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CHAPTER 34
Instrumental Music
in Germany and Austria
Although Italy was the fountainhead of Western art music during the
seventeenth century, other countries developed their own distinctive
musical styles and practices. In German-speaking lands, highly
contrapuntal pieces and those built upon sacred melodies were
especially favored.
Johann Froberger:
German organist and composer
• Like many Northern musicians, he studied for
several years in Italy and later served as organist at
the imperial court in Vienna. He composed almost
exclusively keyboard music and established the
dance suite as an important genre of music for
clavichord and harpsichord.
• Dance suite: An ordered set of dances for solo
instrument or ensemble, all written in the same key
and intended to be performed in a single sitting.
The core dances of the dance suite are the
• Allemande – in common time at a moderate tempo
• Courante – a lively dance characterized by
intentional metrical ambiguity by means of hemiola
• Sarabande – A slow, stately dance in ¾ with a
strong accent on the second beat
• Gigue – A fast dance in triple meter with a constant
eighth-note pulse
• Program music: music in which some external
influence or non-musical event affects the general
spirit and the specific details of an instrumental
composition. In the late seventeenth century, both
the suite and the sonata began to display
programmatic elements. Through the compositions
of Heinrich Biber and Johann Kuhnau among
others, instrumental music was appropriating the
expressivity of vocal music.
Heinrich Biber
• Bohemian-born virtuoso violinist and composer,
mostly known today for his sonatas for solo violin
and basso continuo. Among them are his famous
"Mystery" Sonatas (also known as the "Rosary"
Sonatas), a set of fifteen sonatas for solo violin
and continuo that project through music a
sequence of fifteen miraculous, or mysterious,
events in the lives of Christ and Mary (the
annunciation, nativity, crucifixion, and so on).
Scordatura
Scordatura: Tuning a string
instrument to something other
than standard tuning (Italian for
"mistuning"). The purpose of
scordatura is to make certain
passages easier to play, to
produce special effects, and to
make the instrument sound
more brilliant by emphasizing
the resonance of particular
strings.
Johann Kuhnau: immediate predecessor of J.S. Bach as cantor at
the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, he is known today primarily for his
set of six keyboard sonatas entitled Musical Representations of a Few
Biblical Histories (1700). The first of these sonatas, The Battle
between David and Goliath, constitutes a prime example of
programmatic music.
The North German Organ Traditions
• Exemplified by Buxtehude's organ compositions, it
is marked by intense counterpoint, the use of choral
tunes, as well as plenty of virtuosic display showing
vestiges of improvisation.
• Dieterich Buxtehude: Considered the greatest
north German organ composer. Born in Denmark,
he served as organist at the church of St. Mary in
Lübeck for nearly forty years.
• Abendmusik: an hour-long concert of sacred
music with arias and recitatives given during the
late afternoons of the last five Sundays before and
during Advent. The Abendmusik at St. Mary's
Church in Lübeck were particularly popular during
Buxtehude's time.
The South German Organ Tradition
• As evident in Pachelbel's organ pieces, it tempers the Nordic
contrapuntal rigor with an increased fondness for lyricism.
• Johann Pachelbel: German composer, trained in the south
German and Austrian organ tradition. Although he composed
hundreds of vocal and instrumental pieces, his fame today chiefly
resides in his Canon in D Major.
• Choral fantasia: a lengthy composition for organ
that takes a choral tune as a point of departure and
increasingly gives free reign to the composer's
imagination.
• Choral prelude: a work for organ that sets a
Lutheran choral tune, surrounding it with
counterpoint and florid embellishment. Unlike the
choral fantasia, in a choral prelude the tune is
sounded just once.