A Listener’s Guide to Western Music
Introduction
Donald Grout, my teacher at Cornell, wrote A History of Western
Music, the most widely used text in undergraduate music history courses.
Grout’s book cites 526 composers. Now I can’t remember 526 composers
and I don’t think you can either. Without any disrespect to the great musicologist, I propose an “anti-Grout” text containing only 24 composers.
You’ll recognize half of them: Bach, Beethoven, Berlioz, Debussy, Haydn,
Mozart, Purcell, Schubert, Stravinsky, Verdi, Vivaldi, and Wagner. Moreover, if you attended my lectures on The Matrix of Western Culture you’ll
recognize some of the music. I’ve deliberately repeated that repertoire
since it’s easiest to learn new material if you can attach it to something familiar.
When teaching music history in university, I discovered that I had to
provide an historical context for the music because I could not count on
students having a secure grasp of European history. Time constraints prohibit such a leisurely approach here, but I can refer readers to the lectures
on The Matrix of Western Culture, which outline major ideas in the arts,
history, science, mathematics and philosophy. (www.arthurwenk.ca)
I should comment on the peculiar organization of these presentations. After all, how can one justify devoting one chapter to eight centuries
and another to a mere fifty years? Time constraints play an important role:
a piece of medieval music may last only a couple of minutes while a Wagner
opera stretches on for four or five hours. Musical complexity also affects
the organization. You can say everything that needs to be said about a thirteenth-century motet in five or ten minutes whereas you could devote an
entire lecture to Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony without exhausting the subject. Finally, the increasing complexity of music requires at least a rudimentary knowledge of harmony, traditionally the subject of an entire university course. I will endeavor to keep technical language to a minimum,
but the glossary may help you deal with unfamiliar terms.
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Chapter I. The Middle Ages and the Renaissance
Music has been described as the universal language. An aesthetic response to music seems to be hard-wired into the human psyche, as virtually
every culture has created a musical language of its own. Western music differs from all the other musics in the world in one important respect: the
presentation of more than one musical idea at the same time. This simultaneity may be as simple as guitar chords accompanying a song or as complex
as a musical texture involving eight or more independent voices. This distinctive aspect of western music has its roots in the Middle Ages.
Medieval art does not seek originality so much as a respectful embellishment of pre-existing material. Perhaps the best examples of this principle may be discovered in the elaborate decorations that medieval scribes
added to their transcriptions of ancient texts.
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The elaborate Q on the left provides an entire theological lesson in pictorial
form, including a holy dove inspiring the copyist. The N on the right depicts a scribe at his labors.
Plainsong
In the case of music, the pre-existing material came in the form of
plainsong, also called Gregorian chant, after Pope Gregory I at the end of
the 6th century. Legend has it that the Holy Spirit, in the form of a dove,
sang these melodies into his ear.
While plainsong in some form probably goes back as far as the 3rd century,
our body of plainsong comes from the 9th century, in the time of Charlemagne, who ordered the codification of melodies from earlier times.
3
We notice that the staff has four lines, in comparison to the modern fiveline staff. The clef sign appears at the beginning of each staff, as in modern
practice and indicates that the upper line of the staff is C. Counting down,
we find that the first pitch is A. The words, the text of the Kyrie, the opening movement of the Ordinary of the Mass, translate as “Lord have mercy,
Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy.” Each phrase of the text is repeated
three times, as represented by the italic letters i and j. The final repetition
of the words “Kyrie eleison,” a slight variation of the preceding phrase, is
written out in full. A dot after a note doubles its value. When two notes appear one above the other, the bottom pitch sounds first. In modern notation, the chant looks like this:
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We observe that plainsong melodies are monophonic (consisting of a single
vocal line), generally narrow in compass, and proceed mostly in stepwise
motion. Our example, the Kyrie Cunctipotens Genitor Deus, has both syllabic passages (one note per syllable) and melismatic passages (several
notes for a given syllable, as in the case of the final syllable of the first
“Kyrie.”)
Characteristics of Plainsong
 Conjunct (mostly stepwise), monophonic (single voice) melody,
narrow in compass
 Both syllabic (one note per syllable) and melismastic (several notes
per syllable)
 Pitch well defined; rhythm ambiguous
Tuotilo of St. Gall
In contrast to our modern notions of originality, which essentially began with Beethoven, medieval artists and musicians held a more modest
view of their purpose, preferring to elaborate or decorate existing sacred art
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instead of attempting to create something entirely new. Just as medieval
scribes added pictorial commentaries on the texts they copied, so medieval
musicians elaborated plainsong through the addition of text or music called
tropes. One purpose of a trope was to aid in the memorization of a long
melody. Around 900 Tuotilo, a Benedictine monk in the Abbey of St. Gall,
in what is now Switzerland, added words to one of the melismas in the
plainsong we have just heard.
The addition of a text, transforming a melismatic passage into a syllabic
passage, also provided the opportunity to comment upon the original text.
Translation
Cunctipotens genitor Deus omnicreator eleison
Salvificet pietas tua nos bone rector eleison
Fons et origo bone pie luxque
perhennis eleison
Christe dei splendor virtus patrisque sophia eleison
Plasmatis humanis factor lapsis
reparator eleison
Ne tua dampnatur Jhesu factura
benigne eleison
Amborum sacrum spiramen
nexus amorque eleison
All-powerful Father, God, Creator of all
things, have mercy
May thy compassion save us, good
ruler, have mercy
Font and origin of goodness, Holy one,
light everlasting, have mercy
Christ, the splendor of God, strength
and wisdom of the Father, have mercy
Creator of humankind, healer of those
who fall, have mercy
Lest thy creation be damned, kind Jesus, have mercy
The holy breath, the fusion and the love
of both, have mercy
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Procedens fomes vite fons purificans vis eleison
Indultor culpe venie largitor optime offensas dele sacro nos
munere reple eleison
Spirte alme eleison
Advancing flame, source of life, purifying power, have mercy
Forgiver of sin, bestower of pardon,
erase our offenses, replenish us, give us
holy grace, have mercy
Most gracious Spirit, have mercy
Tuotilo’s Achievement
 Showed the possibility of embellishing plainsong
 Added text to long melismas as a mnemonic device
 Additional words commented on the original plainsong text
This same spirit of elaboration lies at the root of polyphony—the sounding
of more than one voice at the same time—the distinguishing feature of
western music. The earliest examples, dating from the 9th century, are
called parallel organum, in which the plainsong melody is doubled at the
fifth or the octave. Doubling at the octave occurs whenever men and
women sing the same melody, as in the case of a hymn tune. We are so accustomed to this sound that we scarcely notice it as being different from
unison singing. Doubling at the fifth, however, produces a clearly audible
difference.
In the next step, called modified parallel organum, each phrase begins in unison, spreads to the fourth or fifth, and contracts again to the
unison. Notice the two forms of elaboration in this example from the 11th
century, based on the Kyrie we have been studying: first, the text is decorated or amplified; second, the melody is elaborated with an organal voice.
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Notice the intervals between the voices: always a unison, fourth, fifth or octave.
Just as medieval copyists elaborated their sacred texts with illuminations, so medieval composers embellished plainsong either by adding a
trope in the form of new words or by adding consonant intervals above the
plainsong melody. In this rudimentary practice, called organum, we see the
first steps in the development of polyphony.
St. Martial School
By the 12th century composers were experimenting with a style, called
St. Martial organum, named for the Abbey of St. Martial in Limoges,
France. In this style of organum each note of the original plainsong appeared in sustained notes in the tenor, while an upper voice, called the duplum, performed multiple notes. By the way, the word “tenor” comes from
the Latin “tenere” meaning to hold. In medieval music the held notes of the
original plainsong always appear in the tenor.
“We can identify the extraordinary twelfth century as the one in
which European musical practice took a decisive turn toward polyphonic
composition. And if we are interested in isolating the fundamental distinguishing feature of what may be called ‘western’ music, this might as well
be it. After this turning point, polyphonic composition in the West … would
be indispensably, increasingly, and unique the norm. From now on, stylistic development and change would essentially mean the development and
refinement of techniques for polyphonic composition.” [Taruskin, 2010,
vol. 1, p.148]
An example of this practice, based on the Kyrie Cunctipotens chant,
appears in the Codex Calixtinus, a collection of music and tourist information housed at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Spain, a notable pilgrimage site.
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As with the case of plainsong, it is relatively easy to decipher the pitches,
but there is no indication of the rhythm.
In this style of polyphony, different intervals between the voices are permitted in the middle of the melisma but each phrase is supposed to begin and
end with a consonance, defined as a unison, perfect fifth, or octave.
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One wonders how such a piece might have been performed: did the
performer on the upper line (or duplum) nudge the performer on the lower
line (tenor) when it was time to move to a different note? Or could both
singers read the same score, so that the person singing the tenor could keep
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track of the progress of the person singing the duplum? Either way, it becomes evident that composers would have to solve the problem of coordinating parts in order to write polyphony in more than two voices. But St.
Martial organum represents an important advance over the lock-step, noteagainst-note procedures of parallel or modified parallel organum.
Characteristics of St. Martial Organum
 Plainsong sustained in long notes in the tenor
 Melismatic organal voice in free rhythm
 Each phrase begins and ends with a consonance (unison, fifth, octave)
Anonymous French motet
A solution to the problem of coordinating two voices came in the 13th
century with the development of rhythmic modes, fixed patterns comparable to the metric feet in poetry. “With rhythm the Notre Dame composers
could build, as the masons around them were building the immense cathedral.” [Griffiths, 2006, p.25] There were six rhythmic modes in all, the
most common being the alternation of long and short notes:
Our example is a French motet En non Diu—Quant voi—Ejus in oriente.
The term “motet” comes from the French “mot,” meaning “word,” since
words would be added to a melodic line. “‘A piece of music in several parts
with words’ is as precise a definition of the motet as will serve from the thirteenth to the late sixteenth century and beyond. The motet was born in the
thirteenth century out of the more tightly measured discant sections of organum, by the addition to their upper part(s) of words unrelated or newly
related to the parent composition. … The added words were often different
in language (French) and subject matter (secular love) from the sacred
Latin chants on which they were built, and when there were two or more
texts, different from each other.” [Bent, 1992, p.114]
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To compose a motet, one began with the tenor, a passage of plainsong, in this case a fragment of the Alleluia called Videntes stellam, and put
it into one of the rhythmic modes.
Next one added the second and third voices, called the duplum and triplum,
each one forming a consonance with the tenor on the strong beats. The
weak beats could be dissonant. Moreover, while each voice had to be consonant with the tenor—that is, forming an interval of unison, fifth, or octave—the voices did not have to be consonant with each other. The resulting level of dissonance contributes to this music sounding strange to modern ears.
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Texts were assigned to the upper voices, often but not necessarily conveying
sentiments related to each other. These texts could be in French instead of
Latin.
Triplum (upper voice)
En non Diu! Que que nus die,
Now in truth! Whate’er they tell
Quant voi l’herbe vert et le tans
us,
clear,
When the grass is green and
Et le rosignol chanter,
weather clear,
A donc fine amore me prie
And the nightingale doth sing,
Docement d’une joliverté chanter: Then my dainty love doth bed me
Sweetly of a pretty tale of love to
“Marions, leise Robin por moi
sing:
amer!”
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Bien me doi adés pener.
Et chapeau de fleurs porter,
Por si bele amie,
Quant voi la rose espanie,
Lerbe vert et le tans cler.
“Marion, O let Robin now be my
love!’
Truly I must try to please,
And a wreath of flowers wear,
For so sweet a lover,
When I see the roses budding,
Grasses green and weather clear.
Motetus (middle voice)
Quant voi la rose espanie,
When I see the roses budding,
L’herbe vert et le tans clear,
Grasses green and weather clear,
Et le rosignol chanter,
And the nightingale doth sing,
A dont fine amors m’envie
Then my dainty love doth beg me
De joie fere et mener,
To rejoice with her and play,
Car qui n’aime, il ne vit mie;
He who loves not lives not either;
Por ce se doit on pener:
For this only should one live:
D’avoir amors a amie
Love to cherish toward his lover,
Et server et honerer,
Serve and honor her for aye,
Qui en joie veut durer.
Who in joy would still remain,
En non Diu! Que que nus die,
Now in truth! Whate’er they say,
Au cuer mi tient limaus d’amer.
My heart is filled with woes of love.
Tenor (lowest voice)
Vidimus stellam ejus in Oriente et We have seen his star in the east
venimus cum muneribus adorare
and are come with gifts to worship
Dominum.
the Lord.
This motet gives evidence of the decreasing importance of plainsong.
The tenor, the only voice directly associated with plainsong, would usually
be played on an instrument, so the text would not be heard. Moreover, unlike organum duplum, which quoted an entire piece of plainsong, the
French motet uses only a fragment. The development of rhythmic modes
solved a critical problem: how to coordinate multiple voices. The use of
rhythmic modes permitted medieval composers for the first time to write
polyphony in three or four voices.
Characteristics of French Motet
 Plainsong in tenor often performed instrumentally
 Two upper voices (triplum and motetus) may have different texts,
frequently secular
 Rhythmic modes coordinate the movement of the three voices
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Guillaume de Machaut
The rhythmic modes, although a splendid solution to the problem of
coordinating voices in polyphony, proved to have limited usefulness, as one
grew tired of the endless patterns in the equivalent of 6/8 time. Around
1320 a theorist by the name of Phillip de Vitry proposed a new system of
notation that would allow greater variety in rhythmic values. The treatise,
called Ars nova notandi, or “new technique of writing music,” gave its
name to music composed in the 14th century, as contrasted with musica antiqua of the 13th century.
Our examples comes from the Messe de Notre Dame (ca. 1364) written by the greatest composer of the 14th century, Guillaume de Machaut(ca.1300-1377).
By the time he composed this mass, probably for the cathedral at Rheims,
Machaut had established his reputation both as a poet and as a composer,
in the service of noblemen in the vicinity of Rheims.
If the repetitious patterns of the rhythmic modes seemed too simple,
their replacement, called isorhythm, may strike us a completely arcane. In
an isorhythmic composition one begins with a fragment of plainsong called
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the color to which one applies a rhythmic pattern called the talea. In the
case of the Kyrie from Machaut’s Mass, we recognize the plainsong as being
the Kyrie Cunctipotens Genitor Deus.
Applying the talea gives us a rhythmicized melody:
One cannot be expected to hear these relationships, which take the
form of an esoteric game. One other rhythmic procedure of the Ars nova
can be readily heard. This is the fragmentary division of a melody between
two different voices so it seems as if the two voices are constantly interrupting each other. This procedure is called hocket, from the French word for
hiccup.
One other audible procedure in the Machaut Mass is the presence of a
unifying melodic pattern that turns up in each movement. In our example,
the motif occurs in the Christe section.
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Machaut seems to revel in the new rhythmic freedom of the Ars nova,
employing techniques of isorhythm and hocket as a kind of compositional
tour de force, whether his technical mastery could actually be heard or not.
Machaut’s Messe de Notre Dame has become celebrated as the first
setting by a single composer of the Ordinary (or fixed portions) of the Mass:
Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus, Agnus Dei. Up to this point Kyries, Glorias, etc. were gathered together in manuscripts according to their
texts. Machaut seems to have been the first to think of the five divisions of
the Ordinary as a single musical composition.
“Even if we assume that the Mass was composed in a single shot and
that a recurring six-note melodic figure is more than just a stock formula,
there is no strong sense of musical unity from one movement to another:
though the Kyrie, Sanctus, Agnus Dei and Ite missa est are all entirely isorhythmic, each is built on a different plainchant; the Gloria and Credo are
freely constructed, with no isorhythm or plainsong cantus firmus, and the
first three movements cadence on D, the last three on F. Whatever sense of
unity we may perceive through the course of the Mass, this probably more
psychological and ‘mood-related’ than anything else.” [Atlas, 1998, p.114]
Although it took time for the idea of a unified Mass to be accepted, in
this work Machaut established the model for the Mass composers of the Renaissance.
