Comprehensive Study Notes: Music 27 Final Exam (Historical and Experimental Musicology)

The Foundations of Music: Pythagoras and the Apollonian-Dionysian Binary

The Myth of Marsyas and Apollo - This myth originates from Diodorus Siculus ( $c. 30\,BCE$ ) and serves as the founding act of Western music culture's preference for the rational over the bodily. - Apollo: Represents reason, mathematics, strings, and order. - Marsyas: Represents passion, the body, pipes (the irrational), and uncontrollable physical sound. - The Contest: Apollo wins the musical contest and flays Marsyas alive, signifying the suppression of bodily, irrational music in favor of formal, measurable music.
The Pythagorean Legend ( $1492$ Comic Strip) - Pythagoras discovered that harmonious musical intervals correspond to simple integer ratios. - The Octave: Corresponds to a $2:1$ ratio. - Philosophical Implication: Music was mathematics before it was art; harmony is grounded in absolute mathematical truth.
The Apollonian vs. Dionysian Binary - This runs through the entire course: Mind vs. Body, Strings vs. Pipes. - Examples: Hanslick’s formalism and Bach’s fugues (Apollo) vs. Italian opera melismas and Berlioz’s program music (Marsyas).

The Aesthetics of Text and Harmony: Renaissance Madrigals to Baroque Opera

Thomas Weelkes, "As Vesta Was from Latmos Hill Descending" ( $1601$ ) - Form: English secular madrigal for six voices a cappella, written for the anthology The Triumphs of Oriana to praise Queen Elizabeth I. - Technique: Word Painting: The music literally illustrates the text. Melodies descend on the word ‘descending’ and climb on ‘ascending.’ - Specific Details: A solo voice sings ‘leaving their goddess all alone,’ while all six voices join for the crowd of shepherds. The ‘Oriana’ refrain repeats $52$ times in roughly $50\,seconds$ (‘Singing Pro Max’). - Reading: Augustine’s Confessions. Augustine feared musical pleasure (Marsyas/Body) distracted from sacred words (Apollo/Mind). This piece adheres to oratio sit domina harmoniae (let words be master of music).
Thomas Weelkes, "Thule, the Period of Cosmographie" ( $1600$ ) - Context: Two paired madrigals listing Age of Discovery wonders (volcanoes, flying fish, exotic merchants). - Texture as Meaning: The first six lines (external world) are polyphonic (independent voices). The final two lines (‘These things seem wondrous, yet more wondrous I’) shift to homophony (unified voices), representing the shift from the external world to the interior mind (Mind-Body dualism/Descartes).
Jean-Philippe Rameau, "Tristes apprêts, pâles flambeaux" from Castor et Pollux ( $1737$ ) - Style: French tragédie lyrique. - Theory: Rameau wrote Traité de l'harmonie ( $1722$ ), making him the ‘Isaac Newton of music.’ - Musical Detail: Harmony-driven; the vocal melody is plain, but emotional weight comes from harmonic clashes and dissonances between the voice and orchestra. - Reading: Rousseau’s Essay on the Origin of Languages. Rousseau attacked French opera as cold and tyrannical, arguing it ‘shackles’ the natural voice to artificial harmony.
George Frideric Handel, "Se pietà di me non senti" from Giulio Cesare ( $1724$ ) - Form: Italian opera seria in da capo (ABA) form. The singer ornaments the repeat of the A section. - Musical Detail: Voice-driven with long, flowing melismas (many notes on one syllable), specifically on ‘io moriro’ (I will die). - Rousseau vs. Augustine: Rousseau defended this as the ‘free voice of a free society,’ while Augustine worried the melismatic excess distracted from the words.

J.S. Bach and the Formalist Arc

Overview of Formalism - Eduard Hanslick: Argued beauty is in ‘tonally moving forms,’ not emotion or stories. ‘Form is the content.’
The Musical Offering ( $BWV 1079, 1747$ ) - Constructed on a theme from King Friedrich II of Prussia. - Crab Canon (Canon a 2 cancrizans): Retrograde canon; one voice forward, one backward. - Canon in Contrary Motion: Inversion transformation; every up-interval in one voice is a down-interval in the other. - Canon by Augmentation and Contrary Motion: Inversion stacked with augmentation (theme is twice as slow). - Canon per tonos (Endlessly Rising Canon): Modulates upward by a whole step every repetition. After six repetitions, it returns to the original key an octave higher (compare to Penrose stairs or Möbius strip). - Reading: Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach regarding ‘strange loops.’
The Art of the Fugue ( $BWV 1080, c. 1750$ ) - Contrapunctus I: Opening fugue. Proves absolute music because no instrumentation is specified; it is pure relationship of notes. - Contrapunctus III: Inversion of the original theme. - Contrapunctus VI: Stylo Francese; stacks the original theme, inversion, and diminution (sped up). - Contrapunctus VII: Most extreme; stacks original, inversion, augmentation, and diminution simultaneously. - Legacy: These four transformations (P, I, R, RI) are the direct technical ancestors of Schoenberg’s twelve-tone technique.
Bach, Passacaglia in C Minor ( $BWV 582, c. 1706-1713$ ) - Built on an ostinato (repeating bass line). - Social History: Originated as a dance groove from the Americas under Spanish rule; banned by the church in $1615$ ; disciplined by the French court; finally disembodied by Bach into a pure formal object for organ.

