Download History of Western Classical Music Lecture 14: Baroque Vocal Music

History of Western Classical Music
Lecture 14: Baroque Vocal Music
BAROQUE VOCAL MUSIC: MONODY, OPERA
Around 1600 several innovations in music took place. The first deals mostly with a
new freedom to handle dissonances. Monteverdi was sharply attacked by a contemporary music critic for his madrigal Cruda Amarili and in response, as a defense of his music, wrote an article where he called this style the “second practice”. He was comparing
this new style to the first practice that was represented mostly in his first four volumes of
madrigals. Basically, the issue revolves around how dissonances are to be prepared and
resolved, the details of which are beyond the scope of this class.
Monteverdi : Madrigal “Cruda Amarilli”. [workbook chapter 53] Monteverdi is expressing emotions through harmonies, a more sophisticated means than text painting. This madrigal
is in the new homophonic style of the early Baroque. Monteverdi called it the second practice,
where the text and its reflection in expressive harmonies is more important than strictly following the rules. Music in second practice is less bound by the restrictions of strict modal
counterpoint. Notice that this is still a polyphonic setting for five parts. The dissonance in the
13th measure between soprano and bass (9th to a 7th, both dissonant and unprepared) was the
most criticized. NAWM CD 3, # 59
Claudio Monteverdi
Early Baroque homophony: In the late Renaissance and in the aftermath of the Council
of Trent (Counter-Reformation), composers of vocal music were striving to make the
words better understood and a style of homophony developed that was called monody.
Basically, this term is used for an early Baroque melody with accompaniment. Only the
melodies of the uppermost and lowest voices were written out, the voices in the middle were filled in by improvisation based on numbers added by the composer to the
bass line to indicate the intervals that were to be played above it. The contraposition
of the melody and the bass line is sort of like a “sandwich”, where the bread is like the
bass and soprano voices, and the meat, cheese, salad and mayonnaise (and/or whatever
other ingredients one might like to add) is like the other voices that are filling in the harmony in the middle. This type of texture is one of the most important features of early
Baroque music, the notation was called figured bass.
Giulio Caccini, Madrigal: Vedro ‘l mio sol. [Workbook chapter 51] In this madrigal in
the “modern” monodic style, Caccini wrote out some ornaments, but generally, improvisation
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Lecture 14: Baroque Vocal Music
was not only limited to the inner voices, but the singer was also expected to add ornaments, such
as trills and turns and dynamic effects and this was called tempo rubato. NAWM CD 3, # 51
An important composer of monody was Giulio Caccini (1545 – 1618), who wrote about
this genre in his publication Le nuove musiche (The New Music), published in 1602.
Caccini lived near the Italian city of Florence, where in the late 1600s flourished a
group of writers, artists and musicians, most of them aristocratic humanists (people
educated in the culture and language of the Ancient Greeks and Rome, who called themselves the “camerata”. They liked the theater and had an interest in reviving Greek
drama. Greek drama was known to have used choruses, even though Renaissance scholars knew little of how that music actually sounded, certainly less than we know today (!),
and more about Greek philosophical thought on music. But combined with the idea that
music increases the emotional meaning of the words, the camerata developed the genre of opera. Among the members of this group were Jacopo Peri and Giulio Caccini.
There had been some predecessors to opera in the late Renaissance, when intermedi
were written for entertainment at courts, mixing music with dance, mime, drama and
speech, all with fine scenery and costumes. But the new element in opera was that all text
was to be sung! Musically accompanied speech-like singing was used for the dialogues
and called recitative, while the characters expressed their emotions more lyrically in arias.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAhMM_orbD8&feature=results_main&playne
xt=1&list=PL1F15115213E816A3
Jacopo Peri: Le musiche sopra l' Euridice. [Workbook chapter 52] This is the first opera to
have survived in complete score. Listen to the monody, the first two sections being forms or aria,
while the third is a truly new monody in speech-style declamation. CD 3 # 54 – 58
Jacopo Peri
cover of Caccini’s “New Music”
Earliest operas were given at court and in the palaces of the nobility and aristocracy.
However, opera soon gained in popularity and in 1637 the first public opera house was
opened in Venice. Other centers for opera were Rome and Naples, with Alessandro
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History of Western Classical Music
Lecture 14: Baroque Vocal Music
Scarlatti being a prominent composer in both places. Italian opera then moved to the rest
of Europe, mostly to Vienna and Paris.
