm") is a musical technique that arranges a fixed pattern of pitches with a repeating rhythmic pattern.

Ripieno

"Ripieno" (Italian pronunciation: [riˈpjɛːno], Italian for "stuffing" or "padding") refers to the bulk of instrumental parts of a musical ensemble who do not play as soloists, especially in Baroque music. These are the players who would play in sections marked tutti, as opposed to soloist sections. It is most commonly used in reference to instrumental music, although it can also be used in choral music. An individual member of the ripieno is called a ripienista. In the concerto grosso, the term is used to designate the larger of the two ensembles, and opposed to the concertino which are the soloists.[1] In a ripieno concerto, there is no dominant soloist, and thus resembles an early symphony. It can also refer to the main body of orchestra in early orchestral music, although this use is today often disregarded.

Prelude

1. An instrumental composition intended to introduce a larger composition or a set of compositions. 2. A short composition for piano. 3. A composition which establishes the key for a composition that immediately follows. A chorale prelude is a short liturgical composition for organ using a chorale tune as its basis. It was a predominant style of the German Baroque era and reached its culmination in the works of J.S. Bach, who wrote 46 (with a 47th unfinished) examples of the form in his Orgelbüchlein.[1] Most of the chorale prelude form is a theme and variation with a "long A" where the voices retrograde, invert, imitate while following the original basso continuo.

Trio Sonata

A Baroque chamber sonata type written in three voices: two separate melody lines and the basso continuo part requiring four musicians to perform. The trio sonata is a musical form that was popular in the 17th and early 18th centuries. A trio sonata is written for two solo melodic instruments and basso continuo, making three parts in all, hence the name trio sonata. However, because the basso continuo is usually made up of at least two instruments (typically a cello or bass viol and a keyboard instrument such as the harpsichord), performances of trio sonatas typically involve at least four musicians, and some 18th-century published editions have duplicate partbooks for the bass

Concerto Grosso

A Baroque style of music in which a small group of solo instruments (the concertino) plays in opposition to a larger ensemble (the ripieno). is a form of baroque music in which the musical material is passed between a small group of soloists (the concertino) and full orchestra (the ripieno or concerto grosso). This is in contrast to the solo concerto which features a single solo instrument with the melody line, accompanied by the orchestra. The form developed in the late seventeenth century, although the name was not used at first. Alessandro Stradella seems to have written the first music in which two groups of different sizes are combined in the characteristic way. The name was first used by Giovanni Lorenzo Gregori in a set of 10 compositions published in Lucca in 1698.[1]

Sonata Da Camera

A Baroque style of sonata, called a "chamber sonata" (sonata da camera) to distinguish it from the "church sonata" (sonata da cheese). The sonata da camera usually consisted of a suite of stylized dances, performed either by a small ensemble or by a soloist. Sonata da camera is literally translated to mean 'chamber sonata' and is used to describe a group of instrumental pieces set into three or four different movements, beginning with a prelude, or small sonata, acting as an introduction for the following movements. The term sonata da camera originated from Rome in the late 17th century from when Arcangelo Corelli wrote two different variations of sonata. These became known as "sonata da camera" and "sonata da chiesa" respectively.

Cantata

A cantata [kanˈtaːta] (literally "sung", past participle feminine singular of the Italian verb cantare, "to sing") is a vocal composition with an instrumental accompaniment, typically in several movements, often involving a choir. The term originated in the early 17th century simultaneously with opera and oratorio. Prior to that all "cultured" music was vocal. With the rise of instrumental music the term appeared, while the instrumental art became sufficiently developed to be embodied in sonatas. From the beginning of the 17th century until late in the 18th, the cantata for one or two solo voices with accompaniment of basso continuo (and perhaps a few solo instruments) was a principal form of Italian vocal chamber music.[2] Baroque: Cantatas were in great demand for the services of the Lutheran church. Many secular cantatas were composed for events in the nobility. Classical & Romantic: The term cantata came to be applied almost exclusively to choral works, as distinguished from solo vocal music. In early 19th-century cantatas the chorus is the vehicle for music more lyric and songlike than in oratorio, not excluding the possibility of a brilliant climax in a fugue as in Ludwig van Beethoven's Glorreiche Augenblick, 20th Century: Cantatas, both of the chamber variety and on a grand scale, were composed after 1900 as well.[4] In the early part of the century, secular cantatas once again became prominent, while the 19th-century tradition of sacred cantatas also continued.

Anthem

A choral setting of an English religious text similar to a motet, usually used in church with or without organ accompaniment. Anthems were originally a form of liturgical music. In the Church of England, the rubric appoints them to follow the third collect at morning and evening prayer. Several anthems are included in the British coronation service.[1] The words are selected from Holy Scripture or in some cases from the Liturgy and the music is generally more elaborate and varied than that of psalm or hymn tunes.[1] Being written for a trained choir rather than the congregation, the Anglican anthem is analogous to the motet of the Roman Catholic and Lutheran Churches but represents an essentially English musical form.[2] Anthems may be described as "verse", "full", or "full with verse", depending on whether they are intended for soloists, the full choir, or both.[1] The anthem developed as a replacement for the Catholic "votive antiphon" commonly sung as an appendix to the main office to the Blessed Virgin Mary or other saints. During the Elizabethan period, notable anthems were composed by Thomas Tallis, William Byrd, Tye, and Farrant[1] but they were not mentioned in the Book of Common Prayer until 1662 when the famous rubric "In quires and places where they sing here followeth the Anthem" first appears. Early anthems tended to be simple and homophonic in texture, so that the words could be clearly heard. During the 17th century, notable anthems were composed by Orlando Gibbons, Henry Purcell, and John Blow,[1] with the verse anthem becoming the dominant musical form of the Restoration.

Concertino

A concertino, literally "little ensemble",[2] is the group of soloists in a concerto grosso.[3] This is opposed to the ripieno and tutti which is the larger group contrasting with the concertino. Though the concertino is the smaller of the two groups, its material is generally more virtuosic than that of the ripieno. Further, the concertino does not share thematic material with the ripieno, but presents unique ideas. This contrast of small group to large group and one thematic group against another is very characteristic of Baroque ideology — similar to terraced dynamics where the idea is significant contrast.

Passacaglia

A continuous variation form of composition. The basis for the form is a four bar ostinato over which variations are written in the other voices. It is similar to the chaconne and is moderately slow in triple meter. The chaconne has been understood by some nineteenth and early twentieth-century theorists—in a rather arbitrary way—to be a set of variations on a harmonic progression, as opposed to a set of variations on a melodic bass pattern (to which is likewise artificially assigned the term passacaglia),[8] while other theorists of the same period make the distinction the other way around.[9] In actual usage in music history, the term "chaconne" has not been so clearly distinguished from passacaglia as regards the way the given piece of music is constructed, and "modern attempts to arrive at a clear distinction are arbitrary and historically unfounded."[10] In fact, the two genres were sometimes combined in a single composition, as in the "Cento partite sopra passacagli," from Toccate d'intavolatura di cimbalo et organo, partite di diverse arie . . . (1637), by Girolamo Frescobaldi, and the first suite of Les Nations (1726) as well as in the Pièces de Violes (1728) by François Couperin.[11] Frescobaldi, who was probably the first composer to treat the chaconne and passacaglia comparatively, usually (but not always) sets the former in major key, with two compound triple-beat groups per variation, giving his chaconne a more propulsive forward motion than his passacaglia, which usually has four simple triple-beat groups per variation.[12] Both are usually in triple meter, begin on the second beat of the bar, and have a theme of four measures (or a close multiple thereof). (In more recent times the chaconne, like the passacaglia, need not be in 3/4 time; see, for instance, Francesco Tristano Schlimé's Chaconne/Ground Bass, where every section is built on seven-beats patterns) A chaconne's bass line—let alone the chords involved—may not always be present in exactly the same manner, although the general outlines remain understood. (Handel's "Chaconne" in G minor for keyboard[13] has only the faintest relationship to the understood form.[

Variation

A deviation from a theme that uses the same bass pattern or harmonic progression that the theme used, and usually having the same number of measures as the theme. Generally, a variation is played after a theme with the variation being slightly more ornate; in several cases there are many variations upon a single theme. Variations are often used as accompaniments to songs that are several verses long, or as dance music. In both cases, the repeating structure is beneficial to the nature of the function.

Opera

A drama set to music, usually sung throughout, originating in 17th century Italy. Opera is a combination of music, drama, scenery, costumes, dance, etc., to create a complete art form. In traditional opera, singers do two types of singing: recitative, a speech-inflected style[2] and arias, a more melodic style. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance. The performance is typically given in an opera house, accompanied by an orchestra or smaller musical ensemble, which since the early 19th century has been led by a conductor. It started in Italy at the end of the 16th century (with Jacopo Peri's lost Dafne, produced in Florence in 1598) and soon spread through the rest of Europe: Schütz in Germany, Lully in France, and Purcell in England all helped to establish their national traditions in the 17th century. In the 18th century, Italian opera continued to dominate most of Europe (except France), attracting foreign composers such as Handel. Opera seria was the most prestigious form of Italian opera, until Gluck reacted against its artificiality with his "reform" operas in the 1760s. In the 2000s, the most renowned figure of late 18th-century opera is Mozart, who began with opera seria but is most famous for his Italian comic operas, especially The Marriage of Figaro (Le Nozze Di Figaro), Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte, as well as The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte), a landmark in the German tradition. The mid-to-late 19th century was a "golden age" of opera, led and dominated by Wagner in Germany and Verdi in Italy. The popularity of opera continued through the verismo era in Italy and contemporary French opera through to Puccini and Strauss in the early 20th century. During the 19th century, parallel operatic traditions emerged in central and eastern Europe, particularly in Russia and Bohemia. The 20th century saw many experiments with modern styles, such as atonality and serialism (Schoenberg and Berg), Neoclassicism (Stravinsky), and Minimalism (Philip Glass and John Adams).

Toccata

A fantasia-like composition for a keyboard instrument that displayed virtuosity in the art of "touching" the keyboard. In the Baroque era the toccata often served as an introduction to a fugue. It's s a virtuoso piece of music typically for a keyboard or plucked string instrument featuring fast-moving, lightly fingered or otherwise virtuosic passages or sections, with or without imitative or fugal interludes, generally emphasizing the dexterity of the performer's fingers. Less frequently, the name is applied to works for multiple instruments. The form first appeared in the late Renaissance period. It originated in northern Italy. Beyond the Baroque period, toccatas are found less frequently.

Fugue

A form of composition popular in, but not restricted to, the Baroque era, in which a theme or subject is introduced by one voice, and is imitated by other voices in succession. Usually only the first few notes of the subject are imitated exactly, then each voice deviates slightly until the next time it enters again with the subject. Generally the voices overlap and weave in and out of each other forming a continuous, tapestry-like texture.

Canzona

A graceful and somewhat elaborate air in two or three strains or divisions. This term can also be taken to mean an air in two or three parts with passages of fugue and imitation, something like a madrigal. The canzona (It. plural canzone) is an instrumental musical form of the 16th and 17th centuries that developed from the Netherlandish chanson (Caldwell 2001). It differed from the similar forms of ricercare and fantasia in its livelier, markedly rhythmic material and separation into distinct sections (Grout 1960, 299). At first based on Franco-Flemish polyphonic songs (chansons), later independently composed, the instrumental canzonas, such as the brass canzonas of Giovanni Gabrieli and the keyboard canzonas of Girolamo Frescobaldi, influenced the fugue,[citation needed] and the ensemble canzonas were the direct ancestors of the 17th-century sonata da chiesa (Grout 1960, 252). In Italian, canzona literally means "song".

