Music History

Name of Piece: Flow My Tears

Composer: John Dowland

Date composed: 1600

Three facts about the piece: 

  • Adapted from a lute piece called ‘Lachrimae’

    • In the form of a ‘pavane’ (16th C. Italian processional dance)

    • AABBCC form

  • Second Book of Songs

  • Abstract instrumental music for enjoyment of player/listener (Not just for the elite)

  • Topmost melody in the vocal line with a poem in 5 strophes

  • Opening motive: stepwise descent through fourth, suggesting a falling tear

Name of Piece: As Vesta Was

Composer: Thomas Weelkes

Date composed: 1601

Three facts about the piece: 

  • Published in Morley’s collection The Triumphes of Oriana

  • Not sure who it is dedicated to (Queen Elizabeth or Anna of Denmark?)

    • Changed dedication to Queen Elizabeth because Anna was catholic

  • Poetry by Weelkes: very literal word painting, wrote the text himself

    • “Ascending” “Descending”

    • “Running down”, “alone”

  • Story from Greek mythology - 'maiden queen’, related to Diana

  • ‘Long live fair Oriana’ appears 49 times

  • Likely for amateurs to sing at home


Name of Piece: Revecy venir du printans

Composer: Claude Le Jeune

Date composed: Late 1500s

Three facts about the piece: 

  • Exemplifies musique mesurée (measured music - a new approach to poetry and music that was practiced by elite circles in late 16th C. France)

  • Unification of poetry & music, like Ancient Greek

  • Refrain for 5 voices, written in French rather than Latin

  • Poets wrote strophic French verses while attempting to emulate ancient classical Greek meters 

  • Composers set these verses with long notes for long vowels and half as long for the short vowels 

  • Melismas used to relieve the uniformity of the rhythm & add lightness & charm to individual parts


Name of Piece: Canzon a 8 from Sacrae Symphoniae

Composer: Giovanni Gabrieli

Date composed: 1597

Three facts about the piece: 

  • From Sacrae symphoniae

  • Two groups of four instruments alternating long passages and engaging in musical dialogue with organ accompaniment

  • Canzona: contrasting sections (imitative, homophonic)

  • Form defined by a refrain that appears 3 times

  • Divided choirs (core spezzati)

  • For instrumental enjoyment in the cathedral


Name of Piece: Amarilli mia bella

Composer: Giulio Caccini

Date composed: 1602

Three facts about the piece: 

  • Words from Il pastor fido by Guarini

  • Greek myth of Amaryllis - turns into a flower due to not fulfilling a deal she makes with the oracle

  • Expressive ornamentation - florid

  • Focus on how the voice treats the text (compared to Flow my Tears)

  • Solo voice

  • From Le nuove musiche


Name of Piece: L’Orfeo, Toccata

Composer: Claudio Monteverdi

Date composed: 1607

Three facts about the piece: 

  • First opera that we still perform today

  • First performed for the ‘Accademia degli Invaghiti’ in Mantua

  • Alessandro Striggio (c.1573-1630): libretto

  • 5 acts, based on Euridice & the myth of Orpheus

    • Orpheus is son of the muse of music, wife dies at his weddings, sings his way into the underworld with his powerful music, and persuades Hades through the power of music

  • Flexible & expressive recitative

  • Dramatic unity - acts as their own section (treats it as a full story as opposed to separate arias)

    • Brings back recurring themes, sections are similar as opposed to vastly different

  • Dramatic climaxes - heightened emotion in the music (dissonances, virtuosity through the tenor who sings as Orpheus, etc)

  • Toccata section: opening of the opera, instrumental, fanfare-like

  • Baroque version of prelude for opera


Name of Piece: Vespers of 1610, I. Deus in adjutorum meum (Psalm 70)

Composer: Claudio Monteverdi

Date composed: 1610

Three facts about the piece: 

  • Uses a variety of music styles to showcase his compositional talent

  • Thought of as a job application after he quit working at the court of Mantua

  • Composed after his wife died

  • Psalm settings in the Venetian style


Name of Piece: L’incoronazione di Poppea, ‘Pur ti miro'

Composer: Claudio Monteverdi

Date composed: 1643

Three facts about the piece: 

  • Libretto by Giovanni Francesco Busenello

  • Finale scene, love duet

  • Pur ti miro, pur ti godo (“I gaze upon you, I desire you”)

  • Word painting represented with: Harmonic clashes & resolutions symbolizing desire

  • "Più non peno, più non more” (“No more pain, no more death)

    • Voice clash on “pain” and “death”

  • Word painting: “t’annodo” (enchain)

  • Dissonant minor 2nd: musical & sensory dissonance

  • Historical opera on Roman Emperor Nero & Poppaea Sabina

  • Written for commercial theatre: smaller instrumentation (small ensemble) - limited amount of space, focus is on the opera as a whole, not the big musical sound

  • Depiction of human character, emotions, & interpersonal drama


Name of Piece: Lagrime mie

Composer: Barbara Strozzi

Date composed: 1659

Three facts about the piece: 

  • Appeared in the third published collection of cantatas and arias, Diporti di Euterpe

  • Poet likely father G. Strozzi

  • Cantata: form with sections in recitative, arioso, and aria that alternate depending on lyric/narrative poetry styles

  • First three lines: poet addresses tears (recit)

  • Next ten lines: object of poet’s love Lidia (arioso)

  • Descending bass in triple meter

  • Aria & short recit leads to section in triple time

  • Hesitant dissonances imitate weeping & sobbing

  • Style emphasizes her training in the seconda prattica tradition


Name of Piece: Pièces de clavecin, Suite No. 3 in A Minor

Composer: Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre

Date composed: 1687

Three facts about the piece: 

  • Published when she was 22

  • Publication includes four suites

  • Begins with a prelude in improvisational style (similar to toccata)

  • Special notation without meter - greater rhythmic freedom

  • Dances: Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, Gigue, Chaconne, Gavotte, Minuet

  • Variety of moods and styles from contrasting meters, tempos, and textures