Machaut’s Achievement
 Complete mastery of the new rhythmic procedures of the Ars nova
(isorhythm, hocket)
 Use of a melodic motive to unify movements of the mass
 First polyphonic setting of the Ordinary by an identifiable composer
Before turning to the music of the Renaissance it may be useful to review the course of medieval music. The basic principle of medieval art is
the respectful embellishment of a pre-existing sacred object. In music, that
pre-existing sacred object is the corpus of plainsong and the embellishment
can be can be summarized by the word “trope,” the interpolation of words
or music or both. While we have traced the development of polyphony in a
matter of minutes, the individual stages actually occurred across six centuries.
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Treatment of Plainsong
Era
9th
century
10th
century
11th
century
12th
century
13th
century
14th
century
Procedure
Unornamented plainsong
Example
Kyrie Cunctipotens
Parallel organum: note for note in 4ths
and 5ths
Kyrie Cunctipotens
Modified parallel organum: note for note Cunctipotens genitor
in various consonant intervals
St. Martial organum: plainsong in long
notes, free notes decorating
Kyrie Cunctipotens
Motet: plainsong in tenor in rhythmic
mode, other voices added above
En non Diu-Quant
voi-Ejus in Oriente
Isorhythm: plainsong chopped into bits
and fitted with a rhythmic pattern
Machaut, Notre Dame
Mass
In all cases, the addition of polyphonic voices served to decorate plainsong,
though as we have noted, by the 13th century, the original plainsong became
less and less audible.
The period of the Renaissance represents perhaps the first example of
general self-consciousness in a culture. Artists of the Renaissance adopted
a kind of three-layer view of history, making a clear distinction between the
glories of ancient antiquity, the recent past of the Dark Ages, and the new
glories of the present. The word “renaissance,” or re-birth, captures this
ideal of restoring the mantel greatness.
The Renaissance witnessed fundamental changes of world-view. For
the planet, there was a new continent.
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For the cosmos there was a new center, no longer the earth.
19
For religion, there was a new reality no longer based on a monolithic
church.
Literature and drama displayed an added dimension of self-awareness—one might even call it “irony”—a self-conscious stepping out of oneself, the very act of which demands an additional dimension, as exemplified
in the soliloquies of Hamlet.
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In art this added dimension expressed itself in linear perspective
which creates a new reality both in presenting the illusion of depth in a
painting and in actively recognizing the presence of a viewer, outside the
plane of the painting, whose eyes define the work’s vanishing point.
This idea of a new dimension expresses itself in music as a new concern for the vertical as well as the horizontal dimension of polyphony. In
medieval music, each new layer of polyphony had to be in harmony with the
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tenor, but the composer took no account of the relationships among the upper voices. This process produced a considerable proportion of dissonances. These dissonances did not offend the medieval ear which perceived
music in horizontal terms, with the exception of the cadence which necessarily had to be a consonance. Where medieval polyphony concentrated on
layers of horizontal lines, Renaissance polyphony takes a new interest in
vertical relationships, what we would call harmony, as composers developed a greater sensitivity to the consonance of chords. Music, like the other
arts, displayed an awareness of newness, to the point that the theorist Johannes Tinctoris could write, in 1477, “Although it seems beyond belief,
there is not a single piece of music not composed in the last forty years that
is regarded by the learned as worth hearing.” [Griffiths, 2006, p.44]
Guillaume Dufay
Guillaume Dufay(ca.1397-1474), the most famous composer of the
century, enjoyed the good fortune of working for Philip the Good, Duke
of Burgundy, the most powerful sovereign in Europe. Philip established a
reputation as a patron of the arts, commissioning tapestries, paintings and
metal work.
15th
Philip the Good employed musicians in the court chapel and for dances and
incidental music For the Feast of the Pheasant, given by Philip on 17 Feb22
ruary 1454, there were placed in a giant pie 28 minstrels who played various instruments including a trumpet, bagpipes, crumhorn, tambourines,
lutes, flutes and viels.
At one point a young boy rode in on a fake horse, the boy and the horse performing a duet as they entered.
Dufay appears as a watershed figure in the history of music, embodying characteristics of both the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Dufay’s
motet, Ave regina coelorum (ca. 1464) presents the plainsong melody in the
tenor, phrase by phrase, but the motet opens with the plainsong melody divided into sections, with one embellished section as a counterpoint for the
other.
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Where medieval composers preserved the integrity of plainsong melodies,
Renaissance composers treated plainsong as a source of musical ideas, to
be altered or recomposed.
Dufay’s motet gives evidence of a new vertical dimension in music.
Medieval harmony was conceived horizontally: each new voice had to be
consonant with the tenor but not necessarily with the other voices, except at
cadences, a practice which produced a high level of dissonance. Early Renaissance composers, by contrast, began to conceive music vertically as well
as horizontally, with greater concern for consonance among all the voices.
“The flow of their music suggest a change of view from the horizontal, writing one voice part after another, to the vertical, conceiving the whole texture together, the new voices incorporating the given cantus firmus in a
continuous harmonic unfolding.” [Griffiths, 2006, p.47]
In Dufay’s motet we note the frequent appearance of full chords and
modern-sounding V-I cadences. Dufay often ended musical sections with a
progression known as the Burgundian cadence, in which a leading tone
would drop a step before resolving to the tonic.
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In the Middle Ages, the interpolation of text in the form of a trope
served as mnemonic device for recalling long stretches of melody. Four
times Dufay interpolates words into the traditional text of the Ave regina
coelorum, but with a personal touch—he even mentions his own name—
typical of Renaissance sensibilities.
Miserere tui labentis Dufay ne peccatorum ruat in ignem fervorum
Have mercy on thy dying Dufay lest he
fall into the hellish fire of sinners.
Miserere genetrix Domini ut pateat porta
coeli debili.
Have mercy, Mother of God, that the gate
of heaven may be opened to the weak.
Miserere supplicanti Dufay sitque in conspectus tuo mors ejus speciosa.
Have mercy on thy suppliant Dufay, that
his death may find favour in thy sight.
In excelsis ne damnemur, miserere nobis
et juva ut in mortis hora nostra sint corda
decora.
Let us not be damned on high but have
mercy on us, and help us that in our last
hour our hearts may be upright.
In his will, Dufay requested that this motet be sung at his deathbed.
“Though the music of the fifteenth century, like that of any other period,
ranged from the ravishingly beautiful to the painfully boring, we do not
generally think of fifteenth-century music as ‘spine-tingling.” Yet is would
be difficult to find a more appropriate description of Dufay’s turn to C minor, when he asks for mercy with the tropes ‘Miserere tui labentis Dufay’
(Have mercy on your dying Dufay, mm.21-29) and, especially, ‘Miserere,
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miserere supplicant Dufay’ (Have mercy on your supplicant Dufay, mm.8696).” [Atlas, 1998, p.98]
Dufay’s Achievement
 New freedom in treatment of plainsong: embellished, divided and
reassembled
 New concern for consonance—awareness of vertical aspects of music
 New concern for cadences—using harmony to mark phrase divisions
The music of Dufay maintains a medieval attitude toward plainsong
as the basis for musical composition but takes Renaissance liberties in his
treatment of the underlying melody and displays a frankly humanistic approach by introducing his own name into the text of the motet.
Josquin des Pres
Josquin des Pres(ca.1450-1521), the most famous composer in the
first half of the 16th century, served various noblemen in Burgundy, Italy
and France during his career. Josquin’s music illustrates the characteristics
of high Renaissance polyphony.
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The change of texture from alto, two tenors, and baritone to the new norm
of soprano, alto, tenor and bass spread out the voices and led to greater
clarity. Instead of a texture dominated by a tenor line bearing the plainsong melody, we hear a greater equality of voices. High Renaissance polyphony is based on melodic fragments passed from voice to voice—socalled “points of imitation”—a method that composers have employed ever
since.
Josquin’s Missa Pange lingua is a paraphrase mass in which a preexisting tune is embellished and used freely in all the voices, not just the
tenor. In this case, the pre-existing melody comes from plainsong, but
composers of the Renaissance felt free to base their mass compositions on
secular melodies as well. “Josquin based the Mass on St. Thomas Aquinas’s
hymn Pange lingua gloriosi corpis mysterium, sung at Vespers on the
Feast of Corpus Christi. … The hymn tune darts from voice to voice, permeating every corner of the polyphonic fabric. Nor do any of the voices quote
the plainsong melody exactly. At times, in fact, Josquin isolates a single
motive from the plainsong and develops it extensively.” [Atlas, 1998, pp.
302-303]
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Josquin uses this melody, in embellished form, in all four voices at
the beginning of the Agnus Dei.
“The paraphrase Mass may be characterized as follows: it is based on
a single-line pre-existent model, usually a plainsong melody; it typically
wraps that model in a cloak of melodic embellishment; it rolls the model
out phrase by phrase (or motive by motive) and scatters it through the polyphonic fabric by means of points of imitation; and it may include large
stretches of material with barely a gesture toward the model. What it does
not do is place the pre-existent melody in a single voice and use it as the
melodic-structural scaffold on which the Mass as a whole hangs. For the
sixteenth-century composer who wished to write a Mass based on plainsong, the paraphrase Mass became the route most frequently taken.” [Atlas, 1998, p.304]
Josquin, celebrated in his own time for his technical mastery, seemed
to take pleasure in showing off his skill in solving compositional problems.
In particular, Josquin had a particular fondness for canons, a new technique in Renaissance music. We associate canons with rounds—such as
28
“Row, row, row your boat”—in which each voice copies the preceding voice
at the same pitch, but canons can be written at other intervals as well. The
second section of the Agnus Dei begins with the first phrase of the plainsong hymn in a canon at the 5th with a two-measure gap, followed by the
third phrase of the plainsong in a canon at the 5th with a one-half-measure
gap.
Then Josquin presents the third phrase of the plainsong in a canon at the
5th with note values halved, a rhythmic alteration called diminution.
The third section of the Agnus Dei presents the beginning of the plainsong
melody in long notes in the superius, as if recalling medieval techniques.
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Josquin’s Achievement
 Complete mastery of canons, including voices moving at different
speeds
 New texture of soprano, alto, tenor, bass increases clarity of sound
 Equality of voices, with plainsong appearing throughout the polyphonic texture, not just in the tenor, and divided into melodic cells
(points of imitation)
Tomas Luis de Victoria
Tomas Luis de Victoria(ca.1548-1611), the most important Spanish
composer of the 16th century, also achieved distinction as a singer and organist, and spent the latter part of his life as chaplain to the sister of Philip
II in Madrid. Victoria’s work illustrates another aspect of Renaissance music, a concern for giving musical expression to details of the text. We observe this expressivity in the opening of Victoria’s motet O magnum mysterium (O great mystery).
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O magnum mysterium,
et admirabile sacramentum,
ut animalia viderent Dominum natum,
jacentem in praesepio!
Beata Virgo, cujus viscera
meruerunt portare
Dominum Christum.
Alleluia.
O great mystery,
and wonderful sacrament,
that animals should see the new-born
Lord,
lying in a manger!
Blessed is the Virgin whose womb
was worthy to bear
Christ the Lord.
Alleluia!
Victoria sets the word “magnum” (great) to a leap of a perfect fifth, a “great”
interval. The “mystery” of the word “mysterium” is marked by a chromatic
movement of a semitone.
When the text introduces the idea of concerted action, the voices generally
proceed in uniform rhythm: the phrase “ut animalia viderent” is composed
in a homophonic, or chordal, style to depict the animals together witnessing
the birth of Jesus, first two by two, then three by three, and then all four
voices together.
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To suggest the joy of the spectacle, Victoria sets the “Alleluia” at the end in
triple meter.
In the paraphrase mass, as we have seen, a composer would adopt a
pre-existing melody, either sacred or secular, as a basis for creating polyphony. In the so-called parody mass, composers borrowed the entire polyphonic texture of a pre-existing work, a procedure used by Victoria in his
Missa O magnum mysterium.
“The art of the parody technique lies not in literal quotation but in
thoroughly reworking and transforming the material of the model, shaping
it into what is essentially a new composition; the building block is a motive
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or phrase of the model, usually in the form of a point of imitation; a movement of a parody Mass customarily draws on various sections of the model;
and the parody Mass as a whole is constructed by alternately referring to
the model and filling intervening sections with new and original music.”
[Atlas, 1998, p.307]
The beginning of the Kyrie takes up the initial motif of the motet, a
procedure that one sees most clearly in the alto and the bass, while the
other voices are freely composed.
Or the composer may preserve nearly the entire polyphonic fabric, changing only the words, as we see in this comparison of the original motet and
the parody mass based on it.
Original motet:
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Mass:
In the music of Victoria we hear a greater use of “word-painting” than in
the music of his contemporaries, a preference for simplicity over complexity, and a free treatment of melody and harmony for expressive purposes.
Victoria’s Achievement
 Master of the parody technique, employing parts or all of a pre-existing polyphonic texture in a new work
 Expressive use of melody and harmony
 Graceful flow between polyphony and homophony
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Thomas Weelkes
Musical expressivity appears only occasionally in sacred works such
as Victoria’s motet, “O magnum mysterium.” In secular compositions, such
as the English madrigals, a concern for giving musical expression to the text
seems to govern the entire work. The English madrigal, a secular form of
polyphony, may perhaps be best understood in the context of the English
pastoral tradition of the 16th century, which depicted shepherds and shepherdesses at play in Arcadia, a symbol of rural simplicity, a natural life uncorrupted by civilization. English nobility would dress up in pastoral garb
for idyllic retreats in lovely landscapes of timeless spring.
Queen Elizabeth I effectively co-opted the movement in an early example of public relations. The queen drew on pastoral images to consolidate her “natural authority” over her subjects as “Eliza, queen of the shepherds” incorporating a benevolent relationship between the royal shepherdess and her flock. Edmund Spenser’s The Shepherd’s Calendar devoted the
month of April to Elizabeth, adopting deliberate misspellings to create an
archaic flavor to his poem.
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Contented I: then will I singe his laye
Of fayre Elisa, Queene of shepheardes all:
Which once he made, as by a spring he laye,
And tuned it vnto the Waters fall. …
Of fayre Elisa be your siluer song,
that blessed wight:
The flowre of Virgins, may shee florish long,
In princely plight.
For she is Syrinx daughter without spotte,
Which Pan the shepheards God of her begot:
So sprong her grace
Of heauenly race,
No mortal blemishe may her blotte.
Edmund Spenser, The Shepherd’s Calendar
Madrigals had texts about romantic love, often in pastoral settings. :
The great popularity of the madrigal in England dates from the publication,
in 1588, of Musica transalpina, a collection of Italian madrigals translated
into English. The popularity of this anthology encouraged the composition
of original English madrigals.
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The English composer Thomas Morley, perhaps as a way of currying
favor at court, invited his contemporaries to compose twenty-four madrigals, each ending with the text, “Then sang the shepherds and nymphs of
Diana, Long live the fair Oriana” (one of the nicknames for Elizabeth). A
representation of the queen appears on the dedication page.
Thomas Weelkes(1576-1623) served off and on as organist at Chichester Cathedral where he was fined for urinating on the dean from the organ
loft during Evensong. A distinguished composer of madrigals, Weelkes
contributed to Morley’s collection “As Vesta was from Latmos Hill descending.” Weelkes’ naive figuralism—using an ascending melodic line to represent going up the hill or a descending melodic line for going down—seems
appropriate to the simplicity of the pastoral games.
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Here is the text of the poem with a summary of Weelkes’ figuralist devices:
As Vesta was from Latmos hill descending
she spied a maiden queen the same ascending
attended on by all the shepherds swain
to whom Diana's darlings came running
down amain
First two by two,
then three by three together
Descending scales
leaving their goddess all alone, hasted
thither
and mingling with the shepherds of her
train
with mirthful tunes her presence entertain
Solo voice
Ascending scales
Rapid descending figures
Two voices
Three voices, then all voices
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Then sang the shepherds and nymphs of
Diana,
Long live fair Oriana!
Imitation among voices with long notes in
the bass
In contrast to the Renaissance ideal of equal voices, we notice in Weelkes’s
madrigal the new role played by the bass, not only in the prolonged notes at
the end of the madrigal but also in passages oscillating between tonic and
dominant
39
We also observe the use of cadential formulas in the bass, such as I-IV-V-I.