Quodlibet

A humorous composition that contains short passages of popular melodies and texts presented concurrently or consecutively. The term was first used in 1544 in Germany. It is Latin for "whatever you wish" from quod, "what" and libet, "pleases") is a musical composition that combines several different melodies—usually popular tunes—in counterpoint, and often in a light-hearted, humorous manner. There are three main types of quodlibet: A catalogue quodlibet consists of a free setting of catalogue poetry (usually humorous lists of loosely related items). In a successive quodlibet, one voice has short musical quotations and textual quotations while the other voices provide homophonic accompaniment. In a simultaneous quodlibet, two or more pre-existing melodies are combined.[1] The simultaneous quodlibet may be considered a historical antecedent to the modern-day musical mashup.

Chorale

A hymn of the Lutheran church, usually written for four voice harmony. Many chorales were written by J. S. Bach, which serve as a basis for the rules of part writing. The melody is usually in the top voice, with supporting harmony in the lower voices. A chorale is a melody to which a hymn is sung by a congregation in a German Protestant Church service. The typical four-part setting of a chorale, in which the sopranos (and the congregation) sing the melody along with three lower voices, is known as a chorale harmonization. Starting in 1523, Martin Luther began translating worship texts into German from the Latin (Marshall and Leaver 2001). This created an immediate need for a large repertoire of new chorales. He composed some chorales himself, such as A Mighty Fortress. For other chorales he adapted Gregorian chant melodies used in Roman Catholic worship to fit new German texts, sometimes using the same melody more than once.

Virginal Music

A keyboard instrument popular in the Renaissance in England that is related to the harpsichord. A virginal has one set of strings and jacks, and one keyboard; it is distinguishable from a spinet in that the strings run parallel to the keyboard rather than at an angle. The virginal enjoyed popularity in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, when several books were written containing music for it, among them the famous Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book is a primary source of keyboard music from the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean periods in England, i.e., the late Renaissance and very early Baroque. It takes its name from Viscount Fitzwilliam who bequeathed this manuscript collection to Cambridge University in 1816. It is now deposited in the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge. Although the word virginals or virginal (the plural form does not necessarily denote more than one instrument) is used today to refer to a specific instrument similar to a small, portable harpsichord, at the time of the book the word was used to denote virtually any keyboard instrument including the organ.

Psalter

A psalter is a volume containing the Book of Psalms, often with other devotional material bound in as well, such as a liturgical calendar and litany of the Saints. Until the later medieval emergence of the book of hours, psalters were the books most widely owned by wealthy lay persons and were commonly used for learning to read. Many Psalters were richly illuminated and they include some of the most spectacular surviving examples of medieval book art.

Frottola

A secular song that was popular in Italy in the late 15th and early 16th centuries and direct predecessor of the madrigal. The term frottola (plural frottole) can be considered a generic term with several distinct versions. The most typical frottola is a composition for three or four voices with the highest voice containing the melody. The number of voices increased at the end of its popularity and could be performed by unaccompanied voices or by a solo voice with instrumental accompaniment. The text comes from poetry with the poetic forms possibly coming from the 14th century ballata. Although there is a wide range of variations of the frottola, a typical rhyme scheme was abba for the refrain and cdcdda or cdcddeea for the stanza. Some of the versions of frottola included villanella, villotta, strambotto and barzelletta.

Suite

A set of dances, generally referred to as simply a "suite". The suite de danses originated in the early part of the 17th century, and was firmly established by the Baroque era. The Baroque suite contains an optional prelude, followed by the allemande, the courante, the sarabande, the intermezzi, and the gigue. The intermezzi consisted of two to four dances, containing a minuet, a gavotte, or other styles of dances, depending upon the pleasure of the composer.

Service

A term used in connection with a Christian liturgical gathering, containing fixed prayers, songs, hymns, and responses. Also, an Anglican Church term that denotes music for the unchanging morning and evening prayers and for communion.

Madrigalism

A term used to describe the illustrative devices used particularly in madrigals. This includes text painting, for example: changing the texture, tone, range, or volume to musically depict what the text is describing.

Doctrine of the affections

A theory that arose during the Baroque period that prescribed certain musical methods and figures for summoning or portraying individual emotions. For example, happiness would be aroused through the use of faster notes. and major sonorities, sadness through minor keys and slower movement, anger through loudness and harsh discordant harmonies.

Chaconne

An ostinato or ground bass variation form of Baroque music in 3/4 time similar to the passacaglia. A chaconne is a set of variations composed upon a continually repeated chord progression. The chaconne has been understood by some nineteenth and early twentieth-century theorists—in a rather arbitrary way—to be a set of variations on a harmonic progression, as opposed to a set of variations on a melodic bass pattern (to which is likewise artificially assigned the term passacaglia),[8] while other theorists of the same period make the distinction the other way around.[9] In actual usage in music history, the term "chaconne" has not been so clearly distinguished from passacaglia as regards the way the given piece of music is constructed, and "modern attempts to arrive at a clear distinction are arbitrary and historically unfounded."[10] In fact, the two genres were sometimes combined in a single composition, as in the "Cento partite sopra passacagli," from Toccate d'intavolatura di cimbalo et organo, partite di diverse arie . . . (1637), by Girolamo Frescobaldi, and the first suite of Les Nations (1726) as well as in the Pièces de Violes (1728) by François Couperin.[11] Frescobaldi, who was probably the first composer to treat the chaconne and passacaglia comparatively, usually (but not always) sets the former in major key, with two compound triple-beat groups per variation, giving his chaconne a more propulsive forward motion than his passacaglia, which usually has four simple triple-beat groups per variation.[12] Both are usually in triple meter, begin on the second beat of the bar, and have a theme of four measures (or a close multiple thereof). (In more recent times the chaconne, like the passacaglia, need not be in 3/4 time; see, for instance, Francesco Tristano Schlimé's Chaconne/Ground Bass, where every section is built on seven-beats patterns) A chaconne's bass line—let alone the chords involved—may not always be present in exactly the same manner, although the general outlines remain understood. (Handel's "Chaconne" in G minor for keyboard[13] has only the faintest relationship to the understood form.

Chorale Variations

Baroque organ composition in which a chorale is the basis for a set of variations.

Bel Canto

Bel canto (Italian for "beautiful singing" or "beautiful song", pronounced [bɛl ˈkanto]), along with a number of similar constructions ("bellezze del canto"/"bell'arte del canto"), is a term relating to Italian singing. It has several different meanings and is subject to a wide variety of interpretations.[1] The words were not associated with a "school" of singing until the middle of the 19th century, when writers in the early 1860s used it nostalgically to describe a manner of singing that had begun to wane around 1830.[2] Nonetheless, "neither musical nor general dictionaries saw fit to attempt [a] definition [of bel canto] until after 1900". The term remains vague and ambiguous in the 21st century and is often used to evoke a lost singing tradition.[

Chorale Fantasia

Chorale fantasia is a type of large composition based on a chorale melody, both works for organ, and vocal settings, for example the opening movements of Bach's chorale cantatas, with the chorale melody as a cantus firmus. Chorale fantasias first appeared in the 17th century in the works of North German composers such as Heinrich Scheidemann and Franz Tunder (who, however, rarely used the term).

Concertato

Concertato is a term in early Baroque music referring to either a genre or a style of music in which groups of instruments or voices share a melody, usually in alternation, and almost always over a basso continuo. The term derives from Italian concerto which means "playing together" —hence concertato means "in the style of a concerto." In contemporary usage, the term is almost always used as an adjective, for example "three pieces from the set are in concertato style." A somewhat oversimplified, but useful distinction between concertato and concerto can be made: the concertato style involves contrast between opposing groups of voices and groups of instruments: the concerto style, especially as it developed into the concerto grosso later in the Baroque, involves contrast between large and small groups of similar composition (later called "ripieno" and "concertino").

England

Early Music: Music in the British Isles, from the earliest recorded times until the Baroque and the rise of recognisably modern classical music, was a diverse and rich culture, including sacred and secular music and ranging from the popular to the elite.[1] Each of the major nations of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales retained unique forms of music and of instrumentation, but British music was highly influenced by continental developments, while British composers made an important contribution to many of the major movements in early music in Europe, including the polyphony of the Ars Nova and laid some of the foundations of later national and international classical music.[2] Musicians from the British Isles also developed some distinctive forms of music, including Celtic chant, the Contenance Angloise, the rota, polyphonic votive antiphons and the carol in the medieval era. Church music and religious music was profoundly affected by the Protestant Reformation which affected Britain from the 16th century, which curtailed events associated with British music and forced the development of distinctive national music, worship and belief. English madrigals, lute ayres and masques in the Renaissance era led particularly to English language opera developed in the early Baroque period of the later seventeenth century.[3] In contrast, court music of the kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland, although having unique elements remained much more integrated into wider European culture. Baroque Music: The Baroque era in music, between the early music of the Medieval and Renaissance periods and the development of fully fledged and formalised orchestral classical music in the second half of the eighteenth century, was characterised by more elaborate musical ornamentation, changes in musical notation, new instrumental playing techniques and the rise of new genres such as opera. Although the term Baroque is conventionally used for European music from about 1600, its full effects were not felt in Britain until after 1660, delayed by native trends and developments in music, religious and cultural differences from many European countries and the disruption to court music caused by the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and Interregnum.[4] Under the restored Stuart monarchy the court became once again a centre of musical patronage, but royal interest in music tended to be less significant as the seventeenth century progressed, to be revived again under the House of Hanover.[5] British chamber and orchestral music drew inspiration from continental Europe as it developed into modern classical music. The Baroque era in British music can be seen as one of an interaction of national and international trends, sometimes absorbing continental fashions and practices and sometimes attempting, as in the creation of ballad opera, to produce an indigenous tradition.[6] However, arguably the most significant British composer of the era, George Frideric Handel, was a naturalised German, who helped integrate British and continental music and define the future of the classical music of the United Kingdom that would be officially formed in 1801. Classical Music: Musical composition, performance and training in the United Kingdom inherited the European classical traditions of the eighteenth century (above all, in Britain, from the example of Handel) and saw a great expansion during the nineteenth century.[8] Romantic nationalism encouraged clear national identities and sensibilities within the countries of the United Kingdom towards the end of the nineteenth century, producing many composers and musicians of note and drawing on the folk tradition.[9] These traditions, including the cultural strands drawn from the United Kingdom's constituent nations and provinces, have continued to evolve in distinctive ways through the work of such composers as Arthur Sullivan, Gustav Holst, Edward Elgar, Hubert Parry, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Benjamin Britten.

Through-bass

Figured bass, or thoroughbass, is a kind of musical notation in which numerals and symbols (often accidentals) indicate intervals, chords, and non-chord tones that a musician playing harpsichord, organ, lute (or other instruments capable of playing chords) play in relation to the bass note that these numbers and symbols appear above or below. Figured bass is closely associated with basso continuo, a historically improvised accompaniment used in almost all genres of music in the Baroque period of Classical music (ca. 1600-1750), though rarely in modern music. Basso continuo parts, almost universal in the Baroque era (1600-1750), provided the harmonic structure of the music. The phrase is often shortened to continuo, and the instrumentalists playing the continuo part, if more than one, are called the continuo group.

