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CHAPTER 31
The Concerted Style in
Venice and Dresden
The basilica of St. Mark was and is the
focus of civic and spiritual life in Venice
It is built in the form of an equal-sided Greek cross, a unique
architectural plan among the major churches of the West.
• Cori spezzati: literally "broken choirs," it is
music composed for two, three, or four choirs
placed in different parts of the building. Since
the mid sixteenth century, cori spezzati was a
whole mark of composers working at St. Mark's,
where separate ensembles would perform in the
two choir lofts to the left and right of the main
isle (see Fig. 31-1).
• Stile concertato: Italian for "corcerted style," it
is a term broadly used to identify Baroque music
marked by grand scale and strong contrast,
either between voices and instruments, between
separate instrumental and choral ensembles, or
even between soloist and choir.
• Giovanni Gabrieli: organist and composer at St.
Mark's, he is important to history for having been
the first composer to indicate dynamic levels and
specify particular instruments in a musical score, as
can be heard throughout the two volumes of his
Sacred Symphonies (1597 and 1615).
• Concerted motet: a motet entirely in stile
concertato (for an example of a concerted motet,
listen to Anthology, No. 83).
• Claudio Monteverdi, creator of a new-style madrigal
at the end of the Renaissance (see Chapter 28) and
main progenitor of opera (see Chapter 30),
succeeded Giovanni Gabrieli as maestro di cappella
at St. Mark's in 1613. While Monteverdi's secular
music survives in print, most of his compositions for
St. Mark's have been lost as they were never
published.
• Concerted madrigal: a madrigal in which
instruments appear, and textures and timbres are
strongly contrasting (for an example of a concerted
madrigal, listen to Anthology, No. 84).
Stile concitato: a style of composition particularly suited to warlike music
which consists in dividing whole notes into machine gun-like short notes—
sixteenth notes all firing on the same pitch (Ex. 31-2). Monteverdi claims to
have invented this new style in his eighth book of madrigals, in which it is
featured prominently.
• Barbara Strozzi: a pupil of opera composer
Francesco Cavalli, she published eight volumes of
vocal music, mostly solo madrigals, arias, and
cantatas with basso continuo.
• Cantata: literally "a sung thing," it was the primary
genre of vocal chamber music. Grown out of the
solo madrigal, the cantata is usually a piece of
accompanied solo vocal music dealing with secular
topics. Because it was usually performed for a small
audience in a private residence, this genre is also
called the chamber cantata.
Basso ostinato: a bass line that insistently repeats, note for note.
The most frequent types of basso ostinato in the seventeenth century
are the passamezzo antico, folia, passacaglia, and ciaconna (called
chaconne in French).
Lament bass: A basso ostinato which consists in a descending
tetrachordal figure, usually in triple meter (Ex. 31-4a). This ostinato
figure would remain a signpost of lament all the way to J.S. Bach,
who used it in the "Crucifixus" of his B-Minor Mass.
The Concerted Style Moves North:
Heinrich Schütz in Dresden
• Heinrich Schütz was among the first of a long line of
seventeenth- and eighteenth-century composers who made
their way to Italy to learn the Italian style (Handel and
Mozart would follow). He studied with Andrea and Giovanni
Gabrieli, and later with Monteverdi in Venice. He composed
the first opera in German, namely Dafne (now lost) of 1627.
In 1621 Schütz became Kapellmeister (chief of music at
court, German equivalent of maestro di cappella) in the
chapel of the Elector of Saxony in Dresden, where he
started to publish sacred music for the court.
• Thirty Years' War (1618-1648): a series of declared and
undeclared wars fought essentially between the Protestants
and the Catholics over political control and religious
dominance in central Europe. During this time, musical
institutions in Germany were devastated, including those in
Dresden. Schütz's compositions during the Thirty Years'
War reflect the mood of these troubled times.
Schütz's knowledge of the
dramatic conventions of opera and
the Venetian concerted motet can
be heard in his Saul, Saul, was
verfolgst du mich? (Anthology, No.
86), which recounts St. Paul's
conversion to Christianity on the
way to Damascus. In this
concerted motet, Schütz makes
use of many compositional
techniques learned in Italy—
among them cori spezzati,
monody, concerted madrigal style,
and dynamic markings—which
reinforce the dramatic contrast at
the heart of much Baroque art and
music (see, for example, the stark
contrast between light and dark in
Fig. 31-3).