40
The separation of the bass from the other voices will be one of the essential
elements of music in the Baroque period.
Weelkes’s Achievement
 Employment of melody, rhythm, and harmony in the interest of giving musical expression to a text
 Variety in texture—from one voice to six—for expressive purposes
 Cadential formulas anticipate new harmonic language
The Renaissance may be viewed as an era of liberation: a release
from the conventions of an earth-centered universe and a monolithic
church. A new sense of perspective opened new dimensions: a layered
view of human history, more realistic representation in art, and a new consciousness of the self. Renaissance music reflected these new ideas. Composers continued to rely on plainsong but treated it within an unprecedented liberty. Secular music took on a more significant role than in the
past, and in a new concern for the vertical perspective in music, composers
began laying the foundations for the harmonic language that ruled western
music from around 1600 to 1900.
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Chapter II. The Baroque Period
The 17th and 18th centuries in Europe have been called The Age of Enlightenment or the Age of Reason. One might also describe this period as
the age of rational systems, marked by an urge to discovery universal laws
in every aspect of existence. In his Principia Mathematica (1687), Newton
proclaimed a system of universal laws governing motion the cosmos.
In France René Descartes laid out the principles of a rational scientific
method based on accepting only what is undeniably true. The social sciences sought to discover the natural laws underlying government and to
propound the laws of economics. Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan (1651) insisted that political science is subject to general laws.
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French classic drama was governed by rules known as the bienséances in addition to the principles known as the dramatic unities. Philosophers sought rational proofs of God’s existence. Descartes famously began
by doubting everything and building on what lay beyond doubt: cogito
ergo sum (I think, therefore I am).
43
The spirit of rationalism found expression in music with the system of
equal temperament and Bach’s systematic exploration of its possibilities in
the Well-Tempered Clavier, or, “preludes and fugues through all the tones
and semitones, both in major and in minor keys. For the use and profit of
the musical youth desirous of learning as well as for the pastime of those already skilled in this study.”
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Music in the Baroque period embodies the spirit of the age in its insistence on a central governing principle: each movement tends to have a
single, driving rhythm; a single mode (either major or minor); and a single
expressive mood.
The 17th century saw the application of reason to the rebirth of Greek
music. A group of intellectuals, literary figures and musicians in Florence,
having appreciated the rediscovery of classical antiquity in sculpture and
architecture, resolved to accomplish the same task for music. They faced
one nearly insurmountable problem: unlike sculpture and architecture, no
examples of Greek music remained extant. Yet the descriptions of ancient
Greek music seemed almost magical. Aristotle evoked the amazing expressive power of music, which could move spectators by imitating the rhythms
and inflections of natural speech and by using the vocal registers associated
with changing emotions. Who could resist such a challenge?
The group, known as the Florentine Camerata, gathered the known
details: the entire tragedy was sung; the music consisted of a single melody, performed by either a soloist or an ensemble; and, according to Aristotle, the melody imitated natural speech. With nothing but this sparse information to go on, the composers associated with the Camerata concocted
what we call monody, music consisting of a single melody line with a simple
chordal accompaniment. Thus was born what we now know as opera. Of
course, the most popular aspects of opera developed only over time: costumes, scenery, amazing theatrical effects, an orchestra, and especially the
lyrical display of vocal technique in an aria. The earliest operas consisted
entirely of what we now call recitative, with music subordinate to the text.
Henry Purcell
Henry Purcell (1659-1695) spent most of his life in the service of the
church, eventually attaining the post of organist at Westminster Abbey,
where he composed an estimable corpus of sacred music. Purcell also
wrote music for the theatre, including incidental music for plays and operas.
Opera developed rapidly after its scholarly origins at the beginning of
the 17th century. Adopted by royal courts, and elaborated with costumes
and dance, opera served as a vehicle for festive celebration and glorification
of the monarch. Introduced into public theatres, and enhanced by painted
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sets and astonishing mechanical effects, opera became the most popular
form of mass entertainment.
Throughout the 17th century the subject matter of opera came from
history or legend. In the case of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, composed in
1689, the story comes from Book IV of Virgil’s Aeneid, the story of Dido
(Queen of Carthage) and Aeneas (travelling from Troy to Italy after the Trojan War). Dido loves Aeneas but duty calls him to Italy to found the city of
Rome. The conflict between love and duty forms the basis of many an
opera plot, where the inevitable triumph of duty leads to tragedy.
Dido and Aeneas represents an amalgamation of national styles:
from France, the French overture, numerous dances, and choruses in dance
rhythm; from Italy, the clear differentiation of recitative (for describing
events) and aria (for expressing a character’s feelings in response to
events); from England choruses written in madrigal style with much pictorial representation and recitatives in expressive style, in contrast to the
rapid recitative of Italian opera.
The so-called doctrine of affections prescribed that each movement
should convey a single expressive mood. Dido’s Lament expresses the
queen’s grief at losing Aeneas, who has succumbed to the demands of duty,
and announces her acceptance of death. “How does Dido die? With Dido
the chorus’s references to her tomb and drooping-winged cupids assure us
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that death has come, but when and how is not definite. … She is clearly resolved to die and her heart is near the breaking point.” [Savage, 1994,
p.466]
The opening recitative consists of an expressive vocal line over a simple chordal accompaniment.
Thy hand, Belinda, darkness shades me,
On thy bosom let me rest,
More I would, but Death invades me;
Death is now a welcome guest.
Purcell embellishes the first syllable of the word “darkness,” anticipating
the mood of the aria that follows.
The vocal line traces a chromatic descent that foreshadows the chromatic
ground bass of the lament that follows.
In contrast to recitative, which gives simple expression to a text without any particular musical form, an aria represents a developed musical
47
idea with a formal structure and orchestral accompaniment. Dido’s Lament, “When I am laid in earth,” is set to a chromatic ground bass, in which
a bass melody is repeated while the upper part offers variations. Frequently
employed for laments in Italian opera, the constant repetition of the ground
bass pattern challenges the composer to avoid monotony. Purcell skilfully
varies the structure of the vocal line so that melodic phrases do not always
end at the same point as the chromatic bass pattern.
We observe the chromatic “sigh” on the word “laid,” and expressive skip on
the word “trouble”.
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At the end of the aria the instruments take up and develop the “sigh” motive to conclude the movement.
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With one exception, each repetition of the bass pattern ends with a V-I cadence, with a major chord on the dominant D. But in the next to last statement, we heard a D minor chord from the orchestra that interrupts the cadence with a minor 7th chord leading to even more dolorous diminished 7th
chords that intensify the basic affect of tragic grief.
Purcell’s Achievement
 Consistent musical language for tragedy, including the use of
ground bass movements and chromatic elements in melody and
harmony
 Creation of a rational tonal scheme to organize a number opera:
movement from minor to parallel major (e.g., C minor to C major in
Act I) or major to relative minor (e.g., Bb major at the beginning of
Act III to g minor for Dido’s Lament at its end)
 Amalgamation of various national styles into a coherent whole
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Dietrich Buxtehude
The launching of the Protestant Reformation in 1517 required the creation of a new German-language liturgy to replace the Roman Catholic
Mass. It also required the creation of a new body of music to be used in
worship services in the new church. Martin Luther himself composed a
number of chorales, or hymns, including the well-known “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” Other chorales were produced by adding sacred words to
a pre-existing secular tune, a practice known as contrafactum. The familiar
hymn, “O sacred head now wounded,” took its melody from a German
drinking song “Mein G’müt ist mir verwirret von einer Jungfrau zart” [“A
young girl has tangled up all my thoughts”] written by Hans Leo Hassler in
1601. A contemporary example appears in the hymnal Voices United,
where the tune to Danny Boy has been fitted with the text, “We shall go out
with hope of resurrection.”
New chorale melodies could also be formed by transforming plainsong. In this fashion the Latin hymn Veni creator gentium became the
German chorale Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland (Saviour of the nations
come).
VENI, redemptor gentium,
ostende partum Virginis;
miretur omne saeculum:
talis decet partus Deum.
O COME, Redeemer of the earth,
and manifest thy virgin-birth.
Let every age in wonder fall:
such birth befits the God of all.
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Organ composers of the Baroque period would write chorale preludes
to introduce the tunes to be sung in worship, much as a contemporary organist will play a hymn through to announce it to the congregation. Dietrich Buxtehude (ca. 1637-1707) composed chorale preludes as part of his
duties as organist at Marienkirche (St. Mary’s Church) in Lübeck, Germany.
Buxtehude frequently elaborated the original chorale melody with ornamentation reflecting the Italian manner of singing, which sometimes made
it difficult to identify the hymn being introduced. “One is reminded of the
fact that in 1701 the ministers decided to hang boards with the hymn numbers in St. Mary’s Church, because ‘from the organ playing beforehand, the
hymns can be recognized by only a few.’” [Snyder, 1987, p.270]
Compare the original melody composed by Luther for “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”:
with Buxtehude’s embellished version (the pitches of the original melody
are marked with +’s).
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German chorales almost invariably had the form A A B (or Bar-form),
which meant that the composer of a chorale prelude could simply have repeated the A section, but Buxtehude prefers instead to offer a different embellishment:
In the chorale preludes of Dietrich Buxtehude we observe a creative
tension between craftsman and composer. The chorale preludes of lesser
composers served the church well as simple introductions that clearly identified the chorale about to be sung by the congregation. But Buxtehude’s
composer mind led him to investigate musical possibilities that carried his
work beyond mere craftsmanship, even if the resulting preludes became too
long or ornate for liturgical purposes. J. S. Bach would run into trouble
with church authorities for the same reason as he composed chorale preludes up to ten minutes long. In addition to straightforward chorale preludes, such as “Ein feste Burg,” Buxtehude also composed sets of variations
on chorale melodies as well as elaborate chorale fantasias.
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Buxtehude’s Achievement
 Highly elaborated treatments of the chorale melody (which his contemporaries almost always left unornamented)
 Variety of chorale treatments, including chorale preludes, chorale
variations and chorale fantasias
Music from the Baroque period onward seems more familiar to our
ears than music from the Medieval or Renaissance periods. The period
from 1600-1900 is called the Common Practice period because of certain
fundamental principles of harmony governing music during this era. Music
in the Common Practice period is called tonal, that is, based on a major or
minor key, instead of modal, that is, based on one of the church modes. A
single note—the leading tone—is all that separates tonal and modal music,
but that single note, marked by an X in our example, has great significance.
Now look at the plainsong we considered earlier, “Veni creator gentium”
Take particular note of the cadence, which has no leading tone. The absence of the leading tone gives plainsong its “otherworldly” quality.
Music from the common practice period is also based on chordal progressions. During the Baroque period these harmonies were accentuated
by the basso continuo, a combination of a bass instrument, such as the
cello, playing the bass line, and a keyboard instrument, such as the organ or
harpsichord, playing chords.
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Even after the basso continuo ceased to be used, music of the common
practice always carried implied harmonies, whether actually spelled out in
chords or not.
Finally, the chords employed in the common practice period are arranged hierarchically. Each chord has an assigned value in the hierarchy
(where I is the strongest, V the second strongest, ii the third strongest, vi
the fourth strongest), and each phrase of the music tends to proceed from
weaker to stronger chords. Consider the end of the chorale “Ein feste
Burg.” The progression of harmonies vi – ii – V – I is one of the most common ways of marking the end of a phrase or a composition.
The same principle applies in minor mode, as in this cadence from Purcell’s
aria, “When I am laid in earth”:
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Music of the common practice period always moves forward to a
clearly-identifiable goal. The reason that medieval and Renaissance music
sounds strange to our ears is that this music lacks the markers that we find
in music from Bach to Beethoven to Brahms: a leading tone, an underlying
chordal framework, and a clear progression of chords from weak to strong.
Antonio Vivaldi
Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) spent much of his career as music director at an orphanage in Venice. The institution maintained an all-female orchestra for which Vivaldi composed numerous concertos. During the Baroque period instrumental music began to assume an equal footing with vocal music, notably in the concerto grosso. The word “concerto” comes from
the Italian “concertare” meaning either to join forces (in the sense of a
“concerted effort”) or to strive against. In either case a concerto comprises
two groups: the orchestra as a whole (called the ripieno, or tutti) and the
soloists. In Vivaldi’s Concerto Grosso in A Minor, Op. 3, No. 8 (1712), the
solo group includes two violinists, whom Vivaldi carefully makes stand out
from the rest of the ensemble.
The first movement of a concerto grosso most often adopted ritornello form, based on an alternation between a repeated refrain, or ritornello, played by whole ensemble, and episodes played by the solo group. It
was not considered necessary to repeat the entire ritornello each time—often a fragment would suffice. In general, the first and last ritornellos would
appear in the tonic key (the key of the piece), the first departure from the
main key would be in the dominant or (in this case) the relative minor, with
the other departures in related keys.
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In these relationships we observe one of the basic principles of tonal music:
a chord from the key of the piece could be extended to produce an entire
key area, as we see in the following examples, taken from the first movement of the concerto.
TONIC (A minor)
RELATIVE MAJOR (C major)
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SUBDOMINANT (D minor)
Being able to identify these passages as extensions of chords brings you well
along the way to “structural hearing,” the musical equivalent of seeing forests and not just individual trees.
Antonio Vivaldi (1680-1743) evidently found the concerto format congenial, for he composed more than 500 concertos. Vivaldi’s music tends to
be made up of brief cells, as we see in the construction of the ritornello refrain.
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The sequence merits particular mention since it is an essential device
not only for Vivaldi but for Baroque music in general. As seen in measures
6-8, a sequence consists small bit of musical material repeated at different
pitch levels. Once a composer has set the pattern in motion, it could be repeated indefinitely, but in the usual practice the material would appear only
three times, the third time ending in a cadence, most often a progression of
dominant to tonic chords, or perfect cadence.
An outline of the entire first movement of this concerto shows how
Vivaldi uses a few basic cells to spin out the finished product. We also observe the interpenetration of material between the ritornello and the solo
sections.
Outline of First Movement
Ritornello 1 (tonic): cells a, b, c, d, e
Solo 1
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Ritornello 2: cell e only
Solo 2: begins like Solo 1, the soloists exchanging their parts
Ritornello 3 (relative major): phrase derived from Solo 2, cell c, new cadence
Solo 3 (subdominant): derived from cell b
Ritornello 4: cell a only
Solo 4: derived from cell b
Ritornello 5: cell d
Solo 5: derived from Solo 2
Ritornello 6 (tonic): cell a
Solo 6: derived from Solo 4
Ritornello: cell b, c, e, interpolation from Solo 3, e
Vivaldi perfected techniques, including the use of melodic cells and sequences, that permitted him to turn out more than five hundred concertos.
Vivaldi’s Achievement
 Complete mastery of the concerto grosso format (Vivaldi composed
more than five hundred concertos)
 Inventive musical structures through the combination and recombination of brief melodic cells
 Dramatic tension between soloist(s) and tutti
Johann Sebastian Bach
The nature of musical composition during the Baroque period, as
during the Renaissance, depended in large measure on the requirements of
a composer’s employment. Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) composed
several hundred church cantatas as part of his duties as Cantor of the
Thomasschule in Leipzig.
A cantata may be regarded as a sacred opera lacking costumes, scenery or props. Like an opera, a cantata consists of recitatives, arias, ensembles and choruses. As in opera, a recitative might convey the “action,” or
story from the Bible, while the aria allows the soloist to reflect on or offer
an emotional response to the story. Bach’s Cantata 140, Wachet auf, ruft
uns die Stimme (1741), is based on the parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins recounted in Matthew.
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Then the Kingdom of Heaven will be like ten virgins, who took their
lamps, and went out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. Those who were foolish, when they took their
lamps, took no oil with them, but the wise took oil in their vessels
with their lamps. Now while the bridegroom delayed, they all slumbered and slept. But at midnight there was a cry, "Behold! The bridegroom is coming! Come out to meet him!" Then all those virgins
arose, and trimmed their lamps. The foolish said to the wise, "Give us
some of your oil, for our lamps are going out." But the wise answered,
saying, "What if there isn't enough for us and you? You go rather to
those who sell, and buy for yourselves." While they went away to buy,
the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to
the marriage feast, and the door was shut. Afterward the other virgins
also came, saying, "Lord, Lord, open to us." But he answered, "Most
certainly I tell you, I don't know you." Watch therefore, for you don't
know the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man is coming.