Venetian School

In music history, the Venetian School was the body and work of composers working in Venice from about 1550 to around 1610. The Venetian polychoral compositions of the late sixteenth century were among the most famous musical events in Europe, and their influence on musical practice in other countries was enormous. The innovations introduced by the Venetian school, along with the contemporary development of monody and opera in Florence, together define the end of the musical Renaissance and the beginning of the musical Baroque. Several major factors came together to create the Venetian School. The first was political: after the death of Pope Leo X in 1521 and the sack of Rome in 1527, the long dominant musical establishment in Rome was eclipsed: many musicians either moved elsewhere or chose not to go to Rome, and Venice was one of several places to have an environment conducive to creativity.[1] Another factor, possibly the most important, was the existence of the splendid Basilica San Marco di Venezia (commonly known as St. Mark's), with its unique interior with opposing choir lofts. Because of the spacious architecture of this basilica, it was necessary to develop a musical style which exploited the sound-delay to advantage, rather than fought against it: thus the Venetian polychoral style was developed, the grand antiphonal style in which groups of singers and instruments played sometimes in opposition, and sometimes together, united by the sound of the organ. The first composer to make this effect famous was Adrian Willaert, who became maestro di cappella of St. Mark's in 1527, and remained in the position until his death in 1562. Gioseffo Zarlino, one of the most influential writers on music of the age, called Willaert "the new Pythagoras," and Willaert's influence was profound, not only as a composer but as a teacher, since most of the Venetians who followed studied with him.

Chorale Cantata

In music, a chorale cantata is a sacred composition for voices and instruments, principally from the German Baroque era, in which the organizing principle is the words and music of a Lutheran hymn. Usually a chorale cantata is in multiple movements or parts. Most chorale cantatas were written between approximately 1650 and 1750. By far the most famous are by Johann Sebastian Bach, especially the cantatas composed in his second annual cycle of cantatas, started in Leipzig in 1724.

Chorale Prelude

In music, a chorale prelude is a short liturgical composition for organ using a chorale tune as its basis. It was a predominant style of the German Baroque era and reached its culmination in the works of J.S. Bach, who wrote 46 (with a 47th unfinished) examples of the form in his Orgelbüchlein. The liturgical function of a chorale prelude in the Baroque period is debated. One possibility is that they were used to introduce the hymn about to be sung by the congregation, usually in a Protestant, and originally in a Lutheran, church. Style: Although it was typically a polyphonic setting, the chorale would be plainly audible. There was sometimes an obbligato line above or below the melody. As an independent genre, the chorale prelude began with the works of Dieterich Buxtehude, 48 of which are listed as extant in New Grove II. Numerous examples also exist from the 19th and 20th centuries, including some by Johannes Brahms and Max Reger. Works in the form continue to be composed in the present day. Form: Most of the chorale prelude form is a theme and variation with a "long A" where the voices retrograde, invert, imitate while following the original basso continuo.

Oratorio

Large scale dramatic composition originating in the 17th century with text ususally based on religious subjects. Oratorios are performed by choruses and solo voices with an instrumental accompaniment, and are similar to operas but without costumes, scenery and actions.

Arioso

Melodious, graceful; a short composition in the style of an aria but less symmetrical in its construction. In classical music, arioso [aˈrjoːzo] (also aria parlante[1] [ˈaːrja parˈlante]) is a type of solo vocal piece, usually occurring in an opera or oratorio, falling somewhere between recitative and aria in style. Literally, arioso means airy. The term arose in the 16th century along with the aforementioned styles and monody. It is commonly confused with recitativo accompagnato. Though originally a vocal form, the term arioso was extended to instrumental compositions of the same melodic character, the same way the terms aria and recitative were used in the case of the instrumental aria and instrumental recitative.

France

Middle Ages: French music history dates back to organum in the 10th century, followed by the Notre Dame School, an organum composition style. Troubadour songs of chivalry and courtly love were composed in the Occitan language between the 10th and 13th centuries, and the Trouvère poet-composers flourished in Northern France during this period. By the end of the 12th century, a form of song called the motet arose, accompanied by traveling musicians called jongleurs. In the 14th century, France produced two notable styles of music, Ars Nova and Ars Subtilior. Renaissance: Burgundy, the mostly French-speaking area unified with the Kingdom of France in 1477, became a major center for musical development in Europe. This was followed by the rise of chansons and the Burgundian School. Baroque: Influential composers included Louis Couperin, François Couperin and Jacques Champion de Chambonnières. Jean Philippe Rameau, a prominent opera composer, wrote an influential treatise on musical theory, especially in the subject of harmony; he also introduced the clarinet into his orchestras. In the late Renaissance and early Baroque period, a type of popular secular vocal music called Air de cour spread throughout France. Opera: The first French opera may be Akébar roi du Mogol, first performed in Carpentras in 1646. It was followed by the team of Pierre Perrin and Cambert, whose Pastoral in Music, performed in Issy, was a success, and the pair moved to Paris to produce Pomone (1671) and Les Peines et les Plaisirs de l'Amour (1672). Jean-Baptiste Lully, who had become well known for composing ballets for Louis XIV, began creating a French version of the Italian opera seria, a kind of tragic opera known as tragédie lyrique or tragédie en musique - see (French lyric tragedy). His first was Cadmus from 1673. Lully's forays into operatic tragedy were accompanied by the pinnacle of French theatrical tragedy, led by Corneille and Racine. Lully also developed the common beat patterns used by conductors to this day, and was the first to take the role of leading the orchestra from the position of the first violin. The French composer, Georges Bizet, composed Carmen, one of the most well known and popular operas. Classical Era: Claude Balbastre was an organist, harpsichordist and fortepianist. He was one of the most famous musicians of his time. Henri-Montan Berton, son of Pierre, is principally remembered as a composer of operas, most of which were first performed at the Opéra-Comique. Chélard earned his living for much of his career as a violist at the Paris Opera. His 1827 opera Macbeth was a flop in Paris, but a great success in Munich. Jeanne-Hippolyte Devismes married the director of the Paris Opéra. Her only known works are a song, "La Dame Jacinthe", and an opera, Praxitėle, which was a success and ran for 16 performances. Harpsichordist and composer Jacques Duphly contributed to Jean-Jacques Rousseau dictionary, for articles relating to the art of playing the harpsichord. Romantic Era: One of the major French composers of the time, and one of the most innovative composers of the early Romantic era, was Hector Berlioz. In the late 19th century, pioneers such as Georges Bizet, Jules Massenet, Gabriel Fauré, Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy revitalized French music. The last two had an enormous impact on 20th-century music - both in France and abroad - and influenced many major composers such as Béla Bartók and Igor Stravinsky. Erik Satie was also a very significant composer from that era. His music is difficult to classify. 20th Century: The early 20th century saw neo-classical music flourish in France, especially composers such as Albert Roussel and Les Six, a group of musicians who gathered around Satie. Later in the century, Olivier Messiaen, Henri Dutilleux and Pierre Boulez proved influential. The latter was a leading figure of Serialism while Messiaen incorporated Asian (particularly Indian) influences and bird song and Dutilleux translated the innovations of Debussy, Bartók and Stravinsky into his own, very personal, musical idiom. The most important French contribution to musical innovation of the past 35 years is a form of computer-assisted composition called "spectral music". The astonishing technical advances of the spectralist composers in the 1970s are only recently beginning to achieve wide recognition in the United States; major composers in this vein include Gérard Grisey, Tristan Murail, and Claude Vivier. Since 1998, musical works patented by René-Louis Baron made a significant step in the two domains of algorithmic music and artificial intelligence.

Vers Mesure (Musique Mesuree)

Musique mesurée à l'antique (French: [myzik məzyʁe a lɑ̃tik]) was a style of vocal musical composition in France in the late 16th century. In musique mesurée, longer syllables in the French language were set to longer note values, and shorter syllables to shorter, in a homophonic texture but in a situation of metric fluidity, in an attempt to imitate contemporary understanding of Ancient Greek music. Although this compositional method did not attain popularity at first, it attracted some of the most famous composers of the time. Its basis in a desire to re-create the artistic ethos of Ancient Greece, especially in respect to text declamation, had a strong similarity to contemporary movements in Italy, such as the work of the Florentine Camerata which engendered the first operas, and brought about the beginning of the Baroque era in music.

Aria

Originally an air; a song; a tune; sung by a single voice with or without accompaniment. Now taken to mean a lyric song for solo voice generally having two contrasting parts (I and II), ending with a literal or elaborated repeat of part I. The aria first developed into this form in the early operas; the arias found in an opera, cantata or oratorio usually express intense emotion.

Ricercare

Term used in the Renaissance originally meaning a keyboard or lute composition of an introductory nature, similar to a prelude, but later meaning a free composition more resembling a fantasia or a fugue. Both forms of the ricercare were characterized by complexity and an esoteric nature. A ricercar (Italian pronunciation: [ritʃɛr'kare], also spelled ricercare, recercar, recercare) is a type of late Renaissance and mostly early Baroque instrumental composition. The term means to search out, and many ricercars serve a preludial function to "search out" the key or mode of a following piece. A ricercar may explore the permutations of a given motif, and in that regard may follow the piece used as illustration. For example, "Ricercar sopra Benedictus" might develop motifs from a motet titled "Benedictus". The term is also used to designate an etude or study that explores a technical device in playing an instrument, or singing. In its most common contemporary usage, it refers to an early kind of fugue, particularly one of a serious character in which the subject uses long note values. However the term has a considerably more varied historical usage.

Florentine Camerata

The Florentine Camerata, also known as the Camerata de' Bardi, was a group of humanists, musicians, poets and intellectuals in late Renaissance Florence who gathered under the patronage of Count Giovanni de' Bardi to discuss and guide trends in the arts, especially music and drama.[1][2] They met at the house of Giovanni de' Bardi, and their gatherings had the reputation of having all the most famous men of Florence as frequent guests.[3] After first meeting in 1573, the activity of the Camerata reached its height between 1577 and 1582.[4] While propounding a revival of the Greek dramatic style, the Camerata's musical experiments led to the development of the stile recitativo. In this way it facilitated the composition of dramatic music and the development of opera.

Concerto

This term was originally applied to almost any kind of concerted music for voices and instruments of the Baroque era. Today it is taken to mean a composition that shows off a specific instrument (or instruments) with the orchestra used as accompaniment. The term concerto is the same in English, French and Italian. It is a musical composition, whose characteristics have changed over time. In the 17th century, "sacred works for voices and orchestra were typically called concertos."[1] J. S. Bach "was thus reflecting a long-standing tradition when he used the title `concerto' for many of the works that we know as cantatas.".[1] But in recent centuries, up to the present, a concerto is a piece usually composed in three parts or movements, in which (usually) one solo instrument (for instance, a piano, violin, cello or flute) is accompanied by an orchestra or concert band.

Parody Mass

A parody mass is a musical setting of the mass, typically from the 16th century, that uses multiple voices of another pre-existing piece of music, such as a fragment of a motet or a secular chanson, as part of its melodic material. It is distinguished from the two other most prominent types of mass composition during the Renaissance, the cantus firmus and the paraphrase mass. "Parody" often has nothing to do with humor, as in the modern sense of the word; while in some cases bawdy secular songs were indeed used in composition of masses, equally often non-liturgical sacred music such as motets formed the basis for parody masses. Instead of calling it a "parody mass", the term "imitation mass" has been suggested as being both more precise and closer to the original usage, since the term "parody" is based on a misreading of a late 16th-century text.