In the 1670s French opera was established, combining the French liking for literature,
drama and dance with the French King, Louis the 14th‘s liking for lavish entertainment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmYkaqX6Zfg
 Jean Baptiste Lully, Le bourgeois gentilhomme. Notice that the French overture is a
series of dance movements, here an allemande and a chaconne (imported from Latin
America) over a repeated chord pattern (I, V, IV, V most obvious in the measures 10-22
and 44-end). Notice the dotted rhythms. NAWM CD 4 ## 49-50:
Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme
Early stories of opera were taken from mythology and antiquity and the subject matters generally stressed that virtue (being good) has its proper value and that kings and
princes are benevolent and just (of course!). This type of opera was called opera seria
(serious opera).
In France, serious opera was sung in French with sung recitative (tragédie lyrique = lyric tragedy). But soon there also developed the opera comique a sort of open air, street
theatre, were dialogues were spoken. Comic opera developed in other countries as well.
It was called opera buffa in Italy, while in Germany lighter styles of opera were called
Singspiel (singing play), and England had ballad operas and masques. In this lighter
style, recitative was often spoken rather than sung.
The sacred counterpart to opera was the oratorio, which was generally not acted out,
but performed in churches without stage. Since during Lent (the Christian fasting season)
opera was forbidden, oratorios flourished, their stories generally taken from the bible. An
important composer in this genre was Georg Friedrich Handel (1685 -1759) who traveled to England as a young man and later on worked in England, where during the 1730s
and 40s he wrote oratorios like Saul, The Messiah and Judas Maccabeus.
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Lecture 14: Baroque Vocal Music
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6P3o-xmfZjg
NAWM CD 6 ## 25 Handel: Saul. [Workbook chapter 84] Listen to the two types of
recitative: accompanied recitative (with more important and more melodic instrumental
parts) and dry recitative with simple chordal accompaniment.
A particular oratorio popular in the Baroque was the Passion, telling the story of the suffering of Jesus Christ, mostly performed at the Christian feast of Easter. Johann Sebastian
Bach wrote very fine passions.
Masses were still composed, but now set in the new style with solo and choral singing
accompanied by instruments, rather than in the mostly vocal polyphonic style of the Renaissance.
Bach: Mass In B Minor, BWV 232 - Gloria: Gloria In Excelsis Deo (ITUNES)
 J.S. Bach, Mass in b minor: Aria “et in spiritum sanctum dominum”. NAWM CD 6, 13
The secular cantata replaced the Renaissance madrigal as the main popular genre.
Many cantatas (sacred and secular) were written by Scarlatti and Handel, while sacred
cantatas are most known by J.S. Bach. Cantatas would generally begin and end with a
choral section, in between there were a number of recitatives and arias for soloists
(who would sing individually and in ensembles) as well as instrumental sections. The
theme of secular cantatas was generally love, or its betrayal, which gave composers the
opportunity to express strong emotions. Arias were written in different forms, one form
to remember is the Da capo aria, where the A section is repeated after the B section:
ABA (ternary form).
Baroque Motets were similarly adapted to the new more dramatic style. Leading composers were Monteverdi (1567-1643), Giovanni Gabrieli (1554-1612) in Italy, in
Germany there was Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672). In France, Lully (1632-1687) wrote
ceremonial motets with elaborate choruses and expressive solos. In England Henry
Purcell (1659-1695) was the leading composer of verse anthems that were similarly developed in the new style of using chorus and solo sections (originally it had been a simple
devotional hymn with repeated texts and set to the same melody in the successive stanzas/verses, like the chorale of the Lutheran church).
HOMEWORK: LISTEN TO: Johann Sebastian Bach: Cantata “Wachet auf, ruft
uns die Stimme”. NAWM CD 6 (takes about one half hour). Expect questions…. List the

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History of Western Classical Music
Lecture 14: Baroque Vocal Music
individual movements and the groups performing them and hand this list in as homework
next class. Indicate the form of each movement (choose from through composed, binary
AB, da Capo Aria /ternary ABA, strophic with repeated melody to different texts…..)
Sign in at Naxosmusiclibrary.com, username and password: esncmps you can use the
playlist
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