— Matthew 25:1-13, World English Bible
The first movement of the cantata takes its text and basic thematic
material from Philip Nicolai’s chorale.
1. Choral
Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme,
der Wächter sehr hoch auf der Zinne,
wach auf, du Stadt Jerusalem.
Mitternacht heißt diese Stunde,
sie rufen uns mit hellem Munde,
wo seid ihr klugen Jungfrauen?
Wohlauf, der Bräut’gam kömmt,
steht auf, die Lampen nehmt,
Alleluia!
Macht euch bereit
zu der Hochzeit,ihr müsset ihm
entgegengehn.
1. Chorus
Awake, calls the voice to us
of the watchmen high up in the tower;
awake, you city of Jerusalem.
Midnight the hour is named;
they call to us with bright voices;
where are you, wise virgins?
Indeed, the Bridegroom comes;
rise up and take your lamps,
Alleluia!
Make yourselves ready
for the wedding,
you must go to meet Him.
Even before Bach’s harmonization, Philipp Nicolai furnished a number of
expressive elements in the chorale melody. The poem evokes a chivalric
dawn-song, “where the watchman on the ramparts of the knight’s castle interrupts the silence of the night by his horn call which warns the lovers that
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dawn approaches and they must part.” (Herz, 1972, p.56). The chivalric
watchman is transformed, in Nicolai’s poem, into a sacred watchman who
announces the coming of Christ, the bridegroom. Nicolai’s melody represents the horn call by a figure based on the triad.
The melody reaches its highest point on the word “hoch” (“high”) which describes the watchman’s tower. Bach reinforces this imagery by using an actual horn to double the chorale melody sung by the sopranos.
Bach entrusts to the three lower voices a musical commentary on
each phrase of the chorale. These accompanying voices wait two measures
before decorating the first phrase of the melody.
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They wait only a single measure before decorating the second phrase in an
ascending figure to accompany “the watchman on high.”
They enter at the same time as the sopranos to decorate the third phrase
with their cries of “wake up!”, an acceleration suggesting the great excitement of those who await the entry of the bridegroom.
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At the order to arise and take their lamps, the accompanying voices cannot
wait any long and enter even before the soprano melody.
The word “alleluia” of the poem serves as an excuse for Bach to interpolate
a jubilant section by the lower voices (m.135), who sing in a brief melismatic fugato for fifteen measures before the entry of the soprano.
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One hesitates to assign specific meanings to instrumental music, but
the orchestral accompaniment, although independent of the vocal music,
also serves to convey the affect of the movement, and one can at least suggest the nature of its participation. The dotted rhythm at the beginning of
the instrumental ritornello creates the impression of a festive march who
marked accents are appropriate to the arrival of an important personage.
The hesitations of the second motive (m.5) contrast with the insistent regularity of the first and could perhaps be associated with the timidity of the
young women. A third motif (m.9), in ascending 16th notes is associated
with the rising movement of the text (“wake up,” “high up in the tower,”
“stand up”).
These three motives are occasionally implied in the accompaniment
of the choral sections, but the musical material of the voices remains independent of that of the instruments. The great accomplishment of Bach in
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this movement is the amalgamation of chorale melody, choral accompaniment, and orchestra into a unified structure in which every detail conforms
to the overriding affect.
The structure of the opening movement combines the A A B form of
the German chorale with the ritornello form of an Italian concerto grosso.
Ritornello
A
Ritornello
A
Ritornello
B
Ritornello
orchestra
choir
orchestra
choir
orchestra
choir
orchestra
This movement may be described an amalgamation of national styles. The
dotted rhythms, typical of the French overture associated with the entrance
of a monarch, represent Bach’s effort to elevate Jesus above a mere bridegroom. The ritornello form derives from the Italian concerto grosso. The
overall cantata format, although of Italian origin, became a standard element of German Lutheran church services.
The overall symmetrical structure of the cantata illustrates the Baroque preference for rational systems. Bach was particularly fond of the
arch-form as a basis for his musical architecture.
Chorale (chorus)
Recitative & Aria (soprano-bass duet)
Chorale (tenor solo)
Recitative & Aria (soprano-bass duet)
Chorale (chorus)
The choral presentations of the chorale in the outer movements balance the
pairing of recitative/aria, with the whole structure centering on the solo
presentation of the choral.
Bach’s Achievement
 Virtuoso mastery of counterpoint (the art of combining multiple
melodic lines)
 Assimilation of diverse styles for expressive purposes
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 Creation of large-scale musical structures, often symmetrical
As a symbol to incorporate all our ideas on Baroque music, it may be
useful to recall the figure of Louis XIV, the Sun King, who ruled France for
more than 72 years and famously declared “L’État, c’est moi.”
This embodiment of absolute power vested in a single individual, Louis XIV
reminds us of three essential aspects of Baroque music:
1. The doctrine of affections, which declared that each movement of a composition should have a single affect, or expressive mood.
2. The presence of a single, strong driving rhythm in each movement of a
Baroque composition.
3. Most important, the allegiance of every note and chord in a Baroque
composition to a single tonal center, and the implacable forward impulse of
harmonic progression to a final cadence on that center.
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as illustrated in the final cadence of the closing chorale in Bach’s Cantata
140:
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Chapter III. The Classical Period
The Classical Period coincides with the climax of the Enlightenment,
an era that relied on reason to liberate humanity from both ignorance and
religious dogma. The art of this period tended to favor rationality, proportion, and balance, as we see in Thomas Jefferson’s design for Monticello
(1772).
The so-called “enlightened despots” of this period included Joseph II
of Austria, who created a civil service based on merit, abolished serfdom,
reformed the legal system, extended religious toleration, established compulsory education and ended capital punishment.
The Classical Period in music replaced the Baroque doctrine of affections with the sonata principle, based on the reconciliation of opposing
forces. The sonata principle may perhaps be best understood as an expansion of the concept of dissonance. In Medieval and Renaissance music a
dissonant interval resolves to a consonance, as we see at the end of the second section of the Agnus Dei in Josquin’s Missa Pange lingua:
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In the last measure, the dissonant interval of the seventh resolves to the
consonance of the octave. Baroque music expanded the notion of dissonance to include a dissonant chord resolving to a consonance, as we see at
the end of Bach’s Cantata 140 where a dominant 7th chord resolves to a
tonic chord.
The sense of harmonic dissonance becomes clear if we pause on that penultimate chord: we feel an almost irresistible urge to resolve the dissonance
by moving to the tonic.
The Classical Period further expanded the notion of dissonance in the
sonata principle: musical material presented in a key area other than the
tonic constitutes a dissonance that must eventually be resolved by restating
the material in the tonic key. The sonata principle may be understood using familiar terms of drama: conflict, intensification, and resolution. Each
aspect of the conflict corresponds to one of the main divisions in sonata
form: exposition; development; and recapitulation.
Sonata Form in Terms of Drama
Exposition
Development
Recapitulation
establishes the tonic key,
then presents the conflict
(material not in the tonic)
intensifies the conflict by
movement through various
key areas
resolves the conflict by restating the “dissonant” material in the tonic
The sonata principle may also be understood in terms of contrasting
thematic material, the way that sonata form used to be taught in textbooks.
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Sonata Form in Terms of Thematic Material
Exposition
Development
Recapitulation
First theme in the tonic
key; second theme in another key (usually the
dominant or relative major)
Movement through various
key areas, usually based on
partial statements of material from the exposition;
ends in a retransition preparing for the return to the
tonic
Statement of all material in
the tonic key area. May
end in a coda (tailpiece)
firmly re-emphasizing the
tonic
This description of sonata form gets into some of the details of tonality.
The second theme is usually in the dominant key. If the main material is in
C major, the second theme would be in G major.
This description also mentions the “coda,” typically a brief passage of tonic
and dominant chords firmly re-establishing the main key of the piece.
One can also describe sonata form in terms of harmonic events, without even mentioning themes.
Sonata Form in Terms of Harmonic Events
Exposition
Development, Recapitulation,
Coda
Modulation from the tonic to the
dominant
Final cadence in the new tonality
Well-marked return to the tonic;
Final cadence in the tonic
From this perspective, a sonata movement has only two main sections: in
the first, we move away from the tonic; in the second, we return to the
tonic.
But underlying all of these descriptions is the basic sonata principle: musical material presented in a key area other than the tonic constitutes a dissonance that must eventually be resolved by restating the material in the tonic
key.
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Before turning to an actual example of sonata form, it may be useful
to offer one final perspective, a contrast between sections of harmonic stability and sections of harmonic fluctuation.
Sonata Form in Terms of Harmonic Stability
Stable Harmony
Fluctuating Harmony
The presentation of the thematic material
in the exposition and the recapitulation. (The themes are presented in balanced phrases and remain entirely in a
single tonality.)
The modulation away from the tonic in
the exposition; the movement through
various tonalities in the development;
and the remodulation to the tonic toward
the end of the development. (The tonality
in these regions is unstable, and the
structure of phrases shows the baroque
principles of sequence, transposition and
inversion.)
Joseph Haydn
Joseph Haydn (1732-1809), known as the “father of the string quartet,” composed some 84 quartets of which the majority were written during
his service to Prince Esterhazy, a Hungarian noble patron of the arts. The
string quartet, with four independent musical lines, proved to be a useful
medium for an expanding harmonic vocabulary which increasingly used
chords involving four different pitches. “Despite the undoubted pre-existence of the medium, it is not inaccurate to portray Haydn as ‘inventing’ a
version of the string quartet that laid the compositional, aesthetic, and cultural foundations of the genre for subsequent composers … and for western
musical culture more broadly.” [Hunter, 2005, pp.112-113.]
Much of the first movement of Haydn’s String Quarter in C Major,
Opus 76, No. 3, fits our descriptions of sonata form.
Exposition
Theme I
transition to dominant
Cadential theme in dominant
Development
Theme I motif in various keys
Recapitulation
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Theme I
Transition material remains in tonic
Cadential theme in tonic
Coda
Cadential theme in tonic
The first theme is clearly in C major.
You may observe that there is no Theme II as such. Haydn’s so-called
“mono-thematic” use of sonata form shows the inadequacy of a description
based solely on thematic material. But if we recall the underlying principle
of sonata form, we see that it fits for Haydn. There is a cadential theme in
the dominant at the end of the Exposition.
This musical material that appears in the dominant in the Exposition appears in the tonic in the Recapitulation, thus satisfying the requirement
that musical material presented in a key area other than the tonic constitutes a dissonance that must eventually be resolved by restating the material in the tonic key.
But so far we have presented only a partial outline of the movement.
Haydn loved musical games and surprises—you are probably familiar with
his “Surprise” symphony—and the Quartet in C Major contains several.
The following outline marks Haydn’s “surprises” in italics:
Exposition
Theme I
transition to dominant
Cadential theme in dominant
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Dominant minor (g minor)  E♭major  augmented 6th
chord in G
Cadential theme in dominant
Development
Theme I motif in various keys
Rustic dance on drone in E major
Recapitulation
Theme I
Transition material remains in tonic
Cadential theme in tonic
Coda
A♭major  augmented 6th chord in C
Cadential theme in tonic
At the end of the Exposition, just when we thought we were safely established in the dominant G major, the music veers off into the distant key of
E♭major before returning to the dominant.
The development section includes a rustic dance over a drone in the
cello.
When we get to the Coda, usually just a series of tonic and dominant chords
to round of the movement, Haydn suddenly takes us into A♭major before
turning it into an augmented sixth chord—as if to say, “No, just fooling”—
and brings us back to the home key.
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Haydn’s games and surprises, although modest in length, break new
ground. Sonata form, as we have seen, is based on a polarity between tonic
and dominant, key areas a fifth apart. Haydn hints at relationships based
on thirds--C to E♭, C to E and C to A♭—that composers in the 19th century
would explore more thoroughly.
Haydn may be noted for his ability to create large structures from
simple, brief motives; for his idiosyncratic use of the sonata principle (particularly the so-called “monothematic sonata form”); and perhaps most endearingly, his sense of humor in music.
Haydn’s Achievement
 Progenitor of the string quartet, of which he composed more than
eighty
 Idiosyncratic use of the sonata principle, including “monothematic”
sonata form and innovative tonal relationships
 Playful attitude toward the conventions and expectations of the
Classical Period
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) enjoyed a reputation as performer and composer for virtually his entire life. By the time he composed
The Marriage of Figaro in 1786, he was able to earn his living in Vienna
composing piano concertos and operas, with occasional income from noble
patrons.
Just as political units tended to encompass larger and larger territories, so Mozart created ever larger units in opera. Before Mozart, opera
composers wrote individual set pieces--arias, duets, or small ensembles-each one coming to a conclusion and separated from the next set piece by
recitative. Mozart expanded the finale of an act to the point that it lasted
half the act, and unrolled continuously. The librettist Da Ponte describes
the importance of the finale: “The finale … is a sort of little comedy in itself.
… This is the great occasion for showing off the genius of the composer, the
ability of the singers, and the most effective “situation” of the drama. …
Every style of singing must find a place in it. In this finale it is a dogma of
theatrical theology that all the singers should appear on the stage … to sing
solos, duets, trios, sextets … and if the plot does not allow of it, the poet
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must find some way of making the plot allow of it.” [Quoted in Steptoe,
1990, p.173]. Basil Deane describes the finale as “what is surely one of Mozart’s most monumental achievements. … In its scale, its complexity and its
integration of dramatic and musical meaning, it is without precedent, and
has never been surpassed.” [Deane, 1983, p.23]
Consider Act III of Dido and Aeneas (1689):
B♭: Song & Chorus (Come away, follow sailors)
Sailors’ Dance
B♭: Recitative and Song (Our next motion must be to storm)
Chorus (Destruction’s our delight)
B♭: Witches’ Dance
g: Recitative
B♭: Chorus (Great minds)
Recitative
g: Song (When I am laid in earth)
g: Chorus (With dropping wings)
The individual pieces are in related keys (G minor is the relative minor of
B♭ major) but remain separate numbers.
Now let us consider the Act II finale from The Marriage of Figaro,
composed a century later. In the story, Count Almaviva has designs on Susanna, his wife’s maid, engaged to be married to his servant Figaro. Himself an unapologetic philanderer, the Count becomes livid at the thought
that his wife might have a lover. In the finale to Act II, the Count enters his
wife’s dressing room, convinced that she has concealed this supposed lover
in her closet.
Mozart makes use of a number of musical devices to describe the individual characters. Dotted rhythms convey the Count’s anger.
The Countess mimics the Count’s phrase, insisting that he is the victim of
blind jealousy.
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The Countess and Susanna sing in parallel 3rds (an operatic convention for
agreement), telling the Count that if he expects to be forgiven, he must
show forgiveness.
Figaro enters, singing a dancelike tune announcing that the wedding preparations have been made. His entrance “injects a sudden change of mood
between these episodes, emphasized by the use of a rustic 3/8 dance
rhythm and bright orchestral timbre. The key is of G is appropriate for
peasant music of this type, and is used by Mozart for bucolic choruses on
other occasions.” [Steptoe, 1990, p. 176]
The drunken gardener is accompanied by triplets in rapid tempo while he
sings in a duple figure.
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Marcellina and her companions tell about Figaro’s legal complications in a
patter-like rhythm.
Now consider the tonal design of the Act II Finale:
E♭: (Allegro) Count & Countess. Count threatens to kill whoever is in the
closet (Duet)
B♭: (Andante con moto) Susanna emerges from closet. Countess demands
apology from Count (Trio)
G: (Allegro) Figaro enters to say that the band is ready for the wedding
(Quartet)
C: (Andante) Count demands explanation for the anonymous note accusing his wife of infidelity. (Quartet)
F: (Allegro molto) Gardener says he saw someone jump from the window
B♭: (Andante ma non troppo) Gardener presents papers found in garden
(Quintet, after which Gardener exits)
E♭: (Andante assai) Bartolo, Basilio, and Marcellina present document
showing that Figaro must repay his debt to Marcellina or marry her (Septet) (ends Prestissimo)
In the course of the Finale, the number of singers gradually increases from
the opening duet to the closing septet. The tonal design displays a strong
resemblance to sonata form.