Homophony

A style of composition in which there is one melody, and all the voices and accompaniments move rhythmically together. This is opposed to polyphony, in which each voice may move independently. Homophony is not to be confused with monophony, in which all the voices and accompanying instruments are performing exactly the same notes, in homophony there is a distinct melody with accompanying harmony, but all move in the same rhythmic pattern.

Modern era

20th century 1900s

Contemporary

21st century 2000s

Ballade (Fr.)

A French poetic style and chanson type of the Middle Ages and Renaissance usually having a text dealing with courtly love. The term is also applied to a Romantic genre, especially a lyric piano composition. It is a form of medieval and Renaissance French poetry as well as the corresponding musical chanson form. It was one of the three formes fixes (the other two were the rondeau and the virelai) and one of the verse forms in France most commonly set to music between the late 13th and the 15th centuries. The ballade as a verse form typically consists of three eight-line stanzas, each with a consistent metre and a particular rhyme scheme. The last line in the stanza is a refrain. The stanzas are often followed by a four-line concluding stanza (an envoi) usually addressed to a prince. The rhyme scheme is therefore usually 'ababbcbC ababbcbC ababbcbC bcbC', where the capital 'C' is a refrain. (It's a musical form)

Church Mode

A Gregorian mode (or church mode) is one of the eight systems of pitch organization used in Gregorian chant. mode I Dorian D, E, F, G, A, B, C, D - - finalis is D mode II Hypodorian A, B, C, D, E, F, G, A - - finalis is D mode III Phrygian (fridg'-ian) E, F, G, A, B, C, D, E - - finalis is E mode IV Hypophrygian B, C, D, E, F, G, A, B - - finalis is E mode V Lydian F, G, A, B, C, D, E, F - - finalis is F mode VI Hypolydian C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C - - finalis is F mode VII Mixolydian G, A, B, C, D, E, F, G - - finalis is G mode VIII Hypomixolydian D, E, F, G, A, B, C, D - - finalis is G In the 16th century, the eight-mode system of the Gregorian Chant was expanded to include four more modes - two beginning on A and two beginning on C. Notice that in their authentic form, these are like our major and minor scales! mode IX Aeolian A, B, C, D, E, F, G, A - - finalis is A mode X Hypoaeolian E, F, G, A, B, C, D, E - - finalis is A mode XI Ionian C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C - - finalis is C mode XII Hypoionian G, A, B, C, D, E, F, G - - finalis is C Did you catch that the medieval & middle ages musicians skipped the mode that begins on B? They just didn't like the way it sounded - the fifth above the finalis was a diminished fifth instead of a perfect fifth and that was illegal in their music! Later, modern composers added the 13th & 14th modes based on the B: mode XIII Locrian B, C, D, E, F, G, A, B - - finalis is B mode XIV Hypolocrian F, G, A, B, C, D, E, F - - finalis is B Modern composers often use the modes to create a particular feel to their music, but we don't have any octave restrictions on our music! So now when composers refer to the modes, it is usually only the authentic modes or: Ionian (major) C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C Dorian D, E, F, G, A, B, C, D Phrygian E, F, G, A, B, C, D, E Lydian F, G, A, B, C, D, E, F Mixolydian G, A, B, C, D, E, F, G Aeolian (minor) A, B, C, D, E, F, G, A Locrian B, D, C, E, F, G, A, B

Virelai

A Medieval and Renaissance form of French poetry and song, written in an ABBA form with a courtly text. The origin of the word "virelai" is the Old French word "Virer ", meaning "to turn" or "to twist", indicating that the song form originated from a dance form. It is one of the three formes fixes (the others were the ballade and the rondeau) and was one of the most common verse forms set to music in Europe from the late thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries

Trope

A musical addition to or a substitution for an item of plain chant. A trope may or may not have words, and is often an introduction to a chant.

Woodwind - Flutes

Piccolo Western concert flute Fife Alto flute Bass flute Contra-alto flute Contrabass flute Double contrabass flute Irish flute

Soprano instruments

Soprano instruments: flute, violin, soprano saxophone, trumpet, clarinet, oboe, piccolo

Tenor instruments

Tenor instruments: trombone, tenor saxophone, guitar, tenor drum (cello) (French Horn)

Tenor

Tenor is a type of classical male singing voice whose vocal range is one of the highest of the male voice types. It is also used to refer to singers of that voice type. The tenor's vocal range (in choral music) lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, and A4, the A above middle C. In solo work, this range extends up to C5, or "tenor high C". C3-A4 (choral) C3-C5 (Soloist)

Organum

Term referring to the earliest kind of polyphonic music. Organum developed from the practice of adding voices above a plain chant (cantus firmus); these added voices at first ran parallel to the plain chant at an interval of a fourth or fifth. Later they began to move about more freely. Organum was in use from about the 12th through the 13th centuries.

Ars Antiqua

Term used by 14th century composers to distinguish the French sacred polyphonic musical style of the 13th century (c. 1260 - 1320) from that of the ars nova (new art). The term 'antiqua' is now generally extended to include the earlier music of the Notre Dame period (that of Léonin and Pérotin), thus covering the musical styles from c. 1160 - 1320.

Guidonian Hand

The first system of learning music developed in the 11th century by Guido d'Arezzo. He assigned each note a name, Ut, Re, Mi, Fa, sol, and La (thus the origin of solfeggio), and designed the system of placing notes on horizontal lines to notate pitches (thus the origin of the staff). The Guidonian hand is another of his inventions, it is a system of assigning each part of the hand a certain note, thus, by pointing to a part of his hand, a group of singers would know which note was indicated and sing the corresponding note.

Carol

English Medieval strophic song with a refrain (called a burden) repeated after each stanza. Now, erroneously, any Christmas song is called a carol.

Ars Nova

French musical style of the 14th century. The term is generally used to distinguish the music from the time period of c.1316 to the death of composer Guillaume de Machaut (1377) from the earlier musical style of the Ars antiqua. During the ars nova period, musical themes were transformed increasingly from religious to secular. The term is sometimes used more generally to refer to all European polyphonic music of the 14th century. For instance, "Italian ars nova" is sometimes used to denote the music of Francesco Landini and his compatriots (although Trecento music is the more common term for music in Italy). The "ars" in "ars nova" can be read as "technique", or "style".

Chanson

French polyphonic song of the Middle Ages and Renaissance set to either courtly or popular poetry.

Aerophones

which produce a sound with a vibrating column of air; they are sorted into free aerophones such as a bullroarer or whip, which move freely through the air; flutes, which cause the air to pass over a sharp edge; reed instruments, which use a vibrating reed; and lip-vibrated aerophones such as trumpets, for which the lips themselves function as vibrating reeds.

Membranophones

which produce sound by a vibrating a stretched membrane; they may be drums (further sorted by the shape of the shell), which are struck by hand, with a stick, or rubbed, but kazoos and other instruments that use a stretched membrane for the primary sound (not simply to modify sound produced in another way) are also considered membranophones.

Chordophones

which produce sound by vibrating one or more strings; they are sorted into according to the relationship between the string(s) and the sounding board or chamber. For example, if the strings are laid out parallel to the sounding board and there is no neck, the instrument is a zither whether it is plucked like an autoharp or struck with hammers like a piano. If the instrument has strings parallel to the sounding board or chamber and the strings extend past the board with a neck, then the instrument is a lute, whether the sound chamber is constructed of wood like a guitar or uses a membrane like a banjo.

Idiophones (instruments)

which produce sound by vibrating the primary body of the instrument itself; they are sorted into concussion, percussion, shaken, scraped, split, and plucked idiophones, such as claves, xylophone, guiro, slit drum, mbira, and rattle.

Sequence

1. A style of chant used in the Medieval Church. It was usually syllabic, and the text, which was in Latin, was wide-ranging and extensive. 2. A progression of chords which ends in a cadence. 3. A restatement of an idea or motif at a different pitch level from the original.

Hocket

A Medieval practice of composition in which two voices would move in such a manner that one would be still while the other moved and vice-versa. Sometimes this was achieved by taking a single melody and breaking it into short, one or two note phrases, and dividing the phrases between the two voices so that a quick back-and-forth movement of the melody would be heard. In music, hocket is the rhythmic linear technique using the alternation of notes, pitches, or chords. In medieval practice of hocket, a single melody is shared between two (or occasionally more) voices such that alternately one voice sounds while the other rests.

Gymel

A Medieval technique of splitting one voice part into two parts, both with the same range. In most cases the voices would start and end together, but would diverge in the middle of the composition. 1430

Musica Ficta

A Medieval term describing all those notes in use at the time that are not to be found on the Guidonian hand. This term is also used to describe those notes that a modern performer would change by a semitone when playing Medieval music; these alterations are not written into the manuscript. It was a term used in European music theory from the late 12th century to about 1600 to describe pitches, whether notated or added at the time of performance, that lie outside the system of musica recta or musica vera ("correct" or "true" music) as defined by the hexachord system of Guido of Arezzo (Bent and Silbiger 2001).

Cantiga

A cantiga (cantica, cantar) is a medieval monophonic song, characteristic of the Galician-Portuguese lyric. Over 400 extant cantigas come from the Cantigas de Santa Maria, narrative songs about miracles or hymns in praise of the Holy Virgin. There are near 1700 secular cantigas but music has only survived for a very few: six cantigas de amigo by Martín Codax and seven cantigas de amor by Denis of Portugal. Cantiga is also the name of a poetic and musical form of the Renaissance, often associated with the villancico and the canción.

Conductus

A medieval song with monophonic or polyphonic texture and a Latin text that is rhymed and rhythmic. It is thought to have its origin in the south of France around the end of the 12th century. Used by the Notre Dame composers, it became well established from about 1160 to about 1240, but was replaced by the motet in the second half of the 13th century.

Caccia

A directive to perform the indicated passage in the style of hunting music.

Motet

A polyphonic vocal style of composition. The motet was popular in the middle ages, when it consisted of a tenor foundation upon which other melodies were added. The texts of these voices could be sacred or secular, Latin or French, and usually had little to do with each other, with the result that the composition lacked unity and direction. During the 14th century, isorhythm came into use and other rhythmic refinements, somewhat unifying the sound and texture of the motet. By the Renaissance, the separate voices of the motet had adopted the same text (by this time the texts were religious almost without exception) and each voice was considered a part of the whole rather than a whole in itself, thus finally giving the motet unity and grace.

Ambrosian Chant

A purely diatonic series of sacred melodies or chants collected and introduced into the Church by Saint Ambrose.

