Wester Music History (Test #3)

Answers to the review-sheet questions, plus a listening guide with YouTube links. Cross-check details against your class notes and textbook, since your instructor's wording may differ.

Part 1: Short-Answer Questions

Cantata

Definition. A multi-movement work for vocal soloists, chorus, and instrumental ensemble, with a sacred or secular text. In Lutheran Germany it was the centerpiece of the Sunday and feast-day service, performed before the sermon.

General structure (Bach's Lutheran cantata).

• Opening chorus, often big and elaborate (many are chorale fantasias)

• Alternating recitatives (advance the text, sung with continuo) and arias (reflect on it, often da capo)

• Closing movement: a simple four-part harmonization of a chorale, sung by the choir with the congregation's hymn in mind

How many? Bach had to provide a new cantata roughly every week, which works out to about 50–60 per year at Leipzig. He completed about five yearly cycles in all, and about 200 cantatas survive.

Passion

A musical setting of the Gospel account of Christ's suffering and death, performed on Good Friday. It features an Evangelist (tenor) narrating in recitative, soloists in the roles of Jesus, Pilate and others, a chorus as the crowd (turba), reflective arias, and chorales. Bach's surviving Passions are the St. John (1724) and the St. Matthew (1727/1729).

Bach's Biography

• Born 1685, Eisenach. Orphaned young, he lived with his older brother in Ohrdruf and later studied in Lüneburg.

• Early posts: organist in Arnstadt (1703) and Mühlhausen (1707).

• Weimar (1708–1717): court organist, later concertmaster; wrote much of his organ music and began composing cantatas regularly.

• Cöthen (1717–1723): Kapellmeister for Prince Leopold, a Calvinist court with little use for elaborate church music. His duties were secular instrumental music, so this is where the Brandenburg Concertos, solo violin and cello works, and the first book of the Well-Tempered Clavier come from.

• Leipzig (1723–1750): Cantor of the Thomasschule and music director for the city's main churches. He taught, composed and performed weekly cantatas, wrote the Passions and the Mass in B minor, and directed the collegium musicum. He died in 1750.

• Final three cities: Weimar, Cöthen, Leipzig.

Collegium Musicum

A society of amateur and professional musicians, often university students, that gave regular public concerts of secular music, frequently in coffeehouses. Bach directed the Leipzig collegium musicum beginning in 1729.

The Baroque Suite / Partita

A set of stylized dance movements, all in the same key, for keyboard or other instruments.

Four standard dances (in order): Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, Gigue. Optional lighter dances (the galanteries: gavotte, minuet, bourrée, passepied) are often inserted before the gigue.

Form of each dance. Each is in binary form: two sections, each repeated (||: A :|| : B :||). Section A moves away from the tonic, typically to the dominant (or the relative major in a minor key), and B moves back to the tonic.

Unifying elements within a movement. A single mood and rhythmic pattern persists throughout, and a short motive from the opening is repeated and sequenced. B often begins with the opening motive again, sometimes inverted. For example, the gigue of French Suite No. 5 uses imitation between the hands, and the second half inverts the opening subject.

Characteristics of each dance.

• Allemande: moderate duple meter, German in origin, flowing sixteenth notes, starts with a short upbeat.

• Courante: French, quick triple meter, running figures, often with hemiola (shifting between 3/2 and 6/4 feel).

• Sarabande: slow triple meter with emphasis on beat 2, of Spanish origin, stately and ornamented.

• Gavotte: moderate duple meter, begins on the half measure (two upbeats).

• Gigue: fast, compound meter (6/8, 12/8), lively and often imitative.

The Fugue

A piece built on imitative polyphony for a set number of voices. Key terms:

• Subject: the main theme, stated alone at the beginning.

• Answer: the subject restated in another voice, usually on the dominant (tonal or real answer).

• Countersubject: a consistent melody that accompanies the subject after the answer.

• Exposition: the opening section in which every voice enters with the subject or answer.

• Episode: a passage between subject entries, often sequential, using fragments of the subject.

• Middle entries: later appearances of the subject in new keys.

• Stretto: entries overlapping, with the next voice starting before the previous one finishes.

• Other devices: pedal point, inversion, augmentation, diminution.

Toccata

A virtuosic, improvisatory keyboard piece (the name comes from Italian toccare, "to touch"). Its principal characteristic is flashy display: rapid running passages, scales, and chords, often alternating with sections in imitative style. Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor for organ is the best-known example.

Chorale Prelude and the Orgelbüchlein

Chorale prelude: an organ piece based on a Lutheran chorale (hymn) melody, used to introduce the hymn before the congregation sang it.

Orgelbüchlein ("Little Organ Book"): Bach planned about 164 chorale preludes arranged in order of the church year, but completed only 46. His goal, stated on the title page, was twofold: to teach a beginning organist to treat a chorale in many different ways, and to develop pedal technique. The chorale melody is usually clearly audible, with the other parts supporting it.

Handel: Career, Entrepreneurship, Royal Academy of Music

• Born 1685, Halle, the same year as Bach. He worked in Hamburg opera, then traveled in Italy (1706–1710), then served as Kapellmeister in Hanover before settling in London in 1710. He became a British citizen in 1727 and died in 1759.

• Music: Italian operas, English oratorios, and instrumental works.

• Entrepreneur: Unlike Bach, Handel was not tied to a church or a court. In London he organized, financed and managed opera productions, hired singers, composed, sold printed music, and gauged public taste. When opera lost its audience he shifted to oratorios, which were cheaper to produce.

• Royal Academy of Music (1719): not a school but an opera company, financed by nobles and subscribers to produce Italian opera in London. Handel was one of its composers and music directors, and it brought in star singers such as the castrato Senesino and the soprano Cuzzoni. It dissolved in 1728 after financial trouble and rivalry among its singers. Handel then started a second company, which also eventually failed.

• Instrumental works: Water Music (1717), Music for the Royal Fireworks (1749), concerti grossi (Op. 6), organ concertos, and keyboard suites.

Baroque Era Dates

Approximately 1600–1750, from the beginning of opera (and the seconda prattica) to Bach's death.

Da Capo Aria

Form: A B A'. The A section is longer and ends with a cadence in the tonic. The B section contrasts in key, mood, and sometimes text, and is usually shorter. The direction da capo ("from the head") sends the performers back to the beginning, where the singer repeats A with improvised ornamentation. A is often framed by instrumental ritornellos. The da capo aria is the standard aria type of Baroque opera seria.

Handel's "V'adoro, pupille" (Giulio Cesare). It does not follow the standard da capo form. It has two sections, A and B, with no return to the opening, a variation on the standard formula. It is also scored for a large pit orchestra plus an on-stage ensemble that represents the Parnassus setting for Cleopatra's seduction scene.

Oratorio

A large-scale, dramatic, unstaged work for soloists, chorus, and orchestra, usually on a sacred or biblical text.

• vs. cantata: an oratorio is much longer, tells a continuous story with named characters, and gives the chorus a major role. A cantata is shorter and tied to the church service.

• vs. opera: an oratorio has no scenery, costumes, or acting, and typically sets a sacred story, while opera is staged and usually secular.

Why English oratorios (Saul, 1739; Messiah, 1742)? London's taste for Italian opera had faded and the opera companies kept going bankrupt. Oratorios needed no staging or star imported singers, they were in English, and their biblical stories appealed strongly to the Protestant English public. The chorus also gave Handel a powerful new resource.