Exposition (E♭-B♭)
Development (G-C-F-B♭, movement by descending perfect 5ths),
Recapitulation (E♭)
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Mozart even draws musical connections between the “exposition” and the
“recapitulation.” At the beginning of finale, the Count’s anger and determination are conveyed in dotted rhythms:
At the end of the finale, the arrival of Marcellina, Basilio and Barolo, pressing Marcellina’s case against Figaro, portrays the same anger and determination with the same rhythm:
In the second section of finale, the Count is dismayed by appearance of Susanna when he’d expected to see a concealed lover. We hear Susanna and
Countess united (same rhythm, singing in parallel thirds), against the
Count:
At the end of the finale, Mozart again uses similar rhythms to suggest the
alliance of Susanna, the Countess and Figaro against Marcellina, Basilio,
Count and Bartolo (in their “determination” rhythm):
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Mozart’s opera finales represent a continuing drive toward consolidation
and unified musical structures. Mozart’s music epitomizes the clarity, proportion and balance characteristic of the Classical Period. His apparently
limitless inventiveness is employed to good use in opera both to depict individual characters and to communicate the relationships between characters
or groups of characters.
Mozart’s Achievement
 Amalgamating the individual movements of a “number opera” into
a continuous rational structure
 Achieving characterization through the coordination of solos and
ensembles
 Extending the structure of the sonata principle to opera
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) more or less created the position
of composer as artist. He drew his income from a number of sources, including public performances, the sale of his works for publication, and the
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support of noble patrons. But unlike composers of the Renaissance, accustomed to producing music on demand for occasions of the court, Beethoven
set his own course, demanding recognition on his own terms.
Alterations in a political map can be gradual or cataclysmic. If
Haydn’s and Mozart’s experiments may be compared to boundary adjustments, Beethoven’s assaults on musical conventions had the effect of a major war. “Beethoven understood sonata form not as fundamentally comic
or lyrical, in the way of Haydn and Mozart, ending in a reconciliation of dissimilarities, but rather as heroic struggle, in which an essentially single musical force, defined by a guiding motif, would push towards a triumphant
conclusion in the principal key. Hence the increased importance of the development section, as the chief scene of challenge and conflict.” [Griffiths,
2006, p.155]
Assaults on Form
 Great increase in length: three transition themes; two closing
themes
 New material in development
 Coda becomes a second development section)
Beethoven’s assault on form can be seen in the gigantic length of his third
symphony (the so-called Eroica), whose first movement alone lasts longer
than most entire symphonies by Mozart and Haydn. Every section of the
sonata structure is extended: the transition from Theme I to Theme II includes three transition themes; the closing section after Theme II includes
two closing themes; Beethoven even introduces a new theme in the development section, a two-part counterpoint in the distant key of e minor.
Beethoven transforms the coda, formerly a few chords to mark the end of a
movement, into a second development section.
Assaults on Rhythm
 Off-beat accents
 Contrametrical patterns
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 Suppression of main beat (syncopation)
Beethoven’s assaults on rhythm constitute the most immediately
striking aspects of his musical style. Many of the first-movement themes
feature off-beat accents, or entrances off the beat, as in the case of the first
transition theme.
Beethoven delights in constructing contrametrical pattern s, such as a pattern of two beats in a meter of three beats.
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Beethoven upsets the rhythm by suppressing the main beat, as in that passage which concludes with another contrametrical pattern.
Beethoven combines all of these procedures at the climax of the development, leading to dissonance of dominant 9th chord of distant key of e minor.
Assaults on Tonality: Anomalous D♭
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 Exposition: resolves upward, return to tonic
 Recapitulation: resolves downward, leading to “heroic” version of
main theme
 Coda: stepwise motion E♭-D♭- C
Beethoven’s assault on tonality frequently takes the form of an unexpected note early in a movement, creating a tonal conflict that the composer exploits during the remainder of the movement. The first movement
of the Third Symphony contains an anomalous D♭ that in its first appearance resolves upwards, returning to E♭, the key of the piece. We notice that
this tonal disruption is accompanied by a rhythmic disrupting in the form
of a syncopated figure in the violins.
At the corresponding spot in the recapitulation, the D♭ moves downwards,
leading to the so-called “heroic” version of the main theme in F major.
In the coda, D♭ serves as a passing key area between E♭ and C.
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This final use of the D♭ directly violates the rules governing harmonic progression in the Classical Period. It may be thought of as the musical equivalent of leaving the established roads and cutting directly across fields to
reach one’s destination.
The following “roadmap” may be of assistance in listening to this colossal first movement.
EXPOSITION
Opening tonic chords,
Theme I (tonal disruption—C#—resolves upward)
Rhythmic disruption (offbeat accents, contrametrical patterns, step motive)
Theme I (tutti)
Transition theme 1 (accent on 2nd beat)
Transition theme 2
Transition theme 3
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Theme II (each instrument enters on 2nd beat)
Closing Theme 1 (offbeat accents, followed by contrametrical patterns and
suppressed downbeat)
Closing Theme 2 (ties weaken downbeat)
DEVELOPMENT
Transition theme 1 (accent on 2nd beat)
Theme I fragment (progression: c-c#-d)
Theme I motive combined with Transition theme 3
Brief fugal development on Transition Theme 1
Extended rhythmic disruption: clash between duple and dislocated triple
meter ending in dissonant chord
Development theme (two-part counterpoint in the distant key of e minor)
Theme I expanded upwards: C-Db-Eb
Development theme in eb
Theme I* (heroic version) with step motive
Retransition (ends with premature entry in the horn)
RECAPITULATION
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Theme I (tonal disruption--C#--resolves downward, leading to heroic version; syncopated passage has disappeared!)
Transition themes 1, 2, and 3
Theme II (in the tonic key of Eb)
Closing themes 1 and 2 (contrametrical patterns as in exposition)
CODA
Theme I fragment (Db as passing tone between Eb and C)
Development theme)
Step motive
Theme I (heroic version combined with Transition theme 3)
Brief passage on Transitions theme 2
Long passage of tonic and dominant chords ending with Step motive
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Beethoven’s Achievement
 Assaults on form: vast expansion of sonata form through lengthened development section and treatment of coda as a second development section
 Assaults on rhythm: offbeat accents, contrametrical patterns, suppression of main beat (syncopation)
 Assaults on tonality: startling departures from the norms of functional harmony (leads to weakening of tonal system)
Beethoven, like Dufay, can be considered a watershed figure belonging to two eras. We have included Beethoven, along with Haydn and Mozart, in the Classical Period since the majority of his work employs the genres associated with that era: symphonies, concertos, overtures, sonatas,
string quartets, and an opera. But if the Romantic Period can be characterized as an Age of Revolution, strong arguments can be made for considering
Beethoven among the Romantics. Beethoven extended the norms of the
Classical Period and, along the way, broke new ground for composers of the
nineteenth century to explore. Beethoven invented many of the forms most
closely associated with the Romantic Period, including the program symphony, the song cycle, and the character piece for piano. One can imagine
the exasperation in Schubert’s voice when he wrote, “Who can do anything
more after Beethoven?”
Our presentation of the Classical Period has focused on the sonata
principle and in may be worthwhile to summarize this presentation with
two observations on that topic. The first is the ubiquity of the sonata principle in virtually every genre: symphonies, concertos, overtures, sonatas,
string quartets, even—as we have seen with Mozart—opera. This principle
so informed musical thought of the Classical Period that composers habitually organized the structure of their compositions according to its underlying assumption: any musical material presented in a key area other than
the tonic constitutes a dissonance that must eventually be resolved by restating the material in the tonic key.
The second observation has to do with the reign of the tonic over
every harmonic event of a composition. In music of the common practice
period—roughly 1600 to 1900—every chord can be related to the key of the
piece, or tonic. The sonata principle evokes the powerful relationship between the two most important harmonies: the tonic and the dominant.
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The expansion of the harmonic realm into other areas tends to weaken the
fundamental influence of the tonic. You can think of the situation as comparable to the expansion of the Roman Empire.
The farther the boundaries of the empire extended from its center, the
longer it would take to communicate to its extremities, and more important, the less likely that the members of the garrison army would feel
any direct, personal loyalty to Rome.
As composers explored more and more distant key relationships, the
weaker the hold of the tonic over the whole harmonic framework. The end
would not come for another century, but that anomalous D♭in the seventh
measure of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony represents an important event in
the ultimate breakdown of the tonal system.
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Chapter IV: The Romantic Period
The 19th century may be regarded as an era of revolution, beginning
with the storming of the Bastille in 1789 and continuing with revolutionary
activity throughout Europe in 1848.
The fall of the ancient régime led to an exploration of alternative political
systems including democracy, communism and socialism. The Industrial
Revolution, which traces its roots back to the 18th century, saw machinery
multiplying the availability and reducing the cost of material goods, but the
factory system tended to make workers part of the machinery.
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In science, the theory of evolution overthrew the prevailing view of geological and natural history, inviting a new perspective on humanity and its
place in creation.
Literature saw the overthrow of rationalism in favor of exploring the
subconscious.
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The art of this period is notable for overthrowing clarity and liberating color
as a means of expressing emotion, viewing nature as a source of mystery
rather than a source of law.
Franz Schubert
In describing music of the Classical Period, we compared the absolute allegiance of every to a tonal center to the absolute monarchy of Louis XIV.
The development of chromatic harmony in the 19th century tended to
weaken the tonal system. The Romantic Period also saw a new relationship
develop between music and literature.
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We shall explore this new relationship as manifested in song, the program symphony, music drama, and opera. Songs, of course, existed long
before the 19th century, but composers such as Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
created a new vocabulary of musical expressiveness to serve poetry. Schubert never enjoyed the aristocratic patronage of Haydn or Beethoven, but
depended on friends for support, with occasional income from teaching.
He managed to produce a substantial number of compositions during brief
lifetime, most notably his composition of songs, or Lieder.
Schubert’s Erlkönig (or the Erl King, 1815) sets a poem of Goethe.
Original German
Wer reitet so spät
durch Nacht und
Wind?
Es ist der Vater mit
seinem Kind;
Er hat den Knaben
wohl in dem Arm,
Er faßt ihn sicher, er
hält ihn warm.
"Mein Sohn, was birgst
du so bang dein
Gesicht?"
"Siehst, Vater, du den
Erlkönig nicht?
Den Erlenkönig mit
Kron und Schweif?"
"Mein Sohn, es ist ein
Nebelstreif."
"Du liebes Kind, komm,
geh mit mir!
Gar schöne Spiele spiel'
ich mit dir;
Manch' bunte Blumen
Literal Translation
Who rides, so late,
through night and
wind?
It is the father with
his child.
He holds the boy in
the crook of his arm
He holds him safe, he
keeps him warm.
Adaption
Who rides there so late
through the night dark
and drear?
The father it is, with his
infant so dear;
He holdeth the boy
tightly clasp'd in his
arm,
He holdeth him safely,
he keepeth him warm.
"My son, why do you
hide your face so anxiously?"
"Father, do you not
see the Elfking?
The Elfking with
crown and cloak?"
"My son, it's a wisp of
fog."
"My son, wherefore
seek'st thou thy face
thus to hide?"
"Look, father, the Elf
King is close by our side!
Dost see not the Elf
King, with crown and
with train?"
"My son, 'tis the mist
rising over the plain."
"Oh, come, thou dear infant! oh come thou with
me!
For many a game I will
"You lovely child,
come, go with me!
Many a beautiful
game I'll play with
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sind an dem Strand,
Meine Mutter hat
manch gülden
Gewand."
"Mein Vater, mein Vater, und hörest du
nicht,
Was Erlenkönig mir
leise verspricht?"
"Sei ruhig, bleib ruhig,
mein Kind;
In dürren Blättern säuselt der Wind."
"Willst, feiner Knabe,
du mit mir gehen?
Meine Töchter sollen
dich warten schön;
Meine Töchter führen
den nächtlichen Reihn,
Und wiegen und tanzen
und singen dich ein."
"Mein Vater, mein Vater, und siehst du nicht
dort
Erlkönigs Töchter am
düstern Ort?"
"Mein Sohn, mein
Sohn, ich seh es genau:
Es scheinen die alten
Weiden so grau."
"Ich liebe dich, mich
reizt deine schöne Gestalt;
Und bist du nicht willig, so brauch ich
you;
Some colourful flowers are on the shore,
My mother has many
golden robes."
play there with thee;
On my strand, lovely
flowers their blossoms
unfold,
My mother shall grace
thee with garments of
"My father, my father, gold."
can't you hear,
What the Elfking qui- "My father, my father,
etly promised me?"
and dost thou not hear
"Be calm, stay calm, The words that the Elf
my child;
King now breathes in
The wind rustles
mine ear?"
through dry leaves." "Be calm, dearest child,
"Do you want to come thy fancy deceives;
with me, dear boy?
the wind is sighing
My daughters shall
through withering
wait on you fine;
leaves."
My daughters lead the "Wilt go, then, dear innightly dances
fant, wilt go with me
And will rock and
there?
dance and sing you to My daughters shall tend
sleep."
thee with sisterly care
My daughters by night
"My father, my father, on the dance floor you
can't you see there,
lead,
The Elfking's daugh- They'll cradle and rock
ters in the gloomy
thee, and sing thee to
place?"
sleep."
"My son, my son, I see
it well:
"My father, my father,
The old willows they and dost thou not see,
shimmer so grey."
How the Elf King is
"I love you, your beau- showing his daughters to
tiful form entices me; me?"
And if you're not will- "My darling, my darling,
ing, I shall use force." I see it aright,
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Gewalt."
"Mein Vater, mein Vater, jetzt faßt er mich
an!
Erlkönig hat mir ein
Leids getan!"
Dem Vater grauset's, er
reitet geschwind,
Er hält in Armen das
ächzende Kind,
Er reicht den Hof mit
Müh' und Not;
In seinen Armen das
Kind war tot.
"My father, my father, 'Tis the aged grey wilhe's grabbing me now! lows deceiving thy
The Elfking has done sight."
me harm!"
"I love thee, I'm charm'd
by thy beauty, dear boy!
The father shudders; And if thou aren't willhe rides swiftly,
ing, then force I'll emHe holds the moaning ploy."
child in his arms.
"My father, my father,
He can hardly manage he seizes me fast,
to reach his farm;
For sorely the Elf King
In his arms, the child has hurt me at last."
was dead.
The father now gallops,
with terror half wild,
He holds in his arms the
shuddering child;
He reaches his farmstead with toil and with
dread,-The child in his arms he
finds motionless, dead.
Goethe’s poem displays the Romantic treatment of nature as a mysterious
realm as well as the Romantic taste for the supernatural.
The story includes four personages: a narrator, who speaks in the first and
last stanzas; the father, who tries to reassure his son; the Erl King, whose
words are put in quotation marks, and the son, the only one able to see the
Erl King. The father tries to find a logical explanation for his son’s fears:
the rising mist, the wind murmuring among dry leaves, old gray willow
trees. Yet when the son says that the Erl King has hurt him, the father
shudders with horror. The Erl King tries to woo the son, first with the hope
of games, and then with the more powerful charms of his young daughters.
He finally uses force to take the young boy’s life.
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We note Goethe’s expressive use of rhythm. The striking rhythm of
iambs and anapests evokes a galloping horse: “Wer reitet so spät durch
Nacht und Wind?” and “Mein Vater, mein Vater, und hörest du nicht?” Essentially the text maintains a simple, almost folkloric, style, as if one were
reciting a legend.
Stanzaic songs of the 18th century, which used the same music for
each stanza of the text, in the manner of a hymn, offered few opportunities
to give musical expression to details of the poetry. Schubert’s throughcomposed songs, by varying the music for each stanza, permitted a much
more sensitive treatment of the text. The through-composed style allowed
Schubert him to clearly distinguish the personages: the words of the son
are in a high tessitura while those of the father are lower.
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The Erl King always sings pianissimo in the major mode, in contrast with
the predominant minor mode of the song.