Office

A series of eight services of the Roman Catholic Church performed throughout the day. The divine offices consisted of Psalms, hymns, lessons, responsories, and prayers. The Antiphons are the largest category of Office chants. Most are moderately syllabic, with simple recitations used for the verses, sung in antiphony. The Alleluiatici are also antiphonal chants, whose text usually involves an alleluia, similar in style to regular antiphons. Unlike the Gregorian repertory, these are sung at Matins and Vespers even on penitential days, when "alleluia" is omitted from the liturgy. Matins features a musical form called the missa, which consists of an Alleluiaticus framed by two Antiphons and a Responsory. Later missae show common musical material thematically uniting the missa. The Responsories, which are primarily found at the end of a missa, are generally neumatic, consisting of melodic formulas that adjust to fit the lengths of different phrases, ending in a fixed cadence. Other Office chants include the morning-themed Matutinaria, the Benedictiones using texts from the Book of Daniel, the melismatic Soni, and the alleluiatic Laudes. The Psallendi, unrelated to the Psallendae of Ambrosian chant, end with the Doxology. The neumatic Vespertini, like the Lucernaria of Ambrosian chant, usually allude to the lighting of lamps or to nightfall. They show a high degree of centonization, construction from a vocabulary of stock musical phrases, and adaptation, application of a pre-existing melody to a new text. Preces are short, lightly neumatic musical prayers in rhyme with a refrain. They exist in both the Visigothic /Mozarabic rite and the Gallican rite, but the concordance between the two rites appears to be liturgical and not musical. Finally, the Office chants include a number of Hymns, many of which are found throughout Catholic Europe, although we do not know if the same melodies were used.

Madrigal

A vocal music form that flourished in the Renaissance, originating in Italy. The madrigal is generally written for four to six voices that may or may not be accompanied. In modern performance madrigals are usually presented a cappella. Madrigals are usually set to short love poems, though the words are occasionally about death, war, etc. They were extremely popular in England and Italy, and also produced in France, Germany, and a few in Spain. The madrigal is characterized by word painting and harmonic and rhythmic contrast. In the madrigal, each line has its own tune, rather than the entire composition having a single tune with harmonic accompaniment. A madrigal is a secular vocal music composition, usually a partsong, of the Renaissance and early Baroque eras. Traditionally, polyphonic madrigals are unaccompanied; the number of voices varies from two to eight, and most frequently from three to six. It is quite distinct from the Italian Trecento madrigal of the late 13th and 14th centuries, with which it shares only the name.[1] Madrigals originated in Italy during the 1520s. Unlike many strophic forms of the time, most madrigals were through-composed. In the madrigal, the composer attempted to express the emotion contained in each line, and sometimes individual words, of a celebrated poem.

Gregorian chant

Also called "old Roman chant", this is one of the earliest surviving styles of music in Western Europe attributed to Pope Gregory the Great. Gregory probably had little to do with the surviving chant, as the chants that survive in manuscripts date from the 11th to the 13th centuries, and Gregory died in the year 604. The surviving chants are modal with monophonic melodies with freely-flowing, unmeasured vocal lines. Most chants belong to the Mass or to the daily offices. (Also referred too as Plain Chant).

Baritone instruments

Baritone instruments: bassoon, baritone saxophone, bass clarinet, cello, baritone horn, euphonium (trombone) (French Horn)

Bass instruments

Bass instruments: double bass, bass guitar, bass saxophone, tuba, bass drum, (cello) (trombone) (French Horn)

Woodwind - Double Reed

Bassoon Soprano bassoon Contrabassoon Contra Forte Bassoon Oboe Piccolo oboe Bass oboe Contrabass oboe CAPPED: Bagpipes (see Types of bagpipes)

Neck Box Lute

Banjo Guitar Acoustic guitar Acoustic bass guitar Baroque guitar Classical guitar Extended-range classical guitar Tenor guitar Flamenco guitar Harp guitar Russian guitar Electric guitar Eight-string guitar Electric-acoustic guitar Semi-acoustic guitar Ukulele VIOLIN FAMILY: Double Bass Cello Octobass Viola Violin

Church music

Church music is music written for performance in church, or any musical setting of ecclesiastical liturgy, or music set to words expressing propositions of a sacred nature, such as a hymn. Gregorian chant is the main tradition of Western plainchant, a form of monophonic liturgical chant of Western Christianity that accompanied the celebration of Mass and other ritual services. The mass is a form of music that sets out the parts of the Eucharistic liturgy (chiefly belong to the Roman Catholic Church, the Churches of the Anglican Communion, and also the Lutheran Church) to music. Most Masses are settings of the liturgy in Latin, the traditional language of the Roman Catholic Church, but there are a significant number written in the languages of non-Catholic countries where vernacular worship has long been the norm. For example, there are many Masses (often called "Communion Services") written in English for the Church of England. Masses can be a cappella, for the human voice alone, or they can be accompanied by instrumental obbligatos up to and including a full orchestra. Many Masses, especially later ones, were never intended to be performed during the celebration of an actual mass. Generally, for a composition to be a full Mass, it must contain the following invariable five sections, which together constitute the Ordinary of the Mass. 1-Kyrie ("Lord have mercy") 2-Gloria ("Glory be to God on high") 3-Credo ("I believe in one God"), the Nicene Creed 4-Sanctus ("Holy, Holy, Holy"), the second part of which, beginning with the word "Benedictus" ("Blessed is he"), was often sung separately after the consecration, if the setting was long. (See Benedictus for other chants beginning with that word.) 5-Agnus Dei ("Lamb of God") The Requiem Mass is a modified version of the ordinary mass. A carol is a festive song, generally religious but not necessarily connected with church worship, often having a popular character. Today the carol is represented almost exclusively by the Christmas carol, the Advent carol, and to a much lesser extent by the Easter carol. The tradition of Christmas carols goes back as far as the 13th century, although carols were originally communal songs sung during celebrations like harvest tide as well as Christmas. It was only in the late 18th and 19th centuries that carols began to be sung in church, and to be specifically associated with Christmas. Traditionally, carols have often been based on medieval chord progressions, and it is this that gives them their characteristic sound. Some carols like "Personent hodie" and "Angels from the Realms of Glory" can be traced directly back to the Middle Ages, and are among the oldest musical compositions still regularly sung.

Woodwind - Single Reed

Clarinet Piccolo (or sopranino, or octave) clarinet Sopranino clarinet Soprano clarinet (including E-flat clarinet) Saxonette Basset clarinet Basset horn Alto clarinet Bass clarinet Contra-alto clarinet Contrabass clarinet Octocontra-alto clarinet Octocontrabass clarinet Double clarinet Hornpipe Saxophone Sopranino saxophone Soprano saxophone Mezzo-soprano saxophone Alto saxophone Tenor saxophone C melody saxophone Baritone saxophone Bass saxophone Contrabass saxophone Subcontrabass saxophone Double contrabass saxophone

Ethos

From Plato's references to "established forms" and "laws of music" we can assume that at least some of the formality of the Pythagorean system of harmonics and consonance had taken hold of Greek music, at least as it was performed by professional musicians in public, and that Plato was complaining about the falling away from such principles into a "spirit of law-breaking". Playing what "sounded good" violated the established ethos of modes that the Greeks had developed by the time of Plato: a complex system of relating certain emotional and spiritual characteristics to certain modes (scales). The names for the various modes derived from the names of Greek tribes and peoples, the temperament and emotions of which were said to be characterized by the unique sound of each mode. Thus, Dorian modes were "harsh", Phrygian modes "sensual", and so forth. In his Republic,[5] Plato talks about the proper use of various modes, the Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, etc. It is difficult for the modern listener to relate to that concept of ethos in music except by comparing our own perceptions that a minor scale is used for melancholy and a major scale for virtually everything else, from happy to heroic music. The sounds of scales vary depending on the placement of tones. Modern Western scales use the placement of whole tones, such as C to D on a modern piano keyboard, and half tones, such as C to C-sharp, but not quarter-tones ("in the cracks" on a modern keyboard) at all. This limit on tone types creates relatively few kinds of scales in modern Western music compared to that of the Greeks, who used the placement of whole-tones, half-tones, and even quarter-tones (or still smaller intervals) to develop a large repertoire of scales, each with a unique ethos.

Gallican Chant

Gallican chant refers to the liturgical plainchant repertory of the Gallican rite of the Roman Catholic Church in Gaul, prior to the introduction and development of elements of the Roman rite from which Gregorian chant evolved. Gallican chant was said to be recognizably different from Roman chant in both its texts and its music. Walahfrid Strabo, writing in the 9th century, judged Roman chant as "more perfect" and Gallican as incorrect and "inelegant." The Gallican rite and texts were often florid and dramatic compared with their Roman counterparts, which may be reflected in the importance of melismatic music in Gallican chant compared with Roman. The use of two reciting tones in Gregorian psalmody may derive from Gallican chant. Another element of Gregorian chant not found in Roman chant, which may reflect Gallican conventions, is the "Gallican cadence," in which the final neume, found only in Gaulish sources, is an upward step whose second pitch is repeated, such as C-D-D. Some types of Gallican chant show direct influence from Byzantine chant, including the use of Greek texts. Compositional techniques included certain common incipits, cadences, and the use of centonization.

Music of Greece

Greek music separates into two parts: Greek traditional music and Byzantine music, with more eastern sounds. In ancient Greece, men usually performed choruses performed for entertainment, celebration and spiritual reasons. Instruments included the double-reed aulos and the plucked string instrument (like pandura), the lyre, especially the special kind called a kithara. Music was an important part of education in ancient Greece, and boys were taught music starting at age six. Greek musical literacy created a flowering of development; Greek music theory included the Greek musical modes, eventually became the basis for Eastern and Western religious music and classical music. Due to Rome's reverence for Greek culture, the Romans borrowed the Greek method[3] of 'enchiriadic notation' (marks which indicated the general shape of the tune but not the exact notes or rhythms) to record their music, if they used any notation at all.

Clausula

In Roman rhetoric, a clausula (Latin "clause"; plural clausulae) was a rhythmic figure used to add finesse and finality to the end of a sentence or phrase. There was a large range of popular clausulae. Most well known is the classically Ciceronian "esse videtur" type. In late medieval Western music, a clausula 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

Rhythmic Modes

In medieval music, the rhythmic modes were set patterns of long and short durations (or rhythms). The value of each note is not determined by the form of the written note (as is the case with more recent European musical notation), but rather by its position within a group of notes written as a single figure called a "ligature", and by the position of the ligature relative to other ligatures. Modal notation was developed by the composers of the Notre Dame school from 1170 to 1250, replacing the even and unmeasured rhythm of early polyphony and plainchant with patterns based on the metric feet of classical poetry, and was the first step towards the development of modern mensural notation (Hoppin 1978, 221). The rhythmic modes of Notre Dame Polyphony were the first coherent system of rhythmic notation developed in Western music since antiquity. In most sources there were six rhythmic modes, as first explained in the anonymous treatise of about 1260, De mensurabili musica (formerly attributed to Johannes de Garlandia, who is now believed merely to have edited it in the late 13th century for Jerome of Moravia, who incorporated it into his own compilation) (Baltzer 2001). Each mode consisted of a short pattern of long and short note values ("longa" and "brevis") corresponding to a metrical foot, as follows (Reese 1940, 207-209): 1. Long-short (trochee) (Quarter - Eighth) Play X4 (6/8 OR 6/8) 2. Short-long (iamb) (Eighth - Quarter) Play X4 (3/8 OR 6/8) 3. Long-short-short (dactyl) (Dotted Quarter - Eighth - Quarter) Play X2 (3/8) 4. Short-short-long (anapaest) (Eighth -Quarter - Dotted Quarter) Play X2 (3/8) 5. Long-long (spondee) (Dotted Quarter - Dotted Quarter) Play X2 (3/8 OR 6/8) 6. Short-short-short (tribrach) (Eighth - Eighth- Eighth) Play X4 (3/8 OR 6/8)

Musica Reservata

In music history, musica reservata (also musica secreta) is either a style or a performance practice in a cappella vocal music of the latter half of the 16th century, mainly in Italy and southern Germany, involving refinement, exclusivity, and intense emotional expression of sung text. The exact meaning, which appears in scattered contemporary sources, is a matter of debate among musicologists. While some of the sources are contradictory, four aspects seem clear: -musica reservata involved use of chromatic progressions and voice-leading, a manner of composing which became fashionable in the 1550s, both in madrigals and motets; -it involved a style of performance, perhaps with extra ornamentation or other emotive methods; -it used word-painting, i.e. use of specific and recognizable musical figures to illuminate specific words in the text; -and the music was designed to be performed by, and appreciated by, small groups of connoisseurs.

