Purcell Music for a While Vocabulary

Dance Suite

In Baroque music the suite comprised a series of dance movements. By the time of Purcell, suites were composed of four main movementscalled the allemande, courante, sarabande and gigue.

Stile Italiano

Purcell was influenced by the Italian style, which was characterised by the concertato style, the trio sonata, double dotted notes, dramatic recitatives and da capo arias.

Appoggiatura

An ornament that is often referred to as a ‘leaning in’ note. Takes half of value of main note.

Syllabic word setting

One note per syllable of a word

Word painting

Depicting a word in music to imitate its meaning.

Dissonant intervals

Minor and major second, minor and major seventh and tritone (augmented 4^th or diminished 5^th)

Suspension

Prolonging a note to create a dissonance (clash) with the next chord. 

Tierce de Picardie

Refers to a sharpened third in the final chord in music written in a minor key. It ends on a major chord instead.

Onomatopoeic

The music setting sounds like the word, for example ‘drop’.

Da capo aria

ABA or ternary form. Often the repeated A section would be ornamented by the singer. Da Capo means ‘again from the beginning’

Arpeggiated

The chord is spread, normally from the bottom note to the top.

Obbligato

An essential melody part that must be played

Binary Form

A structure of two sections, A and B. Each section is repeated.

Cantata

The word derives from the Italian ‘cantare’ and means ‘sung’. A cantata is an extended piece in several movements comprising chorus, recitative, chorale and aria with an orchestral accompaniment.