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The musical setting loses the strong rhythmic impulses of Goethe’s
poem, but Schubert compensates for this by transferring the galloping
rhythm of the horse to the piano accompaniment, expressed by the constant beating triplets whose rhythm stops only when the father arrives
home only to discover the child dead in his arms. The accompaniment also
presents a menacing figure in the left hand which disappears in calm moments and returns to suggest inexorable fate.
We must also take note of Schubert’s expressive use of harmony. The
boy’s cries of alarm, “Mein Vater, mein Vater,” are sung to a diminished
seventh chord, traced in the bass, whose affective quality is heightened by
the dissonance of the ninth between the voice and the right hand of the piano, and between the two hands of the piano. The increasing urgency of the
cries is expressed by the ascending tessitura with each reprise and by the
increasing dynamic level from mezzoforte to forte to fortissimo.
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Schubert drew on all the resources at his disposal—melody, rhythm, harmony, texture—to give musical expression to his chosen text. The composer of more than six hundred songs, Schubert contributed to the development of this genre with through-composed songs, adventurous harmonies,
and continually inventive piano accompaniments.
Schubert’s Achievement
 Replacing stanzaic songs with through-composed songs to permit
greater expressivity
 Inventive accompaniments set the mood of a song and convey individual details
 Use of variation in tessitura and harmony for characterization
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Hector Berlioz
Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) abandoned the career in medicine that
his father intended for him in order to study music at the Paris Conservatoire. Berlioz is best known for the program symphony, in which a literary
adjunct forms an essential part of the music. Berlioz described his Symphonie Fantastique as “episodes in the life of an artist, a fantastic symphony in five parts.” He explains his use of the program: “The composer’s
intention has been to develop various episodes in the life of an artist, in so
far as they lend themselves to musical treatment. As the work cannot rely
on the assistance of speech, the plan of the instrumental drama needs to be
set out in advance. The following program must therefore be considered as
the spoken text of an opera, which serves to introduce musical movements
and to motivate their character and expression.”
“That a symphony could be inspired by a ‘poetic idea’ was something
Berlioz surely learned from Beethoven. … But that a symphony could be so
unreservedly autobiographical and self-confessional, in the manner of contemporary French and English literature (where novels of this type had
been popular for some years), was fresh to music at that time. Thus the
symphonic exposé of Berlioz’s unrequited love for the Irish actress Harriet
Smithson marked a new fusion of music and literature in the nineteenth
century.” [Langford, 2000, pp. 53-54]
A recurring melody, known as the idée fixe, appears in all five movements of the symphony. “A young musician … sees for the first time a
woman who embodies all the charms of the ideal being he has imagined in
his dreams, and he falls desperately in love with her. Through an odd
whim, whenever the beloved image appears before the mind’s eye of the
artist it is linked with a musical thought. … This melodic image and the
model it reflects pursue him incessantly like a double idée fixe.”
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Berlioz calls the fifth movement of the symphony the Dream of a
Witches’ Sabbath. “He sees himself surrounded by a foul assembly of sorcerers and devils, come together to celebrate the sabbath. They call afar. At
last the melody arrives. Hitherto it had appeared only in graceful form, but
now it has become a vulgar tune, trivial and mean; it is the loved one coming to the sabbath to attend the funeral procession of her victim. She is
now only a prostitute, fit to take part in such an orgy. Then the ceremony
begins. The bells ring, the whole infernal crew prostrate themselves, a chorus sings the plainchant sequence of the dead (Dies irae), two other choruses repeat it, parodying it in burlesque fashion. Then finally the sabbath
round-dance begins to whirl; in its most violent outburst, it mingles with
the Dies irae, and the dream is over.” [Cone, 1971, p.9]
“The ‘Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath’ moves much further away from
traditional symphonic structures. Here the narrative of the program is mirrored in the sectional through-composed form of the music.” [Langford,
2000, p.57]
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Berlioz employed all the effects of the orchestra, and invented a number of new ones, to give expression to his underlying program. In his Treatise of Instrumentation (1844), the first work on orchestration, Berlioz systematically investigated the technical and tonal possibilities of each orchestral instrument. The Symphonie fantastique demanded a substantial expansion of orchestra (four bassoons, four horns and four timpani in place of
the two usually associated with the classical orchestra) and the introduction
of a number of new orchestral instruments (piccolo, clarinets in C and E
flat, English horn, two keyed cornets, two harps, two trombones, two tubas,
cymbals and a bass drum). Berlioz created novel orchestral effects, such as
the division of the upper strings into eight parts to create an atmosphere of
mystery at the beginning of the movement, and the unusual technique of
col legno battuto, in which the string players bounce the wood of their bows
off the strings, to suggest the sinister and supernatural quality of the Sabbath Round.
Berlioz showed considerable inventiveness in giving musical expression to the program. He made full use of pre-existing musical associations,
such as the infernal reputation of the tritone (known since the Middle Ages
as diabolus in musica), the Dies irae, the hymn chanted at funeral rites in
the Roman Catholic church, and the bells, a sonority generally associated
with the church. The fifth movement opens mysteriously with a tritone followed by diminished seventh chords descending by semitone. In contrast
to music of the Classical Period, in which every chord was clearly related to
the tonic, Berlioz’s so-called “non-tonic opening” leaves us at a loss to know
what key the piece will be in.
Berlioz ingeniously conveys the sacrilege of a black Sabbath by deforming a sacred melody. Three phrases of the Dies irae are presented, one
after the other, first in long notes played by the tubas and bassoons
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then in diminution by the horns and trombones
and finally in double diminution in an irreverent rhythm by the winds.
Berlioz further deforms the melody of the idée fixe by the use of the grating
and mocking timbre of an e flat clarinet, accompanied by a clarinet in c, two
oboes, bassoon and piccolo.
In the music of Berlioz we take note of a new element. In addition to
melody, rhythm, harmony and form Berlioz exploits sound in ways unknown to his predecessors. The music of Bach, by contrast, seems to exist
more or less independently of its timbre, or tone quality. Bach’s music has
been successfully transcribed for virtually every imaginable combination of
instruments, even for electronic synthesizer, without substantial loss of integrity. For Berlioz, by contrast, tone color—the quality that makes one instrument sound different from another—takes on an importance comparable to the traditional elements of melody, rhythm, harmony and form. The
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exploration of pure sound, one of the characteristic features of the modern
era, has its roots in the music of Hector Berlioz.
Berlioz’s Achievement
 Exploration of instrumental capabilities and new instrumental effects
 Exploitation of musical associations, both traditional (e.g., Dies
irae, tritone, bells) and original (e.g., idée fixe)
 Innovative treatment of harmony: non-tonic openings; unconventional key relationships; unusual progressions
Richard Wagner
The glorification of the subconscious, one of the characteristic traits
of the Romantic Era, finds its most prolific proponent in Richard Wagner
(1813-1883). In his treatise Opera and Drama (1851) Wagner insists that
the plot an opera must come from myth, a source at once naïve, anonymous, pre-intellectual, and created by the people themselves. The story of
his music drama Tristan und Isolde (1865) comes from a Celtic legend. According to Wagner, these mythic plots should be expressed in symbols, be
they objects or personages. In Tristan und Isolde, for example, the love-potion becomes a symbol for the conscious recognition of a pre-existing
unacknowledged love. In Wagner’s music dramas, the interior drama unfolds in the orchestra, and not in the events on the stage. Music drama thus
combines opera and symphony.
Wagner’s ideas about the language of music drama reflect his preoccupation with the subconscious. In creating his own librettos, Wagner deliberately eliminated conjunctions and prepositions, which convey no emotive force. In place of rhyme, which he considered to be an intellectual relationship, Wagner preferred Stabreim (alliteration), an intuitive relationship
appealing directly to the subconscious.
Stabreim in Tristan und Isolde
Dem Tage! Dem Tage!
The day! The day!
Dem tückischen Tage,
Hate and detestation
Dem härtesten Feinde
Of the envious day,
Hass und Klage!
The cruellest foe!
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Wie du das Licht,
O könnt’ ich die Leuchte,
Der liebe Leiden zu rächen,
Den frechen Tage verlöschen!
Would that, as you quenched the
torch,
I could extinguish the glare
Of importunate daylight!
This brief extract from the Act II love duet between Tristan and Isolde also
illustrates Wagner’s use of symbolism, in which Day represents honour,
faithfulness and the conventional world, while Night stands for the love between Tristan and Isolde, to be achieved only in the realm of death.
Wagner produced his so-called “endless melody” by avoiding cadences, which mark temporary points of arrival, in order to postpone the
arrival until the end of the opera (five hours, including intermission). With
Wagner dissonances “resolve” to lesser dissonances rather than consonances, as we see in the opening to the prelude to Tristan und Isolde where
the so-called “Tristan chord,” perhaps the most celebrated chord of the 19th
century, “resolves” to a dominant seventh chord.
Robert Bailey suggests that “the later nineteenth century ought to be looked
upon as a period which expanded the concept of consonance, rather than as
a period which expanded the treatment of dissonance.” [Bailey, 1985,
p.125]
Wagner weakens the forward impulse of music to the point that one
can no longer describe the structure of his music dramas in terms of the
traditional architecture of phrases, periods, divisions and movements, each
denoted by cadences. The linear logic of sonata form has been replaced by
a kind of global form in which individual musical ideas can be compared to
lines of longitude on a globe. Each musical idea connects with all of its repetitions without participating in a conventional architectural scheme. If we
denote the opening of the opera as Motive A, five additional motives can be
identified.
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Motivic Material in the Tristan Prelude
Motive A
Motive B
Motive C
Motive D
Motive E
Motive F
We observe that the chord progressions in these motives are defined by
voice-leading (semitonal movement) rather than by functional relationships. Each chord “slides” to the next instead of following a logical root
progression.
In the music drama, each of these bits of melodic material constitutes
a leitmotif, a musical fragment symbolizing a character, an object, or an
idea. The principle of the leitmotif becomes for Wagner the key to the
problem of large-scale form. Wagner’s innovation is to have extended a
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network of leitmotifs over an entire work, to the point that they become almost omnipresent. Form in Wagner is thus defined as a woven material rather than an architectonic structure. A schematic drawing may help us to
see how this principle operates in the Prelude to Tristan und Isolde. [Jackson, 1985, p.276]
Structure of the Tristan Prelude
Motive A
1 -17
Motive B
17-24
32-36
Motive C
25-28
Motive D
28-32
Motive E
Motive F
36-44
45-48
48-54
55-63
63-74
74-83
83-89
89-94
94-100
101-106
Wagner’s legacy lies not simply in expanding the vocabulary of chromatic harmony but in inventing a new syntax to replace the organizing
principles of the Classical Period. Wagner’s use of harmonic progressions
based on voice-leading instead of traditional functional harmony allowed
him to create musical structures of unprecedented length, but also served to
weaken the fundamental principle underling the common practice period.
Wagner’s Achievement
 Musical structures of unprecedented length based on a symphonic
web of leitmotifs (global form)
 Harmonic progression based on voice-leading instead of functional
harmony (weakens tonal system)
 Expansion of harmonic vocabulary and consonance/dissonance relationships
Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) enjoyed great popularity in Italy not only
for his operas but for the identification of his name with the nationalist
movement for liberation from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The letters
served as an acronym for Viva Vittorio Emanuele Re D'Italia (Viva Victor
Emmanuel King of Italy).
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Verdi employed his orchestra to set scenes in addition to accompanying singers. To evoke a terrible storm at the outset of the opera, Otello
(1887) uses the peculiar effect of “beating” produced by depressing the
three lowest chromatic notes of an organ simultaneously. The resulting
rumble through the opera house may be compared to the special sound effects currently employed in movie theatres. High woodwinds and pizzicato
strings evoke the sparks of a campfire later in the first act of the opera.
If Wagner achieved operatic continuity by abolishing the individual
units of the number opera, Verdi did so by linking the numbers as if turning
the boundaries into dotted lines. The Drinking Song in Act I of Otello
(1887) illustrates the method. In transforming Shakespeare’s play into an
operatic text, the librettist Boito reduced nearly 3500 lines of text to a libretto of under 800 lines, and created a number of set pieces in which
Verdi could depict character through action rather than words. Boito manufactured the Drinking Song on the basis of a single line in Shakespeare’s
play: “And let me the canakin clink.” In the Drinking Song we see how the
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villainous Iago plays on other people’s weaknesses. Knowing Cassio’s inability to hold his liquor, Iago employs the simple-minded Roderigo in a plot
to get Cassio drunk, then provoke him into a fight that will force Otello to
dismiss him as captain, the post that Iago covets for himself.
Iago’s Drinking Song “is not a static piece embedded in a scene if action; rather it carries the action within itself. For this purpose Verdi uses a
type of bar-form … in which there is room for Cassio’s stammering, his
growing intoxication, Iago’s asides to Roderigo and the amused reactions of
the crowd, and always from the steady development of one idea to another,
the recurrence of the refrain giving unity to the design.” [Budden, 2008,
p.297]
Verdi associates two musical details with Iago, the chromatic scale
and the trill. A descending chromatic line keeps returning in the refrain of
the drinking song.
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The trills appear in the material connecting one stanza to the next.
110
After establishing the pattern of alternating solos and refrains in the first
two stanzas, Verdi uses distortions in the third stanza to offer a musical depiction of inebriation.
Iago: first half of stanza
Cassio: comes in nine measures too soon, interrupting Iago
Iago: second half of stanza, but to the music of the first half—he is evidently confused
Cassio: second half of stanza, but in the wrong place and in the
wrong key
Chorus starts to laugh
Iago advises Roderigo to provoke Cassio
Chorus increases its laughter
Iago finally pulls the chorus together with the second half of the refrain
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Italian opera traditionally distinguishes between recitative as a means
of narrating essential elments of the plot and aria as an opportunity for individual characters to express their emotions in response to developing dramatic situations. Verdi modifies this practice by reducing the amount of recitative devoted to narrative purposes and, wherever possible, carrying out
the exposition of the plot through direct action, as illustrated in the Drinking Song.
Verdi’s Achievement
 Conventions of Italian “number opera” blended into continuous
music with set pieces connected by passages of parlando (speechlike singing)
 Characterization through dramatic action instead of static arias
 Imaginative orchestration to set the scene
Verdi and Wagner, born in the same year, display considerable differences in their approach to opera. Verdi clearly situated himself in the
three-hundred year tradition of Italian opera. Wagner, self-consciously creating what he termed the “artwork of the future,” rejected tradition. Verdi
wrote operas in which singers and vocal melodies occupied center stage.
Wagner wrote music dramas in which the primary musical material appeared in the orchestra. Verdi wrote continuous music by connecting the
traditional numbers of Italian opera. Wagner wrote continuous music by
replacing the traditional structure of musical architecture with a new conception of musical form. Using the analogy of grammar, Verdi replaced periods with semicolons while Wagner more or less eliminated periods altogether.
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Chapter V. The Modern Period
The Modern Period may be described as an age of uncertainty marked
by a succession of cataclysms including World War I, the Spanish Flu, the
Great Depression, World War II, and a seemingly endless series of wars
since the end of that conflict. A new and awful term, “genocide,” has entered our vocabulary, associated not only with the Holocaust but also with
the policies of Stalin, the Cultural Revolution in China, and the phenomenon of “ethnic cleansing” that would include the massacres in Rwanda and
elsewhere.
In science Einstein showed that time is not absolute but relative to
the observer and that space is deformed by gravity.
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Quantum physics described a subatomic world in which conventional expectations no longer apply. According to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, you can determine the position of a particle or the velocity of a particle,
but not both. The more accurate your determination of the position, the
more inaccurate your determination of the velocity.
Literature of the modern period raised challenges to the principles of
narrative, structure and style, including multiple points of view and multiple styles within a single work.
Modern art raised challenges to the principles of perspective, style
and space, including multiple perspectives and multiple styles within a single painting.
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Psychology saw a rejection of the rational mind as the source of ultimate control and explored the coexistence and conflict between the emotional and rational minds.