Through-Composed

In music theory about musical form, the term through-composed means that the music is relatively continuous, non-sectional, and/or non-repetitive. A song is said to be through-composed if it has different music for each stanza of the lyrics. This is in contrast to strophic form, in which each stanza is set to the same music.

Cantus Firmus

In music, a cantus firmus ("fixed song") is a pre-existing melody forming the basis of a polyphonic composition. The basis of polyphonic compositions of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. The tune of the cantus firmus was taken from Gregorian chant; it would move very slowly underneath more rapid vocal or instrumental lines above it.

Zithers

Instruments which are in essence simply a string or strings and a string bearer. These instruments may have a resonator box, but removing it should not render the instrument unplayable (although it may result in quite a different sound being produced). They include the piano therefore, as well as other kinds of zithers such as the koto, and musical bows.

Jewish Music

Jewish liturgical music is characterized by a set of musical modes. These modes make up musical nusach, which serves to both identify different types of prayer, as well as to link those prayers to the time of year, or even time of day in which they are set. There are three main modes, as well as a number of combined or compound modes. The three main modes are called Ahavah Rabbah, Magein Avot and Adonai Malach. Traditionally, the cantor (chazzan) improvised sung prayers within the designated mode, while following a general structure of how each prayer should sound. There was no standard form of musical notation utilised by the Jews and these modes and synagogue melodies derived from them were therefore handed down directly, typically from a chazzan to his apprentice meshorrer (descant). Since the late eighteenth century, many of these chants have been written down and standardized, yet the practice of improvisation still exists to this day. The synagogal reading of the parashah (the weekly extract from the Torah) and the haftarah (section from the Prophets), may recall the melodic tropes of the actual Temple service. Ashkenazic Jews named this official cantillation 'neginot' and it is represented in printed Hebrew versions of the Bible by a system of cantillation marks (sometimes referred to as neumes). In practice the cantillation often echoes the tones and rhythms of the countries and ages in which Jews lived, notably as regards the modality in which the local music was based. There are many forms of song which are used in Jewish religious services and ceremonies. The following are notable examples. With the piyyutim (liturgical poems—singular: piyut), dating from the first millennium after the destruction of the Temple, one stream of Jewish synagogal music began to crystallize into definite form. Pizmonim are traditional Jewish songs and melodies praising God and describing certain aspects of traditional religious teachings. Zemirot are hymns, usually sung in the Hebrew or Aramaic languages, but sometimes also in Yiddish or Ladino. The baqashot are a collection of supplications, songs, and prayers that have been sung for centuries by the Sephardic Aleppian Jewish community and other congregations every Sabbath eve from midnight until dawn. Nigun (pl. nigumim) refers to religious songs and tunes that are sung either by individuals or groups; they are associated with the Hassidic movement. Nigunim are generally wordless.

Keyed or Fingered Brass Instruments

Keyed or Fingered brass instruments used holes along the body of the instrument, which were covered by fingers or by finger-operated pads (keys) in a similar way to a woodwind instrument. These included the cornett, serpent, ophicleide, keyed bugle and keyed trumpet. They are more difficult to play than valved instruments.

Liturgical drama

Liturgical drama or religious drama, in its various Christian contexts, originates from the Mass itself, and usually presents a relatively complex ritual that includes theatrical elements. Until the Late Middle Ages it is the best recorded tradition of religious drama, and is assumed to have been the root from which other forms such as the civic mystery plays, as well as poorly recorded travelling companies, grew. The number of surviving scripts is small, and many performances are only known about from entries in payment records and the like. The medieval drama originated in religion. The Church forbade the faithful during the early centuries to attend the licentious representations of decadent paganism, but once this "immoral" theatre disappeared, the Church allowed, and contributed to, gradual development of a new drama that was not only moral, but edifying and pious.

Rondeau

Medieval and Renaissance style of courtly love song. The music was derived from the rotundellum, which was a circle dance. The definitive characteristic of the rondeau was its structure: A-B-a-A-a-b-A-B. The upper case "A" represents a refrain or a repeat of music and text, and the lower case "a" represents a repeat of music with different text. A rondeau (plural rondeaux) is a form of medieval and Renaissance French poetry, as well as the corresponding musical chanson form. Together with the ballade and the virelai it was considered one of the three formes fixes, and one of the verse forms in France most commonly set to music between the late 13th and the 15th centuries. It is structured around a fixed pattern of repetition of material involving a refrain.

Melisma

Melisma (Greek: μέλισμα, melisma, song, air, melody; from μέλος, melos, song, melody, plural: melismata), in music, is the singing of a single syllable of text while moving between several different notes in succession. Music sung in this style is referred to as melismatic, as opposed to syllabic, in which each syllable of text is matched to a single note.

Minnesinger

Minnesang was a tradition of lyric and song writing in Germany that flourished in the Middle High German period. This period of medieval German literature began in the 12th century and continued into the 14th. People who wrote and performed Minnesang were known as Minnesingers (German: Minnesänger), and a single song was called a minnelied. The name derives from the word minne, which is the Middle High German word for love, and love was the Minnesang's main subject. The Minnesänger were similar to the Provençal troubadours and northern French trouvères in that they wrote love poetry in the tradition of courtly love in the High Middle Ages.

Mozarabic Chant

Mozarabic chant (also known as Hispanic chant, Old Hispanic chant, Old Spanish chant, or Visigothic chant) is the liturgical plainchant repertory of the Visigothic/Mozarabic rite of the Roman Catholic Church, related to the Gregorian chant. It is primarily associated with Hispania under Visigothic rule (mainly in what was to become modern Spain) and with the Catholic Visigoths/Mozarabs living under Muslim rule, and was soon replaced by the chant of the Roman rite following the Christian Reconquest. Although its original medieval form is largely lost, a few chants have survived with readable musical notation, and the chanted rite was later revived in altered form and continues to be used in a few isolated locations in Spain, primarily in Toledo. The Visigothic chant (later Mozarabic chant) is largely defined by its role in the liturgy of the Visigothic rite (later Mozarabic rite), which is more closely related to the northern "Gallic" liturgies such as the Gallican rite and the Ambrosian rite than the Roman rite. Musically, little is known about the chant. Most of the surviving music is written in neumes that show the contour of the chant, but no pitches or intervals. Only twenty or so sources contain music that can be transcribed. However, some things are known about the Visigothic/ Mozarabic repertory. Like all plainchant, Visigothic/ Mozarabic chant was monophonic and a cappella. In accordance with Roman Catholic tradition, it is primarily intended to be sung by males. As in Gregorian chant, Visigothic/Mozarabic chant melodies can be broadly grouped into four categories: recitation, syllabic, neumatic, and melismatic. Recitations are the simplest, consisting primarily of a simple reciting tone. Syllabic chants have mostly one note per syllable. Neumatic chants have a small number of notes, often just two or three, notes per syllable. Melismatic chants feature long, florid runs of notes, called melismas, on individual syllables. In both Visigothic/Mozarabic and Gregorian chant, there is a distinction between antiphonal and responsorial chants. Originally, responsorial chant alternated between a soloist singing a verse and a chorus singing a refrain called the respond, while antiphonal chant alternated between two semi-choruses singing a verse and an interpolated text called an antiphon. In the developed chant traditions, they took on more functional characteristics. In an antiphonal chant, the antiphon is generally longer and more melodic than the verse, which is usually sung to a simpler formula called a psalm tone. In a responsorial chant, the verse and refrain are often comparable in style and melodic content. Visigothic/Mozarabic chants used a different system of psalm tones for psalm antiphons than Gregorian chant. Unlike the standardized Gregorian classification of chants into eight modes, Visigothic/Mozarabic chant used between four and seven, depending on the local tradition. Many Visigothic/Mozarabic chants are recorded with no musical notation at all, or just the incipit, suggesting that the psalm tones followed simple and frequently used formulas.

Polyphony

Music composed for many parts or voices, each with its own melody, thus creating a rich texture of sound. The music itself is called polyphony. This is in contrast to monophonic music (monophony), which has only one part or voice.

Monophony

Music that is written for only one voice or part is said to be monophonic (the music itself is called "monophony"). This is in contrast to polyphonic music (polyphony), which has more than one part or voice.

Mesopotamia Music

Music was played for Mesopotamians' many gods and goddesses. Music was also played on special occasions, such as at festivals, royal weddings, births, and funerals. Some of the instruments used in Mesopotamia were harps, lyres, lutes, drums, and wood and bone wind instruments. We have identified ten Mesopotamian tablets (Fig. 5) that contain technical information about ancient musical scales. We now know that by the Old Babylonian period in ancient Iraq (i.e., by at least ca. 1800 BC, or about 850 years after the period of the Royal Cemetery of Ur), there existed standardized tuning procedures that operated within a heptatonic, diatonic system consisting of seven different and interrelated scales (see box with Glossary of Musical Terms). The fact that these seven scales could be equated with seven ancient Greek scales (dating some 1400 years later) quite startled the scholarly community; and the fact that one of the scales in common use was equivalent to our own modern major scale (do-re-mi. . . ) seemed difficult for many to believe (Fig. 6). But research on the part of several cuneiformists and musicologists working together has been strengthened over the years by the steady accumulation of cuneiform tablets that use the same standard corpus of Akkadian terms to designate the names of the musical strings; the names of the instruments and their parts; fingering techniques; the names of musical intervals (fifths, fourths, thirds, and sixths); and the names of the seven scales that derive their nomenclature from the particular interval of a fourth or a fifth on which the tuning procedure starts. THE 7 SCALES IN USE FROM AT LEAST CA. 1800 BC TO THE MIDDLE OF THE 1ST MILLENIUM. The brackets indicate the tritone. The sharps and flats show what the whole-step/half-step arrangement is in each scale. The scale third from the bottom is equivalent to our major (do-re-mi) scale, that from c to C on the white notes of the piano, without any sharps and flats.

Word Painting

Musical depiction of words in text. Using the device of word painting, the music tries to imitate the emotion, action, or natural sounds as described in the text. For example, if the text describes a sad event, the music might be in a minor key. Conversely, if the text is joyful, the music may be set in a major key. This device was used often in madrigals and other works of the Renaissance and Baroque.

Natural Brass Instruments

Natural brass instruments only play notes in the instrument's harmonic series. These include the bugle and older variants of the trumpet and horn. The trumpet was a natural brass instrument prior to about 1795, and the horn before about 1820. In the 18th century, makers developed interchangeable crooks of different lengths, which let players use a single instrument in more than one key. Natural instruments are still played for period performances and some ceremonial functions, and are occasionally found in more modern scores, such as those by Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss.

