Music History/Text Setting

Stasimon Chorus

   Euripides

   408 BC

Text: about a goddess freeing a boy, sorrow, grief

-melody in the only voice there was, rhythm was free so the text went with it

Summary: Text was a story, went along with the slightly free rhythm, no text painting, syllabic, unison chant.

Victimae Paschali Laudes

Wipo of Burgundy

Early 11th Century

Minidrama in way text is laid out (speakers, response, dialogue with Mary)

Summary: Syllabic, used in church, unison chant

Orientis Partibus

Unknown composer

12th Century

Latin poem set to music, not liturgical. Unison.

Summary: Text was sung in unison.

Sumer is Icumen in

Unknown composer

1250

Announcing coming of summer, cuckoo text painting, upbeat canon, feels dancy

A’larme, a’larme

Grimace

1370

Text: in love, going off to war, call to war

Le Chant de Oiseaux

Clement Janequin

1537

Articulation and alternation of notes sounds like birds chirping

Summary: Text painting with bird sounds. Super duper complex. Nightingale: symbol for unfaithful love

O Magnum Mysterium

Tomas Luis de Victoria

1570

Joy, restrained and unrestrained (triple meter, return of imitation), mysterious (fifths and semitone and imitative counterpoint), awe (slower notes), magnum (large leaps of a fifth)

Solo e pensoso

Luca Marenzio

1590s

Sonnet by Petrarch, about the writer alone in the field, wandering, he knows nature and his inner self, cannot avoid love

Text painting: long ascending chromatic scale like him wandering, jagged melody like his darting eyes

Summary: Text painting of poem, text in five parts

In dulci jubilo

Michael Praetorius

1619

Stanza 1: soloist alternates with full choir

Stanza 2: duet alternating

Stanza 3: boy choir

Stanza 4: choir and soloists alternate with congregation

Saul, was verfolgst du mich

Heinrich Schutz

1632

LOTS of text painting: God’s voice coming out of depths into consciousness, starts low at the beginning calling Saul’s name, kicking melisma