Claude Debussy
In the history of western music Claude Debussy (1862-1918) occupies
a watershed position like Dufay or Beethoven. Debussy’s early compositions clearly belong to the 19th century yet he has frequently been described
as the “father of modern music” and it may be interesting to discover why.
Where we associate Bach with the creation of magnificent musical
structures, we tend to think of Debussy in terms of magical moments: the
sweep of a harp, or the sound of an unexpected harmony. Indeed, Debussy’s legacy for the Modern Period would seem to lie in the liberation of
the musical moment.
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A single four-measure passage from the Jeux de vagues movement of
Debussy’s orchestra work La Mer (1905) captures these ideas.
In contrast to Wagner’s “endless melody,” Debussy’s melody strikes us as
fragmented or atomistic, like a single brushstroke on a canvas. The music
sounds strange to us because it does not belong to either the major or minor scales. Instead, it comes from the Lydian mode.
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The chords do not fulfill the expectations of functional harmony: instead
they seem to exist outside of time.
This is still tonal music, but the tonality is defined by not functional harmony but by a pedal point and an arpeggio on E.
This is not harmony that goes anywhere: it just sits there. Repetition also
negates forward progress: each measure is repeated, and then the whole
passage is repeated, producing the pattern:
a a b b a a b b
Debussy defeats the forward impulse that we commonly associate with music and thereby makes us concentrate on the individual moment instead of
the relationship between moments, as we would in the music of Bach.
Debussy wrote about La Mer in a letter to André Messager: “You’re
unaware, maybe, that I was intended for the noble career of a sailor and
have only deviated from that path thanks to the quirks of fate. Even so, I’ve
retained a sincere devotion to the sea.” [Tresize, 2003, p.108] Jeux de
vagues, the second movement of La Mer, “slips easily from one waveshaped melodic idea to another, each seemingly generated by the underlying harmony, as waves are by underwater tensions, and the sequence of
chords following no progression but drifting and circling, again like marine
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currents. … Debussy wrote how he was feeling ‘more and more that music,
by its very essence, is not something that can flow inside a rigorous, traditional form. It consists of colours and rhythmicized time.’” [Griffiths, 2006,
p.222]
When Debussy described his new conception of music to his harmony
teacher at the Paris Conservatoire, Ernest Guiraud said, “I am not saying
that what you do isn’t beautiful, but it’s theoretically absurd.” Debussy replied, “There is no theory. You have merely to listen.”
Debussy particularly enjoyed using the whole-tone scale, which not
only lacks a leading tone, but has no semitones at all:
Passages in the whole-tone scale occur fleetingly in Jeux de vagues, like
splashes of color.
So what holds this music together? One can reduce the music to a
succession of chords, but they hardly constitute the usual logical progression to a well-defined goal.
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If we consider the melodic material of Jeux de vagues, we find a bewildering assortment of fragmented themes which seem to grow out of one another organically: hardly the well-ordered introduction, development and
recapitulation of material that we associated with the Classical Period.
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Jeux de vagues melodies
We see no evidence of linear form in this piece. The constant repetitions
create a static effect. The notes are like waves: they move, but the ocean itself doesn’t go anywhere.
If we superimpose the melodic fragments on the harmonic framework
we arrive at a pattern similar to that of the Wagner Prelude to Tristan und
Isolde, a sort of global form in which bits of similar material connect with
each other like meridians on a globe. The music displays its own internal
logic, but a logic entirely different from the principles of organization underlying music of the common practice period from roughly 1600-1900.
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“In Debussy’s most progressive music the tradition of continuous
symphonic development is replaced by a kaleidoscopic succession of brief
moments arranged not in a closed, linear progression, like beads on a
string, but in an open global array, like colored tiles in a mosaic.” [Wenk,
1983, pp.69-70]
Debussy’s Achievement: Redefining Musical Time
 Repetition, pedal points and non-functional harmony weaken sense
of forward progression
 Special scales and global form weaken allegiance to a tonal center
 Fragmentary melodies and splashes of color focus attention on the
moment
Debussy has redefined musical time in a way that frustrates our expectations of forward impulse. Fragmentary melodies, static harmony and
global form all serve to focus our attention on the individual musical moment, and in this respect Debussy can truly be called the father of modern
music.
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Arnold Schoenberg
Imagine creating a piece of music in which melody and rhythm virtually vanish, in which harmony remains fixed from one measure to the next,
and the only thing to change is the timbre. Such a piece was actually composed by Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951), with the title “Colors” and the
subtitle “Summer Morning by a Lake,” as part of his Five Pieces for Orchestra (1909). “Schoenberg had numerous second thoughts about the title of
the third piece, which was repeatedly renamed. ‘The Changing Chord,’
‘Color,’ ‘The Changing Chord (Colors on the Traunsee),’ ‘Colors (Summer
Morning on the Lake),’ and ‘Summer Morning at a Lake’ were all tried in
various concert programs and editions of the work.” [Simms, 2000, p.74]
The Five Pieces “have organic structure, recognizable themes, an
overall key-centre, and harmonies that do, in their fashion, direct and
punctuate the flow of events; but one hears them first, as did their earliest
astounded audiences, in terms of frenzied activity and utter stasis, violent
dissonance and weird tone colours, incredibly complex polyphony and an
outpouring of diverse ideas bewildering in its fervor—and used to intensify,
not to render acceptable, the reality of the artist’s innermost vision.” [MacDonald, 2008, p.183]
Colors “is the works’ still central point—the stillness of the fixed state
that, held long enough, persuades a landscape to yield up all its secrets. It
is a musical enactment of the ‘gaze’: it does not represent a landscape in
sound, rather it represents the act of contemplating that landscape. There
are no themes. The ‘colours’ of the title are seen in the two instrumental
combinations that spell out the same chord. Blending imperceptibly from
one ‘chord-colour’ into the other, the harmonic content begins to change,
subtly, gradually, note by note … Then it comes to rest again, returning to
the opening chord and its colours.” [MacDonald, 2008, pp. 184-185]
The piece begins with the following changes of tone color on a single fivenote chord:
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A
Flute 1
Flute 2
Clarinet 2
Bassoon 2
Viola 1 solo
B
English horn
Trumpet 2
Bassoon 1
Horn 2
Bass 1 solo
The overall form of the movement is defined by graduate alterations in timbre:
Section A:
Section B:
ments:
232:
233:
234:
235:
236:
237:
Section C:
Section D:
two changes per measure
arpeggios and gradual introduction of new instruharp, horn 4, trombone 1; violin 2, trumpet 3
trombone 2, violin 1
oboe 2, horn 1
violas, oboe 1, trumpet 1
E♭clarinet, piccolo 2, celesta
horn 3
increasing fragmentation
return to the rhythm of Section A
As with our example from Debussy, the harmony has nothing to do with
traditional functional relationships. The movement consists of a single
chord (A), its transpositions (A+1, etc.), and modifications. Essentially, this
single chord becomes the “tonic” of the piece, with transpositions and returns substituting for classical tonal relationships.
123
“Schoenberg later admitted that in it he had tried to capture the impression of sunlight on the water of Lake Traunsee, as he had seen it once
at dawn.” [MacDonald, 2008, p.185]
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Schoenberg’s “Colors” further develops the ideas of non-functional harmony and suspended time that we observed in Debussy. Schoenberg himself explored a different road in the years that followed, but the emphasis
on timbre proved to be of fundamental importance in music of the Modern
Period. Gradual changes in a basic chord or chord progression can be seen
as the key to Steve Reich’s Music for Eighteen Musicians.
Schoenberg’s Achievement
 Replacing functional harmony with transpositions and alterations
of a single chord
 Focus on the individual moment through changes on color on individual chords
 Suspension of melody and rhythm
Igor Stravinsky
The most significant piece of music written since 1900 remains the
ballet The Rite of Spring (1913) by Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971), composed
for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. This work combines the fragmented
melodies and static harmonies of Debussy with startling rhythmic techniques that continue to have a striking effect even after a century. Stravinsky’s melodies, like those of Russian folksong, tend to be modal, narrow in
compass, and constructed by adding and subtracting tiny melodic cells.
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The famous bassoon solo that opens the work illustrates Stravinsky’s melodic practice. Essentially it consists of a repeated descent of a minor
third—C, B, A—ornamented with grace notes in varying rhythms.
126
The melody is modal—we notice that there is no leading tone.
The harmony of The Rite of Spring tends to be static: it doesn’t go
anywhere. Stravinsky achieves this effect by ostinato patterns,
by pedal points,
and by repeated chords,
127
This last example, perhaps the most famous chord in 20th-century
music, consists of a dominant 7th chord on E♭ juxtaposed against an F♭
major chord. Either component sounds relatively tame on its own, but the
clash of the two harmonies produces a powerful dissonance. And this
chord never resolves: it just repeats itself. “The ‘Augurs of Spring’ with the
famous chord combining F♭ major and a dominant seventh chord built on
E♭, is generally accepted as being the first musical idea Stravinsky put
down for the work. The significance of this section is in its repeated statements of this chord, which establish the importance of repetition and the
harmonic stasis that results.” (Gloag, 2003, p.88)
Stravinsky’s rhythmic practices in The Rite of Spring continue to have
a startling effect, even after we understand how the effect is accomplished.
The example from “Augurs of Spring” given above shows Stravinsky’s use of
unpredictable off-beat accents. Like Beethoven, Stravinsky also makes use
of contrametrical patterns—rhythmic motifs that go against the prevailing
meter. In this example, Stravinsky introduces a pattern of six 8th notes in a
2/4 meter.
Perhaps the most unnerving of Stravinsky’s rhythmic practices is the use of
continually changing meters that prevent us from ever settling into a regular beat. The last movement of the work, the Sacrificial Dance, includes this
passage:
128
The ballet as whole is organized in sections marked by repetition of themes
or distinctive chords.
Sectional Form
Introduction (changing meter: 2/4, 3 /4, 4/4)
A: Theme A (bassoon)
B: (melodic fragments)
C: Theme B (oboe)
A’: Theme A (anticipates ostinatos of next section)
The Augurs of Spring; Dances of the Young Girls
A: Famous chord (F♭ against E♭7), ostinatos (D♭-B♭-E♭-B♭),
Themes C (trumpet) and D (bassoons)
B: ostinato, Theme E (horn) and Theme F (trumpets)
Coda: Theme E
Ritual of Abduction
A: (E♭7 against C7), Theme G (flute) (9/8)
B: (E♭7 against D), Theme G
C: Theme H (upper woodwinds)
B’: (F7 against D), no theme
A’: Theme G (changing meter)
Stravinsky says that the basic idea of the work, a primitive ritual of
sacrifice in which a young girl is forced to dance herself to death, came to
him in a dream. The dissonant harmonies, unpredictable rhythms, and
hypnotic repetitions create a musical idiom quite distinct from the expectations of the common practice period. Stravinsky’s fragmentary melodies
and static harmonies lead one to focus on rhythm as an organizing force,
yet the composer artfully combines off-beat accents, contrametrical patterns and changing meters to keep the listener constantly off-balance. Stravinsky innovative use of sound, whether in large orchestras or in chamber
music, continued throughout his long career.
129
Stravinsky’s Achievement
 Static harmony based on pedal points, ostinato patterns, and dissonance produced by juxtaposition of chords
 Musical development based on recombination of fragmentary melodic cells
 Unpredictable rhythms using offbeat accents, contrametrical patterns, and constant change of meter
Steve Reich
The music of Steve Reich (born 1936) appeals to many listeners who
otherwise reject works from the Modern Era. In contrast to the complexity
and dissonance of much 20th-century music, Reich’s compositions impress
listeners with their directness and consonance.
The 20th century represents the first time that composers in the western tradition were able to hear and be influenced by music of other cultures. Ethnomusicologists sought out and recorded examples of non-western music so that these new/old sounds reached a wide audience. Debussy’s many hours spent listening to Javanese music at the Paris World
Exhibition of 1889 helped to shape his ideas for redefining musical time.
We are so accustomed to thinking of time in strictly linear terms that it may
take us aback to recognize alternatives. Eastern thought tends to look at
time in terms of cycles: the cycle of the moon, the cycle of the seasons, a cyclical view of history in terms of rising and falling dynasties. Javanese gamelan music, based on repeated cyclical patterns of varying lengths, presents
a striking alternative to the western tradition of harmonic progression to a
final goal.
Steve Reich developed his ideas of musical time both from studying
the music of Debussy and by immersing himself directly in the traditions of
Javanese gamelan music. His most celebrated work, Music for Eighteen
Musicians (1976) has no perceptible meter or melody. As a result, we tend
to focus on pure sound in the moment. Like Schoenberg’s Colors, the
changes of tone color in Music for Eighteen Musicians occur very gradually.
Steve Reich has written, “I am interested in perceptible processes. I want to
be able to hear the process happening throughout the sounding music. To
130
facilitate closely detailed listening a musical process should happen extremely gradually. By “gradual” I mean extremely gradual; a process happening so slowly and gradually that listening to it resembles watching a minute hand on a watch—you can perceive it moving after you stay with it a
little while.” (Reich, Music as a Gradual Process, 1968)
The influence of Javanese gamelan music can be seen in the harmonic
organization of the piece, based on the rotation through a sequence of
chords, a cyclical rather than linear approach to harmony.
This harmony is diatonic—each chord comes from the A major scale—and
complex, since each chord has between seven and eleven pitches. The succession from one harmony to the next is quite subtle since each chord
shares around four pitches with its predecessor.
“Reich has made no secret of the fact that his later music reintroduced the concept of a bass line that, if not truly functional in a tonal sense,
did at least have the function (which Reich traces back to Claude Debussy)
of modifying the perceived ‘roots’ of the complex pandiatonic sonorities
above it.” [Fink, 2005, p.50]
Reich employs an alternation of instrumental groups, like Schoenberg’s
Colors, and uses an unusual combination of timbres: violin, cello, 2 clarinets doubling bass clarinet, 4 women’s voices, 4 pianos, 3 marimbas, 2 xylophones and metallophone (vibraphone with no motor).
131
132
In marked contrast to the dissonant harmonies and jarring rhythms
associated with early 20th-century music, the consonant chords and absence
of rhythm in Reich’s Music for Eighteen Musicians has a calming, otherworldly effect not unlike that produced by plainsong. His repeated rhythmic patterns and slow changes of harmony contribute to a redefinition of
musical time that may be regarded as one of the foremost characteristics of
music in the Modern Period.
Reich’s Achievement
 Creating a style of music based entirely on harmony and sound,
eliminating melody and rhythm
 Creating a harmonic language based on rich, diatonic chords, eliminating dissonance
 Replacing linear form with cyclical patterns
133
VI. Conclusion
What overall observations can we make following our survey of thirteen centuries of music? One overall conclusion coincides with our
knowledge of the world in general: universal connectivity has made the
world into a global village and has made communication virtually instantaneous. The developments in polyphony that we traced in studying medieval
music took place over several centuries. Now one can call up music from
practically any time or place at will. This expansion has made it possible
for composers to be influenced by many different cultures, not simply by
their predecessors within the western tradition. This globalization of culture has also had a negative effect in helping to extinguish musical traditions in much the same way that the increasing adoption of English as a
global language has accelerated the extinction of local languages and dialects.
The accepted conventions of the common practice period constituted
a kind of musical lingua franca for three hundred years. No single system
has emerged to replace this framework. Composers of the Modern Period
have been compelled to create their own musical languages. The resulting
multiplicity of tongues makes it difficult to offer generalizations, but generally music of the Modern Period has elevated sound to occupy a defining
role equal in importance to melody, rhythm and harmony. Where instrumental music of the common practice period might have been “orchestrated” after being conceived at the keyboard, many works of the Modern
Period make sound the principal defining element, to the point of suppressing melody or rhythm or harmony altogether.
The question of tonality, which provided a fundamental organizing
principle for music of the common practice period, remains unresolved in
the Modern Period. Debussy and Stravinsky used pedal points and repeated patterns to define a tonal center. Schoenberg used a recurring chord
to serve as a tonal center. Reich used a series of chords all drawn from the
same major scale to similar effect. Other composers endeavored to write
music which would have no tonal center at all, either through a systematic
avoidance of tonality or by writing music for percussion instruments which
avoided the issue of pitch altogether.