Beethoven and the Construction of Genius

Symphony No. 5 in C Minor ( $Op. 67, 1808$ ) - I. Allegro con brio: Saturated by the four-note motive (‘da-da-da-DUM’). Demonstrates prolongation. - II. Andante con moto: Theme and variation. Kant’s Distinction: Beautiful (pleasant opening theme) vs. Sublime (threatening fanfare hinting at the infinite). - III. Scherzo: Ternary form (ABA’). Includes a brass fugato (‘Bach-like’) described by E.M. Forster as ‘goblins.’ - IV. Finale: Triumphant C Major. First symphony to use piccolo, contrabassoon, and three trombones (supernatural instruments).
Reading and Interpretation - E.T.A. Hoffmann: Music is the most Romantic of arts because it expresses ‘infinite longing’ and cannot be reduced to images. - Tia DeNora: Argues Beethoven’s genius was constructed via Viennese aristocratic patronage, not just inherent talent. Compared to Jan Ladislav Dussek (Piano Sonata in B-flat Major, $c. 1800$ ), whose elegant, decorative style represented the actual standard of the time.

Dramatic Music: Berlioz, Wagner, and Mozart

Hector Berlioz, Symphonie fantastique, Mov. V ( $1830$ ) - Context: Program music about an artist on opium hallucinating his funeral. - Musical Detail: Massive orchestra, col legno (bow wood on strings), Dies Irae (chant for the dead) in brass, and tubular bells. - Conflict: Liszt/Sayn-Wittgenstein (Music of the Future/Program) vs. Hanslick/Hoffmann (Pure form/Absolute music).
Richard Wagner, Das Rheingold ( $1869$ ) - Transition Scene 1 to 2: Purely instrumental. Shifts from Rhine leitmotif (low strings) to Valhalla leitmotif (regal brass). - Gesamtkunstwerk: Total artwork. Hidden orchestra pit at Bayreuth. Orchestra acts as the narrator. - Readings: Shaw (anti-capitalist allegory); Wagner’s Judaism in Music (antisemitism).
Mozart, Don Giovanni ( $1787$ ) - Donna Anna, "Or sai chi l'onore": Powerful, ascending sequences. Mind-Body split (she acts). - Don Ottavio, "Dalla sua pace": Useless tenor; melismatic, decelerates action (mind with no body). - Masetto, "Ho capito signor si": Repetitive, frustrated; turns humiliation on Zerlina (body with no mind). - Leporello, "Madamina" (Catalogue Aria): Lists conquests ( $640$ Italy, $231$ Germany, $100$ France, $91$ Turkey, $1003$ Spain). Liane Curtis argues it glamorizes toxic masculinity. - The Finale/Statue Scene: Trombones enter for the first time. D Minor. Don Giovanni’s refusal to repent: heroic freedom (Kierkegaard) or compulsion/drive (Freud)?

Modernism, Atonality, and Minimalism

Arnold Schoenberg, Five Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 16 ( $1909$ ) - Free Atonality: No key center, no system yet. ‘Emancipation of the dissonance.’ - Movement 3, "Farben": Klangfarbenmelodie (tone-color melody). A single chord shifts timbres between instruments. - Reading: Brahms the Progressive. Schoenberg claims he is the logical successor to the Bach-Brahms formalist line.
Arnold Schoenberg, Variations for Orchestra, Op. 31 ( $1928$ ) - Twelve-tone work using the tone row. - Uses P, I, R, RI (retrograde inversion). - Quotes the BACH motif (B-flat, A, C, B-natural) as a tribute.
Steve Reich, "Come Out" ( $1966$ ) - Tape piece using recorded phrase by Daniel Hamm (Harlem Six). - Phase Shifting: Two channels drift out of sync into rhythm/noise (about $13\,minutes$ ). - Reading: Adorno (commodity technology); Fink (consumer culture/recycling).
Steve Reich, "Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ" ( $1973$ ) - minimalism rejection of European ‘Angst.’ - Robert Fink: ‘Mercantile sublime’; small satisfactions like selling burgers or scrolling.

History and Historiography of J.S. Bach

Haskell, The Early Music Revival - The $19th$ century invented ‘Early Music’ for nationalist reasons. - St. Matthew Passion ( $1727$ ): Revived by Mendelssohn in $1829$ . Shifted from Lutheran church service to secular concert hall as a symbol of German greatness. - Cantata BWV 80 ("Ein feste Burg", $c. 1723$ ): Built on Martin Luther’s chorale. Luther promoted congregational singing in German (Reformation), which shaped Bach’s polyphyic style. The $19th\,century$ constructed the Reformation as a specifically German achievement.