Music History 2 January Notes and Terms

Claudia Monteverdi (1567-1643)

• Wrote in both traditional Renaissance genres + new ones: opera, solo song.

• 1590: in service of the Gonzaga (Dukes of Mantua), rose to be chapel director

• 1614-43: choirmaster at St. Mark’s, Venice

• Initially most famous (of infamous?) for his 9 books of madrigals

Monteverdi, “Cruda Amarilla” 

NAWM 71, p.467

• Published in the 5th book of Madrigals (1605) but composed in the late 1590s

• Text: from Il pastor fido [“The Faithful Shepherd”], poem by Giovanni Battista Guarini

  • Speaker: Mirtillo [a shepherd]

  • Poetic play on Amaryllis’ name [“amaro” in Italian translates to both “bitter’ AND “amare” meaning to love]

The Monteverdi- Artusi Controversy

Giovanni Maria Artusi, The Imperfections of Modern Music (1600)

• Criticizes Monteverdi’s unpublished madrigals because they violated the rules of counterpoint, which were made by the church and were considered sacred rules, especially in Italy at the time.

• Building off of Palestrina’s rules of controlling dissonance

Monteverdi's Ren-Baroque Distinction

1st practice (prima prattica):

• Renaissance style sacred polyphony (modeled Palestrina)

• Ideas centered around Order, proportion (harmonia)

2nd practice (seconda prattica):

• Rules of counterpoint broken for expressive purposes

• Ideas centered around “Baroque” dramatic expression (but really goes back at least to madrigalist in the 1550s)

Style of Division in the Baroque Period

Two distinct  styles coexist:

Prima prattica (1st practice): music governed by rules of Renaissance counterpoint

• Text secondary to musical laws

• Also called stile antico (“old style”)

Seconda prattica (2nd practice): contrapuntal licenses express the text

• Also called stile moderno (“modern style”) + continuo

Expression

Affections = particular emotional states: rage, wonder, sadness, exultation, etc.

17th C Theory:

• Music “moves” or “expresses” the affections

• Moving the listener is now the primary aim of musicians

The Concertato Medium

• From “Concertare” Italian “to put together”) meaning pieces with parts specifically composed for voices and instruments

• Few Renaissance pieces had obbligato (Italian “required”) instruments

  • Instruments usually added to double or replace voices in practice

• Early 17th C: “Concerto” meaning pieces for voice and instruments (not just an instrumental piece for a soloist and orchestra)

The Centrality of Performance in the Baroque

• Scores assume many unnoted performance practices

  • Instrumentation flexible, based on context

  • Few dynamic indications

  • Few tempo indications

  • Few indications of articulation

  • Flexible rhythmic practices

  • Considerable use of ornamentation and improvisation

  • Pitch and tuning systems not standardized

• Singers and performers more like actors who needed to interpret the score

• Style of the music guides the interpretation to project affect

How do we know what Baroque musicians did, if it wasn’t written in the music?

Find Evidence via historical research:

• Treatise written on performance from the period

• Study and play old instruments (the study of organology)

• Documents and descriptions of performances

• Visual Representation (the study of iconography)

Musicians experiment with ideas and techniques derived from research and using their own creativity.

Controversies Concerned “Authenticity”

• 1970s: “musicians attempt to recreate performances as they were in the past

  • “Authenticity” becomes a buzzword

  • Musicians turned to instruments of the period to learn about their effect on performance

• Late 80s: critiques of “authenticity” as an absolute

  • All performances involved some degree of creative interpretation

• Today performance on old instruments considered parts of "Historically-Infromed Performance” (HIP)

• Also referred to as “Early Music”

  • Generally refers to repertoire before 1800

  • But 19th C repertoire is also sometimes performed using instruments and performance practices of the period

Basso Continuo

• Italian for “continuous bass”

• Improvised accompaniment

• Found in (virtually) all baroque music

• Figures with signs and numbers indicate the intervals above the bass

  • BC also called “Figured bass”

  • Players improvise a realization of the figures

• Instruments playing continuo typically combine two functions: Harmonic support and Ornamental figuration