Meistersinger

One of a guild of German musicians of the Medieval and Renaissance eras. The Meistersingers were usually of the professional class, and his musical status was strictly controled by the rules of the guild. There is no clear explanation of the source of the Meistersingers, although it is reasonable to say that they probably arose from the wandering troubadour tradition of earlier centuries. The Meistersingers also saw themselves as heirs to the aristocratic Minnesinger tradition that was declining as the Meistersingers arose. Many Meistersinger song texts survive, but only a very few melodies have been preserved.

Troubadour

One of a school of poets and musicians popular in southern France, Provence, and northern Italy between the 11th and late 13th centuries. A troubadour (English /ˈtruːbədʊər/, French: [tʁubaduʁ]; Occitan: trobador, IPA: [tɾuβaˈðu]) was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages (1100-1350). Since the word troubadour is etymologically masculine, a female troubadour is usually called a trobairitz. The troubadour school or tradition began in the late 11th century in Occitania, but it subsequently spread into Italy and Spain. The texts of troubadour songs deal mainly with themes of chivalry and courtly love. Most were metaphysical, intellectual, and formulaic. Many were humorous or vulgar satires. Works can be grouped into three styles: the trobar leu (light), trobar ric (rich), and trobar clus (closed). Likewise there were many genres, the most popular being the canso, but sirventes and tensos were especially popular in the post-classical period, in Italy and among the female troubadours, the trobairitz.

psalmody

One of the oldest Christian liturgical forms of music is the singing of Psalms. Often in psalmody, one group of singers will sing one verse of the psalm to a simple Anglican chant, then a second group of singers responds with the next verse.

Byzantine Chant

Originally it consisted of songs and hymns composed to Greek texts used for courtly ceremonials, during festivals, or as paraliturgical and liturgical music. The ecclesiastical forms of Byzantine music are the best known forms today, because different Orthodox traditions still identify with the heritage of Byzantine music, when their cantors sing monodic chant out of the traditional chant books like sticherarion which in fact consisted of five books, and the heirmologion. According to the chant manual "Hagiopolites," the earliest which has survived until today, chanters of the Hagia Sophia used a system 16 church tones (echoi), while the author of this treatise introduces to a tonal system of 10 echoi. Nevertheless, both schools have in common a set of 4 octaves (protos, devteros, tritos, and tetartos), each of them had a kyrios echos (authentic mode) with the finalis on the degree V of the mode, and a plagios echos (plagal mode) with the final note on the degree I. The resulting eight modes (octoechos) had been identified with the seven tropes (tropoi) of the Ancient Greek harmonikai, the Pythagorean mathematic discipline of music theory as it had been formulated by the harmonikoi during the Hellenic period. Today, chanters of the Christian Orthodox churches identify with the heritage of Byzantine music whose earliest composers are remembered by name since the 5th century, with compositions which are related to them, although it is nearly impossible to reconstruct the original melodies of their hymnodic poems. The melodic neume notation of Byzantine music developed late since the 10th century, with the exception of an earlier ekphonetic notation, interpunction signs used in lectionaries, but modal signatures for the eight echoi can already be found in fragments (papyri) of monastic hymn books (tropologia) dating back to the 6th century.[5] Byzantine chant manuscripts date from the 9th century, while lectionaries of biblical readings in ekphonetic notation (a primitive graphic system designed to indicate the manner of reciting lessons from Scripture) begin about a century earlier and continue in use until the 12th or 13th century.[40] Our knowledge of the older period is derived from Church service books Typika, patristic writings and medieval histories. Scattered examples of hymn texts from the early centuries of Greek Christianity still exist. Some of these employ the metrical schemes of classical Greek poetry; but the change of pronunciation had rendered those meters largely meaningless, and, except when classical forms were imitated, Byzantine hymns of the following centuries are prose-poetry, unrhymed verses of irregular length and accentual patterns. The effect that this concept had on church music was threefold: first, it bred a highly conservative attitude to musical composition; secondly, it stabilized the melodic tradition of certain hymns; and thirdly, it continued, for a time, the anonymity of the composer. For if a chant is of heavenly origin, then the acknowledgment received by man in transmitting it to posterity ought to be minimal. This is especially true when he deals with hymns which were known to have been first sung by angelic choirs - such as the Amen, Alleluia, Trisagion, Sanctus and Doxology. Consequently, until Palaeologan times, it was inconceivable for a composer to place his name beside a notated text in the manuscripts.

Slide Brass Instruments

Slide brass instruments use a slide to change the length of tubing. The main instruments in this category are the trombone family, though valve trombones are occasionally used, especially in jazz. The trombone family's ancestor, the sackbut, and the folk instrument bazooka are also in the slide family.

Imitative Counterpoint

Some examples of related compositional techniques include: the round (familiar in folk traditions), the canon, and perhaps the most complex contrapuntal convention: the fugue. All of these are examples of imitative counterpoint. In imitative counterpoint, two or more voices enter at different times, and (especially when entering) each voice repeats some version of the same melodic element. The fantasia, the ricercar, and later, the canon and fugue (the contrapuntal form par excellence) all feature imitative counterpoint, which also frequently appears in choral works such as motets and madrigals. Imitative counterpoint spawned a number of devices that composers use to give their works both mathematical rigor and expressive range. These devices include: Melodic Inversion Retrograde Retrograde inversion Augmentation Diminution

Canon

Strict counterpoint in which each voice exactly imitates the previous voice at a fixed distance. In music, a canon is a contrapuntal (composed of two or more relatively independent melodies sounded together.) compositional technique or texture that employs a melody with one or more imitations of the melody played after a given duration (e.g., quarter rest, one measure, etc.). The initial melody is called the leader (or dux), while the imitative melody, which is played in a different voice, is called the follower (or comes). The follower must imitate the leader, either as an exact replication of its rhythms and intervals or some transformation thereof (see "Types of canon", below). Repeating canons in which all voices are musically identical are called rounds—"Row, Row, Row Your Boat" and "Frère Jacques" being widely known examples. An example of a classical strict canon is the Minuet of Haydn's String Quartet in D Minor, Op. 76, No. 2 (White 1976, 66).

Strophic Form

Strophic form (also called "verse-repeating" or chorus form) is the term applied to songs in which all verses or stanzas of the text are sung to the same music.[1] The opposite of strophic form, with new music written for every stanza, is called through-composed.[1] Das Wandern, the opening song in Franz Schubert's song cycle Die schöne Müllerin, is a classic example of a strophic song. The term is derived from the Greek word στροφή, strophē, meaning "turn". It is the simplest and most durable of musical forms, extending a piece of music by repetition of a single formal section. This may be analyzed as "A A A...". This additive method is the musical analogue of repeated stanzas in poetry or lyrics and, in fact, where the text repeats the same rhyme scheme from one stanza to the next the song's structure also often uses either the same or very similar material from one stanza to the next.

Renaissance

That era of music covering the 15th through 16th centuries (c. 1450-1600 CE), following the Medieval and preceding the Baroque era. The Renaissance saw the arrival of modes similar to modern major and minor scales, and of tonal harmony. Music of this era is characterized by its smoother, more charming melodies, rich, many-voiced, imitative harmonies, brilliant energy, and lively ornamentation. The instruments in use during this time included the lute, viol, harp, virginal, organ, recorder, oboe, and crumhorn. Major composers of the era include Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Orlando de Lassus, William Byrd, Orlando Gibbons, Tomés Luis de Victoria, Thomas Weelkes, Thomas Morley, Giles Farnaby and others.

Romantic

That era of music following the Classical era and ending around 1900. The compositions of the Romantic era are characterized by great, large ensembles, great dynamic fluctuations from fortississimo (fff) to pianississimo (ppp), less tonal and melodic tunes, more discordant, atonal pieces, and immense, long compositions. The piano is a prominent instrument of the Romantic era. Major Romantic composers include: Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt, Robert Schumann, Richard Wagner, Johannes Brahms, Hector Berlioz, Franz Schubert, etc.

Classical era

That music which was written in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The chief composers of this style of music are Haydn, Mozart, and early Beethoven. This music flourished chiefly in Vienna, and is characterized by its periodic structure, and the expanded and developed length as compared to that of the Baroque. The term "classical music" is now also erroneously taken to mean any music of the Baroque through late-Romantic eras.

Notre Dame School

The Notre Dame school or the Notre Dame school of polyphony refers to the group of composers working at or near the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris from about 1160 to 1250, along with the music they produced. The only composers whose names have come down to us from this time are Léonin and Pérotin. Pérotin is the first composer of organum quadruplum—four-voice polyphony—at least the first composer whose music has survived, since complete survivals of notated music from this time are scarce. Léonin, Pérotin and the other anonymous composers whose music has survived are representatives of the era of European music history known as the ars antiqua. The motet was first developed during this period out of the clausula, which is one of the most frequently encountered types of composition in the Magnus Liber Organi. The earliest motets are the Notre Dame motets, written by composers such as Leonin and Perotin during the 13th century. These motets were polyphonic, with a different text in each voice, and employed the rhythmic modes. An example of a Notre Dame motet is Salve, salus hominum/O radians stella/nostrum by Perotin, composed between 1180 and 1238.

St. Martial School

The Saint Martial School was a medieval school of music composition centered in the Abbey of Saint Martial, Limoges, France. It is known for the composition of tropes, sequences, and early organum. In this respect, it was an important precursor to the Notre Dame School. Many of the modern musicological studies concerning a "Saint Martial School," focus on four manuscripts with remarkably innovative compositions for the 12th century.[1] It is often assumed that these fragments derived from different Southern French monasteries, despite the lack of cantor attributions in the rubrics.

Sarum Use

The Sarum Rite, more properly called the Use of Salisbury, was a variant ("use") of the Roman Rite widely used for the ordering of Christian public worship, including the Mass and the Divine Office. It was established by Saint Osmund, Bishop of Salisbury,[1] and Richard Poore in the 11th century and was originally the local form used in the Cathedral and Diocese of Salisbury, England.

Ballata

The ballata (plural: ballate) is an Italian poetic and musical form in use from the late 13th to the 15th century. It has the musical structure AbbaA, with the first and last stanzas having the same texts. It is thus most similar to the French musical 'forme fixe' virelai (and not the ballade as the name might otherwise suggest). The first and last "A" is called a ripresa, the "b" lines are piedi (feet), while the fourth line is called a "volta". Longer ballate may be found in the form AbbaAbbaA, etc. Unlike the virelai, the two "b" lines usually have exactly the same music and only in later ballate pick up the (formerly distinctly French) first and second (open and close) endings. The term comes from the verb ballare, to dance, and the form certainly began as dance music.

Franco-Flemish School

The designation Franco-Flemish School or Netherlandish School refers, somewhat imprecisely, to the style of polyphonic vocal music composition originating from the Burgundian Netherlands in the 15th and 16th centuries, and to the composers who wrote it. The diffusion of their technique, especially after the revolutionary development of printing, produced the first true international style since the unification of Gregorian chant in the 9th century. Franco-Flemish composers mainly wrote sacred music, primarily masses, motets and hymns.

Melodic Inversion

The inverse of a given fragment of melody is the fragment turned upside down—so if the original fragment has a rising major third (see interval), the inverted fragment has a falling major (or perhaps minor) third, etc. (Compare, in twelve tone technique, the inversion of the tone row, which is the so-called prime series turned upside down.) (Note: in invertible counterpoint, including double and triple counterpoint, the term inversion is used in a different sense altogether. At least one pair of parts is switched, so that the one that was higher becomes lower. See Inversion in counterpoint; it is not a kind of imitation, but a rearrangement of the parts.)