134
The end of the common practice language has produced a divide in
which some audiences refuse to cross the threshold of the 20th century even
after its conclusion. Gone are the days when the appearance of a new Verdi
opera would be enthusiastically embraced by Italians in all walks of life.
Music has become ubiquitous—you can scarcely go anywhere without hearing it—but new music of our own time has increasingly become the province of a select few. Yet musical creativity continues unabated as composers keep exploring new ways of creating art from sound.
135
Glossary
Anapest: in poetry, a metrical foot consisting of two short syllables followed by a long one, e.g., “Twas the night before Christmas and all through
the house.”
Arch form: a symmetrical structure such as A B C B A
Aria: a lyrical movement for solo voice in opera, oratorio, or cantata
Ars Nova (or “new technique”): a treatise by Philippe de Vitry (ca. 1320)
advocating greater rhythmic flexibility in composition; also the style of
composition by composers like Machaut in the early part of the 14th century
Augmented sixth chord: an example of chromatic harmony associated
with 19th-century composers, named for the interval of the augmented sixth
between the outer voices.
Basso continuo: in Baroque music, the combination of a keyboard instrument, such as organ or harpsichord, and a bass sustaining instrument,
such as cello, to highlight the bass line and the basic chords underlying a
composition.
Cadence: in music of the common practice period, a harmonic pattern
marking the end of a phrase or composition.
Canon: a passage in which one voice imitates another exactly (e.g., “Row,
Row, Row Your Boat”)
Cantata: sacred opera without costumes or scenery
Chorale: a German hymn, such as “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”
Chorale prelude: a composition for organ intended to introduce a chorale for congregational singing
136
Chromatic: melody or harmony that uses pitches from the chromatic
scale in addition to those of a given major or minor scale
Chromatic harmony: the use of chords, such as the augmented sixth
chord, requiring notes from the chromatic scale in addition to those of a
given major or minor scale
Chromatic scale: scale that includes all of the twelve semitones in an octave
Coda (or “tail-piece): in sonata form, a concluding section at the end of the
movement.
Col legno battuto: a string effect in which players bounce the wood of
their bows off the strings
Color: in pieces using isorhythm, the pitches drawn from plainchant
Concerto: a form in which a solo performer or solo group contrasts with
the main ensemble
Concerto grosso: a concerto for a small group of soloists (the concertina)
and orchestra (the ripieno)
Contrafactum: fitting sacred words to secular melodies (e.g. VU 586, “O
Danny Boy” becomes “We shall go out with hope of resurrection.”)
Contrametrical pattern: a rhythmic group that opposes the prevailing
meter, e.g., a two-note group in a movement in ¾ time
Counterpoint: the combination of two or more melodic lines
Da capo aria: an aria in two sections (A B), followed by a repetition of the
first section, to produce A B A
Development: the central section in sonata form in which musical material is altered
Diatonic: belonging to a particular major or minor scale
137
Dies irae (Day of wrath): a plainchant associated with the Mass for the
Dead
Diminished seventh chord: an example of chromatic harmony widely
used by 19th-century composers, named for the interval of the diminished
seventh between the outer voices.
Diminution: the statement of a theme in shorter note-values
Doctrine of affections: in Baroque music, the rule that each movement
could express only a single emotion or “affect”
Dominant: the fifth degree of a scale, or the chord based on the fifth degree (see Tonic)
Dotted rhythm: a dot written after a note increases its value by half.
Duple meter: organization of musical time in multiples of 2 (e.g., 2/4,
4/4)
Duplum: in medieval music, the part immediately above the tenor
Dynamics: indications of how loud or soft a musical passage should be
Equal temperament: a tuning system devised in the Baroque period
that permitted a keyboard instrument to play in any key; exploited by Bach
in his Well-Tempered Clavier
Exposition: the opening section of a movement in sonata form
138
Figuralism: a melodic, rhythmic, or harmonic depiction of a detail in a
text
French overture: in Baroque music, a two-part composition with a
stately slow section in duple meter with dotted rhythms followed by a faster
fugal section, usually in triple meter
Functional harmony: the hierarchical organization of chords in allegiance to the tonic chord
Ground bass: a repeated bass pattern used to organizing a musical composition, e.g., the aria “When I am laid in earth” from Dido and Aeneas
Hocket (Fr. “hiccup”): in music of the 13th and 14th centuries, the splitting
up of a melodic line between two voices so that one sounds when the other
is silent
Homophony: a musical texture in which all the voices move together, as
in a hymn
Iamb: in classical poetry, a foot consisting of a short syllable followed by a
long syllable, e.g.,
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Isorhythm: a compositional technique of the Ars nova in which a rhythmic pattern (talea) was imposed on a section of plainchant (color), thus
becomes
Leading tone: the seventh degree of a scale which lies a semitone below
the tonic and in tonal music often leads to or resolves to the tonic (see
Tonic)
Leitmotif: a melodic fragment associated with a particular personage or
object in a music drama
139
Lydian mode: a scale similar to the major scale but with a raised fourth
degree
Madrigal: a secular Renaissance composition, usually in four or voice
voices, characterized by a fondness for figuralism
Major scale: the pattern of whole steps and half steps produced by playing the white keys on a piano beginning with C, or any transposition of this
pattern
Mass: the most important service of the Roman rite.
Melismatic: having more than one note for a given syllable of text
Minor scale: the pattern of whole steps and half steps produced by playing the white keys on a piano beginning with C, or any transposition of this
pattern. Often the leading tone of the scale is raised.
Modal: associated with one of the church modes, e.g., the Lydian mode, as
contrasted with tonal, meaning based on the major or minor scale
Monophony: music consisting of a single voice, e.g., plainchant, or any
unaccompanied song
Motet: in medieval music, a brief composition for two or three voices with
a tenor drawn from plainchant; in Renaissance music, a polyphonic setting
of a sacred Latin text
Motif (motive): a brief melodic fragment, like the beginning of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony
Neume: any of the signs employed in the notation of plainchant
Non-functional harmony: the organization of chords by voice-leading
or the use of a pedal point
Off-beat accent: an accent that appears other than on the principal beat
of a measure (see the example under Contrametrical Pattern)
Opera: a drama that is primarily sung, accompanied by instruments, and
presented theatrically
140
Ordinary of the Mass: the fixed sections of the Mass: Kyrie, Gloria,
Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus, Agnus Dei. (As contrasted to the Proper of the
Mass, comprising sections associated with particular feasts)
Organum: Medieval polyphony usually based on a melody from plainchant
Ostinato: a repeated melodic pattern
Overtone scale: a special scale characterized by raised fourth and lowered
seventh degrees
Parallel organum: early form of Medieval polyphony in which the upper
voice moves in parallel fifths or octaves, note against note, with the underlying plainchant
Parallel thirds: two voices moving together separated by the interval of a
third
Paraphrase Mass: Renaissance polyphonic mass based on the repetition
and embellishment of a pre-existing melody, either sacred or secular
Parody Mass: Renaissance polyphonic mass that takes over the entire
texture of a pre-existing composition
Pedal point: a sustained note in the bass of a composition
Point of imitation: in Renaissance music, a melodic setting of a phrase
of text that is then imitated by each of the voices
Polyphony: more than one independent voice sounding simultaneously
Program symphony: in the 19th and 20th centuries, a symphony whose
melodic and harmonic ideas are based on an underlying piece of prose
called the program
Recapitulation: the final main section in a movement based on sonata
form
Recitative: a section of opera devoted to the presentation of text with
simple accompaniment
Rhythmic modes: brief rhythmic patterns used in medieval polyphony
as a means of coordinating the individual voices
Ripienist: in a Baroque concerto, a member of the larger ensemble, as
distinct from the soloist(s)
141
Ritornello form: the characteristic form of a Baroque concerto grosso,
based on the alternation of tutti (ritornello) and solo sections. The term “ritornello” also refers to the recurring musical material played by the whole
orchestra
Semitone: or half-step, the distance between any two adjacent notes on a
piano keyboard
Sequence: the repetition of a musical phrase at different pitch levels
Static harmony: harmony that seems to remain in one place, produced
by using pedal points, repeated chords or ostinato patterns
Subdominant: the fourth degree of a scale, or the chord based on the
fourth degree (see Tonic)
Superius: the highest part in medieval or Renaissance polyphony
Syllabic: having one note for each syllable of the text
Syncopation: a momentary suppression of the main beat, frequently encountered in the music of Beethoven
Talea: in isorhythmic compositions, the rhythmic pattern imposed on a
section of plainchant (the color)
Temperament: a system of tuning in which pure intervals are slightly
modified in order to allow performance in more than one key
Tenor: in medieval music, the part containing the underlying plainchant
Tessitura: either the range or the placement of a melody (high or low)
Texture: a description of the number and nature of melodic lines in a
composition (polyphonic, monophonic, homophonic)
Through-composed: a song setting with different music for each stanza
of text
Timbre, or tone color: the character of a sound, as distinct from its pitch;
the quality of sound that distinguishes one instrument from another
Tonal: exhibiting the principles of functional (tonic-dominant) tonality, as
distinct from modal or atonal
Tonic: the principle note of a major or minor scale, or the chord based on
that note
Trill: a rapid alternation between two adjacent pitches
142
Triple meter: organization of musical time in groups of three (e.g., 3 /4,
3/8)
Triplum: in medieval music, the third part above the tenor
Tritone: the interval of the augmented fourth or diminished fifth, known
since the Middle Ages as “diabolus in musica” (the devil in music)
Trope: the interpolation of newly-composed text or music or both to an
official liturgical chant of the Latin church
Voice-leading: the conduct of the several voices in a polyphonic texture;
harmony based on voice-leading takes its logic from stepwise motion of individual pitches instead of the relationship of each chord to the tonic, as in
functional harmony
Whole-tone scale: a scale based entirely whole steps; associated with
Debussy
143
Repertoire
Medieval [19:30]
 Plainsong, Kyrie Cunctipotens [2:00]
 Tuotilo of St. Gall, Kyrie Cunctipotens trope (ca. 900) [3?]
 Cunctipotens genitor (St. Martial School, ca. 1125) [5:30]
 Anonymous, En non Diu-Quant voi-Eius in Oriente (13th century)
[3:00]
 Machaut, Missa Nostre Dame (Kyrie, ca.1364) [6:00]
Renaissance [24:00]
 Dufay, Ave regina coelorum (ca. 1464) [8:30]
 Josquin des Pres, Missa Pange Lingua (Agnus Dei; ca.1515) [7:30]
 Victoria, Missa O Magnum Mysterium (motet; Kyrie; 2nd half, 16th
century) [2:30, 2:00]
 Weelkes, As Vesta Was from Latmos Hill Descending (1601) [3:30]
Baroque [19:00]
 Purcell, Dido and Aeneas (1689), “Dido’s Lament” [5:00]
 Buxtehude, Ein feste Burg (2nd half, 17th century) [3:30]
 Vivaldi, Concerto Grosso in A Minor, Op.3, No. 8 (1st movement,
1712) [4:30]
 Bach, Cantata 140, Wachet auf ruft uns die Stimme (1731) (1st movement) [6:00]
Classic [46:00]
 Haydn, String Quartet in C Major, Op. 73, No. 3 (1797) (1st movement) [7:00]
 Mozart, The Marriage of Figaro (1786) (Act II Finale) [21:00]
 Beethoven, Symphony No. 3 (1st movement, 1803) [18:00]
Romantic [30:00]
 Schubert, Erlkönig (1815) [4:30]
 Berlioz, Symphonie Fantastique (Dream of a Witches Sabbath, 1830)
[10:30]
 Wagner, Prelude to Tristan und Isolde (1865) [11:00]
 Verdi, Otello (Drinking Song, 1887) [4:00]
Modern [23:30]
 Debussy, La Mer (Jeux de Vagues, 1905) [7:00]
 Schoenberg, Five Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 16 (Colors, 1909) [3:00]
 Stravinsky, Le Sacre du Printemps (First 4 movements, 1913) [8:00]
 Reich, Music for 18 Musicians (I. Pulses, 1976) [5:30]
144
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149
Index
A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, 51
Aeneid, 46
arch-form, 66
aria, 48
Aristotle, 45
Ars nova, 15
artwork of the future, 112
As Vesta was from Latmos Hill
descending, 37
Augurs of Spring, 128
Ave regina coelorum, 23
Bach, 60
Bar-form, 53
basso continuo, 55
Beethoven, 81
Berlioz, 100
bienséances, 43
Buxtehude, 52
canon, 28
cantata, 60
Charlemagne, 3
chorale prelude, 52
coda, 71
Codex Calixtinus, 8
cogito ergo sum, 43
col legno battuto, 102
color, 16
Colors, 122
Common Practice period, 54
concerto grosso, 56
contrafactum, 51
contrametrical pattern, 82, 128
dawn-song, 61
Debussy, 115
Descartes, 42
development, 70
diabolus in musica, 102
Dido and Aeneas, 46
Dido’s Lament, 46
Dies irae, 102
diminution, 29
dissonance, 70
doctrine of affections, 46
Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath, 101
Dufay, 22
duplum, 8
Elizabeth I, 35
endless melody, 105
English pastoral tradition, 35
Erlkönig, 93
Eroica, 82
Esterhazy, 72
exposition, 70
Feast of the Pheasant, 22
figuralism, 37
Five Pieces for Orchestra, 122
Florentine Camerata, 45
French motet, 11
French overture, 66
global form, 106, 120
Goethe, 93
ground bass, 48
Guiraud, 118
Hassler, 51
Haydn, 72
Hobbes, 42
hocket, 16
homophonic, 31
idée fixe, 100
isorhythm, 15
Javanese music, 130
Jeux de vagues, 116
Josquin des Pres, 26
150
Kyrie Cunctipotens Genitor Deus,
5, 16
La Mer, 116
leading tone, 54
leitmotif, 107
Leviathan, 43
linear perspective, 21
Louis XIV, 67
Luther, 51
Lydian mode, 116
Machaut, 15
madrigal, 35
Marriage of Figaro, 76
Messe de Notre Dame, 15
Missa O magnum mysterium, 32
Missa Pange lingua, 27
monody, 45
mono-thematic, 73
Morley, 36
Mozart, 75
Music as a Gradual Process, 131
music drama, 104
Music for Eighteen Musicians, 130
Musica transalpina, 36
Newton, 42
Nicolai, 61
non-tonic opening, 102
Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland,
51
O magnum mysterium, 31
off-beat accents, 82
opera, 45
Opera and Drama, 104
Ordinary, 17
organum, 8
Oriana, 37
ostinato patterns, 127
Otello, 108, 109
parallel organum, 7
paraphrase mass, 27
parody mass, 32
pedal point, 117, 127
Philip the Good, 22
Phillip de Vitry, 15
points of imitation, 27
polyphony, 7
Pope Gregory I, 3
Principia Mathematica, 42
program symphony, 100
Protestant Reformation, 51
Purcell, 46
recapitulation, 70
recitative, 48
Reich, 130
rhythmic modes, 11
ripieno, 56
Rite of Spring, 125
ritornello, 56
ritornello form, 56
Russian folksong, 125
Sacrificial Dance, 128
Schoenberg, 122
Schubert, 93
Shepherd’s Calendar, 35
sonata principle, 70
Spenser, 35
St. Martial organum, 8
Stabreim, 104
Stanzaic song, 96
Stravinsky, 125
string quartet, 72
Summer Morning by a Lake, 122
Symphonie Fantastique, 100
talea, 16
tenor, 8, 10, 11, 12, 14, 18, 22, 23,
24, 27, 30, 66, 138, 140, 143
Thomasschule, 60
through-composed song, 96
timbre, 103
Tinctoris, 22
151
tonal, 54
Treatise of Instrumentation, 102
Tristan chord, 105
Tristan und Isolde, 104
tritone, 102
trope, 6
Tuotilo of St. Gall, 6
Veni creator gentium, 51
Verdi, 109
Victoria, 30
Videntes stellam, 12
Virgil, 46
Vivaldi, 58
voice-leading, 106
Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme,
60
Wagner, 104
Weelkes, 37
Well-Tempered Clavier, 44
When I am laid in earth, 48
whole-tone scale, 118
152