Music Appreciation

Hamilton

• Hamilton is the singular creation of actor, writer, and musician Lin-Manuel Miranda

• he casted non-white actors to play historically white characters.

• Hamilton is the latest musical to incorporate contemporary popular styles

• Hamilton also references other styles and instruments for the purpose of

  communicating with the audience in ways that transcend the script and stage

  action

  • The use of musical sounds to signify hidden meaning is termed allegory

  • Allegory depends on our prior associations with musical sounds

• It is in the style of 1960s British Invasion pop

  • Miranda makes a connection between an invasive British

  musical style and an imperialistic British character

  • The cheerful music also underscores the disturbing text

• Hamilton also incorporates cyclical techniques

• Hamilton also incorporates cyclical techniques

•Cyclical techniques are used to tie together the various parts of a large-scale work

• Cyclicism involves the repetition of musical material

The Origins of European Opera

• European opera was first imagined by members of the Florentine Camerata

• These courtiers, composers, poets, and scholars, led by Count Giovanni de’ Bardi, were i interested in revitalizing ancient Greek sung drama

• They were inspired by Girolamo Mei’s 1573 book On the Musical Modes of the Ancients

• Ancient Greek plays were sung

• The music was emotionally powerful

• Vincenzo Galilei, the father of Galileo, developed a new approach to the composition of

vocal music

• Recitative is a style of vocal writing in which the pitches and rhythms are determined

  by the sound and meaning of the text

  • Recitative does not have a regular pulse or meter

  • There are few catchy melodies and little or no melodic repetition

  • The harmonies express the emotional content of the words

  Recitative is supported by basso continuo, a term that refers both to a style of

  accompaniment and the instruments that provide it

  • Basso continuo requires at least one instruments that can play chords (e.g. an organ or lute)

  • It usually also includes a bass instrument (e.g. the cello or bassoon)

  • These instruments provide harmonies in support of the singer

  Basso continuo was nearly universal throughout the Baroque period (1600-1750)

Claudio Monteverdi, Orpheus

• Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) took Italian opera to new heights

• He served the Gonzaga family in Mantua

• He flourished under the patronage of Duke Vincenzo I

• He was not affiliated with the Florentine Camerata,

• but he was aware of their ideas and experiments

• Monteverdi was dismissed by Vincenzo’s son and successor in 1612-

• In 1613 he became music director at St. Mark’s basilica in Venice

• He continued to write operas into his old age

• Monteverdi wrote Orpheus for the 1607 Carnival season

• Carnival immediately precedes Lent, the 40-day period of fasting and penitence that

leads up to Easter in the Catholic calendar

• The Orpheus myth was an obvious choice for early opera composers, for it is about the

power of music

• Orpheus was a legendary musician fathered by the god Apollo

• Monteverdi’s Orpheus begins with an overture, or instrumental introduction