Mass

The liturgy of the Eucharist, the central service of the Roman Catholic Church. In the middle ages, the Mass was chanted and was one of the chief sources of music of that period that survive to the present. Many composers throughout European history have set the Mass to music from the early middle ages up through the present time. There are two major categories of the items of the Mass, the Proper, or the texts that are variable, and the Ordinary, or the fixed texts. The Mass is the Christian celebration of the Eucharist. Plainchant occurs prominently in the Mass for several reasons: to communally affirm the faith, to expand on the scriptural lessons, and to cover certain actions. Praelegenda are opening chants corresponding to the Gregorian Introit, which use the same antiphonal structure and psalm tones found in the Visigothic/ Mozarabic Office.

Middle Ages

The music from a period of about 500 C.E. until about 1450 C.E. Sometimes the period is divided into two periods, the early middle ages (500-1100 C.E.) and the late middle ages or Gothic Period (1100-1450 C.E.).

Baroque

The music of the period c. 1600 - 1750 C.E., directly following the Renaissance and preceding the Classical era. This style is characterized by a lot of ornamentation, thus the name; it is also distinguishable by its use of basso continuo and application of the doctrine of the affections. The main composers of this era include Giovanni Gabrieli, Claudio Monteverdi, Antonio Vivaldi, Dominico Scarlatti, Johann Sebastian Bach, and George Frederick Handel.

Harp Lute

The plane of the strings lies at right angles to the sound-table; a line joining the lower ends of the strings would be perpendicular to the neck. Notched bridge African Harp guitar

Burgundian School

This refers to the style of music written by a group of composers active in the late 14th and 15th centuries around the Burgundian court. Burgundy was the area at the deltas of the Rhine, Scheldt, and Meuse rivers which now includes part of northern France, western Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands and is also known as the Low Countries. The court moved from place to place throughout the 15th century and the composers connected to the Burgundian court came primarily from the Low Countries. These composers typically started as singers in the court but became known for their compositions. Many of these composers traveled extensively across Europe, taking the Burgundian style of music as far as Italy. Several additional styles were born within the Burgundian School which includes the Netherlands Schools. The composers in the Burgundian School include Guillaume de Machaut, Guillaume Dufay, Gilles Binchois, Antoine Busnois, Johannes Ockeghem, Jacob Obrecht, Josquin Desprez, and the English composer John Dunstable. Their compositions included the following musical genres: Mass, motet, chanson, ballad, virelai, madrigal, frottola, villancico, canzona, ricercare, and rondeau. The Burgundian School was a group of composers active in the 15th century in what is now northern and eastern France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, centered on the court of the Dukes of Burgundy.

Trouvere

Trouvère (French pronunciation: ​[tʁuvɛʁ]), sometimes spelled trouveur [tʁuvœʁ], is the Northern French (langue d'oïl) form of the langue d'oc (Occitan) word trobador. It refers to poet-composers who were roughly contemporary with and influenced by the troubadours (composers and performers of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages) but who composed their works in the northern dialects of France. The first known trouvère was Chrétien de Troyes (fl. 1160s-1180s) (Butterfield, 1997) and the trouvères continued to flourish until about 1300. Some 2130 trouvère poems have survived; of these, at least two-thirds have melodies. The popular image of the troubadour or trouvère is that of the itinerant musician wandering from town to town, lute on his back. Such people existed, but they were called jongleurs and minstrels — poor musicians, male and female, on the fringes of society. The troubadours and trouvères, on the other hand, represent aristocratic music making. They were either poets and composers who were supported by the aristocracy or, just as often, were aristocrats themselves, for whom the creation and performance of music was part of the courtly tradition. Among their number we can count kings, queens, and countesses. The texts of these songs are a natural reflection of the society that created them. They often revolve around idealized treatments of courtly love ("fine amors", see grand chant) and religious devotion, although many can be found that take a more frank, earthy look at love.

Eygptian Music

Typically ancient Egyptian music was composed from the phrygian dominant scale, phrygian scale, double harmonic scale (Arabic scale) or lydian scale.[citation needed] The phrygian dominant scale may often feature an altered note or two in parts to create tension. For instance the music could typically be in the key of E phrygian dominant using the notes E, F, G sharp, A, B, C, D and then have an A sharp, B, A sharp, G natural and E to create tension. During the Abbasid and Ottoman dynasty Egypt was one of the main musical hubs in the middle east and therefore after the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1923 Egypt became the capital of Arabic music where classical instrument such as the oud, qanun and ney were widely used.

Valved Brass Insturments

Valved brass instruments use a set of valves (typically three or four but as many as seven or more in some cases) operated by the player's fingers that introduce additional tubing, or crooks, into the instrument, changing its overall length. This family includes all of the modern brass instruments except the trombone: the trumpet, horn (also called French horn), euphonium, and tuba, as well as the cornet, flugelhorn, tenor horn (alto horn), baritone horn, sousaphone, mellophone, and the saxhorn. As valved instruments are predominant among the brasses today, a more thorough discussion of their workings can be found below. The valves are usually piston valves, but can be rotary valves; the latter are the norm for the horn (except in France) and are also common on the tuba.

Augmentation

When in one of the parts in imitative counterpoint the note values are extended in duration compared to the rate at which they were sounded when introduced.

Diminution

When in one of the parts in imitative counterpoint the note values are reduced in duration compared to the rate at which they were sounded when introduced.

Retrograde Inversion

Where the imitative voice sounds the melody backwards and upside-down at once.

Retrograde

Whereby an imitative voice sounds the melody backwards in relation the leading voice.

Printing of Music

Who invented the musical notes? In 1000 CE Guido D'Arezzo made many improvements in music theory. He first improved and reworked standard notation to be more user-friendly by adding time signatures. Then he invented solfege. This is the vocal note scale: do, re, mi, fa, so, la ,ti, do. During the early Middle Ages (c. 800-1450) the Catholic Church was a powerful body. It exercised control over many affairs including music. During this time, the church believed that music elevated liturgical words to a higher level. This was also a time of illiteracy, where only the clergy and a few others learned to read and write. As a result, most of the music notation from this time period has been found in highly decorative manuscripts called illuminated manuscripts. These manuscripts were written and decorated by hand in either Gothic or Roman notation. Manuscripts that contained text were sometimes left blank or only the staff lines were drawn where the music was to be added later. The most common color for the staff lines was red, but sometimes black was used. The notes were then written in black ink. The paper on which the music was written was mainly vellum made from animal hide. By the late 15th century a technique evolved for printing music called woodblock printing. The process involved writing or drawing the music on a piece of wood that was leveled on one side to make it flat and even. In order to prevent mistakes, the wood cutter would carefully write or draw the music on the wood in reverse. Reversing the music on the woodblock enabled the printing of a mirror image. The next step was to carve out the wood around the symbols so that the symbols were elevated. At intersections of lines, the cut needed to be clean or a small nick needed to be made between the perpendicular lines so that the ink would not blob or spread. (The quality of music printed by woodcutting varies in quality because of the carelessness of the woodcutter or improper inking and printing of the woodcut.) The completed woodcut was inked, pressed on paper or vellum, and left to dry. In 1450, Johann Gutenberg invented the printing press. As with previous methods of printing, it would soon be utilized to print music. With moveable type every note, line, beam, etc. had to be assembled into a "puzzle." The correct notes, lines, and other music symbols were lined up in the correct order of the written music. The music had to be assembled correctly from left to right and in reverse. Errors had to be avoided as the workers would not get paid for corrections. From this point the types were locked together, placed on the printing press, inked, and pressed onto paper. Assembling the music was tedious and expensive, but the printing press made it possible to duplicate music at a faster pace. Copies of the music could now be sold and distributed to more people. Because moveable type was unable to duplicate many of the details of hand-written manuscripts, more elaborate methods of printing music were adopted. Engraving was the next technique used to print music. The basic process of engraving was to plan out the lines, spaces, and layout on paper where the page turns are also determined. The process of lithography was invented by the playwright, Alois Senefelder in 1796. He could not afford to have his plays published so he began experimenting with printing techniques until he succeeded with lithography. The process involved drawing an image, text, or music on a smooth piece of limestone with an oil-based ink. Acid was then poured onto the stone to burn the image onto the surface. A water soluble solution such as gum arabic was then applied, sticking only to the non-oily surface and sealing it. For printing, the water adhered to the gum arabic. The oily ink, however, repelled the water, thereby allowing for the printing of the images. As technology advanced, lithography evolved into other processes such as chromolithography, photolithography, and microlithography. Traditional lithography didn't suit every task, particularly when most printing was still done by letterpress and the music was to be mixed in with normal text such as hymn books. Printing blocks were the answer. They were the same height as the type used and could be incorporated into a normal letterpress job. The alternative was to set them in special music type, a more complex and sophisticated version of the early type shown below. I've attached my rather poor photo showing a demo of how the music was built up from many tiny parts. Once it was set together with all the text, a stereotype cast was usually taken to print from and which could be stored for future use, allowing the music and text type to be distributed back into the case for re-use. Photolithography: The invention of the camera changed music printing once again. Photolithography became a practical process to copy music. This method involved transferring a photo image to a stone or metal plate using chemicals and then treated to produce a printing surface. The Halston Process: The Halstan Process was another method of printing music. The music was written out in blue pencil about four times its original size. Black ink was used to outline the blue markings. A photo was then taken and reduced in size. The blue pencil markings did not appear on the photo. The proof was then used to duplicate the music. Music typewriters were developed in the 19th century, but it wasn't until the mid 1900s that they became popular. Musicians usually specialized in using these machines. Several different models were invented, but there were two different concepts that became standard. The Keaton Music Typewriter looked very different from a regular typewriter. It had two keyboards, one which was moveable and one stationary. The other models were much like a regular typewriter. They employed musical symbols instead of letters. Staff paper or blank paper was slipped in the carriage and the keys struck. After the music was printed on a music typewriter, the original was photographed or copied to make the extra copies necessary to distribute and sell. Middle to Late 20th Century Although many programs and software have been developed, below is a discussion of some of the innovative techniques of notating music through the use of technology, and does not include other aspects of music technology such as recording or sampling.) With advances in technology during the 1950s and 1960s, music was now possible to be notated through the use of computers and software. The first two programs that were developed in the early 1960s were Plaine and Easie Code and DARMS (Digital Alternate Representation of Musical Scores). The problem with early computers was the lack of visual feedback to the encoder. The next development involved the use of a machine that used the Musicwriter keyboard which punched out paper. (Punched out paper was used as a storage device during the 1960s.) A machine called the ILLIAC was used to read the coded paper. An output paper was again placed in the Musicwriter and correctly formatted to print the music. With the development of the desktop computer, music notation began evolving once again. Programs such as SMUT, SCORE, MUSTRAN, MEG, and the Oxford Music Processor were developed. The development of MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) in the 1980s allowed musicians to input music into a computer by connecting the computer to a music keyboard through MIDI cables. The next program to be developed was Mockingbird. This program was capable of playing the music back and printing with a laser printer. A successful music notating program was Professional Composer. It used a mouse and several palettes on the computer screen to choose different symbols.