Music History Midterm

plainchant

monophonic, unaccompanied, sacred vocal music with a free un-metered rhythm, traditional sung in Latin. (Gregorian chant)

double verse structure

a song using two distinct repeating verses before a chorus or a song with two consecutive lyrical sections that are considered a single large “verse” unit 

secular monophony

a style of medieval and early renaissance music featuring a single, unaccompanied melodic line without religious themes, sung by troubadours, trouvères, and goliards about love, heroism, or daily life

strophic

relating to, containing or consisting of strophes(repeating sections of a song, or form where the same music is used for different verses of texts) using the same music for successive stanzas

through-composed

having new music provided for each stanza

bar form

a three part musical and poetic structure (AAB)

paratactic form

medieval & renaissance - sense of fragmentation, modularity or a sense of standing on its own musically, repeatable sections

performance practice traditions in secular monophony

the interpretive traditions surrounding the single unaccompanied melodic line of medieval songs. Improvisation, instrumental accompaniment, and flexible rhythmic interpretation guided by text

madrigalism

word painting applied to the genre renaissance madrigal

mimesis

an attempt to reproduce reality in the music

Word painting/ text painting

creates an explicit association between individual words & the music to which they’ve been set. Pain→harmonic dissonance, song→extended malisma

mood painting

when the composer attempts to create a musical impression of poetic mood

“drive to the cadence” (a hallmark of Josquin’s compositional style)

a sense of forward momentum and heightened anticipation leading to a harmonic conclusion or a sense of finality at a cadence point. Gradual release in rhythmic activity and melodic intensity, building tension that is resolved by the cadence.

points of imitation

a musical passage or otive that is introduced in one voice and then copied by other voices at a different pitch and time, creating a texture of overlapping or sequential imitative entries in a contrapuntal composition

pervasive imitation

a compositional technique (late renaissance) where a short melodic idea or motive is imitated and repeated across almost all voices in a polyphonic texture.

clear cadential moments

a definitive point of resolution that marks the end of a musical phrase or section.

style

the particular combination of features that marks something as distinctive and at the same time as part of a group

rhythm and meter

concepts of musical time, beat or pulse, meter, rhythm, syncopation, polyrhythm vs polymeter, free rhythm, additive meters

melody

a succession of pitches that has a sense of order, cohesion, and direction

pitch

perceived quality (highness or lowness) of a sound that results from its fundamental frequency - can be fixed or movable.

motive

a short fragment of melody or rhythm used in constructing a long section of music

harmony

pitches heard simultaneously

monophony vs polyphony (texture

singular or multiple

types of polyphony (type of texture)

Homophony, Imitative Polyphony, Non-imitative polyphony, heterophony

timbre/tone color

the sonorous quality of a particular instrument, voice, or combination of instruments or voices

orchestration

art of employing instruments in various combinations 

instrumentation

study of properties & capabilities of individual instruments

traditional western classification system

strings, woodwinds, winds, percussion, keyboard

Sachs-Hornbostel Classification System

Idiophone, Membranophone, Chordophone, Aerophone, Corpophone, mechanical/electrical

Idiophone

an instrument whose body vibrates to produce sound (subdivided by playing technique)

membranophone

sound produced by a vibrating membrane (subdivided by playing technique, shape, size, and # of heads

chordophone

sound produced by a vibrating string (subdivided by construction and playing technique)

aerophone

sound produced by vibrating air

corpophones

sound produced by ones body