Music history exam 1

some terms

seven liberal arts

grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy

trope

new text or music added to an existing liturgical chant

sequence

elaborate musical and textural trope added to an Alleluia’s long closing melisma

Hymn

short, strophic melodies with regular, metric texts; usually syllabic or neumatic

Goliards

Vagabond monks and students, active in late 10/early 11C

Pastourelle

courtly love subgenre in which a knight attempts to seduce a sherpherdess

Organum

note-against-note polyphony based on chant. a chant line (vox principalis) with a newly composed second voice (vox orginalis)

Parallel oragnum

voices moving in constant parallel motion, a fourth or fifth

modified parallel (or composite) organum

same as parallel but with one or both voices duplicated at the octave

organum with oblique motion

one voice moves, the other doesn’t

organum with contrary motion

both voices move in different directions

organum similar motion

voices move in same direction, but at different intervals

free organum, or descant

any extended combination of other types of organum

florid organum

the singing of many original notes in the upper voice (duplum) against a single, extended note of the bottom voice (tenor)

Discant

neume against neume writing

ligature

a rhythmicized neume of two or more pitches, “something used to bind”

ordines (singular ordo)

one or more statements of a modal pattern ending in a rest

voice exchange

the alteration of phrases between two or more voices to avoid excessive repetition in a single part

Subsitute discant clausulae (SDC)

newly composed sections of discant replacing older discant passages

conductus

early 13C Latin strophic song, first time tenor text is not based on pre-existing chant

barform

early medieval secular monophony popular with German minnesingers (aab)

cantilena style

self-sufficient melody, cadentially-defining tenor, and harmonically enriching contratenor

madrigal

song-poem of the Italian trecento in aab form (a’s: terzetti, b: ritornello)

ballata

3-voice song in AbbaA form

caccia (“chase”)

bipartite song with a 2-voice unison canon over a free tenor often with humurous texts

antiphons

chant preceding and following a psalm

cantillation

the chanting of a text by a soloist

proper

group of Mass texts according to a yearly cycle

ordinary

the set of unchanging mass texts

contrafactum

a vocal piece in which the original text is replaced by a new one

church modes

1- dorian 3- phrygian 5-lydian 7-mixolydian

order of ordinary

kyrie, gloria, credo, sanctus, gloria, agnus dei, (ite, missa est)

duplum

Latin “in two parts”, originally a medieval composition for two voices, later a second voice above tenor

motet

genre of medieval polyphonic vocal music that derived from the texting of upper parts in clauslae

ballade

french formes fixes (aabC)

virelai

french formes fixes (Abba)

hexachord system

a six-note pitch segment recognized by Guido of Arezzo in the eleventh century, represented by the solmization syllables ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la; basis of musical theory through the Renaissance.

strophic form

AAA

respond

first part of a responsorial chant, in which the full choir alternates with a soloist